Black and White

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  Ray sat back, and the creaking of his chair seemed loud in the suddenly quiet office. He stared at something past her, maybe something in the past altogether. After a moment, he looked back at Jennifer.

  “The prevailing theory was that someone was waiting for her at the shop,” he said. “That they attacked her as she was getting out of her car. If I’m following you here, you’re suggesting either she unlocked the car door for somebody who was there, or maybe someone was in the car with her.”

  Jennifer nodded slightly. “Yes.”

  He rubbed at his jaw. “Someone she knew.”

  “Someone she trusted,” Jennifer clarified. “Mom was really paranoid after Jonah, even though I don’t think she thought it was connected to her. Maybe she did and didn’t talk about it in front of me, but…”

  Ray shook his head. “Until Claire was killed, nobody really thought what happened at the lake had anything to do with her. Race? Yes. It was only a month after desegregation here. Tension was high, tempers were flaring; it was a hard time. But nobody connected the lake murders to Claire’s activism until she was killed, too.”

  “I remember that a lot of people thought she deserved to lose her son because of it.” Jennifer said it quietly, but with a bitter edge to her words. “That he was shot because he was with a colored girl and Mom deserved that because of what she was doing for colored people.”

  Ray ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Yeah, there were idiots who said things like that. But let me explain something you might not have noticed, or might not remember. There were a lot of people in this town, white people, who supported your mother. Some openly, some not. There were just as many white folks at your mother’s funeral as there were black, and you shouldn’t forget that.”

  Tears sprang to Jennifer’s eyes from nowhere, and she blinked. “No. You’re right, I shouldn’t. I do forget that sometimes.”

  “I’m not reprimanding you, Jennifer,” Ray said. “I just want you to remember that there are good and bad people in this town, and they’re both black and white.”

  He leaned back again and sighed. Jennifer had almost forgotten Daniel was beside her until he spoke.

  “You probably knew or remember the adults in her life better than us. Besides all of us, you have any idea who Jennifer’s mom might have let in her car?”

  Ray looked at him a moment. “What are you doing?”

  Daniel looked uncomfortable for just a second, then straightened his spine. “Look, I wasn’t exactly excited that Jen’s looking into this case—”

  “Reading it, not looking into it,” Ray said sternly.

  “Reading it, then,” Daniel said. “But since she is, I want to know what happened, too.”

  Ray pointed at Jennifer. “Shut the door.”

  Jennifer walked to the open door. Patterson squinted at her curiously from his desk, and a couple of night shift cops who were walking by glanced at her and Daniel both as they passed. Jennifer shut the door quietly and walked back to the desk.

  “Great. Now they’ll all think Daniel and I are asking permission to date again or something.”

  “That’s better than them thinking you guys are trying to do a better job on a case that was investigated by two of their fellow officers.”

  “I’ve never thought that Murray and—what’s the other—”

  “Jake Hamilton,” Daniel said.

  “Hamilton. I never suggested they didn’t do a good job,” Jennifer said. “And I’m not suggesting it now, either. They had no reason to think anything of the fact that her passenger door was unlocked.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Ray said. “I’ve pored over that case myself a few times over the years, and I didn’t notice it, and it wouldn’t have meant anything to me if I had. I don’t even remember the last time I was in a car with your mom.”

  “I saw that they interviewed my father and checked his alibi,” Jennifer said. “Was that just because they were divorced?”

  “That’s right. Always check the spouse first,” Ray answered. “A few people remembered him being over at Monty’s that night, but nobody remembered for sure when he left. The house is only a couple of blocks away from the bar, and he was passed out drunk when Murray and Hamilton went over there around midnight. He wasn’t much of a suspect, anyway. He told plenty of people that she was right to leave him. He was angry for a while, but he got over it years before your mom was killed. Besides, there was the lake, and a definite racial connection. And Willie lost his son, too.”

  “Okay,” Jennifer said. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Listen, I know they fought sometimes when they were married, and I couldn’t stand the guy from the get-go, but he went to hell in a handbasket when Jonah was killed. After Claire, he was a goner. I don’t think he’ll ever climb out of that bottle. He ever contact you out there in New Orleans?”

  “He didn’t know where I was,” Jennifer answered. “I don’t even know if he asked.”

  Ray sighed and stood up. “Listen, I know you want answers. We all do. The door lock is meaningful, but it’s not enough for us to get the go-ahead to reopen the case. If you find something in that file that’s more concrete, then I’ll go to the D.A. But until then, you don’t talk to people about it, you don’t go around poking sticks into copperhead nests, nothing. You get me?”

  He looked at each of them until they’d nodded in turn.

  “I’m not brushing you off, Jennifer. If you think of something that can actually lead us to these guys, we’ll go after them,” he said, and his eyes darkened. “Although it would be in their best interests to already be dead.”

  Saturday was bright and hot, with possible thunderstorms late in the day, but nothing to bring relief at high noon, when Inez and Jennifer set out for Ebby’s Market.

  They’d spent the last couple of hours supervising a gaggle of Tyne kids and Inez’s two little ones as they took turns on the Slip n’ Slide in the back yard. Now Mama Tyne was getting the youngest kids fed and down for naps, and she’d had “a taste” for a cold Coca-Cola, which they didn’t keep in the house.

  Inez had tied a white button-down shirt over her bathing suit top and pulled on some cut-offs, and Jennifer had changed back into her T-shirt and shorts. Their flip-flops flip-flopped over the uneven sidewalk as they walked the four blocks to the store.

  Everyone was outside, despite the heat. Old women sat together on aluminum chairs in the front yard or in rockers on the porch, fanning themselves with magazines, or paper fans they’d gotten at church. Old men hung over shared fences or dug in their flowerbeds. One group of kids played kickball in an empty lot, another played hopscotch in somebody’s driveway.

  Young women sat with babies in the grass while little ones played in the sprinklers. Young men worked on their cars, mowed the grass, or gathered in little clusters, listening to somebody’s car radio. Most everyone they passed made note of Jennifer; even now, a white woman was a rare sight in this neighborhood. Some waved or said hello, some glared, others just went back to their conversations.

  Just as in 1962, or 1957, or any other time in Jennifer’s memory, there were several people hanging out in pairs or groups in front of Ebby’s. Thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls with picks sticking out of their hair blew bubbles and tried not to look self-conscious. Young men congregated in patches around the small parking lot, smoking cigarettes and drinking sodas. Five blocks away, the young men standing outside Floyd’s Package Store were drinking cold beers out of paper bags, but Ebby’s didn’t sell alcohol, or allow it on the premises.

  A group of three men leaned on the chest that held bags of ice, and they stared at Inez and Jennifer as they approached the front door.

  “Oh, Christy Love!” said a man in old work trousers and a white button-down shirt that hung open over his undershirt. “Girl, you are looking fine today. Let’s you and me go somewhere a
while.”

  “Get lost, Turner,” Inez said, without actually being unfriendly. “You know I’ve got a real man.”

  “Well, maybe your lovely friend here would like to take a walk off Honky Street,” he said, smiling.

  “She doesn’t need some jive turkey with a roach clip in his hair,” Inez said, opening the front door. Jennifer couldn’t help laughing softly.

  “Oooh, burn!” one of Turner’s friends said.

  “I can smell the scorch comin’ off the brother’s skin,” said the other one, but all three of them were laughing.

  Jennifer was greeted with the familiar smells of Pine-Sol, coffee, hamburgers and vinegar, all being blown around the store by the box fans in every window. She was amazed to see Ebenezer Jackson himself behind the counter. He had to be eighty years old, and his hair had gone completely white. A middle-aged man Jennifer didn’t recognize worked at a stove and flat-top grill a little further down.

  There were several rows of metal shelves and wire racks on the left side of the store, and coolers and a few tables in back. A few men who were clearly on breaks from work were sitting down to a quick lunch.

  On the right was a long, glass display case. Inside were pans of fried chicken, greens and devilled eggs. On the top of the case were giant jars of pickled eggs, pickled sausage, garlic pickles, and beef jerky, each one accompanied by a coffee cup with a pair of tongs in it. When they were kids, Jennifer had eaten her weight in those pickled eggs.

  “Hey, Mr. Ebby,” Inez said with a big smile.

  “Hey yourself, Inez,” he said back, a gold tooth glinting from his own smile. “Who this, then?”

  “This is my best friend, Jen. You remember her.”

  Jennifer smiled at the old man as he squinted at her. “Well, my law, so it is, too!” he said.

  “How are you, Mr. Ebby?” Jennifer asked.

  “Just fine, just fine,” the old man answered. He handed a package wrapped in white butcher paper to the middle-aged woman waiting at the counter. “Here you go, Miss Diane.”

  “I’m gonna go get Mama’s Coca-Cola and grab a couple treats for the kids,” Inez said. “What do you want?”

  “Just a Coke.”

  Inez headed toward the other side of the store, and Jennifer turned back to Mr. Ebby.

  “You been gone a long while,” he was saying. “Long time. I was sorry to hear Mrs. Quindlen passed; God rest her.”

  “Thank you.” Jennifer decided to have a pickled egg after all, and grabbed a napkin from a metal dispenser.

  “What a good woman she was. Funny lady, oh my law she was funny.”

  Jennifer smiled as she opened the jar. “She was.”

  “You here to see to the house, then?”

  “I’m home for good,” she answered, choosing her egg and putting it in her napkin.

  “Now, that’s good. That would please her, I think.”

  “I think so.” Jen screwed the lid back on the jar. On the little portable TV behind the counter, a baseball game played in black and white. Someone must have hit a good one, because people were jumping from their seats and she could just make out the excited voice of the announcer.

  “Isn’t it a shame what we do, one to another?” Mr. Ebby was saying, shaking his head. “Breakin’ the heart of the Lord.”

  Jennifer was pretty sure she didn’t need to ask what he was talking about. “Yes, sir,” she replied quietly.

  “It’s good that you come on home, chile. Good, though.”

  Inez walked up to Jennifer with the necks of three bottles of Coke in one hand and a fistful of treats in the other. There were two, foot-long sticks of Bub’s Daddy bubble gum, one grape and one green apple, a Sugar Daddy, and two Charms Pops.

  “Look at this, then,” Mr. Ebby said, laughing. “Mutt and Jeff back in here after all these years, with their pickled eggs and their Co-Colas and candy, just like always.”

  “Now, Mr. Ebby, you know this candy ain’t for me,” Inez said.

  “That the truth, then?” He nodded. “Who’s gonna eat that Sugar Daddy?”

  “You know what, Mr. Ebby?” She dumped the booty on the counter. “Some people drink or smoke weed. I eat like two of these a month. Go on, now.”

  “Ever’ Saturday’s when you eat a Sugar Daddy,” he said back.

  Inez was going to reply when she saw Jennifer pull a five out of her back pocket. “No, uh-uh. I brought money.”

  “Just let me get it, Inez. It’s not like I’m out blowing my paycheck every week.”

  “I know that’s right,” her friend replied. “We need to get you out, get you some new clothes or go to the movies or something.”

  “That would be good.”

  Jennifer had fallen asleep in Grandma’s recliner the night before, the case file at her feet and Johnny Carson on TV.

  “You girls have a good day, now,” Mr. Ebby said as he handed Jennifer her change.

  “You, too, Mr. Ebby,” Jennifer said.

  “You too, sir.” Inez took the little paper bag and one of the Cokes. Jennifer popped the caps off the other ones, using the opener that was screwed to the side of the counter.

  Jennifer handed Inez her soda, and they went back out into the scorching heat, blinking against the white brightness of the day. Turner and his friends whistled and said their goodbyes, and the two women drank their sodas as they headed back the way they’d come.

  When they got back to the house, the older kids were watching Soul Train in the living room, Mama Tyne was washing up the lunch dishes, and Daniel was at the kitchen table, eating greens and a pork neck from a pink Tupperware bowl.

  Inez dumped the candy on the kitchen table. “Hey, Daniel,” she said with a smile. “What are you doing here?”

  “Being obedient,” he said as he stood.

  “Look at him, looking like he doesn’t have any food in his icebox,” Mama Tyne said. “

  Inez and Daniel hugged. A real hug, as opposed to a polite one. “How you doing?” she asked him.

  “Good. How are you?”

  “Good.”

  She looked over at Jennifer, like Jennifer had been hiding something. Jennifer ignored the look by taking the unopened Coke to Mama Tyne.

  “Oh, thank you, baby,” the woman said. “This is just what I need.”

  She turned to rummage through a utensil drawer, and Jennifer looked at Daniel, eyebrows raised. “What are you doing here?”

  “You weren’t home, so I drove by here and saw your car.”

  “Okay.”

  Daniel was sitting back down to his snack, and didn’t look at her. “I got us an appointment with those guys we were talking about yesterday.”

  “What guys?”

  He looked up at her as he picked up a pork neck. “About fixing your barn.”

  Inez looked over at Jennifer. “Why would you pay people to fix that barn? That’s what the boys are for.”

  Inez’s four brothers ranged in age from twenty-six to twenty, but Inez still referred to them as “the boys”.

  “It’s okay,” Jennifer said. “We’re just…” She looked at Daniel. It was his lie, but he was chewing rather than helping. She looked back at Inez. “We’re just gonna see if it’s worth fixing or not.”

  Inez looked her suspiciously. She glanced at Daniel, then back at Jennifer. “That’s the best you could do?”

  Mama Tyne sank into a kitchen chair with her Coke in one hand and a banana in the other. “I told Daniel he needs to come by more often, especially now. We haven’t seen him—except on the street—we haven’t seen him since Anna passed.”

  Daniel smiled at her as he wiped his fingers on a paper napkin. Jennifer hadn’t seen him smile that warmly since she’d been back. He always had loved Mama Tyne.

  “I should come around and see you more,” he said.


  “You going to church?” she asked him.

  He shrugged. “Most of the time.”

  “What’s Pastor Huddleston say about that?”

  “He says it’s not too late for me to become a degenerate,” Daniel said, grinning. He got up and took his bowl and fork to the trash can. “He’s okay. He knows I’m working some things out.”

  He scraped his bones into the trash and put his bowl in the sink.

  “Leave that; you got to be somewhere,” Mama Tyne told him.

  “I need to go home and change first,” Jennifer said.

  Daniel looked at her shorts. “Okay. Why don’t I just wait for you at your house, then?”

  Jennifer nodded. “Okay.”

  He hugged Mama Tyne and Inez in turn, and said his goodbyes, then Inez and Jennifer followed him to the door. Inez held the door open, and once Daniel was on his way to his truck, she grinned at Jennifer.

  “I’ll see you later,” Jennifer said.

  “Yeah, good luck with your barn,” Inez said. “Tell the Amish guys I said hey.”

  Daniel waited in his truck in the driveway, as Jennifer hurriedly changed into tan trousers and a light blue short-sleeved top. She pulled her hair out of a ponytail and swiped on some lip gloss, but she ignored the temptation to check her appearance more than once, or do anything more to enhance it. She and Daniel weren’t on a date; they were going to talk to the two cops who had investigated both the lake murders and the murder of her mother.

  Jennifer had intended to follow Daniel in her own car, but when he asked why she should bother using the extra gas, she didn’t have a good reason, so she climbed in.

  “We’re going to see Kenneth Murray first,” Daniel said as he turned around and headed down the driveway. “Do you remember him?”

  “I remember two cops, but I don’t know which is which,” she answered. “There was a guy with reddish-brown hair and freckles—”

  “That’s Frank Hamilton.”

  “So Murray is the guy with the dark hair and receding hairline.”

  “It’s done receding.”