by Rod Davis
“I know.”
“If somebody says something I can’t handle, I’ll let you know.”
“I know.” She leaned across to kiss me on the cheek. I kissed her back but it wasn’t good, just a thing that had no meaning. I settled back against the seat and took a couple of breaths. I felt like some monster was swimming around in the deep of my mind but for now all I could feel were the thick, cold pulses of its waves.
“This is no good. We brought your brother’s ashes here and that was right but—”
“You think I don’t think about what else is going on, too?”
“Then what do we do?”
“I have to talk to my aunt.”
“If you can even find her. And what will she be able to really tell you?”
“She’ll know why Young Henry is dead. That’s a start.”
“All we’ve got is ‘starts.’”
She didn’t answer.
I drove on. When we got to the highway, I headed north, but instead of turning in at the lane to Artula’s house, I kept going. No real reason.
We rehashed the bubba incident and she told me more about her brother and Artula and Rosedale back in the day. I talked about living in Dallas, down in Oak Cliff, the southern half of the city split among blacks, whites, and browns and utterly distinct from what festered in the downtown skyscrapers and Republican suburbs.
We agreed that we were both glad we had moved on. But we couldn’t get a fix on what we had moved on to. We were almost to the bridge across the river to Helena, Arkansas, before I turned back, the morning eaten up.
Artula and the kids were already home from church. She was still in her dark blue dress suit, Vanessa still on one arm. Junior, still wearing his blue slacks and a white shirt, ran up to hug Elle. We slipped off our mud-spattered shoes.
“How did it go at the river?”
“It was good. I feel like he’s home.”
“That’s good, Ellie. I’m so glad.”
Elle didn’t elaborate and Artula was too preoccupied to delve. Elle picked up Junior and went to the kitchen to get some apple juice. He ran right back to the TV, giving me the once-over on the way. Artula put Vanessa in her playpen.
“By the way, if you were looking to lay low here, I guess you’ll be thinking that over some more,” Artula called out. “You know these small towns.”
Elle was taking a plastic pitcher of iced tea from the fridge.
“Cici Pettit and the people from the church sale were all talking about you,” Artula said, coming back into the kitchen. “So Cici flat out asked me if you were staying over, which she already knew you were, and I couldn’t just lie. Anyway, you’re supposed to call her.”
I was in the kitchen by then, too. Elle reached for two glasses from the cabinet. She filled one and gave it to me. “Baptist grapevine, sure enough. I guess some things never change.” Her voice was even. Too even.
Artula frowned defensively. “Everybody heard you’d done so well for yourself and they just proud of you, you know?”
Elle poured a glass for herself. Extremely slowly. “I guess maybe I should have gone with you after all. I could have brought this one, as well.”
Artula looked me over, then back at her cousin.
“I’m just saying what people say.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“Never mind me,” I said.
We laughed, more or less, that being the only option.
“I got to change, girl, and them, too,” Artula said, her voice taking on a deliberate brightness. She walked toward the hall, but stopped. “Hold on.”
On a table across the living room, a light was blinking on her answering machine. “Never saw that when I came in.” She went over and clicked the play button.
There was one message: “Tula, hey, girl, it’s Lenora. How are you? Look, I’m over here in Clarksdale but I’ll be down there by this evening and I’ll come by then. Keep it to yourself, please, ma’am, if you don’t mind. Love you, darlin’. Hey to your little ones.” Slight pause. “Hey to your cousin if she’s still around.”
12
It was a vague and purposeless afternoon, consumed by waiting for Lenora, and what might be information that could save our lives. Elle and I went to a grocery and bought a dozen bags of food as a way of thanks for our stay. She and Artula talked a little more, and Cici came by and they all sat in the living room and visited.
I went out for a drive. Rosedale didn’t take long, so I cruised on to the industrial port south of town, where Byron had taken the noble way out, if you wanted to look at it that way. En route, I noticed for the first time that Rosedale had a municipal park and golf course. It seemed out of place. Like myself.
I stopped in at a convenience store for a Dr Pepper and a pack of sunflower seeds, then went back to the square and parked. I didn’t want to go back to that house. Not because I wasn’t any part of the conversation going on there, but because it reminded me how much we needed to keep moving. I was losing faith that Lenora would even know anything useful, but Elle was convinced. I got out of the Explorer, ambled over to a shaded bench and sat there like a tourist. A couple of people walked by, said hello, kept going.
A sharp flash of sun broke through the clouds and I pulled down the brim of my Saints ball cap. Just like that, I was back in Incheon. It was hot then, too, late July. A pack of drunken off-duty MPs had gang-beaten one of my deep-cover informants in a nearby ville. I had worked with Mr. Lee for months and liked him, and it wasn’t easy running agents with contacts north of the DMZ. I couldn’t file a charge against the MPs through anything like “normal” channels, given my line of work, but I couldn’t let the killing go unanswered, either. So I got two of the hard guys in my small intel unit and we caught three of the MPs outside a bar after curfew. We left them in an alley, worked over but alive. It was as wrong as anything I’d ever done. But also right. I don’t know if it was about revenge. I don’t know what it was.
Something changed in me after that and it never got right. Or maybe something inside cracked open and came to the surface. What was eating at me now was the possibility of the latter. The brawl in the Dallas newsroom, the Beretta in the Trinity, the leap into this situation, the way I felt at Witch Dance. Connect the dots. Any surprise I was willing to shoot that kid back in the field?
A city police car pulled past and I snapped back to the present. The young white cop gave me a cursory look-over and parked at the station a block away. I was of no further interest. Maybe I did look like a tourist.
“Aunt Lenora, this is the man who is helping me about Young Henry.”
“That you left the message about on my voicemail.”
“I’m glad you got it.”
“Hello, Jack.” Her grip was firm, indicating a core power that would have seemed more appropriate from a grizzled Shaolin monk. She had arrived about nine, just after Artula put the kids to bed. She was petite, almost cloud-like in a light yellow shift with green trim, lots of golden jewelry. Her body seemed to match her voice. She was probably twenty years older than Elle, darker and stronger, with sharper features. Maybe that’s what Elle’s father had looked like.
The three of them exchanged hugs and brief condolences about Terrell, but in a measured way that I’m sure came from having a stranger in the house. Then Artula led them to the bedroom so that Lenora could have a look at the sleeping children. I went into the living room and settled back into the La-Z-Boy with the beer I’d been nursing while passing time watching TV. I channel-surfed mindlessly and settled on Larry King interviewing a celebrity.
Artula led her guests into the kitchen and got each a glass of wine. She couldn’t drink, from the medicine, and had an iced tea. I worked on my beer. They continued to talk, quietly, catching up on family business other than murder. Probably sizing me up, too. Larry was asking about the burdens of being famous. I
clicked over to a rival news channel. It was all war and politics. I was surrounded by words, none with meaning.
Presently Elle and Lenora joined me. Elle gave me a passing peck on the cheek. Her aunt scrutinized me like a stray dog somebody had brought home.
Artula was baking and stayed in the kitchen. She turned on the radio and sang along with a blues and gospel station. “Another beer, Jack?” she called out.
“Thanks, I’m good.”
Elle and Lenora settled into the sofa.
“So the service, it was good?”
“It was good. Reverend Johnson gave a good service.”
“You had him cremated.”
“We put his ashes in the river this morning. Except a little I saved for you.”
She fluffed a pillow behind her back for support. “That’s a good thing.” She glanced at Artula, humming and lost in the pleasure of taking care of company. In a lowered voice, to Elle: “And the other? That you wanted to talk about?”
Elle leaned close. “You didn’t go to your house, did you?”
“Not after I heard that message from you.”
“There’s more since then. Trey came to the service.”
Lenora’s body stiffened.
“And he’s been to my house in Tuscaloosa, too.”
Lenora looked away, taking it in. It took her a few moments.
I went over to squeeze in next to Elle. I leaned toward Lenora. “You also need to know he sent a couple of his crew after us yesterday.”
“Trey did?”
“I shot them.”
She looked at me as though she’d just seen me for the first time.
I tried to keep my voice low. “I didn’t kill them.”
“We didn’t have any choice,” Elle said.
Lenora continued to stare at me. Through me. “This is bad.”
“You could say that.”
“Y’all doing okay in there? More wine, Elle?”
“Okay for now. You just bake that cake. We’re going to be hungry.”
“Bakin’ and shakin’. Shakin’ and bakin’.” She turned up the music.
Elle shot me a look, then turned to her aunt. “There’s more to tell you. Later.” She tilted her head toward Artula. “I don’t want her involved.”
“No.”
“It’s just that we don’t know where to go with this. I thought maybe you might know something. Anything.”
Lenora shook her head, as if she were trying to sort things out. “There’s so much.”
“Start with that painting. We know Young Henry stole it.”
I added, “More to the point, so does Trey.”
Elle’s look told me to watch my mouth. But I wasn’t in the mood. Nor did we have the time.
I could see that Lenora understood my directness. She crossed her arms, leaning forward in thought, trying to retrieve a series of memories that only now seemed to fit together. “He told me they’d had a fight. He took it to get even. I tried to tell him not to go that way, but by the time we talked he’d already done it. What he wanted was for me to help him find a way to hide it.” She glanced back to reassure herself that Artula wasn’t hearing us over the radio and kitchen noise.
“So you hid it?” I asked.
“He was real impatient, you know, like all men tend to be.” A warning scowl that had nothing to do with Trey and everything to do with Elle and me crossed her face. “And I think he was doing the coke again, and he wouldn’t listen to any of my cautions. I’d never really seen him like that. I called him a couple of days later. This was only a month or so ago. All he’d tell me was that he’d taken care of it.”
“Uh-huh. He always talked like that when he was hiding something.”
“So I said, ‘How?’ And he said not to worry, he was going to meet with Trey and ‘deal with it.’”
“‘Deal with it.’ He talked like that, too.”
“After that he didn’t bring it up, at least with me. You know, he was taking a break from teaching last semester and so he was always gone. Never at home much.”
“He talked to me about the painting, how much it was worth and all. But not about the fight,” Elle said.
“He was strung out, you understand? I asked him to sit for a reading, maybe the spirits could find out the truth. But he wouldn’t. It was like, you know, he didn’t want to know.”
She stopped. Her eyes were misting. Maybe bottling it up ran in the family.
Elle took her hand. “It’s okay, auntie. I know you miss him. I do, too.”
“You know, sometimes being Sister Lenora to my people is hard, when I feel all like this inside.”
Elle held her aunt and stroked her back. Then she stood, and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m going to bring you something. I’ll be right back.” En route to the bedroom, she walked through the kitchen, tasted the cake batter, praised it to her cousin who was still dancing to the music.
Lenora stared down at the shag carpet, wiped her eyes again and breathed out. When she looked up, it was back to her harder self. “You’ve been good to her but you got yourself into something, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“You regret it?”
“I don’t regret meeting Elle.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“No.”
“I can see it in you. You have a heavy spirit on you.”
I shrugged.
“No maybe about it, honey. I don’t know much about you, yet. But I know that.”
Elle returned with Terrell’s urn and handed it gently to Lenora.
“These are saved from what we put in the river this morning.”
Lenora opened the top, looked inside, closed it.
“And there’s this.” Elle gave her aunt an envelope. Inside was a folded-up tissue. Lenora unwrapped it to find a small pebble.
“That’s from where Jack found Young Henry’s body in New Orleans. That’s Young Henry’s blood.”
Elle glanced at me as if to say there would always be some things I didn’t know.
Lenora looked at the stained pebble a long time, then folded it back into the tissue and returned it to the envelope. “This will be good.”
“Aunt Lenora, what are you going to do? You can’t go home now.”
“I don’t know. I can just stay down in Jackson or even over in Birmingham for now. And get out on the road like this. Maybe it’s time to get out of Oxford anyway. You know how it’s gotten.”
Elle nodded. “I don’t think you should go back there. Ever. Trey or no Trey.”
Lenora smiled. “Well, I don’t see that boy living to retirement years.”
I had the same reaction. Lenora caught it. “So what are you thinking?”
I said, “I’m thinking let’s get Trey what he wants, and let the law take care of the rest. Which means I’m thinking I still don’t know where that painting is and I need to.”
Elle sat up straight. “He can’t get away with it. I won’t let him.”
It came out loud and strident. Artula stopped her singing to look our way. “Got one in the oven. Cake, I mean.”
“You best mean that, girl,” Lenora called out. She turned the urn slowly in her hands.
“Do you believe Trey really thinks you know where the painting is?” I asked. “You personally?”
“He knows I don’t.” She looked at the urn, then at me. “You know I put down a goat on his spirit last year. Not for him, but for Terrell, to try to protect him from Trey. Trey knows that, too.”
“But he was at your house.”
“No, sir. Trey wasn’t there. It was those two men worked for him.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“That’s different.”
“It is,” Elle said.
I sat back. �
��So it really is just Elle he wants.”
“I’ve been telling you,” Elle said.
“He knows you won’t give up until you find the painting. He’ll let you do all the work,” I said.
“It’s bad,” said Lenora.
“And then he won’t want you anymore.”
“It’s been that way with Trey all his life.”
“It is bad,” I said.
“It’s bad,” Lenora said again.
Artula came into the room, wiping her hands on a towel. “Hope y’all love chocolate as much as I do.”
13
It was a waxing moon, but the sky was bright, and the profusion of stars here, so far from the big cities, amplified the effect in ways urban dwellers like me tend to forget. After we sampled the cake, Artula went to bed, exhausted, to sleep with her children. Elle and I waited outside on the deck for Lenora. Bug spray and a strong northwest breeze kept the mosquitoes at tolerable limits.
Lenora wanted to offer something for Terrell’s spirit and was in her room preparing. She wanted to use the pebble from the Marigny gutter to get a “second sight” into what Terrell had been thinking, or what might have happened that night.
I didn’t know what to think, so I tried not to.
Presently, she came outside, carrying a large straw bag. We followed her to some plastic yard chairs under an oak at the side of the yard. We sat and she took out a white cloth about twice the size of a large napkin. She spread it on the grass. Digging into her bag, she pulled out the tissue Elle had given her, unwrapped it, and placed the blood-stained pebble on the cloth.
She said a few words from what I assumed was an African language, and then took out three small vials. She opened two and sprinkled the pebble with scented liquids. She knelt and asked Elle and me to join her and close our eyes and say a silent prayer for Terrell’s spirit. Elle took my hand and gripped it tightly.
“Elegba, Ochosi, Ogun, Oshun, Olodumare, spirits of our ancestors, praise all, praise the Lord, praise all the mighty spirits here and for all time . . . .” She repeated this several times, rocking gently on her knees. Then she opened the third vial. “This is Henry,” she said to Elle, “from the urn.” She sprinkled ashes over the pebble, then closed the top and put it back in her bag.
