Africaville

by Jeffrey Colvin

  “I’ve been moved by the affidavits of three former members of the New Confederates, who swear that Zera Platt was not on the pier when the man guarding the houseboat drowned,” the governor told the group of reporters that accosted him several weeks ago as he was leaving the state capitol building in Jackson. “I also believe that she had no knowledge of the bomb that police found on the former governor’s houseboat. I have not yet made up my mind about the pardon. But rest assured I will terminate my days as governor of the great state of Mississippi with my conscience clear about the matter of Zera Platt.”

  The next day—Tuesday, April 14—the governor is due to fly to Washington, DC, to serve out the eighteen months remaining in the term of Mississippi’s recently deceased senior senator. What departing action will leave the governor with a clear conscience? Warner wonders, as he drives off the rental car lot at the airport. Will he leave office pleased about signing Zera’s pardon? Or will he depart satisfied about deciding to leave her to spend her last days in prison?

  The most prominent voice in the chorus of politicians urging the governor to pardon Zera is Mississippi’s newest black congressman, Eldridge Littlejohn. “I never thought I’d get another meeting with you,” Warner tells Eldridge in the wood-paneled office in the federal building as he arrives for his 10:15 a.m. appointment. “Especially now that you’re a big-time congressman.”

  Eldridge sits at the desk, where a young aide arranges folders sent over by the pro bono attorneys now handling Zera’s case—the third firm to take up the case since Eldridge’s former firm bowed out. His muscular face is still youthful, though his sideburns are tinged with gray. “I wish we could have had this meeting sooner,” he says, opening one of the folders. “But I understand you don’t get down here too often now that you’ve moved up to Vermont. I trust the family is doing well.”

  Warner nods, feeling the chill in his legs, stiff from the walk from the parking lot through the cold April rain. Usually he is eager to relay news about his daughter, who was up in Burlington last month during school break. If pressed he might even admit that his brain is still drunk with the news that his ex-wife, Minerva, is having a baby with the man from Crenshaw County. But today he isn’t interested in making small talk with this man who once made plenty of tall promises. Watching Eldridge trying to decide which document he wants to examine first, Warner feels a resurrection of the anger that racked his body years ago when a legal assistant called to say Eldridge was passing Zera’s case on to a younger associate. Letters asking State Representative Littlejohn and later State Senator Littlejohn to assist with Zera’s parole case were answered with form letters saying the office was looking into the matter. What a shock to get a telephone call several days ago saying the congressman wanted to meet. But with Zera in the hospital again, Warner did not come to talk about anything but her. Watching the congressman struggle to make sense of the papers on his desk, Warner wonders how serious Eldridge is about helping now. Why does Eldridge look confused? Hasn’t he already reacquainted himself with the case?

  “Any word from the grandnephew, the tennis boy?” Eldridge asks, examining a document.

  “He’s playing in a tournament somewhere in Europe,” Warner says. “He can’t get away. He says he will help Zera financially.”

  “She won’t need his money if she doesn’t get released. Can we call the boy?”

  “I have already,” Warner says. “You must have a copy of the letter he sent to the governor.”

  Eldridge shakes his head. “A letter? That’s the best he can do? He has been a disappointment.”

  “Zera has other supporters,” Warner says. “Half the congregation from the church in Sunflower is willing to drive down to speak on her behalf. Members of the city council here in Jackson have been calling the governor about her. And now you are on the case.”

  Eldridge’s face shows a bit of pride as the aide directs his attention to a note sitting on the desk. “I expect the governor will return my telephone call soon,” Eldridge says, picking up the note. “Who knows, he may call while we are sitting here.”

  Eldridge frowns as he studies the words written on the tab of another folder. “I thought we settled the matter with Zera’s burial plot years ago,” he says. “Don’t tell me the cemetery owner has put another body in Zera’s plot.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Warner says. “After we got the notice that the plot was being sold, we fought it. But we got whupped. The entire cemetery’s full now.”

  “Is the occupant of the plot at least a deceased relative of Zera’s?”

  “Not a close one. A cousin by marriage, I believe.”

  “Have you told Zera yet?”

  “I want to see if it is possible to get her plot returned to her. Can we sue?”

  “Evicting a body from a plot’s a tall mountain to climb. I would not be optimistic.” Eldridge drops the folder back onto the desk, shaking his head. “I advise you not to tell her just yet. We don’t want to send her into a tailspin. Better to wait until we get her released to discuss this matter.”

  Eldridge sits back in the chair with a long exhale. “I wish I’d known sooner about the new trouble with the burial plot.”

  “I left a bucketload of telephone messages for you,” Warner says. “Nobody in your office ever called me back. I don’t fault you for that. You had work to do, especially those campaigns to run.”

  Eldridge shrugs then hands Warner a page with a list of names. “Plenty of constituents in Jackson are willing to talk with the governor on Zera’s behalf. Anybody on the list worthy?”

  Warner scans the list, disappointed that his great-uncle Icarus Platt and Icarus’s wife, Gussie, are not still alive. He had come to like them.

  “Every time Zera is hospitalized, one of these imposters shows up at the hospital, telling lies to reporters,” Warner says. “Zera doesn’t know a single name here. And none of these clowns knows Zera.”

  Eldridge lifts a yellow sticky note off another document in the folder. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Is this really a letter from Sherry Gobe?”

  “The deputy warden herself. She’s retired now.”

  “Still, I never thought I’d see the day that woman would write something nice about Zera.”

  “My great-grandmother’s gone a near decade without an incident at the prison.”

  “That’s bankable conduct when it comes to consideration for clemency.”

  “The big one this time,” Warner says. “A full pardon.”

  When the aide tries to explain the contents of another folder, Eldridge silences her with a wave of his hand. The confusion and tentativeness he displayed earlier have disappeared. He pores over the documents in the folder, chewing the end of a pen, his gaze focused as it used to be when he was an up-and-coming young partner.

  “Clemency petitions are usually typed,” Eldridge says. “But the governor wants a handwritten document from Zera. He says he wants to read Zera’s own words.”

  “Something he can show the newspapers, too, no doubt.”

  Eldridge holds up the single page, which is blank on the backside. “A simple but powerful document. Lot of clean white space at the bottom, so Zera can write plenty.”

  After Eldridge hands over the form and a few other documents he wants Warner to take to the hospital, he escorts Warner through the reception area, gesturing grandly as he used to when he was a hotshot entertainment lawyer bolstering his community credentials with pro bono work. His most important compatriots back then were the head of the local NAACP, several prominent black businessmen, two members of the city council, and too many well-known Mississippi activists to count. And he bragged with the most fervor about the dozen or so law students he had recruited to work for Zera’s release. “We are the New New Confederates,” he had said during one of Warner’s previous visits. “All of us are working hard to do what’s right. Not just for Zera. For all the wrongly convicted.”

  “It will be a struggle to get her to write an
ything,” Warner tells Eldridge while they wait for the elevator doors to open.

  “Surely you can motivate her to write a sentence or two.”

  “I hope I can. But you know Zera.”

  Back then, Warner tells himself as he reaches the second floor of the Jackson City Hospital and hands his driver’s license to the uniformed state guard seated by the elevator, Eldridge and his fellow New New Confederates proved to be a lot of bluster. Their previous effort was a bust. The question is, will Eldridge and his cohorts succeed this time? Maybe. As in the past, their success will depend on Zera.

  “Did you hear me, Great-granny?” Warner says from the doorway of the hospital room. “I was saying it’s good to see you.”

  “I think they heard you in Tennessee,” Zera says. She sits in a wheelchair on the other side of the room, looking out the window. “Why all the shouting?” she asks as Warner approaches. “Nothing’s wrong with my hearing.”

  When Warner reaches her, Zera points at the window. “See the dirt daubers’ nest on the wall out there?” she says.

  “Afraid I don’t.”

  “Right over there below the window ledge. A mother wasp works fast as slick lightning to build a home for her eggs. Of course, I doubt there are any eggs in the home now. That nest looks abandoned.”

  Warner leans toward the window, still unable to see the nest. But, then, the bars on the window distract him. After a two-week hospital stay, Zera sounds like her old stubborn self. He hopes that another health scare has gotten her to consider the chance she has for freedom. By the time another governor sympathetic to her case sits in the state mansion, she may not be alive to benefit.

  “Are you happy that you are being discharged today, Great-granny?”

  “Not really. The iced tea is better here at the hospital.”

  “They do not serve iced tea to patients.”

  “They do to an old woman who asks nicely.”

  “I’ve been told we’ve got a bit of time before your discharge paperwork is done. What say we take a gander at some of the things I brought.”

  Zera frowns. “Papers?”

  “We’ll get to those. First I want to show you a few pictures. I’ll lay them out over on the bed.”

  Warner unlocks the tires on Zera’s wheelchair and pushes her toward the bed under the eye of the guard now seated in a chair by the doorway. That is another sight that should make Zera eager for freedom. He has heard enough now from her to understand some of her pain. She blames herself for her son dying up north, where she sent him after her foolish mistake. She probably also blames herself for the fact that her husband, Matthew, was killed in prison. But there are reasonable periods of purgatory after which a person has atoned for their mistakes. Even the Mississippi governor recognizes that.

  At the bed Warner unzips a laptop computer case, the makeshift briefcase he uses to carry Zera’s documents. “That is a lot of looking,” Zera says as he takes out a stack of pictures.

  “It would have been taller,” Warner says. “But I rushed out of the house first thing this morning for my flight and forgot a whole other stack. You’ve already seen enough pictures of my girlfriend, but I hate that I forgot the new pictures I had of Jennifer.”

  Warner places two pictures on the bed. One is a wide shot of a section of the cemetery in Jackson where the Platt family is buried. The other is of a single burial plot. The name on the headstone is Matthew Ornell Platt.

  Zera leans over the bed and stares a long time at the picture of the headstone. “Matthew had not been dead but a few years before his son left this earth, too,” she says. “I’d like to believe father and son are now together in heaven.”

  “I’ve got more pictures,” Warner says. “But first I’d better tell you that I’ve got some not-so-good news about your cemetery plot here in Jackson.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “They’ve put another family in there.”

  Zera considers the news a moment, her fingers pinching the thin cotton of her drab, checkered dress. “I guess that means I have no need to worry about where I will lie.”

  Warner hands Zera another photograph. “There may be room in the cemetery where this woman is resting. Take a look.”

  Three lines are carved on the face of the tombstone in the picture:

  Patience Frances Bradenburg

  Faithful wife of Floyd Aldolphus Bradenburg

  Mother of Zera Josephina Bradenburg

  Warner detects a slight tightening around the corners of Zera’s gray eyes. Is that pain? As she mumbles a few low, unintelligible words, he notices that the guard has left the room and gone into the hallway. On his return, the guard hands Warner a note.

  “The congressman wants to see me again,” Warner says, reaching for his bag. “When I return, I have a few more pictures you definitely need to see.”

  “Your great-granny is happy to look at pictures,” Zera says. “But tell the congressman not to send me any more paperwork for a pardon. I am still not inclined to sign any.”

  Eldridge does not get up to greet Warner when he enters. He remains seated at his desk, playing with his necktie.

  “What’s the matter?” Warner asks, taking a seat. “Has something come up?”

  “The governor wants to meet with Zera,” Eldridge says.

  “When?”

  “Before she leaves the hospital. Has she started to write the pardon request?”

  Warner shakes his head. “I was getting ready to show it to her when I got your note asking me to come back here. I will get her working on it when I go back. I hope she agrees to meet with the governor.”

  Eldridge hands the aide a note and she rushes out of the room.

  “I’ll bet you noticed those state guards strutting the hallway at the hospital,” he tells Warner. “Those Mississippi boys will sit Zera in front of the governor in shackles if need be.”

  “She cannot refuse to see the governor,” Warner says, “but she can refuse to fill out the papers that will allow her to accept a pardon. That is messed up.”

  “Don’t look at me. I’m no longer a lawyer.”

  “But you are a lawmaker.”

  Eldridge rises and closes the door. When he returns to his desk, he takes a seat on the front edge. “The head of clinical psychology at the hospital is a supporter of mine. A few phone calls and—”

  “I do not want to go there again,” Warner says. “I’m not about to declare Zera incompetent.”

  “Nobody would fault you.”

  “Zera would.”

  “Not after she’s inhaled a lungful of freedom.”

  “If I ever gave you the impression that I wanted to force Zera to do something she doesn’t want to do, it was probably because I was angry with her.”

  Eldridge checks his watch. “The governor finishes his meeting at the statehouse at four. Then he will head over to the hospital.”

  The aide returns and hands Eldridge a document. “You know, after this brief stint in the Senate, the governor plans to retire,” he says. “I suppose dreaming about lounging on the porch of his beach house has made him soft. He no longer cares if Zera handwrites her clemency request.” Eldridge holds up a typed form. “The governor will not question the paragraphs we have written on her behalf saying why she wants to be pardoned. But the man wants some political cover, if only on the temporary. There will be no deal if Zera does not sign.”

  “That’s all she has to do?”

  Eldridge nods. “Will she?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Work on her. Maybe this long hospital stay has made her more cooperative.”

  “You mean more compliant?”

  Eldridge circles the desk and returns to his chair. “Your great-grandmother is healthy now,” he says. “But with every passing day her chances of staying well enough to enjoy any freedom will get slimmer and slimmer. That is a bit of logic for you and Zera to chew on.”

  Warner hoped that the short walk from the federal building back
to the hospital might clear his head. But the chilly drizzle that seeps through his thin jacket and corduroy slacks disturbs his thoughts. Perhaps this journey south is yet another folly.

  He enters the hospital room intending to get right to the paperwork. But maybe it would be best to first show Zera two more photographs.

  Zera studies the first photograph with a tight mouth and tense brow, as if both curious and fearful. And for the first time since he began visiting her, he imagines he can tell what she might have looked like as an inquisitive young woman.

  The name on this tombstone is Omar Jedediah Platt.

  After what seems like several minutes Zera exhales a long breath of air. “My mother-in-law gave my son his middle name to honor Omar’s grandfather,” she says, her eyes still on the photograph. “That man was one of the first colored congressmen to walk the halls of the Capitol. All the Platts had similar aspirations for Omar.”

  Zera seems reluctant to hand the picture back to Warner. “You’ve been hauling yourself around visiting cemeteries in Jackson, up in Sunflower, and way up there in Halifax,” she says. “What will you do with yourself when I am dead and gone?”

  “Let’s not talk about anybody dying.”

  “If you didn’t want to talk about dying, why did you bring me pictures of tombstones?”

  Warner sits down on the bed. “There’s a space in the cemetery in Sunflower,” he says. “I’ve been told there is one plot that can fit two family members.”

  “There is just one of me,” Zera says. “I don’t need a plot big enough for two.”

  “You will if we need a place for Granddaddy Omar’s remains.”

  “Stop your foolishness, boy. My son is buried up there in Canada.”

  A state guard comes to the doorway and waves to Warner. “He’s telling us that the governor has left the statehouse,” Warner says. “He’ll be here directly.”

  “Coming here?” Zera says. “Why?”

  “He wants to meet with you,” Warner says. “Decide if he wants to help you get released. He says he will help but only if you ask to be released.”