Southern Souls

by Stuart Jaffe

  Sandra said, “That’s how you know you’re every bit as much a real father to him as that poser. You are far more of a father. You think Isaac Brown would care if PB chose you?”

  J said, “The only thing he wants is to win. He don’t care nothing about PB.”

  Max tried to take a cleansing breath but ended up coughing. “It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t about winning. At least, not for me. But it’s over now. In a few days, they’ll perform their ceremony and get rich, and PB will never think about us again.”

  “What are you talking about?” J said shoving his feet against the back of his Max’s seat. “Where’s all that push on through talk that you guys always are doing? Why aren’t you trying to save PB anymore?”

  “Because PB doesn’t want to be saved.” Max spoke the words harshly enough that J fell back in his seat. Max went on, “I would think, considering the horrible life you lived on the streets, that you would understand some of this reality. Life gets crappy. Lots of times, for just about everybody. The only reason PB latched onto me was because I offered a hand when he needed one. But he doesn’t need it anymore. He’s got a better offer on the table. I get it, and so should the both of you. PB is a survivor. We never got to see the real boy. He put up a façade to appease us so that he could survive in a better situation than he was in before. But now, this guy comes along and promises PB tons of money and maybe even some power in life. Why wouldn’t that boy go for it? All we have to offer is us.”

  The surly expression on J’s face caused Max to stop. He had not meant to go so far, to be so hard. But J sat forward, and in a calm yet strong voice, he said, “You don’t know shit about what you’re saying. I lived on those streets same as PB. And I’m smaller than him. You think he got picked on? I got it worse. I spent tons of nights never getting any sleep because I had to worry about getting raped or beat up or taken away by somebody who wants Lord-only-knows what from me. You think you were the first guy to come along and offer to take us away from the streets? Heck, it happened at least once a month. What made you different was that you actually care about us. When PB came to me and said he found somebody — I knew what he meant. We didn’t put on some show for you to try and get you to like us. And you didn’t try to become our daddy. All you wanted to do was give us a job, let us earn some money, so we can take care of ourselves. All this family stuff started later. If you don’t think it meant the world to PB, then you are a giant idiot. PB’s not choosing his old dad over you. PB is confused and his heart is being torn in different directions, and he don’t know what to do. But you both, you are our real family. At least, I thought you were. Family fights for each other. Seems like you want to roll over and die now. That’s not family.”

  Max did not know what to say. Every response sounded empty to his ears. J crossed his arms and leaned back in the seat. He stared straight ahead with a defiant scowl but did not make eye contact with Max or Sandra.

  Drummond poked his head through the side of the car. It would have been comical, but J’s words fell heavy inside Max.

  “I’d like a word with you,” Drummond said. “Outside.”

  Chapter 22

  MAX WALKED OVER TO THE FRONT OF THE CAR and sat on the hood. The metal felt hot through his jeans and more heat radiated off the car, but he didn’t want people seeing him speak to empty space next to the car, so he endured. He pulled out his phone and pressed it against his ear — at least, should any of the customers watch him, they’d see a guy talking on his phone. Observing the cars zip by on Route 64, Max waited for Drummond to say his piece.

  The ghost flew directly in front. “I had intended to bring you out here to smack some sense into you.”

  “J beat you to it.”

  “I saw. I’ll tell you this — that boy gets more appreciation from me every single day.”

  Max had a whirlpool of emotions spinning inside him — he did not need to worry about whatever Drummond’s take on all of this would be. “Anything else?”

  “You better watch your attitude. Just because I’m dead and you’re my partner doesn’t mean I can’t set you straight when necessary.”

  With an impatient tone, Max said, “I was upset, and I haven’t had much sleep the last few days. That’s all.”

  Drummond put his hands in his coat pockets and loomed over Max like he intended to interrogate a suspect. “Easy to say, but I witnessed what happened down there. You just think about this — you are only PB’s father if you’re willing to fight for him.”

  “I get it,” Max said, putting plenty of force behind the words. “Everybody thinks I’m worthless because I have emotions.”

  “Cut that out. You want to twist words around to make it all look like you’re the victim? You do it when that boy is not in trouble.”

  Max lowered the phone from his ear. “That’s just the thing. PB is not in trouble. His father is going to do a horrible thing and PB will benefit from it. I suppose you could argue he’s in moral trouble, but he’s made his choice.”

  Practically chewing his lip off, Drummond said, “Don’t make me have to become solid enough to smack you. I don’t want that kind of pain today. And while you’re busy feeling sorry for yourself, you’re not listening to me. The boy is in trouble. In fact, Sandra needs to hear this too. Get back in the car.”

  Moments later, Sandra drove toward their office. Drummond had to share the backseat with J, and Max could see that neither one was noticeably uncomfortable with the arrangement. But Max did not really care about their comfort — good or bad.

  “What did you want to say? Why is PB still in danger?”

  “While I floated above your meal — which looked mighty delicious, let me tell you — I could feel magic on Isaac Brown.”

  Sandra said, “I didn’t notice anything. Although, I was wrapped up in trying to get PB to leave Isaac. Maybe I missed it.”

  “It was subtle. It wasn’t a ward, and it wasn’t an actual spell surrounding him. It was more like the residue of a spell.”

  As Sandra took the ramp onto 52 North, which led straight into Winston-Salem, Max saw the grim expression come over her. She said, “The spell must be starting to work. They’ve already succeeded in completing two parts of the overall ceremony. Whatever it’s going to do, it’s beginning to touch Isaac Brown.”

  Max said, “What do you mean whatever it’s going to do? It’s supposed to make him rich and powerful.”

  “That’s what he thinks the spell will do,” Drummond said, “but he’s hardly a master of witchcraft, and he got his information from Madame Yan. Would you trust that woman as the source for your future?”

  Sandra said, “Whatever it’s doing, it’s starting. That’s my point.”

  “My point is that something is off. I could feel it. That magic residue surrounding him — it did not feel like a simple thing. Not like the kind of warm feeling you might get from something that is going to bring good fortune to a person.”

  J spoke up. “Does that mean PB really is in trouble?”

  “It does,” Max said. He let his gaze fall upon every person in the car. “I’m sorry for my outburst. Thank you all for helping me stay focused.”

  Drummond said, “Partner, we all want the same thing. We all are going to try to get that boy back.”

  “Well, we’ve got two days to figure it out. So you and Sandra need to work on determining what spell is actually being used. As for me — I’ve got to figure out where the next ceremony is going to take place.”

  The scowl had left J’s face as he took interest in the conversation. He said, “I might know.”

  Chapter 23

  ACCORDING TO J, the last time PB ever saw his father, he had tracked Isaac to a spot under one of the crossovers of Business 40 — an old highway cutting through Winston-Salem.

  “PB had followed his dad,” J said, so eager to tell his tale that his previous anger evaporated like boiling water. “This is after he’d already found out about what his dad was involved with, but
he didn’t tell you this part. He actually followed his dad lots of times. I guess he didn’t want to sound all desperate but that’s what happened.”

  “Business 40? That’s a long stretch of road,” Drummond said. “A lot of overpasses.”

  “Yeah, but it has to be a place where a tragedy occurred. Right?”

  Drummond snapped his fingers at Max. “Kid’s right. You should get on that.”

  Max could not help it — he laughed. After all the emotional tsunamis he’d been through, laughter felt good.

  Sandra and Drummond left to learn what they could about the spell that appeared to be surrounding Isaac Brown. Max and J drove off to the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. Being at a school reminded him that J should have gone to school that day. He made a quick call, endured a reprimand from the school secretary, and got J off the hook for not showing up to class.

  Walking across the university campus, Max said, “This is one of my favorite libraries. It once was two separate buildings and they closed up the alleyway between and turned it into this beautiful open space that we can work in.”

  “What kind of work?” J asked.

  “Researching Business 40. We’ll see if we can find any record of a terrible tragedy happening along that route through the city.”

  “Under one of the crossovers.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So if we find that, we’ll know where to find PB in two days.”

  “Exactly.”

  Max did not know what to expect from J. Few boys would look forward to spending their day stuck looking through old books. But once they entered the labyrinth of the library, it became evident that J had found a second home.

  His face lit up. His fingers trailed the rows of books in the stacks, and Max even caught him breathing in the aroma of all those pages.

  “You really like this?” Max asked.

  “This place? It’s awesome. All these books and you can go right up and take them. Read what you want. What’s not to love about that?”

  “I agree entirely. It’s just weird to find somebody who feels the way I do.”

  “Well, I am your son, right?”

  Max stumbled forward, caught himself, and squatted level with J. He put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and tried to keep his voice from cracking. “You most certainly are.”

  “Are you going to start crying again?”

  Max pulled J in for a hug. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s go get your brother back.”

  Their first step was to get some simple background on the history of the road. The state government website and Wikipedia provided enough basic information on that part.

  Essentially, after the towns of Winston and Salem merged into one back in 1913, the area grew fast. By the 1940s, traffic congestion had turned into a major problem. Winston-Salem had become the largest manufacturing hub in North Carolina thanks to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Hanes textiles. Lots of roads came into the city, but there was no simple way to cross from one side to the other.

  “Look here,” Max said, finding it strange to have somebody hear him talking to his books. Especially somebody who might respond.

  J checked out the part Max had indicated. “So from 1940 to 1954, everyone just lived with the problem?”

  “Looks like it.” Indeed, only in 1954 did the city find the money to start constructing the East-West Expressway. Two years later, the Federal Aid Highway Act was passed and when Winston-Salem took its share of that money, they decided to connect the East-West Expressway with the new Interstate 40. When finished it became the first completed highway in North Carolina.

  Since 1958, little had changed despite rising safety standards and better construction methods. In fact, Max and J learned about the infamous Hawthorne Curve. This S-curve overpass of Hawthorne Road became known for the numerous wrecks and deaths it had caused. Especially because the road’s tight design was rumored to have been ordered by Mayor Marshall Kurfees in an effort to help out his business pals from being damaged by the original path. Mayor Kurfees denied the corruption charge to his deathbed but that never stopped the rumors.

  “Is that tragedy enough?” J asked.

  “Not even close. Plus, we’re looking for a singular, individual tragedy. This was multiple times with different people.”

  Recently, the main section of the highway running through the city was closed and cut into pieces as they attempted to finally fix the traffic flow for the modern era. Once completed, the road would no longer be known as Business 40. A website contest for a new name had been conducted and the Salem Parkway would open fairly soon.

  Max jotted down some notes. From the corner of his eye, he caught J watching closely. Swallowing hard, Max had to hold back from beaming pride at J’s interest.

  “Okay, now what?” J said. “How does any of this get us closer to finding where PB is going to be?”

  “When you research, it sometimes takes slow and strange turns. You learn to go with it, but you have to remember why you started in the first place. You said it yourself — we’re searching for a tragic event. But we could have wasted hours looking in the wrong place or at the wrong time period. By getting this information, we know what years the highway existed, and that gives us a timeframe to focus on. Now we get to do the fun research.”

  J rubbed his hands together. “Cool. What’s that?”

  “The two best places we can look are newspapers from that time and old public police records. If there was a tragic murder or a suicide or any kind of weird death where the highway went under one of the old roads, it should have made it into one or both of those publications.”

  “Can I look at the police records?”

  Max chuckled. “You bet. Those are really neat. You’ll find all kinds of bizarre arrests in there.”

  Although the scope of their search had narrowed some, it was still quite wide. Construction began in 1954 and Isaac’s “death” would have been around 2011. Fifty-seven years of police records and newspaper articles. Max showed J how to run some computer searches of the archives but made sure to impress upon the boy that they might fail to find what they’re looking for with ease. In the end, they both had to go through numerous years of records — three hours’ worth.

  At one point, Max went to the restroom, and when he returned, J had disappeared. Max’s heart immediately pounded in his chest. But a breath later, he spotted J talking to a librarian. She helped him print out some records off microfiche. He raced back to Max with the warm paper to show him.

  “I think I found it. Look, look.”

  Max read over the police report. In 1982, a man identified as Timothy Newitz had been found in a pool of blood under the Cherry Street overpass. An officer’s note in the report referred to unusual circumstances. Max’s blood warmed. “I think you’re right.”

  “I know it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, right?”

  “The fact that the police are being coy about what they found suggests it might’ve been a lot worse than simply a body. That means somebody might’ve written about it in the newspapers. Thanks to you, we know exactly what day to look at — June 15, 1982. Let’s get to work.”

  Within a few minutes, they confirmed J’s discovery. In a little article buried on the eighth page of the Winston-Salem Journal, a reporter described the strange situation of Timothy Newitz. He had been found under the Cherry Street Bridge in what looked to be a suicide. However, the blood beneath him had been drawn into a circle and several disturbing symbols had been formed with the blood as well. The reporter had been unable to identify the language the symbols came from nor why Mr. Newitz would cut open his wrists while also hanging himself. The only thing missing that would have given Max a one hundred percent certainty was a photograph.

  Unable to stop, he reached over and hugged J once more. “You did it. This has got to be the place. When we get PB back, it’s going to be because of you.”

  J tried to hide his smile. “Cool. Now
what do we do?”

  Max sat back and sighed. He hated to kill the moment but saw no point in hiding the truth. “Now, we have to do the worst part of this job. We wait.”

  Chapter 24

  DINNER WAS A QUIET AFFAIR. Max, Sandra, and J ate pasta while each managed surreptitious looks at the empty chair where PB should have been. After dinner and clean up, J sequestered himself in his bedroom with a book — a basic history of Winston-Salem that he had checked out of the library. Max and Sandra exchanged what they had learned. Well, Max did — Sandra absorbed it all, but when her turn came, she only said that she neared an answer yet needed more time before she could share it.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “I have to verify a few things.”

  “Can’t you at least tell me what you think is happening? What is the spell all about?”

  “If I tell you, it’s going to spin your thoughts off in a million directions and you won’t be able to do your job properly.”

  Max tossed his arms in the air. “Everything you just said is going to spin my thoughts off in a million directions.”

  With a comforting hug, she rested her forehead against his. “Trust me.”

  And that was it. The rest of the night continued much like dinner — quiet, reflective, marked with bouts of sadness as one of them thought of PB.

  Despite J’s protests, Sandra took him to school the following morning. Max promised he would miss out on nothing — they still had to get through the entire day and wait until midnight the following day before anything would happen.

  Max could sympathize, though. The last thirty-plus hours had been filled with a strange ceremony, a kidnapping, an all-night effort to find PB, a tense lunch meeting, Max’s emotional breakdown, and the many hours of research that followed. Life had been barreling down like a runaway train, and suddenly, everything halted. There was nothing more for J or Max to do until the ceremony began.