“Mr. Gray went home sick. He’s been coughing and sneezing all day. I believe I can get Mr. Norcoast for you.”
Norcoast came on the line. “Clarence, I’m really sorry about all the trouble you’ve been having.”
“Yeah. Well, none of it’s true and I’m going to be cleared, but sometimes it takes awhile. Listen, you’ve been saying you wanted to play tennis again. I’ve got a court at four-fifteen today.”
“Hey, tennis sounds great. Normally I couldn’t—I’ve got a standing appointment with Carson Thursdays at four-thirty. But he went home sick. Poor guy was coughing and sneezing and hacking and I said, ‘Go home before you get us all sick.’ Four-fifteen out at Cascade Athletic Club on Division?”
“Yeah. Court three.”
“Super. I’ll see you there.”
Clarence had expected Norcoast to say no. Politicians don’t like to be seen with people in trouble. He flipped open the Ebenezer Church directory and looked up Harold Haddaway.
“Harold? Clarence Abernathy. You working at Councilman Norcoast’s office tonight? Can you do me a favor? It’s a little unusual. Could you let me into the office for just a few minutes tonight? There’s a good reason, believe me. You can stay right next to me the whole time, okay? Really? What time do you come in? Everybody gone by then? Great. Be there by seven-fifteen. And do me a favor, okay? Don’t mention this to anyone. And don’t dump the garbage until I get there.”
Reggie Norcoast served right on target, pounding Clarence’s backhand. No time for a backswing. Clarence could only block the ball and rely on the pace generated by Norcoast to get it back. The councilman’s service routine was exactly as Clarence remembered. He rubbed his left sweatshirt cuff across his mouth. Then he bounced the ball twice, went into his high toss, and brought down a powerful serve, mixing in a few heavy spin serves to vary the pace.
Clarence lost the first set 4-6 and won the second 7-5. That was the first set he’d won off Norcoast, but it took everything he had. They didn’t have time or energy for a third set, so they went to a twelve point tie-breaker, which Clarence lost 5-7.
They shook hands and walked to the locker room to shower. They tore plastic bags off the roll dispensers and put their tennis clothes and sweatbands in them. They sat in the hot tub, showered, returned to their lockers, got dressed, and started to walk out, each with his own duffel bag. Norcoast paused, double-checking inside the locker and his bag.
“Did you see my sweatshirt?” Norcoast asked Clarence.
“No. Are you sure you put it in the locker?”
“I thought so. But if I left it out, somebody might have thought it was his. Lots of gray sweatshirts. No big deal. Hope they get good use out of it. Have time for dinner, Clarence?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got a few things I’ve got to do back in town tonight.”
“Yeah. I promised I’d be home all evening with Esther. Thanks for the match. It was fun.”
Clarence rushed home, energized but tired and hungry. Geneva reheated the roast and potatoes in the microwave. He’d opened some of his mail at work but had put the rest in his briefcase so it wouldn’t distract him from his column. He started opening it now. A few of the dozen personal letters were complimentary and supportive. Some were neutral. But three letters stuck with him as if they were the only ones:
“Can’t stay away from white girls, huh? Better watch your back, nigger.”
“You can take the boy out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the boy”
“We have always enjoyed your column, but your recent behavior has left us in shock. We’ve thought of you as a true Christian standing up for conservative values in the midst of a biased liberal media. But now you’ve betrayed us all by doing these horrible things. Your column and Jake Woods’s were two of the very few reasons we even subscribe to the Trib. Now we’d just as soon never see your name in print again. Shame on you.”
Clarence pushed back his plate, dinner uneaten.
The same people who whine about how biased the Trib is turn around and believe everything the Trib says.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Geneva asked “Didn’t like the roast?”
“No, it’s fine. I’m just not hungry. And I’ve got something I have to do.”
Clarence walked out the fourteenth floor elevator to the detective department carrying a brown grocery bag that looked out of place with his tailored suit. After he waited five minutes, Ollie came barreling out and shook his hand.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Clarence. Our wives may get jealous. What’s up?” Ollie held open the door and beckoned him into the office area.
“No time to come in. Got to get back to the Trib and polish off a column. Just thought I’d drop these off for you.” He opened the bag so Ollie could peer in.
“A gray sweatshirt in a plastic bag? Smells ripe.”
“I think you’ll find that the left sleeve, especially the cuff, has a healthy sampling of saliva from the mouth of one Reggie Norcoast.”
“No kidding?” Ollie pointed in the bag. “And what’s in these little baggies?”
“Four still-moist tissues from the wastebasket of one very sick, coughing, and hacking Carson Gray.”
“Nasal discharge? Gag me. Well, we’ll see. It might do the trick.”
“As a backup, I scraped off two globs of chewing gum from under Gray’s desk.” He held up a baggy. “Didn’t touch it. Used my pocketknife.”
“Gray sticks chewing gum under his desk? Amazing the dirty little secrets you find out about people. Chewing gum, huh? Never used it for a DNA test before. I read in a journal it’s been done, though. Let’s see what the crew in criminology can do with it. If nothing else, it looks like it’s good for a few more chews. DNA testing usually takes weeks, but I’ll put a rush on it.”
Clarence headed to the elevator. “I never asked you for this, right?” Ollie asked.
“Nope. It was 100 percent my idea, start to finish.”
“What’s your column tomorrow?” Jake asked Clarence as they sat at Lou’s Diner.
“Winston says with the latest O. J. controversy, it’s time for another go at ‘the great racial divide.’”
“The O. J. thing’s never gonna go away is it? The case that never dies.”
“October 3, 1995—I remember the exact day of the acquittal, can you believe it? Ollie and I had a long talk about it. Interesting.”
“You and I never talked much about the trial when it was going on, did we?” Jake asked. “I guess I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. But I know it bothered you.”
“Sure it did. When O. J. was accused, I felt like I’d been accused.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a black man.”
“But that doesn’t—”
“I know, I know. It sounds irrational. One day I overheard two rednecks at a lunch counter, talking about O. J. One guy said to the other, ‘What’d you expect from a nigger?’ I wanted to put his face in his mashed potatoes, but then he probably would have just said, ‘What’d you expect from a nigger?’” Clarence laughed, but not convincingly. “You know what I thought about, Jake? Something I never told a white guy before, but I sure brought it up to my black friends.”
“What?”
“I thought about how nearly all serial killers are white. Manson. Son of Sam. Bandy. Dahmer. Gacy. All those guys. But when Dahmer sexually abused and murdered men and cannibalized them, did anyone say, ‘What’d you expect from a white man?’ Did anyone even think of saying that? Of course not. When Aldrich Ames betrayed CIA agents in the Soviet Union for a maroon Jaguar and a nice house, and twenty people were murdered as a result, did anyone say, ‘That’s a white man for you’?”
“Race has nothing to do with it,” Jake said.
“Unless you’re a black man and it’s a black criminal. See, when a white man does something wrong, he’s just another bad man. But if Dahmer had been black, the whole equation would’ve changed. He wouldn’t have bee
n just another bad man; he’d have been another bad black man, a black murderer, a black cannibal. Every black man feels the weight of that—at least, I do.”
“It really affects you that way?”
“Look at the stereotypes. Black men have illegitimate children and don’t raise them or care for them. That’s what people think. Well, how many centuries did white men rape their black slave women, get them pregnant, refuse to acknowledge the children as their own or raise or care for them? How many black men have been accused of ‘having a thing’ for white women? How many black men are automatically viewed as potential rapists of white women, when for hundreds of years it was routine for white men to rape black women? But do white men feel everybody’s viewing them as rapists? No. Black men do.”
“Well,” Jake said, “white men do have to live with the stereotype of being racist oppressors. Sometimes you feel like everybody’s loading guilt on you. It really gets old.”
“I hear you. But what about the ‘Blacks are violent’ stereotype? I heard people in the sixties point to marches and demonstrations and riots to defend that thesis. But look at organized labor in this country. White workers marching, rioting, and burning before the civil rights movement even existed. Look at history. For three hundred years whites steal, whip, torture, rape, brutalize, and murder their black slaves. The vast majority of those blacks never fought back, never returned violence for violence. You could make a great case for American blacks historically being the least violent people in the world, obviously a great deal less violent than the whites who whipped them. After all that, now you’ve got some black criminals rioting and shooting each other and everybody thinks, ‘Yeah, those black people are just violent by nature, aren’t they?’”
“I don’t think that way, Clarence.”
“Maybe you don’t. But haven’t you heard people talk about Africa? Idi Amin and what he did in Uganda. The civil war in Mozambique. The slaughter in Rwanda. They think it’s because blacks are violent—I’ve heard it said, Jake. I’m sure you have too. And I say, look at the bloodshed in the Middle East. So that makes Arabs and Jews violent by nature? Look at the wars and murders in Central America. Hispanics are violent by nature? Look at the bloodshed in China—Mao killed what, five times the number Hitler did? And Pol Pot—Asians must be violent by nature. And Hitler, he was a Caucasian, right? So were all the soldiers who did the killing. And how about Stalin’s Caucasian Russians murdering starving children in the Ukraine, millions of them? And what about the Bosnian Serbs? More Caucasians. Look at Ireland. They’re white as they can be, religious church-goers, too. But does anybody say, ‘See that proves it—those whites, they’re just violent by nature’? Of course not.”
Jake felt Clarence’s frustration and didn’t know how to respond.
“Know what it all tells me, Jake?”
“What?”
“Not that blacks are violent. Or Hispanics are violent. Or Asians are violent. Or whites are violent. Just that all of them are people and it’s people who are violent. Color doesn’t matter. Like Pastor Clancy says, It’s not a skin problem, it’s a sin problem.’”
“I’m with you there, brother,” Jake said. “And I’ve got another example for you. Think about Bobby Knight and John Thompson. Knight grabs players by their jerseys and screams and swears at referees and throws chairs. Thompson’s a controlled disciplinarian who treats his players with respect. But nobody looks at Bobby Knight and says, ‘Just another out-of-control white man.’ And they don’t look at John Thompson and say ‘There’s another cerebral, thoughtful, disciplined black man.’”
Clarence looked at Jake with surprise. “Careful, bro. You almost sound like a black cat. Like you’re starting to see through different eyes.”
Blacks are lazy. There’s a stereotype few people say aloud anymore. Like most racial prejudice, it lingers barely beneath the surface. And like most, it is also irrational. Consider the historical facts. A culture of white people enslaved blacks to do their menial labor for them. For hundreds of years blacks worked sixteen hours hard labor a day so whites wouldn’t have to wash their clothes, cook their food, tend their animals, or raise their crops. Yet somehow the belief surfaced that it’s blacks who are lazy. The truth is, of course, there are lazy whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans. There are also hard-working whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans. The fact that I even have to make what should be a self-evident point demonstrates the depth to which we are permeated by racial stereotypes.
After finishing his column, Clarence started opening the day’s mail. He braced himself. The first letter was printed crudely by one of those adults who still write like a second-grade boy who’d rather be at recess. “So you played around with the white girl, nigger? Got the jungle fever? Bet it felt good. And now you killed her. O. J. got away with it, but you won’t.”
Clarence’s index finger rubbed against the leathery patch an inch below his right ear. He opened the next letter, this one on letterhead from a Gresham businessman.
“Though I’ve never written you before, I’ve always enjoyed your columns. Just wanted you to know I believe in innocent until proven guilty. Unless you are proven guilty in a court of law, I’ll continue to believe you when you say you didn’t do these things. If I was in your position, I’d want others to assume my innocence, and Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Keep writing that column, Clarence, and know a lot of us still trust you. Respectfully, Jim Riegelmann.”
Letters such as this, and he’d gotten several others, moved Clarence deeply. Encouraged, he decided to open one more.
“Nigga: why you messin’ with white trash in the first place? Sisters ain’t good enough for you? I’m glad she’s dead. You deserve to die too.”
The whole Abernathy clan gathered at Clarence and Geneva’s house December 12 for a combined Christmas and Kwanzaa event. As they had the past few years, they met two weeks before the first day of Kwanzaa in deference to Harley’s family’s custom of preparation for their holiday.
Before dinner Harley set up a red, black, and green flag. He stood before the family and spoke in solemn and heartfelt tones.
“Habari Gani. This is the Bendera Ya Taifa, the flag of the black nation. The red stands for blood, because with blood we lost our land and without blood we cannot acquire land. The black stands for our proud identity as African people. The green stands for our land, which we have lost but which we must regain, for without a land of our own we can have no freedom, justice, independence, or equality. We gather today to begin our preparation for Kwanzaa. We give thanks for being part of a black family.”
After Harley’s wife and children said a few words about the meaning of the Kwanzaa season, Obadiah opened a Bible and read the Christmas story from Luke 2. A family feast followed that went on for two hours, punctuated by stories, laughter, and animated discussions.
“Geneva, honey,” Obadiah said, “I swears that’s the best sweet potato pie this old soldier’s had since my Ruby used to make it.”
Geneva got up and hugged her father-in-law. “Now that’s the greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten, Daddy. Nobody did tater pie like Mama.”
“Nobody,” Obadiah agreed, “but yours is as close as they come, I reckon.” He looked at all the children. “If your grandma could see you now … I expect she can. Some of you didn’t ever get to meet her here, but you’ll see her on the other side, if you loves Jesus like she do.”
“What was she like, Grampy?” Keisha asked, as the family retired to the cramped elbow-brushing living room.
“She was an Aunt Jane if ever there was one,” the old man said as soon as he was seated on the couch. “A Miss Sally through and through.” The children looked confused.
“Aunt Jane and Miss Sally,” Clarence said, “were nicknames they used for a few older women in each black church. They were always highly respected women. Usually didn’t have much education, but lots of homespun wisdom and God-given c
ommon sense. They were especially close to the Lord.”
“Close to God, my Ruby was. And even closer now,” Obadiah said. “My own mammy was an Aunt Jane. Mammy used to ring that ol’ bell on the porch, she did. Meant it was supper time, time to come home. Sometimes this ol’ boy hears the bell a ringin’. Time to come home.”
Obadiah tilted his head, listening intently. A few family members felt embarrassed, as if this old man belonged in a place where people who hear voices are kept from hurting themselves. Obadiah went right on listening to the music no one else could hear. In moments such as this, when his old age was most obvious, Obadiah looked most youthful, boyish, as if running unrestrained through the meadows of childhood. Was he remembering childhood or anticipating it? How could it be that the older he got, the younger he appeared? After listening to the music in silence, the old man joined it with a dilapidated voice that nonetheless rippled with enthusiasm.
“Oh Freedom, Oh Freedom, Oh Freedom over me. And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free.
“Git on board, little chillen’, git on board. De gospel train, she’s comin’, git on board.
“Amazin’ Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”
Most the family joined in now, though Harley seemed uncomfortable and buried his nose in a newspaper he’d picked up from the coffee table. They sang four verses, Obadiah knowing every word of every verse, though nowadays he often couldn’t remember what happened that morning. Clarence could tell how far back his father’s mind went by the way he pronounced the words.
“When we been dere ten thousand years, bright shinin’ as da sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, dan when we first begun.” The tears poured down Obadiah’s cheeks as he stared out the window. Clarence followed his daddy’s gaze. He could see nothing.