Lightning Men

by Thomas Mullen

  “How much was it?”

  Thames closed his eyes. “Five thousand one hundred and twenty-seven dollars.”

  Jesus Christ. Hadn’t the man heard of banks?

  Rake assessed the room. The window was open, the panes overlapping, both of them shattered. Half-unfolded blankets that perhaps had been stored under the bed were thrown across the floor. Coins lay scattered atop the man’s dresser, and the drawers of a ladies’ dresser on the far wall had similarly been rifled through.

  “Oh dear Lord, they’re gonna kill me.”

  “Who’s going to kill you?”

  “Everyone who donated money! Everybody standing out there! Five thousand dollars! I had it and now it’s all gone! They’re gonna kill me!”

  “No one will be killing anyone, Mr. Thames.” Still, he was glad he’d taken the man’s gun away—the plumber seemed less stable every second. And though Rake was reasonably sure no one would try to punish Thames for being the victim of theft, he was far more concerned about the safety of Hanford Park’s three Negro homeowners.

  Alone in the kitchen, he called headquarters to check on the squad car and was told two were on their way. Then he called Cassie, assuring her all was well but explaining he’d be awhile. He popped open the gun’s cylinder and confirmed that the six-shooter was half empty. He spun it to an empty chamber, then slid the still-warm gun into his jeans pocket.

  Ten minutes later, two officers interviewed Thames in the parlor. Rake had been at the academy with Officer Al Wilkins, a cocky and energetic kid who struck Rake as the sort never to back down from a challenge. His partner, Officer Henry Dallas, maybe ten years older and possessing the slow drawl of someone used to being in charge, was short but muscular, and Rake appreciated the steady calm the man conveyed as he asked his questions, looking Thames in the eye the entire time while Wilkins took notes.

  Dallas had allowed Rake to hang around, provided he not interfere. Rake had given them Thames’s gun and stood by while they noted the condition of the man’s bedroom, one bullet hole in the ceiling and a second in the wall beside the window. Just in case, Wilkins called Dispatch from their squad car and requested they inform the Negro hospital to keep watch for anyone with a bullet wound.

  While they questioned Thames, Rake wandered into the kitchen, where a pile of hand-drawn maps of the neighborhood sat on the table. Three of the houses were circled to indicate where Hanford Park’s Negro inhabitants dwelled. He folded one in half and slipped it into his pocket.

  Outside, the officers and Thames inspected the yard. The squad car was parked diagonally across the center of the street to discourage onlookers from getting too close. The neighbors had indeed backed off, but it didn’t appear that anyone had actually retreated into their houses. Under the shroud of darkness, what might have been idle gossip took on a conspiratorial air.

  Wilkins held his flashlight as Dallas took note of the shattered window. They didn’t appear to have found any footprints. Grass or pine straw covered the dry ground everywhere, no exposed dirt for a sole to imprint itself.

  “Who knew you were keeping that money there, sir?” Dallas asked.

  “There in that spot? Only my wife. But the whole neighborhood knows I’ve been collecting it. I got a master list in there of every house I’ve knocked on and everyone that’s given. They knew I had it. And the coloreds knew, too.”

  “You’d approached them already?”

  “Yeah, the one on Oak Lane and the one on Spruce. I haven’t had a chance yet to talk to the ones on Myrtle Street, but I imagine they all passed word on to each other.”

  “How’d it go when you made the offers to ’em?”

  “Not good at all. They weren’t inclined to listen to reason. Damn it all, the plan was to use the money to buy them out, then resell to white families, and everyone would get their money back, or near enough. It might cost us a few percentages, but it would have been worth it to get them out. Now it’s gone, how are we supposed to get them out?”

  “Let’s try and stay focused a minute,” Dallas said. “Can you identify the one who broke into your house?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. It happened so fast. But it must be one of the ones in the neighborhood, or one of their friends or relations. How else would they know I had that money?”

  Rake counted thirty, maybe forty people gathered down the block as a second squad car parked on the curb in front of Thames’s neighbors. Out of shotgun came another young officer Rake had trained with, Barnwell. Then emerged the driver, Brian Helton, best friend to Rake’s former partner.

  “Grits Rakestraw,” Helton said to Rake as the officer huddle split up. An old insult that only Helton still used. “Looks like your neighborhood’s going to shit.”

  “What a surprise, with a professional like you keeping watch.”

  “I keep watch just fine.” Rake didn’t care for the way he was staring, as if trying to peer into some truth Rake was hiding. I have no idea what happened to Dunlow two years ago, he had told Helton many times. I don’t know where the man is, I don’t know if someone killed him or why. Yet Helton clearly suspected him in some nefarious dealings; he was reasonably sure Helton had investigated him, discussing Rake with his then sergeant, thumbing through his daily reports for evidence of any scheme.

  Rake already had enough of Helton, so he walked back to where Dallas and Wilkins were talking to Thames. He put a hand on Wilkins’s shoulder and gently pulled him aside.

  “This isn’t good, Al,” Rake said. “That was communal money that got stolen. It’s not just a theft from one man. We’re gonna have a whole neighborhood of people feeling victimized and wanting revenge.”

  Wilkins agreed but said they needed a few more minutes with Thames. Rake walked over to Barnwell and Helton and told them he’d try to get people to go home. Rather than assist him, they stood by their squad car, unimpressed or uninterested, as Rake walked toward the nearest group, five men in a semicircle. He knew one of them, Bobby, a lanky blond, from his brief time at the mill after returning from the war. Bobby had been a joker at the mill but here his face looked dark and ready to give in to motives that were far from comic.

  “What’s the story, Rake?” he asked.

  “Story is, there was a break-in.” Rake let his eyes move across all five men’s faces. “No one’s hurt, and we’re going to find out who did it. But it’s time everyone headed back home.”

  “When you gonna arrest the niggers?” one of the men asked.

  “Where’d you hear they were Negroes?”

  “Joe over there said he saw one at the wheel of the car,” he said, motioning with his head to some other group, somewhere else, wherever it is rumor or fact comes from, who knows. “You-all gonna get ’em, or do we have to?”

  Rake kept his arms at his sides, trying to stay friendly and affable but unquestionably in control. “Crime’s not but an hour old, fellows. We’ll get ’em.”

  Another man said, “You gotta open your eyes. We got coloreds moving in and already we got a break-in.”

  “Last time they moved in, they got burned out,” another said. “That’s the only way.”

  Rake folded his arms, surrounded by a circle of five angry men, and behind them the other groups had seemed to coalesce, as if waiting for some signal that the time for impotent porch chat had passed and now the real men could take control.

  And they didn’t even realize yet that the money that had been stolen was theirs.

  “I’m not a fan of talk about folks taking the law into their own hands,” Rake said. “I live here, too, you know that. We won’t let anything happen to this neighborhood.”

  The voices came too quickly and angrily for him to reply:

  “But it is happening!”

  “They can’t move in here and bring Darktown’s problems to our doorstep!”

  “I didn’t fight in a goddamn war to have my own neighborhood taken over by them!”

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Officer Dallas had quite a set of p
ipes when he used it right. Rake felt it in his chest. “People! My partners and I have a job to do right now, and it isn’t made any easier by all of you standing around here.” As he said this, Officer Wilkins slowly walked to Rake’s left, a gentle pace and with both his palms raised at his chest, but walking forward nonetheless, like a slow-motion football blocker who only needed a few feet of air to propel opponents backward. Helton, perhaps reluctantly, was doing the same thing.

  Dallas told everyone to go home, using people’s first names, seeing Fred over there and Jason over here, Mikey and Mikey Jr., calling them out and thus reminding them that they could not dissolve into anonymous parts of a soulless mob and instead were still imbued with, and weighed down by, their consciences. Rake stepped back so the uniformed officers could take control.

  He was standing on Thames’s yard again, which rose a bit from the street level, and from that vantage he could see, at the periphery of the crowd, a familiar face: Delmar Coyle. Standing beside him was his pal Neville. Two Columbians, neither of whom lived anywhere near Hanford Park. Either they had a sixth sense for racial disturbances, or they made a habit of patrolling the area like they’d done to other “transitioning” neighborhoods a few years back, or they had known something would be happening tonight.

  Rake remembered the incidents from a few years ago, when Negroes moving into other formerly all-white areas had been attacked by Columbians at night, some of their houses firebombed. Maybe some of those nights had started this way, with some unrelated crime providing the spark the Fascists needed to harness the crowd’s anger and unleash anarchy.

  Then Rake saw the most galling sight of all. Approaching the two Columbians was Dale. Who smiled and shook hands with Coyle like they were old friends.

  Later, Rake and everyone else had finally returned to their homes. He called the police switchboard again and asked to be transferred to the Butler Street precinct. The Negro cops.

  “Atlanta Police, Sergeant McInnis speaking.”

  “This is Officer Denny Rakestraw, from the Sixth. I need to get a message to Smith.”

  “He’s walking his beat. Can I help you with something?”

  He was glad Smith wasn’t available to speak. After all, he’d told Smith and Boggs he would help look into the beating of Smith’s relative, yet he’d done little beyond keeping an eye on the Columbians and the Dunlow brothers. When chatting with neighbors, he’d asked if they knew anything, but he would have done that regardless.

  “He needs to get word to the Negroes in Hanford Park. They’re not safe here tonight.” He gave McInnis the basics, ending with, “We’ve calmed people down and got them to head home, but we can’t stand watch forever.”

  “Hanford Park’s not our beat.”

  “I’m trying to do the right thing here. I’m not saying I want Negro cops to come out and patrol—Jesus, that’s the last thing we need.” He couldn’t understand why McInnis was being so obtuse. Maybe he thought Rake should knock on their doors himself, which Rake had considered. But that might antagonize the rest of the neighborhood, like he was taking the Negroes’ side; he’d lose whatever local authority he was clinging to. “I just need them to get word out; the Negroes here might want to sleep somewhere else tonight.”

  A long pause. “We’ll get the word out, Officer.”

  32

  JESUS SAID IT was easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than it was for a rich man to enter heaven. Nearly as difficult a task was accessing the alcohol stash of Reverend Daniel Boggs. The Baptist minister did not partake of the stuff, but he had secreted a few bottles in his house, as he often entertained local and visiting luminaries, and surely the Lord did not object to such consumption by laymen. One of the brightest such luminaries was sitting in the study right now: Thurgood Marshall, swirling rye in his glass as he told his latest tale.

  “They have any evidence at all?” asked Lucius, holding a glass of Coca-Cola.

  “They claim to have molds of footprints one of the men left at the scene of the crime,” Marshall said. “But I have an expert saying that one of the cops must’ve taken the boy’s shoe after they arrested him, then made the footprint and took the mold.”

  Lucius shook his head. “Can’t trust any evidence from a Southern cop.”

  “Said the Southern cop.” Marshall laughed. The lead attorney for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, he’d stopped in town for a day of meetings on his way to Groveland, Florida. Deep in orange country, two Negro men had been convicted of rape under deeply suspicious circumstances. Originally three had been charged, Marshall explained, but the third had been hunted through the cypress swamps and killed by as many as a hundred vigilantes, his body riddled with bullets. The two who hadn’t been shot that day had lost their case in a small-town court and been sentenced to death by electric chair, but Marshall was appealing.

  Bach played softly on the record player as Lucius, his father, and his brothers chatted with Marshall. The attorney’s tie was loosened around his neck and his shirt was nearly untucked after enjoying Roberta’s feast of brisket, collards, and corn bread.

  “I have a doctor saying he doesn’t think there even was a rape,” Marshall said. “She’d been out drinking with her estranged husband that night. One of the men they charged, they only picked him up because he wanted in on a gambling operation the cops down there control. So they pinned a rape on him, and when he ran, they chased him through the swamps and took target practice on him.”

  This brand of justice sounded distressingly familiar to Boggs.

  “We’ll have to get you in our courthouse one of these days,” Reginald said. “That’d be a sight.”

  “Just tell someone in your daddy’s congregation to get in some trouble.”

  “How are those school trials going?” William asked. Normally he slept at the Morehouse dorms, but a visit from Thurgood Marshall was not to be missed.

  “The wheels of justice are slow, son, but they do churn if you keep pushing from behind and don’t mind getting mud and horseshit kicked in your face. Might take another few years, but we’ll get there.” A few months ago, the Supreme Court had ruled in Marshall’s favor on two cases involving Southern Negroes and white graduate schools. The Justices had avoided striking down school segregation en masse, but Marshall explained that he’d put his foot in the door, which he would soon force open. “Once we win on schools, everything else will follow.”

  “You truly believe that? That segregation will end?” Lucius asked.

  Marshall looked surprised by the doubt. Lucius’s own job was a sign of progress, supposedly, but the very difficulties that he confronted day in and day out were wearing away at him. An unending tension, this awareness that he was a statistical oddity the law of averages would soon correct.

  “I do, son. Every day I believe it. Or I’d be a crazy man. I got you the vote, didn’t I?” He winked.

  It was true. A few years back, Marshall had argued before the Supreme Court that all-white Democratic primaries, like the one in Georgia, were unconstitutional. As a result, Lucius’s father and other local leaders had registered thousands of Negro voters, providing the leverage they’d long needed to get Mayor Hartsfield to hire Negro policemen. Which meant Lucius literally owed his job to the man sitting before him.

  “Got me a lot more than the vote,” he said.

  Marshall lifted his glass to acknowledge the compliment. “I’m kidding, you know that. Constitution gives you the vote. But they kept it from you, that and a lot else. We’ll be getting it back, I assure you.” He smiled again. “We’ll get you backward Southerners to catch up with the rest of the country yet.”

  “I’ve been asked to mediate the matter in Hanford Park,” Reverend Boggs told Lucius in the kitchen. They were foraging for snacks, as Mrs. Boggs had retired for the evening. His brothers and Marshall were laughing about something in the parlor. “A white man by the name of Gilmore sent word through one of my congregants. They realize things are getting tense th
ere, and they know that one of the Negro families who moved in are members of my congregation.” It wasn’t unusual for Reverend Boggs or other Negro men of the cloth to be invited to unofficial councils like this; with no colored elected officials, the ministers and local businessmen served that role instead. “He said the neighborhood wants to negotiate.”

  “What do you know about Gilmore?”

  “He owns a hardware store in Hanford Park. Says he’s the head of the neighborhood association.” He scanned the countertops. “Now, where does your mother hide my pecans?”

  “Negotiate what, exactly?”

  “The color line, I’m guessing.” The pecans weren’t in the cupboards; they weren’t behind the toaster, either. “My money says he’s going to show up with some maps and pencils and he’s going to propose where we redraw the line between white and colored.”

  Lucius smirked. “He wants the reverend to play God with the land.”

  Reverend Boggs checked the top of the refrigerator: nope. “It’s not playing God, Lucius. It’s keeping people safe. You should know about that.”

  “I also know about arresting criminals. How do we know this Gilmore fellow isn’t involved in what happened to Malcolm?”

  “We don’t. But the point is, they want to negotiate.” He checked the bread box: nope. “That, in the end, is a good thing for us. It means they’re willing to concede some of the neighborhood.”

  “I want to be at the meeting.”

  “Hold on. This is a delicate matter as it is. Bringing a policeman, especially a—”

  “I won’t wear my uniform. Look, even if he didn’t take part in what happened to Malcolm, he’s likely to at least know something. None of the white people will talk about it, especially not to us. But I want to see if he lets anything slip.”

  The reverend opened a tin marked Baking Soda, something he would never otherwise look in. “Ah-ha.” He took a bowl from the cupboard, then emptied into it the true contents of the tin: a good half pound of candied pecans. “Woman’s not as sly as she thinks she is.”