Tomb of the Unknown Racist

by Blanche Mccrary Boyd

  “Can I sit down?” Without waiting for an answer, I sat on the naked mattress on her cot. The cell was bare except for the video camera in one corner and a metal toilet with no seat.

  “They were all right,” she said sullenly. “They were sleeping when I left. I just did what I was told.”

  “Please don’t start with lies, Ruby. Are they giving you medications to help you calm down?”

  “They’re even giving me shots, but nothing does any good. How could it?”

  I tried to quiet myself inside. “Why don’t you come over here and sit down by me?”

  Her steps were awkward, perhaps from the drugs, but she sat beside me on the cot. “It’s like confession,” she said. “When you sit beside the priest, you don’t have to look at him through the grate. Even if you try, he just keeps looking forward.”

  “Are you saying you want me to keep looking forward?”

  “Yes, please.”

  We stared at the cinder block wall, this one painted ocher. The un-painted back wall annoyed me. “Have you become a Catholic, Ruby? That’s what I heard from your mother.”

  “The church was where I met Mr. Dabley.”

  The story that emerged in this first conversation was nearly as bizarre as her earlier tales. Two months ago, she claimed, she had been walking to her car in a parking lot at a small Catholic church in Bocca, Arizona, when a man named Claude Dabley approached her. She had been going twice a week to the noon Mass before her accounting class. Lightman didn’t know about the accounting class and thought she still worked at a grocery store in Bocca. She knew he would be furious about her going to Mass, but ever since she saw the sacramental snake during the winter festival, she wanted to learn more about the Christian God. Jesus was always unselfish and fair to everyone, except to the moneylenders, and the smells and rituals of the Catholic Church calmed her. This is my body and my blood was a sickening idea, but the gods and ceremonies of the Nogalus were much worse. During the winter festival, when a giant puppet snake thrust its head through the doorway of her mother-in-law’s house, she was terrified. She knew the figure wasn’t real, but she felt a deep panic about it that she still couldn’t explain.

  “When you went to confession, did you tell the priest your secrets?”

  “They wouldn’t be secrets if I told him.”

  “Did you tell him who your father was?”

  “No, but I told him about the man who kidnapped me, the one who said he was the hand of God.”

  I couldn’t help but turn my head and look at her. “You were kidnapped, Ruby?”

  She began to tear the hemline of her paper dress into little squares. “When I was fifteen, I hitchhiked over to Berkeley, and this crazy old man locked me in his car. Santane thought I’d run away again, and by the time she got worried, it was too late. Besides, we weren’t the kind of people who called the police. Jerry claimed he was the prophet Jeremiah. He lived in a trailer in the woods, and his teeth had turned black. His mouth was the worst part, but some nice people helped me get away.”

  I tried to absorb what she was saying and gauge if any of it was true. “So, when you got back home, did you tell your mother what had happened?”

  She stacked the tiny squares of paper on her knees and balanced four of them before they collapsed back into her lap. “It didn’t take Santane long to make me confess, because I was pregnant. The old man kept saying, ‘I’m the hand of God, honey, I’m your bad luck.’ But maybe he wasn’t bad luck, because Lucia came. Jeremiah was a white man, but then Lucia turned dark and her hair frizzled all up.” She turned her head away and began to chew on her sleeve again.

  “Go back for a minute, Ruby. Tell me more about the man in the parking lot at the church. You said his name was Claude Dabley?”

  “He was dressed in a suit and tie, and his teeth were white and straight, like those people in toothpaste commercials. He was really skinny, and his face was swept back almost like a blade. He’s the one who told me Daddy is still alive.”

  She rose, crossed the tiny cell and spit a piece of paper into the metal toilet. A third of her sleeve had disappeared. The squares of her hemline had dropped onto the floor, and I resisted the urge to pick them up.

  She stared up at the video camera in the corner, suddenly distraught. “Why can’t you at least let me have something to write with? Why won’t you give me a Bible? How can I hurt myself with a Bible?”

  “Ruby, let me see what I can do about it. I’m sure they’ll give you a Bible, but I doubt they’ll give you anything sharp, like a writing instrument. Would you like for me to ask for a priest to come see you?”

  She made a strange harsh sound like a cough and then sat back down, burying her face against her knees. I wasn’t sure whether or not to touch her, so I just stared down at the patch of gray mattress ticking between our legs.

  “Please don’t let them send a priest.” She made that guttural sound again. “I know my father is alive, because why would Mr. Dabley say that if it isn’t true? He told me to get a post office box in Bocca and write the number in the dust on my car. ‘Don’t wash your car,’ Mr. Dabley said. He told me Daddy would write me a letter. He said Daddy knew I had children and wanted to see all of us, but it would have to be carefully arranged.”

  “You thought Royce was writing to you? Is that the letter Santane told me about, the one that came to the post office box?”

  “When the first letter came, I showed it to her, but she said it wasn’t his handwriting and that somebody was trying to trick me. She kept saying I was in danger. I hadn’t seen her that upset since I was little.”

  I tried to imagine what Santane would look like upset. “Can you please stop chewing your dress?” I patted the dry part of the sleeve next to me.

  When she turned, her gaze was burning, and I stood straight up. “You’re the first person I’ve thought might understand,” she said.

  16

  The second time I visited Ruby, she again was leaning against the back wall of her cell, but this time she held a small black Bible pressed against to her chest. “I know the whole story,” she said. “Daddy told me. Cain killed his brother Abel, and he was banished to the land of Nod, and Daddy killed Joe Magnus’s father, so I would have to go to Nod too.” She thumped the Bible against her chest twice.

  “Ruby, help me comprehend this. You’re saying Nod was a real place?”

  “Daddy explained everything to me. What happened to Joe Magnus’s father was an accident, but even with all the meditation and praying, God wouldn’t forgive him.”

  “Do you remember when Joe Magnus came to the cabin in Mendocino?”

  “No, but I remember his beard and weird face. He looked like a big monkey, but a really mean one. Even his arms hung funny. Daddy told me I should never talk to him alone.”

  She began thumping the Bible against her chest as if it were her heartbeat. “When I was born, Daddy tried to deliver me himself, but Santane’s vagina tore, so he had to take her to a hospital.”

  “Can you please sit down?” I sat on the cot again and patted the space beside me. Again, there was no cover on the thin gray mattress. “I’m surprised my brother would tell you something like that when you were so young.”

  Ruby did not move away from the wall. “He was very proud of it. And I delivered Lucia by myself in a hotel room.”

  “How could you possibly manage that? Ruby, I want to believe you, but you just keep telling me so many different stories.”

  “They’re all true.” She sat awkwardly beside me on the cot again, and again it was as if we were traveling together on a train. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “After Mr. Magnus came to the house, he and Daddy went into the woods. Mr. Magnus had a rifle with him because he was a soldier, but Daddy was a Buddhist. They brought back dead squirrels, and Daddy skinned them in the yard.”

  “Ruby, please tell me the truth. Where did Lucia’s African American blood come from? You’re saying someone kidnapped you when you were fifteen who c
alled himself the prophet Jeremiah and that he was a white man?”

  “Well, he looked and acted white, but then Lucia turned that chocolate color, so everyone started saying she was black.”

  “What do you mean, he acted white?”

  “You know, like you do. Like all white people do.”

  Ruby described how they traveled to Nod in Joe Magnus’s truck and she had to sit between the men, but she leaned as close to Royce as she could. “Daddy and I played clouds. One person says what a cloud looks like, and the other person tries to guess. We stopped at McDonald’s, and I got a Happy Meal. There were two other children at Nod. One was this black boy named Stretch, and one was a white boy who had something wrong with him. We were in a building like a warehouse, only it was supposed to be a church. A lot of people had crowded inside, and a man was preaching. He had big white eyebrows, and his hair stood straight up because he had been shocked by the Holy Spirit. His name was Billy Valentine. They sang ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,’ and people started raising their hands in the air and making noises. The children had to go up front first. Daddy made me do it. Reverend Valentine put his hand on my head.”

  “Have you told Santane about this?”

  “I didn’t tell her because she hated Mr. Magnus so much. She and Daddy would argue about him in whispers. She didn’t want him to do it.”

  “To take you to that camp?”

  “Or to have Mr. Magnus in the house. Daddy promised he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me, but she stopped speaking to him anyway.” She studied the Bible on her knees.

  “I see they gave you a new dress. Or whatever it is.”

  “I have paper underpants too.”

  “You’re not going to chew your way out again, are you?” When she didn’t reply I said, “What is it you want to have happen now, Ruby? What can I do to help you? I’ve hired a good lawyer. I hope that’s okay with you.”

  “I have everything I want. My children are in heaven, and they’re wearing little gold halos.”

  “You think they’re wearing little gold halos?”

  “Did you ever hear the song ‘Jesus Loves the Little Children’?” She began to sing, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world … and all those children have halos …”

  I cut her off. “Do you still want to see Royce?”

  She sighed and her hands went slack. “I know he can’t come here. And it wouldn’t really matter now.” She touched the black cover of the Bible, tracing the gold word Holy. “I did want to go to the funeral. Did you go?”

  “The ceremony was private, and Lightman didn’t allow me or your mother to attend.” I did not volunteer that Lightman had refused to claim Lucia’s body.

  According to Ruby, it was Mr. Dabley who had come up with the plan. Nogalus don’t like having their pictures taken, but Ruby had pictures made before they moved to the reservation. The only reason she agreed to move there was to get help with the children. With Lucia, she had managed pretty well by living with another single mother, but after River was born, she and Lightman decided to move to the reservation because he had been offered an apprenticeship with a prominent knife-maker and his mother could help with the children.

  At first Ruby did not find living with her mother-in-law so awful, but she kept wanting them to get remarried in a Nogalu ceremony because she said marriage by a justice of the peace did not count. Ruby kept saying “No, no, not yet,” and then, when she saw the giant snake at the winter ceremony, she knew she could never marry Lightman the Nogalu way. The Nogalu belief system frightened her too much. Once Lightman had disappeared for three days, and when he returned, the inside of his mouth was burned black. For a while he could drink only the liquids his mother gave him, and he became too thin.

  Mr. Dabley had told her that Royce wasn’t killed in the fire at Whidbey Island, but he had been burned badly there. His right hand was damaged, so someone else had to write letters for him—because Ruby had asked about the handwriting. Dably said they had taken Royce to Brazil, but part of one foot had to be amputated. They’d saved his other leg, but now he needed a wheelchair most of the time. Still, Mr. Dabley insisted that Royce looked just like he always had, except for getting older and for the burns on his hand and foot and one side of his face. Being in the chair was sapping his strength, and he wanted to see Ruby again and meet his grandchildren while he still could.

  “We’ll have to arrange two separate trips,” Mr. Dabley said. “We’ll take the children first.”

  “No,” Ruby told him, “no, no, that doesn’t make any sense, and how could you handle Lucia and River without me?” He claimed a wonderful woman named Mary would accompany him when they came to pick up River and Lucia, and Ruby would have to pretend they had been kidnapped. Then Mary would take the children to her father, and within a week they would be dropped off at a hospital in the northwest.

  Ruby hadn’t believed what Mr. Dabley said until he gave her the rattles. Royce still had his collection from the snakes he killed as a boy. There were four sets of rattles that she had played with as a child. When Mr. Dabley handed her the smallest and palest of the collection, she felt struck, dazed with hope, and then something else gushed up inside her.

  “I could feel it coming up inside me like a fountain. I thought I was going to start screaming, so I drove away, and I sat for two hours in the parking lot of Dunkin’ Donuts, holding on to the rattles.”

  “Ruby, you were planning to let them take your children without you?”

  “No, of course not. I told him I would never agree to that, and he would have to kidnap all three of us. Because I needed to see my father. Maybe I wasn’t white, but I was part white. I don’t know how Lucia got that dark, but it wasn’t her fault. And Daddy had already told me that Jews were going to lead the revolution, so maybe I could convince him Native Americans should be given special treatment too. They live on their own reservations and aren’t any trouble to anybody. And Lucia could be an exception because I was an exception.”

  This rush of information confused me. How had Ruby known Royce’s views about Jews and the white apocalypse? Had he instructed her like this when she was only six years old? According to Ed Blake, it was Royce’s pro-Semitism that had caused a major schism in the radical right and had put him in danger from his former allies. “Can you tell me more about Lucia, Ruby?”

  “Lucia didn’t make the mistake, I did.”

  “Lucia was a mistake?”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  My anger was quick and harsh. “You think Lucia was a mistake because she was dark-skinned and had nappy hair?”

  “Don’t say that word! That’s a mean thing to say! Lucia had beautiful hair!”

  “The way ‘gook’ is a mean thing to say?”

  Ruby made a choking sound. “I did the right thing!”

  “The right thing was to put your children inside a refrigerator?”

  “There was a plan. They didn’t come!”

  “You did it, Ruby? You really did?”

  Her wailing was so loud that two male guards came jogging to her cell. Ruby had buried her face into the torn edges of her dress, and I wrapped my arm tight across her shoulders. “We’re okay,” I said. “She’s okay.”

  “I’ve called medical,” one guard said. “You’ll have to leave now.”

  “But she’s finally trying to tell me what happened.”

  “You have to leave immediately,” he said again, so I did, and Ruby’s wailing followed me down the hall.

  17

  The lawyer I hired was a lean, morose man with thick black hair. His name was Billy Brock, and he was well-known for death penalty cases, although the death penalty seemed unlikely in Ruby’s situation. Brock immediately advised Ruby not to answer any questions from law enforcement, even if he was present, and he also told her she should stop her conversations with me, a suggestion we both rejected. Later Brock told me that he didn’t know
whether Ruby had killed her children and didn’t need or want to know. And once Brock was hired, I became increasingly reluctant to confide in Ed Blake.

  I kept trying to work out a time line. According to the FBI, my brother had died in the fire along with the leader of the Silent Brotherhood in 1984, and Royce’s body had been identified via DNA in 1986. Then, in 1993, government forces had set fire to a compound in Waco, Texas, that housed a religious cult called the Branch Davidians. Seventy-six people had died in that conflagration, two dozen of them children. Then, on April 19, 1995, four years ago, on the second anniversary of the destruction at Waco, a right-wing terrorist named Timothy McVeigh set off a massive bomb that collapsed the federal building in Oklahoma City. McVeigh’s bomb had killed 168 people, 19 of them children. When McVeigh was arrested some ninety minutes later, he had pages of The Turner Diaries inside an envelope in his car. McVeigh was scheduled to be executed, and his request that his death be televised had been turned down.

  If, as the FBI claimed, the white terrorist movement had been disabled in the 1980s, if most of the members had been jailed or were dead, and any remaining extremist elements such as a compound at Elohim City in eastern Oklahoma were thoroughly monitored or infiltrated, how could the construction and detonation of a six-thousand-pound bomb on a bright blue morning have slipped through the FBI and BATF nets? Timothy McVeigh continued to insist he was an independent foot soldier in the war against the corrupt American government, but I had always wondered if he was. The many missing elements concerning the Oklahoma City bombing troubled me, and now I had a new and awful thought: What if my brother had somehow been involved in Oklahoma City? And what about Joe Magnus, one of the few figures still classified as a fugitive?

  My current AA sponsor, a nice Charleston woman who drove a silver Mercedes and had her hair done weekly, drilled me repeatedly that I was not responsible for the world’s troubles. “You and I are just these eentsy-beentsy specks, Ellen,” she said in her heavy accent. “We are these tiny grains of sand. Your only task is to stay sober no matter what, so you must learn to yield to things you can’t control. That certainly includes your dead brother. Your brother’s actions were not your fault.” I believed her because I wanted to, and a surprising peace had come to me during the years I’d been sober. Nevertheless, Estelle once remarked that I was “about the angriest white woman I’ve ever met.”