by Daniel Black
“Nice to meet you, sir!” she screeched.
“Oh, please, ma’am, have your seat.”
“I thank you kindly.”
“How can we help you?”
She nodded to the young man. “I told him my business here. Came to get my son.”
The lieutenant licked his lips. “Um … ma’am … that bail has been set at two hundred thousand dollars.”
“I know how much it is, baby.” She clutched her pocketbook to her bosom. “I done seen the bonds peoples. Done gave ’em the money and everything. Here the papers.”
The officer perused them cautiously, as if he didn’t believe her.
“You have children, Mr. Lieutenant?”
He nodded.
“Then you understand that nobody knows your children like you do. Ain’t that right?”
“Guess so.”
She nodded once. “I know what y’all think. But it ain’t so. My son ain’t killed nobody. I didn’t raise him like that.”
Lieutenant Bennett returned the papers. “Ma’am, I’m not saying he’s innocent or guilty. I’m just saying—”
“I’m sayin’ he’s innocent!” She banged the tree limb against the floor. “I know my son. Just like you know yours.”
The lieutenant looked away briefly, then returned his gaze. “If you’ll give us a moment, I’ll bring the inmate to you and escort you both outside.”
The Comforter smiled and said, “Thank you, sir. And much obliged.”
Both men disappeared. The Comforter leaned the walking stick against the wall and exhaled. She looked around, noting order and cleanliness, and hoped never to return. Something about the place felt stale and lifeless, she thought, and the longer she stayed the more her good energy drained. Before long, she heard footsteps, so she grabbed the stick and stood. Lazarus came around the corner, positioned between the two officers. He didn’t recognize her.
“Lazarus, oh, Lazarus!” she cried, and hobbled toward him. “Are you okay, dear Lazarus?”
He stumbled backward. Officers caught him as his mother’s voice disrupted his balance. “Oh Lord, I missed you, baby. They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
Still, Lazarus’s face bore no recognition. He knew something was going on, but he didn’t know what. Could this really be his mother? The Comforter hugged him and, fearing he might ruin the scheme, whispered, “The Comforter has come.” Lazarus trembled. He saw her now, beneath the clothes and wig and homemade scar. He almost screamed, but she covered his mouth. How had she assumed his mother’s voice? He hadn’t heard it in years, but it was definitely hers. It had the mousey soprano quality he’d never forgotten.
“Momma?” Lazarus called, half-serious.
“I’m here, baby. I came to get you. It’s gon’ be all right now.” She rubbed his hands as if they were cold.
Sympathy gathered in the officers’ eyes. “We need to handle a little paperwork, ma’am; then you’ll be ready to go. Why don’t you both have a seat right here and we’ll get this goin’ just as quickly as we can.”
They sat on twin chairs before a desk strewn with papers and a black telephone. The Comforter touched Lazarus’s knee. Who is this woman really? he thought. The only way to hold his peace was to look down, so he stared at the floor, trying to calm his excitement. And how in the world does she know my mother?
The young officer brought a plastic bag with Lazarus’s possessions: a ragged brown leather wallet, seventy-four cents in change, and an ankh necklace Lizzie had given him years ago. Then the senior officer explained that signing the papers was no admission of guilt; rather, it was acknowledgment that Lazarus understood the charges against him and promised not to leave the vicinity until the matter had been resolved. “We’ll be right here!” The Comforter assured. “He ain’t done nothin’ wrong, so he ain’t gotta run.” Lazarus looked at her and, again, she touched him beneath the table.
After signing several documents, Lazarus sighed. The lieutenant gathered papers and stapled them together. “That’ll take care of everything,” he said, standing.
“Well, good!” The Comforter said. “You both have been so kind. I appreciate y’all takin’ care of a old lady. Gentlemen are hard to find these days.”
“You’re most welcome, ma’am. If you two would follow me this way, I’ll show you to the exit.”
With her left hand, The Comforter held the bend in Lazarus’s right arm. With her right, she pounded the tree limb as she shuffled.
Halfway to the exit, Lazarus began to burble, “How did you—”
“Shhhhhh,” The Comforter hissed. “Don’t ruin a good thing, dear Lazarus.”
He remained composed. The officer opened a glass door and said, “Good luck, sir … and ma’am.”
Both nodded a gesture of thanks and proceeded to the nearest sidewalk. They continued the charade until safely out of sight.
Then, resting on a patch of grass beneath an overpass, The Comforter removed the wig and said, “Whew!”
“I don’t believe this!” Lazarus shouted, dazed. “How in the world did you come up with something like this?”
“I didn’t,” she said, staring into the distance. “It was your mother. She sent me.”
Lazarus almost asked how, but he stopped himself. Instead, they breathed deeply until their heartbeats were in sync again. Then, hand in hand, they walked south on Pryor, crossing over Memorial Drive, until reaching the embankment of The Upper Room. Lazarus stopped and inhaled. He’d missed the sights, sounds, and scents of home. The Comforter squeezed his hand and, looking heavenward, said, “Stars haven’t been so bright since you’ve been away.” Together they ascended the concrete slope, and Lazarus fell upon the blue comforter as if it were a cloud.
“The battle is not over, dear Lazarus.”
He pined and said, “I know. Oh Lord, do I know.”
With his index finger he reached and penetrated Zeporah’s soil, and, feeling nothing but dryness, emptied the remainder of a bottle of water across her cracked arid dirt. Within seconds, every droplet was consumed and still the soil contained no moisture. Some of her leaves, like a black elder’s hands, had begun to brown and wrinkle at the edges, draining life from a once-vibrant, verdant, living thing. Only then did he realize his mother had saved him again, and he stared at The Comforter, hoping once more to glimpse the woman who’d conceived him. But she was not there. She’d come when he’d needed, but as always she could not stay.
The Comforter told Lazarus of The Family’s recent activities. Each display of love teased his heart and reinforced that he’d made the right decision all those years ago. But he’d not done all the right things. And now he had to right those wrongs, The Comforter said. He had to heal breaches and provide connections between generations so that demons couldn’t flourish. He was the trinity made complete, the third Lazarus, the only one with arms stretched forward and back, touching every soul in his lineage. It was his calling, his duty, to say what had never been said, to risk the intrusion of truth among contented lies in order that every Lazarus might be made whole and thus live again. Only by this work, The Comforter said, could the planets realign and familial bondage cease.
Lazarus understood. It was the message of the lambs. They’d tried to tell Granddaddy, to plead with him to resurrect his only-begotten son, but the old man’s pride outweighed his humility. The only thing he’d never said, the only thing he’d vowed never to say, was I’m sorry. And in keeping this promise, he’d practically destroyed his son. But Lazarus III could say it for him—if he could find his father.
Reading Lazarus’s mind, The Comforter extracted from her bra a small folded paper and handed it to him. When he read it, he knew what it was and he knew it wouldn’t wait. He left The Upper Room just as he’d come—clear, determined, anxious—and fled to a past that might unlock his future.
Chapter 27
The brick mansion on Windsor Street in Buckhead stood bold and erect in all its splendor. Lazarus approached slowly, sure that he wou
ld be unwelcome. After ringing the doorbell and waiting to no avail, he backed away, overcome by a sense of Quad’s venom and immeasurable scorn. Across the street, Lazarus relaxed beneath a tree in a small park and watched middle-class mothers whisper about a strange dreadlocked black man with pretty eyes whom they’d never seen before. Their children also stared. The youthful gaze wasn’t as subtly masterful, as nastily discreet, as their mothers’, but with each passing moment innocence hardened into juvenile judgment until, like their mothers, they stared contempt at Lazarus for being obviously out of place. Unconditional love drained from their spirits. Lazarus’s hope of a perfect world was gone. Erased. Obliterated. Just like that. No verbal negotiation or discussion of losses and gains. The children knew he was different. He wasn’t like them. And now they knew the meaning of difference. He was to be avoided. Feared. Second-guessed. He had failed the test of sameness and thus could not be trusted. He might even try to hurt them since, surely, he envied them. Yes, he was human, but only human—not superhuman, as they were, or divinely human, as their religions confirmed. His lot in life relegated him simply to the status of man. Through their mothers’ snowy gaze children learned that black editions of man were suspect and unreliable and that their responsibility was to beware those men who apparently plotted in their hearts to steal or at least spoil precious, priceless whiteness. Gathering children close and into arms of safety, mothers ushered them away from the black threat and consequently destroyed any dream of a diverse though unified America.
Slightly after five thirty, a cranberry BMW zoomed into the driveway. It, too, like the house, carried the signs of upward mobility. Having turned much too fast, it screeched to a halt and swayed until settling, finally, like a spinning top. The yard was cut but unkempt, as if maintained by someone in a hurry, and Lazarus knew that if he didn’t do this now he never would. Half-running from the park, he met Quad at the front door.
“I don’t have any right to be here,” he began. Quad turned, startled. “But please don’t turn me away.”
The son chewed his bottom lip, discerning whether to strike him or invite him in. Staring at his father, who’d never seen his house, Quad asked, “When’d you get out?”
“Little while ago.”
“How?”
“A friend.”
“Was it Lizzie?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it does. I told her not to do it. She can’t afford it.”
“Then you can relax. It wasn’t her.”
“Good.”
He proceeded into the house, leaving the door slightly cracked behind him, so Lazarus followed, reentering the world he’d fought so hard to escape. Immediately he encountered high-back Davis accent chairs and broad leather sofas far more expensive than anything he’d ever owned. A print of Renoir’s Vase de fleurs—he assumed it was a print—hung over the sofa while adjacent walls displayed Ernie Barnes’s work and Henry Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson. It was a veritable museum, Lazarus thought, full of the excess he’d wanted Quad to avoid. Even the eggshell marble floors glistened brilliantly. Yet Lazarus believed it was all for spite. There was no warmth, no real character, in any of it, no sense of genuine artistic appreciation. Just lavish expense. As if Quad had bought things simply because he could—not because he cared about them. His silence, Lazarus supposed, was the boy’s way of forcing him to notice it all, of rubbing in his face the fact that his plan had been a dismal failure. So, like a good father, he perused walls and touched furniture, which had probably never been touched, and moaned loudly enough for Quad to believe his father was impressed. When Lazarus thought about it, however, he shivered with disappointment. There was no life in the house. Only cold, dead things. And if he knew nothing, he knew the emptiness of things.
They met in the kitchen, at a large rectangular table for eight. Quad sat on one side, Lazarus the other, just as they’d done in the prison a week earlier.
“Nice house,” Lazarus said.
Quad nodded. He’d waited years to mock his father with such extravagance, but now the idea seemed devoid of meaning.
“You got a girlfriend?”
Quad sighed. “No, I don’t.”
“Why not? You’re a handsome young man who obviously makes decent money. Any nice girl would be glad to have you.”
Quad’s rolling eyes revealed both irritation and sadness. He hated that his father’s voice melted him and dismantled barriers he’d tried to erect around his heart. His only defense was silence. Had he opened his mouth, even in rebuttal, he feared he would’ve cried. And he would’ve hated himself for it.
Because Quad had no interest in talking about girls, Lazarus said instead, “Thanks for coming. To the prison, I mean. You didn’t have to.”
“No, I didn’t. But I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to.”
They shared an awkward glance. Lazarus looked around.
“I meant well by you, Son. I really did. You and your sister. I thought I was freeing you from something that almost killed me.”
“Your leaving killed me.”
Tears burst forth from the corners of Quad’s red eyes. He smeared them into his cheeks quickly, as if hoping Lazarus wouldn’t notice.
“I don’t know what to say. Except … that … I’m sorry, Son. I’m really sorry. It’s not what I meant. I thought I was doing a good thing. I didn’t want you spending your whole life chasing things. I was trying to show you you didn’t need … this … to be happy.” Lazarus paused. “I wanted you to be free.”
“I didn’t care about any of that, Daddy. I just wanted you to come home.”
“But I couldn’t, Son. Not to that life. Not to that lie. I just couldn’t.”
Quad nodded, not because he agreed, but because he didn’t want to argue. “All right. Fine. Whatever.” He blinked repeatedly. “You made a decision and we both have to live with it.”
“But, Son, I did it for you! I know you can’t see that right now, but one day you will.”
Quad shrugged. “Maybe I will.”
“I never meant to hurt you, boy. Never. All I wanted was for you not to do what I had done. I didn’t want you to spend your life working and paying bills just so others could be impressed. I wanted to show you how to live.”
“Show me how to live? Look at you! This is what you call living?”
“Yes. It is. This is how I live. And, until now, I’ve been happy.”
Quad peered into his father’s eyes and saw Truth dancing freely in a field of wildflowers. It was a massive gray thing, this Truth, reshaping itself with every move, becoming whatever the viewer needed in order to believe. Light as a feather, it floated slightly above the blooms, a mist of refreshment, unconcerned with eyes that cannot see. It was the freedom of Truth that Quad found so alluring, its shapeless mobility, its ever-changing height and depth, and for the first time he understood his father’s longing.
“I wanna be happy, too.”
It came out uncensored. Unrehearsed. Naked. Just like that. Bearing the odor of need. Unable to take it back, Quad relaxed in the chair and added, “I’ve been angry with you all my life, Daddy. I wanted to beat you and make you suffer for what you did. I dreamed of meeting you on the street one day and punching you in the face.”
Lazarus shivered.
“But now, I’m just tired. I don’t care about anything anymore. You. Me. Nothing. All I do is get up and go to work and come home. And eat!” He rubbed a protruding belly. “I eat all the time. Now that’s something I do religiously!” His masked laughter rumbled in his throat. Lazarus managed a fake smile. Quad added, “I never seem to get full.”
Sensing Quad had more to say, Lazarus anointed the shiny red oak tabletop with his huge, calloused hands and waited.
Quad shrugged. “I don’t know what to do. Guess I been so mad at you I forgot to make a life of my own. Now I ain’t got nothin’.”
Their eyes met.
“Your whole life’s ahead of you, Son. You could do anything you
want.”
“But that’s the thing, Dad—I don’t want anything! It’s like my heart is numb. I can’t feel nothin’. Every time I start something, I lose interest and quit, then start something else and quit that, and I’m back where I started.”
“Life can be like that, Son.”
“It ain’t supposed to be!” Quad pounded the tabletop. “You were supposed to teach me, Dad! About life. Instead of letting me become a fuckin’ waste!”
Lazarus didn’t flinch. “You’re not a waste. You just gotta find what’s important to you. And that’s what you spend the rest of your life doing—whatever’s important to you.”
Quad shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter what it is, doesn’t matter what others think or say. And something is important to you. That’s the only reason you were born—because your spirit is convicted about something. Every life has it.”
Quad looked past his father, into the foreground. “I don’t have it, Dad. I just don’t have it.”
Lazarus nodded. “Yes, you do. You’ve gotta find it.”
“How?”
Lazarus hadn’t heard that whimper in years. “By ignoring everything and everyone who isn’t committed to your growth. No one can make your life or destroy it but you. No one. Don’t care what happens or when.” He paused. “Hard times and difficulty come, Son, but they’re never because of someone else. They’re not even because of you. They come on their own, and you gotta learn to navigate your way around them. Else they’ll block you forever.”
“Well, I’m blocked.”
“Then get unblocked.”
Quad smirked. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not easy at all. It’s just simple. Every man is responsible for his own life. Period. People can act and we can respond, but nobody can do anything to you. We use other people’s behavior as an excuse not to live, but it’s not the reason. It never is. Sometimes it seems like it is, but it never is. Regardless of what someone did to you.”
“But people hurt each other all the time.”
“Yes, we do. And wounds heal.”