by Jeff Stetson
He turned and studied his wife. “Maybe it wasn’t race Matheson manipulated, or even our desire for revenge. Maybe it was something as simple as knowing we don’t want to believe ordinary people are capable of profound evil. And when it happens, we rally behind a flag or a god or a set of tribal customs to rationalize continuing the madness. After a while we’re too busy burying each other to remember who threw the first stone or why.”
“We’re also capable of extraordinary acts of generosity and decency and love,” countered Cheryl. “And eventually, that’ll make all the difference. Not in one day or one trial or even one lifetime. But good wins out, James. You’ve got to believe that. And you’ve got to help our children believe it, too.” The phone rang. Cheryl looked at her watch. “It’s after midnight. Who’d be calling us this late?”
“I’ll get it,” said Reynolds. “It’s probably one of my many fans wanting to offer their congratulations.” He reached inside the doorway and grabbed the wall phone. “Hello.”
Cheryl watched his face grow increasingly tense.
Reynolds listened to the recognizable voice. “I’m sorry you couldn’t make it to my celebration,” Matheson said. “I wanted to let you know there are no hard feelings.” Reynolds wanted to respond, but the veins in his neck wouldn’t allow him.
Matheson continued. “I was recently advised of the nature of your distress. There’s no need to thank me, but . . .”
Cheryl touched her husband’s arm, but he never looked at her.
“You won’t be haunted by nightmares anymore.”
Reynolds gripped the phone receiver and stopped breathing until he heard the voice again.
“At least not any from your childhood.”
Reynolds’s throat finally opened wide enough for him to speak, but by that time Matheson had hung up. He loosened his grip on the phone and listened to the dial tone.
“Honey?” Cheryl said.
His eyes filled with fear and rage.
“James, you’re frightening me.”
Ignoring the desperate pleas of his wife, he rushed out of his home and raced toward his car. He quickly started the engine and speeded out of the driveway, leaving Cheryl standing in the middle of the front yard, pleading with him to come back.
Reynolds never thought about the absurdity of his effort. He’d driven all this way, recklessly violating speed limits and racing through traffic signals and stop signs. He didn’t know if he’d locate the place this late or, even if he did, how he could be so sure he’d find what he feared most. He slowed down the car and searched aimlessly for the entrance. The moon helped a bit, but every pathway looked the same at night.
He parked the car and decided to follow his instinct. He opened the glove compartment and removed a flashlight. He ran alongside the outer fringes of the state park and headed down one entrance, but stopped after a few yards. The path should have been narrower, with trees spaced apart more evenly. He left the area and returned to the side road.
He remembered that Edwards had pointed to a trail covered by thick brush that he’d pulled back to enter. He grabbed at hedges and branches and anything that moved until he found a spot that seemed familiar, then made his way through the bushes and discovered the trail. As he ran, he heard the night sounds and imagined the fingers chasing behind him. He raced past wild brush and through a thicket of tall grass. Slipping on the moist dew, he fell to the earth, striking his face against dirt and stone. He got up and sprinted as if possessed, flinging his arms to the side, pushing back branches that sliced his hands and ripped his clothing. He gasped for breath and felt his heart pounding. The past reverberated around him, and he saw himself as a child running from the ghost.
He heard a man’s voice screaming, “Help me! In Jesus’ name, please help me!” He saw the mob and the handheld torches and the long knotted rope and the glistening stream and the ax blade that sparkled and fell brutally beneath the fiery cross. He heard a child’s voice yell, “Leave him alone!” and through that child’s eyes he saw the knife plunge into the dead man’s heart. The person who placed it there turned and grinned, posing for his photo at the foot of his victim.
Reynolds lost all feeling in his body as his emotions spiraled through pain and terror. He left the narrow trail, stumbled into a clearing, and saw the silhouette of a man hanging from a gnarled tree a few feet from a burning cross. Against his will he moved closer and watched Gates Beauford twist slowly in the night breeze until he became the corpse of Frank Edwards’s father, then changed back into Beauford, with his neck broken and his hand severed and a knife protruding from his heart.
Reynolds collapsed to the ground and pounded the earth with his fists. “No!” he screamed. “Goddamn you, no!” He suddenly became aware of the thick warm liquid underneath his body. He stared at his hands, now stained with the victim’s blood. After thirty-five years, it had returned to mark him once again.
CHAPTER 65
MATHESON REMOVED SEVERAL plaques and framed certificates from the wall behind his desk and wrapped them with protective plastic. He placed them carefully in a cardboard box, then took the last row of leather-bound manuscripts from the top shelf of the built-in bookcase and stacked them neatly on the floor. He’d begun putting them into a heavy-duty carton when his office door opened.
“You have a moment?” asked the Reverend Matheson.
“Come on in,” replied his son, who continued packing. “I’ve been invited to give a series of lectures around the country. We can use the fees to help rebuild the church.”
The Reverend Matheson hesitated, then moved toward the desk and assisted his son in sealing one of the boxes. “During the time you were in jail, there weren’t any murders. You’re out less than two days and another man dies.”
“Wasn’t much of a man,” Matheson answered as he tore off a piece of masking tape and ran it across the lid.
The Reverend Matheson stopped helping his son and stepped back to address him. “All my life I’ve fought against hatred.”
“Wasn’t much of a fight.” Matheson finished with the tape and placed the box against the wall. He wrote some identifying information on a label and pasted it on the side of the cardboard.
“It was a struggle. And we won!”
Matheson placed the top on the Magic Marker and tossed it on the desk. “Those black kids who slaughter each other every day—what did you win for them?”
“Freedom. A chance.” The Reverend Matheson never wavered.
“You didn’t give them a chance. You gave them a death warrant.” Matheson started filling a second box with books. “You sacrificed them on some civil rights altar to conceal your own confusion and cowardice. You begged for acceptance from your enemies and lost the respect of your own children.”
Matheson slammed the last set of books into the box and angrily confronted his father. “You had a duty to protect your family, your community, your damn self! But you were so busy wanting to be an American, you forgot what Americans do best. They buy guns and they kick ass. And they never, ever apologize for it.”
He took a step back from his father and spoke despondently. “You have any idea what happens to a people who don’t believe they’re worthy of protection or that their lives matter? All that pain and hurt becomes self-loathing, the loathing turns into rage, and that rage has no choice but to strike out in the only way it can.” He moved closer to his father and once again sounded accusatory. “Your pleas for nonviolent resistance made it easier for us to accept our own destruction. And now the murder of black people is not only tolerable, it’s justifiable. The really tragic thing is, white folks don’t need to brutalize us anymore, because we’re doing that to each other.” Matheson looked away for a moment, then faced his father and smiled sadly. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? You wanted us to love our enemy, and we wound up hating ourselves.”
He lightly touched his father’s shoulder. “Dad,” he said, choking back the tears. “Can’t you see that once you betray the dead, you�
��ve no choice but to condemn the living?”
The Reverend Matheson stared at his son with more than a hint of anger, then moved away, remaining silent for several moments. He regained his composure and turned toward him. “I remember when that man called you ‘nigger,’” he said sympathetically. “Remember your face. Remember how the tears just seemed to fill your eyes, frozen, too afraid to come out.” The Reverend Matheson closed his eyes briefly. “I was praying to God, ‘Don’t let those tears fall.’ I told myself it was because I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing how much he’d hurt you.” He smiled sadly. “But I knew the truth.”
He faced his son, speaking firmly. “I knew if so much as one teardrop fell, I would have ripped out that man’s throat. Made sure no words ever came out that could ever harm you again.” The Reverend Matheson leaned against the side of the desk and confessed to a surprised and attentive son, “If I’d done that, I would have become just like him. He would’ve succeeded in making me the one thing I knew you and I never were—niggers. I wasn’t willing to become that. Not for your respect.” His voice crackled with emotion. “Not even for your love.”
The Reverend Matheson moved from the desk and walked close to his son, speaking in a hushed voice. “I wonder if you realize that man finally succeeded in making you into something you were never born to be.” He turned and noticed Reynolds standing at the doorway. The two men looked at each other but exchanged nothing more than eye contact. He walked past Reynolds and left the office. Reynolds slowly approached Matheson, who remained motionless.
“You murdered them all?”
“I thought we settled that in court. I was found not guilty. Isn’t the same as innocent, but then, Jesus was the only perfect man, and we both know what happened to him.”
“I’m going to bring you to justice,” stated Reynolds. “No matter how long it takes.”
Matheson nodded agreement. “It took more than thirty years to bring the murderer of Medgar Evers to justice. Almost thirty-nine to convict one of the men who dynamited the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and murdered four teenaged girls.” He moved closer to Reynolds. “Who knows? By that time you might even become man enough to take justice into your own hands.”
Reynolds threw a right cross that landed flush on Matheson’s jaw, knocking him to the floor. Matheson rubbed the side of his face and looked at Reynolds, who now stood directly over him. “Guess I should’ve been wearin’ one of those slings you told me about,” Reynolds said as an afterthought.
The professor rose from the floor. “Felt good, didn’t it?” He stood in front of Reynolds. “There’s a certain freedom when you decide you won’t take any more—that you’ve finally had enough. You gain a genuine sense of relief, a feeling that perhaps for the first time in your life, you’re really alive.” The two men looked at each other and shared an uncomfortably intimate moment of mutual understanding. “I imagine that’s what Bigger Thomas must’ve felt after he killed that woman,” Matheson said softly. “God have mercy on his soul.”
Reynolds walked slowly toward the door. When he reached to open it, he felt the gun just inside his jacket. He’d forgotten he brought it. He considered the havoc Matheson would create, the hatred and violence that would follow wherever he traveled.
“Did you forget something?” asked Matheson.
Reynolds didn’t turn to face the professor. He simply closed his eyes for a moment and then answered, “Yes.”
EPILOGUE
Reynolds walked underneath the brick archway into the sunlight and saw students run toward him. He thought about what Cheryl had said and reluctantly agreed: He had more in common with Matheson than he ever cared to admit. But the thing that made him different also served as his salvation and kept him from crossing a line from which there’d be no return. The students brushed past him and rushed to their classes.
His heart beat rapidly with the realization of how dangerously close he’d gotten to becoming Matheson. Ironically, the same people who condemned the professor would have honored and defended his action, considered him a patriot. They’d never recognize their own hypocrisy, and because of that, Matheson had won a victory to be repeated again and again. Hatred wouldn’t end, because it would never be seen as hatred. Someone would always demand a pound of flesh and believe that it was justice rather than revenge.
That was the nature of “an eye for an eye,” whether it was white against black, or nation against nation, or the state versus its citizens who for the moment were doomed to be judged by a jury of their peers. He remembered a question Matheson had asked him: What do you call the person who bombs a terrorist? Reynolds now knew the answer to the professor’s riddle: a hero.
When he struck Matheson, he had felt a ferociousness he didn’t know existed. And yes, he felt an enormous degree of satisfaction. But he also felt something else: an obligation to his children and the world they’d inherit—one he hoped would be free from a vendetta imposed upon it by history. He wouldn’t betray Angela’s and Christopher’s future with violence and hate. He wouldn’t lose the ability to touch or be touched by those he loved. Matheson wasn’t worth that. Bigger Thomas would not claim his soul, too.
The final hour of one’s life couldn’t be wasted fighting heroic battles or settling scores. He’d reached that conclusion with an unparalleled degree of moral certainty. It must be devoted to making love or music or writing a poem or holding a child or wiping away the tears of those who mistakenly fear the unknown. The great challenge for him would be finding the courage to live life as if each hour were indeed his last, John Wayne and Miles Davis be damned.
Reynolds descended the steps of the humanities building and stopped at the bottom to observe a campus divided by walkways and magnolia trees and race. He watched groups of blacks and whites move in different directions, oblivious to the conditions that perpetuated their invisibility to each other. He proceeded down the path that would lead him away from the university and closer to a shared fate Matheson had attempted to disavow: In the end, we are all our brother’s keeper. And when we deny that, we lose hope and so much more.
For some strange reason Reynolds recalled a hymn composed by Duke Ellington. Perhaps he’d last heard it sung at the Reverend Matheson’s church ages ago: “Lord, dear Lord above, God Almighty, God of love, please look down and see my people through.”
He never felt the tear leave his eye, nor did he notice it fall to the ground to be quickly absorbed by summer’s arid earth. This time there’d be no trace that justice had wept—only the burning desire to relinquish the pain.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This has been a long and interesting journey from Harlem to Marina del Rey. There are many people I’ve met along the way, to whom I owe much.
I offer my grateful appreciation to Rick Horgan, vice president and executive editor, Warner Books, for his support, assistance, and willingness to test his own assumptions.
Many years ago, I chose to attend a small state-supported college rather than accept invitations from a number of more “prestigious” private institutions that wanted me, not for my talent, but for my racial profile. My experience at Framingham State College brought me into contact with some of the most dedicated, idealistic, and decent people I’ve ever known. I want to thank them for giving me their guidance and the motto “Live to the Truth.” I’ve tried my best to find it and to share it with others, whether they wanted it or not.
To my friends and colleagues in the Massachusetts State College system and at the California State University, I’ll be forever grateful to you for your kindness, support, encouragement, and love. I regret I had to leave education in order to be an educator; perhaps I can return one day.
In the mid-seventies, the students of the Black Artists Union at the Massachusetts College of Art taught me the importance of the artist and, through their sacrifice and courage, inspired me to say “no” when saying “yes” would have been so much easier. To Brenda Walcott, Ricardo Gomes, and the stud
ents who never compromised their values or distorted our history, I’m eternally in your debt.
To those actors, directors, artistic staff, and most importantly, audiences, who made each of my plays live—both on and off the stage. Their support has sustained me through the most difficult moments and made it possible for me to enjoy and more fully appreciate the best of times.
At an early age, I discovered and devoured everything James Baldwin ever wrote. I never knew, nor did I expect, to join his honored profession. It was simply enough to follow his vision of how the world might be if we lived with integrity, compassion, and love. I owe him my respect and admiration, and I apologize for taking so long to finally pay the price of the ticket.
To my friends from Natick High, some of whom I’ve recently rediscovered, thanks for convincing me I could sing, when all I really could do was dance.
To the Los Angeles Black Playwrights and Los Angeles Actors’ Theater Playwright’s Lab, both no longer in existence—but, for me, never gone—thanks for helping to develop the craft and nurturing the passion.
Lastly, to those who offered love, and allowed me the privilege of loving them back; especially my family, in particular, Raoul, Troy, and Anwar—they’re the only heroes I will ever need and the principal reason I have dared to dream.
