The Turncoat: The Anna Series, #1

By Renney Senn

Jed Haiger is an unfathomable mystery. In 1928 semirural Alabama, Jed's knowledge of horrific KKK crimes becomes a death trap when he is mysteriously transformed into the culture's ultimate prey. Jed's gifted younger sister and a blockbuster federal trial thrust him into being an enigmatic national hero with a deadly secret. His fame leads to a shocking conclusion of violence and redemption that stuns the nation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Renney Senn
• Release date: Mar 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386734932

Renney Senn

Born in San Diego, California, I attended Brown Military Academy and then San Diego Military Academy (SDMA) for my college prep education. I still correspond with a number of my SDMA classmates. I attended The University of the Seven Seas (now Semester at Sea) in 1965 as a freshman. On the third day of the trip, I met my future wife, Susie Orr. My sophomore and junior years were spent at the University of California at San Diego where I founded and edited what is now UCSD’s official university newspaper.  I found the newspaper considerably more exciting than UCSD’s then hardcore-science undergraduate curriculum. Needing clinical courses for my career as a psychologist, I finished my senior year at UCLA. My graduate work was completed at Chapman University where I received my master’s in counseling psychology in 1971. Susie and I had now been married for two years and fortunate enough to take a second around-the-world tour, but this time as staff; I was doing my master's internship and she was the secretary to the dean of the ship. Despite my expectations of completing my doctorate and becoming a clinician, I was suddenly redirected to a career in business when my father urgently needed temporary help with his real estate development company.  This led to my founding a small venture capital company that funded the television production side of the David Frost – Richard Nixon Television Interviews in 1977. Since then I have founded seven other companies involved in real estate, television post-production, manufacturing, telecommunications, and software. Upon reflection, I can only attribute this repetitive, feverish effort to some genetic defect. Two of these companies became public entities and all of them provided a wealth of experiences that I feel very fortunate to have enjoyed and, in several cases, survived. Now in retirement, I have returned to what I first experienced at the Triton Times, writing. After completing a manuscript that tells the unbelievable story of my telecommunications company, I decided to write a novel, The Turncoat. I had the germ of the idea many years ago but only recently decided to return to it and finish the story. The electronic book is to be released in late March 2018. I am currently developing other novels that should be forthcoming soon.

Book preview

Prologue

SEPTEMBER 1927—OUTSIDE Gilbert, Alabama

PARALYZED WITH FEAR, the man breathed in quick, shallow pants as he witnessed the proceedings. The oppressive night air raised large beads of sweat on his black skin giving it a blistered appearance punctuated by crimson gashes from his having been dragged to the meeting behind a cantering horse. The two large men on either side of him were oblivious to his suffering. They held him so tightly that were he not riveted with terror he would have screamed in pain. Their snow-white robes were in stark contrast to the naked, filthy, and bloodied body suspended between them.

Not twenty feet away, on a four-foot-tall wooden platform overlooking a large clearing, stood the region’s exalted cyclops. His immense, sheeted frame was lighted by a towering, burning cross and the torches held by each of the forty hooded men standing in an arc before him. No one dared speak while the cyclops was delivering his judgment. It would determine not the guilt or innocence of the accused, only the means of his execution. What the black man was hearing propelled him to the edge of unconsciousness.

As the exalted cyclops concluded his description of what was to take place, he brandished a new, custom-made whip that would be the proceeding’s instrument of torture and death. As he cracked the weapon, its portent of violence signified that the talking was over.

At that moment, even the frenzied, impatient clamor of the mob was unable to penetrate the catatonic state of the victim. Twenty-seven-year-old Emo Crumley was about to suffer what only a monster could ever have conceived.

Part 1

Chapter 1

MASONTOWN TIMBER, MASONTOWN, Alabama—July 1928

SEVERAL THOUGHTS CROSSED Howard Clayton’s mind as he walked alongside the logging truck to inspect its load of massive longleaf pines. Tugging at the second of three large chains restraining the wood giants, he was preoccupied with knowing that this particular delivery to Hollister Lumber was a lifeline for Masontown Timber. The regional lumber recession had greatly weakened his employer and a missed delivery could mean the end of the company. Everyone knew the stakes. As the only black foreman, Howard knew his were far greater. Now finalizing the last shipment of the day, he was relieved that he had rescued Masontown from potential disaster.

Howard’s deft supervision had long tortured Jed Haiger, another foreman, who resented the black man’s skill. Several months earlier, they had gotten into a bloody fight when Clayton had directed some of Jed’s crew to help his own. While most foremen would often cooperate, Howard’s presumptiveness and Jed’s racial hatreds had exploded leaving both men to limp away with bruises and humiliation in front of their crews. Jed had been mortified at his public drubbing at the hands of a black man and would never forgive him.

Bill Harris, the mill manager, had been informed by Jed that the critical Hollister order was running late and had ordered Howard and his men to help Jed’s crew expedite it. The black foreman had already seen the need and was directing both his and Jed’s men when Jed returned from Harris’s office.

Jed’s teeth clenched at what he saw as Howard’s usurping his authority, but this time he had an idea that bridled his anger so that his reaction was merely cold and curt. Jed told Howard to take the lead. Howard paused at this sudden surrender of authority as Jed’s icy manner made him suspicious. He was convinced that Jed sought to insulate himself from being laid off by somehow sabotaging him.

Howard directed both his and Jed’s men expediently and with more apparent respect than Jed had ever commanded. As Jed saw the black man’s superior deftness with both teams of men, the spark to detonate his emotional tinder box was struck. Jed’s deep-seated hatred for Howard suddenly overwhelmed him.

In an act of obsessed, self-destructive mindlessness, Jed suddenly pulled one of his more timid men aside. Ya listen good, ya little shit! Yer gonna leave one ’o them main chains unhitched and ya ain’t gonna breathe nothin’ ’o this to nobody! Ya got it?! Now go! The worker jerked his head up and down with his wide eyes fixed on his boss. Despite the man’s misgivings, his fear of Jed’s anger prevailed and he found his chance as the final load was being secured on the huge trailer.

Once the last wood giant was hoisted on the truck and seemingly secured, the men who had worked doubly hard to meet the deadline took off their gloves and started to head for the office to punch out as Howard made his final inspection. A deafening crack pierced the air as a piece of chain severed by the now unhinged logs whipped towards him, tearing off his right arm. Breaking free above him, the massive logs threw his body backward. Two logs bent his legs forward over themselves at the knee, boring the toes of his boots into his thighs as another crashed into his torso blasting his innards out through the side of his shirt. Now flattened on the ground facing upward, his final sensations were seeing a great falling tree trunk inches from his face followed by a massive crunch, darkness, and an end to the bloody onslaught.

Having rushed to see what had happened, a stunned and disbelieving group of men stood frozen, trying to absorb what lay before them. Jed’s first reaction was that he had foiled his black nemesis. It would still be several minutes before the full dimension of the tragedy’s impact on him and everyone else would pierce the ironclad shell of his hatred. For the moment, Jed felt only triumph and vindication.

His perverted satisfaction was shattered when Bill Harris flew onto the scene and shouted, Goddammit, Jed! Get with it—what the hell ya waitin’ for?! I’m gonna git someone’s head for this! Call an ambulance!

The enormity of Jed’s crime finally hit him. His hated rival had not only been sabotaged, he was also dead, as dead as the Hollister contract, his employer, and his job. In a frenzy, Jed began shouting at men almost incoherently, shoving others, and blaming everyone.

The minute the local authorities arrived and started questioning witnesses, Jed’s elevated anxiety mushroomed. Everyone was ordered to stay until they were officially released, which gave Jed far too much time to lie about his innocence while imagining the ever-increasing likelihood of his eventual punishment. Rather than displacing his earlier employment fears, his behavior had compounded them, making Jed physically shake as he imagined what lay ahead.

Hours later Jed was finally released from the traumatized mill and headed for the small hovel he called home. As he imagined the threats growing around him, Jed felt his neck and spine turn to ice. He would seek refuge in a bottle, a place where he could deaden his fears, at least temporarily.

Chapter 2

DESPITE HAVING ONCE been ruggedly handsome, Jed Haiger’s face was now leathery and weather-worn. His downcast expression and a slightly stooped stance reinforced the impression of prolonged hardship. Born in Alabama thirty-eight years before, he was part of a family that had always been poor and was ultimately destroyed by itself.

Tall and good-looking, Jed’s father had been an able farmer whose impoverished circumstances left him with an unfulfilled need for respect. Unfortunately, his father’s darker side would be uncorked when too much liquor added violence.

This was especially true in his later years or when Jed’s mother was readily at hand. A tattered soul who had once been pretty, she had long since resigned herself to suffering as a way of life. Her body was tattooed with scars, the price she had paid attempting to shelter young Jed and his younger sister Anna from their father’s drunken rampages over the lifetime of a failed marriage. Needing to protect herself from the hopelessness and desolation of her circumstances, she had long ago retreated into herself and was perpetually in a sort of waking coma, shuffling from one household chore to another. Over time, tenderness, sympathy, and even the ability to feel and show love to her son and daughter had given way to despair.

Jed’s and Anna’s life suddenly and dramatically changed not long after Jed turned sixteen. He and Anna had come into their house late one afternoon to find their father, their partially nude mother, and a black drifter all dead of gunshot wounds in their parents’ bedroom. The police report later indicated that it appeared that their father had barged in on their mother and a young black stranger getting ready for sex, one of the few pleasures left for both. In the scuffle that ensued, all three were killed, but there was a suspicion that their father had survived, only to finally shoot himself in a blind drunk.

At fourteen years old, Anna’s reaction to this horrific experience was complex and formative. She resolved never to allow herself to become the helpless, tragically victimized person her mother had been. She would harness her emotions and develop a keen awareness of everything around her. Out of this crucible, the teenager would emerge as someone who was determined to control her destiny rather than be dominated by it.

In contrast to Anna, Jed’s emotional scar from this watershed event became a prism through which he would see everything from then on. He saw himself as doomed to a life of violence, humiliation, and injustice that was inescapable in the world into which he had been born. A ferocious temper was the only relief valve for his ever-present feeling of abject hopelessness.

Now, twenty-two years later, Jed’s growing fears made him barely aware of entering his rented shack. The frayed screen door clattered behind him as a stark light bulb pierced the darkness with the click of a soiled switch. He shuffled into his bathroom where the only coolness he felt was the porcelain sink. Another filthy light switch snapped in the silence as he leaned on the sink and gazed into the eyes of a middle-aged, terrified, and haunted man staring back at him; his teeth gritted and his stomach flexed. He splashed some tepid water on his face to relieve the heat, if only for a second. A few steps and minutes away was his bed, silence, and, thanks to a bottle, a brief escape.

A broken chain of fitful naps left him awake, the oppressive, hot dampness making the sweat from his skin glisten in the reflected moonlight. Jed seemed suspended between the languor of sleep and the ache of fatigued wakefulness. His frame throbbed at each joint while his muscles felt swollen and stretched. Oh God, not now, he thought as a blast of pent-up breath billowed his cheeks and brushed his lips. What a helluva time to get sick, he moaned.

His agitation and discomfort forced him out of bed and into the next room to heat a cup of caffeine and sugar. He cursed as his assaulted joints struggled with the instant coffee jar and spoon. His skin seemed numb; he was barely aware that he had accidentally splashed some hot water on it as he filled his stained mug. You’ll be OK, just keep movin’, he reassured himself hollowly as he dragged himself off to his bathroom.

My God. It’s gotta be cheap shit booze, he concluded, gazing into his bathroom mirror. His face was subtly splotched and his nose seemed swollen. The density of his facial hair made his cheeks and chin appear uncommonly dark, but he reassured himself that this would disappear with a shave. Then he shook with a start. His skin tingled while panic pierced his gut. Wha’the? ... My eyes! What the hell’s wrong with my eyes?! Jed’s light blue irises had become dark and empty gray moons, surrounded by jagged red lines enveloping milky white-yellow orbs.

Amidst his growing tension, he was unaware of hot drops of sweat racing down his chest and a cramp in his back and legs. His terrified fascination drew him just inches from the mirror. Wha’the? ... What ... in ... the ... hell?! he heard himself shout while pushing back from the bizarre reflection. A flush of scorching fever suddenly shot through his torso to his face as his pulse seemed to explode through every vessel of his body.

In mindless desperation, Jed mechanically retreated to a routine that ordinarily he found comforting. But this time, his longer than usual shower provided no respite from what had become a terrorizing obsession. Still dripping wet and grasping at a wispy hope that shaving might offer some comfort, Jed’s desperation grew as he sensed his razor being held by an exceptionally taut hand that ached by the time he washed the last lather down the sink. Again, he pushed his face to the mirror. To his horror, his three-day growth had hidden a blotchy, singed skin that he now saw slowly spreading across the rest of his body. What the hell is this? Goddammit! What is this?!

The baffling physical changes he was undergoing, growing stress from the probable demise of his employer that Jed had been living under the last several weeks, and now the weight of having to pay for the horror at Masontown Timber finally collided inside him all at once. In his semi-sobriety, his fears exploded in a full-blown panic that left his parched mouth virtually cemented shut. Jed’s head pounded and his torso broke into a sweat as he felt his soul free-falling into an abyss.

In a mindless, frenzied rush to escape, Jed threw some clothes and basics into an old duffle bag. His clunker skidded out of the dirt driveway and onto the two-lane interstate highway. Still unaware of where he was going, his blind terror was forcing him to flee as if he were being pursued by some titanic beast in the darkness.

Chapter 3

AS JED TORE DOWN THE deserted two-lane road barely illuminated by his aging headlights, two hours of solitary driving had done nothing to ease his steadily rising fear and physical discomfort. Desperation had enabled him to recall a nearby place where he had once felt completely isolated. It was an abandoned shack he had stumbled upon the previous summer during a visit with his sister. As he approached the turnoff, his terrifying condition was now racking his entire body with excruciating pain. As it intensified, he became obsessed with escaping into the dark, remote place he was now approaching.

Coming to a clearing at the end of the overgrown road near the derelict hovel, his pain was becoming so severe that even the total seclusion enveloping him was now offering little relief. The shack had not been inhabited for years; it was an ideal refuge for someone desperately needing to vanish. Jed stumbled into the single room that offered a sink, mirror, toilet, and mattress on the floor as its sole signs of domestic convenience. They were filthy, to be sure, but they were there. The water worked, the electricity did not. He would make do.

He saw through the darkness only with the limited help of a flashlight he had long ago stolen from Masontown’s supply shed. It would now give him sight where he would soon wish to be blind. The mirror hung on the far wall of the denuded room, far enough away so that Jed could not see himself from the doorway where he stood. Training the light on the mirror, he walked the few steps to examine what he had been afraid to see since getting into his truck.

At first, he had trouble aiming the flashlight properly. The reflection was badly obscured, clouded by the mirror’s age and damage done by years of ever-present humidity. As Jed rubbed the mirror’s surface, he was less and less aware of his aching body, while becoming more and more consumed with what his reflection might reveal.

The image was still unclear as he fumbled with the flashlight to see his face. He could make out only small portions of it clearly, which required him to visualize a composite of the hints he was able to see. As the seconds passed, his breathing became halted, his neck pulsated and he felt as if his entire skin was being singed. Strangely coarse arm hair rose as if it were a slow time-lapse film of growing grass, while his temples began to pound. What was happening was beginning to sink in.

Frantically, Jed clawed at his skin as if he could somehow strip it from his body, leaving deep red gashes in his flesh. Suddenly blood seemed to race from his head, and his legs shuddered; he was being pressed by an invisible, mighty hand onto the barren board floor, his unconsciousness becoming a brief, merciful respite from his unbearable reality.

As he lay alone in the flashlit darkness partially paralyzed, he recovered his senses several minutes later, only to see that the transformation of his bare arms was as vivid as the second he had passed out. What was happening to Jed was unfathomable. He was horror-stricken as he realized that he was fast becoming what he hated above all—a black man. Only partially metamorphosed, he was now a dark mulatto, with the characteristics of a blended white and black genealogy.

Before long, the process would run its course.

Chapter 4

BILL HARRIS, JED HAIGER’S boss and drinking buddy, was coming to the end of his third and final mill manager job interview with Tarenton Lumber Mill, located just outside of Gilbert, Alabama. He had quietly decided the month before that Masontown Timber was probably in too much financial trouble to survive and started looking for another job. He had been right—Howard Clayton’s death had merely hastened the inevitable. Coincidentally, this interview was on the same day that Masontown declared bankruptcy. In an attempt to stand out from any competitors for the mill manager’s job, Harris had indicated in his first interview that if he were hired he could probably persuade Hollister, Masontown’s lifeline customer, to award its potentially lucrative, long-term contract to his new employer.

I know the others have probably gone over this already, but it says here that your present job is with Masontown Timber. Weren’t you the mill manager when that Negro was killed there a week or so ago? queried Steven Choate, the senior personnel manager.

Yeah, but it turned out to be sabotage. One o’ the foremen forced a worker to monkey with the chains on one of our trucks. God knows why. Ya can bet your life, with all the people outa work and the dead colored’s family an’ all, people are gunnin’ fer him, that’s fer sure. There was hell to pay when that happened, and I caught most of the heat; that’s somethin’ I din’t take kindly to and ain’t soon gonna forget. When we discovered it was a crank employee behind the accident, senior management told me I was cleared, not that it did much good. We all lost our jobs and I’m still lookin’ fer the asshole ... sorry, I mean, the bastard who did it.

Well, I’m impressed with your credentials and experience. It looks as if we could use someone like you as our mill manager. Of course, I don’t have the final say, but my senior management will look favorably on your record. I know that for sure, and I’ll personally recommend you. Of course, your bein’ such a help in gettin’ us that long-term contract that Masontown had with Hollister is a big plus for you.

Harris’s gambit worked. He would start as the new mill manager for Tarenton Lumber Mill the following week.

Chapter 5

BARELY ABLE TO STIFLE the revulsion he felt at his bizarre condition, it would be a long two days before Jed was fully released from his prison of partial paralysis. Now, necessity forced him to break out of his endless fits of panic enough to begin concentrating on what he had to do to survive in his new world. He had some food he had brought with him, but not enough to last much more than a week. He needed money but, despite his new disguise, he feared going anywhere near Masontown lest he be recognized and arrested for Howard Clayton’s murder. There’s no way that little shit who fixed the securin’ chain ain’t already ratted on me, he concluded.

Despite his financial straits, with the all but assured cancellation of the Hollis contract, there wouldn’t be any money for him at Masontown. His last paycheck would have been negligible due to all the advances he had taken. A brief flash of yearning came with the memory of what now appeared to have been better times. But now those were gone—vanished into another world to which he knew he no longer belonged.

Jed knew his friends would never understand, even if he could magically get close enough to tell them what had happened. He knew their violent prejudices precluded the remotest chance of even hearing his story, let alone accepting it. He also knew he couldn’t find a doctor willing to see him except if the doctor were black. Now there’s some real shit right there that I ain’t even gonna think about, he hissed to himself. Jed need not have been concerned. There was barely a handful of black doctors in the entire state.

One week after he arrived