Which worried me all the way to the shop. I knew, of course, that he couldn’t have been talking about Clarence and Addie, for the Two-Knock incident was old news. Besides, Clarence’s death hadn’t warranted so much as a mention when it occurred. But the newsie’s cry knotted up my mind nonetheless, distracting me so bad that I didn’t notice Vernon Fish standing just inside the shop door until I’d near run him over.
He was in rare form, waving a copy of the Tribune about, thundering on with fire and brimstone in his voice.
“Hanging’s too good for criminals like that Rowland boy, and me and the fellas are gonna fix him good. Wanna be part of it, Half-breed?”
Then a look evil as any I’d seen came into his eyes, and his hand petted Maybelle’s grip in his holster. “Gonna neuter him first. Let him dance awhile over a bonfire. Mark my words, we’ll make that boy beg us for the noose.”
My innards shriveled as he spoke. I thought how Ruby was likely on her way to visit. And though I’d always been irregular in my prayers, I set about asking God right then and there to keep that little girl safe.
Maybe it was the sight of me standing mute, or maybe it was just manners, but Pop got me out of Vernon’s crosshairs by saying, “Why don’t you fetch Mr. Fish a stool from the back, William?”
I practically sprinted to the storeroom.
“Ruby?” I whispered once the door closed behind me. “You here?”
When no response came, I pushed open the alley door and said her name again. After that, I checked to make sure neither Pop nor Vernon had followed me back, and when I was certain they hadn’t, said in the loudest whisper I dared, “Go home, Ruby. It’s not safe here.” Then I went inside, locked the door behind me, and made ready to face Vernon Fish.
“Everything you need to know’s right here, Half-breed. Read for yourself.”
Vernon jabbed his finger into the bottom right corner of the Tribune and smacked it down on the counter in front of me.
NAB NEGRO FOR ATTACKING GIRL IN AN ELEVATOR
A negro delivery boy who gave his name to the public as “Diamond Dick” but who has been identified as Dick Rowland, was arrested on South Greenwood avenue this morning by Officers Carmichael and Pack, charged with attempting to assault the 17-year-old white elevator girl in the Drexel building early yesterday.
He will be tried in municipal court this afternoon on a state charge.
The girl said she noticed the negro a few minutes before the attempted assault looking up and down the hallway on the third floor of the Drexel building as if to see if there was anyone in sight but thought nothing of it at the time.
A few minutes later he entered the elevator she claimed, and attacked her, scratching her hands and face and tearing her clothes. Her screams brought a clerk from Renberg’s store to her assistance and the negro fled. He was captured and identified this morning both by the girl and the clerk, police say.
Tenants of the Drexel building said the girl is an orphan who works as an elevator operator to pay her way through business college.
It didn’t sound good, I’ll admit. But Pop surprised me, saying, “I know that boy. He doesn’t seem the type.”
Which set Vernon to sputtering how there was no such thing as a trustworthy Negro, and who was Pop to question the paper?
Pop said, “I’m not saying it isn’t true, Vernon. It just surprises me. That boy’s shined my shoes on more than one occasion and seemed the quiet type. Did a fine job, too. And I never once heard anyone call him Diamond Dick.”
“Well, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought,” Vernon said. Flecks of spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth. “Most of ’em know enough to hide their true nature, but all you have to do is look in their eyes to see it. They’ll smile and nod, scheming all the while to take our women and everything we got. The only good nigger’s a dead nigger, Stanley. And me and my boys are gonna make sure Dick Rowland’s good as gold before the night’s through.”
Pop cleared his throat and pushed the paper back across the counter. Vernon swiped it up and stuffed it under his arm. Said, “I’m meetin’ up with the boys to discuss the situation. You comin’?”
He waited, standing so still I could hear the breath coming and going from all three of us. It just about killed me, that quiet, until finally Pop smoothed his mustache with his fingertips, saying, “Not just now, Vernon. I can’t leave William here alone.”
Vernon’s lips parted, but his teeth stayed clenched. “Close the damned shop and bring him,” he said.
Pop shook his head and said he couldn’t do that. Vernon’s face flushed deep red. His lips went white.
“You know, Stanley,” he said, getting up to leave, “the surest way to protect your business is to come with us and clear that nest of savages out of Greenwood. If you don’t, they’ll be comin’ for everything you’ve got.”
That notion seemed to unsettle Pop, but he held his ground all the same. Vernon stuck his smoldering cigar between his teeth and said, in a voice full of ash and gravel, “At least your son had spine enough to stand up to that boy in the speakeasy. Must be he gets it from your squaw.”
Then Vernon walked out and Pop came from behind the counter, fists clenched so tight it looked as if his knucklebones might pop through the skin. And he stared out the window, looking up and down a street quiet as a cemetery at dawn.
“They won’t be taking anything. Not with ten whites for every Negro in Greenwood,” he said, so soft that I couldn’t tell if I should respond or keep hushed. I coughed into my hand. Pop gave a start, like he’d forgotten I was there.
“Don’t you have work to do?” he snapped. And I yes sirred him and hopped to, making for the storeroom as fast as I could, grateful for once that my mop and bucket awaited.
Soon as I got to the storeroom, I opened the back door wide, propped it open with a brick, and started sweeping. It was usually the part of the job I went slowest at, there being no ammonia involved. But that afternoon I felt like a mechanical toy wound too tight, pushing dust ahead of me in short, choppy thrusts. The physical movement was soothing, though. Enough that I swept the whole place twice.
And still there was no sign of Ruby.
So I sloshed out a measure of ammonia and filled the rest of the bucket with water from the spigot out back. My eyes went bleary and my lungs squeezed tight as I mopped, but that was nothing compared to the way the hate in Vernon’s words chewed at my insides. I mopped the hell out of that floor, let me tell you, sweating and thinking about Clarence Banks and how even if Dick Rowland had done wrong by that girl in the elevator, a judge should decide his fate, not a lynch mob of Vernon Fishes.
Long after there was no dirt left to scrub, I went out back and squatted down to rinse the bucket at the spigot. Cool water spilled over my arms. I cupped my palms and splashed some over my head, closing my eyes against the drips.
“You baptizin’ yourself, Will Tillman?” Ruby giggled.
It surprised me so bad that I tipped backwards onto the ground. And my heart lightened at the sight of her, then went heavy as lead when I remembered our circumstances. I put my finger to my lips to shush her and fumbled about, trying to stand. Ruby giggled harder.
“I mean it,” I said. “Something bad’s happening and you need to get home quick.”
Her giggle quieted. “I know,” she said.
Pop’s voice came through the storeroom door, then Vernon’s. It made me sick at my stomach knowing he’d returned. Both of them were close, like they could come through the backroom door any minute.
“Go home, Ruby,” I pleaded. “There’s a crazy man up front, and you don’t know what he’d do if he caught you.”
And she looked into me with her deep brown eyes and said, “Course I do, Will. Same thing they’re gonna try and do to that man in the jailhouse.”
Which made me feel sick all over again as I realized that Ruby knew better than me what was going on. She always had.
The storeroom doorknob turned. Pop
and Vernon were coming.
“Get out of here!” I all but begged.
Ruby frowned, serious like her brother, then let loose the hellion’s grin I’d come to love so well.
“Ain’t nobody gonna catch me, Will,” she whispered.
Then Pop and Vernon were in the storeroom.
And Ruby was gone.
We ate an early supper that night, for Pop had decided to join the crowd gathering in front of the courthouse. He ate fast, gulping down his pie and coffee before Mama and me finished our trout.
“Eat your meal,” Pop said. Then he wiped his mouth off, adding, “And remember what I told you.”
Mama cleared her throat. “Will’s a good boy,” she said. “I only wish you’d reconsider and stay home with us.”
But Pop said he was obligated to go see what was what downtown. After all, the last sheriff had let a band of vigilantes walk out of the jailhouse with a murder suspect in their possession. They’d driven him out to the country and lynched him, Pop reminded us, and he’d been white. Besides, there were rumors aplenty that armed Negroes up in Little Africa were gathering in the streets, planning God knew what. And such a thing could not stand.
Only from what I’d heard, Tulsa’s new sheriff was tough as nails and twice as sharp, making it unlikely he’d require the assistance of a shopkeep like my father. But Pop had made up his mind to go, and there was no persuading him otherwise.
After Pop left, Angelina cleared the table and Mama asked me to accompany her into the parlor to help wind yarn. All year long, she made caps for poor babies and orphans. Pop used to complain about the cost of it every time Mama pulled out her needles, and one evening a few months prior, he said something to the effect that it wasn’t up to him to put a hat on the head of every squalling ragamuffin in Tulsa. That time Mama’s eyes never lifted and her hands never slowed in their work as she responded: “I’m quite certain it’s not, Stanley, which is why the yarn money comes from my own income, same as the payments we’re making on that fine new house you wanted.”
That ended Pop’s complaints right then and there, and showed me a side of my mother I rarely saw. For though she was the stoic sort, her words had bite and heft when she wanted them to.
“Quit fidgeting,” she said in the parlor. I was perched on her footstool, hands caught up in the length of soft blue yarn she was winding into a ball. I mumbled I was sorry. Mama smiled. And that was all that passed between us as she wound one skein of yarn and another. Finally, on the third, she asked would I like a cup of tea. Jittery as I was over the events of the day, I said I would. Mama called Angelina in and asked her to fetch us each a cup. And when Angelina set the china service down on the side table, Mama asked was her son’s family still living up in the Negro quarter.
Now, Angelina may have been getting on in years, but there was always a hum about her. An energy. That night, though, it was quiet.
“Yes’m,” she whispered.
“How many are there?” Mama asked.
“Five,” Angelina replied. “Samuel, his wife, and their three boys.”
Mama pondered that, then said, “I’ve been thinking about the violence in Chicago a few years back. How a riot broke out after those white men threw stones at that poor Negro boy in the lake until he drowned. Have you room enough in your quarters to invite your kin down for the night?”
Angelina brightened, then faded all over again. “Might be, Ms. Kathryn, but they haven’t a telephone.”
Mama dropped the half-wound ball of yarn into her skirt, picked up her cup and saucer, and took two ladylike sips. The china barely clinked when she set it down.
She motioned for me to give her the looped yarn, saying, “I’ll take that, William. Angelina, would you be so kind as to ride along with William and show him where your family lives?”
That put the starch back in Angelina’s collar, and quick. But me? Well, my jaw dropped so fast and so low I near had to scrape it off the floor. Then Mama reached into her pocket and pulled out the truck key and gave it to me, saying, “I trust your father’s driving lesson was sufficient to get you safely to Greenwood and back?”
I nodded yes even though it wasn’t true.
“Good,” Mama said. And she took five crisp new ten-dollar bills from her knitting bag. “For emergencies,” she said, handing them to me. “Be back by sundown.”
The whistle from the Midland Valley Express came loud through the open parlor window. Mama set to winding the yarn herself. Angelina made for the truck.
And me?
I did exactly as Mama had bid.
Rowan
James and I started going to Cain’s Ballroom together right after we met. A real estate tycoon—some founding-father-of-Tulsa type who dabbled in politics and the KKK—built it as a garage for his car collection in the twenties. After that, another someone bought the place and turned it into a dance hall. Today, it’s where you go for concerts. They usually don’t get anybody huge—big names go to the BOK Center downtown and charge more than mere mortals can afford. But Cain’s is cheap, fun, and gets great bands on their way up.
The catch is, there’s no seating. It’s just this big dance floor with a few three-step bleachers against the side walls. If you want to get close to the stage, you line up a few hours before the show, rush to the front of the dance floor when they open the doors, and park yourself in the best spot you can get. And if anyone tries to push past you, it’s perfectly acceptable to throw an elbow.
James and I don’t bother with that. We show up just before the opening band’s set and watch from the back. The view’s still great, no one vapes in your face, and you can pee whenever you want without losing your spot. The barbecue place next door does decent sweet potato fries, too. And when it comes to the actual bands, James and I figured out through trial and error that the ones with the lamest-sounding names usually put on the best shows.
“They suck,” James said. He’d picked me up late—just like always—and parking had been bad. So the band opening for Roy Boy and His Kentucky Kickers was maybe halfway done by the time we got our fries and squeezed in next to a be-denimed older couple on the bleachers.
I didn’t think the band was that bad, but I was way more focused on all the things I wanted to tell James than I was on the music. After our fries, though, and after the band finished its set so I didn’t have to scream over them. But James had things to tell me, too, and he didn’t want to wait.
“Poke fine the rectory” and “shop” were all I could make out when he shouted in my ear.
“What?” I shouted back.
He gave me his phone. “Poke fine the rectory” was actually the “Polk-Hoffhine Directory,” a printed list of businesses and people in Tulsa from 1921 that someone had scanned and put online. James reached over and scrolled down to show me an advertisement for the Victory Victrola Shop.
Our Prices Will Be Music to Your Ears.
Victrolas and Phonograph Records.
Conveniently Located on Main Street.
He scrolled some more and pointed to one of the actual listings.
Tillman, Stanley G. (Kathryn), prop Victory Victrola Shop, Main st r 1301 S Norfolk av
“You’re a god!” I shouted. The woman next to us shot me an ugly look. James pointed to the entry beneath it.
Tillman, William E., student r 1301 S Norfolk av
At first I didn’t get it. But then James pointed to the W in William and the T in Tillman.
W. T. The initials on the Victory Victrola Shop receipt. It looked like William the student was Stanley Tillman’s son.
The song ended and the singer started talking about their T-shirts and CDs.
“Impressive,” I told James. “What else ya got?”
“You mean I haven’t given you enough already, sweetness?” James said, which I thought was weird until I noticed he was discreetly pointing at the denim couple. They were side-eyeing us, disapproval practically oozing out of their pores.
I scooted cl
oser, put my lips to his ear, and whispered, “The anthropologist found a tooth in the dirt that wasn’t from the skeleton.” He giggled like I’d used my tongue for more than talking.
After the band finished their last song, James patted his lap and I climbed onto it. He winced, muttering something about his legs being sore from working out that morning, and the denim couple started quietly shitting kittens. Then the roadies came out to set up Roy Boy and His Kentucky Kickers’ gear, and I told James everything Geneva had said about the skeleton.
“Uh, racist much?” he grumbled when I got to the part about her using the skull to decide the skeleton’s race. Denim man cleared his throat and said something to his wife. All we heard was “trashy” and “typical.”
I wrapped my arms around James’s neck, saying, “Maybe. But Geneva kept saying how even though race might be an artificially created construct, patterns of evolutionary differences in skeletal morphologies from isolated geographic areas are measurable and real.”
James’s eyebrow went up. “What?”
“I think she was trying to say it’s complicated. And that she’s not a racist.”
He brushed my hair away from my ear and whispered, “Speaking of racists, shall we?”
I pointed to the OVER 21 wristband he’d gotten with his lousy fake ID at the door. “Only if you buy me a beer.”
James smiled, stood up, took my hand, and planted a big, wet kiss on it. Then he turned to the denims, flashed them my most favorite of his wicked grins, and said, “Don’t worry, folks. It’s not serious. I’m just her baby daddy.”
And then we walked away, leaving them to sputter and grumble over the sorry state of Negro youth in America today.
I didn’t get home from the concert until after one, so I skipped my run the next morning and slept late. There was a sticky note on the fridge when I got up saying Dad was at the office and Mom had gone to the gym. I showered, threw on a T-shirt and basketball shorts, and pulled up directions to the title company. Dad had kept his word and called them, and since I hadn’t been able to get there during the week, Saturday before noon was my big chance.
Dreamland Burning Page 14
