A decorated officer for his heroics in France and Germany, Sy expected to return to the United States, to Richmond, Virginia, after the war, a hero. He also expected for racism and segregation to have been vanquished in the wake of the victory against the Germans, but such was not the case, as the Negro men who had fought in both the Civil War and the Spanish-American War had learned. In fact, it seemed like things were worse for Negro soldiers now than before the war.
Two days after Sy’s return to Richmond in 1919, the Richmond Planet reported on the lynching of a black man, which was nothing new to the South, with one exception this time. He was lynched in his Army uniform. The paper reported that Sgt. Reese was now one of ten World War I veterans lynched in his uniform since the war had ended. In France, they had tasted the forbidden fruit of integration, but back home, in the South, and even parts of the North, many Negro soldiers had to be reminded that Jim Crow and segregation was alive and well. There would be no sharing of public space.
He was bitter - so bitter that he had begun to drink. And when he wasn’t drinking, his insomnia had him walking the Ward at night sometimes as far as Church Hill. He couldn’t find a job and his countless medals afforded him no special treatment among whites and sometimes even among his own people. He had seen many atrocities in France and Germany such as the death of twenty of his own men during the Meuse-Argonne offensive. He had orders to take a hill that was under enemy fire. They were packed in that trench like sardines. He was giving their position over the radio begging for more support when his handle operator, Private Clarke, was shot in the head. Brain fragments splattered all over Sy’s face and uniform. He threw up in the trench next to where he sat before the medics took Clarke’s body away. Clarke was nineteen years old, the only son of a farmer in Tennessee.
Sy never got over that day as he’d witness the death of more Negro men on foreign soil by the end of the offensive. The survivors would walk away with medals from the French for valor having achieved their goal of reclaiming the hill, but for the rest of their lives they were haunted by the deaths they’d been witnesses to: especially Sy.
Every time he drank from a bottle of bourbon or whiskey, he’d think about his men like Private Clarke and he’d drink even more. At least four nights a week, he’d wake up drenched in sweat from the nightmares of mortar shells dropping around him and limbs flying through the air like a flock of birds. But Sy also drank because he had tasted freedom and respect in France. The French had showered the Negro soldiers with gifts and food and women. Sy felt he did not have to apologize for his skin color every minute of his life while in France. And his men felt the same way.
“Hey, Captain. Do you think when we get home, we gonna be kings there too?” asked Private Clarke a few days before he’d leave this earth for good. They were drinking French beer at a café in a small village outside of Paris. It was one of those rare days when the battlefield was resting - they saw no action. Clarke’s normally dull brown eyes were now bright like a kid spying presents under the Christmas tree.
“I hope so, Clarke. Otherwise, this is all for nothin’.” Sy scratched at a healing bullet wound on his shoulder and then downed the rest of his beer. “We’d have fought for the wrong freedom. Let’s go, men. We’ve got work to do,” and ten of Sy’s men grabbed their hats reluctantly. A few kissed their pretty French maidens sitting on their lap goodbye. They headed back into the darkness of war and death, all in the hopes that French freedom might seep like water from a faucet somehow into America.
Sy was replaying that conversation in his head as he sat behind his desk in his office on the corner of Jackson and First Street. He had a bottle of bourbon in his hands readying for his dry lips when Lena, his secretary, interrupted him.
“Mr. Sanford, there’s someone here to see you.” Her voice was soft like butter cream. He took a few seconds before answering to look at her through the glass of the bottle which was now hovering above his lips like a kite trapped in a wind tunnel.
Lena was more beautiful than all the French women he had met and lain with in France. Her cocoa brown skin vibrated against the canary yellow dress she was wearing. Lips painted with crimson lipstick softly pleaded with him to put the bottle away. Her almond eyes concurred. Lena had been Sy’s secretary for several months now. After he couldn’t find any decent work requiring the use of his Army skills, in a moment of clarity from a drunken haze, he decided to open up a security office.
He also felt he had needed someone to keep the office clean and his files straight since he was not effective at either one. When he was in the service, he was often under fire from his commander for not turning his reports in on time. Sy felt it was stupid to worry about files when his men were dying day in and day out on the battlefield. “To hell with it!” he once yelled at his commander when he had asked for a file and he couldn’t find it under the mountainous stacks of papers on his desk. He’d only received a verbal warning that time.
When Lena Johnson responded to Sy’s ad, he secretly fell in love with her instantly, and she with him. Neither one acted upon their feelings for a while, though, because Lena was married to Amos Johnson, an ex-boxer and well known barber at Prometheus Jackson’s barber shop. Amos was a hothead and had once served time in prison for killing an opponent in the ring, so his reputation as a killer was solidified, and rightly so. It was even suggested that he had first killed outside of the ring – and not in prison – but no one would dare tell the story out loud. Amos was a big man with an even bigger temper.
She loved Amos, or she had when they first married. Now, she feared him and stayed only because she had no other place to go. He had courted her so sweetly: brought her flowers every day. Yet, it wasn’t really out of love. It was more so the bet he had with the other men down at the local bar who insisted no man could get that close to Miss Lena, the almond eyed beauty with hair black, smooth and straight like water. But Amos never liked to lose – didn’t believe in it. So, he put on the mask of charm and won not only the bet, but her hand in marriage. It was time he settled down, anyway, his mother had told him.
Fate played a part in the courtship too, though. He had brought her down to Virginia from New York soon after they had married and her mother had died of tuberculosis; he was her savior, she thought. And she had needed one by the time Amos had shown up in her life. Lena was the only child of the poor immigrant Negro woman from Jamaica. She did not know her father. When she would ask her mother about him, she’d only say, “He is the dirt that we walk on.” Her life was hard – so too her mother’s. They barely were able to feed themselves, and Lena’s mother would not allow any man to come near her beautiful daughter. “You save yourself for God!” she’d tell Lena – when she could talk, for the fits of coughing along with her heavy Jamaican accent would overtake her ability to speak in clear sentences.
Lena’s mother had met her demise a few days before Lena was spotted by Amos boarding the L train, so she was not able to protect her daughter from his toothy smile. Alone in the city, Lena welcomed his attention. He was so gentle and patient with her. But it didn’t take long after the wedding for the real Amos to show up. In fact, both events happened almost simultaneously, but Lena never told a soul this, especially not Sy. She saw something in Sy that was dangerous and explosive. Deep down, her instincts told her that if he ever knew what Amos did to her, something really bad would happen. So, she covered up her bruises as best as she could with make-up and excuses.
Lena wasn’t very good at covering up, though. Sy suspected there was dark trouble in Lena’s home; he’d seen it before – men who beat their women, and he hated the weakness in a man that would make him do so such a thing. But he also knew that it wasn’t his place to interfere, although his heart ached for her. So, he tried to give her more things to do around the office or sent her on exaggerated errands just to keep her busy and away as long as possible from Amos. He wanted to save her.
“We have company, Mr. Sanford. Please put that away. You coul
d get into trouble for that.” She reached over his desk to take the bottle from him.
He let it go without a fight and then straightened up in his chair. No one had walked through his office doors since he opened the security firm a few months ago. He had used the last of his military savings to start his business, thinking perhaps the pay from it would extend his living a little longer.
Besides, he felt that he had nothing else to do or live for. His mother had died when he was serving in France and he and his father had never seen eye to eye. They hated one another, in fact. Sy because Big Sy kept putting his hands on his mother, and Big Sy because Sy always tried to protect what he felt was his property to do with as he pleased. So, once Hattie Sanford passed away, Big Sy married his mistress and left for South Carolina, leaving Sy to send word back home to have his mother buried in the family gravesite in the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. But he hadn’t visited her grave yet. He was waiting to get the strength, he often told himself.
Lena squared her shoulders, cleared her throat and looked Sy firmly in his eyes for the first time finally revealing the love that lay behind them for this troubled man. “We need this.” She was pleading to him to make this work…for both of their sakes. Lena was secretly counting on Sy to take her away from Amos one day. But she refused to go from the hands of one drunk with nothing to another. She needed for him to be sober in order to make room in his life for her, and it had to be safe.
“I know,” Sy said as he stroked her hand which held the bottle. His green eyes were filled with the pain of war and life. Lena watched the wrinkles around the edges of his mouth swim in the rare smile that escaped from his lips lately. “Who is it?”
“Mrs. Perditia Jones.”
“And she’s here to see me? What would a rich woman like her want with me?” he asked calmly.
Lena let out a giggle. “This is a security firm, ain’t it?” and she left Sy’s office with the bottle tucked behind her back to usher in Mrs. Perditia Jones.
***
He had just finished tucking his shirt into his pants when she came in. Mrs. Jones walked into Sy’s office with an air of gratitude, grinning widely. “Mr. Sanford, it is a real pleasure to meet you.” She nearly shook his hand off.
Sy was amused. No one had ever been so excited to meet him. Not even the French prostitutes he frequented while in Paris. “Mrs. Jones, the pleasure is mine.” And he kissed her hand the way they do in France. Lena watched this exchange from the doorway and marveled at the change that had suddenly come over Sy Sanford. He was alive and vibrant like nothing she had ever seen in him, or any man, for that matter.
Sy saw Lena watching him out of the corner of his eye and motioned for her to leave the room. She complied and shut the door on her way out. “Mrs. Jones, what can I do for you today?”
“Mr. Sanford…” she began earnestly.
“Please. Call me Sy. You’ve known me all my life, so there’s no need for you to be formal with me, Mrs. Jones.” He smiled softly like a schoolboy who had a crush on his teacher. In fact, he once had a secret crush on Mrs. Jones. He had watched her all of his life, having grown up just in Petersburg, a town about forty minutes south of Richmond. Twenty years his senior, Mrs. Perditia Jones was much sought-after by the gentlemen of her time. Educated and wealthy, she walked on air, he felt then, as if royalty. She always had a smile on her face and gave the local children candy whenever they came into her father’s candy shop on Second Street.
She was in her late 50’s now, a plump woman with great sized breasts to match and brown eyes that sparkled with life and energy. She was once a beautiful woman. Still was to some, like Prometheus Jackson. Her once black curly hair was now salt and pepper grey and was coiled nicely underneath a black cloche hat. But little pieces of her grey hair stuck out from under her hat like sprightly children at play. She wore a matching black mantle coat with black satin gloves and hosiery – a real lady wore hosiery, they said then. She was dressed for an evening out, and a man like Sy Sanford enjoyed her elegance.
I still have it, Mrs. Jones said to herself. She could feel Sy’s desire to know her and, of course, she barely remembered him from when he was a child. She was being courted by Daniel Jones when Sy was a boy, so her eyes and thoughts belonged to Daniel then, not the little Negro boy with soft green eyes that always tried to stare into her soul whenever she’d lean down to give him a piece of candy.
“Sy, we need your help. You have heard of the recent murders, haven’t you?”
Sy, now seated in his chair behind his desk, shifted in his seat. He had heard of the murders like everyone else, and had a bad feeling in the pit of stomach about them. “Yes, I have. But what is that to do with me?” he inquired cautiously.
“I am here as a representative of the businessmen and women of Jackson Ward. These hellacious murders, Mr. San— I mean, Sy, are beginning to hurt our businesses. Folks are starting to take their business elsewhere, saying the Ward is too dangerous.”
Sy leaned back in his chair and rubbed his five o’clock shadow; he wished heatedly that he had shaved earlier that morning, but then he had felt that it was going to be another desperately lonely day, so why bother. Besides, Lena didn’t seem to notice. She barely gave him eye contact. “I can understand that, but white folks have always had an excuse not to buy from the Negroes around here.”
Mrs. Jones cleared her throat, a sign of irritation for her as Sy was not getting what she was saying. “Sy, we are not talking about white folks. Negroes in the Ward is taking their business out of here. We cannot afford for that to happen. Many of us have worked too long and hard to grow stable, financially secured businesses that support this community to see our people turn on us. This killer is dropping off bodies in Jackson Ward like it’s a dump yard. You’ve got to stop it!”
“Me?!” Sy was clearly taken aback as he nearly jumped out of his chair. “Mrs. Jones, I am a security firm, not the police. You need to go to Sheriff Mason. This is his job.”
Mrs. Jones let out a hearty laugh as she rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Don’t you think we’ve tried that? Sheriff Mason is more than happy that the bodies are being dumped here and not in the City of Richmond. He said this is ‘our’ problem.”
Sy was silent for a moment as he stared back down at his desk. He was wishing he had the bottle of bourbon back now. “But I am a security firm, Mrs. Jones,” he repeated more to himself for reassurance than to remind Mrs. Jones.
She waved his comment off as if it were a pesky fly. “Securities is the same as investigations. We’ve got to stop these murders, or we all will be out of business.”
“Who is this ‘we’ you keep talkin’ about?” Sy asked shortly. He was starting to sweat now under the intense gaze of Mrs. Jones and the weight of what she was asking him to do.
“Alright! I’ll play this game. We is myself, Prometheus Jackson, Preston Miller, Raymond Turner and Jack Johnson. And we are willing to pay you whatever you want to take this job.” She leaned forward and gently laid her hand on Sy’s sweaty hand which lay on top of his desk just as lifeless as he now felt. “The Ward ain’t got nobody else to help it, Sy.”
Sy felt a sense of foreboding as he looked down at the gloved hand that lay on top of his. He brought his eyes up and directed them at the owner of the black satin glove. They pleaded to Mrs. Jones for release from this burden, but they failed. Truth be told, Sy needed the money this case would bring. No one had come to hire him since he’d opened the firm and he was almost out of money. And he wanted to take Lena away from her life and give her a better one. But he couldn’t do it without a financially strong business. He knew Lena would not have him if he had nothing, and he wanted Lena more than anything.
He let out a deep sigh from his soul, which was tired now. “What exactly do you want for me to do? I don’t have any experience in this sort of thing, you know.”
“Talk to people. The Ward is kind and open to its own. Visit the places where those poor women were murdered, and t
heir families, you know. Stuff like that. We want these murders to stop, Sy. Do you understand?”
“How much you gonna pay me?” he asked as he reluctantly removed his trembling hand from under Mrs. Jones’ and rubbed his shadow again.
“How ‘bout one hundred dollars a week until you solve the murders and bring the murderer to justice,” she said and smiled triumphantly as she pulled a pile of bills out of her purse. “Here’s $400 to start,” and she held out the bills in front of Sy.
He stared hard at the money. This was the answer to his problems, yet he felt doomed as he took the money and put it in his desk drawer.
“Ain’t you gonna count it?” she asked.
He shook his head no.
“Ok. We expect to receive a report from you every week at which time you will be paid for your services. You are to meet us next Friday at the Sessions Hotel restaurant around noon.” She paused for a moment and watched Sy look at the drawer. ‘This man has hell after him,’ she said to herself, and she immediately said a prayer for Sy Sanford.
“Justice! Mrs. Jones, how are we gonna bring a murderer to justice if the sheriff here won’t do nothin’ for us now?”
Mrs. Jones stared hard at Sy. “The good Lord always metes out justice.” Their eyes locked in a battle that seemed to last for hours, but was only for a few seconds as Sy lowered his first.
“I shall see you next week, Sy,” she said as she rose to leave. “It was a pleasure to meet you … again.”
“You too, Mrs. Jones,” and he escorted her to the outer office where Lena’s desk stood.
Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders (Sy Sanford Series Book 1) Page 3
