Richmond Noir (21 page)
Ray Harold Vermeer studied himself in the mirror, touched a hand to his temple. The phone rang and Velma got up to see who was calling; when she saw Betty Richardson’s number on the caller ID she didn’t answer, but let it go to voice mail.
“Vee, I swear, Regina’s just bluffing.”
Velma placed her cigarette in the ashtray, rose from the bed, and walked toward the bathroom, as if she had been summoned. “Then why did you come over here this morning? You say this is my house, but when you and Regina argue, she threatens to fly on over here and act a fool, same way she did the time we moved in, calling me a slut in front of my neighbors.” Pulling another cigarette and matches out of her robe, Velma lit up with trembling hands.
“Will you forget about her for one minute! Why can’t we just spend a little time together like we used to before Harold came into the picture and Regina went on the warpath? Take off that bathrobe. Daddy wants to show you something when he comes out the bathroom.”
“Ray Harold, I’m tired of you thinking you can show up here any time you feel like it and disrupt my plans, just so you can get some and then go on about your business.”
“Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t come here just to bed you, woman. I got good news!” Ray met Velma in the hall and stood there in his undershirt. The phone rang again. Neither made a move to answer, until finally Velma could stand it no longer. She went and picked up the receiver.
“Regina, stop calling my house.” She listened. “Well, bring it on, then!” She slammed the phone down. “That’s it. We’re moving! As soon as I can get my things together, me and my son are leaving this house. I don’t care if it’s in the historical register, it’s never going to be mine!”
“Wait a minute, Vee. Look, I was going to surprise you, but I guess I’ll go on and tell you. I think we’re close to getting a contract to start work. You remember I told you the mayor knew my daddy and my granddaddy? Well, he put me in touch with some people I need to know. People who matter. I want you to be cool until I get this contract on the old Hippodrome. Vee, we’re going to—”
“Ray Harold.” She called his name as if it were a command to be quiet. “I’m not interested. When are you going to acknowledge to everyone, including Tug, that he is a Vermeer, that he is your son, your
only
son? And when are you going to stop belittling him? I’m tired of being laughed at by my enemies, pitied by my friends, and scorned by my family, all because I haven’t figured out how to leave you.” Velma walked past Ray Harold and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
Ray Harold banged on it.
“Velma, come on out so we can talk this over. I don’t have much time before—” “Before what?” said Velma through the closed door.
“Before you have to go home to that witch? You know, I used to be impressed with you, how you were a man of position in the community, one of the top black contractors in Richmond and from a good family. I didn’t think you wasn’t honorable the time one of your schemes to be a major player in the renovation of down-town fell through.” Velma opened the door to the bathroom with tears in her eyes. “You remember that night? You buried your head in my lap and cried like a baby. I had a boyfriend who wanted to marry me, but I gave him up for you, and when I had your son, you didn’t even claim him until you saw he looked just like you. That’s when you moved us into your daddy’s house.
Your daddy’s house
. This isn’t my house
or
yours!”
Ray Harold slapped Velma so hard she stumbled backward into the bathroom. He followed her inside and shut the door.
Why did they go in there? What are they doing?
Tug couldn’t see them, so he left his position on the landing and lay on his side in the hallway inhaling dust as he peered under the door. Mr. Not’s feet flanked the toilet bowl.
His pants aren’t falling around
his legs like mine do when I’m sitting down so he must not be using it. What’s he doing?
A few inches away, his mother’s feet faced the toilet bowl.
“You told me I made you feel brand new. You told me you were getting a divorce. You didn’t tell me I’d have to share you with your wife, and you won’t even tell our son you’re his father, acting like you’re some kind of white man and I’m your concubine.”
Tug bit his underlip till it hurt, then kept biting it.
“You can’t leave well enough alone. I brought you from nothing. You and that little faggot live in a fine house, you wear the best clothes money can buy. You use my credit card and it says Vermeer. People know that boy’s my son. And you know I’m still trying to work things out with Regina so that things can be divided—”
“You go ahead and divide whatever you want to. I’m taking Tug back to Charles City.”
Mr. Not’s shoes tapped the floor three times. The second tap made the fine mahogany floorboards ring as the door rattled and bounced in its frame. Startled, Tug rolled back, then returned to the same spot, desperate to see what was happening. It didn’t occur to him that the door might fly open at any second. All he knew was that he had to get closer to see as much as he could.
“You’re not leaving me or taking my son anywhere!” shouted Mr. Not. Then Tug heard a rattle-bang of flesh against metal. His mother’s feet stumbled, and he moved even closer, sticking his nose as far under the door as he could. He saw two knees on the bathroom floor—hers.
“Ray Harold, please! Don’t do this!”
What’s happening in there? Marguerite, we have to help Mommy! Somebody! Mrs. Richardson! Batman! Gabriel Ogun!
He cried out, “Mommy!” and the door opened suddenly, and sunlight beaming through the stained-glass bathroom window put Mr. Not’s face in deep shadow. He stood with his legs wide apart, his face a mask of anger when he looked down and saw Tug on the floor.
“Go play”—he inhaled all the air around him—“son. Your mama and I have to discuss some things.”
“You’re not my daddy,” said Tug. “You’re Mr. Not!”
“Go play, Tug. It’s all right,” said his mother, but she didn’t look him in his eyes. Instead, she stared at the back of Mr. Not’s head.
Something heavy, a zag, wrapped around Tug’s stomach and squeezed and squeezed and wouldn’t let go until it released itself down his legs. He was awake and the blue zig-zags were marching across his wide-open eyes.
“Go change your underwear, sissy,” said Mr. Not. Then he stepped back into the bathroom and closed the door in Tug’s face. When Tug’s head cleared, he knew the zig-zags were really drops of blood on the tiled floor. He knew Mr. Not wouldn’t disappear under the house like the Wicked Witch. What would Mr. Spock or Batman do? What would Gabriel Ogun do?
Tug grabbed Marguerite and dashed downstairs to the dining room where Mr. Not kept a glass-paned bookcase. Some shelves held books and building models, but on one shelf there was a set of fancy long knives, glinting in their velvet exhibit covers. Tug had always admired them for their beauty. They made the bookcase look royal and mysterious. Tug gazed now at the array of knives, not knowing an East African panga from a Malaysian golok, but he went into the drawer of the antique desk across the room and got the big key and picked a panga from the case.
Holding Marguerite in one hand and the panga in the other, Tug climbed the stairs to the hallway bathroom. Then he set Marguerite on the floor and slowly opened the door. His mother sat with her back pressed against the tub. Mr. Not was kneeling down with his hand wrapped around her silk bathrobe, the one he had given her as a Valentine’s Day gift. Her nose was bleeding, and she was staring at the floor.
Tug heard the rhythm of a hammer crashing down on an anvil with the force of a black god. With both hands on the long knife, Tug raised it high above his head and plunged it deep into Mr. Not’s back. The man straightened with a sharp intake of breath and looked up at the ceiling. He reached behind him to remove the knife, which had pierced his kidney. Then he turned around to face his attacker and peered into Tug’s eyes, but his mouth couldn’t register surprise. Mr. Not had only enough strength left to slump down next to Velma, who did not glance up until he was sitting beside her, leaning his head on her shoulder.
Tug jumped back into the hallway, picked up Marguerite, stuffed her in his backpack, continued out to the swing set, grabbed his skateboard, and ran and ran and ran. He didn’t know where he was headed as he sprinted down East Leigh with its manicured lawns behind wrought-iron fences. When he got to Broad Street, he stopped and just stood there, looking neither left nor right. A wiry man of average height sidled up to him.
“Look lively, son. Where you headed?”
Tug glanced up at the Tin Man. “To the cemetery. I mean, to the parking lot.”
“Well, you’re on the wrong side of the street. Cross here and catch the Riverview or the Churchill bus. That’ll get you where you want to go. What’s your name, son?”
“Harold Holloway. Are you the Tin Man?”
“No, they call me Dumptruck. Be safe, son.” The man smiled him on his way.
Tug caught the Riverview and the driver let him ride without paying a fare. He got off the bus when he recognized 12th Street and Broad and walked the rest of the way to the overpass with the historical marker that told of the exploits of Gabriel the Blacksmith, who was hung on the gallows and buried in the Burial Ground for Negroes. Tug followed the cobblestone path that led to the empty parking lot with numbered spaces and overgrown grass in the medians.
After setting his backpack down, he took Marguerite out and leaned her against some tall weeds. “Marguerite,” he said, “don’t think about it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t want to.” He jumped on his skateboard and rode it as best he could on the expanse of concrete. He glided back and forth over the blacktop for hours.
The lights of the city started winking on. MCV Medical Center glowed on the hill. Tug wanted to go home. He wanted to see his mother, but didn’t know if she would be angry with him. He remembered once when Mr. Not had slapped her and Tug tried to come between them, his mother had swatted him firmly on his buttocks and sent him to his room with the warning to stay out of
grown folks’ business
. Where could he go? Back to Mrs. Richardson’s house?
There were places to hide under the old tracks, but he was afraid to go into the dark wooden enclosures that looked like they’d once kept slaves penned up. Tug wanted to be headed home on the
Starship Enterprise
with Mr. Spock or in the Batmobile with the Dark Knight. He wanted to be in the house on East Leigh Street with his mother, watching Dorothy click her heels. He turned to the stone arch under the freeway. There, the concrete parking lot gave way to dirt. What had his mother told him about those black ancestors who slept below the ground? She had said they wouldn’t hurt him.
Gabriel, where are you? Will they hang me on the gallows?
Tug found a place under the freeway. Exhausted, with his back against the wall, he sat Marguerite on his lap to comfort her.
The sun shone brightly down on the parking lot. As Tug flew over it, he watched brawny black men and strong black women holding down the Sandman so he couldn’t get away. When Tug drew closer, he saw that it was Mr. Not they all held fast. His face was chalk-white and his lips were smeared in a grotesque smile.
Bury him
, said Gabriel Ogun.
Yes
, said the people,
dig a deep hole!
After explaining to the police how Ray Harold Vermeer came to be sitting lifeless on the bathroom floor, Velma enlisted their aid in finding her son. The police questioned people up and down East Leigh Street. The answers they got led them to Broad Street, where they talked to shopkeepers and bystanders, including a little man named Dumptruck, who confirmed Velma’s suspicions. The police drove her out to the Burial Ground for Negroes, where she found Tug under the overpass. With Marguerite sitting beside him, spotless in her gingham gown, the boy was asleep on his knees. In front of him was a hole three feet deep and a foot and a half wide. Tug’s fists were filled with red soil. On his lips were the words of the people:“Bury him deep! Bury him deep!”
Y
es, I understand the gravity of my actions. I’m no idiot. I’m something of a historian, in fact, and I know that history itself is more or less a record of our greatest collective depravities: who did what to whom and for how long. And the desecration I’ve committed—yes, I admit it was a desecration—strikes at the heart of something we in these parts hold dear. This is Richmond, after all, capital of the Confederacy, where history is still a living, breathing animal, with teeth and fangs and a clear sense of identity. And once you start messing with identity, you’re treading on dangerous ground. Eddie sure found that out. He’s the one who put me up to it, by the way.
It wasn’t a political statement, though I’m sure there’ll be reporters who try to turn it into that. But nothing could be further from the truth. I treasure my Southern roots. My family used to be one of the most prominent in the city, having once owned the ironworks factory on the James River during the war. Had Grant’s army not driven my ancestors into exile when the city fell, I might have been a person of some influence in our community. But sometimes the world spins off-kilter. My inheritance was siphoned off by carpetbaggers. As a consequence, I was never allowed to take my rightful place among the aristocracy, and have instead been forced into a series of menial occupations, the most recent being that of a bulldozer’s apprentice. You might think that a family’s reversal of fortune shouldn’t weigh so heavily on a descendant born a century after the fact. But I assure you, the pain is as acute to me as if I’d suffered the loss only yesterday.
My doctor refuses even to acknowledge my fallen state. He says I’ve manufactured a personal family history from the intellectual pieces of my former life. That’s an intriguing tactic on his part, I have to admit. I suspect he has an article in the works and I’m his guinea pig in what he imagines will be some breakthrough form of therapy. But he’s destined for disappointment. I could never disavow my heritage.
My
misstep
, let’s call it, was no easy chore. Cemeteries have always given me the creeps. But besides that, the place tends to be crowded. Hollywood Cemetery is like the Disney-world of final resting places. It’s in a beautiful spot, up there on that high bluff overlooking the James River. Young lovers picnic there. Artists set up their easels. Photographers prowl around the statuary. Kids climb on the mausoleums. Historians walk the avenues taking notes. I used to do that myself, actually, when I was researching my dissertation. I was writing about the military and political history of the United States in the nineteenth century, so Hollywood Cemetery was the ideal field trip for me. President Monroe is buried there, and President Tyler too. Tyler was the father-in-law of Jefferson Davis, by the way. And there’s General George Pickett, of the infamous Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. He’s buried at the north end of the cemetery, along with eighteen thousand regular Confederate soldiers. J.E.B. Stuart is in Hollywood, and General Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Robert E. Lee. Twenty-five Confederate generals in all. General Longstreet isn’t there, but three of his children are, killed by the scarlet fever epidemic of 1862. Seven governors of Virginia. And, of course, the proverbial jewel in the crown, President Jefferson Davis himself.
I wish the place weren’t named Hollywood, though. That makes it sound too phony, fake, like it’s a hangout for dead movie stars. But Hollywood Cemetery was a landmark in Richmond long before the first silent films ever came out of that other Hollywood. Maybe that Hollywood was named for this one. In any case, our Hollywood is the greatest Confederate cemetery in the country. Maybe even in the whole world.
As you can probably tell, I’m highly educated. I might have been a renowned scholar but for my accident. Apparently—and I say apparently because I have no memory of the event—I was struck by a car while riding my motor scooter without a helmet. Why a scholar would be on a motor scooter, I haven’t a clue. Motor scooters are undignified—scholars should drive used Volvos. In any case, they say I suffered significant head trauma—something I believe because I do get terrible headaches almost daily.
There was another side effect of the accident that’s been a slight problem. When I came out of the coma, I developed a compulsion to keep talking, even when no one is around, like those people I’ve heard about on the subway trains in New York City. It’s like the accident turned on a faucet in my head and words just keep pouring out all the time, except when I’m on medication. I can’t explain it. As soon as I get a thought, it comes right out of my mouth. So they give me pills to stop the leak. Of course, the bad thing is that whenever I stop taking the pills they find out right away because I can’t keep myself from telling everybody about it. That’s one reason the police know every detail of what I did in the cemetery. I might as well have given them documentary footage.
So, anyway, I know there was an accident, and I know there were consequences.
Much of what they tell me about my condition, however, is untrue. They say I’m given to violent outbursts, but that’s all a matter of perspective. They say I’ve lost certain social skills, that I no longer comprehend the subtleties of human interaction. Yet who among us comprehends our neighbor? They say I don’t make logical connections the way normal people do.
By
they
, of course, I mean my therapist, Dr. Myles, and sometimes my Uncle Morty. Uncle Morty is a good man, but he’s been duped by Dr. Myles. He believes everything the doctor tells him about me, almost as if he were the doctor’s apprentice. Though Uncle Morty isn’t an apprentice, he’s a general contractor.
I know about apprentices because that’s one field in which I have truly excelled. When I first came to work for my Uncle Morty two years ago—no, wait, it’s been longer than that. Let me think. Seventeen. Yes, that’s it, seventeen years. And in the seventeen years I’ve worked for my Uncle Morty, I’ve been every kind of apprentice you can think of. It was Uncle Morty and Aunt Eileen who took me in after I lost my fellowship at the university. They say they’re my parents, and that’s sweet of them, but I don’t feel comfortable enough to allow them that level of intimacy. Still, Uncle Morty figured out the perfect job for me. He said I could be the company apprentice. It’s almost the same thing as being a student, except you don’t have to write papers or study for tests.
“All you have to do is watch,” he told me. “Watch and learn.” I think we both thought it would help me regain my focus. And we were right.
I started off as a janitor’s apprentice and I stayed at the main building all day. Uncle Morty owns a big construction company, and he has a sheet-metal warehouse where he keeps his heavy equipment. As you might imagine, floors have to be kept clean in a place like that, and my job was to watch Arby the janitor keep everything in order. Just watch and stay out of the way—that was my entire job description, and it came straight from Uncle Morty. I did that job pretty well, and after a while I got promoted to groundskeeper’s apprentice. In that job, I had to watch Miguel ride the lawn tractor and patch the driveway and fertilize the grounds. That’s what we called the yard around the building—the grounds. I don’t know why we didn’t call it a yard, because it sure looked like one. I thought about asking Miguel about it once, but I didn’t. Asking questions wasn’t part of my job.
I was an excellent groundskeeper’s apprentice. I stared at Miguel all day long, even on our breaks, which probably made him feel important. Pretty soon Miguel talked to Uncle Morty and the next thing I knew, I was promoted to plumber’s apprentice, watching Big Dan. I watched him like a hawk, or like an owl, maybe, until he went to Uncle Morty and got me another promotion, this time to carpenter’s apprentice with Wilber. I liked working with Wilber because he had the same name as the guy on
Mr. Ed
, which was a TV show about a talking horse. I liked that show a lot. It proved that anything was possible.
After Wilber I became an electrician’s apprentice for Gus, which I also liked because Gus sounded like a proper name for an electrician. Then I was a mason’s apprentice for a guy whose name I can never remember because I keep thinking his name ought to be Mason, which it isn’t. Then I began to move through my apprenticeships on all the pieces of heavy equipment—the forklift, the backhoe, the grader, and finally, all the way to the top of the apprenticeship mountain, the bulldozer. Basically, they’re all excavators. My favorite is the Cat 312CL because it has an enclosed cab and a mechanical thumb. The enclosed cab makes it less noisy, plus you can keep away from bad weather. But the best part is the mechanical thumb, which is what separates it from an ordinary backhoe. A normal backhoe claws and scoops, but an excavator with a mechanical thumb can actually grab things. The dredger bucket clamps tight around whatever you’re trying to pull up. I don’t know why they call the extra part a thumb, though. To me it’s more like the bottom half of a set of jaws, like on a giant dinosaur. There’s true power in an excavator with jaws like that. It’s a dangerous piece of machinery.
But just because I got shifted around through so many positions in the company, don’t think I couldn’t hold a job. The job was pretty much the same whatever it was, because whatever it was, I was still the apprentice. I watched and I learned, and I stayed out of the way. But at the same time, I was moving up through the ranks. I think Uncle Morty was trying to familiarize me with the whole operation—you know, grooming me to take over the business when he retires. I could do it too. After so many years of apprenticing there, I know how everything works.
Eddie knew how everything worked too. He was site foreman on the cemetery project. I know that was a tough job because I used to be a foreman’s apprentice and I’ve seen how busy things can get.
Uncle Morty was real happy when he first got the cemetery contract, but it turned out to be a nightmare. That’s what I heard him say, that the cemetery project had been a nightmare. One nightmare after another, he said, starting with the retaining wall and ending with Eddie and Aunt Eileen. I don’t know what Aunt Eileen had to do with any of it. She’s not really on the payroll. But she was sure there a lot. She used to come out to watch us on the days Uncle Morty had to be away at other projects, I guess to report back to him on what kind of progress we were making. She and Eddie would eat lunch together behind the chapel, I guess so he could fill her in. It’s not the best spot in the cemetery, as far as getting a good view is concerned. It’s way too overgrown with bushes. I prefer the spot just across from President Tyler. That’s where you get the most picturesque view, and when I look out at the broad stretch of the James below—where it’s too rocky and shallow for boats to navigate—I can almost forget I’m in a cemetery surrounded by skeletons and who knows what other bad things.
The problem with the cemetery was that parts of it were starting to fall away into the river. Erosion. And, of course, a lot of the most important bodies were planted near the edge of the bluff, where big chunks were already starting to crumble away. I don’t know why so many of the famous people got buried near the edge, but that’s how it is. Maybe folks thought they deserved a nice view. Jefferson Davis was a good twenty paces from the edge, which afforded him a few more years of security, in terms of natural processes. But Presidents Monroe and Tyler were in more imminent danger. Tyler was buried barely eight steps from the precipice. One good mudslide and he’d be floating down the James and out to sea, with Monroe only about five steps behind him.
So the city hired Uncle Morty to erect a retaining wall along the bank to keep every body in place. It’s hard to build a wall on the face of so steep a bluff. And even if you get the wall in place, it’ll block the drainage, which increases the weight and makes the problem worse than it was before. What you have to do is drill drainage holes under the graves to allow the excess water a way to escape. And I can tell you, from my time as a driller’s apprentice, that’s one tricky feat of engineering.
It’s risky work too. I almost went over the edge myself one day when I sat on a stack of twenty-foot PVC piping. The stack gave way and about half the pipes rolled over the cliff. Eddie tried to blame me for it, but Uncle Morty said it was Eddie’s own fault for putting the pipes too near the edge and for not keeping an eye on me like he was supposed to. I sided with Uncle Morty in that argument. So it was Eddie’s fault we lost half a day’s work getting the pipes back up to the work site.
The time I didn’t side with Uncle Morty was when he tried to fire Eddie. I know Uncle Morty was under a lot of emotional strain, because Aunt Eileen had just told him she was leaving him for somebody else. That came as a big surprise to me. Things had been peaceful at home, with nobody ever saying anything to anybody, so I’m not sure why Aunt Eileen was so unhappy. In any case, it was understandable that Uncle Morty might have been a little on edge. But Eddie hadn’t done anything wrong all day, everything was going just as smooth as could be, when Uncle Morty drove up in his Cadillac and got out, already mad as I’d ever seen him. He told Eddie he was fired and good luck supporting his new girlfriend without a paycheck. Eddie said he’d file a union grievance and bring the whole project to a standstill. That stopped Uncle Morty on the spot. He paced around for a minute like he was about to explode, and then he said, “Fine, then you’re not fired. But you’re not the foreman anymore.” Then he pointed a finger straight at me. “You work for
him
now,” he said, and Eddie looked at me with his eyes squinted and his forehead wrinkled.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eddie asked him.
Uncle Morty got a satisfied look on his face. “From here on out, you’re his apprentice.”
Eddie seemed baffled, and maybe a little angry too. “That moron don’t do shit around here,” he said.
Uncle Morty smiled, but not like he was happy. “You’re free to quit if you don’t like the job,” he said.