Old Bones

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  “Or if you want help, a better situation, you and the dog.” Salt leaned down and patted the mostly white dog’s dusty flank.

  “Undocumented?” La Luna asked.

  “Undocumented. Dogs, too,” Salt replied. “Adios, La Luna.”

  The Taurus smelled like five kinds of cheap cologne. She watched the girls pair up with the men from the van. Face glowing, La Luna tended the fire, adding a broken stick of furniture to the barrel.

  • • •

  The lights on the fountain in the park changed colors, alternating Christmas red and green. White lights outlining the fountains, trees, and pavilion turned Woodruff Park into a fairyland. Salt, doing her end-of-shift check, looking for witnesses, belted her coat and was leaning against the Taurus when she heard the crutches.

  “Gimme a ride,” Makepeace said, pointing a crutch at the Taurus.

  “Happy holidays to you as well, Mr. Makepeace.”

  “Bullshit. I just come from Grady. Now, you tell me how I’m supposed to stay off this leg. I’m homeless and the doctors say stay off the leg.”

  She went to the passenger side and opened the door. “Your chariot awaits.”

  “Don’t get smart with me.” He swung his legs between the aluminum cuff crutches, coming to the car door she held and closed after he’d gotten in.

  Behind the wheel she asked, “Where to? Where are you staying nowdays?”

  “Your old stomping ground. I’ve got a cat hole in one a them buildings they fixin’ to tear down in The Homes.”

  “Really?” She put the car in gear, drove south, and took him to the stripped-out building on Shaw Street he directed her to. He opened the car door himself, and before he got out, she asked, “You didn’t happen to come by the fountain the night the Spelman girls were shot?”

  “No. Why, you all can’t get the ones did that?” Under the car dome light his scowl deepened, his mouth grew thin, and his eyes narrowed.

  “No one coming forward about the truck,” she answered. “They’ve had it all over the news.”

  “You know some white folks seen that truck,” he said.

  “You’d think,” she agreed.

  He didn’t get out, just sat there looking out the front windshield.

  “You know the Gateway Center has medical recovery rooms? You could stay there while they hook you up with the VA.”

  He looked at her, again scowling, got out, and slammed the door.

  “You’re welcome,” she said to the departing Makepeace.

  • • •

  The next day when Salt and Felton came into the Blue Room, Man drew aside the newspaper, yesterday’s, the one with the NO ARRESTS headline. “You all in some deep ol’ shit now, boy.” He spread the paper, tapping the headline while he watched Felton, who was checking out the room, looking up and down the walls and at the back of the sign in the barred window. Felton flipped the cord switch for the blue neon BLUES sign; its light blinked a reflection on the linoleum floor.

  “We ain’t open,” Man said loudly. “What’s dude’s problem?” he asked Salt, who sat down beside him at the table.

  “You’ll get to know him. He’s a good guy. We’re kinda like partners, like on TV, you know.”

  “You always been a loner. How come now you got somebody with you?”

  “Compromise,” she said, letting her eyes wander, then settle. “Remember last year when I was working that case and the guy was shot in here?”

  “Yeah, you got Stone time cut around all that.” Man nodded.

  “It started with Stone and his statement to the FBI about having been pimped when he was a kid—when you first started watching out for him.”

  “You say so. Me ’n’ him don’t talk ’bout that shit.” Man kept his eyes on Felton, following his movements, now at the counter between the kitchen and the room.

  “So what’s up with you and Flash Daddy? Is he your ticket?”

  “Don’t go messin’ with my business now, Miss Dee Tec Tiv.” Man turned to her, eyes gone hard, lips drawn tight. “We ain’t had no hard feelings between you and me lately.”

  Felton leaned back against the bar, elbows propped, jacket falling away from the black .40-caliber on his right hip. He winked when Man looked his way.

  Man gathered up the paper. “Anyway, seems like you might have your hands full.” He folded the paper so that just the bold print showed.

  Salt and Man had a long history of conversations that were wide-ranging. From economics to social justice to history, he held unique perspectives.

  “Man, we got another case the other day. You might have read about it—mass grave? We think the bones are those of convicts sold into labor, like slaves.”

  “You and macho man over there”—he tipped his head toward Felton—“didn’t come by to give me a history lesson.”

  “You know what they say about the past not being over—it’s not even past.”

  “Why you here?” he asked, leaning forward.

  “You wasted my time, Man. You knew JoJo and Glory wouldn’t be at Marvin’s. How come you don’t want me talking to them? I’m trying to find out if they know anything about who could have been involved with Lil D’s sister.”

  He leaned back. “You can talk to them. I don’t give a shit.” He scowled, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “They teach us in cop school how to read body language, you know.” She pointed at his arms.

  “You gettin’ on my last nerve now,” he said.

  “Where can I find JoJo and Glory?”

  “They dancers. Where you think you find them?”

  “What is your problem, Man?”

  “You. You the problem. You always up in my business. I’m trying to go legit, trying to get out of gangsta life. An’ you all up in my shit.”

  “Prostituting young women, girls, is your legitimate business?”

  “Who said anything about my girls prostitutin’? They dancers.” He spread his hands in a leave-it-to-fate gesture.

  “So none of your girls turn tricks?”

  “What they do on they own time is their business. But they don’t trick out of my club.”

  “Stripping is just another way of selling their bodies. It’s not much of a stretch to go on to straight-out prostitution. And selling bodies is just another kind of slavery.”

  He pinched up his face, eyes narrowed, mouth twisted. “They free to go. They got beautiful bodies. Why shouldn’t they get the money?”

  “I think it troubles you, Man. I do.”

  They sat. Felton leaned.

  “Where do JoJo and Glory stay?” she asked again.

  “You ax them.”

  “All right, Man.” She sat back. “But you’re just calling my attention by being obvious that you don’t want to help me get in touch with them. Makes me even more determined, you know?”

  The door to the Blue Room opened and Stone came in. He went behind the bar, got a glass of water, and threw back a handful of pills, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his long neck.

  “Hey, Curtis.” Salt stood and went to the bar, exchanging positions with Felton, who walked over to where Man was seated, keeping both Man and Stone in his line of sight. “I heard that Mary Marie, Lil D’s sister, about three or four months ago—it would have been right around the time you got released—that she was seen at the church.” Salt pointed in the direction of God’s World next door.

  Stone rolled his head around on his shoulders and closed his eyes.

  “He don’t wanna talk when the hallucinations are bad,” said Man as he stood and went to Stone. “You good, dude? You need to eat something with them pills.” Man walked to the passageway between the bar and the kitchen, told Sam to hand him a two-piece meal, which Man then gave to Stone, who left without speaking a word. Watching him leave, Man said, “The doctors
give crazy people scripts and expect them to take them right—what time, with water or food. He don’t know a lot of times if it’s night or day. How he gonna keep track of takin’ pills three times a day with water or food? Sheeite.”

  “You ever see Mary next door?”

  “Naw.”

  “She might have been here some early mornings.”

  “You know I don’t do mornings.”

  “You think Stone could have had anything to do with her? He and Lil D never got along too good. And like you said, it’s hard to make sure Stone’s taking his meds like he’s supposed to.”

  “Stone ain’t no problem.” Man looked at the door.

  Salt walked to the center of the room, where she was able to barely detect a faint stain on the floor from where the blues guitar man’s blood had pooled. The taste of his mouth as she gave him CPR, the feel of his ribs as she pushed on his chest, counting the breaths into his mouth—the scene rushed back to her.

  “Salt? Salt.” Felton was kneeling beside her while Man stood above looking down. Felton unhooked the Handie-Talkie from her belt and brought it close to his mouth.

  “No.” Salt put her hand to his. “I’m all right.”

  “You’re on the floor, Salt. You passed out or something.”

  “I’m okay. I was just light-headed for a second. Please don’t make this be a thing. I’m already . . .” She looked at Man. “Well, you know, the fit-for-duty eval.”

  Man pulled a chair close and helped Felton get her up. He went to get some bottled water and gave it to her.

  “Thanks. Maybe I just need to eat.”

  “You want some of Sam’s chicken?” Man asked.

  “Probably I need something a little easier on the stomach,” she said, getting up. “Really, let’s go get some of Mai’s pho,” she said as Felton gave her his arm.

  A BARE TREE

  By the week before Christmas Salt had grown frustrated waiting for Felton to be available every time she needed to go to The Homes. They were both tracking leads on separate cases. Wills and Gardner and the Things all had caught fresh bodies and everyone was playing catch-up after having investigations delayed by the deployment to the task force. She needed to speak to the minister at the storefront church, and she’d yet to find JoJo or Glory; their schedules at the club were “not available.” And the protest organizers were revving up for one last demonstration before the Christmas break—another of the critically injured students had died, and there was no progress on locating the truck or any suspects. Hamm’s partner, Best, worked his new case while Hamm waited for analyses from the forensic scientists of the mass-grave bodies. Members of the media were stomping their feet at the politicians, who stomped on the commanders, who begged for something, anything, from the detectives, all of whom were likely to be diverted at any moment by new cases.

  Christmas Eve morning Salt came in early, determined to get to God’s World in time to catch the morning service, the one Mary might have attended. In the parking lot of the almost vacant strip mall were three vehicles: an old passenger van, a beater with elaborate rims and spotted with Bondo, and a dented red compact. She parked parallel to the sidewalk in front of the church window with its amateurish globe painting, flaked and disappearing, Florida almost gone. There were no signs of Christmas on the exterior of the storefront church. Entering, Salt took off her fedora. At the front of the room a T-shirt-clad man, his back to her, was decorating a needleless scrub pine, hanging white origami birds on its flimsy bare limbs. The room looked as if the furnishings—plastic stacking chairs, drum kit, and keyboard—might have been borrowed from the Blue Room next door.

  Salt raised her voice. “I’m looking for the minister.”

  The man turned, cigarette pinched in a corner of his mouth, eye squinched to the smoke, a dove dangling from his right hand.

  “Reverend Gray,” she said.

  “Ah, the good detective,” Gray said in that way he had of making it sound as if he were identifying her as the protagonist in a parable.

  “That’s actually quite beautiful, Rev,” Salt said, coming forward, nodding at the tree planted in a five-gallon paint bucket of dirt. “The doves add the magic.”

  “It’s supposed to be a live tree. The Homes’ elementary school gave it to us when school let out for the holiday break. They made the birds in art class—nondenominational and all. Here . . .” He held the dove out to her. Forty-five, heavy in the belly, he wore his usual T-shirt, this one somewhat white, with “God Is My Copilot” lettered over the outline of a plane, cigarette burn holes dotting the shirt’s front like strafing from enemy fire.

  The front door opened and an elderly man and woman followed by a bandanna-wearing, saggy-pantsed teen came in. The man, whom she knew from her patrol days, raised his hand in greeting to both Salt and Reverend Gray. From a door at the front of the room, on the other side of the lectern, Stone came out. Keeping her eyes on Stone, she asked the reverend, “This your regular gig?”

  Gray was also watching Stone. “Don’t let him bother you. He’s harmless. Lives in back. I’ve been doing services here almost since the last time I saw you. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was under suspicion, the way you keep turning up.”

  “I do seem to keep coming to you for help. At the shelter when you helped me find Lil D’s father, and then last year when I was investigating the abuse of young men at the shelter. Maybe God’s trying to tell me something.”

  “I’m gonna need to get this service going, such as it is.” Only a few other congregants had arrived. “It won’t take long, maybe twenty minutes. Can you stay?”

  “Yes. I got up early to be here. You’re not going to make me confess or anything?” Salt hung a dove on a top twig.

  “We’d be here all day if I was in the confession business.” Gray picked up a single sheet of paper, a photocopied hymn, and handed it to her.

  She took a chair at the back of the room.

  Stone went about the room unstacking chairs, placing Bibles in the seats, glancing at her, then jerking his head away. When Gray went to the lectern, Stone sat down against the wall at the front of the room.

  “Let us pray.” The reverend raised his arms heavenward. “Oh, God!” His eyes closed as he fervently shook his head. “Today we celebrate the birth of one who came to deliver us from the slavery of shame, to free us and deliver us into our own personal glory.”

  “Amen,” replied the congregants.

  “Curtis will now read from the Scripture.” Gray sat down.

  Stone stood, opened his Bible to the back, and began reading: “And white robes were given unto every one of them; . . . until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.” Stone struggled with the more archaic words. Gray listened with a look of growing curiosity, his brows raised.

  “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood,” Stone read, pausing to wipe his slack mouth with the back of his hand, but he persisted, stumbling over more of the words.

  The first memory Salt had of Stone was the Christmas Day she came across him, twelve years old, exposing himself as small children nearby were riding their new Big Wheels and tricycles. Rather than take him to Juvenile, she’d tried to find his guardian, someone to ensure his appearance in court. All she’d found were indifferent relatives who didn’t want to be bothered. He’d smeared the window of her patrol car by sucking and plastering his open lips on the glass.

  “And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth; . . . she is shaken of a mighty wind.” It was painful to watch the drooling drowsiness overtaking Stone. He rocked on his feet, sweat running down his temples. “And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man
, hid themselves—”

  Gray finally stood, interrupting Stone. “Thank you, Curtis,” and held up the hymn sheet. “Everyone rise and join me in singing ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.’ I know it’s not a Christmas song, but it’s what got copied.” Gray began heartily and on key. Here and there Stone barked out a word or two of the hymn. Salt remembered the harmony.

  “I’ve chosen two texts from Isaiah,” Gray said at the end of the hymn: “. . . thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger . . . satisfy the afflicted soul . . . they . . . shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach.”

  He continued. “For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden . . . And garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire . . . For unto us a child is born . . .”

  He closed the Bible and took up a black journal. “All of us here today need something. Sometimes what we think we need is not what we really need. Sometimes it is, but most of us keep trying to get what might not be good for us. What we want for Christmas we rarely get. We want magic. We want Santa to deliver—to bring us gifts so wonderful our lives will be changed. I’d like to quit smoking, to quit drinking, to lose weight. I guess while we’re at it, maybe Santa could drop us all off at an uptown church and we’d be wearing uptown clothes.”

  “Amen,” shouted the old man.

  Stone’s head shook. “No.”

  “But instead we wear the clothes we wear in our everyday lives. Our everyday lives.”

  “Amen,” said the old woman without much enthusiasm.

  “Where we feel bloodied and often defeated.”

  “Amen.”

  “And our everyday clothes are stained in blood.”

  Salt folded the hem of her coat across her lap and ran her fingers around the inner band of her hat.

  “Amen.”

  “But Isaiah tells us those everyday clothes are fuel for the transformative fire, that our afflicted souls will be satisfied.”