by Angela Henry
I located a burgundy book with the words In Remembrance etched in gold lettering on the front, right where Christy said it would be. I opened it and was greeted by about fifty names spread over four pages. I scanned the signatures, some of them scrawls I couldn’t begin to decipher, and was disappointed that I didn’t recognize any of them until I got the very last name on the last page of signatures, J. Kirkland, as in Joyce Kirkland. The same Joyce Kirkland who claimed she hadn’t known Brenda. I knew she was lying. Feeling pleased with myself. I looked around quickly before tearing out the sheet with Joyce’s signature, folding it and shoving it into my purse. But no sooner had I done it than I felt a hard, painful poke to my left butt cheek.
“Ouch.” I jumped and whirled around, my hand immediately touching the sore spot on my behind. A little old man barely as tall as me and as brown and wrinkled as a California raisin stood behind me with his wooden cane outstretched like he was ready to poke me again. “What is your problem?”
“My problem?” He threw his head back and cackled. There wasn’t a single tooth in his head. “You the one ripping pages out of books you got no business ripping pages out of. What’s your problem, young lady?”
“Huh?” It was all I could think to say in light of the fact that I was flat out busted.
“Don’t act all innocent with me. I stood right here and watched your disrespectful ass rip something out of Brenda’s memorial book. Hand it over.” He held out a gnarled hand as a few of the other residents started to gather around to see what was going on. Great.
“What’s going on, Pinky?” asked a petite blue-haired lady in a green polyester pants suit.
“What’s going on is that young folks these days got no respect for the dead. I just caught her tearing pages outta Brenda’s book.” His hand was still outstretched. I had no intention of giving him the page I took.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” said the blue-haired lady. Then quick as a flash, she reached out and pinched me hard on the arm. The hand on my butt instantly flew to my now smarting arm.
“Hey! That hurt, lady. And it was only one page.”
“And if you were my daughter you’d have gotten a lot worse than that,” she exclaimed.
Christy Nelson rounded the corner accompanied by another of the residents, a tall, rail-thin woman with fluffy white hair decked out in a peach silk suit and a triple strand of pearls.
By the time Christy and her escort reach me, a crowd had formed, conveniently positioning themselves in the path between me and the hallway leading to the front entrance. Many of them had canes poised to poke or batter me and bony arthritic fingers just itching to pinch me. One heavyset old guy with his plaid pants pulled up to his chest had balled his fist up and was punching his palm rhythmically, like he wished it were my face. Another lady was twirling an ugly black umbrella like a baton and kept giving me a menacing smirk like she’d have loved nothing more than to shove it up my butt and open it. I instinctively took a big step back and hit the wall. I was sorely tempted to bulldoze my way through them. Pinky’s elderly posse would have been knocked to the floor like bowling pins in my wake, with scores of broken hips and arms. And I really didn’t need that kind of bad karma on my conscience. I already knew whose name was on the page. Plus, Mama might have friends living here and would get wind of this and that’s the last thing I needed.
“Do I need to call the police?” asked Christy, looking from the crowd to me. But the annoyed look on her face as she looked at the group of assembled residents told me she’d have been just as happy to call the police on them as well. How had this gotten so out of hand?
“Yeah, call ’em Christy, honey,” said Pinky, aka the ringleader. “How much time ya’ll think they’d give somebody stealing from an old folks’ home?”
“Ten years,” shouted Blue Hair.
“Seven,” shouted a disembodied voice in the crowd.
“It was only a piece of paper,” I insisted.
“So what!” said the lady in the peach silk suit, indignantly. “I have a friend named Jean who lives in France who spent life in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family.”
“That was Les Miserables, Lottie. Remember? We read it in book club last month. And it was 19 years, not life,” said Christy, gently putting an arm around the older woman.
“That’s right. We did, didn’t we? Well, in that case, 40 years!”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Fine,” I said and pulled the folded page from my purse and dropped it into Pinky’s still outstretched palm. “I’m sorry, sir. I meant no disrespect.” Once I’d handed over the page, the crowd parted like the Red Sea. I beat a hasty retreat down the hall and out the front door.
I sat in my rental in the parking lot with my shaking hands grasping the steering wheel not quite believing I’d just been assaulted by a gang of geriatrics. But much as I hated to admit it, I shouldn’t have ripped that page out of Brenda’s book. Pinky was right. It was disrespectful. I was exactly two blocks away when it hit me like a ton of bricks. Pinky? Could he have been the same man Lewis had told me about? The one who’s bootleg joint Dibb Bentley had killed Otis Patterson in? I could certainly imagine the ballsy, grizzled old coot running an after-hours joint thirty years ago. But there was only one way to find out for sure. I had to go back to Woodlawn Nursing home. Yay me.
Ten
I went home, changed, fed and walked Queenie, and stopped by the bakery and picked up a box of cookies. By the time I got back to Woodlawn almost two hours later, a different woman named Lucy Tucker was at the front desk. She looked to be a good twenty years older than Christy.
“Hi, Lucy,” I said, making a point of looking at her name badge. “I’m here to see Pinky.” Lucy’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Really?” She broke into a big smile. “Mr. Buford doesn’t get many visitors.” Gee, I can’t imagine why, I thought, barely managing to hold on to the smile on my face. My arm and butt still hurt from being poked and pinched.
“I just wanted to say hi and give him this peace offering.” I gestured towards the box in my hand. “We had a bit of a disagreement a little while ago.”
“And what’s in there? We have a strict policy on food gifts, since so many of our residents are diabetic. As a matter of fact, Mr. Buford’s on insulin.” She got up from her chair and walked out from behind the receptionist station.
“Sugar-free chocolate chip.” I’d noticed the medic alert bracelet on the old guy’s arm when he’d held out his hand for the page I took.
“Oh, that’s okay as long as he doesn’t have too many. Let me walk you back to the rec room.”
I glanced cautiously around the lobby for any of the perpetrators from my earlier visit. Thankfully, I didn’t see anyone else besides Lucy.
There were only two people in the room, the man working on the jumbo puzzle and Pinky, who was sitting in a chair by one of the large windows. He had a Walkman in his lap and headphones over his ears, bobbing his head and snapping his fingers like he was listening to his favorite song. I was happy to see that lethal cane of his was lying on the floor next to his chair.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Lucy.
“Most of our residents like to take naps or spend quiet time in their rooms before dinner at 6. But Leroy Buford’s got more energy than people half his age. He always says he’ll sleep when he’s dead.”
Leroy ‘Pinky’ Buford must have sensed he was being talked about, because he took off his headphones and turned to look at us. The sound on his Walkman must have been turned up all the way. Loud music blared from the headphones, cutting through the quiet in the room like a hot knife through butter. It was an old school song whose title eluded me at the moment. When he spotted me a knowing, toothless grin spread across his wrinkled face.
“Mr. Buford, you’ve got a visitor.” Lucy reached down and lowered the volume on Pinky’s Walkman as he smirked up at me from his chair. “Don’t let him eat too many of these,” she whispered
to me, patting the box in my hands. “It’ll ruin his dinner.” Then Lucy smiled and left us alone.
“I come in peace and bearing gifts.” I held out the box of cookies.
“Good. And if it’ll ruin my appetite that’s even better. Have a seat, young lady, and let’s set what you got.” I sat down in the seat opposite his and handed him the box. Once the lid was off, he snatched up a cookie and took a big bite gumming, smacking, and drooling to his heart’s content, grossing me out in the process. I had to look away at one point.
“I’m really sorry about earlier, Mr. Buford. I didn’t mean any harm. My manners are usually better than that.”
“Brenda’s the one you should be apologizing to. Just because someone’s dead don’t mean they don’t deserve respect from the living. But that ain’t why you’re here, is it, young lady?” He held out the box and I helped myself to a cookie wondering how he could read me so easily.
“Not really,” I reluctantly admitted around a mouthful of cookie. It wasn’t bad for being sugarless, but it was sure dry as hell and I wished I had some milk.
“What’s your name, honey?”
“Kendra Clayton. You might know my grandparents Estelle and Timothy Mays?” That got Pinky’s attention; he set the cookie box on the table next to him and pulled a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket, putting them on to get a better look at me.
“You’re little Timmy Mays’s grandbaby? I can’t believe it. Come here and give me a hug, honey.” I got up and gave the old man a quick hug and couldn’t help but smile.
“You were a friend of my grandfather’s?”
“We came up together in the same neighborhood over on Oak Street about a million years ago. We used to hang out when we was kids. I was always wild and Timmy’s mama, your Great Grandma Mays, didn’t like him hanging with me and my crew. She was right to keep him away from me, since I was always in trouble. But she sure kept him on the straight and narrow. Last time I saw Timmy was right after he got out of the Army and got a job at the post office sortin’ mail. He’d just married your grandma and told me he was gonna be a mailman. It was the fifties and I told him he was a fool for thinkin’ they’d ever let black folks deliver mail in this town. But dang it if he didn’t become Willow’s first black mailman.” We both laughed and I swelled with pride. It was rare that I talked about my grandfather anymore, and it felt good to talk about him with someone who’d known him.
“He was a special man.”
“That he was,” concluded Pinky. He leaned back in his chair, folding his hand over his belly, and fixed me with an assessing look that made me squirm. “Why’d you take that page from Brenda’s book? And don’t you tell me it’s because you needed something to write on.” I went ahead and told him. I filled him in on everything and at the first mention of Lewis’s name Pinky let out a cackle and slapped his knee.
“What’s so funny?”
“Not what, who—that damned fool, Lewis Watts, is who’s funny. I told him when he got himself mixed up in what happened to Otis Patterson that he was gonna regret it. But he wouldn’t listen. Now look where he is.”
“But I thought Dibb Bentley killed Otis Patterson?”
“I’m not talking about Otis getting killed. I’m talking about what happened after he got killed.”
“You mean when Dibb held Lewis hostage?”
“If that’s really what happened. All we got is Lewis’s word. No, honey, I’m talking ’bout him always getting himself involved in some woman’s mess. Always trying to be a knight in shining armor when no one asked him to. Most women saw him coming a mile away and worked him like a job.”
“And why would that have gotten him mixed up in what happened after Otis Patterson was killed?” I was confused. I already know how Lewis was when it came to women. What else could Pinky have been talking about?
“You like to dance, honey?” He turned up the sound on his Walkman and the tune he’d been listening to when Lucy and I had walked in blared out. This time I recognized it. It was The Twist by Chubby Checker.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, you heard me. Don’t be a stick in the mud. Come on and dance.” Pinky held his thin arms up close to his upper body with his bony elbows sticking out and began twisting from the waist up. I looked around but the guy working on the puzzle wasn’t paying us the slightest bit of attention. And I noticed for the first time he was wearing two hearing aids.
“Um, I’ll pass, Mr. Buford. I’m not much of a dancer.” That was an understatement. If Janet Jackson was the leader of the Rhythm Nation, I was the poster child for the rhythm less. And unless liquor was involved, I usually kept my ass seated when the music started. I was an expert chair dancer. I could happily wave my hands in the air, like I just didn’t care, because I was safely in a chair.
“Well, I tell you what, honey. You can either dance or leave because I’m not saying another word until you start shaking your tail feather.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.” Chubby Checker had stopped singing and was quickly replaced by Jackie Wilson’s Workout. “Now, this was back when music was music and not any of that rappin’ mess.”
Pinky took a step towards me. I started to take a step backwards. His gnarled hand grabbed mine and before I knew it, he expertly twirled me around the room then let go and started to snap his fingers, bob his head, and shake his narrow behind.
I quickly looked around to make sure there were still only three of us in the room. The man with the hearing aids was still deeply engrossed in his puzzle. I let out an annoyed breath and stepped side to side to the music, while Pinky clapped and smiled encouragingly. Feeling a bit braver, I moved a little faster.
“Now you’re getting it,” said Pinky.
I’m not sure what got into me. Maybe it was the validation shining in the old man’s eyes or maybe it was temporary insanity. But I went for it. I shimmied my shoulders forward and backward. Skipped to my left and right. Flapped my arms like a chicken. And twirled my hips like I was working a hula hoop. By the time Jackie started singing, “round and around and around and round,” I was twirling an invisible lasso over my head with one hand, while I slowly spun round and around and around and around. I was so into it I didn’t realize I’d lost the beat, or that the music had stopped, until I heard Pinky’s loud guffaw of laughter. I immediately stopped dancing and stood there, slightly out of breath, to see a half dozen residents had slipped into the back of the room and were laughing at me as well.
“Girl,” Pinky said, practically in tears. “If you had to dance to save your life, you’d be six feet under!”
“You're hardly Fred Astaire yourself,” I said, as my whole body burned with embarrassment.
Had this little troll set me up for what I’d done to Brenda's memorial book? But to my surprise the residents started applauding, cheering, and yelling for an encore. Clearly, they needed to get out more. Pinky took my hand and bowed and gestured for me to do the same, which I did, still feeling like a complete fool.
“Will you be performing again, later?” asked one woman who I recognized as the blue-haired woman who’d pinched me earlier. I could tell she didn’t remember me at all. Thankfully, one of the nurses showed up and ushered them out of the room. When they’d left, I turned to glare at Pinky.
“Oh, don't go getting all in embarrassed, honey,” said the old man. “It was all in good fun and besides, you really need to loosen up, girl. You're a bit uptight, did you know that?”
I could have protested but I’d known from dealing with Mama not to argue with the elderly. The ridiculousness of the situation finally hit me. I cracked a smile, which gave way to a belly laugh as I realized how ridiculous I must’ve looked. Suddenly I felt like the atmosphere had lightened considerably and I relaxed. I had to admit that I had been feeling pretty tense. So, if flapping around like an idiot made me feel better, then I guess it was worth it. Maybe.
“As you were saying, Mr. Buford?” It was time to
get back to the topic at hand.
“Party pooper,” he replied with a wink, as he sat back down in his chair. “Now, where was I?”
“What did Lewis loving the ladies have to do with what happened to him after Otis Patterson’s murder?”
“Not a darn thing,” he replied, matter-of-factly. I blinked in confusion.
“Then why did you say—” I began before he cut me off.
“Just checking to see if you were payin’ attention, that’s all.” He let out a loud cackle when I glared at him and crossed my arms in annoyance. The old man had me dancing to his tune because he had information I needed and he knew it.
“Mr. Buford, I really don’t have time for this.”
“Oh, I was just joking, honey. Didn’t mean no harm. And call me Pinky.” Pinky Buford gave me a toothless grin. But something had closed behind his eyes. For some reason he’d changed his mind about whatever he’d been about to tell me about Lewis. That couldn’t be good.
“Okay, Pinky. What happened the night Otis Patterson died?”
“Not what you think, honey. And definitely not that trash they printed in the papers.”
“You mean it wasn’t a fight over a woman?”
“Nope.”
“Then what was it about?” I asked, leaning forward in my seat.
“Money.”
“Money? What money? Did Otis Patterson owe Dibb money?” But he was barely paying me any attention. He looked right past me clearly reliving what had happened almost three decades ago.
“If I had a dime for every fool who thought they’d get rich robbing folks of their hard-earned cash,” he said, indignantly. “I’d be a rich man lounging on a beach somewhere.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense, Pinky.”
“Let’s just say there’s no honor among thieves, and no one involved in what happened that night was exactly what I’d call innocent. I ‘m just glad I’m still around to watch all those damned near 30-year-old chickens come home to roost.”
“Thieves?” I said, ignoring that last part. “You mean Otis stole something from Dibb?”