by Lewis Shiner
“Okay,” Bishop said. “Just make sure he keeps a lid on it.”
Michael dug out his sketchbook and drew the entire wrist. Since he was there, Michael sketched the face as well.
“I’m due in court in half an hour,” Bishop said. “Let me walk you out.”
They walked together to the gate. “You had a chance to talk to your old man again?” Bishop asked.
“I’m thinking on it.”
Bishop nodded. “Call me on the cell if you find out anything about that symbol.”
“I will.”
He got in an unmarked gray Crown Victoria, identical to a handful of others for sale on the lot, and drove away. Michael got in his own car and headed for Durham on I-40, intending to fax the drawing to Roger from his hotel. Instead he found himself taking the Durham Freeway cutoff toward the Hayti Heritage Center.
Don’t do this, he thought, but he did it anyway.
To his disappointment, Charles was at the desk again. “Is Ms. Franklin in?” Michael asked.
Charles picked up the phone and punched a two-digit extension. “Your voodoo friend is here again,” he said. Charles didn’t answer her either, just hung up and said, “I’ll walk you down.”
Self-consciousness attacked Michael on his way down the stairs. Was his pulse racing? Would he give away his nervousness by not being able to catch his breath?
When they got to Denise’s office, it was clear she was nervous too. She didn’t seem to want to look at him. “Come in,” she said. “Sit down.”
“That’s okay,” Michael said. “I won’t take much of your time.” He got out his sketchbook and held it closed in his left hand. “They found something at the crime scene. It’s a tattoo on the dead man’s hand.”
“Is that a drawing of it?” Denise nodded to the sketchbook.
Michael saw that Charles was lurking by the doorway. “This has to be in absolute confidence,” he said. “If this gets out, the cops won’t trust me again.”
“I won’t talk about it,” Denise said.
She looked at Charles, who said, “Yeah, okay, whatever.”
Michael laid the sketch on the desktop. Denise looked up at him. “You drew this? It’s really powerful.”
He felt his face heat up. “Thanks,” he said. “Have you ever seen that symbol before?”
“No, sorry,” she said. “It looks like it could be African, maybe. How about you, Charles? It looks like it’s ringing a few bells for you.”
Charles did look nervous. “No, I…at first, I thought it was something else.”
“What did you think it was?” Michael asked.
“I don’t know, a gang thing, maybe. There was a lot of gang stuff going on when I was in high school.”
“You were in a gang?” Michael said.
“No, no, I…my sister dated a guy in the Bloods for a while, they would be around the house. They used to give me a hard time.”
Denise came to his rescue. “You might take this to Dr. Donald Harriman at UNC. He teaches a course on African Myth and Religion. He’s helped us here from time to time.”
Michael was still watching Charles. Charles’s face lit with a flash of the same buried rage Michael had seen the day before. “You don’t like that idea?” Michael asked him.
“Dr. Harriman is a busy man,” Charles said. “He doesn’t have time for wild goose chases. I’m sure the police have their own sources for this kind of thing.”
“You’re probably right,” Michael said. “I should go.” He reached for the sketchbook, but Denise stopped his hand.
“Hang on. Charles, will you give us a second?”
Charles walked out. Denise suddenly seemed to realize where her hand was and took it away. “Can I look?” she said, pointing at the sketchbook. Before he could stop her, she had flipped to the drawing of her own face, the sketchbook still lying on the desk between them. Michael felt himself blush again.
“You didn’t happen to call my cell phone last night, did you?” she asked. “I heard it ring around nine, but there was no message.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got a teenage son. His father is still…a part of things. That’s what I meant by complicated. We don’t live together, but sometimes we do things together, for Rachid’s sake. Last night he was over for dinner.”
“Are you divorced?”
“Legally separated. We never went through the divorce. It’s been ten years.”
“Wow.”
“His father has lived with other women. I’ve had some relationships, nothing very serious. They tended to happen when Rachid was with his father or at school or at camp or something.”
“How old is Rachid?”
“He’ll be sixteen in December.”
“Isn’t it about time you had a life of your own?”
“People always tell me that. I have a life. I have my work, I read a lot of history, I go to art museums. Having a life doesn’t mean I have to have a man in it.”
Though gentle, the rebuke was clear. “It’s none of my business,” Michael said, hoping she might contradict him.
Instead she looked down at the drawing. “Do you really think I look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Beautiful,” she said, and looked up at him.
They were standing on opposite sides of the desk. She was leaning forward, and Michael saw that if he leaned forward also it would be possible to kiss her. “Yes,” he said. The notion, crazy as it was, lodged in his brain. He caught himself looking at her full lips.
She turned away. “I don’t know what’s eating Charles,” she said. “He’s hinted at this troubled youth business before, not that I see why that matters. You put two people through the same set of circumstances and one is going to be fine and the other is going to be angry all the time. I love to travel because I spent my whole life in one apartment in Queens, whereas Rachid’s father hates to travel because he never traveled as a kid. Am I talking too much?”
“You already know I’m no good at this,” Michael said. “Do you want to have dinner with me or not?”
“Yes,” she said, and that seemed, finally, to calm her. She sat down and said, “I worry that you’ll get frustrated with me. Trying to deal with my schedule.”
“What’s your next opening?”
“Saturday night. Is that possible?”
“It’s fine.”
“Call me tomorrow and we’ll figure out the details. All right?”
“All right,” he said, and gathered up his sketchbook.
“You’re a wonderful artist,” she said. “Is that what you do for a living?”
“Would it freak you out if I told you I draw comics?”
“No. And Rachid would probably go out of his mind.”
“I’d like to meet him.”
“Maybe. For now, you need to take it very easy, Michael. Any minute I might come to my senses and start asking what the hell I’m doing.”
“Okay,” Michael said. “I wouldn’t want that to happen.”
“Did you want Dr. Harriman’s number?”
“Yes, please.”
When she gave it to him their hands did a brief pas de deux—him accepting the paper, transferring it to his left hand, then taking hers again for a quick squeeze. “Thanks,” he said.
“Talk to you soon.”
Not even the sullen look on Charles’s face could shake Michael’s good mood as he all but danced out the door.
*
At the hotel office, he copied the symbol onto a blank sheet of copy paper, scrawled some question marks underneath, signed it, and fed it into the office’s fax machine. He dialed Roger’s fax number from memory.
Roger called half an hour later.
“It’s called the Four Moments of the Sun,” Roger said. “Technically it’s a cosmogram, a picture of the way the universe works. The horizontal line divides the land of the living, above, from the land of the dead. The vertical line shows the link between the living and the d
ead. The four smaller circles represent the position of the sun at dawn, noon, sunset, and midnight. You’ll note that at midnight, the sun is in the underworld. It’s about the cycle of life, y’see—as the sun moves freely from the land of the living to the land of the dead, so our spirits die and are then reborn.”
“Where’s it come from?”
“It’s from the Kongo culture, that’s Kongo with a ‘K,’ from West Africa. You’ll find variants in Cuba and Brazil. And in Haiti.”
“Haiti.”
“Sure. Those vévés that you did in number 17, a lot of them were descendents of cosmograms like this one. The ones based on cross shapes belong to Legba, god of the crossroads, where the world meets the realm of the lwa. Same deal, basically. So where did you find this?”
Michael found himself suddenly reluctant to get Roger fully engaged. “It’s connected with this Hayti business, you know, that neighborhood my father knocked down.”
“Connected how?”
“It was at the Hayti Heritage Center.” That was more or less true. “It gave me a spooky feeling.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“I don’t know, Roger. I’m trying to work on Luna and figure out my own history and deal with my father dying and I’m not even sure what’s happening here myself.”
“All right, then. Keep in mind that I can fly out there. You only have to say the word.”
“Not necessary. I promise I’ll let you know if that changes.”
“All right. You did say you were working?”
He reassured Roger and then called Bishop. He heard the keyboard rattle in the background as Bishop took notes. At the end Michael said, “I didn’t tell him what it was about.”
“That’s good, Michael. You’ve been a big help.”
Michael had hoped for more. “Any time,” he said.
He was too restless to work and haunted by the symbol on the dead man’s wrist. Rather than risk a brushoff over the phone, he decided to confront Harriman in person. He used the Web on the slow dial-up connection in his room to locate Harriman in the African and Afro-American Studies Department at UNC, then called the department and got his office hours. By the time Michael ate lunch and drove to Chapel Hill, Harriman would be in.
*
Harriman’s office was in the Battle Building, facing the Franklin Street campus drag. Michael parked in a lot behind the retail strip. There seemed to be an excess of beautiful girls crowding the sidewalks, full of laughter and dramatic gestures. Some had broken out their fall clothes, and he loved the way the ribbed sweaters clung to their bodies, the exaggerated topographical relief of the widening and converging lines.
He took the stairs to the second floor and found Harriman’s office easily enough. The door was open an inch or so, and he heard voices inside. He took out his sketchbook and sat on the floor in the hallway, working up some minor background characters for the Luna script.
Fifteen minutes later a kid with a backpack came out, and Michael got up and stuck his head in the door. “Dr. Harriman?”
Harriman was what Roger would call portly, not fat so much as big all over. He looked to be in his fifties, with short, receding wiry hair, aviator-style bifocals, and a massive jaw. His skin was medium brown and his suit had an understated elegance that said money to Michael. His look was not friendly.
“I’m sorry,” Harriman said, “did you have an appointment?”
“No, sir,” Michael said. “I’m not a student.”
“Does that absolve you from the basic social niceties?”
“No, sir. I have a very quick question and I wondered if I might—”
“Impose? Take advantage? Intrude?”
“Something like that, yes, sir.”
“All right. I suppose we should reward your honesty, if not your methods. Come in.”
The office was dimly lit. Harriman had softened the academic sterility with an antique-looking rug over the industrial carpeting, a standing lamp, and three well-ordered oak bookcases. Red lights glowed on a rack-mounted stereo in the far corner.
A whiteboard to Michael’s left, between the door and Harriman’s desk, was clean enough to glisten. “May I?” Michael asked.
Harriman nodded, and Michael used a red marker to draw the symbol from the tattoo. “Have you ever seen this before?” he asked.
“Possibly.” His expression was impossible to read. “Where did you find this?”
Michael had an answer ready. “I’m an artist, and I wanted to use it in one of my drawings. I remember seeing it in something I read, but now I can’t remember where.”
“What kind of artist?”
If you ever have to lie, Michael’s mother had told him, make it as small as possible and surround it with the truth. “I draw comics.”
“What, like Superman?”
“I did a Batman graphic novel, called Sand Castles.”
“You’re Michael Cooper?”
Michael nodded, startled.
“Indeed,” Harriman said. “I enjoy Roger Fornbee’s work. I thought Sand Castles had elements of a genuine postcolonial cultural critique.”
“I’m sure it did. Roger reads a lot.”
“And you were thinking of using this symbol in what way?”
“I was looking for something kind of mysterious and exotic that somebody might use, I don’t know, on a piece of jewelry. Or a tattoo, maybe.” Again, no discernible reaction. “I didn’t want to use it if it had a meaning that was inappropriate, or offensive. The way a swastika would be, you know?”
“Why didn’t you ask your associate, Mr. Fornbee?”
“It’s for somebody else. He’s a bit jealous when I have work overdue for him and I take on a side project.”
“And how did you come by my name?”
“Denise Franklin at the Hayti Heritage Center mentioned you.”
“Ah. The redoubtable Ms. Franklin. So you want to understand the semiotics of this symbol.”
“I don’t know. Is that what I want?”
“Semiotics studies the relationship between a sign and what it conveys. Let me see if I can find this one.”
Harriman rolled his chair backward and plucked a book from one of the shelves. Then he rolled forward, set the spine of the book on the desk, and opened it a third of the way in. He turned the pages as if he had white gloves on and the book was a crumbling antique, which it clearly was not.
“Ah,” he said. He handed the open book to Michael. “Does that look like what you remember?”
It was almost the same drawing, except that the central circle was flattened into an oval along the horizon line, and counterclockwise arrows pointed from one solar disk to the next. The caption read, “Yowa: the Kongo sign of cosmos and the continuity of human life.” Holding his place with one finger, Michael checked the title: Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson.
He handed Harriman the book. “That looks like it. Maybe I saw it in this book. I do a lot of research—it’s hard to keep track.”
“A luxury those of us in the academy don’t have. We must keep track of everything.” He glanced again at the text. “Yes, I remember now. This is a very fundamental symbol. It shows up throughout the Diaspora.”
“Diaspora?”
“A polite word for the spread of African peoples across the Atlantic. On slave ships.”
It was all Michael could do not to look away from Harriman’s stare. “So,” Michael said. “If I had this symbol on, say, a T-shirt, what would it say about me?”
“It might say any number of things. The cross at the center is not Christian; it signifies the intersection of the earthly and divine realms. Like the crossroads where the Devil tuned Robert Johnson’s guitar. It’s a profoundly dangerous place.” Michael got the stare again, and then, finally, Harriman looked down at the book. “It’s known as the Sign of the Four Moments of the Sun. According to Thompson, God is above, the dead below, water in between.” Harriman closed the book. “It coul
d be as simple as saying that the wearer is knowledgeable about life and death and the order of things in the universe. Does that help?”
It was an invitation to go, and Michael was happy to take it. Things were starting to feel like he was out in the ocean and the bottom was not where he’d thought it was. He stood up. “Yes, actually, yes, it helps a lot. Thanks.”
Harriman offered his hand and Michael took it. The gesture was slow, nearly ominous.
As he turned to go, Harriman said, “A word of caution.”
“Yes?”
“Symbols are powerful things. You might be better off making something up.”
“Is that more semiotics?”
“Call it common sense.”
*
It was a relief to be outside in the cool air. Nice that Harriman knew Sand Castles, but otherwise Michael hadn’t learned much. It left him restless, needing more.
He drove north out of Chapel Hill and through the booming, gentrified southwest corner of Durham, past Duke and the VA hospital and east into downtown. He parked behind the 1970s-style precast building that housed the main library, with its thrusting columns and architectural optimism.
A thin, older woman with a wild thatch of white hair showed him to the index for the Durham Herald-Sun and gave him quick instructions on using the microfilm reader. It took only a minute to find what he wanted in the index and locate the reel of film in a gray file drawer. The story was on the front page of the local news section for Thursday, September 5, 1974. Mitchell Edward Antree of Durham, 49, was pronounced dead early the previous morning at the site of a one-car accident near downtown.
Michael printed out the story, including the jump page, and took it over to a table to read the whole thing.
There was a photo, from the mid-sixtiess, to judge by the clothes. Antree was handsome, with short black hair, black framed glasses, and a boyish smile. His shirt was a dark solid color, and his narrow tie seemed to sparkle.
It was ironic, the story noted, that Antree died on the East-West Freeway when his One Tree Construction firm had been one of the major contractors involved in that stretch of the road. The East-West Freeway, Michael remembered, was the original name for the Durham Freeway. Even the state highway number, 147, had come later.