Lightning Men

by Thomas Mullen

  Boggs tried to peer through all the lies and half-truths he’d been told by so many people lately: his fiancée, his boss, and, no doubt, several other people. He asked, “You really trust him?”

  Smith nearly laughed. “Whoa, I said the man’s clean, but do I trust him? A white man?” He shook his head. “Of course not.”

  30

  TWO KNOCKS AND the door opened without being invited.

  “Hello there, Jeremiah.”

  He thought of the white man as Officer Tall. He actually wasn’t all that tall, Jeremiah realized now, but something about the way he carried himself made him seem more imposing, as if he were perpetually standing on something. He’d been a distant, lingering presence years ago, this cop who would show up and take money from Jeremiah’s brother.

  “Hello, Officer, sir.”

  Jeremiah had been sitting on the wooden shipping pallet that, adorned with a thin blanket, was his makeshift bed. He took the Bible that had been on his lap and put it on top of the cardboard box that served as the only other piece of furniture in his room, his home, this tiny space in the basement below a smoke shop. The shop owner rented the space from Feckless, who owned this building one door down from his club. Feckless was letting Jeremiah sleep here temporarily, until he found a place. His new job was nothing special, cleaning the club and doing dishes, grunt work, but at least the days ended with a bit of money in his pocket.

  “It’s ‘Sergeant’ now.” Officer Tall closed the door behind him and Jeremiah could immediately smell what was in the brown paper bag the white man carried, could see the grease stains of the fried chicken. “Good to see you again, boy.”

  Jeremiah wasn’t sure if he should stand, if that would be more polite, or if Officer Tall would see that as a threat, so he stayed put, hands at his sides. He was wearing the same clothes he had worn for as many days as he had been out of prison.

  “It’s good to see you, too, Sergeant, sir.”

  Officer Tall looked around the room. “I heard you had fallen far, boy, and I’d say this confirms it. You hungry?” He offered Jeremiah the bag.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The bag seemed incredibly heavy—was there an entire bird in there?

  Officer Tall watched him for a moment, a strange look in his eyes, at least as far as Jeremiah could tell based on the tiny quick glances he allowed himself. You were not supposed to look white folks in the eye, certainly not police officers.

  “I know you were in there a long time, boy, but I hope you never forgot you could’ve been a lot worse. Could have been dead. I do hope you remember that.”

  “Most definitely, sir. I’m very grateful to be alive. Thank the Lord.”

  “And thank me as well.”

  “Yessir. Thank you.”

  Officer Tall looked at the tiny space, basically a closet. A lone lamp was plugged into an outlet in the hallway thanks to an extralong cord. To use a toilet, Jeremiah had to creep upstairs and out the back door, then walk to the Rook’s restroom. He’d used the alley a few times when the Rook was closed.

  “It’s a shame what happened to your brother. I know there have been whispers it might have been me who done him in, but I never did kill Isaiah. What happened to him was tragic.”

  Jeremiah wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. He opted for, “Yessir.”

  “I been keeping my eyes out for who mighta killed him,” Officer Tall continued. “Couldn’t mount a real investigation at the time, on account of all the trouble that had been kicked up then. Had to keep a low profile.”

  “Yessir.” You haven’t even thought of my brother until you heard I got out.

  Silence for a few seconds, Officer Tall staring at him, perhaps to see if Jeremiah would give something away. He prayed to the Lord that he not give anything away. He shouldn’t even think bad thoughts about Officer Tall; white people had a way of reading your thoughts. They had powers Negroes did not possess, and Jeremiah needed to be careful.

  “I understand your family situation is rather complicated right now.”

  He must mean the Negro policeman, Jeremiah thought. He didn’t know how to respond, couldn’t think of words that would do justice to his feelings.

  “He ain’t going to just walk away from her, you best understand that. You want to raise that little boy, there’s but one way to do it.”

  “Yessir.” Not understanding.

  “You like the thought of him climbing on top of your woman?”

  “Nosir.”

  “He’s a hell of a nigger. Acts all churchified and high, I suppose there’s a chance he ain’t stuck himself in her yet. There’s a chance you can have her back before he’s spoiled her, understand?”

  Jeremiah had never been one for such coarse talk but he said, “Yessir,” in hopes that would stop Officer Tall’s comments.

  “Eat, boy. I know you’re hungry.”

  How did he know? Jeremiah was given some food at the club during his break, but barely enough to keep him going. He hadn’t wanted to spend all his meager pay on food, knowing he needed to save money to win Julie back, so he’d barely eaten, and not in many hours.

  Despite his nerves to be in the officer’s presence, despite the tightness that had not yet released his chest, he opened the bag. He reached for the waxed paper and picked up the top portion, a fat drumstick attached to a thick breast. Good God, it smelled delicious. He tore into it and hated how he must look, the fierce bites and the grease on his lips, using his sleeve as a napkin. He hated how self-esteem was a luxury.

  “These colored cops, they think they run this city now,” Officer Tall said. “Think they can rewrite our laws, redraft our traditions, retell our culture.”

  “They bad news, that’s right.” It wasn’t himself speaking, he was just reading the lines that he knew the white man had set before him, as though Officer Tall were pointing with his baton at cue cards.

  “Ain’t but one way to stop them.”

  Jeremiah was wiping his lips on his sleeve again and wondering where to put the last of the picked-clean chicken bones when Officer Tall said, “There’s more in there, boy.”

  Jeremiah reached into the bag. His fingers touched steel. He looked up at the officer for a second, momentarily forgetting the protocol. Officer Tall smiled as Jeremiah removed from the bag a small revolver. So that’s why it was so heavy.

  “There is but one way to rid yourself of the problem of Negro Officer Lucius Boggs.” Then he took something from his pocket and tossed it at Jeremiah. A smaller bag, rolled tight. “The bullets. You didn’t think I’d hand you a loaded weapon, did you?”

  Officer Tall laughed and Jeremiah fake-laughed along with him.

  “No one will ask questions when it’s done. In fact, the police department will be on your side this time. Win yourself quite a few favors, boy. More importantly, you’ll get that girl back before he spoils her.”

  He felt sick to his stomach. Why was Officer Tall asking this of him? Why me? Surely a man this powerful could do the deed himself. Jeremiah felt small, a thing to be played with.

  Officer Tall told him Boggs’s address. “There will be two hundred dollars in your pocket once you do the deed, boy. You imagine all the things you could do with two hundred dollars?”

  “That’s a lot of money.” Life-changing money. Family-making money. Surely the offer wasn’t sincere?

  “But you’d best hurry, ’fore someone else beats you to it.”

  Officer Tall was leaving when Jeremiah said, “I’m not a fully formed thing. I’m still clay.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, the clay hasn’t hardened yet.” He scrunched his eyes shut, knowing he couldn’t explain.

  “Boy, I haven’t a clue what you’re saying.”

  Jeremiah shook his head and held his breath a moment, tried again to make sense of this world and his role in it.

  “You understand all this? Do I need to find someone else, or are you my boy?”

  “I understand, Sergeant, sir
. I’m your boy.”

  31

  EARLY THE NEXT evening, the Rakestraws were taking an after-dinner stroll with Charles Dickens on one of Rake’s rare nights off. All above them was lavender and pink. Skies, Rake thought to himself, did not come any more feminine than this.

  In a few more weeks it would be dark at this hour, so even though the baby had been cranky during dinner and Denny Jr. tended to complain that his feet hurt after making it a single block, he and Cassie believed in the importance of family rituals. Cassie talked to the pram-bound baby about the busy squirrels, and Rake pointed out to his son the contrails of some jet thousands of miles above, a celestial slash mark in all that pink.

  Rake felt like these were the sorts of family moments that looked more idyllic than they actually were—because, true to form, Denny Jr. was already asking to be carried, and Rake’s polite refusal had the boy on the verge of a tantrum. Rake wasn’t sure if this observation was true of parenthood in general or was he perhaps doing it wrong, not as emotionally invested in this as he was supposed to be.

  “I had four Negro sightings today,” Cassie said. Ever since she’d attended that neighborhood association meeting, she’d been recording, in a small notebook she kept in her purse, any “sightings” she had of Negroes in the area. She’d been jotting down descriptions along with makes and models and times of day.

  “People do have maids, you know.”

  “I do know. I recall telling you we should get one, Mr. Tightfisted.” He let that one slide. They couldn’t afford domestic help, but maybe if he made detective. “I’m not counting ’em if they look like maids, and anyway maids take buses. Folks I’ve been spotting are in cars, usually men, sometimes being driven around by another man. Realtors and such, up to no good. Anyway, four today, that’s the most yet.”

  “Cassie, I don’t know that you need to be—”

  “I shooed some off today, too.”

  “You what?”

  Undeterred, she smiled, proud of her gumption. “Me and Sue Ellen were walking with the kids this morning and we saw what I’m sure was a Negro realtist out with a Negro couple, by the Richmonds’ place. So I very calmly and politely informed them that this was not a transitional area and that they’d been misinformed, and they’d best be on their way. They left.”

  “Cassie, you should not be walking up to random Negroes like that.”

  “Why not? Cause they’re dangerous? You’re always insisting they’re not.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Denny Jr. started to say something about a neighbor’s cute dog, but they ignored him. “If most of the neighbors were half as vigilant as me,” Cassie said, “we wouldn’t be having this problem.”

  “I do not want you—”

  He was interrupted by what a less experienced man might have thought was the sound of a car backfiring. Then a two-second pause, then two more shots.

  Cassie put her hand to her mouth. “Lord, it’s worse’n I thought.”

  “Take the kids back home,” he told her, handing Denny Jr. the leash.

  Before she could reply, they heard the sound of tires squealing, then shouting.

  He ran down the street to the next intersection, turning left toward where he believed the shots had been coming from. Here he saw more people, some still emerging from houses, and three men talking in the street.

  One of them held a gun.

  He ran toward the trio, who were stepping back to look in all directions as if they were surrounded by something invisible that might attack them at any moment.

  “I’m a police officer!” Rake yelled as he ran toward them. “Put that gun down!”

  He was very aware of the fact that he had no weapon of his own, no uniform or even badge, that he was running toward a firearm, with no idea what was happening. But something about the men’s posture suggested they weren’t arguing with each other, that whatever altercation had occurred was already past. They looked up at him as he said, “Sir, you need to put that gun down and step back.”

  One of the men Rake recognized from church; they’d chatted at a punch social once or twice, but apart from that Rake couldn’t recall much. Short and slight, nothing to worry about. Another man, much older and with old-fashioned pants hitched halfway up his chest, was a stranger. The fellow in the middle, the one who—enragingly—was still holding a revolver, was the local plumber, Paul Thames. The one who, Cassie said, had come by a few nights ago in search of donations for the neighborhood buy-out-the-coloreds fund.

  “This is my gun,” Thames said, his voice shaking a bit, “and I’m on my property.”

  Rake kept his hands at his sides. The other two men each backed up another step. If Rake lunged forward to knock the piece away, he’d probably get shot first.

  “You’re in the middle of the street, sir, and that gun’s making me just a bit nervous. So put it down, please.”

  Thames looked down at the asphalt below them. Which was when Rake realized they’d gathered here to take in the fresh black skid marks, no doubt left behind by the squealing tires he’d heard a moment ago.

  “I own this gun square and I don’t have to give it to you.”

  The barking of neighborhood dogs, roused by the gunfire, added to the chaos.

  “Paul, c’mon,” the man from church said. “I know Officer Rakestraw. If he says put the gun down, put it down.”

  Thames nodded, then bent over—grunting from creaky joints—and laid the revolver on the street. “Sorry. I’m a little heated up, I guess.”

  Rake picked up the pistol. It, too, was heated up. He would check how many bullets it had later, not wanting to do so in front of Thames. “Now, what’s going on, gentlemen?”

  The older man said, “Coloreds broke into his house.”

  Thames nodded. “That’s right.” His mind seemed slowed, unable to take hold of all that had occurred.

  “What happened, Mr. Thames?”

  “I was in the parlor reading after dinner. I heard a crash coming from the bedroom. Martha Ann’s at her bridge club tonight. I grabbed my gun and ran to the bedroom and there’s this nigger going through my things.”

  “You shot him?”

  “No, I just shot into the ceiling the first time. I thought about it, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to it. Then he jumped out that window he came through. I coulda shot him in the back, I guess, but . . .”

  “That’s all right, Paul,” the older man said. “It’s a hell of a thing to do.”

  “I fired again as he slipped out; wound up shooting up my own wall just to scare him I guess. Never had anything like that happen before. It was so fast. And then he made it into some getaway car and off they went.”

  “You get a good look at him?” Rake asked.

  “Yeah, which one you think it was?” the man from church asked before Thames could answer. “That young one down the block? Or that ornery one on Oak Lane?”

  The “ornery one on Oak Lane” just got out of the hospital this morning, Rake thought.

  “I don’t . . . I gotta think.”

  Rake asked the others if they’d seen anything. The older man said no. The man from church, who lived across the street, said he saw a Negro run into a red car, a longer model (“maybe a Plymouth?”), and drive off. He didn’t get a clear enough look at anyone’s face, just enough to see the skin color (“jet black, and real sweaty lookin’ ”).

  More people gathered outside now, some of them almost close enough to overhear the conversation. Rake recognized many of his neighbors, men who spent their weekends fixing cars, cleaning gutters, and playing ball with their children. Mailmen and rail yard workers, carpenters and masons, truck drivers and firemen; he didn’t see any of the other cops, yet.

  Rake told one of the men to call the police from his house.

  “What’s going on?” one of the many onlookers asked.

  “There was a break-in, sir, but the perpetrators have driven off. I’m a police officer, and more will be arriv
ing shortly. In the meantime, everyone should stay in their homes.” If there were more witnesses, the responding officers could find them later. He didn’t need a mob gathering, trading bits of misinformation that might color what witnesses would later claim to remember.

  “Someone break into your place, Paul?” another man asked, ignoring Rake’s command.

  “Yeah. But I’m okay.”

  “Please head on back home, folks.” Rake felt the futility of these words even as he spoke them. Upward of two dozen people spread across the length of the block now, staring, passing on news, gesticulating. The world had grown darker, purple sky gone to deep indigo, porch lights flickering on. In minutes it would be full-on night, and an angry crowd would be all the more able to spin beyond control. He hoped the nearest squad car was very near indeed.

  “What’d the niggers steal from you?” someone called out to Thames.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know yet,” Thames said. Then a look of horror stole across his face. “Oh no.” With that, he turned and ran toward his front door.

  Rake told the crowd again, “Y’all go home now, please.” Then, needing to see whatever Thames might next do in this house that had become a crime scene, he followed the plumber inside, locking the dead bolt behind them. “Mr. Thames?”

  “I’m in here! Oh Lord Jesus!”

  Rake walked through the overdecorated parlor—he or his wife was quite the watercolor painter, landscapes of all hues and geography filling nearly every inch of wall space—and down the bungalow’s short, unlit hallway, following the lamplight into one of the bedrooms. Thames stood before an old dresser, his reflection in the mirror doubling his sense of loss.

  “It’s gone! They took the CAHP money!”

  It took Rake a minute to understand the word, remembering the leaflet Thames and his wife had left behind when they’d come by seeking donations.

  “I keep it in an envelope in here!” He was motioning to a small pile of men’s underpants, any sense of embarrassment absent amid the greater tragedy. He’d kept the money in the top drawer, the first place a thief would look.