by George Wier
“Thank you, Ms. Coleeta,” I said.
“You,” she told me. “You and me are going to have some words, right after I find out what’s going on.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. What else could I say?
“That child needs a bath,” she said, turning toward the dining room.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.
Ms. Coleeta was Lawrence’s mother. I had been on a nodding acquaintance with her for a good number of years, but this was my first opportunity to get to know her without Lawrence being there.
When Lawrence left the Army back in ’88, he’d been home only a week before he fired up the grill. His uncle, Benjamin Finley, came up from Houston and spent two weeks with Lawrence and his mother, showing Lawrence the ins and outs of the barbecue business. Ben ran one of Houston’s most successful barbecue stands off of Jensen Drive. I got to know the fellow when I was in college down there. That was the history of White’s Barbecue according to Lawrence.
Ms. Coleeta had a different version of the same story. According to her, about the second night Lawrence was home, he practically cleaned out her refrigerator. Somewhere along the line, Lawrence had learned how to eat. He ate and ate and ate. Whether it was in his genes-his grandfather, after all, was a big man-or just his inclination, the man put groceries away faster than they could be purchased.
That second night Ms. Coleeta got up to fix herself a late night snack and found there was nothing in the refrigerator. Even the six month-old pickled relish was gone.
She didn’t bother closing the door. She went to the telephone, picked it up and called her dead husband’s brother in Houston, and the next morning the man drove up Highway 290 to Austin. By sundown that night there was more food in the house than Lawrence could possibly eat. Ben even sprung for a new deep freeze. Within forty-eight hours Lawrence was cooking and dishing out platters of food for the neighbors, and he was making money while he was doing it. Word spread rapidly through the community and Lawrence and his mother were in business.
And that was White’s Barbecue, a history of.
Personally, I liked Ms. Coleeta’s version better.
About six months after Lawrence got his barbecue stand going-regardless of which version a fellow chose to believe-a certain Austin do-gooder and financial consultant got a late night call. Somebody was pulling in too much cash. In fact, according to Uncle Benjamin, Lawrence didn’t have a bank account. What he did have was about ninety thousand dollars in greenbacks.
So I went to work.
That was all of fifteen years before. In that time I had put on about fifteen extra pounds. Lawrence, however, had added an extra Lawrence-size-wise.
Fifteen years.
I sat at Coleeta’s dining room table. Next to me was Hank with a beer in his hand. Across from me was Ms. Coleeta. Julie was in the bathroom giving Keesha a good scrubbing. We heard the occasional loud splash and explosion of giggles from both of them.
Those two were rapidly becoming inseparable.
Having been raised in the neck of woods I hail from, namely the Brazos River Valley area of east Central Texas, I had met a good number of large-boned black women in my time. My father had been an insurance agent for many of my formative years and he used to take me along while collecting on his debit route. From about the age of eight to eleven I must have highly favored a young Jerry Mathers (either that or all of us little white boys look the same) and along my dad’s route in many a black home such as Coleeta White’s I became known as “Beaver”, or just plain “Beave”.
Coleeta White and her warm home called to mind those days.
“Now,” she began. “Let’s see how much of this we can sort out before my son gets back from Waco.”
“Well, ma’am…” Hank started in.
“Hold on, Slim. I want to hear from Mr. William here first.”
It took awhile, but I told her everything that had happened thus far. She took the news about the murder attempt on Julie pretty easily but when I told her about the explosion I noticed a shocked look had come over her face. Her mouth was open and her eyebrows were drawn down into a heavy v-shape of sheer anger. At that moment I swore I would never, ever do anything to make the woman mad at me.
“What’re you gonna do, Mr. William?” she asked.
At that moment Julie and Keesha came into the room. Each of them had on a new dress and were smiling from ear to ear.
I looked down at Keesha. Her eyes sparkled and she was moving from side to side in excitement.
“Ms. Julie says you bought this dress for me, Bill.”
“That’s right, darlin’,” I said. “And don’t you look pretty?”
“She does,” Ms. Coleeta agreed. “Come over here, child” she said.
Ms. Coleeta pushed her chair back. “Come on and hop up here with me,” she said.
“Yes’m” Keesha said.
With the kid in her lap, she turned back to me.
“Well?” she asked.
“She’s why we came here,” I said, nodding toward Keesha. I looked up at Julie.
“Hoo-boy,” Ms. Coleeta said. “I see now.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “I’m sure that right now you can see better than any of us.”
She looked back down at the child who was curled on her lap.
“Ma’am,” Hank said. “I’m only glad you didn’t see the conditions this child was living in. It would have broken your heart.”
“I heard it, though,” she said. A tear slipped down her cheek before she could catch it. “I heard it in what William wasn’t saying.”
I felt Julie behind me. She put her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear.
“You’re amazing,” she said. I patted her arm.
“We’ll talk about all this tomorrow,” Ms. Coleeta said. “It’s getting plenty late and it’s been a long day-for everybody. You folks can bed down now. Miss Julie, Keesha, you both can sleep with me. You two men can sleep out here in the livin’ room. I might wake you when Lawrence comes in, which I expect will be sometime between two and four.”
With that said, the meeting broke up.
Lying awake in the darkness, the loud tick of an old-fashioned cuckoo clock to track the passing half-seconds, I waited for the sound of tires crunching on gravel. It didn’t come.
There in the pier-and-beam solid wood-floored home, lavish with green and red Aubusson throw rugs and aging pictures of a sad Jesus, I became comfortable for what felt like the first time in ages.
I successfully fought off sleep for an hour, maybe longer.
Big trucks whistled along in the night down I-35, half a mile away to the west, and there was the occasional whoop of an ambulance siren: approaching, dwindling, gone.
Finally, sleep came, embracing me and carrying me off.
There are some that give credence to dreams. I always subscribe more to the philosophy that they are the drippings of experiential soup; nothing less, nothing more. But my dream there on Coleeta White’s couch was potent, and inside it, I became caught up in a plot not of my own devising.
This was Africa. I don’t know how I knew this, it just was. A thousand miles away from any coastline, Julie and I were in a valley. It was property that we owned and we were together there. On the land there were solid square miles of old junk cars and trucks laying about in no particular pattern, rusting away, turning into habitats for exotic wildlife that was too quick for the eye.
Our Land Rover had run out of gas here near the center of our labyrinth. I opened the squeaking door of the truck and climbed out. Julie came out her side.
“I’ll get it,” she said, and reached into the back for a jerrycan of gas, about five gallons worth. She hefted it with a small grunt and it knocked about against the sidewalls before coming free.
I turned and put my hat on my head and walked a few paces back down the road, surveying our disorderly valley.
Something was wrong here.
On a feeling, I turned and Julie wa
s standing to the side of the road. The jerrycan was raised up over her head. She tilted it toward her and liquid spilled out, covering her from head to foot and running off in little pools.
She smiled at me.
I was rooted to the spot, trying to move toward her. I had to stop her. Why was she doing this? Julie pulled out a pack of matches from her butternut-colored safari shirt. The can hit the dirt beside her, rolled over into the ditch. She held the book of matches out before her, between us. I tried to read a “why” in her eyes, but there were motivations there unknown and unknowable.
I shouted at her but I couldn’t make a sound. A low, dry whistle emerged from my throat.
The matchbook opened. She struck a match. Above us the sky was the deep purplish blue of approaching twilight. We lived in this world that was like no other. And Julie wanted to leave it.
I tried to scream at her. The scream was a bubble of agony, terror, unreality and negation swelling in my chest, struggling to break through like a drowning man struggling for the surface.
The smile widened on her face. She batted her eyes at me. The match came to life. It was like a stage magician’s trick. She held the lit match above her cupped palm as if to say “Look, see? I have made fire!”
She let go of the flickering match. I could no longer see the flame from it, but I knew it was there. The match fell slowly, gracefully, a drifting feather-match, as delicate as a mayfly’s wings and as potent as poison.
The bubble broke. The scream came, at first as an almost silent wail, then in growing intensity like a teakettle coming to boil, it whistled out:
“NnoooOOOOO!”
Flames engulfed her, her hair, her eyes, her clothes and skin. And I was screaming but my scream was just the tiniest whistle.
“Bill! Bill!” It was Hank and I was awake, the shallow wail from my throat cut off.
“Get a hold of yourself,” he said.
I stared into the darkness in the direction of his voice. The house was quiet.
I noticed lights through the blousy window curtains. Truck headlights. They were there just a moment before they winked out.
“Somebody’s here,” Hank said. “I hope to God it’s this big friend of yours.”
“That it’s Lawrence,” I said. “Back from his chicken run to Waco. Yeah. I hope so too.”
It was.
The inside back porch light came on and I heard a heavy tread on the hardwood floor.
I listened.
After a few moments I heard low murmurs from down the long hallway off the living room. It sounded like it was the back bedroom. It was Lawrence and his mother whispering to each other.
I didn’t feel so good, and it wasn’t just the leftover stirrings from the nightmare I had just experienced. It was a feeling of vacuum down in my gut. Like maybe I was taking unfair advantage of folks of good will and had become a nuisance.
The whispers and mumbles lasted a few minutes, Mrs. Coleeta explaining, no doubt, and Lawrence clarifying. No other voices.
The conversation ceased. The hardwood floors vibrated, and I knew Lawrence was again moving through the house.Hank and I waited, but Lawrence was either intent on getting some much-needed sleep for himself or on allowing-for the moment-sleeping dogs to lie. Or both at the same time.
We heard the creak of old bed springs behind a closed door.
“Let’s catch a few hours more,” Hank whispered in my direction.
Before long I was back on the edge of sleep. And thankfully, this time, there were no dreams.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Breakfast was a family affair. Keesha sat up at the table, smiling, a milk moustache prominent beneath her little nose. She wore a small light-blue PowerPuff Girls blouse-one of the purchases from Target, no doubt. She looked happy in it. No more lonely nights and grimy tenements for her. It made my heart glad.
Julie sat across from me and to Keesha’s left, making fast work with her knife and fork.
Lawrence put in an appearance, plopping himself down in a chair and looking as though he could do with a little additional sleep.
Breakfast done, Julie helped Ms. Coleeta with clearing the table and getting the kitchen squared away. It was refreshing to see Keesha both eager to help and encouraged to at the same time. The vacant look that had been there on her face had begun to fade. There is no greater thrill in life than to find that you are not only useful, but that you can help, and that your help matters. I was sure it was that, coupled with her natural childhood resilience, that made all the difference.
Hank remained at the table nursing yet another cup of coffee while Lawrence took me out back to the pit.
As the morning wore on, I helped him clean out the previous day’s dead coals and scrape the grill.
I had a beer in my left hand, and that made it feel like a Sunday.
“Hey, Bill?” I knew from the tone of his voice that what he had to talk about with me wouldn’t be exactly sweetness and light. I was right. “How’d you get roped into this?” he asked after handing me a scratcher pad.
“It’s a long story,” I told him.
“When did it start?”
“As far as I can tell about 1926.”
“You’re playin’ me, man,” he said.
“Well, maybe a little. But still, I think that’s where the money started. I’ve still got some checking into all that to do. But I came in on this whole thing Monday morning. By the way, what’s today?”
“Thursday.”
“Damn,” I said.
“Yeah. Time flies, and all that nonsense.”
“Yeah.”
“You got pulled in pretty fast, didn’t you?”
Fast. That was the word I’d been searching for while dodging Austin Police patrol cars in the night.
“Yeah,” I said. “But compared to what?”
“Don’t get me wrong, Bill,” he said. “She seems like a fine lady, even though she’s some kind of thief, but-you gonna do this thing? You going to help her?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know what else to do,” I said.
“Bill,” he said, pausing. I looked up at him. “You in love with this girl or something? Don’t get me wrong. I’m smitten with her myself.”
I looked down at the grill I was scrubbing and at my hands. The grill was cleaner than it had been probably since it was new and I had flecks of black carbon up to my elbows. It was a hell of a question, and I suppose it took me a little off guard. I wasn’t sure how to answer.
“You really want an answer for that, Lawrence?”
“Not if you don’t want to give me one.”
He looked at me, his large brown eyes both expectant and patient.
“I like her, Lawrence. She reminds me I’m still alive.”
He laughed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’ve seen men do worse.”
We put our attention back on the job at hand for another ten minutes. When I looked back up, Lawrence was just standing there, his hands on his hips. He was a big man, but he carried it well. I’d known a few large guys before that were like Lawrence; much bigger than they themselves perceived. I had a theory that because they were not so consciously aware of their own size they could be dexterous and quick. There’s nothing quite as liberating as not knowing one’s own limitations.
“The kid can stay with us,” he said.
“That one came out of left field,” I told him.
“That’s where I pitch from. Don’t take this the wrong way, but she needs her own kind of folks. What she don’t need is more danger.”
I agreed with him. I hoped that Julie would as well. Maybe it wouldn’t be a sticking point. A wedge between us.
I finished up on his grill. When I looked around, he was unloading whole chickens from a large Igloo cooler, setting them up next to his cutting board, getting them ready to quarter.
“Bill. I’d join you. I’d help out.”
“But?” I waited.
“Action? That’s the last thing I want. Really, I’d prefer a vacation.
“Yeah, right!” He laughed. “Since when do people like us get to take vacations?”
I supposed he was right.
He turned towards me, one large brown hand with long fingers like plump sausages wrapped around a whole chicken. I imagined those hands could be of real use to us in the near future, but it looked as though it wasn’t meant to be.
“Yeah. I understand,” I told him.
“But I do have one piece of advice for you,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“Good. I don’t like to give out advice. Most of the time people don’t like to take it. It was a white fellow, I think, who said that people just hear what they want to hear, and disregard the rest.”
“Right. That was Paul Simon.”
“All right then. Don’t you think you better talk with that woman of yours in there about all this stuff? About the kid? About what she really wants you to do? You’d better take control of this operation right now. But first, I’d find out where her heart is. What side she’s on, if she’s on anybody’s but her own. If she’s willing to put you in danger then something’s not right.
I just looked at him.
“Well,” he said. “That’s it.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t realize that I had been holding my breath and so I let it out. “Maybe I’ll do just that,” I said.
By the time I got back inside the house the look on Hank’s face probably meant that he was aware that I had something on my mind, but that he wasn’t hell-bent on questioning me about it.
In the kitchen I caught Julie wiping wet dish hands on her pretty backside. She turned to look at me.
“We need to talk,” I said.
We sat on a couple of rusted-out and upended barbecue barrels in the back yard. There were bees around us, gathering nectar from the wild flowers that grew there in profusion.
