Down by the Riverside

by Jackie Lynn

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “He was a hard worker.”

  She nodded her head.

  I pressed for more. “Was there any other reason they would say he took his own life?” I asked.

  She turned in my direction. Her brow wrinkled as if she was studying me. “Who did you say you were again?” she asked.

  “My name is Rose,” I replied, knowing I needed to explain. “Rose Franklin Griffith,” I added.

  She chewed on her lip. “Did you know my son?” It was a legitimate question.

  “No, ma’am.” I knew I sounded suspicious.

  “You working with the police?” she asked. She had obviously already been questioned by Montgomery or one of his men.

  “No,” I answered.

  I could tell she was trying to figure out why I was asking so many questions. I knew I needed to explain why I was there, but I knew that at the time I didn’t fully understand that myself.

  “I just keep thinking about him, about my coming on the day he was found, about why he might have taken his own life.”

  I changed positions in my seat. I felt uncomfortable trying to talk to the grieving mother.

  “I feel like something’s wrong about what they’re saying about Lawrence, about his death—” I stopped.

  I crossed and uncrossed my legs. I could feel Tom watching me. I knew that he was curious, too, about my desire to meet Mrs. Franklin, about my sudden questions for her.

  “My father and I are not close.” I felt as if I was going to have to start at the beginning. “I have a brother, but we don’t really talk. My mother died when I was a little girl. I’ve just gotten a divorce and I wasn’t even planning on stopping here.” I looked at Tom. This was for him, too.

  I shook my head, started again. “I met a little girl at Shady Grove, at the campground where I’m staying.” I added, “Her name is Clara and I’ve talked to her a few times now.”

  I slid my hands together and then pulled them apart, placing them on my legs. I was quite uncomfortable. I felt the scrutiny of the older woman and of Tom.

  “She said that she saw Lawrence sometime the night before or the morning that he disappeared, down at the river.” I cleared my throat and continued. “She said he was happy, that he laughed and that—” I stopped again, knowing that I was starting to sound a little crazy. “She said that there was an angel there.”

  Neither Mrs. Franklin nor Thomas spoke.

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” I said, fidgeting. “I just feel like something’s not right about what they’re saying about your son. I think somebody’s covering up something; I don’t know why, but I think I’m supposed to figure it out.”

  The older woman made a low humming noise like she was thinking, studying on what I was saying. I figured she was going to ask me to leave or just be polite and halt our conversation.

  “What was your mama’s name?” she asked, surprising me with her question.

  I answered her truthfully. I knew she deserved to be able to ask me anything after my questions about her son.

  “Rose Pearl Franklin,” I said. “I was named after her.”

  “Rose Pearl,” Ms. Eulene repeated. She interlaced her fingers and rested them on the table. She had stopped rocking.

  “Are we related?” she asked.

  I dropped my face. “I don’t think so,” I replied. “I didn’t know my mother’s people, but they weren’t—” I paused, not knowing how to talk about race. “Her mother was Lumbee Indian. I never really knew about her father. He was the Franklin and I think he was from Georgia or somewhere south. I never knew any of his family.”

  The older woman smiled slightly. She unfolded her hands and reached over to take mine.

  “It don’t matter,” she said. “We all mixed-up anyway.” Then she pulled her hands away and stretched her back so that she sat up tall in her seat.

  “Lawrence would never have committed suicide,” she said sternly, matter-of-factly.

  “He respected life, honored it. People think that because he was an undertaker that he resigned himself to death, lay down to it, but they didn’t know my Lawrence. He never stopped death when it came to this community; he knew we all got a time to go and he helped a lot of others make their way to the other side.” She spread her fingers on the table, wide like she was playing the piano.

  “But he would never have sent himself or somebody else across the Jordan if it wasn’t time.” She folded her fingers into fists. “And I know it won’t his time.”

  We heard steps on the front porch and a young woman of about twenty walked through the door. She smiled at Tom and looked at me. The door opened and closed.

  Mrs. Franklin listened to the sounds at the door and to the sounds of the woman coming into the room. She waited until she was just in front of the sink. “Rusty, this here is a cousin of mine, Rose Franklin.”

  I was stunned at the older woman’s description of who I was. I felt my face flush.

  “She’s visiting from North Carolina. She’s a friend of Tom’s.” She reached over and knew right where my hands were placed. She took one in hers.

  “I’m happy to meet you, Rusty,” I said.

  The young woman lifted her eyebrows and smiled. “Nice to see you, too,” she replied.

  “Ms. Eulene hasn’t fed you yet?” she asked, walking over. She placed her hands on the older woman’s shoulders and squeezed them lightly.

  “In time,” Mrs. Franklin replied.

  “Well, I just came to check on you. I’m going to go back and get some folding chairs to bring over. I figure that we’ll have a lot of people here again tonight.”

  She turned around and seemed to be taking inventory of the food on the counter behind us. She lifted foil and plastic wrapping, studying the contents of the containers.

  “You need some help?” Tom asked, as he stood up from the table.

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Sawyer, it would be nice to have an extra set of hands,” the young woman answered, still sorting through the food.

  I started to get up, too. She turned around.

  “No, Rose, it’s okay, you stay here. It won’t take us very long,” she said.

  I sat back in my chair and watched as Tom and the young woman left the kitchen. I followed them with my eyes as they walked across the road. Mrs. Franklin hummed quietly.

  “You want me to help you with these peas?” I asked, remembering that she was involved in that activity when Tom and I arrived.

  “That’d be pleasant,” she answered.

  I slid the two bowls that were on the table near us, placing the one with the unshelled peas and hulls in front of the older woman and setting the one with the finished peas closer to me. I took a handful of shells, placed them on the table, and watched the older woman as she sifted through the bowl.

  “You grow up with a garden?” Mrs. Franklin asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I answered. “But it’s been a long time since I worked one.” I fidgeted with a shell.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Me, too. The plot is a mess now,” she added, and I knew she meant the lot next to the house that I had seen when we arrived.

  “Junior,” then she noted quickly, “that was what we called my husband. Junior always plowed the land for me. And then Lawrence did after his father died.” She stuck her thumb in the end of a long shell and slid it down. She made it look so easy.

  “It’s been a few years since I had a vegetable garden,” she added. She felt around for the bowl and then slipped the peas into it. She dropped the hull in the bowl in front of her and picked up another. “Just got too hard.”

  I watched her work. I found the string on the seam of the shell I was holding and pulled it down. Then I stuck my thumb inside and tore it open. Peas fell out. I thought I saw Mrs. Franklin smile as if she had seen what I had done. I picked up the peas and placed them in the bowl.

  “Mrs. Franklin, did Lawrence write a letter before he died?” I asked. I remembered what the deputy
had said.

  “He wrote some things down that’s all.” Her fingers moved like a typist at work. “I told them he was doing that before his birthday, that he always did that, made an inventory of things, wrote notes for people, cleaned out closets. His birthday is in a couple of weeks and he did that every year. It was just his way of ordering the years of his life.” She blew out a breath.

  I didn’t respond. Lawrence’s actions made perfect sense to me, but I could see how the police would try connecting those things together to call his death suicide. It was logical in their minds. The two of us kept working at the peas.

  “Did Lawrence ever mention anything to you about river property or trying to find something down there?” I was still trying to understand her son’s life as well as his death.

  “Lawrence loved that old river.” She smiled. “He was always reading about the history of it, trying to figure things out about it.” She moved quickly through the hulls. She was so much faster than I was.

  “He wanted to put the cemetery down there.” She laughed a bit.

  “Junior told him a long time ago that it was crazy, but he just had this notion in his head.” She slid and pulled another row of peas into the bowl.

  “That was when he started all his reading, when he found about the old slave burial grounds.”

  “Yes, Tom mentioned that.”

  “Lawrence was real serious about it. He wanted to find it, thought it should be a historical landmark or something.” She let out a breath.

  “Went down to the courthouse trying to get somebody to help him search for it.” She shook her head.

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She seemed to be thinking about the question. “I guess it was a year or there about.” She paused again.

  “Did he get any help from the city? Did they ever find it?” I asked.

  “Nah. The city manager said that it couldn’t be any burial ground near the river, that he must have had his locators wrong.”

  She slid a hull apart. “He gave up on it after a while.”

  I reached for another shell, a long firm one. I opened it and spilled the peas again, this time on the table and on the floor.

  “Until a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “He brought it up again at dinner a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

  “Brought what up?” I asked, scooping peas from the floor.

  “The burial ground.” She reached around the bowl for more shells. She had done ten or twelve and I was still working on my second.

  “What about it did he bring up?” I asked curiously.

  “Just that he thought he had figured out where it was.”

  I faced the older woman. I had quit shelling by then.

  “Was it near Shady Grove?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. “I believe it was,” she answered. “But not right at the camping sites,” she added. “I think that he thought it was closer to the quarry, closer to Tom’s.”

  She reached her hand in the bowl and let the peas slide through her fingers.

  “It looks like we finished,” she said.

  “It looks like you finished,” I replied. “I just made a mess.”

  I glanced around the floor for more peas that I had dropped.

  She reached over and patted me on the hand. “You did fine,” she responded. “There wasn’t too many left to do anyway.”

  “Mrs. Franklin”—I thought since we were talking so openly about her son I had room to ask more questions—“did Lawrence ever mention anything about the slave’s gold?” I knew it seemed to be an unrelated question. I just thought that the story that Tom had told me might be connected to the death.

  “No. I mean, everybody knew that old story; Tom knows more about it than anybody, but Lawrence and I never talked about it.”

  She brushed the tiny pieces of strings and hulls from the table, sliding them into the cup of her hand. “It wouldn’t have mattered though.” She dropped them in the bowl of old shells.

  “Why not?” I asked. “If it’s true what folks say, that the gold was buried somewhere on this side of the river, it would be worth a lot of money. I would think somebody might be interested in finding it.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say somebody wouldn’t be interested,” she replied. “I’m just saying Lawrence wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Why?” I asked again.

  “Lawrence felt like a lot of the black people around here feel. They understand that gold was meant to buy their flesh. Not too many south side people would go looking for that kind of sorrow. And besides, Lawrence never cared anything for money. Just wasn’t something he thought about.”

  She placed her hands in her lap. I felt embarrassed that I would have implied that her son was looking for tainted gold. I recalled that Tom had said something very similar to what the dead man’s mother said. I waited for a minute and then asked, “What did he care about?”

  I was still curious about the kind of man he was.

  “Family,” she answered. “He was interested in family and how we were all related.”

  She smiled slightly.

  “He’d have known by the end of the day how we were connected. He would have searched through his papers and been able to tell you by supper time how your mama’s people and the Arkansas Franklins were kin.”

  She found another tissue and wiped her eyes. I felt a little sorry since I felt as if I had caused the tears.

  “He traced every family’s history in Crittendon County,” she said. “At least the ones living on the south side,” she added.

  I knew she meant African-Americans.

  “It’s hard sometimes finding the histories of slaves,” she said as she touched the sides and back of her head, sliding in the pieces of hair that had fallen out of the braids.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “I think it would be.”

  “Lawrence was happiest when he would bring families together, when he could bury relatives near each other.”

  I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. “Yes, ma’am,” I said again.

  “That’s why he wanted to find that burial ground,” she explained.

  I listened more carefully. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Lawrence found the names of the people who died there. They were written in an old Bible of a man who died some time ago. The family gave it to Lawrence when he was writing up the obituary for the paper. He found the names on a page just in front of the Old Testament; once he realized that some of the names were the same as people living in West Memphis, he wanted to find and mark the site, give honor to the dead people who rested there. He found out that it was his great-great-great-grandfather, or something like that, who had been the one to bury those slaves.”

  She paused for a minute.

  “Did Thomas tell you that story?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I remembered my conversation with him from the previous day.

  “Well, Lawrence thought he owed it to the community to find that cemetery. He thought he owed it to his ancestor, to his great-grandfather, to his grandfather, to his father, to honor what had been done, to mark their lives, to name their passing. To say to this community, to these families, here are your ancestors, your roots. Our blood flows from them.”

  She stood up from the table and took the bowl of peas to the sink.

  “Lawrence cared about family,” she repeated. She turned on the water and began washing the contents of her bowl.

  I watched the blind woman as she sorted through the small brown peas, able to pull out string and dirt, the easy way she read the vegetables with her fingers. She hummed a bit while she stood with her back to me. I saw Tom and Rusty coming across the road with their arms filled with folding chairs. He was laughing at something the young woman was saying. Delight spread wide across his face. I watched the way she flirted with him, the way he seemed to
enjoy it.

  “Mrs. Franklin,” I asked, because the thought had just crossed my mind. “Did Lawrence tell anybody else that he had figured out where the grave site was?”

  She faced me and nodded like she was thinking. Then she turned off the water. “Well, let’s see, I know he told the old man who leases the land from Mr. Boyd for the quarry rights, a Mr. Koonerd or Cunley. He told the Boyds, too, because I think Mr. Boyd let him go over from time to time to look at the place. He told me at supper when Beatrice and Rusty were here, I believe. Thomas knew, of course, because they had been working on that cemetery project together.” She sifted again through the peas. “And that’s right, he told Sheriff Montgomery.”

  The name made me jerk toward the older woman. “Why did he tell the sheriff?” I asked, thinking that I was hearing his name far too many times.

  “He was on his way to the courthouse to look at the land deeds. He said he ran into the sheriff on his way in and that when the sheriff asked about what he was doing there, he mentioned it to him.” She set the bowl aside and wiped her hands.

  Tom and Rusty had walked around to the front door and were bringing in the chairs. I could hear them opening them and setting them around the room. I heard them mention the preacher, and that the family didn’t know yet when the service was going to be held. I could tell by the awkward silence that followed that it remained a subject of displeasure for the family and friends of Mr. Franklin.

  “He said the sheriff seemed real interested in his findings, said he thought the city ought to mark it like Lawrence wanted. He even said that the sheriff told him to keep him posted about it because he wanted personally to make sure the historical society took the request seriously.”

  “Have you seen the sheriff?” I asked, not sure why.

  She nodded. “He was the one who brought the news to me, gave me Lawrence’s jacket.”

  I suddenly realized why the victim was not dressed the same way he had been down at the river once he arrived at the hospital, but I still wondered why the sheriff had taken the garment.

  I didn’t think that was usual, to take things from the scenes of crimes and deliver them to family members. Hearing this news made me even more suspicious about the sheriff. I wondered if he had been searching for something.