“Sure. We’re getting as much as we can while it’s affordable.”
“Does Carson know about the redevelopment?”
“It’s no secret.”
They both knew that wasn’t an answer, but Persy let it drop. They walked toward the parking lot in silence until Blaire stopped in the middle of the sidewalk on College Street. “He’s double dealing!”
“Who? How?”
“Carson. Something’s fishy. He didn’t seek payment of a sizable lien for twenty-three years. Why? And how come the first title search showed no debt?”
“Would that depend on who did the search?”
Blaire looked at her with new respect. “It was a guy in Parker’s office.”
“Does Parker have anything to benefit from this?”
“His fee, obviously. No, no, Jerry Parker’s as honest as they come, wouldn’t hide a lien if he knew it existed. But someone . . .” He paused, twisted his mouth. “Okay, here’s the deal. I think Carson collected the debt years ago. The original seller’s dead, the attorney’s dead. If the lien was satisfied by cash or check, and if there’s no record of the transaction, well . . .”
“My word, he’s trying to collect again.”
“That’s my suspicion. If I can prove it, the city can buy up the tract at a bargain.”
“And Mr. Carson?”
“Goes straight to jail, does not pass Go, does not collect two hundred dollars.”
“Or another forty thousand.”
“You got it.” He stopped at the car. “I’ll go get the keys, be right back.”
Persy waved to the boy Noah as they pulled out of the lot. He waved back, a wistful look on his face.
Blaire turned onto College, headed toward Trade. Persy asked, “I’d like to ride by the property, it’s on our way.”
“Why?”
“I’m curious, having heard so much about it.”
“Not much to see.”
Blaire was right. Two ramshackle buildings on East Third with faded words, WHOLESALE AUTO BODY PARTS.
They sat out front for a minute.
Persy said, “Indulge me. Go down Third to Myers. I want to show you something.” But as soon as they turned onto Myers, Persy regretted it. They passed houses that looked unlivable, crumbling chimneys, dirt yards, broken windows. She would have assumed the dwellings were abandoned if she hadn’t seen a woman hanging clothes on a line and children in a front door watching them ride by.
Blaire said, “Persy, we have to help these people.”
They passed a storefront advertising coal and fuel, a poolroom, shoe repair, grocery, a café. “But look at all these businesses,” Persy said. “And there, drive down the next block.” They came to where there should have been a row of pastel cottages, but the only one that remained appeared to be in a state of flux. The picket fence was in sections, the windows of the cottage blank, the bushes uprooted and lying in the front yard. “Oh, no, Roberta’s house is gone.”
“Yes, renewal began here months ago. It has to happen, Perse. Brooklyn is over seventy percent blight. That’s a fact.”
Persy was quiet the rest of the way home.
CHAPTER 24
Dooby Franklin is in his porch rocker, staring off like he’s sleeping with his eyes open. Not rocking, his stick legs bent at the knee, his belly bulging under the arms of the chair. I holler “hey” to him but he doesn’t even turn his head, just looks at a piece of paper he’s holding. “Dooby?” I call out again. He crumples the paper into a ball, tosses it in the dirt.
I walk down our front steps, cross the yard, pick up the paper. Dooby pushes himself up. “Got my letter. They give me three months.” He opens his door and goes inside.
The letter is dated June 12, 1964, from the Redevelopment Commission of Charlotte, telling him he’s got to find a place to live and move out, that his house gon be torn down in three months.
I put the wrinkled paper on his rocker and go home. Uncle Ray is in the kitchen, trying to fix the toaster that burned out yesterday, got it torn apart with stuff all over the table. Bibi’s sitting there watching him, frowning. “No more toast coming from that piece of junk,” she say.
I suspect she right. “Dooby got his letter this morning.”
“His letter?” Bibi ask.
Uncle Ray pats her shoulder. “Where’d you put my pliers you were using yesterday?”
“Oh. Maybe I left them in the bathroom.”
She gets up and walks down the hall. I can’t think what she’d be doing with pliers in the bathroom.
“How’s he doing?” Uncle Ray asks, looking out the window toward Dooby’s house.
I shake my head.
“I’ll give him some time before I visit.”
The next morning after breakfast Uncle Ray goes over to see Dooby. After a short while he comes back. One look tells me something is awful. His skin’s gray, his hands shaking. He passes me without a word and picks up the phone in the hall. I hear him dial, say, “Operator? Get me the police. No, an ambulance. No, the police.” A pause, then, “Yes, ma’am, emergency. I got to report a death.”
When he gets himself calmed down, Uncle Ray tells me he got to Dooby’s house, got no answer at the door and went on in. “I called out to him, had to push junk aside and climb over it so I could get down the hall to his bedroom. Found him on the floor on his belly. Dead. Still holding a needle.”
“A needle? What you mean?”
“Like for shooting up, but I can’t figure Dooby doing that.” Uncle Ray shakes his head. “Doesn’t seem right, but maybe.”
I fix him some ice tea.
He holds the glass with both hands. “Dooby hasn’t thrown away a paper in fifty years. Stuff stacked everywhere, magazines, cans, dirty clothes, shoes. I stepped on a dead mouse. Those cats of his running free. Gotta be a dozen.” Uncle Ray pulls his handkerchief from his pocket, wipes his eyes, blows his nose. “Had him a path to the kitchen, the bathroom. Stinks bad in there, almost couldn’t breathe.” He slumps into his chair. “No wonder he never let anybody in his house. No wonder. How can a person live like that?”
Pretty soon we hear sirens. First the police, then an ambulance, then more police. We watch from the porch as they take Dooby out, a huge lump on a stretcher, four men carrying it to the ambulance.
Cats scatter in the neighborhood, yowling, hungry. Neighbors set out food for them, but a man from the pound shows up, starts tossing them in his truck.
City people come and go, men with clipboards, standing in the yard, talking. One man shouts, “I say bulldoze the whole thing, junk and all.”
Another say, “I’m not going back inside. Rats everywhere.”
Dooby has been dead two days when a woman knocks at our door saying she’s his sister. Thin, so different from her brother I would never guess they were related. A fine maroon coat with velvet collar and cuffs, black hat, leather gloves, but she doesn’t have airs when she introduces herself as Irene Scoville Franklin, from Alexandria, Virginia.
I invite her in. “Would you like a glass of tea?”
She takes Uncle Ray’s chair by the front door. “No, thank you. But of course I do have some questions, if you have the time?”
“Sure.” I sit on the sofa.
She takes off her gloves, puts them in her pocket. “I understand you were the last person to talk with James.”
“James?”
“Dooby. My brother.”
All those years we never knew his real name. “Yes, the day before . . .”
“The coroner says he died of a heart attack, and I don’t question that, given his weight, his diabetes.”
“Diabetes? Was he taking shots for it?”
“Yes, apparently every day.”
“My uncle Ray, the one who found Dooby, will be glad to know that’s what the needle was all about.”
“Found him?”
“Yes, ma’am, after he passed. Holding a needle.”
She’s quiet, her face so sad.
“He was upset about the letter.”
“What letter?”
I’m wondering how in the world she doesn’t know about that. “From the city, telling him he had to move in ninety days. He got it the day before he died.”
She stands. “That explains a lot. He may have taken twice the amount of insulin that morning.” She puts her hand on the doorknob. “I’ve given the city permission to do whatever is necessary with the house. They’re going to bring in an exterminator, haul away the trash, then tear it down. I’m making arrangements for a service. James didn’t have a church, not that I can determine, but the minister at Friendship Baptist—”
“Reverend Coates.”
“Yes. He’s agreed to officiate and our family has two plots left at Pinewood. James gets one of them.”
She picks up her purse, fixing to leave, looking tired, edgy. I reach out, touch her arm. “Would be no trouble for me to fix you a glass of tea. Why don’t you sit back down for a bit?”
She looks around like she forgot where she is, and I wish I could make it easier for her. She has lost her brother, maybe her only family. She falls back into Uncle Ray’s chair, touches a hankie to the tears on her cheeks. “We hadn’t been close, not since our parents died, all those years ago. I wish I’d known about his—” She hesitates like she’s not sure how much I know. “About the way he was living.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“No.” Her voice catches in her throat and she sits quiet for a minute. “But it’s awful, beyond anything I could have imagined.” She blows her nose. “Yes, a glass of tea, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No, ma’am, not one bit. Come on in the kitchen.”
She laughs. “Ma’am? I grew up in Blue Heaven. Went to Second Ward High. But it is strange being back here.” She follows me, takes a seat at the table. I get the tea jug from the refrigerator.
She looks out the window. “Your house, is it . . . are you . . .”
“Haven’t got a letter. But it’s only a matter of time.”
“Where will you go?”
“We thinking on it, thinking on it.” I get glasses from the cabinet. “What do you do in—where was it you say you live?”
“Alexandria, Virginia, but I work in DC, in the Government Accounting Office. What about you?”
“I’m at the S&W Cafeteria on the Square, ten years now. I’m on the serving line.”
She picks up a toy truck Hawk left on the table. “You have children?”
“One boy, Hawk. He’s nine, fourth grade at Myers Street School. You know it?”
“Went there myself.”
“Do you have children?”
She shakes her head. “I chose a career, never married.” Dooby’s sister finishes her tea, says goodbye.
As she goes down the front walk, stepping around the magnolia limbs, getting in her shiny blue car, I wonder what it’s like living in Virginia, working for the government. I watch as she drives away.
CHAPTER 25
An odor assaulted Eben inside the front door of the manse. Mildew, which he’d smelled for weeks, but stronger than it had been. Where was it coming from? Perhaps a plumbing leak in the basement. Before he reached the bottom of the wooden stairs, he saw standing water, glittering in the gaunt light from narrow windows near the ceiling. He sat on the steps, removed his leather shoes and socks, stepped barefoot into frigid water, an inch, maybe more. What had been on the floor that would now be ruined? Had water gotten into the coal bin? If so, the furnace wouldn’t run and he’d soon be needing it. The coal delivery chute ran through an opening in the top of the bin, which was otherwise covered tight, secured by a latch attached to a cross beam. Using all the strength he could muster, he shoved the bin an inch or two away from the wall. The rusty latch gave way. He lifted the lid. There wasn’t much coal—he’d planned to get a delivery next week—but what was there was soaked, mildew climbing the walls of the bin.
“Well,” he said aloud, “that’s that.” As he turned away, something caught his eye, a flash of faint color behind the bin. With his face against the wall, he reached as far as he could, but couldn’t dislodge whatever was there. He sloshed over to the tool bench, turned on a work lamp hanging from a hook, took it to the bin. The wavering beam illuminated a book.
With a pipe wrench as a lever, he shoved the coal box a bit more from the wall, reached in and retrieved the book. REGISTER in murky letters across stained leather. His legs trembled. He sank down on the bottom of the basement steps.
Upstairs the phone rang and rang. Eben sat for a long while, the ancient book on his knees, caressing the damp leather. He started to open it, but the cover bent, began to tear from the spine. “No!” he shouted. With the book in his right hand, he pulled himself up by the railing, climbed slowly to the first floor of the manse, getting there as the phone stopped ringing. He spread a thick towel on the kitchen table and put the book on it, pressing to release moisture. Who would value the treasure he’d uncovered, would honor it?
Georgie Bee. She’d know what to do with this precious relic. He dialed the number for her brother’s house. When he reached her, she laughed, “I just tried to call you.”
“Oh, that’s crazy. I was in the basement, heard the phone but couldn’t get to it.”
“You sound excited.”
He sat down, calming himself. “Could you possibly come over here? I’ve got something to show you, don’t know what to do with it, but I’m sure it’s important.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He was still sitting at the kitchen table when the doorbell rang. He walked into the living room, saw Georgeanne through the screen door. “C’mon in.” He felt awkward greeting her in his bare feet.
She touched his arm. “Eben, what in the world? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I might have. The ghost of Reverend Tilley.”
She followed him through the dining room. “Where are your shoes?”
Of course she would notice. “On the basement stairs. Got a problem with water down there.”
At the kitchen door she saw the book, reached for it.
“Don’t! It’s wet, fragile. We’ve got to figure out how to dry it before we open it.”
“What is it?”
They sat at the table. “The register Reverend Tilley told me about, the night he died. Said it was in the basement, behind the coal bin. I thought he meant St. Tim’s. Never occurred to me he was talking about the manse, until today, when a problem in the basement forced me—” He shook his head.
“Oh, my. Did he say what was in it?”
“He—I mean, I didn’t put a lot of faith in what he said at the end. He was rambling, something about slaves running off, empty graves. Oh, and that what was once vital wouldn’t matter after a while.”
Georgeanne touched the damp towel. “I wonder how we should go about drying it.”
“After I called you I remembered someone who might know what we should do, an anthropologist interested in the graveyard. He’d know about preserving things.”
“Let’s call him.”
Marion Lipscomb was, if anything, more excited than Eben or Georgeanne by the discovery of the register. He inspected it cautiously, his eyes large beneath bushy colorless eyebrows. “I’m in a field where time takes on a new meaning. The time that things have been latent, for example, can be anywhere from days to millennia. Then there’s the time that must be respected in the process of extraction. I’ve seen delicate fragments ruined by hasty hands. When something like this is discovered”—he gestured to the damp book on Eben’s kitchen table—“rushing risks destruction.” He raised his arms, twirled with glee in the small kitchen, shouted, “Oh! This is a great day. Give me an hour, and I’ll bring you what you need to dry this precious book. I promise you we will uncover its mysteries.” He ran through the house, slamming the front door behind him.
“Wow,” said Georgeanne, “the man’s a whirlwind.”
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p; “He is that, and his enthusiasm’s contagious.”
“Is he albino? I’ve never seen such white hair.”
“Don’t albinos have pink eyes? Anyway, I’m glad we called him.”
Less than an hour later Marion returned with an impressive array of tools: an oscillating table fan, two rolls of paper towels, a variety of tweezers from the most delicate—what might be used to extract an errant eyebrow—to needle-nose pliers. He laid out an assortment of wooden blades so thin they were almost transparent, magnifying glasses, and a canvas cylinder he unrolled to reveal a dozen brushes of various sizes.
“Now we go to work,” he said, setting the fan on the kitchen table. “We’ll run it day and night on the lowest setting, rotating back and forth to create a gentle breeze. When the cover is dry enough to lift, we’ll use these”—he held up a wooden blade, the smallest tweezers—“to insert a paper towel between the cover and the first page. As the drying proceeds—and it will, be assured—we go to the second page, etc.”
A week later, under Marion’s expert guidance, at the cost of two rolls of paper towels and arduous patience, the register was dry, though permanently bloated. As if returning from the dead, its color was restored: the word REGISTER in rusty red on brown leather, the spine of black cloth, the pages edged in tarnished gold. It sat there on the kitchen table, framed on three sides by paper towels.
They all wore thin cotton gloves Marion had provided.
“Ready?” Marion asked.
“Ready!” Eben and Georgeanne spoke simultaneously.
Marion lifted the cover, removed the first paper towel to reveal a bold flourish across the title page: “Second Presbyterian Church Colored, Charlotte, North Carolina.” And below that, “Register of Members Beginning in the Year of our Lord 1842.”
Eben said, “According to the church Bible, St. Timothy’s was added to the name after the Civil War. Until then, it was simply Second Presbyterian. This confirms that.”
“My goodness,” said Georgeanne, “I had no idea the church was well over a century old.”
“As an institution it’s a hundred and twenty-one. In the early years members met in homes in what was then called Logtown, renamed as Brooklyn at some point after the Civil War. By 1880, they had enough money to buy a new two-story house as a permanent location for what is today St. Timothy’s Second Presbyterian. The history’s in the King James Bible we keep at the pulpit.”
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