Tomb of the Unknown Racist

by Blanche Mccrary Boyd

  I sat straight up. “Jesus, Blake, why didn’t you tell me this before? How can I ever start trusting you?”

  He turned on his side unperturbed, perhaps because of the sex. “You know I would have told you before if I could.” He studied me for several seconds before saying, “When the children first went missing, the FBI tried to convince Santane to come to the reservation to help Ruby, both to comfort her and to see if she could get her to remember more. Santane refused. It was hard to make sense of her reaction.”

  The next evening, when I appeared without notice outside Santane’s condominium door, standing in her bland hallway, she was unhappy to see me. “I cannot help Ruby,” she said, before I could even speak. Her English remained beautifully modulated, though her British accent had lessened. Behind her I could see her into living room, sparsely furnished and serene.

  I didn’t bother with preliminaries either. “Why didn’t you come to Ruby? She’s your daughter. Why didn’t you come when she first said her children had been kidnapped?”

  She turned wordlessly, inviting me inside.

  “Ruby has a head injury,” I said to her retreating back, as graceful and narrow as I remembered it. “She needs you. You’re her mother. There may be a trial.”

  She said, without looking at me, “She murdered her children.” She pronounced the word oddly, like murther.

  “But how do you know that’s what really happened?”

  Santane turned to face me. She looked much the same as she had two decades ago, when I’d visited her and Royce and the infant Ruby at their cabin in Mendocino, but there was something barren in her composure now. “Either Ruby did it or she let it happen.”

  “Who tied her up? Who hit her in the head?”

  “Perhaps she did those things to herself.”

  “You look so much the same,” I said, although every feature of her face had sharpened, deepened, as if it were not age that would destroy her but too much definition.

  “I am not the same, and it was better that your brother left us. He was a very unhappy man.” This seemed an overly generous assessment of someone who had once broken her arm.

  “My brother may have turned into a monster,” I said, “but he was not always so.”

  “No, not always.”

  We stood there considering each other. I wondered how she saw me, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, my fishing overshirt hanging unbuttoned, in sandals because of the heat. “Stay here,” she said. “I will make tea.”

  Soon we were sitting in her living room drinking tea from plain white mugs with Tetley teabags. The peaceful environment, I realized, was an illusion, the result of stringency, not of ease. There were no extraneous objects, no magazines or papers, no television, and her decorations contained no human images. Her environment felt like a large, well-done hotel room. “You don’t have any pictures?”

  “I have pictures.”

  “Santane, did you know Ruby’s children?”

  “Their fingerprints are on the chair you’re sitting in.”

  My hands jumped up from the arms of the black enameled chair, a lovely replica that looked like a prop for a noir movie.

  Her face still had that carved quality. “I can detect their scents in this room. For many years I thought that working with so many hair products would make me less susceptible to odors, but it has not.”

  Gingerly, I lowered my arms. “I heard you own your own shop. That you’re married and successful now.”

  “The Vietnamese community has been kind to me.”

  I wanted to say something else, but instead I said, “What did they smell like?”

  She had composed this answer: “Lucia smelled like a small white flower in Vietnam. Merry is the closest translation. Americans would find it odorless. And River smelled like running water. But sometimes he smelled like a puppy. A small, clean puppy.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. “Don’t say such stupid things.”

  I looked down at my hands. “I’ll try to remember that.”

  She said, “Your hands are much like Ruby’s.”

  I kept my head down.

  “Royce is dead, Ellen,” she said.

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “I don’t believe that anymore, and my guess is you don’t either.”

  “Royce is dead, and River and Lucia are dead, and soon Ruby will be dead too. We must let them go.”

  I studied her face. “How can you even talk like that?”

  She breathed deeply, and for a second I felt her breath inside my chest, a white-hot locus of pain.

  “What do you mean, Ruby will be dead too? They won’t execute her.”

  “You don’t know Ruby,” she said.

  “I want to help her if I can.”

  “How American of you. Does Ruby want your help?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She sighed again, her irritation now visible. “How is she handling herself?”

  “She’s on suicide watch, and they won’t even let me to talk to her. They’re keeping her in a paper dress in a single cell with only a mattress and paper sheets. Video cameras monitor her all the time.”

  Something unreadable crossed her face again.

  “Santane, if Ruby is responsible for what happened to her children, then why didn’t she take her own life as well?”

  “Because suicide is a sin.”

  “And murder is not?”

  “Ruby wanted to become a Catholic, and in Catholicism, one cannot be forgiven for suicide, because there is no opportunity to repent.”

  “That sounds so crazy.” I placed the mug outside its saucer onto the enameled coffee table, wishing its finish would blister. “None of you are going to tell me what’s going on, are you?”

  “Ellen, nothing is going on, in the sense that you mean.” Then, perhaps to distract me, she said, “All right, I will visit Ruby. But I hope you will begin to let go of my daughter and the rest of us too. Royce’s family has only been a source of danger, and of much pain.”

  “I don’t think of myself as Royce’s family anymore. Royce became a horrible person, and his beliefs and actions were ghastly.”

  “But you’re his sister.”

  “And she’s his daughter.”

  A strobe of anguish crossed her face. “Don’t you think we know that?”

  Behind her, the front door opened and a man appeared in the frame. He paused and spoke sternly to her in Vietnamese. He was smaller than Santane and looked considerably older.

  She answered him at some length, then turned to me and said, “My husband, Giang, is home.”

  He spoke again, not acknowledging me.

  “You must go,” she said.

  He held the door open, his expression averted. I assumed he was angry about my presence.

  “Thank you for talking with me,” I said as Santane escorted me to the door. “Will you ask Ruby to speak with me too?”

  “I have no power over Ruby’s choices.”

  Her husband said something harsh, and for the first time Santane looked at me as if I were not an enemy. “My husband says you should stay away from us. And if you cannot do that, please have the good sense to be afraid.”

  13

  When Santane arrived to visit Ruby at the Albuquerque jail, her small husband accompanied her. He and I sat for almost an hour in a waiting room that had the sterile feel of a doctor’s office. I had not desired nor been asked to be present at the meeting between Santane and Ruby, but neither did I want to sit with this man who seemed to be glowering at me. Finally, he said, in perfect English, “Americans believe in the fresh start. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

  I realized he must be joking, so I said, “Into every life a little rain must fall.”

  He laughed, a surprisingly pleasant sound. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

  “When bad things happen to good people.”

  “Every cloud has a silver lining.�
��

  “Make that lemonade.”

  “I don’t understand that one,” he said.

  “When life give you lemons, which are sour, you’re supposed to make lemonade, which is sweet. Who were you in Vietnam?”

  “A restaurant owner.”

  “And what did you have to do to get out?”

  “Be very fortunate,” he said. “What did your own forebears have to do?”

  “I understand your point. Three of my grandparents were part of the Scotch-Irish migration. And the fourth—who knows? Cherokee is what I wish, but English is what I suspect. In any case, they were desperate people. What now is called white trash.”

  “Americans have no history. It is such a convenience.”

  “Of course we have a history. We crushed the natives and brought in the slaves, didn’t we? And you’re an American citizen now too, here in the land of self-invention. History is what keeps pushing us along.”

  “Only four generations in this country, and already you are a dangerous family.”

  “My brother is dangerous. I’m just obnoxious and well-meaning.”

  “I suspect you are nearly as dangerous as he.”

  “How?” I asked, genuinely interested. “Because all white people are dangerous?”

  “If you understand that, then you know it’s true. But, no, that is not what I mean. You are meddling in our affairs, Miss Burns. You bring your innocence, your hope. You believe there is some larger truth you will discern.” He smiled with a trace of mockery.

  “It’s been a long time since someone labeled me innocent.”

  “You radiate your innocence, Miss Burns. My wife values it in you more than she wishes to, and I believe it is what she saw in your brother. And, of course, she loves it deeply in Ruby.”

  “Maybe the right word is naïveté?”

  “Here is the mistake you are making: You may be innocent, but your blood is not. Blood has its own demands. An acorn cannot become a pine tree, no matter how good the quality of the soil.”

  “So are we talking symbolically now? Is this a conversation about genetics?”

  “We are having a discussion about soil, Miss Burns, and about what can grow in it. You must come to my restaurant. I would like to feed you. And bring your police chief with you. He is a decent man. This is a serious invitation. Let me know when you would like to visit.”

  “May I ask why you call him my police chief?”

  “Don’t confuse privacy with secrecy, Miss Burns.”

  When Santane returned, she looked tired and gravely beautiful. She spoke first to Giang in Vietnamese, and there was something sharp in the exchange. Or maybe it was just the unfamiliar sound of their language. To me Santane turned and said, “Ruby has decided to try to tell you what happened, and I will attempt to do so as well. It is a difficult decision for us. Perhaps even a risky one.”

  “Let the chips fall where they may,” Giang said.

  14

  Santane would not agree to meet with me at her apartment or at her husband’s restaurant, and she would not permit me to take notes on our conversation. Instead we met in an Albuquerque diner, face to face in a booth with red imitation leather seats. She put a manila envelope on the table between us but kept her hand fixed upon it.

  I ordered a chocolate milkshake, and Santane ordered tea. I had not been this close to Santane physically before, and perhaps this was some of what my brother had felt: an attraction to her opacity. She was probably only a few years younger than me, ten at most, but even with my face-lift I looked older. For the first time, I wondered how she had gotten from Vietnam to America.

  After the waitress left us alone, Santane said, “I’m still not sure what you want from us.”

  “If Royce is alive, I want to find him. I hold him responsible for what has happened. And I want to help Ruby too, if she can be helped. But, Santane, I’m not sure why you think I’m intruding. Am I putting you in danger? Could that possibly be true after all these years?”

  “How do you imagine your presence is helping? We would have gotten a lawyer without your intrusion. And please don’t use that technique on me, addressing me by my first name in an attempt to foster false trust between us. That was a favorite of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Your BATF.”

  “My BATF?”

  “They had a Korean woman question me first, before they realized I did not speak Korean and was not reassured merely by the sight of another Asian female.” She smiled without any warmth. “BATF had some very bad people in it, but they were also quite stupid.”

  “Were the FBI people stupid too?”

  “No. They seemed to want to protect Ruby and me. They were not using us in an attempt to find Royce. Or not only using us.”

  The milkshake was too thick to drink, so I picked up the long spoon. “I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for a long time, but I still have this sugar thing.”

  Santane blew on her tea. “Yes, and you are probably a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have several clients in AA. You all have a certain gaze.”

  I felt even more unsettled. “What do you mean?”

  “Your eyes have a quality of serenity. But is it real?”

  I held steady on her gaze, which was not easy. “No, it’s not. Not always. I used to have an AA bumper sticker on my car that said SERENITY, but I had to take it off because of several episodes of road rage.”

  When she smiled again, I studied her tea-stained teeth.

  “I forgot how beautiful you are,” I said.

  She looked away. “You look too much like Ruby for me to be comfortable. Your skin is a different hue, and you’re much older, of course. And you do not have Ruby’s eyes. I believe the cast of your skin is called ‘olive,’ is it not?”

  “No, it’s called ‘pink’. I think of myself as a pink person now because ‘white’ has become too contaminated. Is that envelope for me?”

  She did not hand me the envelope but began to answer my questions in surprising detail. She said she had arrived in the United States with the first wave of refugees after the fall of Saigon; the Anglican mission in San Francisco had recruited her because their diocese had received a letter praising her virtues and devotion to the faith. This letter had come from her keeper—keeper was the word she used—a defense contractor who had required her to accompany him to Anglican services after every time they had “intimate relations.” Santane had understood, even at fifteen, that she was not sinning, and she did not hate this man, who had been kind and who prized her British-accented English, but when an abortion became necessary, it left her with a sense of ruin she could not easily overcome. She had started going to a nearby Buddhist temple where she met Royce. He was young and hungry, and his eyes were as open as windows.

  She pushed the envelope across the table and said, “Who knows why anybody loves anybody?”

  Back at my hotel room in Gallup, I ordered a second milkshake from room service and opened the envelope she’d given me. Two papers were inside. The first was a note scribbled in Royce’s cramped handwriting, in pencil on blue-lined paper.

  My dearest Santane,

  A writer I admire once wrote that if we could hear the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, we would die of the roar that lies on the other side of silence. The first time I saw you, I heard that roar. Do you understand what I am saying? How much I love you?

  The second letter had been printed on computer paper.

  Santane,

  I’m sorry I hit you. I do regret what I said to Ruby, but, as you must know by now, you and Ruby have become a source of anguish for me. I am a white man, and the white race is being eradicated. Without large-scale resistance, there will be no more of us, only this disastrous mongrelization that Ruby embodies. Caucasians are the core of civilization, and we must seize the future now, whatever the personal costs.

  As I had speculated, a bizarre religious experience was at the root of Royce’s personality change. His letter tried to describe this
event in some detail because apparently he needed Santane to “understand.” He explained that the second time he’d gone to the Brotherhood compound, an evangelist named Billy Valentine had been preaching. During the speaking-in-tongues part of the service, which Royce had at first found ridiculous, he had raised his arms.

  And this is what happened to me. Soon after I raised my arms a current of energy began to flow down my right hand. It was as real as water pouring over my skin. Then my feet got hot, and when I opened my eyes—I hadn’t known they were closed—my legs were being transformed into black and yellow lights. What looked like luminous jewels were replacing my feet and ankles, and diamond and gold snakes were wrapping my legs and rising up me. I don’t remember shouting, but it seems that I did. “Ecstasy” is not the right word because there is no right word. When I awoke several hours later, I was lying on a sofa, and William Luther Pierce, who later became my friend and mentor, was waiting in an armchair beside me. “You have a great gift. I have been looking for someone like you for a long time.” Because this is what I had been shouting: “I AM THE ONE. I AM THE ONE.” I don’t remember much about how Ruby and I got back home, but it wasn’t Joe who drove us. I was still confused by what had happened, and when I carried Ruby inside I whispered, “Don’t you worry, baby, I love you more than God.” I assumed she was asleep. In any case, what I said to Ruby was not true. I AM THE ONE, and I have to accept my destiny.

  I did not know what to make of these letters. Royce had clearly loved Santane and Ruby, and it had mattered to him to attempt to explain his transformation. But what was it that had happened? I knew from my own experience that there are strong energies not yet understood—early in my sobriety I’d had powerful encounters with a shaman in Peru and a guru in Vermont—but I had never heard of anything as patently psychotic as Royce’s vision. Maybe Joe Magnus reappearing in his life while he was living so peacefully with Santane had cracked Royce’s mind, or maybe all religious fanatics must break apart on their roads to Damascus.

  15

  Ruby leaned against the back wall of her cell, arms spread against the raw cinder blocks. Wet gaps showed on both of the short sleeves of her paper dress.