Wherever There Is Light (8 page)

The day was hot and still as Julian drove along a dirt road.

“Spoke to Eddie last week,” Julian said. “He told me when you were home, you came over to Newark and sat in at the Alcazar.”

“The band was cookin'. And Eddie and me got boiled as owls.”

The road went by orange and lemon groves, the fruit jewel bright against the dark leaves, then curved around pastures with cows sleeping in the sunlight and fields of lettuce, sugarcane, and corn stubble. Negro men in floppy straw hats and women in bonnets were working the fields. Newark had no shortage of poverty—Julian's early days in the city had been spent in a cold-water tenement that smelled of coal smoke and backed-up toilets—but he could hardly bear to look at the shacks of the tenant farmers. To earn a few extra pennies, the farmers allowed the sides of their shacks to be plastered with handbills advertising tobacco and patent medicines; the steeply pitched roofs were patched with tarpaper; and the sagging porches were packed with young and old seeking shelter from the sun.

“If Derrick's car broke down near here, he'd go to Hazee's.” Otis said.

Hazee's was a clapboard-sided, tin-roofed juke with a sign over the door advertising Jax beer. Garland was sitting in her wood-bodied Ford station wagon in the dusty parking lot, and Julian pulled up alongside her.

“Hazee says Derrick hasn't been by,” Garland said. “Keep straight, and I'll come around the opposite way.”

Four miles from Hazee's, Otis said, “Over there, Jules. On the other side of the road. That's Derr's Chevy. Daddy bought it for him as a graduation gift.”

Julian and Otis inspected the eggnog-colored car. The rear left tire was flat, and so was the spare, which was on the back seat.

“Hot dog! I bet big bro's just down a ways.”

They drove for fifteen minutes without spotting Derrick. A breeze, offering no relief from the heat, was blowing, and Otis said, “Damn, you smell that? Nasty, ain't it?”

Julian had helped clean up some of the messes Looney and Gooney had made, so he was familiar with the stench of seared flesh. Gently, Julian said, “Otis, you gotta prepare—” but he didn't finish his warning because up ahead he saw Garland in a clearing and heard Kendall scream. She and her mother were ten yards from an oak tree. Most of its branches were bare and as crooked as the fingers of a crone, but swaying like a grisly pendulum from the oak's thickest limb was Derrick, his head thrown back with the coils of a noose up against his chin and his blind eyes raised heavenward as if searching the clouds for mercy.

“Jules?” Otis said, his voice cracking.

Kendall stopped screaming as Julian and Otis rushed into the clearing, trampling the remnants of a celebration—empty bottles of soda and beer, cigarette butts, peanut shells, and lollipop sticks. Derrick's feet were charred, the gasoline can dumped behind the tree with the overturned barrel on which Derrick must have been forced to stand. His right hand, the hand he'd used to slap Hurleigh Scales, had been hacked off at the wrist, and blood dripped along the bark of the tree like sap. The buttons from his vest and suit coat were missing, most likely snagged by souvenir hunters, who had also taken his shoes, belt, tie, and wristwatch.

“You two did this!” Kendall shouted, her eyes luminescent with rage. “Both of you!”

Catching his breath between sobs, Otis stammered, “Ken-Kenni-Ann, I—” but she spun away from him, taking out her Leica and flinging her satchel to the ground.

Julian was neither hurt nor perplexed by her explosion: it had to be less agonizing for Kendall to hurl accusations than to remind herself that Derrick wouldn't have been driving to Florida had she agreed to marry him. As Otis sank to his knees, wailing, “Derr, I'm sorry, Derr,” and Julian crouched to comfort him, he thought that parceling out responsibility based on contingencies was futile. Because of the violence Julian had committed in pursuit of Abe's approval and worldly success, he fluctuated between belief and disbelief in God, but he was convinced that if the Arch-Mathematician of the Universe existed, He was the only one who could tally the numbers.

“This isn't on you, Otis,” Julian murmured as he watched Kendall get down to business with her camera. The balletic grace of yesterday was gone, and she circled the clearing with the predatory strides of a carnivore hunting prey.

Garland, her eyes wide, watched her daughter, then said to Julian, “Take him down.”

On the ride back to campus, Otis said, “I'ma gonna kill the motherfuckers.”

“You'll wind up on the same tree as Derrick. And what about your mother and father? It's only you and Derrick, right?”

“So nobody pays for Derrick?”

“Somebody pays. I promise.” Julian had maintained his composure in the clearing. He had backed up the Cadillac to the tree, gotten up on the hood, uncoiled the rope from Derrick, then put him in the back of the station wagon. Otis and Kendall stood there, crying. Garland had stopped at Hazee's to phone the Broward County Sheriff and the Negro undertaker in Fort Lauderdale. Julian had waited in the parking lot, listening to Otis repeat that the lynching was his fault and watching Kendall in her mother's car with her head in her hands. An icy fury made Julian's palms sweat. He thought about Derrick's terror as they dragged him to the tree, and how his death was eating up Otis and Kendall, and what it would mean for him with Derrick gone. Live competition was one thing; competition with a ghost was another, and Julian was disgusted with himself for allowing his thoughts to drag him in that direction.

At the Wakefield house, a van from the Benton Funeral Home was in the circular drive, and two Negro men in suits were loading Derrick into it.

“Swear to me,” Otis said. “Somebody pays for my brother.”

“Somebody pays. And you want me at the funeral with Eddie, you got his number, give us a ring. Anything you need, ask.”

Garland came over to Otis. “We'll call your parents from the house. I'll be along shortly.”

Julian extended his hand to Otis, who gave him a clumsy hug instead before walking up the driveway.

Garland said, “Hurleigh killed that child, and the sheriff tells me the Lovewood police will handle the investigation.”

“Lovewood's got police?”

“Two of them. And Jarvis Scales is in charge of the department. I called the mayor and gave him holy hell. He said his store's open late, and he'll be by in the morning.”

“Kendall okay?”

Garland looked at him as if his question had proved his ignorance—and by extension the ignorance of his race—beyond all doubt. “She's a mess. Went to her dorm.”

There was nothing he could do here. Not now, maybe never. “I'm going back to Miami Beach.”

Garland glared at him. “Good.”

The lights were on in Scales Antiques. Jarvis was alone inspecting his display cases and making notations on a clipboard. Outside, Julian stood with his body hidden by the building and peeked through the window. The bell over the door would ring when he went in, so he held off until the mayor was facing away from him, and then he slipped into the store. Turning, Jarvis said, “Can—” but he shut up and dropped his clipboard because Julian, towering over the mayor, was pressing the Beretta against his forehead and walking him into a back room, where he pushed the mayor into a desk chair.

Julian said, “You seen Hurleigh?”

“I ain't, but when I do he'll answer if'n he had a thing to do with that boy gettin' hung. But Hurleigh gone. Look out the window.”

In the fading light Julian saw a two-story, wood-frame building with double doors.

“I own that garage, and Hurleigh stay in the apartment above it. Him and his car's gone. I wager he went to see our cousins in Mississippi.”

“It's good you got a big family.”

“What you— Why?”

“Because if I find Hurleigh, you won't miss him at Christmas. Now lie on the floor. Facedown.”

Jarvis did as he was told. “Lookit, heah. I been fair with the colored in Lovewood. Ask any of 'em.”

Jarvis rambled on, telling the ash-gray linoleum that every fool involved in the lynching would be arrested, but before he completed his speech, the bell jingled as Julian walked out of the store.

HARLEM, NEW YORK

O
n a raw, blustery Monday morning, Julian waited with Eddie in the shadow of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Derrick's lynching had made the New York dailies, accompanied by Kendall's photograph of him dangling from the tree, which somehow she'd gotten to the Associated Press. Thousands of people were lined up along 138th Street, and the police were everywhere, on foot and horseback, and the Negroes eyeballed the white cops as if they were Visigoths come to sack Rome.

Julian said, “Otis isn't talking about acing anyone?”

Eddie replied, “When he called, he said we're gonna do that. Are we?”

“After I flew home, I sent the Goldstein twins down.”

Eddie and Julian passed a flask of Jameson's back and forth until Julian's face was as numb as his toes. Eddie said, “Kendall's here.”

“I would've asked if I wanted to know.”

“Who you kidding? Look around: a nice guy from Harlem got strung up because some white people hate coloreds, so why shouldn't the coloreds hate 'em right back? You get in the middle of that because of Kendall and you expect it to be smooth sailing? You're the smartest moron I ever met.”

As the pews and balcony filled up with a dark sea of somberly dressed men and women, Otis stood beside Derrick's casket, which was adorned with lilies and rested on a bench below the marble pulpit.

“Thanks for being here,” Otis said, wiping his swollen eyes with a hankie, then shaking hands with Eddie and Julian. “Come meet my folks.”

The Larkins, a stately couple, sat in the front pew. Julian had never witnessed a mother and father burying a child, but while Otis introduced him and Eddie, and they offered their condolences, Julian thought the Larkins looked as though their insides had been scooped out. When Julian turned so Otis could point out their seats, Mr. Larkin tugged on the sleeve of Julian's Chesterfield and leveled his forefinger at the casket. “It should be me in there.”

Again, Julian said, “I'm sorry for your loss,” but Mr. Larkin appeared not to hear him.

Otis had reserved spots for Eddie and Julian five rows back on the far left side of the sanctuary. Trailing Eddie to the pew, Julian nearly ran over Garland, who was standing by her aisle seat. Kendall was facing away from him, sitting and talking to an elderly fellow next to her. Julian said, “Hello, Mrs. Wakefield.”

Giving him the once-over as if she expected him to rip the strand of pearls off her neck, Garland hissed, “You've been drinking.”

Julian moved on, thinking that, in all probability, the favor he was doing her with Hurleigh Scales wouldn't improve her opinion of him. He was about to take a seat when he heard Kendall call his name. He stepped out of the pew, and Kendall, in a black velvet cloche and black silk dress, came to meet him. Her hair, flowing from under her cloche, cascaded over her shoulders in shining brown waves. He wanted to tell her that she looked beautiful, but knew he shouldn't say that. “I saw your photo in the
Herald Tribune
.”