The Ghosts Are Still Coming Home

A sheriff struggles to confront prejudice in his own inner circle in this excerpt from Wiley Cash’s new novel.

Excerpt By Wiley Cash

Photos by Mallory Cash

My new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, opens in the fall of 1984, when Sheriff Winston Barnes finds a crash-landed airplane abandoned on the runway of a municipal airport on the coast of North Carolina. The mystery soon ignites a murder investigation after the body of a local Black man is discovered nearby, unleashing long-simmering racial tensions and class grievances. Later, there is a moment in the novel when Sheriff Barnes encounters what is perhaps the most disturbing and insidious discovery of his long career in law enforcement. In the scene, Barnes has just learned that a small Black community in rural North Carolina was terrorized the previous evening by a group of night riders organized and led by Bradley Frye, a local white supremacist who is standing against the sheriff in an upcoming election. Frye is using the mystery surrounding the airplane and the murder to fuel rumors of drug activity in the Black community. Barnes soon realizes that his secretary, Vicki, with whom he’s worked for decades, had not delivered the community members’ messages to him. When Barnes confronts his secretary about why she did not share these urgent cries for help, she responds that “there is no law against driving around.”

The novel is set in 1984 on the eve of Ronald Reagan’s decisive victory over Walter Mondale in a re-election that saw Reagan win every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota while receiving nearly 60% of the popular vote. This overwhelming political tide was implicit in my life as a young man growing up in North Carolina in the mid-1980s, where my community was primarily white, Christian, and conservative. We shared a worldview in everything from politics to religion to cultural attitudes.

The moment between the sheriff and his secretary is the moment I had been writing toward since beginning the novel, not because it reveals a plot twist that changes the course of the narrative, but because it reveals how I wanted the relationships in the novel to feel, which is similar to how many of us have felt about our relationships over the past several years. For me, life in 1984 was implicit, but over the past decade or so, political beliefs and cultural attitudes have become much more explicit. Whether you cover your face with a mask while following COVID protocols or your face shows up on the news lit by the fiery glow of a tiki torch as you march to preserve symbols of white supremacy, we are a nation of people who have revealed our cultural, political, and personal values in subtle and not so subtle ways. Some of us have had tough conversations with people we love, others have averted our eyes from proud, unmasked faces in the grocery store or turned away from outspoken family members when discussions of Black Lives Matter or Defund the Police or vaccinations come up at the table.

Regardless of who we are or what we believe, most of us have little doubt that we view our nation’s history and contemporary moment correctly and clearly. In the process of looking around with freshly sharpened, critical eyes, it is only our view of one another that has changed. 

Like the sheriff, we have experienced a whiplash in terms of how we view the history, not of our nation, but the history — as well as the future — of our relationships with one another.

After hanging up with Rollins, Winston heard Vicki raise her voice out in the lobby, speaking loudly as if trying to get someone’s attention. “Sir,” she said. “Sir!”

Winston leaned forward as if being closer to Vicki’s voice would give him a better idea of what was going on on the other side of his closed door.

“Sir!” Vicki said. “You can’t go in there!”

Footsteps rounded the corner and pounded down the hallway toward Winston’s office. As if commanded by instinct, Winston stood and braced his body for whatever was about to come through his door, understanding that his gun hung just out of reach. Without thinking, he moved from behind his desk and readied himself to face the person that Vicki had been unable to stop.

He winced when the door flew open, not so much because the force of the swing made him blink, but because of the person the door’s opening had revealed: Ed Bellamy stood just a few feet away from him, breathing heavily, his face gleaming with sweat, from either anger or exertion, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. Neither man said a word, each seemingly surprised to be in such close proximity to the other after the stir Bellamy’s march into the station had caused. Winston could see Vicki standing in the middle of the hallway, her face a combination of fear and anger. Winston looked from her to Bellamy, and then he looked back at her. “It’s okay, Vicki,” he said. “It’s okay. I’ve got it.”

She nodded her head slightly and turned the corner to make her way back toward her office.

Winston watched her go, and then his eyes settled on Bellamy’s. He’d left one hand on the doorknob, and with his other he pushed his glasses back toward his eyes, and then he raised a hand and pointed his finger at the dead center of Winston’s chest. Bellamy didn’t say a word. He just stood there, pointing.

It was clear to Winston that Bellamy was not someone looking for a fight; he was very clearly someone who’d had the fight taken out of him: a father who’d lost a child, a man whose life had been destroyed in the course of a single day. Behind his thick glasses his eyes were damp with tears garnered by grief and rage, and in that single moment of silence that passed between them, Winston understood just how close and inextricably tied together the two emotions are.

Winston did not whisper, but he did speak quietly. “Ed,” he said, “you can close the door.”

Bellamy stood there for a moment, and then he pushed the door closed behind him, his other hand still pointed at Winston in what seemed like an accusation.

“What’s going on, Ed?” Winston asked. He stepped back, felt his desk brush his thighs. He leaned against it as if he were about to relax into a conversation with a colleague who’d stopped by to swap gossip.

“We’re not going to do this again, Winston,” Bellamy said. He waved his finger as if scolding a child, and then he folded his fingers into a fist. “We’re not going to do this.”

“Do what, Ed?” Winston said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He gestured to a chair in front of him, and then he bent slowly and picked up his hat where it sat on the seat. “You want to sit down? Talk this over?” He stood slowly and walked behind his desk to give Bellamy more room to do whatever he decided to do.

Bellamy did not sit, choosing instead to put his hands on the back of the chair and grip it as if preparing to throw it against the wall. He leaned toward the chair, his voice coming out even and clear.

“We’re not going back, Winston,” he said. “We’re not going back to night rides and gunshots. We’re not going to stand for it.”

“Jesus, Ed,” Winston said, “what in the world are you talking about? What gunshots?”

“Last night,” Bellamy said. “Bradley Frye and all his good old boys. They showed up at Rodney’s house and threw something through a window, demanded that boy Jay come out. They were driving through the Grove in the middle of the night in their trucks, revving their engines, shooting off guns. Had their rebel flags flying.” He pushed his glasses up again, and Winston saw that his hand trembled. “They came by my house too, and I was waiting for them. Anybody firing a weapon in front of my house is going to take fire in return.”

“Wait,” Winston said. “Wait, are you telling me that Bradley Frye came to the Grove and shot at people?”

Bellamy’s face changed suddenly, and Winston saw that, for the first time since he’d burst into his office, Bellamy was angry. He stepped out from behind the chair and pointed at Winston again. His voice was louder, more defiant.

“I’m telling you that he came into the Grove like the goddamned golden days of the Klan.” He stopped, his breathing coming rapidly, his forehead again damp with sweat. “And I’m telling you this too: we will not be run out of our homes. Not again. Not by him.”

“Jesus, Ed,” Winston said. “I had no idea.”

“You should’ve,” Bellamy said. “I called 911 last night. It took some fat-ass deputy of yours over an hour to get out there; they’d all left by then. Your deputy didn’t even get out of his damn car, Winston; wouldn’t even come up on my porch and talk to me. I was out there with a rifle. He made me set it down, threatened to arrest me if I didn’t. He said the night looked quiet as far as he could see.”

Bellamy turned and looked at Winston’s closed office door. He lifted his finger as if pointing through it. “And I’ve called her about five times this morning trying to get you on the damned phone, and every time she tells me you’re busy. And I get here and find you sitting on your ass while my son—” He stopped, choked back something, and then continued. “While my son is sitting up in the funeral home because his widow can’t stop crying long enough to make a decision about when to lay him to rest. And now she’s got a bunch of white boys shooting off guns in front of her house in the middle of the night, busting out windows. We’re not going to stand for it, Winston. I’m telling you. You listen to me now.”

“I’m sorry, Ed,” Winston said. “This is the first I’ve heard of what you’re telling me.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” Bellamy said. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and took his glasses off and cleaned the lenses.

“You know as well as I do that Bradley Frye is an asshole,” Winston said. “He’s always been an asshole.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy said. “He was a little asshole back in high school when he was loading up white boys to drive up to Wilmington to jump Black kids in the parking lot at the junior high school. He was an asshole when he was throwing eggs at our houses and cars and burning bags of shit on the front porch.” He finished cleaning his glasses and passed the handkerchief over his forehead and then stuffed it back into his pocket. “But he’s a man now, and he might still be an asshole, but he’s an asshole with a gun and a truck and a rebel flag and a whole bunch of other assholes who’ll do anything he tells them to do.”

Winston attempted to say something, but Bellamy held out his hand to stop him, and he continued.

“And here’s what he’s telling his people, Winston, the people he’s convincing to vote for him: he’s telling them that my son was flying drugs into the airport, that Black people in this county are responsible for every bit of crime or violence or drugs that goes on here. And he’s terrorizing the people in the Grove to try to get us to do something stupid, and, Winston, I’m ready to do it.

“You know he’s developing that land on the water that backs up to the Grove. That’s what this is going to end up being about. If he can terrorize us, turn people in this county against us, force us to sell our land and move, he’ll be sitting on a whole lot of land, and when he uses this to get you voted out, he’ll be sitting on a whole lot of power.”

Winston’s vision narrowed to the fine point that Bellamy was making, and he knew without reflection that everything Bellamy was saying was true. As a kid, Bradley Frye had reveled in the racial violence that trickled south like a poisoned stream from Wilmington, where there were fires and shootings and attacks on Black students and Black communities. It had been a war, and many of the battles had been waged by Bradley Frye and his buddies right here in Brunswick County. For people like Frye, angry boys who’d grown into wealthy men, the war was still raging, but now it was being fought with checkbooks and votes instead of fists and baseball bats.

“A deputy came out to your house last night?” Winston asked. Bellamy nodded his head yes. “You remember his name?”

“No,” Bellamy said, “and I don’t think he told me, even though I asked for it after the bullshit he pulled.”

“And you called here today?” Bellamy again nodded his head. “And you spoke with Vicki out there, and you told her about what happened last night.” Another nod. “Excuse me,” Winston said.

He stepped around Bellamy and opened the door, and then he closed it softly behind him. He knew Vicki was back at her desk; he could hear her moving papers around as if she had suddenly become as busy as she had ever been. Winston walked down the hallway, turned the corner, and stopped at the open glass window in front of her desk.

“Vicki,” he said. She paused in her work and raised her head slowly. They made eye contact for a moment, and Winston could not recall ever looking at her as clearly or as seriously as he looked at her now. She sighed and sat back in her seat as if knowing a long conversation was about to unfold. Winston finally spoke. “Ed Bellamy in there says he’s been calling all morning, Vicki. Is that true?”

Vicki moved her hands into her lap, and Winston saw her interlock her fingers. She crossed her legs. She leaned her left elbow on the arm of her chair.

“You’ve had some calls, Sheriff,” she said. “I was planning to give you all the messages. All of them too, not just the ones from him.”

“Who else called? You told me Marie called when I came in. Who else called?”

Vicki dusted something off her lap. She repositioned herself and looked back up at Winston. “No one,” she said.

“Let me see the messages.”

“What?”

“The messages from Ed Bellamy,” he said. “The ones you were going to give me.”

“I didn’t write them down yet,” she said.

Winston sighed and stepped away from the window. He put both hands in his pockets, his fingers moving through his keys and loose change. He kept his eyes on the floor, the linoleum catching the glow of the fluorescent lights above him.

“Vicki,” Winston said, his voice coming out quiet and even. He didn’t know if he was speaking this way so that Bellamy would not hear him or so that Vicki would understand his seriousness. 

“This isn’t just some other case.” He looked up and stepped closer to the desk.

“That man just lost his son. He’s devastated. And now he has Bradley Frye out there trying to terrorize his family and his community.” He took his hands out of his pockets and put them on the counter. “When someone calls about something like that, Vicki, especially when they call three, four, five times, I need to know about it, okay?”

It seemed that Vicki did not even think about what she said next, and Winston knew that the words that came from her mouth were the purest expression of who she was.

“No law against driving around, Sheriff.” She held Winston’s stare, breaking it only to unfold her hands and scoot her chair closer to her desk. When she looked at Winston again there was something cold and final in her eyes that he had never seen before, but he understood that what he was seeing had always been there, had always been a part of Vicki and her life and her view of people like Ed Bellamy and her opinion of men like Winston who believed they deserved justice and equity. It was clear to Winston that his certainty was and had always been an affront to Vicki and people like her, and even more than surprise, Winston felt foolish for believing differently.

A door had closed between them, and Winston could feel that a coldness had seeped in. He now foresaw a relationship with Vicki that would be cast in the full light of their prejudices. There would be a sudden stop to small acts of kindness and shared joys, which could never transpire again without an unease that would color their every interaction.

Winston removed his hands from the counter and stood up straight. He kept his eyes on Vicki’s. “Vicki,” he said, “you are not an officer of the law in Brunswick County, and it is not your job or responsibility to decide what is and what is not illegal. It is your job to share all messages with me, regardless of who they are from and regardless of what they are. Is that clear?”

Another moment passed between them, their eyes still on each other, and in that moment Winston understood that, at least on this issue and probably many others that would be revealed and come to bear on their lives in significant and insignificant ways, Vicki had sided with Bradley Frye and people like him, and he knew that she would vote for Bradley Frye next week. Nothing had changed, but something had been revealed, and Winston had not seen it coming, although he had lived with it and worked alongside it every day of his life for almost two decades. This new knowledge diminished him, and he felt smaller standing in front of Vicki now than he had when he arrived at her desk buoyed by the righteous anger of justice and accountability. Winston found himself suddenly and acutely aware that he had run out of allies and that he was alone, both the arbiter of justice and the witness to justice gone awry.

“Vicki, listen to me,” he finally said. “Let me be clear. This isn’t a game of Black versus white. This isn’t white boys and Black boys getting in fights at the high school over the decisions adults have made.” He leaned forward, put his fingertips on the counter as if balancing the weight of his body on their points. “We’ve already had us one murder; I don’t want to have another one. We’re sitting on a powder keg here, and I don’t need anybody in this office playing with matches, Vicki, okay?”

She hesitated. Winston looked into her eyes, imagined her mind tossing around words and phrases she’d grown up hearing, long-held beliefs that she insisted on holding against Black men like Ed Bellamy and his dead son. Asking her to work against suspicions and beliefs so deeply held as to seem intrinsic to life was like asking Vicki to attempt the impossible task of separating her skin from her own skeleton.

“Yes, sir, Sheriff,” she said.

“I need you,” Winston said, “not to be on my side, but to be on the side of the law. I have to know that I can trust you, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. She scooted her chair even closer to her desk and cast her eyes back down at her work. A storm had passed between them, destroying every structure in sight and ripping trees from the earth, but neither of them would ever acknowledge the carnage, choosing instead to live exposed to the elements in silence.

From When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash. Copyright© 2021 by Wiley Cash. Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.

Wiley Cash is the author of When Ghosts Come Home, The Last Ballad, This Dark Road to Mercy, and A Land More Kind Than Home. He serves as the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville and lives in North Carolina with his wife, photographer Mallory Cash, and their two daughters.

Mallory Cash is an editorial and portrait photographer based in North Carolina. Her work has appeared in the Knoxville Museum of Art and numerous publications, including The New York Times and Oxford American.

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