“So true,” Sylvia said. “Laneer does his best with this garden, and he does grow the sweetest tomatoes I ever had, but we’re all grateful for the calories you sneak into that girl. Lord knows she needs some calories. Which I don’t. And vitamins. She needs them, too.”
“That’s why I’m here. Kali would never miss picking up her lunch on Friday unless something was bad wrong, so I came straight over here when we finished giving out the food. Today’s the day we hand out backpacks for the weekend. You know that, Sylvia. Kali counts on that backpack so she’s got what she needs to eat till Monday. Food’s not high on Frida’s priority list. Anybody can tell that by how skinny she is. You and Laneer can only do so much.”
“Poor Frida,” Sylvia said.
Walt’s face went still. “What are you saying? What’s wrong?”
“Somebody hurt her last night. Hurt her bad. She’s at the hospital.”
Walt looked at Faye. “Is that why you’re here? Are you some kind of social worker? I wondered what you were doing following Kali around yesterday.”
“No. I just got worried about where a little girl was going every day by herself, so I followed her.”
“You go around saving little girls all the time? Is that how you get your jollies? Nobody in your neighborhood needs help, and you’ve got to come to ours to be a do-gooder?”
Faye had to force herself not to take a step back from his hostility. Her own adopted daughter, Amande, had been a young girl who needed a home and Faye had given it to her. The decision to make Amande part of her family had given her more joy than she could explain to this man. He didn’t know what he was talking about, but she wasn’t about to bring the decision to adopt her daughter into this conversation. Faye would be damned if she’d give this man a chance to taint it.
“I don’t like the sound of ‘do-gooder,’ not the way you say it, but my mother and grandmother taught me to look for the right thing to do, then do it.”
“Did they do it the ladies’ club way? Sell each other tickets to a fundraiser luncheon, then write some charity a check? That way, they could forget about all those people who need help when they sat down at their luncheon and filled themselves full of iced tea and cucumber sandwiches?”
Faye looked down at her borrowed clothes and wondered how it was possible that she seemed so rich to this man. Was it the way she talked? And also…cucumber sandwiches? Was this guy for real?
Did Laneer, Sylvia, and Kali see her that way? Her mother had taught her never to argue with a fool, but when Walt Walker insulted the memory of the women who had raised her, he’d earned a few moments with the rough side of Faye’s tongue.
“My mother was a licensed practical nurse who worked the night shift. My grandmother was a secretary for a man who never paid her any more than he could get away with. And my father died before I was two. Mama and Grandma didn’t have time nor money for ladies’ club lunches, but they always found a way to help people. The checks they wrote for charity and to their church weren’t very big, but they did write them.”
Walt said nothing. To his credit, he looked taken aback, but Faye wasn’t through with him.
“You didn’t know my mother and my grandmother. It’s not okay for you to insult them when you don’t like me because…I don’t know. Why don’t you like me? Because of the way I look? The way I sound? Do I smell bad?”
“No, no, no. I didn’t mean to be a jerk. I’m really sorry.” This time the expansive charm was focused on Faye. “I get too involved with my children. My students. And their families. About twice a year, some people come in here and convince these people that they have all the answers. They talk big about their jobs programs and their after-school programs and their charter schools and their legal aid programs. Then they fade away and nothing has changed.”
Faye decided it was time for her to be the one asking the questions.
“Is that why you work at the summer lunch program?”
“Yes. Well, I volunteer when they need me, which is a lot these days. It’s work that actually does something for people. I’m happy to give them some of my time.”
“And that’s why you teach? Because you like to help people? You seem like a capable man. I feel sure you could get a job that pays better.”
Walt’s face softened. “Yeah. I teach because I want to help people, and I do it here because this is where I live. I want to help my neighbors’ kids.”
“Well, I’m here to do a job that I need quite a lot, and I hired five young people to help me who really need the jobs. I’m working through a local man, Jeremiah Hamilton.”
“I know Jeremiah.”
“Then maybe you know that he’s associated with a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged young people from…”
“From places like this?” Walt asked.
Faye realized that she’d just firmly slapped Walt’s home with the label “disadvantaged.” Not good. At least she hadn’t called it “the inner city.” Her misstep embarrassed her, but it hardly mattered. Walt seemed to have hated her on sight, anyway. She might as well plunge ahead.
“Yes, I guess I do mean ‘places like this.’ Jeremiah finds jobs for his kids. He teaches them to do job interviews and helps them find the right clothes for work. He knows all the local college admissions people. He hires at the community college, then he helps his workers with their applications for a four-year degree. He gets their application fees waived or he finds the money to cover them. I’m here because of him and I brought jobs with me. When he heard I’d gotten the Sweetgum State Park job, he wrote me, out of the blue, and told me he had a proposition.”
“A proposition? Ain’t nobody ever told you not to listen to fast-talking men?” Sylvia jammed her hands in her pockets and rocked back on her heels “I know Jeremiah, too. He says a lot of things. You believe him when he talks?”
“A proposition for my firm, not for me. He knew I’d need technicians for this job and he wanted me to subcontract that work through his nonprofit. I interviewed Jeremiah pretty hard before I signed a contract with him to provide me with labor for this job. He convinced me that I could get my work done while doing something good for somebody else. Does any of this bother you, Mr. Walker? Am I such a do-gooder that you want me to close down my project and go home? Do you want me to go back to Florida and hand those jobs over to somebody who won’t want to waste energy helping kids?”
Laneer appeared at the corner of the house, but Walt didn’t see him. He was too busy venting his frustrations at the expense of a woman he’d just met.
“No, stay,” he said, his mouth curled into a sneer. “By all means, stay. I’m sure you can single-handedly save those kids. I can sure see that you think you can save Kali. But why stop there? If Kali needs you so much, then what about every kid on the street? What makes her special? Take them home. Take them all home. Adopt them. Maybe that will make the guilt go away.”
“What guilt?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Maybe Faye did. She reflexively glanced up and down the street, revealing herself to Walt as she took in peeling paint, iron-barred windows, and signs announcing that people should keep the hell out. She’d never felt rich and she’d sometimes felt poor, but she’d never lived in a place like this.
Walt saw her and his smile turned triumphant, but Laneer interrupted him before he could use the troubled expression in Faye’s eyes against her.
Laneer’s face said, “Would you people pay attention?” but his voice said only, “We’ve got company.”
Little Kali stood on the front porch. “I’m going home. I’ve gotta find my mama.”
The child was fast, but Faye already knew that. She’d already spent a morning chasing her down a creek, struggling to keep up with short legs that were all muscle and no fat.
Laneer was a bit too old to be that fast, and Sylvia was a bit too heavy
. Walt had long legs and he moved like a man who ran for fun, so he was going to beat them all to the little girl. Something inside Faye hated that, so she put on some more speed.
She wasn’t keeping up with Walt and she certainly wasn’t catching up with Kali, but she was holding her own until her phone rang. She tugged it out of her pocket, planning to just glance at the phone but let it roll over to voice mail, unless the name on its screen made her think the call was important.
Caller ID said that Detective McDaniel was trying to get hold of her, so Faye reluctantly shifted down to a walk and put the phone to her ear.
“Is the little girl up yet? I’m coming to talk to her.”
“Oh, she’s up. And running, but I’m right behind her. She’s going back to her house, looking for her mother. Somebody’s going to have to tell her what happened, just as soon as we catch up with her, so come quick.”
“Oh, I’m not just coming. I’m already there.”
As Faye rounded a curve in the road, she looked past the running child and found the white house she was running toward. McDaniel was standing on Frida’s doorstep and there was another man beside him. McDaniel was still wearing the polo shirt and khakis Faye had seen on him earlier. The second man was in a suit.
Clad in black from head to toe, the stranger stood with his head slightly bowed, his chin just a few degrees below horizontal and his eyes on the ground a few feet in front of him. In his hand, he carried a black book. Faye was still too far away to see the book, but she knew what it was. She knew that it was probably leather with its pages printed on fine vellum, and its cover was probably ornamented with gold leaf. Perhaps some of its most venerated words were printed in red ink.
Everything about the man who had come with McDaniel to talk to Kali said that he was a minister. The presence of a man of God when police came to give bad news was a bit of grace intended to bring comfort in times of pain, but Faye didn’t think it was going to help today. Kali was too little, too young, too innocent to be told that her mother had gone to a better place. Even if the minister was right that Frida was in a better place, Kali needed her mother here with her.
Now McDaniel and the man in black were walking toward them. The sight of the approaching law officer and minister hit all the adults chasing Kali, and it hit them hard. Walt’s full-out speed slackened and halted. Sylvia stumbled for a step, then tried to get moving again.
Laneer, who had been walking more than running and yet was still breathing hard, stopped dead-still. When he spoke, his words gushed out in a single breath, like a prayer.
“Oh, Lord God, don’t do this, don’t take this baby’s mama away from her.”
Ahead of them, Kali skipped the steps and jumped flat-footed onto the porch. Pulling a key out of her pocket, she used it to burst through the front door of the home where she had lived with her mother until today. If she saw McDaniel and the strange man in black, she didn’t let on. She just disappeared into the dark house and let the door slam behind her.
Chapter Thirteen
Six adults hovered on the doorstep of Frida’s house. Faye supposed it was now Kali’s house, if Frida had owned it. If she had not, and Faye couldn’t imagine that the salary of a restaurant cleaner would pay a mortgage note, then thirty days or less stood between Kali and eviction. Homelessness. Not that a ten-year-old had any business living alone, even if the house was hers, by purchase or by lease.
Laneer was her great-great-uncle. Sylvia was her candy lady, whatever that was, but it didn’t seem to mean she was blood family. Unless Kali had closer kin, Faye presumed that the girl would sleep at Laneer’s house that night and every night for the foreseeable future. She looked at Laneer, standing bent over with his hands resting on his thighs, breathing deeply, and she wondered how long the old man would be able to take care of his great-great-niece.
Maybe there were other relatives to step in, if need be. Faye had only just met Kali and Laneer, so she had no idea. She found the situation inexpressibly sad.
The adults stood uncertainly in the front yard of Frida’s—Kali’s?—house. Laneer had caught his breath enough to speak, so he stood up straight and addressed the stranger in black.
Exuding the dignity of a patriarch doing what his family needed him to do, he spoke. “Reverend Atkinson, are you here to tell us something about Frida?”
Faye was close enough to see the small, shield-shaped pin on Reverend Atkinson’s lapel, adorned with a cross and an anvil. She remembered her friend Douglass wearing a pin like that when he was making deacon’s visits to the people in his congregation. This connection with her cherished father figure made her feel a little warmer toward the somber-faced man.
Reverend Atkinson looked at McDaniel, who nodded, so he cleared his throat to speak. “Ms. Stone breathed her last about an hour ago. She has gone to be with the angels.”
Tears washed down Laneer’s cheeks. “She was an angel her own self. Always was. Just the sweetest child. Her little voice was like music. Like bells ringing. And that pretty face of hers.”
Sylvia’s hands were clenched in her apron, wadding its black gingham fabric in both fists. “If it wasn’t for that pretty face, she’d be here right now. Wouldn’t have been raising that little girl on her own since she was a teenager, neither. Frida had the kind of face that brought the man-rats scurrying her way.”
“I give her credit,” Laneer said. “She was smart enough to run ’em off whenever she figured out she’d done it again. When she saw she’d let another rat into her life, she told him to get out. The thing is that there was always more where they come from.”
Sylvia gave a firm nod. “You said it. And now one of her rats has gone and killed her.”
McDaniel looked like he wanted to ask Laneer and Sylvia to give him a full accounting of Frida’s man-rats, but he knew that this wasn’t the time. “We have to let the little girl know about her mother.”
“Did Frida wake up at the end?” Laneer asked. “Did she have any last words for Kali? Something that would let her know that her mama was thinking about her and loved her?”
The minister shook his head. “I was with her when she passed. No, she didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe, not really, not after what that monster did to her.” He looked at Faye. “You’re the one that found her, right? You saw what bad shape she was in.”
Faye, trying not to think about what she’d seen, let out a few feeble words. “Yes. It was me.”
“I’ve watched lots of people die, so I could see she was going soon,” the minister said. “Frida hasn’t been so much for church since the baby came along, but I remembered about the little girl. I said I’d see to it that she was looked after, and she squeezed my hand. That’s worth something, don’t you think, for the little girl to know that her mama wanted her safe and happy?”
Laneer was sobbing again, so he just nodded his head as he walked toward the front door of the house where Kali had lived with her mother. When he drew near, he reached out a hand to touch the doorknob, just in time to hear the deadbolt thunk into place.
The adults looked at each other. Now what?
Faye hoped to goodness that McDaniel didn’t do something stupid like yell, “Open up! It’s the law!” She also hoped that Reverend Atkinson did not try to invoke the will of God to get Kali to let them in, because she didn’t think the bereaved child would pay him much attention.
Did Kali know she was bereaved? She had to suspect it. How often did her mother disappear, replaced by a herd of grown-ups like this one, some of them weeping? It must be obvious to her that something was terribly wrong.
If, as Faye feared, Kali had seen the attack on Frida and had watched her being put into the ground, she had probably thought her mother was dead from the moment she ran to Laneer’s house. But knowing it and hearing somebody say it were two different things. If Faye were Kali, she wasn’t sure what it would have ta
ken to get her to open that door.
There were windows on either side of the front door with venetian blinds hanging down nearly to the windowsill, leaving a wide crack at the bottom where light could get in. McDaniel and the minister hunkered down to peer into one window. Laneer and Sylvia did the same at the other one.
Faye and Walt, who both had no real reason for being there beyond circumstance, stared awkwardly at each other. They had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and neither was sure what was expected of them. His confrontational air was gone.
Leaning toward Faye, he murmured, “You were there? You found her?”
She nodded.
“I heard…” His voice trailed off, presumably because nobody really likes saying the words, “I heard she was buried alive.” He swallowed and found the guts to say them.
“You heard right. But how did you hear?”
He gave a soft laugh. “Sylvia’s been texting. She’s good at that. Cell phones have made children’s lives a lot harder, now that their candy lady can tell their mama when they’ve done wrong. Nowadays, she can do it before they can run home and tell a lie big enough to save themselves.”
“So yeah,” Faye said. “Buried alive. I’m guessing the bastard thought she was dead. Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe he’s getting his jollies right now, wondering whether she’s dead yet and wondering how long it took her to go.”
Walt shuddered. “Where did you find her? People usually try to hide it when they’ve done something like that. You must have been way off the beaten path.”
“I’m an archaeologist. A lot of my work happens off the beaten path. That’s why I’m here in Memphis. I’m doing an excavation in the park for the state of Tennessee, mostly along the creek and on the bluff above it. That’s where I found Frida.”
“You picked a fine time and place to start a job in Memphis.”
Undercurrents Page 7
