Dark Corner (2 page)

They made excellent time. Traveling Interstate 20 West,
they swept through Georgia and entered Alabama within a
couple of hours. It was a fine day for a road trip. The morning sunlight was golden, and the cloudless sky was a tranquil
ocean blue. Traffic was light and flowed smoothly.

After three hours on the road, sixteen miles outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama, David pulled into a rest area. He kept
King on a leash as they walked along the grassy sward of the
designated pet walk, but the dog was well behaved and didn't wrestle against the leash or try to force David into a run.
King handled his business near a tree with the solemn dignity that befitted his name.

David was returning to the truck, planning to let the dog
inside so he could go back and use the rest room himself,
when he saw the man.

He leaned against a white Cadillac DeVille. Slender and
brown-skinned, perhaps in his mid-fifties, he wore a green
shirt and tan slacks. He talked on a cell phone, checked his
watch.

From a distance of about thirty feet, the man looked like
David's father.

David stiffened and stopped. King, brought to a halt,
looked at David questioningly.

Although the day was warm and humid, a chill fell over
David.

As if sensing David's attention, the man turned. He met
David's eyes briefly, then looked away, continuing to chat on
the phone.

The man was not Richard Hunter, his father. Of course it
wasn't him. His father had died five months ago.

David sighed, went to the SUV, and let King climb inside.

I need to stop this, David thought, as he walked to the rest
area washrooms. I'll never see my father again. I have to accept it.

He used the rest room, then returned to the parking lot.
The man who resembled his father was gone. Whoever he
had been.

David got behind the wheel of the SUV.

His cell phone chirped.

"Hey, it's your mama. Where are you?"

It was just like his mother to call the moment after he experienced an episode of weirdness.

"Hey, Mom. I'm right outside Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I
passed the big Mercedes-Benz plant a little while ago"

"You're driving too fast. You shouldn't be that far already."

Although David was twenty-nine years old and had traveled extensively throughout the country, by air and by car,
Mom never hesitated to dole out travel tips and cautions.

"I've been cruising at seventy-five. Traffic has been
light." He paused, then added, "I'm at a rest area. I just saw a
man who looked like Dad"

"Oh," Mom said. A note of melancholy crept into her
voice. "Remember how the same thing happened to both of
us, when your granddad passed? For a while, it seemed that
once a month we'd see a man who looked exactly like him."

"I remember. But I feel different about this. Because
there's always a chance . . ."

"David, honey, it's not good for you to think about that. I
know it's painful for you, but you need to try to let it go. Your
father is gone"

David swallowed. A monarch butterfly landed on the
windshield, its colorful wings gilded with sunlight. It
seemed to peer inside the truck at David.

His mother was right. He had told himself the same thing
many times. His father, Richard Hunter, was dead and gone
forever. Any stranger who looked like him was just that-a
stranger.

But the circumstances of his father's death stirred a naive
hope that he might be alive.

Richard Hunter had not been an ordinary man. He was a
writer, not merely good but brilliant; a Pulitzer Prize winner
who evoked favorable comparison to the revered literary
lions in the canon of African-American literature: Ellison,
Hurston, Wright, Morrison. Richard Hunter had lived an adventurous, colorful life that matched his literary accomplishments. After a brief, disastrous marriage to David's
mother that produced only one child, Hunter moved to Paris to write his first novel, an immediate best-seller, and thereafter embarked on a series of journeys that took him from
Morocco to China, from South Africa to Nepal, from
Australia to Indonesia, from Brazil to Denmark ... his father's travels could've filled a dozen issues of National
Geographic. Writing and publishing one best-selling novel
after another, publishing essays in The New Yorker, crafting
stage plays that opened on Broadway, and penning the script
of an Oscar award-winning film, Richard Hunter had the
proverbial Midas touch in the literary world. But his ability
to sustain meaningful, long-term relationships seemed to be
directly inverse to his writing talent.

David hardly knew his father. Throughout his dad's endless globetrotting, it was a rare event to receive so much as a
postcard from him, to say nothing of a birthday or Christmas
gift. He called or wrote David every few years, and visited
less often. Although Hunter married three more times, and
entertained countless girlfriends and mistresses, he never
had another child. Often, David had thought that being
Hunter's only child would have meant something to his father, but their relationship never developed beyond a superficial, awkward friendliness. David had learned more about
Richard Hunter by reading about him in magazines than he
had through direct contact with his dad.

But in March of that year, his father had been on a boat in
the Gulf of Mexico, deep-sea fishing, when a storm swept
him off the deck and into the ocean. An extensive search by
the coast guard failed to recover his body. At the coroner's
inquest, he was declared legally dead.

Richard Hunter's will revealed that he had bequeathed his
money, property, and belongings to David-the total value
of which equaled over four million dollars.

David was suddenly rich, granted a fortune by a man who
was a relative stranger to him.

Nagging questions circled David's thoughts. Why did his
father ignore him for his entire life and then will him every thing he had owned? Had his father loved him, but been unable to express his feelings? What kind of man had Richard
Hunter been, outside his literary exploits?

And the question that haunted David most of all remained: Was his father really dead? His body had never
been recovered, which gave David a fragile hope that, somehow, his father had survived the accident. But if Richard
Hunter had survived, then where was he? Why hadn't he
resurfaced to reclaim his life?

It was hard to speculate about stuff like that. One bewildering question led to a slew of others even more puzzling.

"I hope you learn a lot about your dad while you're in
Mississippi," Mom said. "Like I've told you before, I don't
think you need to make this trip, but I know you won't be
happy otherwise."

Although his father had been a world traveler, between
his journeys, he always returned to his hometown: Mason's
Corner, Mississippi. There, he lived in a modest house that
had been in the Hunter family for generations. The home
had been vacant since his father's death.

"Well, like I've said, I'll be there for a year," David said.
"Maybe not that long. It depends on how things go, and what
I find out"

"What do you expect to find out, David?" Mom said.
Mom had asked him the same question before, but there was
a desperation in her voice that he hadn't heard previously.
"It's a tiny town with three traffic lights. What do you think
you're going to learn there?"

David turned the key in the ignition. The engine hummed
to life.

"I don't know, Mom," David said. "Maybe ... the truth"

At a quarter past three o'clock in the afternoon, driving
north on Interstate 55, David passed a road sign that announced the upcoming exit for Mason's Corner.

Anticipation tingled in his gut.

It had been about fifteen years since he had visited
Mississippi. He had purposefully taken a longer route to
Mason's Corner, traveling Interstate 20 West into Jackson, at
the center of the state, where he then connected with Interstate
55 North, which would take him up to the northwest region,
at the edge of the delta. He wanted to absorb the sounds and
sights, and immerse himself in this place where his father's
family had lived for so long.

Mostly, the land was covered with verdant hills that appeared to stretch to the edge of the world. At other times,
maple trees and pine trees crowded the highway, their trunks
festooned with kudzu. In many of the open stretches, he
saw vast fields of soybean and cotton.

It was easy to imagine that this had once been a land in
which cotton plantations had sustained the economy. The
earth was so fertile it seemed anything might thrive in the
rich soil. North of Jackson, David had stopped to refuel, and
the warm, humid air was like the inside of a greenhouse.

The exit ramp for Mason's Corner came into view. He
turned onto the winding lane, and entered a tunnel of trees
that blanketed the road in dense shadows. Then, the trees
thinned out and gave way to a suspension bridge. A sunlightspangled river rushed in the chasm below. Two black children stood along the sandy bank, working fishing poles.

The bridge, about forty feet long, rattled and clinked as
he drove across it. King poked his nose out the half-open
window. He whined.

David stroked the dog's neck. "We're almost there, boy. I
know you're fed up with riding in here"

Ahead, a blue sign read in white letters: Welcome to
Mason's Corner, the Jewel of Mississippi. Pop. 3,200.

The town limits were marked only by small, erratically
spaced homes. Rusty cars sitting on concrete blocks filled
front yards, and clotheslines heavy with garments snapped
in the summer breeze. People-everyone David saw was black-sat on porches and lawn chairs. They watched him
drive by, and he thought he could hear what they were thinking: "Who's that guy moving here?" This wasn't like
Atlanta. In a small town like Mason's Corner, a new resident
would be noteworthy.

The road, Main Street, cut through the center of downtown-though calling the tiny business district "downtown"
was being generous. While he waited at a traffic light, he
looked around. Faded storefronts lined the road: a diner, a
clothing shop, a florist, a furniture store. Old black men sat
in chairs in front of a barbershop, talking and watching anyone of interest-all of them looked his way, their gazes lingering over the trailer. A scattering of cars and trucks were
parked diagonally along the curb; a lot of people owned
pickup trucks.

The light switched to green. He rolled forward.

He spotted other buildings: a People's Bank branch office, an elementary school, a library, the police station, a
Baptist church, a BP gas station, a barbecue joint, a pool hall
with a Coors beer sign in the window. Farther ahead, there
was a large park that had basketball and tennis courts, a
baseball diamond, a playground, benches, and a pond that
sparkled like quicksilver.

Everywhere, when he passed people, they looked his way
and appeared to take note of the trailer. He could only smile.
"Welcome to Mississippi," he said to himself. King chuffed.

David consulted his directions. The family home was located on Hunter Drive, which was coming up. He made a
right turn, and found himself in a peaceful neighborhood of
mature, leafy elms and modest houses.

The place was half a block down, on the left. A black
mailbox at the curb had the name "Hunter" written in fancy
script.

He pulled into the asphalt driveway.

Sitting in the idling truck, David stared at his new home.

A sensation of unreality washed over him. He had really done it. He had left behind his life in Atlanta and moved
here, to the land of his father.

"My new home," he whispered.

It was a two-story house, painted eggshell white, with
clapboard siding and forest-green shutters. According to
Earvin Williams, his father's estate attorney, the home was
almost eighty years old and had been constructed by a team
of men that included David's great-grandfather. The place
looked as though it had been kept in good repair. It had a
screened-in porch, a two-car garage, and a tool shed, too.

The lawn, however, badly needed to be mowed. Earvin
had said that he'd hired someone to cut the grass, but that
was a few weeks ago. The property had been undisturbed
since his father's death. The lawyer had paid the utility bills,
in the meantime, and promised David that he only needed to
bring his belongings, and move right in. "There's no telling
what you might find in there," Earvin had said. "Your father
lived the last few months of his life in that house, may his
soul rest in peace."

That's perfect, David had thought. Maybe I can figure out
what Dad was doing before the accident....

King clawed the glass, jarring David out of his reverie.

"All right, boy, we're getting out" David cut the engine.
"We're here"

King looked at him as if to say, It's about time, man.
You've kept me cooped up in this thing forever. Let me outta
here!

David opened his door, and King, normally patient, didn't
wait for David to walk around and open the passenger door.
The dog scrambled over the seats and leaped outside. He
roved across the yard, sniffing.

"Don't run off," David said. He raised his arms and
stretched.

At a brick home across the street, a grandmotherly woman
tended a bed of flowers. She waved at him. He returned the
greeting.

He could get used to having friendly neighbors. At his
town house community in Atlanta, he and his neighbors had
rarely spoken to one another.

He had a lot of unloading and unpacking to do, but he'd
take care of it later.

The screen door was unlocked, and opened silently.

Thick waves of humid air churned in the porch. Three
lawn chairs stood inside, ranked beside one another. A copy
of the Chester County Ledger lay on an end table, beside a
glass ashtray filled with a cigar butt. His father had loved
cigars.