We’re all walking corpses, thought David. We all look like we’re out for a night on the town in Hell.
The last of the carnival atmosphere was gone. A vague unease settled over the mob. The people glanced at one another, then looked away, suddenly unable to meet one another’s eyes. They shuffled in place. For one split second, something very like terror rippled through the crowd. David could feel it. He could see it. People began to sidle away. One by one, they left. Men pulling away wives, mothers dragging away children; in some cases, shielding their children’s eyes from the very sight they’d brought them to see.
David stayed. He kept witness until the bitter end.
Jonah’s torso arched and his legs drew up as his muscles contracted in the heat. After about forty eternal minutes, his roasted body was reduced to an unrecognizable smoking mass. The flames sputtered and popped, briefly flared up again, then went down.
David turned away. He was alone. The others were long gone. He stumbled a short distance, then collapsed on a boulder and vomited. The war in Europe, despite its vast horrors, had not prepared him for what he’d just seen: the specter of God-fearing, churchgoing, patriotic Americans burning a fellow man to death.
For talking to me. For telling the truth. His breath came in hitches. I was a fool. All us colored who fought for this country—we were fools.
He felt worse than a fool. He was ashamed to be black. We’re a race of victims. Always at the mercy of some white man’s whim. That’s what we are. Always at the mercy of some white man’s whim.
Then he heard another voice, a voice that would come to haunt him.
You did nothing. Nothing. But stand by and watch.
Self-hatred surged through him and he spilled hot tears. If he were honest, if he faced the truth, he would have to admit that he was less ashamed of what he was, than of what he had done.
You betrayed the Movement. Betrayed it and everything you swore to uphold.
There was nothing I could do!
Nothing? Nothing but stand by and watch?
He couldn’t have saved Jonah. What could he have done against a mob? Saving himself was the least—and the most—he could have done. But an implacable voice, a voice that sounded so much like his father’s, condemned him as guilty of unforgivable cowardice.
David bent his head and gave in to gut-wrenching sobs. He was a strong man. He’d seen a lot during the war and survived it all. But the lynching was something else. That single atrocity did what a year in the trenches had failed to do: savage his hope for humanity, his belief in his country, his faith in his God—and his respect for himself.
Suddenly, the rains came, hard and heavy, drenching him to the skin. Casting his eyes to the sky, he held out his hands, palms upward. He felt the slanting rain splatter against his face and laughed harshly. So, now you send the rain. Too late, my Friend, too late.
He clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and whispered a bitter prayer. You’re guilty too. You know that, don’t You? You and I, we both did nothing. Nothing but stand by and watch.
He dragged himself to his feet and staggered back through the muddy streets to the rooming house.
Early the next morning, he went to see Sheriff Payne and told him what he had seen––and what he’d learned. He’d already filed his report, one that named names, the city superintendent’s name among them.
“Leave town,” was Payne’s polite advice. Saying it was for David’s safety, Payne had him escorted to the station and put on the next train that came through. But five men were waiting at the next stop––Payne among them. They dragged David off the train, down into the dust.
“You one lucky white bastard,” Payne said. “We hates Yankee nigger-lovers down here, almost as much as we hates niggers themselves.”
He delivered a ferocious kick to David’s side. One of the men standing alongside slammed the toe of his boot into David’s lower back. The others moved to join in, but Payne held up his hand. Bending down, he grinned in David’s face with brown, tobacco-stained teeth.
“Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna let them kill you. I wouldn’t do that to one of my own. But you gots to learn how we do business down here. You gots to learn not to stick your nose where it don’t belong.” Straightening up, he nodded at the others. “All right. Get to it, boys. I ain’t got all day. Just don’t kill the sonuvabitch.”
David awoke days later in a hospital in Lovetree. Railroad workers had found him lying by the side of the tracks. The doctors and nurses had assumed he was white and treated him better accordingly. Broken spiritually, mentally, and physically, he did not correct them.
After leaving the hospital, he drifted. One morning, he woke up in a filthy flophouse in a city he did not know. He did not remember where he had come from or when he had arrived. His reflection in the small mirror over the washbasin indicated that it had been weeks since he had shaved. His new beard was hard and matted. His hair was newly touched with gray. He cleaned himself as best he could, then left the flophouse and began walking.
He learned that he was in Philadelphia. He walked for hours. Finally tired, he decided to rest on a park bench. A black woman sat there, neither old nor young, but visibly bent under the weight of sorrow. Her sobs were silent but her shoulders heaved. He half-turned, intending to walk on. But something told him not to. Something in that woebegone figure drew him back. In her hunched figure was the personification of his own desolation.
She looked up. Alarm flickered across her face at the sight of him. His face was clean but unshaven and his clothes were dirty and disheveled. He realized that he appeared disreputable, so he spoke quickly.
“I don’t want to bother you, lady. I just want to ask if I can help.”
She drew back and shook her head, but she seemed reassured. Her thoughts apparently went back to her troubles. Her gaze drifted away and her head bowed again. He took a step toward her.
“Maybe it would help to talk. I’m good at listening.”
She ignored him. He hesitated, then slid onto the bench next to her, not too close, but not too far away either. He waited patiently. Minutes passed.
“My boy,” she said in a sudden whisper. “They’ve got my boy.”
He waited, but she said nothing more. “Who’s got him?”
“My boy,” she whimpered. “He ain’t but fourteen. The police. They gonna put him away.”
“What do they say he’s done?”
“Robbed a store. Killed the owner.”
He took this in. A Negro teenager in a situation like that barely stood a chance. “You got a lawyer?”
“No money for one.” She hugged herself and rocked back and forth. “No money. And no way to get none.”
He was quiet. A squirrel scampered down the trunk of a nearby oak tree and found a tidbit in some last-minute pre-winter scavenging. The little animal grabbed it up and scampered away with a switch of bushy tail.
“I’m a lawyer,” David heard himself say. “I could defend your son.”
She looked at him, surprised, doubtful, and a bit alarmed. “You’s a crazy man, ain’t you?”
“I admit I don’t look like a lawyer.” He smiled apologetically. “But I am one. And if you want me to, I’ll talk to your son. My talking to your boy wouldn’t hurt him, now would it?”
“No ... I suppose it wouldn’t.” She scrutinized him. “And you say you’s a lawyer? You sure?”
“Yes, very sure.” His soft eyes twinkled.
They talked a little more about the details of the case and she seemed to feel better. She gave him her name, her son’s name, and where she could be reached. He scribbled it all down with a pencil stub on a piece of paper he’d found in his pocket. As he stood to go, he clutched that bit of paper like a man adrift who has found a life raft. He was flush with a new sense of purpose. She looked up at him, her face a mix of worry and hope.
“Why,” she asked, “would you want to help my boy?”
He was the one who looked away then. How cou
ld he explain that she was doing him a favor? He gave a little half-smile. “Because …” He shrugged, “because I can.”
“Well, maybe you can.” She was thoughtful. “Being a white man makes a difference in this city. Maybe you can make them listen.”
His smile froze. It had never occurred to him that she might take him for white. He started to correct her, then stopped. She thought he was white and that gave her hope. Why disappoint her? He was an experienced pretender. The Movement had given him the moral mandate to pass as white in order to investigate lynchings; he’d abused that trust when he disavowed Jonah. Now, he might once again put his lies to good use. He suppressed a bitter laugh. Passing was becoming a curse.
“I can’t promise you anything.”
“You promise to do the best you can?”
He nodded.
“That’s enough. That’s all anybody can do.”
He won that case. It became the first of many. They came to him because he was dedicated, inexpensive, and apparently white: an unbeatable combination.
The switching of identities required no effort. He simply let people take him for what he appeared to be. Many times, he wished he hadn’t had the freedom of choice, for it was a temptation and a responsibility. His father had always been adamant about “standing tall as a colored man,” about identifying himself, but what would his father have said under the present circumstances? What purpose would he serve in destroying his credibility and with it, his ability to help the people who needed him?
Most of his clients were small-time offenders. He was their main hope and the main one they lied to. He became used to them evading, denying, obfuscating—telling anything but the truth. By and large, they were gauche, uneducated, unemployed men—either too reckless to realize that they would end up in jail or too desperate to care. Most had never had a chance to be anything other than what they were.
When David had an odd moment to reflect, he would compare their lives to his sheltered upbringing. After what he had done with his life, he was in no position to criticize them. Streetwalkers, alcoholics, and thieves: It was an education to serve them. His previous life took on the blurred appearance of a dream. He changed his name and severed contact with everyone from his past, everyone but Lilian. He felt alive, challenged, and productive. This was his path to redemption—even though it meant living in exile, living a lie.
Now Lilian’s death had summoned him back to Harlem, back to Rachel. He would never find the strength to leave her again. And given what he now knew, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did.
He thought about his furnished room in a Philadelphia boardinghouse. The house sat back from lovely, inviting, well-manicured lawns, but the room itself was desolate and plain. It contained nothing for him to return to: a thin bed, a table, and a dresser; a sink attached to one wall; a closet with two extra suits, some simple ties, and his one luxury—a second pair of shoes. The room was a monk’s cell, a place to sleep. Alone. Night after night, alone.
He was concerned, however, about his clients, about the cases he had dropped. There were depositions to be taken, briefs to be written, court dates to be kept. He could not abandon his clients. He would write letters to them and to the courts, offering some explanation. And he would write his colleagues, asking them to take over his cases.
He turned his thoughts away from Philadelphia. It too now belonged to his past. It was his future in Harlem that worried him, and his marriage. Would it be strong enough to overcome the difficulties it would no doubt face?
27. Toby’s Mom
He found himself on the corner of 137th and Lenox, in front of a slightly battered-looking establishment called the Mayfair Diner. On impulse, he stepped up to the door and went inside. He simply wanted somewhere to sit down. The place was half-empty with the late lunch crowd; there was one waitress, wiping a table at the farther end. She seemed familiar. He recognized her when she turned around. It was the woman whose son he had saved, Toby’s mother. She came toward him. Her tired expression softened at the sight of him and his heart felt oddly lighter.
“Well, if that don’t beat all,” she said. “Take a seat.”
He slid onto a stool at the counter. “How’s your boy doing?”
“Fine. He asks about you.”
“Nah.”
“Sure he does. You his hero.”
David smiled. “Thanks.”
“What for?”
“For making me smile.”
She cocked her head to one side as she poured his coffee. “Had one of them days, huh?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, don’t worry. Whatever it is, it too will pass. That’s what my papa used to say.”
“Did he now?”
“Yes, he did. And he was a wise old coot.”
David chuckled. “Where’re you from?”
“Virginia. My folks was sharecroppers.”
“Big family?”
“There was nine of us kids. We was poor but we had a good time together. I guess you could say, we didn’t know no better.”
“Been here long?”
Her smile faded. “I come up here with my sister a few months ago—but she went back. Sister couldn’t take the city. She wanted to take Toby back with her, but he’s mine and I’m keeping him. His daddy don’t want him. He up and took off. I can’t have him thinking that his mama don’t want him, neither.”
Was this the way Rachel would’ve spoken about him if Isabella had lived? He would’ve wanted Isabella, though. If he’d had the chance, he would’ve protected her, given her everything he had.
“You really are having a bad day,” she said, looking at his face. “How about something to eat?”
He shook his head, glancing at the stitching on the pocket of her shirt. He hoped to see her name but it was simply the name of the diner. “Just a cup of coffee.”
For the next twenty minutes, he watched her move up and down the counter, exchanging lighthearted banter with the other customers: truck drivers, busboys on break, drunks, and drifters. He saw the way she managed to bring a crooked smile to even the saddest face. Finally, she paused in front of him.
“Anything more I can get for you?”
“Just more coffee, please.”
His gaze fell on her hands as she poured. In her rough skin and broken fingernails, he saw a lifetime of sewing and scrubbing, cutting and chopping. He watched her move away and again wondered what her name was. He could imagine her hands kneading dough for fluffy biscuits, patting a baby’s bottom, massaging her man’s back. She would give comfort and strength. She looked like a woman a man could trust, someone he could bare his heart to.
He blinked, suddenly aware and faintly disturbed at the course of his thoughts. He stood, signaled her. She caught his gesture out of the corner of her eye and moved down the counter toward him. He took out his wallet and gave her ten bits. She quickly returned with his change. He waved it aside.
“Keep it.”
She touched the money and looked up at him. “This is way too much.”
“It’s way too little for the price of a smile.”
She studied him with light amusement, as though she didn’t know what to make of him. He liked what he saw in her eyes and he liked the way it made him feel—like a man standing in sunshine after spending years in the rain.
“Good luck,” she said. “I got a feeling you need it. Maybe even more than I do.”
She tucked the money into her apron pocket. He watched her move away, then turned to go.
“Hey,” he heard her call to him. He turned around. “I get a break in five minutes,” she said. “You wanna take a walk?”
He paused. “Yeah, okay.”
She looked suddenly shy, perhaps realizing how “forward” she’d been. “Okay.”
He slid into a booth to wait and looked out the window. Some members of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association were parading down the street. The men were dressed in m
ilitary-like uniforms with generous applications of gold braid. Many of the women wore long pale dresses with wide cloths tied about their heads like missionary sisters. These people were trying to keep up the spirit of Garvey’s Back-to-Africa Movement, but the UNIA was in tatters, and their leader, the Black Moses—a short, charismatic Jamaican who had galvanized thousands of Harlem’s poor with talk of returning to their ancestral homeland—was himself locked in the Atlanta federal penitentiary, serving a five-year sentence for mail fraud.
“I’m ready,” David heard a soft voice say and turned around. She was bundled up in her coat and had stuck her little cloche hat on her head. She looked adorable.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
As always, the Avenue was crowded. It was even more so that day because of the parade. Though small, the parade was enough to attract attention. They joined the onlookers for a minute, admiring the UNIA’s smart color guard, then turned away and headed downtown. On the left, they passed the Renaissance Casino & Ballroom.
“You ever go to a dance there?” she asked.
“A long time ago.”
“It’s real nice, ain’t it? I heard they got receptions and basketball games and everything.”
Directly across from them, on the corner of 135th, was Small’s Paradise, the place where Nella’s playwright friend had danced on the tables. Not a block away was Saint Philip’s. The last time David had been there, it had been for his father’s funeral. They reached the corner of 135th and paused for a stoplight.
“NAACP secretary James Weldon Johnson used to live around here,” he said. “I met him once.”
“What’s he like?”
“Got a good sense of humor.” The light changed and they started across the street. “Fats Waller and Florence Mills live only a couple of blocks down the way.”
They walked in comfortable silence, pausing at the corner of 133rd. To the left and right stretched “Jungle Alley,” the main drag of expensive Harlem cabarets. David’s memories came to life. The Nest Club, Kaiser’s, Barron’s: Once he’d been a regular at them all. Farther down Seventh was the Lafayette Theater. There was no better place to see tap-dancing greats Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Honi Coles, Bunny Briggs, Chuck Green, and Baby Laurence.
Harlem Redux Page 26
