Nana Mama was already up. “Coffee with chicory,” she said, handing me a go cup and a small soft cooler. “Bananas, water, and her protein shakes are in there. There’s some of those poppy-seed muffins you like too.”
“Fattening me up?”
“Putting some meat on your bones,” she said, and she laughed.
I laughed too, said, “I remember that.”
When I was a teenager, about Jannie’s age, I’d gotten my height but weighed about one hundred and sixty dripping wet. I had dreams of playing college football and basketball. So for two years, Nana Mama cooked extra for me, putting some meat on my bones. When I graduated high school, I weighed close to two hundred.
“Dad!” Jannie whined.
“Tell Bree we should be back before ten,” I said, and I hurried out of the house with my daughter.
Jannie was quiet on the ride over to Starksville High School. It didn’t surprise me. She is incredibly competitive and intense when it comes to running. Sometimes she’s irritable before facing a challenge on the track. Other times, like that morning, she’s quiet, deep inside herself.
“This coach is supposed to be strong,” I said.
She nodded. “Duke assistant.”
I could see the wheels turning in her head. One of Duke University’s assistant track coaches ran the AAU team out of Raleigh during the summer. Some of her athletes would no doubt be on the track. Jannie was out to impress them all.
I pulled into a mostly empty parking lot next to the high school. At a quarter past six on a Saturday morning, there were only a handful of vehicles there, including two white passenger vans. Beyond them and a chain-link fence and bleachers, people were jogging, warming up.
“You’re here to train, right?” I said as Jannie unbuckled her seat belt.
She shook her head, smiled, and said, “No, Daddy, I’m here to run.”
We went through a gate, under the stands, and over to the track. There were fifteen, maybe twenty athletes there already, some stretching in the cool air, some just starting their warm-up laps.
“Jannie Cross?” A woman wearing shorts, running shoes, and a bright turquoise windbreaker jogged over to us. She carried a clipboard and grinned broadly when she stuck out her hand and said, “Melanie Greene.”
“Pleased to meet you, Coach Greene,” I said, shaking her hand and sensing her genuine enthusiasm.
“The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Cross,” the coach said.
Then she turned the charm on Jannie and said, “And you, young lady, are causing quite the stir.”
Jannie smiled and bowed her head. “You saw the tape of the invitational?”
“Along with every other Division One coach in the country,” she said. “And here you are, walking onto my track.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jannie said.
“Just for the record, you’ll only be a sophomore in the fall?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Coach Greene shook her head in disbelief and then handed me the clipboard and said, “I’m going to need you to sign a few forms here, saying we are not in any way, shape, or form considering this a recruitment meeting. This is summer work, and it’s all about training. And there’s an athletic release form from the Starksville school system at the bottom.”
I scanned the documents, started signing.
“Why don’t you take a lap and get warmed up,” Coach Greene said to Jannie, all business now. “We’ll be working two-hundreds this morning.”
“Yes, Coach,” Jannie said, looking serious as she put her bag on one of the low bleachers and ran out onto the track.
I signed the last of the documents and handed the clipboard back.
“You’re here how long?” Coach Greene asked.
“Unclear,” I said. “We’re down on a family issue.”
“Both sorry and glad to hear it,” she said, and she shook my hand again before jogging back to several women wearing AAU and Duke warm-up jackets.
There were other girls and boys coming in now, younger than the college bunch already out on the track, some roughly Jannie’s age. Three of them wore Starksville Track hoodies. I took a seat in the stands, sipped coffee, and ate poppy-seed muffins while Jannie went through her prep routine: a slow lap and then a series of ballistic stretches and drills, increasing in intensity and designed to get her quick-twitch muscles firing.
The entire time, the other athletes watched her, sizing her up, especially the high school–age girls, especially the ones from Starksville. If Jannie noticed, she wasn’t showing it. She had her game face on big-time.
Coach Greene called in the athletes and divided them into training groups. Jannie was put with the local girls. If she cared, she didn’t show it. This was all about the clock.
Chapter
22
Greene called for 60 percent effort, and the men went first, running the long left-hand turn of the two-hundred and then slowing into a trot back around. Greene sent the next groups in in waves. The seven college girls were serious athletes, strong and fleet. They seemed to dance down the track, barely touching the surface, their legs churning in a quick, powerful cadence.
Jannie watched them intently but showed nothing. When it came time for her group, the high school girls, to run, she went to the outside, letting the others have the favored lanes. Greene said something to her I didn’t catch. Jannie nodded and settled in.
They ran the staggers with no blocks, just taking off at Greene’s whistle. Some of the other girls, especially the three from Starksville, were surprisingly gutsy and kept abreast of Jannie through the slowdown. But you could see that they didn’t have her natural fluidness and stride.
The difference was more readily apparent two intervals later when Greene called for 80 percent effort. At the whistle, Jannie took off in a smooth, chopping motion that quickly gave way to the long, explosive lopes of a quarter-miler as she rounded the turn. She let up with ten yards to go and still beat the high school girls by three body lengths.
“Hey!” one of the local girls said angrily to Jannie, breathing hard. “Eighty percent!”
Jannie smiled and said, “That was seventy.”
Her tone was matter-of-fact, but the girl seemed to think Jannie was being condescending. Her face hardened; she turned and went over to her friends.
Coach Greene must have heard Jannie say she was giving only 70 percent, because she jogged over and said something to her. Jannie nodded and ran to catch up with the older girls.
“Drop to groups of four, ladies,” Greene shouted after them.
The college girls nodded to Jannie when she jogged up, but these were Division 1 athletes. After that moment of acknowledgment, they put on their game faces.
“Eighty-five to ninety now,” Greene called as the girls moved into the stagger.
At fifteen and a half, my daughter was as tall as or taller than most of the girls, but she didn’t have their strength or build. She looked slight next to them.
Jannie ran stride for stride with the two strongest girls until they were a hundred and fifty meters in. Then their conditioning and experience showed. They pulled away from her and crossed the slowdown mark a yard ahead.
“Ninety,” Greene called, and all the girls in that heat, including Jannie, nodded, their chests heaving.
They ran two more like that, and Jannie finished third both times. Then Greene called for warm-down and stretching. The two fastest college girls went over and talked to Jannie; the local girls tried to ignore her.
Coach Greene came to the fence, and I went down to talk to her.
“Has she run in the two-hundred in competition?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Quarter-mile only. Why?”
“Those two that beat her, Layla and Nichole, they’re pure sprinters. Two-hundred’s their race. Layla was runner-up at the Atlantic championships, twelfth at NCAA nationals.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I think she wants the four-hundred.”
“I know,
” Greene said. “She’s raw, but very impressive, Dr. Cross.”
“Thank you, I think.”
The coach said, “It’s a deep compliment. I…” She paused. “Think you might be able to bring her over to Duke next Saturday morning?”
“For?”
“There’s a group from Chapel Hill, Duke, and Auburn, all four-hundred girls; they train there. And I’d like my boss in my other life to see Jannie run.”
“Thought this wasn’t about recruitment.”
“Just a friendly suggestion. I think Jannie will get bored running with the girls up here, and there are more suitable training partners an hour away.”
“We’ll talk about it,” I said. “And it will depend on my family situation.”
“Just know the door’s open for her,” the coach said, and she jogged off.
The three Starksville girls were coming across the track, and Greene high-fived them as she went by, told them, “Tuesday afternoon.”
The girls shot me hostile glances as they passed and then went on chattering about something. I watched Jannie kick into her rubber sandals and shoulder her bag. Every move she made was efficient and natural; even the way she ambled was fluid, her shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles in perfect, loose sync.
I realize I’m bragging on my own daughter here, but, proud papa aside, I knew enough about athletics to understand that you couldn’t teach what Jannie had. It was genetic, a blessing from God, a level of physical awareness so far beyond my comprehension that at that moment, I looked up to the sky and asked for guidance.
Jannie came up beside me, shaded her eyes, and scanned the sky too. “What’s up there?”
I put my arm around her and said, “Everything.”
Chapter
23
We got home at around twenty past eight. Ali was up but still in his pajamas, sitting on the couch and watching a deep-sea-fishing show on the Outdoor Channel, one of the few stations that came in well.
“This is cool, Dad,” Ali said. “They hook these huge marlin and they take like hours reeling them in so they can be tagged and tracked.”
“That is cool,” I said, peering at the turquoise waters. “Where is this?”
“The Canary Islands. Where’s that?”
“Off Africa, I think.”
Bree and Nana Mama were in the kitchen, making breakfast.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Bree asked as I came in the room. “I wanted to go.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was trying to let you rest.”
“I’ll rest when I’m in Jamaica,” she said firmly.
I saluted her, said, “Detective Stone.”
“At ease,” Bree said, breaking into a soft smile. “After you eat, can we drive around? Like, all around?”
“So I can give you the lay of the land?” I said. “Sure, that makes sense.”
“Take me too,” Nana Mama said. “I’m going stir-crazy sitting in this house when all there is on the television is fishing and hunting shows. And I don’t care what Connie Lou says about how much Starksville’s changed. When I close my eyes, I see it as it was.”
Oddly, I didn’t. I realized that I hadn’t thought of the bungalow as my childhood home or as my parents’ home since that first night in town. The psychologist in me wondered why that was. And what about my aunts insisting I’d witnessed my father being dragged by a rope? Was I blocking it? If yes, why?
“You all right, Alex?” Bree asked, handing me a plate.
“Huh?”
“You’re brooding about something,” she said.
“Feels like a brooding day.” I shrugged, sat down at the table, and began to eat.
Naomi came in, said, “Isn’t this where we left off?”
“Nothing wrong with having two breakfasts in eight hours,” Nana Mama said. “You want anything, dear?”
“I can barely move from last night’s cholesterol bomb,” Naomi said, and then she looked at me. “Do you want to see where he was found? Rashawn?”
“Long as we can take in the sights along the way,” I said.
An hour later, temperatures were climbing into the eighties and it was growing stickier by the minute. I put the Explorer’s AC on arctic blast; Bree rode shotgun, and Naomi and Nana Mama were in the back.
We drove slowly north, zigzagging through Birney, which was still mostly as I remembered it, a few degrees shy of shabby and inhabited by black folks and a smattering of poor whites. On the east end of the neighborhood, Naomi pointed out a sad duplex, said, “Rashawn lived there. That’s Cece Caine Turnbull’s place.”
“When did his mom last see him alive?” Bree asked.
“That morning, when he went off to school,” Naomi said. “He was part of an after-school program at the YMCA, so she didn’t get alarmed when he wasn’t home by six. But at seven, Cece started calling his cell. He didn’t answer. His friends said they hadn’t seen him. So Cece called Stefan and the police.”
“The police look for him?” Bree asked.
“Halfheartedly, at best. They told Cece he was probably off somewhere with a girl or smoking pot.”
“At thirteen?” Bree asked.
“It happens around here,” my niece said. “Even younger.”
I drove north across the tracks and the arch bridge and through the neighborhoods into downtown. We passed a liquor store, and I noticed the name: Bell Beverages. I wondered whether this was one of the supposedly legitimate businesses Marvin Bell had bought with his drug profits.
We drove through the center of the city and into wealthier neighborhoods. It wasn’t wealthy in the New York or DC sense of the word, but there was a definite middle class there, with larger houses than the bungalows and duplexes in Birney and bigger and better-kept yards.
“It was just like this when I was a girl,” Nana Mama said. “You had the poor blacks in Birney and the whites up north here with all the jobs.”
“Who’s the big employer now?” Bree asked.
Naomi pointed through the windshield to a grassy hill surrounded by those middle-class neighborhoods and a vast brick-and-wrought-iron wall. Beyond the wall, a long, sloping lawn had been trimmed like a golf course. In the sun, the lawn seemed to pulse green, and it ran up the hill to the only structure in Starksville that you could legitimately call a mansion. A modern interpretation of an antebellum design, the house was brick-faced with lots of white arched windows and a portico. It took up the full crest of the hill and was ringed by low, blooming bushes and fruit trees.
“That’s the Caine place,” Naomi said. “The family that owns the fertilizer company.”
“Rashawn’s grandparents?” Bree asked.
“Harold and Virginia Caine,” Naomi confirmed.
“Big step down for Cece, then,” I said. “Living where she does.”
“Her parents say they had to practice tough love because of her drug and alcohol issues,” Naomi said.
“So Rashawn was an innocent victim even before he died,” Nana Mama said in a fretful tone. “I couldn’t stand this place fifty years ago, and I’m getting the feeling nothing’s changed. It’s why I had to get out after I left Reggie. It was why I wanted to get Jason out of here all along.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw my grandmother wringing her hands and staring out the window. Reggie. It was one of the few times I’d heard her use my grandfather’s name. She rarely brought up her early years, her failed marriage, or my father, for that matter. Her history always seemed to begin when she got to Washington and into Howard. And she avoided talking about my dad, as if he were a scab she didn’t want to pick at.
“Take a right,” Naomi said.
We went around the hill below the Caines’ place and then veered off to the west, where there were fewer houses. The road went past a Catholic church where a groundskeeper was mowing the lawn.
“St. John’s,” Nana Mama said fondly. “I took my First Communion there.”
I glanced in the mirror again and saw she�
��d relaxed into some better memory of Starksville. Beyond the church, the road wound into woods.
“There’s a pull-off ahead, up on the left, beyond the cemetery,” Naomi said. “You’ll get the bird’s-eye view.”
Chapter
24
We passed the open gate to St. John’s Catholic Cemetery. Up the hill I could see the pull-off.
“It’s a beautiful spot,” Nana Mama said, and I glanced in the mirror a third time, catching my grandmother looking into the cemetery. “Your uncle Brock’s buried there. He could have been at Arlington, but Connie Lou wanted him here with family.”
“He died in the Gulf War, right?” Bree asked.
“Green Beret,” Naomi confirmed. “Posthumous Silver Star for valor at Fallujah. It’s on the shelf in the front room.”
“And Connie never remarried?” Bree asked.
“She never saw the need,” Nana Mama said. “Brock was her soul mate, and her men friends all paled in comparison.”
“Men friends?” I said.
“None of your business.”
I knew better than to pursue the subject. Instead, I drove up and into the pull-off. About three hundred yards ahead, the ground gave way to pale white and irregular cliffs. Hardwood trees, maple and hickory, grew above the cliffs on the far rim. But on the near side, the bigger trees had been cut for lumber, the remaining stumps all but swallowed by raspberry brambles and sapling thickets.
Bree, Naomi, and I got out, aware of the building heat and insect whine all around. My grandmother rolled down the window and stayed put. “I’ll wait here, thank you,” she said. “I’ve taught too many thirteen-year-old boys; I can’t listen to what you all have to say out there.”
“We won’t be long,” Naomi promised, and she said to me: “You might want binoculars if you’ve got them.”
“I do,” I said, and from a compartment in the rear of the Explorer I retrieved the Leupold binoculars I’d bought when I was still with the FBI.
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