As they dragged Joseph off towards the nearest telephone pole, the Florsheim man put his hand on my shoulder. My skin prickled. The hairs on my neck stood up as the heat of his whiskey-tinted breath touched my ear.
“Watch close, young fella,” he whispered. “Watch and learn.”
Rowan
There were seven messages on my phone the next morning from numbers I didn’t recognize, all saying they were so-and-so from such-and-such website or newspaper, all wanting to know if I’d be willing to talk to them about Arvin. I deleted every one, turned off my phone, and went downstairs. Mom was dressed for work, reading the newspaper at the dining room table.
“It’s official,” she said, handing me the front page.
I skimmed the story just enough to see it wasn’t going to tell me anything I didn’t already know. The DA’s office hadn’t found sufficient evidence to prosecute Jerry Randall. People were angry. I was still a “female teenage driver whose identity is being withheld.” Arvin was still dead.
“How are you feeling about everything?” Mom asked.
“Lousy.” I headed to the kitchen for my juice. Mom followed, pressing me to say something more.
“I liked being around people who knew Arvin yesterday,” I said. “But in some ways it made everything harder. His aunt Tilda told me what he was like when he was a little boy, and there were people who went to high school with him, and his friends from the Day Center for the Homeless…”
Mom looked out the window, giving me time to finish. When I didn’t, she turned back and said, “Your father and I have been talking. We’re not sure the DA made the right call on this one.”
I drank some juice to clear the lump out of my throat.
“Was it self-defense?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you think he would have done it if Arvin had been white?”
“I don’t know. But he definitely wouldn’t have called him a—”
Mom put her hand up. “Okay,” she said. “That’s all I needed to know. Got plans for today?”
“Just laying around, following doctor’s orders.”
She gave me a dubious look.
“Call if you need anything,” she said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “And no digital screens until Monday.”
I smiled, poured another glass of juice while she gathered up her stuff, waited until her Mercedes backed out, and got my computer.
I had work to do.
Thanks to Geneva, I knew Raymond Fisher was from Decatur, Georgia, and that he and his gun, Maybelle, had gone AWOL from the army while he was on leave for his mother’s funeral. So I started my digging with the 1910 census, which was the last one taken before 1919.
Sure enough, Raymond Fisher was there, in the same household as his mother, Ava. Both of them were listed as being Negro, but other than that, the census didn’t have a lot to say. There was a link to Ava’s death certificate, though, which told me she’d been a seamstress who died of pneumonia in January of 1919. There was also a little window on that page with the names of her children. Raymond was there, born 1902, and so was Virgil, born 1900. There wasn’t anything more about Virgil, who I assumed must have died young.
Raymond’s 1917 World War I draft card was even more helpful. According to that, he’d been single, childless, had dislocated his shoulder when he was sixteen, was tall, stout, and had blue eyes. The top right corner of the page was torn off, and even though there was no specific line for it, the person filling in the card had written Light-skinned and marked it with a star.
There was no death certificate for Raymond, but that wasn’t a big surprise. He’d probably changed his name after he went AWOL, trying to stay out of the army’s way. From 1919 on, Raymond Fisher was literally a dead end.
After that, I searched Arvin’s name and got sucked into reading the online craziness that followed.
There was good stuff, yes. But it didn’t take long to wander into comment threads and forums full of crap so hopelessly messed up that I couldn’t stop reading. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, racist skinheads, neo-Confederates, the KKK—up until that morning, I’d had no idea those were all different things, or that there were so many different ways to hate black people. Racists, it turned out, were into diversity after all.
Fortunately, the doorbell rang just before ten. Otherwise, I might have spent all day getting sucked into the world’s most depressing wormhole.
It was James, dressed in a pink plaid shirt, Bermuda shorts, and Top-Siders with no socks.
“Road trip,” he said.
I asked if the yacht club knew he’d escaped. He ignored me and came inside, grabbing my hand on his way past.
“C’mon. I was a busy boy yesterday, and it’s my second day in a row calling in sick. We’ve got a lot to talk about on our way to Pawhuska.”
I let him pull me toward the staircase. Other than moving out of Gladys’s way when she came to clean that afternoon, I didn’t exactly have plans.
“Why would I want to go to Pawhuska?” I asked.
He started up the stairs, pulling me behind him. “Get dressed. I’ll tell you in the car.” At the top, he pushed me into my room—gently—and closed the door. “Hurry, Chase. It’s a long drive, and he’s expecting us.”
“Who is?” I hollered, digging through my closet for something clean.
“William Tillman’s son.”
Sixty seconds later, I was fully clothed, yanking the door open so fast that James stumbled inside. My sandals were in my hand. The Victrola receipt was tucked into an envelope inside my purse.
“What are we waiting for?” I said. “Let’s go.”
There’s not a lot to look at between Tulsa and Pawhuska other than fields, hawks, and sky. We roared up Highway 99 north of Cleveland with the windows down and wind whipping our hair. 1969 El Caminos didn’t come with AC, and even though the backs of my knees were damp and a fine layer of Oklahoma dirt had settled on my skin, I felt free.
I kept James’s phone in my hand as we crossed into the Osage Reservation. If I’d turned it on, the screen would have filled with William Tillman’s picture. But I didn’t need to do that—I had every curve and line of his face memorized already.
While I was at Mama Ray’s, James had been faking sick so he could talk to a historian at the Osage Tribal Museum and dig through the high school yearbook collection at the main library branch downtown. He’d found William Tillman inside the pages of the 1921 Tulsa Central High School Tom Tom, looking out from underneath black hair that was slicked back and parted down the middle.
If Geneva was right about the skeleton belonging to an African American, it wasn’t William’s. His features in the picture were round, with broad cheekbones and a softness that somehow came across as strength. He definitely wasn’t black, though. Brownish, maybe, with skin that would darken quickly in the sun. But not black like Mom, or even me.
All that aside, his eyes were what held my attention for so many miles. They were deep set and calm, laughing all on their own as if the photographer had just cracked a good joke and told him not to smile. They were kind, too. Like Kathryn Yellowhorse’s.
James slowed down when we hit the outskirts of Pawhuska. We passed through downtown, with its low-slung brick buildings set against the sky’s wide-open blue. A few storefront windows had displays. Plenty were empty, others had been boarded over. I pulled up directions to Parkside Manor, and we followed them to a depressing one-story building overlooking City Cemetery.
“Shouldn’t they have built their nursing home someplace with a nicer view?” I said.
James jangled the keys in his cupped hand. “I bet they put toe tags on people as soon as they check in.”
Neither one of us unbuckled.
“We should take him something,” I said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Just… something. What do you think?”
James shifted into reverse.
“I think we should see what we ca
n find.”
“Mr. Tillman?”
The sign next to the door said JOSEPH TILLMAN & HERBERT EBERSOL. I knocked quietly in case either one was asleep.
“Hello?” I peeked inside and saw the ends of two beds. The one next to the window had feet underneath its blankets.
“Mr. Tillman?” I bumped the door with the box of grocery store cookies in my hand. Behind me, James had a potted fern.
The feet moved. A soft voice told us to come in.
“You must be James and Rowan,” the man said. “Please, sit down.”
His shaky hand pointed to a blue plastic recliner and a folding chair. I went to the recliner, trying to ignore the nursing home smell of warehoused human beings. James shook the man’s hand, saying, “Thank you so much for seeing us, Mr. Tillman.”
“I’ll take any visitors I can get,” Mr. Tillman said. “Especially ones who bring me presents.” He eyed the cookie box and patted the top of the hospital tray table next to him. “What have you got there, young lady?”
“Cookies.” I opened the lid and held them out. “Would you like one?”
“I would indeed,” Mr. Tillman said. “There are paper towels in the bathroom. Do you mind?”
By the time I got back, James had set the fern on the windowsill and was sitting in the folding chair. Mr. Tillman tilted the top half of his bed to sit upright. I moved the tray table across his lap and set a cookie on a paper towel.
“I can’t eat all of these myself,” he said. “Won’t you have some, too?”
I took out one apiece for James and me.
“That’s better,” Mr. Tillman said. Then he stopped, drawing a deep breath in through his nose and closing his eyes. As his wrinkled face tightened in pain, I noticed how long his body was underneath the covers, and how broad the gaunt shoulders underneath his hospital gown were. He felt for a cord looped over the bed railing without opening his eyes and pushed the button at the end of it. A few seconds later, his face relaxed and his eyes opened.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I’ve got a touch of cancer, and sometimes the pain gets to be a bit much.” He pointed at the IV bag hanging from a hook above his bed. Morphine, I figured. The heavy-duty stuff.
“But enough about that,” Mr. Tillman said. “I believe you mentioned you have some questions about my family, James?”
James came forward onto the edge of his chair. “Yes, sir, Mr. Tillman,” he said. “Rowan and I—”
The old man interrupted him. “Joe. Call me Joe.”
James smiled. “You got it, Joe. So, Rowan and I are researching the history of her house, and I think your grandparents might have been the ones who built it.”
“Stanley and Kathryn,” Joe said. The smile on his face was so sad and sweet that I could see a young man underneath the wrinkles. Once upon a time, he must have looked a lot like the picture of his father on James’s phone. And even through the morphine glaze, I could see he had his father’s eyes.
“That’s quite a house you live in, young lady,” he said.
I smiled. “It’s been in my family a long time. My great-great-grandparents bought it from Stanley and Kathryn.”
“Imagine that,” Joe said. “Granny Kathryn wouldn’t set foot in that place, you know. Though I suspect the two of you might not be surprised to hear that.”
He looked back and forth between James and me, and I swear he was trying to get information from us as much as we were from him.
I asked him what he meant. He closed his eyes again, only that time he didn’t jack into the morphine. I got the feeling he was doing some kind of complex mental calculation instead, deciding what to say. And when they opened, his eyes weren’t just clear, they were alive.
“I mean you’ve found it, haven’t you?” he said. “After all these years, someone’s finally found the body.”
WILLIAM
The Florsheim man’s gang was so fired up and rowdy that not one of them heard me the first time I shouted for them to stop. Second time, either. Third one did the trick; they all looked to me, then to their leader, who eyed me like I’d sprouted horns. “What did you say?” he asked in a growl that made the hackles on my neck stand up.
I swallowed hard. Said it a fourth time: “Stop.” And his growl dropped even lower as he asked me, “Why?”
“Because I promised him to Vernon Fish,” I replied. And the whole lot of them stared with their jaws aflap. All except the Florsheim man, that is.
“You know Vernon?” he said, coming so close that the bootleg whiskey on his breath set my eyes to watering.
I stammered that I did. Then my voice steadied, and I spun a yarn about how Mr. Fish was a friend of my father’s and liked to tease me about not knowing how to handle Negroes properly. I said how I’d argued back earlier that day that yes I did, and that I’d go out and hunt one down myself to prove it. I even told him Mr. Fish had promised to let me use his whipping strap if I succeeded, adding, “I reckon he’d be pretty sore if I showed up with this boy already whupped.”
The Florsheim man ran the leather of his own strap across his palm, caught the end of it, and snapped it tight.
I swallowed hard. Said, “I sure do want to join the Junior Klan once they start up here in Tulsa.”
And he snapped the strap again, saying, “So you’ve never schooled a nigger?”
A shudder passed through Joseph’s body.
“No, sir,” I said. “But Mr. Fish told me all about how he handled that chicken thief up Vinita way, and how Maybelle shot an old man’s eyes out.”
I stopped then, for something had eased in the Florsheim man’s countenance. He even chuckled, saying, “I doubt Vernon Fish ever will love a girl so true as he does that Colt of his.” Which set a few of the men around Joseph to tittering. Then he yanked Joseph’s head up by the chin and said, “What do you think, boy? Should I leave your hide to Vernon?”
Joseph said nothing.
“You answer him, boy!” one of the uniformed men shouted. Another hauled back and kicked Joseph in the stomach so hard the air rushed out his mouth. But Joseph kept his eyes down and did not move.
“I sure would appreciate it if you’d let me handle this boy myself,” I said, stepping closer to the Florsheim man. “I’ve been struggling lately, bucking rules and acting all kinds of awful. If you were to let me deliver him like I promised, it might prove to my pop and Mr. Fish that I’m on track for real. And, well… I’d just be awful grateful, sir.”
The Florsheim man looked from Joseph to me. Said, “Who’s your pop?”
“Stanley Tillman,” I replied.
And he tipped his head sideways and looked surprised, saying, “The same Stanley Tillman who sold me my Victrola last year?”
“That’s him,” I replied.
“The one Vernon’s been trying to bring into the Klan for months even though he’s married to an Osage squaw?”
I told him yes. Then I felt the thin ice under my feet starting to crack as the Florsheim man came at me. And just when our chests were near close enough to touch, he laughed and slugged my arm so hard my teeth clattered.
“Why didn’t you say so, Half-breed?” he boomed. “Your pop saw the light and joined up tonight. He’s one of us now!”
Pop had filled out his application, paid his fee, and joined the Klan right there on the courthouse steps, in front of God and Vernon Fish and the Florsheim man. Whose real name, I learned, was Reggie Gould.
Reggie told me the whole tale with relish, saying how Pop’s view on Negroes being harmless had changed soon as he saw the first armed carload of them drive up to the courthouse, and how Pop said that if they were willing to confront the sheriff with guns, they surely wouldn’t hesitate in doing the same to him at his shop. Which sounded close enough to Pop’s sort of reasoning for me to believe it was true.
But bad as it hurt to hear them tell about Pop’s change of heart, some good came of the exchange. For Reggie and his boys let me drive off without harming the Tylers or Joseph,
believing as they did that I was about to deliver all three to Vernon Fish. That’s how I ended up driving down the outer edges of the city like a madman, desperate to get Joseph and the Tylers safe.
Turned out I’d no choice but to stop again, when a second body turned up in the street with a fist-sized hole blown out of its chest. For even after all the trouble we’d run into so far, my instinct was to pick it up and see that it was buried proper. But Joseph peeked up as the truck slowed, and when I pointed to the corpse, he said, “It isn’t safe, Will. Keep driving… please?” His voice bobbled about, which was understandable given what had nearly been done to him not five minutes prior. And there was no question it would be risky to stop.
So I drove on near a half mile until the next obstacle presented itself. Only that time it wasn’t a corpse, but a living man.
A living man who I hit with the truck.
It happened at the intersection of Fifth and Detroit. He’d only intended to step out into the street long enough to flag me down, that much was clear. But he misjudged my speed and distance by a good ten feet, so there was no way I could avoid him. Fortunately, I only clipped his hip. The man and the shotgun he’d been holding spun through the air separately and landed hard on the ground. Then came an awful silence, followed by the sound of Mrs. Tyler’s sobs and a moaning from the street. I told Joseph to stay put and got out.
Judging by his grease-stained overalls and the black under his fingernails, the struck man was a roughneck. That didn’t account for the red spot blooming on the leg of his pants, though, for even in Tulsa, there was no mistaking blood for oil.
“Help me,” he wheezed. “Please!”
Then his gaze jerked to something past my shoulder. It was Joseph, standing behind us with his legs set wide and the roughneck’s shotgun aimed at its owner’s head.
“Give me my gun and get away from me, you goddamned nigger,” the roughneck hissed.
Joseph pressed the muzzle to the man’s cheek, whispering, “How many goddamned niggers have you killed with this gun tonight, sir?”
Dreamland Burning Page 21
