Winner Take All (4 page)

A robin took roost just outside his open window, and mocked the dawn’s treachery with song. “You want me to obtain affidavits and confront the landlord in open court.”

“The young lady gave her previous address as your side of Rocky Mount. I arranged for a shelter to take her and the children last night. But she needs someplace semipermanent.” Judge Sears read out the names and addresses. “Marcus, do I have to tell you anything more?”

“This phone call never happened,” Marcus confirmed.

He disconnected, took another breath, and dialed Deacon Wilbur’s number from memory. As he listened to it ring, his mind wandered back to his waking thought, and the fear that Kirsten’s call would be to say she was leaving him for good.

He and Deacon collected the young woman and her babies, spoke with two of the other women, then headed downtown. By the time they arrived on the Wake County courthouse’s third floor, the babies were squirming and cranky.

Her records claimed Yolanda was nineteen. The elder of Yolanda’s two children, a boy, was almost two and looked huge in her arms. The daughter was about six months old and far lighter in skin tone than her brother. Yolanda crossed the foyer with the blank-faced sullenness of one who was well used to living without hope.

Marcus staked out the stairway while Deacon stood sentry before the elevators. Deacon Wilbur was a retired black pastor who revealed his seventy-plus years in the gaunt caverns at his temples. Deacon had never studied much besides the Bible; his formal schooling had ended
at nine when his sharecropper daddy had ordered the boy to join him in the fields.

There had been a period in Marcus’ life, separated from the present by a mere knife’s blade of time, when sorrow had been both crippling and constant. As he drove back from a weekend on Figure Eight Island, his car had been struck by a truck and his two children killed. His wife had used their subsequent divorce to brand him with further public shame. When Marcus had finally begun emerging from his own dark pit, Deacon Wilbur had been there to shed light upon what Marcus had almost decided was a hopeless and intolerable climb.

The older child started mewling again. Deacon turned to Yolanda and spoke softly. She snapped from her internal funk long enough to hand him the boy. Deacon held the child with a grandfather’s experience, bouncing him slightly on his hip, and paying the fretful sounds no mind whatsoever.

Hamper Caisse emerged from the stairwell so deep in conversation with his client that he almost collided with Marcus before he saw him. “Marcus, why don’t you go find some other place to park your sorry carcass.”

“I have some affidavits you may want to see.”

“Don’t go waving your papers in my face. You want to see me about something, you come to my office.”

“These affidavits relate to a case you’re trying this morning.” The man seeking to hide behind Hamper was a caramel doughboy and minus a neck. “Would you happen to be Mr. Duane Dean?”

“Don’t say a word to this man.”

Yolanda spotted them and emitted a terrified wail. The babies caught wind of their momma’s distress, and began caterwauling.

“Mr. Dean, I am about to present evidence before Judge Sears that you have made a practice of extorting sexual favors in lieu of rent, then falsely impounding your tenants’ property.”

“Back off, Marcus, while you still got use of your legs.”

“I would imagine that Judge Sears will be issuing a warrant for your arrest.” Marcus offered Duane Dean the affidavits. “Your situation would be vastly improved by seeing to this matter immediately and permitting this woman to return to her apartment.”

Hamper slapped the papers from Marcus’ grasp. “You’re way out of line here, counselor!”

Deacon set down the child and swooped in to confront the landlord.
“How can you do this to one of your own kind? You been going around preying on our children, taking them like you would a nice piece of meat.” The pastor was a scrawny bundle of rage and time-blackened iron. “Don’t you be shaking your head at me, I know what I’m seeing. I know!”

“Who is this nutcase?” Hamper moved to block Deacon’s inexorable approach. “Get him away from my client or I’ll have him arrested!”

Deacon shunted Hamper Caisse aside as though the attorney held less substance than a shadow. He pressed Duane Dean tightly against the scarred cinder block wall. “How old are you, sir? Forty-five? Fifty-five? You know how old this child is? What is your
problem
? You think you’re gonna come into my town, take advantage of my flock? I got some news for you, sir. I’ll tear your house down with my two bare hands!”

“Threats!” Hamper was playing to the theater now, waving his arms enough to make his tie dance like a silk snake. “Y’all hear that? He’s threatening my client with bodily harm!”

“I’ll expose you to the newspapers! I’ll talk to my friends in the police and the sheriff’s office. This might be Carolina, sir, but it’s a new day. Yessir, a new millennium. We got us some friends now, and we’ll turn every one of them against the likes of you. You hear what I’m saying? We’ll hunt you down where you live!”

Duane Dean emitted a rodent’s squeak, clawed his way around Deacon, and fled down the staircase.

“Duane, hold up now, we’re due in court!”

Deacon turned on the lawyer. “I’ve got something to say to you, sir.”

Hamper Caisse had the haggard features of a dedicated chain-smoker and the pale eyes of a luminous ghost. His voice held the rough hoarseness of one who lived for theatrics. Everything about him—vision, direction, dress, motion—was disjointed and awkward. He did not seem to connect with anything fully, not even himself, until he entered a courtroom. Before the bar, Hamper Caisse came into his own. He roared, he laughed, he juggled the jury’s emotions. Then he departed, untouched by all but the thrill of trying another case. He was said to have a wife and children, but he took no social engagements and was always seen alone. His paperwork was abysmal, his memory shoddy, his morals absent. He took everything that came his way, from traffic violations to rape. He would defend anyone. He reassured even
the most pathological sadist by the utter absence of questions in his gaze.

Hamper tried for indignation, but it flickered and died in the face of Deacon’s rage. “You just keep your distance!”

“You might
think
you have the right to do whatever you want with my people.” Deacon’s voice would not have carried far, save for the fact that the third-floor lobby now held its breath. “The book learning and the power you think you got makes anything you feel like doing just fine, don’t it. Tell me I’m not talking the truth.”

Marcus gathered up his affidavits and moved a half step away. Anyone who could silence a courtroom dramatist needed no help from him.

“You might
think
you can control the cards, on account of who you are and who you know.” Deacon moved closer. Hamper had the choice of backing up or rubbing chests.

He backed.

Deacon kept on coming. “You might
think
you’re a powerful man, given the color of this no ’count skin you’re wearing like a cheap suit. But my God knows just
exactly
who you are. Oh yeah. He knows
exactly
what you’ve done.” Another step. “My God is a
great
God.” And another. “He’s an
awesome
God.”

He pushed Hamper around the corner and into the center of the lobby. “He’s bigger than anything you know, or anything you have, or anything you’ve ever done. So I’m gonna pray to my God for your no-good, rotten soul.” Deacon leveled the only weapons he had at his disposal, his gaze and his voice and his trembling finger. “Your nasty, stinking, depraved, and
wicked
soul.”

When the elevator doors pinged open, Hamper flung himself into the crush. The cries of those at the back were cut off by Deacon rising to a full-on pulpit roar. “But let me tell you this. If I
ever
catch you anywhere near my people again, I’ll have this entire
world
in the streets!”

A deep black voice from somewhere behind them belled out, “Say it, brother!”

“I’ll have them marching on your home! I’ll have them crying for your head!”

A woman’s voice took up the background cadence. “I
say
amen!”

“You think you know some folks? I’ll call the politicians who’re
just
begging
for our votes. I’ll tell them just exactly what it is you and your filthy friend’s been up to. You think you can do this to my people? You’re wrong! It is
not
going to happen.” Deacon had to lean over to fit his epitaph between the closing doors. “I’ll expose you for the scum you are!”

When the doors cranked shut, the silence lasted a profound moment. Then the entire lobby began cheering. It was the first time Marcus had ever heard applause in the Wake County courthouse.

Deacon turned around, his features seared by his own flames. He spoke to the cowering young woman. “Come on, daughter. Let’s go watch Marcus clear up this mess. Then we gotta find your children someplace healthy to live.”

They left the courthouse and went by the apartments, where Yolanda’s unit was now open and the landlord nowhere to be found. After they had gathered her belongings, Deacon asked her to introduce them to every other young woman living there. Marcus came in twice to take affidavits from women enduring the exact same treatment, then retreated back to his car. The stench of abject hopelessness was too strong for his paltry spirit to withstand for long. Deacon was made of stronger stuff, however, and did not reemerge until every one of the women had received his message. Whether they wanted it or not.

Yolanda remained morosely silent the entire journey back to Rocky Mount, save for two sharp outbursts when her children grew so boisterous she could not ignore them. Deacon used Marcus’ phone to call ahead, then turned around to say, “I’m taking you by your aunt’s home. She’s agreed to take you and your children in for a time.”

“She don’t like me none.”

“She’s family, she’s Christian, and she knows what’s right. She’s disappointed in you, the same as I am. You know that, don’t you?”

Yolanda might have nodded, or she might simply have jerked in time to her son’s bounces on the seat beside her.

“Child, you’ve known me since you were a baby. I changed your diapers. I married both your momma’s sisters. Look at me, daughter. I even helped you learn to
walk
. Why on earth didn’t you come to me before now?”

Yolanda found something beyond the car window of morose fascination,
and said nothing. Marcus studied her in the rearview mirror, and wondered if having so much sorrow inside such a young form stripped away the ability to weep.

“It breaks my heart to see people I love go out there and make bad choices,” Deacon went on. “I know you’ve been abused. I know you’ve been taken advantage of here. Turn around and look at me, girl, I’m talking to you.”

She tilted her chin upward, but the defiance was such a paltry show she did not even convince herself.

“This ain’t just about that man back there. You knew exactly what you were getting yourself into. Don’t you shake your head. The fact that you’ve got these two children sitting here says you know all there is to know about using your body.” He turned around long enough to say, “Pull up in front of that red brick house there.”

Before Marcus cut the motor, a heavyset black woman he recognized from church pushed through her front door. They gave each other a solemn nod, but neither felt this was a time for neighborly waves.

“I am angry with you, child. I’m upset. Same as your aunt here. We know you’ve been doing wrong. All this trouble we’ve been having today is on account of bad decisions you’ve made yourself.”

The boy spotted the older woman standing on her front lawn and let out a squeal of delight. Yolanda leaned over to open his door, almost masking her shattered tremble.

“Everybody makes bad decisions, daughter. That’s why Jesus walked upon this earth, to help us with these bad times, especially the times that are all our fault. But from this point forward, you gotta play it straight. You need to start thinking about what kind of legacy you’re gonna be leaving for those children. You not careful, you’ll be watching them do the same things with somebody else. You hear what I’m saying?”