“Like Satchel Paige?”
Mal choked on his root beer. When he recovered, he peered closely. “What do you know about Satchel Paige?”
“Negro League. One of the best pitchers of his day, Black or White.”
Mal’s jaw dropped. “Who are you, and what have you done with our Devon?”
And for the first time that day, Devon smiled. “My grandma’s daddy played with Mr. Paige and Mr. Gibson, and even Mr. Cool Papa Bell.”
Mal blinked. He looked around as if he wanted to call someone for help but found Devon too fascinating to let out of his sight. “Your great-grandfather played Negro League ball?”
“Yes, sir. My grandma’s family album had a bunch of old pictures and articles from the newspapers.”
Mal sat back. “Well, I’ll be. So you like baseball?”
“Yes, sir. Me and my grandma were Braves fans because of Mr. Henry Aaron.”
Mal chuckled at the craziness of this interaction. “Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Nobody asked.”
That made perfect sense. “Tell you what. This weekend coming up, the playoffs start and your Braves are in the running. How about you and me watch together?”
Devon had no way of knowing that the way his eyes lit up made Mal realize he was going to love Devon just as much as he loved Amari.
Mal asked, “Would you like that?”
“Like a bullfrog loves flies.”
“What?” Mal asked through his laugh. “Where’d you hear that?”
“My grandma used to say it all the time.” He stilled, and the sadness in his eyes broke Mal’s heart.
“Miss her a lot, I’ll bet?”
Devon wiped at the tears filling his eyes. He didn’t want Amari and Preston seeing him cry.
Mal asked softly, “Would you do me a favor?”
Devon nodded.
“I want you to tell me all about her while we watch the game. That okay with you, buckaroo?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mal ruffled his hair.
Devon asked, “Do you call people buckaroo because of Mr. Herb Jeffries’s movie The Bronze Buckaroo?”
Mal froze and stared. “How did you know that?”
Devon’s answering grin made Mal wave him off. “Never mind. Bonfire’s getting ready to start. Go get your ice cream before you give me a heart attack.”
Grinning, Devon replied, “Yes, sir.”
As Mal watched him go, he thought about Devon’s struggles, and then peered through the growing shadows for Lily and Trent. They were across the yard, watching him. Feeling pretty good about himself, he walked over to join them.
Lily said, “We saw you with Devon. Did he let you talk to him?”
Mal replied nonchalantly, “Devon and I will be watching the baseball playoffs together this weekend.”
“What?” Trent asked.
“Didn’t know he liked baseball, did you?”
A perplexed Lily shook her head. “No. He’s never said anything about that.”
“According to him, it’s because nobody ever asked.”
Silence.
Mal chuckled. “That’s how I felt.” He met his son’s eyes and boasted, “And this is what I meant about Dads Inc. needing my advanced wisdom. I’m liking this boy like a bullfrog likes flies.”
Lily laughed.
Trent asked, “Dad, don’t take this the wrong way, but like a bullfrog likes flies? Have you been drinking?”
“No offense taken, and the answer is no, but before this whole Devon thing is resolved, we may all need a drink.”
That said, he walked off whistling music from The Bronze Buckaroo.
“What does he mean?” Lily asked.
“With Dad, who knows?”
Trent was about to add to that but saw some kind of commotion going on by the food table. Bernadine was yelling for Reg, and people began running toward her. Trent and Lily got up and took off at a run, too.
It was Ms. Agnes. She was lying on the ground, and the grim Reg was administering CPR. Due to the lateness of the day, visibility was limited, but quick-thinking truck owners ran to their vehicles, turned on their high beams, and drove up close. In the circle of light Lily saw the horrified Marie standing with Leo. Tamar pushed her way through the crowd. Marie immediately grabbed Tamar’s hand in a grip that appeared tight as her heart had to be.
Bernadine closed her phone. “Sheriff said they’ll be here in ten minutes at the most.”
Everyone prayed it wouldn’t be too late.
Reg managed to get Agnes’s rhythm stabilized just as the ambulance roared up. Moments later the techs had her on a gurney and inside. Lights flashing, the ambulance sped off to the big hospital up in Hays, while Marie, Leo, Tamar, and Lily followed in Leo’s fast-moving town car.
At the hospital they were ushered into a room set aside for families of loved ones undergoing emergency surgery, and the wait for news was excruciating. Marie appeared to have her emotions under control, but when Lily looked into her eyes, the bleakness mirrored there was soul-deep. It was well known that mother and daughter rarely agreed, but Marie loved Agnes very much—more than Agnes deserved, some might say, but the only thing that mattered to Lily was Marie’s pain. The sight of it was breaking Lily’s heart.
Marie stood and announced emotionlessly, “I need some air. Come and get me if anything happens.”
Leo asked, “Do you want me to go with you?”
She shook her head and left the room.
Lily met his eyes for a moment and then glanced over at Tamar, who was seated in a chair on the far side of the room. Her eyes were closed, and to a casual observer it appeared that she might be asleep, but upon closer inspection, you saw her lips moving, and if you listened hard you could hear her chanting nearly soundlessly in a tongue only her ancestors knew.
“What’s she doing?” Leo asked quietly.
“Praying.”
“In what language?”
“Seminole, I imagine, but I don’t know that for sure.”
“Can she hear us?”
Tamar opened her eyes. “Yes, Leo. I can hear you. Shut up, please.”
He didn’t say another word.
Forty minutes later the surgeon came in and introduced herself. Her name was Rita Sullivan, and she didn’t have good news. “All we can do is make her comfortable. Her heart is just wore out. I’m sorry.”
Marie bit her lip. “Can I see her?”
“Of course. She’s awake. We have her on a couple of IVs, but it won’t be long.”
Lily’s tears met Tamar’s.
Tamar whispered, “Come on, you two. Let’s go say our good-byes.”
Leo stayed where he was. He knew without asking that Agnes would not want him at her bedside.
She was indeed awake. Seeing how fragile and small she looked lying in the hospital bed with the oxygen lines in her nose and the IVs in her thin brown arms sharpened their pain.
Marie didn’t bother wiping away her tears as she bent over the bed and stroked her mother’s silver hair. “How you doing, Mama?”
“Not so good, baby,” she rasped out. “Not so good. Need to tell you something.”
“It can wait, you rest.”
“I’m going to get all the rest I’ll need in a few minutes, so just listen.”
Tamar smiled. “You tell her, girl.”
Agnes looked to her old friend. “Going to miss you, Tamar.”
“I’ll miss you more.”
Tamar moved closer and placed a soft kiss on the forehead of her BFF. “I expect you to meet me at the Gates when it’s my turn, Agnes Marie.”
“I will. And maybe we can find a good man up there. Do you think?”
Tamar chuckled through her grief. “I hope so. We didn’t do too good this time around, did we?”
Agnes quieted, as if she’d drifted back in time, then said finally, “No, we didn’t.”
She settled her eyes on Marie and said softly, “And that’s what I’v
e been trying to tell you. All these years I’ve lied to you, Marie.”
“About what?”
“Your father. Your birth. He wasn’t killed in Korea. I made up that story.”
Marie stared. “Then who was he?”
“A boy I met while I was at Spelman. He wouldn’t marry me, so—”
“You took out your anger on me because my mistake reminded you of yours?” Marie asked incredulously. She turned on Tamar. “Did you know about this?”
“She’s my best friend, and it wasn’t my place.”
Lily couldn’t believe her ears. How much more would Marie have to suffer?
“How could you?” Marie threw back at Agnes in a voice thick with tears. “All the name-calling and the anger and derision, when you’d done exactly the same thing? Why couldn’t you have helped me?”
“We Jeffersons don’t have bastard children.”
“Yes, we do!”
The monitors began beeping.
Agnes looked up at her only child and whispered with her last dying breath, “Get rid of that Leo. All he wants is our land.”
The nurses rushed in, but Agnes Marie Jefferson was gone.
The memorial service was held outside on the open plains behind the Jefferson home. It was a raw, cold day. Dressed in mourning black, Marie greeted everyone and thanked them for coming. Agnes had requested cremation, and that her ashes be sprinkled over her land, so those who’d come formed a large shivering circle. In the center stood Tamar. She raised the vase holding the cremains high in the air as if offering up a final tribute and then said, “Agnes Marie, we loved you, and we’ll miss you.”
Everyone nodded in solemn agreement.
The ashes were spread, tears flowed, and when it was over, they all went into the house for the traditional repast.
That evening, after everyone had gone, Lily was in the kitchen washing up the last of the dishes. The tired-looking Marie entered and said, “Thanks for helping.”
“No problem. You go on back out there and sit down. I’ll finish up.”
Instead, Marie took a seat at the kitchen table. “Leo wanted to stay, but I sent him home.”
“He’s been very supportive.”
“Yes, he has, but I wanted to be by myself tonight. Genevieve is going to stay with Tamar. I think Tamar’s grief is even rawer than mine.”
“They’ve been friends a long time.”
“Before I was born.” Marie added wistfully, “I keep expecting Mama to walk in the door.”
Lily put the last of the dishes in the drain, dried her hands, and took a seat at the table. “She’ll be missed.”
“I can’t believe the last words out of her mouth were to tell me what to do, though,” Marie noted in a voice tinged with humor and disbelief. “She was something.”
“Yes, she was.”
“My life’s my own now.”
“Yes, it is. Any idea what you might do?”
“Finish my grieving and then contact my son.”
Lily nodded. “Good girl.”
“And then figure out a way to forgive Tamar for not telling me the truth.”
“It wasn’t her place, Marie,” Lily said gently. “No sense in being angry at her.”
“My head knows that, but my heart—it still hurts, and I want to scream. All those years Mama spent berating me and looking down her nose. Why couldn’t she have just told me the truth? Life for us would have been so much better.”
Lily had no answer, but she hoped Marie would someday find it within herself to forgive Agnes for what she’d done.
Marie glanced up at the clock on the wall. “It’s late, Lily. You should probably head home.”
“Anything else you need me to do before I go?”
“No, you’ve been a rock these past few days.”
“Just trying to be here for you like you were for me when Mom died.”
They shared a tight, emotion-filled hug, and Lily whispered, “So sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Lily drove home through her tears.
Chapter 11
As the plane lifted into the air, Reverend Paula Grant gazed out the window at the receding sight of Miami. Watching her old life fade from view was bittersweet.
Two plane changes later, she entered the Hays airport. She knew someone from Henry Adams would be meeting her, but she assumed it would be Ms. Brown, or her assistant Lily Fontaine. Instead there was a well-dressed young man in a suit holding a card with her name on it, and Paula felt very special indeed. He introduced himself as Nathan Nelson, helped retrieve her suitcases from the belt at the baggage claim, and escorted her out to a large black town car. After politely ushering her inside and closing the door, he got behind the steering wheel and drove them away.
It didn’t take her long to learn that Nathan was a conversationalist. She heard about his wife, Lou, and the baby they were expecting around the Christmas holidays, and that if the child was a boy, he would be named Ethan after Lou’s wife’s great-grandfather. She learned that he was a native of Kansas and that being the driver for Ms. Brown was the best job he’d ever had.
“She makes me feel like I’m real important, you know.”
Enjoying the smooth ride, Paula totally got that.
“She’s been encouraging me to get my GED. Nobody in my family ever graduated high school. You’d think a lady with all her money would look down on poor folks like me and Lou, but not Ms. Brown. She’s been real concerned about the baby. Even got me and Lou some health insurance so we could see a real good doc. Lou says she’s like a fairy godmother. You’re going to like her.”
One of Paula’s guiding tenets was to treat the lowly just like the mighty. She was glad to have further proof that Ms. Brown subscribed to that tenet as well.
During the ride, Paula looked out at the passing landscape. She hadn’t seen such wide open spaces since leaving Oklahoma two decades ago, and the thought brought back bittersweet memories. Like Nathan’s family, no one in hers had ever graduated from high school either until she came along. It hadn’t won her any accolades, though. If anything, her thirst for knowledge had driven a death stake into her relationships with the kin she’d left behind. She’d been born to an unwed teen mother in one of Oklahoma’s all-Black townships, where due to the ignorance brought on by poverty, the remnants of segregation, and a world without dreams, no one could fathom why Paula took her education so seriously. Uppity thoughts, her aunt Della had called them, and there was no place for that when all you were destined for was a job in the laundry or kitchen of the local prison, if you were lucky. Thinking back on those painful years, Paula was glad she’d gotten out, because from the moment the scholarship she earned took her to college, she’d never gone hungry physically or spiritually ever again.
Nathan interrupted her musings. “You here to hear little Devon preach?”
The question caught Paula off guard. “No. Little Devon?”
“Ms. Fontaine’s foster son. He’s been preaching up a storm this summer.”
“Really?”
“Yep. My granny says he reminds her of somebody called Rev. Ike.”
Paula chuckled. Ms. Brown hadn’t mentioned the town already having a preacher.
Nathan continued, “At first, so many people came out to hear him there weren’t enough seats. It was kind of fun watching him bouncing around on the stage and shouting ‘hallelujah,’ but then folks started noticing that he did the same thing week after week, and they stopped coming.”
She found this very interesting. “So why did you call him little Devon?”
“Because he’s eight, maybe nine years old.”
She blinked with surprise. “Really?”
“Yep. Nice kid, though.”
For the remainder of the ride, Paula pondered an eight-year-old Rev. Ike and what role she’d really been hired to play.
Nathan left the highway and took to a back road that cut through m
ore wide open spaces. Finally he said, “We’re here, Reverend. This is the Power Plant, where Ms. Brown and Ms. Fontaine have their offices.”
“The Power Plant?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s called that because of all the power Ms. Brown has around here. It’s a joke.”
“Ah.”
Paula peered out her window at the shape and flowing lines of the flat-topped red building. It looked like it should have been in Manhattan or on the cover of Architectural Digest, not the plains of Kansas.
Nathan came around to open her door, then retrieved her bags. “I’ll walk you in.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
“Ms. Brown said I was to bring you to her office, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Paula surrendered to the rock-star treatment and followed Nathan to the building and inside.
Bernadine was on the phone when they arrived at her office door. A smile creased her face when she saw Paula. She excused herself from the person on the other end of the phone for a moment to say, “Welcome to Henry Adams, Reverend. How was the flight?”
“Long.”
“I’ll bet. I have to finish this conference call, but Lily will show you around and take you out to where you’ll be staying. I’ll hook up with you later.”
“That’s fine.”
Ms. Brown turned back to her call, and Nathan left Paula in Lily’s capable hands.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Then let’s get you something to eat first.”
They walked out to Lily’s car, and a few minutes later she pulled up in front of the Dog. Paula peered at the sign. “The Dog and Cow?”
Lily smiled, explained the name and the owner’s intent, and added, “He used to be the veterinarian here, and was doing a lot of drinking back when he opened the place. He’s in recovery now, though.”
Paula had no idea what she expected the former alcoholic owner of the diner to look like, but it certainly wasn’t the handsome dark-skinned man who introduced himself as Malachi July.
“Welcome aboard, Reverend. Lunch is on the house.”
“Why, thank you.” It was easy to see the man was a flirt from the mischief in his eyes. He led them to a booth near the windows and left them to their menus. Paula looked around. It was late afternoon, and the place was almost empty. The music was thumping Rufus with Chaka Khan singing “Tell Me Something Good,” however, and that surprised her as well. The waitress took their order, and after she departed, Paula asked, “Does Zoey know I’m coming?”