I’d nodded that I did. Mama bit down on her lip and fought back tears. And Pop glared hard at us both.
Then he stood up and said for me to follow him, and told me I was to drive straight to the shop, park in the alleyway, and take up a post in front of the counter. Mama stood with us, asking why Pop didn’t guard the shop himself. Pop replied that he needed to keep an eye on the situation at the courthouse. “I’m a tolerant man,” he said. “And good to Negroes. But I’ll not stand for armed gangs of them coming into proper Tulsa.”
After that, Mama kissed me and held me so long that Pop grumbled it was time to go. We drove north, him in the Model T, me in the truck behind, until Pop turned left onto Seventh and I continued on. And though a few empty cars were parked along Main Street by the shop, that part of Tulsa was quiet as a ghost town.
I parked in the side alley like Pop had said and used the moonlight to find my way inside. Then I stood guard for near an hour before calling Mama, just to hear her voice and tell her I was fine. She said she was glad, and that she loved me and I should be careful.
After we hung up, I was alone in the quiet and the dark again, wishing I knew if Ruby was safe.
Until the shot sounded.
Just one, far off.
Then another.
Two after that.
Then so many that I couldn’t count. And I stood there with my gun in my hands, frozen with fear and numbed by a sudden, overwhelming awareness of just how fragile the life I knew really was.
Eleven minutes ticked by on the old pocket watch Pop kept near the register. I tightened my grip on the shotgun as a pair of headlamps moved north along Main Street. More gunshots sounded, then three northbound vehicles passed by. After that, the street stayed empty, though shots pecked and popped at the air like Fourth of July fireworks. I ground my teeth so hard my jaw ached. Only, so far as I could make out, the sound was moving away. And by the time twenty-three minutes had passed, my breathing eased and my muscles unclenched.
At minute twenty-four, the telephone rang and near scared me to death. It was Mama, checking to see how I was. I could hear the relief in her voice when I told her the gunfire was too far north to be a worry. Then she said it was good I hadn’t let word slip to Pop about his surprise, and could I keep it secret just a little while longer. Which made no sense at first, though I did have my wits about me enough to eventually figure out that Mama was speaking in code. She did that sometimes, knowing any one of the other four households sharing our telephone’s party line could listen in on our conversations whenever they pleased. And whether or not we heard a click or a cough to let us know they’d picked up their receivers to spy, we always assumed they had.
Mama waited patiently until I caught on that she was talking about Angelina’s family. I said of course I could keep the surprise a secret, feeling guilty over how completely Grace Brightwater and her children had slipped my mind. But they were safe as any Negroes in Tulsa could be, tucked away in a white neighborhood full of lawyers and bankers and merchants. It was Ruby I was scared for, knowing she might be out on the streets in the middle of a gunfight.
And perhaps Mama heard something in my tone, or perhaps she understood me better than I knew, for she asked was I all right. Then a dark shape sped by outside, and when I gave her a hesitant yes, Mama asked was I sure.
I eyed the Springfield on the counter. Said, “I’m sure, Mama. Don’t you worry.” Then I hung the earpiece up, set the telephone down, and grabbed my gun. Whatever was outside had been moving too fast to be a person and too slow to be an automobile. I crouched down and waited until a soft rapping came from the storeroom. Shotgun at my shoulder, I made sure the front door was locked.
The rapping came louder.
My feet moved against their better judgment. My throat seized up. My palms went clammy. But I kept walking until I got to the storeroom door, where I stopped and put my ear to the wood and heard it again.
Knock, knock, knock.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.
The storeroom was pitch-black save for a patch of moonlight shining through the high-set ventilation window on the back wall. Thankfully, all my afternoons mopping had taught me where every last crate and stool in the place was. Enough so I could get to the back door without so much as stubbing my toe. I leaned towards it, waiting for another knock. A kick. Something. Only what I heard was a grunt, then metal scraping overhead. Warm air blew across my cheek, and a deep voice came, hushed and desperate, but a relief to me nonetheless, calling out for the girl I hadn’t been able to get off my mind all night.
“Ruby? Ruby, are you there?”
I found Joseph in the alley, standing atop a wobbly stack of crates from the stationer’s next door. He’d got himself just high enough to catch hold of the back window’s sill, but not high enough to see in. It was a precarious arrangement even without the surprise of me opening the door. The crates underneath him swayed and swung, then the stack toppled like so many jackstraws.
Joseph didn’t fall. He hung there, fingertips hooked over the sill, whispering a blue streak of curses that surprised me more than seeing him there had done in the first place.
“That you, Will?” he asked when his curses had run their course. I replied it was, and that he’d better come inside quick before someone heard the ruckus he was making and decided to investigate.
He let go of the sill, landing heavy on his feet.
“Ouch!” he grunted, shaking out his ankles and rubbing his knee.
“I bet,” I said.
Then we stood there, Joseph casting a wary eye towards my Springfield, neither one of us knowing quite what to do.
He spoke first.
“You gonna call the police?”
“Why?” I replied. “You gonna rob us?”
He sighed. Said, “You know full well I’m not.”
Which I did. Far as I was concerned, Joseph had paid off all but the finance fee on the Model 14 and would have been perfectly within his rights to carry it home. But both of us knew he hadn’t come about the Victrola. And both of us knew he couldn’t go home.
“You seen Ruby?” he asked.
I told him I had, only much earlier that day. Then I said again how he’d best come inside.
“Word of honor you won’t call the police?” he said.
I swore it. Even so, Joseph deliberated long enough that I got tired of waiting and told him he could stay or go as he pleased, but I wasn’t saying another word about Ruby until we were safe inside with the door locked behind us. He sighed and followed me into the shop. And I bolted the door and told him to stay put while I went to fetch the old oil lamp and matches Pop kept on a shelf next to the cleaning supplies. Then I carried the lamp back to where he was and lit it and turned the wick low, praying no one would notice its glow from the alley behind.
After that, Joseph and I sat down on the floor. By the look of him, he was even more scared than me. Yet he started right in talking, saying how Ruby had been missing since noon. As a rule, she never played hooky until the last hour of the school day; noon was early enough that her teacher had telephoned their mother at the café to let her know.
“Peach pies,” I murmured.
“What’s that?” Joseph asked.
So I told him how Ruby had been visiting me for the last two months, and how she’d said their mother was a baker who made wonderful peach pies. Joseph let out a sob disguised as a cough, and my own throat swelled up tight. But it didn’t stop me from saying I was worried about Ruby, too, and that I wanted to help him find her.
“You mean it?” he asked.
I replied that I did, then pointed to the Springfield and said I knew how to use it.
“Maybe so,” he replied. “But would you do it on her behalf?”
I thought about Ruby, and the carloads of armed men who’d driven past our house, and the marks on Maybelle for the Negroes Vernon Fish had shot. And there was no hesitation in my voice when I replied yes. Yes, I would.
Th
at was the moment things began to change between me and Joseph. Not in any way I could define, more in a way I could feel. He told me what he’d seen that night; how he’d been too far away from the courthouse steps to hear everything that transpired, but that he knew enough men had come down from Greenwood to make the white folks assembled there nervous.
“I didn’t see who fired the first shot,” he said. “But it turned everyone still as statues. Second one got them moving, and by the third, they were screaming how they’d chase all us Negroes out of Tulsa for good.”
He went quiet, then cleared his throat and began again.
“They started moving up Boulder. I ran east along a side street. Plenty of those men from Greenwood are soldiers come back from the war. They know how to fight, but they weren’t at the courthouse for that; not most of them, leastways. They just wanted to make sure Dick Rowland lived long enough to stand trial. But now… well, if a white man shoots at them first, they’ll shoot back. Only do you know how many white men there are for every one of us, Will?”
“Near ten,” I replied.
Joseph nodded. I asked him did he know any other places where Ruby might hide. He shook his head, saying, “I’ve checked all her usual haunts twice already, including here.”
Then it occurred to me that Joseph must have been worried about his mother on top of everything else. So I told him I’d seen her earlier that night. “She was afraid for you both,” I said. “But she was safe.”
“How’d you know where I live?” he asked. I replied I’d been helping our housekeeper’s family and one of her grandsons had told me the address. He frowned like he didn’t quite believe me, but the space between us softened even more.
Then I asked did his family have a telephone. Joseph said no, but their neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Tyler did. Only, when I took him up to the store’s counter to call, the Tylers didn’t answer. Neither did anyone at the Nut-n-Honey Café, which Joseph said normally didn’t close till midnight.
“I’m sure your ma’s fine,” I said, aiming to make him feel better.
“How do you figure that?” Joseph replied.
And the God’s honest truth was that I had no idea if Mrs. Goodhope was fine or not, nor any reasonable basis for making assumptions either way. So I changed the subject, suggesting that if the crowd at the courthouse was moving north towards Greenwood from downtown, maybe we could take the truck out wide to the east, turn north, and come down into the area from above. “You ride in the back of the truck so no one sees you,” I said. “With any luck, we’ll get to your house and find out Ruby got home long ago.”
Joseph looked at me, his face more open and true than ever I’d seen it. “Why would you do that?” he asked.
Which was a question I couldn’t answer. Nor, as it turned out, did I have to. For just as I was about to mumble how I only wanted to help, headlamps lit up the shop window, passed by slow, and stopped.
Joseph went still as a possum. “Get down!” I whispered, blowing out the lamp. “Stay low, crawl back to the storeroom, and wait for me there.”
When he didn’t move, I said it again, loud enough to shock him into dropping to the floor. Then he made for the back, leaving me there with the Springfield clutched tight.
Please go, I thought to myself, praying the automobile would move on. Seconds ticked by. Minutes. Enough of them so that I switched to whispering for Joseph to stay put in the back. For if he tried to sneak out through the alley, whoever had parked across the street was bound to see him.
I patted my pocket and felt the fob ring holding the truck’s keys. Then I slipped out from behind the counter and pressed my back against the north wall. Fast as I dared, I slid forward, keeping to the shadows all the way up to the front corner of the shop until a rap came at the glass so sharp my belly dropped clear to my boots.
I looked down the length of the front windows and saw Clete’s profile. And past him, someone taller with his cap pulled low.
“Will?” Clete hollered, cupping his hands around his eyes to peer inside. “I know you’re in there, Will!”
I stepped away from the wall. Then Clete saw me, and I noticed the rifle at his chest. He smiled and motioned with one arm, shouting: “C’mon out, Will. We got some huntin’ to do!”
I resisted the urge to look back towards the storeroom, and hollered through the glass how Pop had told me to stay put and guard the shop.
“We come to grant you a reprieve,” Clete bellowed. “Besides, ain’t nobody gonna mess with white men’s property tonight!”
“I can’t leave,” I replied. Then Clete elbowed the figure next to him and the two of them laughed. “You let me in right now, Will Tillman,” Clete hollered. “Or I’ll tell your pa you were too lily-livered to come out!”
“I told you,” I hollered back. “Pop said to guard the shop.” And Clete looked straight at me with a predator cast to his eyes, saying, “Who do you think sent me here in the first place?”
Then the man beside him moved out of the shadows and tipped back his cap. He held up a wicker fishing creel stuffed full to overflowing with bullets, shaking it so I could hear the clink of them through the glass. And he smiled around the cigar between his lips and pressed his horrible face close to the glass, saying, “Open the door, Half-breed. Or I’ll smash it in myself.”
Rowan
James showed up Tuesday night with gelato and a grin.
“Petty crime’s my calling,” he said, handing me a dish of half-melted coconut and chocolate. “And by the way, that’s très chic.” He meant the hideous neck brace I’d finally given in and put on.
Smartass banter didn’t feel natural yet but I played along anyway, hoping it would help get things back to normal.
“Good. That’s what I was going for. Do you have the title?”
James lifted the strap of his messenger bag over his head. “Of course. Because yours truly possesses one of the great criminal minds of the century.”
“They just gave it to you, didn’t they?”
He took a thick sheaf of papers out of the bag. “Didn’t even ask for ID.”
Now, it turned out that reading our house’s title was only slightly easier than reading the clinic’s insurance manual. But it was definitely more interesting. The first few documents were typed on paper as thin as an onion skin. They showed that the land our house was built on had been signed over to the Muscogee Creek Nation by President Millard Fillmore in 1852. There hadn’t even been an Oklahoma then, only Indian Territory.
After that, we read from the yellowed pages how the tribe had given my family’s lot to a seventeen-year-old girl named America Manuel, who was listed as a freedman—a black slave who’d belonged to the Muscogee Creek Nation but had been freed after the Civil War. Which meant that the first person to own our property was a teenage girl with brown skin.
I set the empty gelato cup aside and took the title from James’s hands so I could see her name up close. “That. Is. So. Cool!”
He reached across me and flipped the page. “No doubt. I don’t think she ever lived here, though. She leased the land to a farmer first, then to the Anchor Oil Company. After she sold it in 1904, it changed hands”—he took the title back and flipped pages quickly, counting under his breath—“eight times. But there’s nothing about a house until”—more flipping—“ha!”
“What?” I peeked over his shoulder. He pointed out two names at the top right corner of the page.
Stanley G. Tillman and Kathryn E. Tillman
“No shit!” I whispered.
“Yup. Stanley and Kathryn bought the lot in 1920. And here’s a construction mortgage in their names for twenty-five thousand dollars, so apparently they built the house, too. Only…”
“What?”
James kept reading. “I’m not sure, but I think… wait. Yeah. Here. Stanley and Kathryn owned the land and built the house, but if they lived here, it wasn’t for very long. See?”
He pointed to a tiny line of type. In November of 19
22, my great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother, Flowers and Ora Chase, paid twenty-nine thousand dollars cash for the house James and I were sitting in and the land underneath it. Which meant that since the Victrola receipt and the newest coin in the skeleton’s pocket were from 1921, there was a good chance the body was in the back house before my great-greats ever moved in.
“Maybe there isn’t a murderer in your family tree after all,” James said. “You relieved?”
I flipped the title closed and rolled my eyes, saying, “Oh, so very.”
And you know? I actually kind of was.
William Tillman’s parents built this house. He left home sometime before the Polk-Hoffhine Directory came out in 1922. No one could find him when his father died. And he almost definitely would have had access to the back house while it was under construction. Bottom line: there was a good chance he was either the skeleton or the guy who’d put it there.
Only the more James and I talked things through, the less likely it seemed that the body could be William’s. For one thing, we didn’t see how he could have been black (yes, uncomfortable as it made me, I was willing to give Geneva’s race theory the benefit of the doubt). His father, Stanley, must have been white, otherwise Tulsa’s Jim Crow laws would have made it impossible for him to own any business on Main Street other than a shoeshine box. And when we tracked down the Tillman family tree on Ancestry, William’s mother turned out to have been one of the original 2,228 Osage Indian tribe members given a headright allotment and 160 homestead acres in 1906. That meant she’d had money, because the Osage had made sure the mineral rights for tribal land—translation: the oil rights—stayed communal. And that meant all the profits from oil pumped out of Osage land went into one big account, and four times a year, everyone with a headright got a check for an equal percentage share.
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