Warner reads the letter again, feeling a bit jealous. Where is his letter? There were boxes to check that asked the types of jobs he thought he was qualified for. He had checked most of the boxes beside jobs that required a college degree. Were the people in personnel unimpressed with his application?
“I heard your daddy was in town,” Warner says, handing the letter back to Gerrick.
“Bad news travels fast, I guess,” Gerrick says.
“That’s no way to talk about your daddy. I’ve been meaning to ask you, why did you tell everybody he was dead?”
“Because he might as well have been.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“He was to me.”
Something tells Warner to keep at it, but what good will that do? “Your old man must be proud to see you getting on.”
Gerrick shrugs. “I remember meeting your daddy when I was a kid. Mr. Peletier picked me up off the ground and held me over his head. Scared the shit out of me. One time he called me a Bluff Boy. Couldn’t tell you what he meant.”
“You probably reminded him of a boy from Halifax.”
Gerrick looks puzzled as he slips the letter into his back pocket. “Pinky came by the store yesterday,” he says, a smile returning to his face.
“Looking for her sister, no doubt.”
“If she was, she didn’t tell anybody,” Gerrick says. “Soon as that girl heard she had just missed you, she was out the door. She didn’t even pay for the MoonPies she put on the counter.” Gerrick laughs. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you got trouble.”
Warner laughs, too, though he heads into the store to start his shift knowing he shouldn’t. His friend Randy has already mentioned that Warner was seen standing awfully close to Pinky in the parking lot of the Lucky Lounge the other night. If word is getting around, he ought to cool his mischief. But all he was doing with Pinky was talking.
The first weeks of classes pass in cool but pleasant fall-like weather. But later, as heavy, frigid air lingers over Montgomery during February, the term starts to drag on. At home in the evenings, Warner hardly sees Minerva. During her months of part-time work at the hospital, where she is a rehabilitation therapist, she spent her off-hours absorbed with the baby. And now she is busy studying for her Physical Therapist II certification exam. When they are not passing the baby off to one another, they rarely talk. And they are not having sex.
In early March, with a string of exams approaching, having finished a double shift at the Kwik Mart and attended a review session on campus, Warner arrives home to find Minerva and the baby asleep and his textbooks on the kitchen table. With his plate of cold pork chops on the table, he opens his Intermediate Macroeconomics textbook with a loud exhale. Despite what he’s been telling in-laws and friends, he does not particularly like this class. After reading a long section, he scans the ten questions assigned, unable to answer a single one. It looks like the answers to questions seven through ten will require extensive graphs.
Had he majored in pre-law, as his father had advised, his final months on campus would have been loaded with easy afternoon classes. He also ignored his father’s suggestion that he take a summer job in the mailroom at a private law firm. Instead he took an internship at the county courthouse. He would have been able to file court transcripts faster if he spent less time reading them, but he couldn’t help himself. Though he had quibbled with a few of the indictments, every verdict seemed right as rain. Do the crime. Do the time. Sometimes prison is a good thing.
But since the runaround he has gotten at the correctional facility in Mississippi, he has been developing a different attitude. Not only is the staff rude, but nobody there even believes he is the great-grandson of Zera Platt.
Warner hardly believes it himself. He stabs at the green beans with a fork, recalling the frustrating telephone calls he has made trying to locate Zera’s relatives in Mississippi. He started with her family, the Bradenburgs, in Sunflower River. The problem is not that there are no Bradenburgs living in northwest Mississippi. It is that there are too many—twenty-nine listings alone in the Sunflower County phonebook. He reached two people who claimed to be relatives of Zera, and both agreed to come with him to the prison. But after he asked them to bring proof of their relationship to her, neither would take his calls. His job would be so much easier if the married couple in Jackson would cooperate. They are Platts for sure. But they will not return his calls.
Warner rakes the remnants of his meal into the trash can, glancing at the clock on the stove. The Tuesday night regulars at the Lucky Lounge will probably wonder why he is absent again tonight.
On a sheet of paper he draws a set of intersecting axes. Price on one axis, quantity sold on the other. That is the easy part. He reads the question in the economics text again. But now the words blend together. After another minute, he closes the book and gets up from the table, wondering where he put the keys to the Camaro.
Warner exits the parking lot of the Lucky Lounge with Pinky on the front seat next to him. On the highway, he feels a presence behind him in the back seat of the Camaro. Yet his urge to turn around is not as strong as his interest in each approaching set of headlights. Every time he meets a car on the road, he imagines the unseen driver suspects his mischief.
Pinky, who stuttered as a child, sounds steady and assured now. She’s telling Warner about her time in California.
“Of course I’ve seen a walnut tree,” Warner says. “We have walnut trees here in Alabama, you know.”
“Not as many,” Pinky says. “In Modesto, I saw an orchard that took up more land than Woodhaven. Even if you count the colored section.”
The headlights illuminate a telephone pole riddled with small round reflectors. Nothing’s going to come of this, Warner tells himself, turning into the driveway at Pinky’s house.
After he dropped Randy off, he drove back to the lounge telling himself he just wanted one more rum and Coke. He remembers the feel of Pinky’s freckled arm as he helped her off the bar stool, and again as she got into the front seat of the Camaro. Her skin felt as soft as new grass. Just being friendly, Warner thinks now, with the car rumbling along the rocky driveway. A quick detour before the ride home.
In the dim light, Pinky looks fifteen. “Don’t see Millicent’s Dodge in the yard,” he says.
“That girl’s on the way to Opelika with that storytelling boyfriend of hers,” Pinky says with a laugh. “She won’t be back here tonight.”
Warner kills the engine, and before he realizes it he is kissing her. He undoes the top buttons on Pinky’s blouse. When the porch light comes on, he takes his hand out of her blouse. A tall cedar blocks his view of the front porch.
“It’s my daddy, Rayford, turning on the porch light,” Pinky says. “More’n likely he’s on the way to bed.”
Warner reaches back into Pinky’s blouse again. “You on anything?”
Pinky shakes her head, pressing her lips tightly. “Don’t imagine you’d have some rubbers. You being married.”
“We don’t have to do anything that might get you in trouble,” Warner says. “We can just have a little fun.”
Warner unzips his pants. Feeling Pinky’s warm mouth over his penis, he lays his head back on the car seat. He is trying not to think about Minerva, but when Pinky’s hand starts to work his penis, his thoughts begin to blur. After helping Pinky lower her jeans, he puts a hand inside her panties. The softness and warmth make him dizzy.
Kissing Pinky’s shoulder, he inhales her strong perfume. Blue Wind, she calls it. A thought causes him to lift his head quickly. Upholstery cleaner will mask the smell, but Minerva knows when a stranger has been in the car.
“What’s wrong?” Pinky asks.
“Let’s get in Rayford’s car. We could have more fun on those large seats.”
Pinky puts her hand on the door handle, looking like she is considering whether Warner is worth any more trouble. Warner has his own trepidations. He will have to get up at four o’clock if
he is to complete those last few economics problems before morning. He pushes that thought out of his mind. He kisses Pinky again. This time he is more tender, hoping Pinky realizes that, despite his half-hearted attempt to pay attention to her, he really does hope he can give her pleasure.
Colored Enough
A pleasant sprinkle of March rain hits Warner as he strolls the parking lot behind the economics department building on the campus of Cumberland College. His final midterm exam completed, he is looking forward to a weekend at the lake house owned by Minerva’s parents. To his surprise, Minerva says she is also looking forward to the trip. It will be their chance to stop ignoring each other as they have been over the last few weeks.
The next day he is unbothered that the rain looks in no hurry to let up. At a quarter to five, as he unpacks items from an overnight bag, Deedra Cummings calls.
“The trustees have approved another way to honor Etienne,” she says. “Instead of naming a lecture hall, we’re going to plant a little tree grove. Isn’t that awesome?”
“How many trees?”
“Two. Oak saplings, so they will grow mighty tall.”
Warner shifts the phone to the other ear, continuing to listen but hearing nothing of interest. “Both of Etienne’s biological parents were colored,” he says. “You’re the director of minority affairs. Shouldn’t you be working hard to make sure the college does right by him? A couple of saplings? I don’t believe that’s an adequate honor.”
“Well, when I told the vice-provost that Etienne has decided to identify as a colored man—”
“Decided?”
“Now, listen, young man. I admit I was not that fond of Etienne. But I am serious about my job of helping minority students.”
“But you are doing a poor job.”
Deedra’s voice gets quieter. “Maybe you should have kept your mouth shut about your father being a colored man.”
“That’s odd talk coming from someone in your position.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean shouldn’t you be encouraging white folks down here in Alabama to stop denying their heritage? Wouldn’t that make your job easier? Maybe some of the so-called white trustees are colored. In any event, I may have to contact a lawyer.”
“What good will that do?”
“I’ll let you know after I talk to one. I’ve already got a lead on one with the NAACP.”
“Calm down, young man. Remember, this is Alabama. I’ve been living here my whole life.”
“So have I.”
“But not as a colored person.”
“One day the trustees want to honor my father,” Warner says, “the next day they don’t. The lawyer will at least make them explain the slight to my family. I’m sure Jocelyn will want that, too.”
“Listen, Warner.”
“Oh, so now you know my name?”
The line is quiet for a long while. When Deedra resumes, her voice has cooled, almost to a soothing whisper, as she tells Warner a few things about her experiences at the college. “I have been here a long time,” she says. “Any lawyer you get will not be able to change what the white trustees of the college decide.”
Warner hangs up, but it takes several hours before he starts to calm down. Why was he so angry, he wonders as he watches the evening news. Lying in bed later, he considers the tone in Deedra’s voice. She has never sounded like that in his presence. There was a softness to her voice that now soothes his brain. Maybe she really is trying to help.
Despite what he has said on the phone, he does not yet know an NAACP lawyer. But the conversation with Deedra has reignited his desire to ask Gerrick for the name of the one helping Sibelus fight Platinum Paper. A lawyer could also help with any problems that come up after he has visited his great-grandmother Zera.
“Why do you need to talk to my lawyer?” Gerrick asks a few days later at the Kwik Mart.
Warner has come to the front corner of the building, where Gerrick is using the air pump to inflate a leaky tire on his Monte Carlo. “A distant relative is in some nasty trouble with the prison authorities in Mississippi,” he says. “I figure the NAACP helps the down-and-out.”
“They help the colored down-and-out.”
Gerrick takes a business card out of his wallet. “You could call her,” he says, handing the card to Warner. “But I doubt she’ll help a white man.”
Warner takes the card, surprised that one of the clerks has not said anything to Gerrick about him being colored. But then none of the clerks know Gerrick that well. He could tell him. Well, maybe at a later date.
Can we reverse the college’s decision concerning your father’s commemoration?” the lawyer from the NAACP says, when Warner calls. “Can we do that? Perhaps. Am I optimistic though? Not too much.”
“But will you at least contact them to try?”
“Of course. I’ll be happy to put in a call to the college.”
Warner talks to the lawyer from a phone booth at the Plaza. Looking out through the murky glass windows, he feels uneasy about the people that pass on the covered sidewalk. They all seem lost in their own troubles.
“I guess it’s premature to talk about my great-grandmother,” Warner says. “Being that I haven’t met her yet.”
“That’s correct,” the lawyer says. “Moreover, whatever legal issues come up with your great-grandmother’s incarceration are best handled by our sister office in Mississippi. I’ll give you the telephone number.”
The following week, inside a plain brick building several blocks from the central business district in Jackson, an elderly man with graying blond hair and blue eyes welcomes Warner. “Before you ask,” the director of the NAACP office says, “yes, indeed, I am a colored man. Very nice to meet you, young man.”
What kind of situation is this? Warner thinks, taking a seat in the office. Whatever it is, it is one he has never been in before. Why has the man just announced right off that he is colored? Is there some unspoken understanding among people like the two of them, men without the slightest features that anyone would consider colored? When did this man learn the news about himself? Has he known his entire life? All these questions flood Warner’s mind.
The director seems eager to talk about Zera Platt. But when he does, all he offers is a long list of barriers to getting Warner’s great-grandmother out of prison. The warm optimism that grew in Warner on the long four-hour drive from Montgomery cools with every word he hears. But he tells the director that he has no intention of giving up.
When the meeting ends, the director gives Warner a three-by-five card with the name of a lawyer in Jackson. Then the director shows Warner several faded mimeographed letters.
“Look here,” the director says, pointing to a faint signature at the bottom of one letter. “Even the Reverend Doctor couldn’t get Zera paroled.”
From the NAACP offices, Warner takes a short drive to a house on Farish Street. On a brick patio at the rear of the house, the man who admits to being a relative of Zera Platt’s does not look pleased that his wife has extended an invitation for Warner to visit.
Bald and heavy and sweating in a green apron that says KISS THE CHEF, Icarus Platt waits until the chicken thighs he is tending to on the charcoal grill are sizzling to his satisfaction before he picks up the letter Warner has placed on the small table near the grill.
“Every decade or so, some man or other wants to write a story about Zera,” Icarus says, opening the folded letter. “And now you’re here. What are you writing?”
“I’m not a reporter,” Warner says. “I’m family.”
“Why don’t you visit her then?”
“I’ve tried,” Warner says. “But the folks at the correctional facility won’t approve my visitation request. The problem is that my father, Etienne, was adopted. That and the fact that he was born in Canada. The paper trail, you know?”
One of the newspaper articles Warner read on the microfiche machine in the college library said Icarus’s eyebrows were cin
namon red. Today his brows are steely gray. The letter he holds is the one that Zera Platt wrote to her in-laws in Canada back in 1923, asking them to take in her son, Omar. Icarus holds the pages at arm’s length, his chin jutted.
“I’m amazed at what calm words Zera wrote,” Icarus says and places the letter back into the envelope, “especially knowing any minute she might have a rope thrown around her neck. She must have been quite a young gal.”
“I imagine she still is quite a gal,” Warner says.
“Her brother-in-law, Thomas Platt, was the closest relative I had up in Canada—he and Chevy Platt. There was a great-aunt up there, too, somewhere. They are all dead, of course. All the family I had heard talk of in Canada are dead. There is not a soul down here in Mississippi who knew Zera well.”
Icarus’s wife, Gussie, comes out of the back door. Her short, gray Afro is half hidden beneath a floppy hat. The features of Gussie’s face suggest to Warner that she is colored. But as with her husband, her skin is as pale as Warner’s. “I don’t know why they keep putting my husband’s name in the damn papers,” she barked at him the first time he talked to her on the telephone. “Icarus has never had anything to do with Zera Platt and he never will.” Warner is glad that he wore her down.
“Y’all go ahead and eat,” Gussie says, placing a box of assorted doughnuts on the patio table. “Don’t wait on us.”
Gussie says she needs to pick up their grandson at tennis practice. Unlike the hard face she wears out here, in the living room she was cordial as she showed Warner magazine covers with pictures of their grandson. Last year, she said, he reached the quarterfinals of the US Open. At the table, Warner spoons potato salad from a plastic tub onto a plate, doubting that Gussie will return in time for him to meet the young man.
Warner bites into a chicken thigh, feeling the warm smoky juices coat his tongue. It has been a long haul from that first phone call to this meal. Minerva believes this visit will be another waste of time. She also says perhaps it is premature to talk about getting Zera paroled. Who said anything about getting Zera paroled? he reminded her. He just wants to visit the woman.
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