Crimson Footprints

by Shewanda Pugh

  Floor arrangements of lilies, statice and caspia flanked each end of Anthony’s coffin, brilliant in sunburst orange, lilac and ivory. A poster-sized portrait of him in a button-up and tie stood at the back of the casket, facing an audience with standing room only. Walter Haines, an old and weathered black man who’d played at her father’s and grandfather’s funeral, stroked out gentle gospel from an organ onstage. Deena wondered if he’d play at hers too.

  Seven years had passed since the last Hammond burial, when they laid to rest Deena’s grandfather. Were he still alive, she knew what he’d say. Justice. Anthony’s fate was justice, as sin begot sin.

  Deena blinked in surprise at the program in her hand. Looking down at the picture of her brother, even now she couldn’t help but smile back. It was a portrait of Anthony in the 10th grade, his grin wide-mouthed and toothy—silly in that contrary way that was his alone. He was love one moment and fire the next, never able to find rest in his mind. She only prayed now that he had.

  Late mourners poured in, an army of them, as if to make a show of it. Each wore a black tee with white letters that read “R.I.P. Tony Hammond,” and beneath them was a picture of Deena’s brother. In it, his hair was a cascade of toffee coils that fell to his shoulders, so heavy that it parted down the center from its weight. And there was no smile here—just a Budweiser in one hand and a .32 in the other. The picture looked recent. Very recent.

  “Deena?” Lizzie whispered.

  Deena turned to face her. “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want them here.”

  Deena nodded. She didn’t want them there either.

  TAKUMI SLIPPED INTO the church and stood at the back of the sanctuary, heart ricocheting with the power of a cannonball. Settling on a place near a cluster of ushers in navy vests, he let his gaze sweep the pews. Then he saw her, saw the hair first—coils of honey, cinnamon and chocolate, cascading like a waterfall. A moment passed and he remembered to breathe again.

  A black woman with short and plastered curls stood from her place on the front pew and approached the microphone. She introduced herself as Rhonda Hammond, aunt of the late Anthony Hammond. Her voice was soft and therapeutic, the way only an aunt’s can be. With lips too close to the microphone, she presented an assortment of sympathy gifts, but there weren’t very many. A basket of fruit, a vase of Peruvian lilies, a prayer plant from the church. Three dozen red roses from Daichi Tanaka and the Tanaka firm.

  That caught his attention.

  AUNT RHONDA FOUND her seat, and afterwards a short stout man named Mr. Phillips stood and ventured to the piano. His wife, a tall and thick-browed black woman with a hawk nose and long fingers, followed him. Even as a child, Deena thought the couple looked more like brothers than husband and wife. Mrs. Phillips found the microphone, cleared her throat and closed her eyes. Deena waited, knowing what would follow.

  Mr. Phillips came in first, delicate and unobtrusive on the piano with a gentle melody. When his wife slipped in to join him, she pierced Deena with a voice she both loved and hated. It was beautiful and awful, smooth, rich and melancholic, all with the damned first note. They rose together, piano and woman, never relenting with their sorrow. “It’s time to be with the Lord,” that ugly woman said, and she was ready. “When our time here is through, it’s time to be with the Lord.”

  There were more songs, hopeful, upbeat, rousing numbers sung by a rocking choir in white robes. They served their purpose, raising the spirits of those around Deena, until most were on their feet shouting, clapping, jumping in tune to the love-filled lyrics. But seven years of Sunday school had taught Deena that Anthony was not in the joy-filled place they promised her. And because of that, she was grateful when they shut the hell up.

  People shared stories about Anthony next. Aunt Rhonda murmured in a voice too low about his silly ways and his smile, her eyes rimmed red. A cousin of Deena’s, one of Caroline’s children, talked about a time Anthony stood up and fought a bully for him. “Never a coward,” he said in quiet admiration, “never.” Others went, including Lizzie, who broke down and had to be half-carried back to the pew.

  When Deena rose, she made her way to the microphone with a wad of tissues in her fist. From her place at the podium, she stared at the coffin. An eternity passed, and finally, her voice surprised her.

  “I didn’t want to do this,” she said softly. Her eyes found the ceiling and she struggled to inhale. “Coming here and talking to you like this is an admission—an acceptance—and I’m not ready to accept this just yet.”

  She laughed bitterly and shifted her weight.

  “You know, if you knew my brother, you know he was like a train wreck. He had no problem tearing from the tracks and—and running roughshod through the forest.” Deena swallowed and shook her head. “And as crazy as this sounds, I admire that. I wish I had that kind of strength and blind courage.”

  She lowered her gaze to the coffin.

  “I don’t want to negate the things he’s done, or the people he’s hurt. No doubt people have stood, as heartbroken as I am now, because—” she broke off. “Because of who my brother was.”

  She looked up, met her audience for the first time. “But I need you to know, to believe that there was good in him. That he was a good brother, that he had value and that people loved him.”

  Deena opened her mouth to say more, closed it, and retreated to the pew. Once there, she collapsed in sobs.

  When the service ended six pallbearers, all cousins, hoisted the solid copper casket onto their shoulders. They carried Anthony Hammond to the tune of an upbeat gospel about marching up to heaven on an angel’s wings. Deena stood, swayed a bit, and found Aunt Rhonda there to steady her. They walked arm in arm, with Deena’s gaze on the floor as the Hammonds made their way to the exit. God had given her so few to love, so very few, and saw fit to take even them from her. He hated Deena. And she hated Him.

  She raised her gaze, though she didn’t know why. Searching, searching until she saw him, tucked away near the ushers. Their eyes locked, and stayed locked, through Deena’s slow procession, until she was out the door and could see him no more.

  AT THE FRONT of an empty church, Takumi ran an appreciative hand over the brass cymbals of a drum set. It was a Tama Swingstar, good quality at a great price. When he was seven, he fell in love with the sound of a birch Yamaha, and had remained true ever since. He didn’t get to play much anymore though, as the crashing sound was counter conducive to being neighborly. These days, Takumi relied on the guitar or keyboard for a bit of melodic retrospection. But none of that had a thing to do with the price of dairy in Denver. So why the hell did he linger?

  The doors of the sanctuary opened and he looked up. Just then, his reason for lingering stepped in and made her way down the aisle. Takumi stood up straighter.

  She didn’t so much walk as flow, the black silk of her dress like a caress against curves. Ample in that perfect way only a woman could be, the undulations of her body reminded Takumi of the Salween, the last free-flowing river in South Asia.

  “It’s you,” she whispered. She looked up at him with eyes that were blue: a shimmering shock of blue under long, thick lashes. He didn’t even see how they were possible.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  She hesitated. “What are you doing here?”

  Takumi looked away. He couldn’t tell this woman whose name he knew only from a funeral program that he’d not come to pay his respects, but because he knew she’d be there.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I saw what happened in the paper and…I’m sorry.”

  They fell silent. Finally, she gave a rough nod and blinked back tears. When they fell anyway, she dashed them away in impatience. He wasn’t sure what to do.

  Suddenly, she looked up at him. “Why were you there? In Liberty City that night?”

  He hesitated, not sure why he felt embarrassed. His work had never embarrassed him before. “I was, uh, looking for inspiration.”

  She
raised a brow. “Inspiration?”

  “Yeah.” He shifted his weight. “I’m an artist. I paint.”

  “Paint what?”

  Takumi shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Hope. Happiness. Regret. Stuff like that.”

  An almost-smile crept to her lips, lips that were fuller than he remembered, like strawberries ripe to bursting. Her eyes widened.

  “Fascinating,” she whispered.

  He couldn’t have said it better himself.

  “So…Did you find it? Did you find your inspiration?” And there it was—a twinkle. A twinkle behind weary ocean eyes. She was teasing him. And he liked it.

  Takumi grinned. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  But his smile faltered with the memory of why a Buddhist was standing in the middle of a Baptist church. He shot a look at the double doors.

  “Sweetheart, if you—if you stay any longer you’ll miss the burial.”

  He wanted the words back instantly; the words that stole the twinkle and almost-smile she’d given him.

  But they were gone.

  With a heavy sigh, she took a seat on the front pew.

  “I’m not going,” she whispered. “I can’t watch.”

  Deena dropped her head, as if ashamed, and stared at the slender, manicured hands that rested in her lap.

  Takumi sat down next to her. When his ojiichan had died, his grandfather, he’d taken it hard. Had, in fact, sobbed like a broken-hearted baby, despite the full year a diagnosis of colon cancer gave him to prepare for it. It was only his father who—

  He looked up, roused with the memory of an earlier point in the service. “You, uh, know Daichi Tanaka?”

  She looked up in surprise. “Know him? The asshole’s my boss.”

  Takumi grinned. “Well, I’m Takumi Tanaka. The asshole’s my father.”

  DEENA’S EYES WIDENED with the sort of white-hot horror that only came from imminent danger. She searched, registering with pain each of the physical similarities this stranger shared with her boss. And there were so many.

  He extended a hand. “You can call me Tak.”

  “Oh my God.” Deena breathed. Her hand found her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I—I just—I’m stressed and—oh my God.”

  He held up a hand. “Really. It’s alright. I’ve called him a lot worse.”

  Deena smiled weakly and lowered her hand. “Yeah? Like what?”

  He shrugged, nonchalant, the way only rich kids can. “Oh, I don’t know. Nosferatu, Pinhead, Skeletor—”

  “Skeletor!”

  “Yeah,” he raised a brow. “Come on. You know the cartoon. He-man? She-ra?”

  “You’re insane!”

  “By the power of Grayskull?”

  She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh, the first in so long. But when he proceeded to prattle off a never-ending list of cartoonish villains he likened to his father, Deena found she could hold back the laughter no more. Not even there, with the foliage of her brother’s demise all around her, could she hold back that unaccustomed sound.

  DEENA HATED THE awkwardness of grief. As a girl, she’d experienced it with the death of her father. The staring, the avoidance, the uncomfortable ramblings of people who felt obligated to speak yet wanted nothing more than to put distance between them and you.

  Though a decade had lapsed between her dad’s death and her brother’s, she found that people hadn’t changed all that much. So when Deena entered her office on the third floor of the Tanaka firm Monday morning, she was relieved to put a slab of wood between them and her. She didn’t want their damned condolences or sickening sympathy, constant reminders that her brother was dead. What she wanted to be reminded of was that she wasn’t.

  She couldn’t say for sure just how long she stood there, eyes shut, back pressed to mahogany. But when she opened them, a bouquet on her desk took her by surprise. Peek-a-boo pink plumerias, golden stargazers, jutting purple larkspur and mango calla lilies seemed to dance on her desk, overshadowing her little bonsai with their beauty. And could she really smell their sweetness from the door? Certainly not.

  Briefcase set aside, she took a seat in her leather swivel and brought the flowers in for a sniff. Deena froze mid-smile at the sound of the office intercom.

  “Ms. Hammond, Mr. Tanaka’s here to see you.”

  Deena frowned. So much for indulgences. Her boss Daichi was many things, but indulgent was definitely not one of them. So, it was back to business as usual.

  Deena met Daichi Tanaka while in her final year at MIT She could still recall the thick and cramped feel in Kresge Auditorium as faculty, students and the community piled into it in mouth-foaming anticipation of the “avant-garde” of architecture. She arrived early, though not early enough, as she had to step and stumble her way to a seat. Despite the darkness of the auditorium, she noted that scores of people clutched a recent copy of Time Magazine. Daichi Tanaka was on the cover.

  “May I?” Deena whispered, nudging the old hawk-eyed woman she settled in next to. With a nod, she handed it over, dark eyes wary and watchful. Deena turned her attention to the magazine.

  Behind a Hitchcock-style silhouette of Daichi was a collage of a dozen major city skylines—New York, Mumbai, Moscow, Miami, Hong Kong, Karachi, Cairo, L.A. and more. Underneath was probably the boldest declaration ever attributed to a single architect: ‘Daichi Tanaka: Architectural God’.

  Though bold, the phrase was apropos. His was the biggest firm in the world, the most influential, and by far the most daring and cutting edge. Tanaka tempted fate with his designs, implored homemade theories and thumbed his nose at the very laws of science and society. As a junior, Deena read about the power of a single architect to reinvent a nation. Daichi Tanaka and his project Cityscape was the example, a miniature world unto itself made of glittering, twisting, turning buildings that seemed to cut into thin air and defeat the laws of gravity. Part beauty, part resort and part fantasy, the lush acreage of Cityscape was suddenly a status symbol, a tour de force for an impoverished Guatemala. As the world rushed in for the opportunity to eat four-hundred-dollar plates of carne adobada while hovering over the Pacific, Hollywood elite built mansions along the coastal mountainside. But Daichi’s greatest triumph came not from single-handedly creating a tourism mecca in a once unappealing place, but from doing what no one else dared dream. In a country little more than a decade removed from Civil War, Daichi shifted power to the masses—to the rural Mayan farmers who’d been victims of state-sponsored terrorism. He paid them fair prices for land he built upon and negotiated so that the influx of hotels and restaurants used locally farmed foods. And suddenly, with the rising of the sun, the Guatemalan people had a voice. So it came as no surprise to Deena that the people in Kresge Auditorium looked around as though a god would soon be among them. The man was a god, an architectural god.

  After wilting under the professor’s glare, Deena slipped the magazine back to its owner. Suddenly, she was startled by thunderous applause. The room rocked with the approval of a clamoring crowd: a crowd enamored by the pop icon of architecture.

  Daichi took to the podium and scowled.

  For an hour and a half they were lectured, accused and verbally accosted. He ridiculed them for traveling to far flung locales without studying the correlating history and culture—without respecting it. He called them presumptuous, privileged and narrow-minded.

  “You all look the same and think the same and pick people who are the same to attend your illustrious universities. Why? Because you need validation. Because you serve yourself. But an architect is a selfless being, reflecting the client, the society that has secured his services. And in this, you’ve failed.”

  He should’ve been shouted down, run off, or at the very least challenged. It was a rant more than a speech, damned near shouted by the most privileged architect of them all. But he was met with a boom of approval, a roar of allegiance from an otherwise sane and brilliant bunch. They were the choir to his sermon, amen-ing his every utterance.
And Deena understood. It was hard not to feel dazzled by his presence. After all, when was the last time an architect had changed the world with his vision? Ancient Rome? They had every right to be at least a little star struck. And they were. Even Deena.

  Daichi took questions for half an hour.

  She stood in line among the hopeful, waiting for an opportunity to ask something, though what she had no idea. The questions from fellow students were predictable: What drew him to architecture? What were his inspirations? How did he handle criticism? When a professor Deena recognized as an architectural one-man think tank rose, she knew a challenge was coming. Not everyone wanted to admire Daichi Tanaka. A few wanted to unseat him.

  “In Time Magazine you credited your success in Guatemala to Architectural Determinism, a theory that has largely been disproven. Given that, isn’t it fair to say that you have no idea why you’ve been so successful?”

  Dr. Cook was met with a foreboding sort of silence. In it, Deena could practically hear his celebratory smile. When Daichi looked up at him, it was with a look of expectancy.

  “Michael, if you can recall from our days at Harvard, Architectural Determinism simply espouses that the built environment is the chief determinant for social behavior.”

  “I know what Architectural Determinism means!” Dr. Cook sputtered.

  “Good,” Daichi said brightly. “Then perhaps I can influence the learned with a bit of common sense. Consider this, if you will. If you build beautiful things and charge high prices, then beautiful people with deep pockets will pay for them. No need to consult a thick text on that trinket. There’s a charming little boy in Nassau that carves wooden figurines on request, just about anything you can imagine, and charges a pretty penny for them too. No doubt he could counsel you more on this matter.”