“Do you get hassled about it?” Duane asked.
“Sometimes you hear it up front,” Diane said. “More often you just hear the whispers. We always see the looks, get the vibes. Neither of our families ever accepted our marriage. We don’t even spend the holidays together anymore. It’s just too hard.” Diane’s eyes looked heavy.
“Our kids aren’t fully accepted as blacks or whites,” Sal said. “I mean, we’re glad we got married. Wouldn’t have it any other way. But it hasn’t been easy.”
“We found that out eight years ago,” Duane said, “when we adopted two black children.”
“You’ve got black kids?” Sal asked.
“Yeah. They’re the best. But you get the looks. Some white neighbors thought it was terrible. A black social agency stepped in and tried to take them from us and put them back in foster care because they thought no parents were better than white parents. Then there was my father. He wouldn’t even hug them for the first few years. Finally I said, ‘Dad, I love you, but if you can’t accept my children, I can’t be around you anymore.’ In time he fell in love with them. Now you can’t find a prouder grandpa.”
“Maggie,” John said, “you’ve been kind of quiet. What do you think about all this?”
“I grew up in Atlanta in the fifties and sixties.” Maggie spoke with a deep southern drawl. “Talk about a racially charged atmosphere. My parents didn’t blame blacks as much as white Yankees.”
“Liberal civil rights agitators from the north, right?” Clarence asked. She nodded.
“Yeah, I’ve been in Georgia,” Sal said. “I visited the capitol building in ’85, and they were still flyin’ the Confederate flag. I couldn’t believe it. Remember, baby?” He looked at Diane. “Somebody should tell them they lost the Civil War. It was in all the papers.”
Diane moved her hand to Sal’s arm as if she were a pilot ready to press her copilot’s eject button if a crash seemed imminent. Right now, it did.
“On the Fourth of July,” Maggie said, “Mama used to hang out a Confederate flag. I’ve never thought it was wrong to be proud of my heritage. Do you?”
“Well, it depends on your heritage.” Sal looked at her incredulously. “If you’d won that war, I’d still be pickin’ cotton for you. When you fly that flag, it says to me you wish I was still your slave.”
Maggie teared up. “I don’t think that. Not for a minute.”
“The white Southerners I’ve known,” Sal said, “watch Gone with the Wind and long for the good old days when white folk owned everything and black folk were subservient nincompoops.”
“That’s enough, honey,” Diane said.
“Sal,” John said, “Stop beating around the bush—we all want to know what you really think.” Everybody laughed, including Sal. “Okay, let’s call a truce,” John said. “It’s a good discussion and I’m sure we’ll get back to it. But let me throw out another question: Are race relations getting better?”
“In the sixties I was one of those northern agitators,” Bill said. “A liberal ACLU civil rights boy, the kind Maggie’s dad blamed for the problems. Back then I had dozens of black friends, good friends, at least I thought so. With all the laws changing, all the civil rights victories, I really believed in another twenty years we’d have a racial Utopia. But from my perspective, things are worse. Maybe opportunities for minorities are greater, but instead of a racial melting pot, this country is more like a pressure cooker, ready to blow up. The irony is, and it really hurts to say this, I had many more black friends in the sixties and seventies than I have today.”
“Several years ago,” Clarence said, “for an hour or two I thought racial relations had really turned around. I was in Detroit, doing some interviews, going to some ball games, writing some columns. The last day I was wiped out. I just laid back in my room and did some reading. Didn’t watch television or anything. I get up the next morning, catch a cab, and the cabdriver was a white guy, real friendly, extra nice. I thought, this is different. Then I get to the airport and there’s no place to sit in the terminal, and a white guy sees me looking and gets up and offers me his seat. I go, wow, things really are getting better. Then I get on the airplane and the flight attendant offers me a pillow and a blanket. She’s a white gal, but she’s oh so sweet. The guy sitting next to me, he’s really nice too. I think, hey, what Dr. King dreamed about, it’s really happening.
“Then the plane takes off and I see the guy in front of me reading the newspaper. The headline says ‘LA Blacks Erupt into Violence.’ See, it was the morning after the police who beat up Rodney King got acquitted and the riots broke out. Then I realized what was up. All these white folk figured they’d better be nice or I might pull a tire iron out of my briefcase and beat the livin’ crud out of ’em!”
Everyone laughed.
“Well, next week,” John said, “we’ll start our Bible study. But I think it was good getting to know each other. And raising some issues too.”
Clarence and Geneva stayed another hour, chatting with new friends. They walked hand in hand to the car. “That was fun, wasn’t it?” Geneva asked.
“Yeah, it wasn’t that bad,” Clarence said. “Aren’t you glad I talked you into coming?”
“You had some awfully hard times on earth, Grandma,” Dani said.
“Terrible times. The worst was when the marsers and overseers would come at night, force themselves on me. And other times when I’d jus’ think one of the mens was comin’, even if they didn’t. I’d lay there and weeps. Of the eleven chillens I bore, three was fathered by marsers, the first when I was thirteen years old. But I tell you I loved those chillens as much as the others. And don’t you ever tell me it’s a chile’s fault what his father done and that the chile don’t deserve to live or that he’s any less precious to God. You know, if we hadn’t had those chillens and loved ’em, lots of our precious grandchildren and great-grandchildren, some of them powerful servants of Elyon, they wouldn’t never have been.”
Ruth sounded stern for the first time. Dani remembered herself arguing on earth that it was all right to abort children conceived by rape. She wondered if Ruth had been listening. Of course she had.
Ruth looked through the portal of current events on earth with an expression of distaste. “I swear, there’s mo’ folkses bein’ fools down there now than ever. I tells the Master he should just close up shop and get on with the kingdom. Things ain’t gettin’ better down there, that’s fo’ shore. But Master, you know, he gots a mind of his own, and I gotsta admit he always be right. Stands to reason, he bein’ the Almighty and all.”
Dani and Ruth observed through the portal pictures of injustice, including those who gained their wealth from the suffering and unrelenting toil of the poor and needy. She saw people beautifully dressed, warm, and celebrating, other people shabbily dressed, cold, and shivering.
“Does it make you bitter?” Dani asked her.
“Bitter? No. The story don’t never end in that world. Ends on the other side.” She looked at Dani. “The brightest days in that world always had their sunset. The darkest nights in that world always had their sunrise. Those who live in hell’s eternal night can’t hardly remember the bright days on earth—only enough to torment them, so I’s told. Those who lives in heaven’s eternal sunrise can remembers the dark nights enough to fill their hearts with gratitude for the sunlight of this world. We live in the sunrise, chile. Ain’t it wondrous?”
“Tell me more about your family—my family,” Dani begged.
“Well, I jumped the broom with yo’ grandpappy just before the war was over, when I was fifteen years old. He was a kind man and a powerful good father. It was hard bein’ a man those days, the only rest bein’ sneakin’ a good leanin’ on a hoe when the overseer was liftin’ a whiskey jug or somepin’. Wasn’t easy bein’ a woman neither, but I was always glad that’s what the good Lawd made me. Besides havin’ three of marse’s, eventually we had eight more chillens, Elijah and yo’ daddy the last of them. Mira
cle babies I called them, ’cause God gave them to me ten years after I should have been barren. Now, when my first babies was young, they brung the marser’s and mistress’s chillens to suck with me. I loved ’em like my own, their color never mattered one way or t’other. But I always thought it strange marser never admitted three of my babies was his, even though they had his eyes and nose. Never could understand how I wasn’t good enough to step foot in the big house but I was good enough to bear his chillens and nurse and mother the chillens of he and his proper wife. Seems like raisin’ chillens be a lot mo’ important than where you puts down yo’ foots.”
Dani sensed someone coming up behind them. Together she and Ruth turned, both delighted to see the favorite face of heaven.
“How are my sisters? I’m glad you’ve finally met.” The three of them hugged.
“Want to tell you about my mission, Master. But before I does, I was just about to tell Dani one mo’ story, and you knows which one.”
“Yes. Tell her. I know she’ll want to hear it. So do I.”
“Well, I was just sixteen years old and Marse Henry, he say to us, ‘You niggers been seein’ the Federate soldiers comin’ by here lookin’ purty raggedy and wored out, but that no sign they licked. Them Yankees ain’t gonna get this far,’ he say to us, ‘but iffen they does, you ain’t gonna get free by ’em ’cause I’ll line you up on the bank of the creek and free you with my shotgun, you hear me?’
“Well,” Ruth said, “we never thought we’d get freedom till we comed home here. But one day a few weeks later, Granddaughter, we was all out in them cotton fields and then a kitchen negro come out on a hoss from Mistress, and he tell the overseer he should come right up to the big house. Well, he did and we wondered what was brewin’. Then the old bell rung, and we didn’t know what to do ’cause we never broke from work this time o’ day, and we was afraid we’d be whipped if we comes in. Well, finally one of the main negroes, ol’ Samuel, he says, ‘We best go on up.’ So we did, but we let Samuel go first!
“Well, sittin’ up there on the porch was a man we never seen, wearin’ a big broad black hat like the Yankees wore. Now, I’m a thinkin’, that’s it, we all been sold off in a bunch. But this man has a funny smile on his face. And he say to us, ‘Do you darkies know what day this is?’ We didn’t know, ’cept it was Wednesday, which couldn’t explain the bell ringin’. Then he says to us,” Ruth’s voice got low, ‘“Well, this the fourth day of June, 1865, and you always gonna remember this day ’cause today you is free. Free just like I is, just like all the white folk is. The war’s over and you’s free. You don’t need no passes to travel no more. You yo’ own bosses. You free as birds.’
“We stood there in shock, hopin’ this wasn’t no cruel joke and wonderin’ if those who danced a jig and sung a song was gonna get shot or whipped. But somehow we knew it was true, and all of a sudden there was whoopin’ and hollerin’ and dancin’ like you never seen.”
Dani watched through the portal and there it was, happening just as Ruth described it.
“I’s heard a lot greater whoopin’ and hollerin’ here, hasn’t I, Master, and seen a lot better dancin’ here, but not back there, not never.”
Ruth looked first at Dani, then at the Carpenter, and said, “Slavery was a terrible burden Elyon took off his black chillens, and I praise you for it. The years ahead wasn’t easy ones, but we was free. We kept talkin’ ’bout how Jesus of Nazareth come to set the captives free. And we laughed and shouted and cried and hugged each other. Because we was free. And I thank God always I saw that day, June 4, 1865. The only day better was October 8, 1924.”
“What happened that day, Grandma?”
“That’s the day the prison door swung open.” She gestured at the portal, where Dani saw Ruth old and shriveled, lying on her sickbed. “That’s the day I walked out of the world of pain and sufferin’, the world of bondage. That was the day I walked into the arms of my sweet Jesus. And then I knew, then I knew shore enough for the first time what it really meant to be free.”
The glow in her eyes penetrated Dani’s heart. The Master put his arms around them both, and from nowhere Zeke and Nancy appeared, worming their way into the group hug, punctuated by sobs of joy.
“Welcome, Mr. Abernathy. Jay Fielding. Good to see you again.” The principal extended his hand, which Clarence shook warmly.
“Thanks, Mr. Fielding. And thanks for setting things up for me.”
“Glad to. How’s Ty doing?”
“Not that great. We’ve got a curfew on him, try to watch the crowd he hangs with, but it’s awfully hard.”
“Yeah. Nothin’s easy anymore. His grades have been slipping.”
“Got him straightened out there. They won’t be slipping from now on.”
Fielding looked at him with uncertainty “Well the students are going to meet with you right here in my office. I’ve got plenty else to do in other parts of the building. Sorry only three signed up, but they don’t like to call attention to themselves. You know what it’s like being a minority—exposure can make it worse for you. They should be here any time. Oh, here’s Rachel and James. James Broadworth and Rachel Young, this is Mr. Clarence Abernathy from the Tribune.”
Nods and nervous handshakes followed. Rachel and James were obviously a couple.
“The other student is Gracie Miller. Here she is now. Gracie, this is Mr. Clarence Abernathy.” This handshake was warmer, more confident. Gracie was an attractive blonde, dressed as Clarence had always thought he would never let his daughter dress. After a few pleasantries, Mr. Fielding left.
“Just to let you know,” Clarence told the students, “I was one of ten blacks in a white grade school back in Mississippi. So our skin color’s different, but I can understand what it means to be the minority at school. Okay, so, what’s it like for you here?”
“Teachers and students around here are always blaming white racism for everything,” Rachel jumped right in. “But then they treat me the same way they say whites always treated them. I’m tired of high school. Just want to finish up. James and I are getting married after we graduate, and we want to get as far away from the city as we can.”
“I feel a little different,” James said. “I mean, I understand what Rachel’s saying. Sometimes it’s a hassle. But I guess it’s a good education. I think I’ll always be more understanding of minorities because I’ve been one.”
Gracie, blonde with three earrings on each side and wearing a crop top that revealed a garish ring in her navel, appeared to be a classic sixties rebel with a nineties cynicism. Attitude seeped out of every pore.
“Mainly, it’s the black girls I have problems with,” Gracie said. “They’re always pickin’ fights with me because they say I flirt with their men, like they own them or something. Most of the guys here are black, so what am I supposed to do? That’s their problem. I like being with black guys.”
The discussion led to interracial dating, whites in sports at a black high school, educational quality, segregated tables in the cafeteria, “the white corner” of the locker rooms, and a host of other subjects, all the color-reversed image of what Clarence had always known. At 2:20 the bell rang.
“School’s out already? Thanks for your time. The column should be out next Wednesday or Friday. Appreciate your honesty.” James and Rachel walked out, grateful to have missed their last two class periods.
Gracie lingered. “Clarence, can I say something to you?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess so.”
“I heard your sister was murdered. I’m sorry.” She seemed surprisingly thoughtful, defying his first impressions of her being self-absorbed.
“Thanks.”
“I heard they haven’t found the dudes who did it, huh?”
“No. Still looking.”
“Some of the guys talk to me. Bangers, I mean. If you want I could ask around, see if anybody knows anything.”
“Uh, well, the police department is conducting the investigation, of course.”
br /> “Sure. But they haven’t found anyone, and it’s been, what, five weeks?”
“Six.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to, I won’t ask. Just offering.”
“No. Actually, what could it hurt if you asked?”
“Should I call you if I find out anything?”
“Yeah, please do. Here’s my card.” He pulled it from his wallet. “That’s my number at the Trib.”
“Okay. I work at Lloyd Center every afternoon till six. So I’d have to call you in the evening. Are you at this number then?”
“No. Here’s my home phone.” Clarence scratched it out on the front of his business card. “If you find out anything, please call.”
“I will. Really nice to meet you, Clarence.” She put out her hand, and he shook it, but her hand lingered on his. He pulled it back in surprise. He could see why the girls thought her a flirt. But he would take whatever help he could get.
She still stood close to him. He started to back away as the door suddenly opened. “Oh, excuse me, I thought you were done,” Mr. Fielding said.
“We are,” Clarence said, sounding defensive. “I was just leaving.”
“Clarence and I were just talking about some personal things,” Gracie said.
Why does she have to call me Clarence? And “personal things”?
Mr. Fielding forced a smile and reclaimed his office. Clarence followed Gracie out the door a full four feet behind her, determining that whichever direction she was going, he would go the opposite.
After stopping at the usual drop-off points and distributing product to a half-dozen dealers, GC cruised by Ty’s house in his Coup de Ville. As planned, on seeing his car, Ty ran down to the end of the street and met him around the corner. He jumped in the car.
GC had held his post much longer than the previous high rollers. Prison and death had a way of cutting short the reigns of most local drug kings. Pearly, Ba-ba, and Brain had all bit the dust in a few months. Capone was a legend for lasting over a year, and Li’l Capone who followed him went down in a month. GC picked up the mantle then, and he’d had it now for almost two years, making him the street equivalent of an eight-term senator.