The Between

by Tananarive Due

  “But you believe now?”

  “I believe in things I see.”

  Hilton closed his eyes, feeling an unexplained, intense pang of sadness, as though something he’d known forever was being translated for him in simple terms he couldn’t ignore. He dreaded the sound of Kessie’s voice. She seemed to sense it, touching his face. “I don’t have to go on. Do you want the rest?”

  With effort, he nodded yes.

  “When Kaya was born, I befriended a nurse who agreed to let me hold her in the nursery. I stood a few feet before the glass window, and I could see my reflection there, and the reflection of the bundle in my arms. A movement in the glass caught my eye, so I looked up high. And I saw a colorless thing, an indescribable thing, dancing above her empty crib. I blinked my eyes and looked and looked, and I was sure of what I saw. A death spirit. So I told Dede she must change the child’s name. I told her it was to honor my heritage, but it really was to help the baby flee.”

  “And Jamil?” Hilton asked, breathing painfully.

  “I prayed I wouldn’t ever see that thing again, and I never did. But I felt it, Hilton, from the first instant the second child was in my arms. Just like the first. I felt like mourning if I only touched them, as though what I held was less than a corpse. It was . . . nothing.” Her voice was a guttural whisper.

  those seedlings will choke soon enough

  Abruptly, Kessie patted Hilton’s knee. “But Mama Kessie was wrong, you see? So much for my superstitions. Kaya and Jamil both lived. We’ve managed to trick the spirits. Through prayer? Through resolve? I don’t know how or why, but they are both still here, and here they’ll stay. We won’t speak of this again, as I said, because you’ll think I’m a mad old bush woman.”

  “I could never think that about you,” Hilton said, the image of the dancing spirit haunting his thoughts. Was that what he saw in his sleep? “Do you ever have dreams about them, Kessie?”

  “Those children? No,” she chuckled. “But from time to time I dream about you, Papa. You won’t be flattered.”

  “What about me?”

  “Once I dreamed I couldn’t remember your face. I was talking to Dede about her husband, and then your face was gone from my mind. Your name, too. Poof. That’s a funny dream, isn’t it?”

  Hilton didn’t answer. Instead, he closed his eyes and rested his head fully against Kessie’s warmth. He enjoyed a small relief in the midst of his trepidation. In some unknown way, he believed Kessie’s story made him understand a little more why his life no longer fit exactly in place. He felt as though he’d laughed suddenly after a long, hard cry. Funny, he thought, but he’d never paused to realize how much he really loved Kessie. If Dede walked in and saw them now, Kessie on his lap, she wouldn’t believe it. Mama Kessie. The name suited her, especially tonight.

  “Someday I’ll miss you, Kessie,” he said.

  She squeezed his knee and raised her hand to stroke his head. “Sleep, son,” she said in a voice that sounded like Nana’s.

  CHAPTER 19

  Antoinette’s funeral.

  Everything is as it was, the simple white casket beneath a gathering of flowers at the pew, a small congregation wearing black. Hilton stands near the back of the church, tightly clasping Kaya’s hand. He glances down at her from time to time, and she smiles up at him, looking brave and sad. “Are you okay, Dad?”she asks. It’s all the way it was that day.

  Yet Hilton is anxious to leave this place. Small details are beginning to jar him, sliding out of place. The room is too bright, with a cloud of dust particles floating in the light gleaming through the stained-glass windows. Antoinette’s casket was open, not closed as this one is. Kaya didn’t wear bows in her hair to the funeral, did she? This isn’t right.

  The organist pounds out “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” and the mourners begin to sing. Hilton doesn’t join them. This is his favorite spiritual, but no one played this for Antoinette. He glances around the church and notices that all of the pews are crammed tight, with more people standing in the back. Stu is here, as he was at Antoinette’s funeral. But so is Raul. So is Curt, who wasn’t there. Hilton also spots the mayor, Council-woman Price, even Danitra standing teary-eyed in a clinging black dress.

  “Whose funeral is this?” Hilton asks Kaya, but she is no longer standing beside him.

  There are three caskets now, he sees. Three. One full-sized casket and two smaller ones, all matching in creamy rose.

  A flash catches his eye as a photographer snaps a picture. He hadn’t noticed all of the reporters until now, but they are a swarm at the front of the church with their blinding lights and video cameras from all of the news stations. Where are Kaya and Jamil? “ . . . don’t know how Dede made it . . . She’s up front, poor thing . . . with her mother. . . Eyes so empty. . . can’t even cry . . . Shock, of course. . . Can you imagine?. . . At least they caught that man. . . it’s all over the national news . . .”

  He has to leave here. Faces stare past Hilton as he pushes through the crowd to try to escape through the church door, which he finds locked. He struggles with the knob until a cold, wrinkled hand seizes his. “Stop running, Hilton,” Nana says. She looks angry. She is no longer beautiful or comforting in her loose-fitting, outdated clothes. He senses that she is not his friend.

  “I won’t stay here.”

  “You would rather go back to the highway? Or maybe to the beach? Where will you go? This is where you have chosen. There is nowhere else for you.”

  He peers at her shrunken, leathery face. Her lips are cracked and moistureless. This is not Nana at all, but the pale-faced man from the hearse window, wearing a white wig and Nana’s dress. His breath smells dank and sour, of his bowels. “This isn’t real,” Hilton reminds himself out loud. “None of this is real.”

  The cold hand tightens its grip until it hurts and Hilton is certain his fingers will be ripped from their tendons. “Whatever you can touch is real,” the man hisses in an icy voice that freezes Hilton’s soul.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Bingo,” Curt s voice crackled across the telephone.

  “Bingo what?”

  “Bingo on Charles Ray Goode,” Curt said, nearly whooping. “The sister in D.C. came through, and you won’t believe what she dug up. When can you get away?”

  Hilton sat straight up, his heart flying. He held up his hand to Ahmad to signal he’d need a minute, so his assistant crossed his arms with a sigh and sat down in the chair in front of the desk. He looked irritated.

  “I’m in a meeting, but fill me in. What’d you get?”

  “You were right. He wasn’t a grunt. He was ROTC, an officer recruited from an Ivy League in 1977. Discharged in 1985—and you’ll never guess why.”

  “I’ve waited too long for guessing games, man.”

  “He was a munitions advisor for a fucking terrorist group called The Order, out of Seattle. More than one group, could be. White-hate Nazi stuff. Bunch of the leaders went to jail. You remember that radio talk-show guy who was killed? There was a movie about it a few years back. These guys killed him.”

  “I remember,” Hilton said, his entire chest thudding.

  “Anyway, it turns out Goode had ties to these guys, but the FBI couldn’t prove anything. He’s discharged anyway, and the whole thing is swept under the rug. Can you believe it? A fucking Green Beret officer.”

  “Jesus,” Hilton said, full realization settling over him. He felt a leap in his stomach, nausea tickling his throat. This was the man after his family, a terrorist? “Lord Jesus.”

  “My major made me call the feds on it. I wanted to rush a search warrant and grab the guy myself, but the majors probably right. So we’ll do it their way. They’re moving today. You in?”

  Hilton fumbled for a pen and held it gingerly. His right hand hurt like hell for some reason today, as though he’d slammed a door on his fingers. “Go.”

  Curt gave him the address of a trailer park in North Dade. Goode was still living with the woman he’d beate
n, whose skull he had gashed with a crowbar. Federal officers planned to search his property at five-thirty, before nightfall, for explosives or the computer and printer used to write the threatening letters to Dede. With his record, and because of Florida’s antistalking law, Curt said, they could send Goode’s ass to jail. At least for a while.

  “Man, I don’t know how, but you knew,” Curt finished, laughing. “Yo, you gotta give me six numbers for Lotto.”

  “You get this guy, Curt, and you can have anything you want.”

  Poinciana Haven, a few blocks east of Biscayne Boulevard near the county line, was home to several dozen neatly kept mobile homes equipped with carports, paved walkways, and elaborate gardens. This wasn’t a roost for snowbirds; the residents here were settled, and many of them were elderly. Most of the population had come to gawk at the half dozen marked and unmarked police vehicles in front of the double-wide mobile home parked in lot 1OG.

  Goode and his girlfriend, who were still inside with FBI agents an hour after the convoy arrived, hadn’t made an appearance to satisfy their curious neighbors. Two Metro-Dade officers stood in front of the trailer’s open door to offer the stock answer that all the fuss was just routine. Just back off, said one who was losing his patience. Wasn’t it about time for people to start cooking dinner?

  “What happened to Charlie?” asked a resident arriving late, hobbling into the crowd with a cane.

  “He musta’ done something, Jack.”

  “Charlie? Can’t be.”

  Hilton sat with Curt in his patrol car twenty yards from the trailer, nursing a lukewarm cup of coffee he’d picked up from McDonald’s. His eyes were glued to the doorway. He’d seen Goode’s silhouette for a brief second when he first opened his door at the FBI’s announcement that they had a warrant, but Hilton was still bracing for his first good look. At least he’d know him then.

  A flock of birds was squawking and quarreling from the lolling branches of a royal poinciana tree overhead. The more the sunlight faded, the more nervous Hilton felt. The Big Mac he’d wolfed down wasn’t settling easily in his stomach. He’d taken a chance not telling Dede about Curt’s news, hoping he’d be able to fill her in after Goode was already in custody. The unhappy alternative would be telling her the FBI suspected a neo-Nazi terrorist who was still free for lack of proof. The thought of it made Hilton rub his forehead with desperate frustration.

  “Why haven’t they brought him out yet?” Hilton asked.

  “Easy, man. They’re feds. By-the-book stuff, I guess.”

  A hoarse, angry shout suddenly emerged from the trailer: “So this is a game to you? . . . What, you thought it would be cute to go after a judge? It’s not cute, Goode. It’s stupid. . . . You hear me? Brainless and stupid. Because we’re all over your ass now. You got that, Ivy League? Every time you take a piss, I’ll have a report on my desk . . .”

  Two federal officers in suits, an olive-skinned man and a woman Hilton recognized from earlier, walked out of the trailer with their pads in their hands and their eyes on the ground. The woman muttered something to the Metro-Dade officer as she passed. Hilton could see a shadow in the doorway cast by the lanky, blond-haired man Curt had told him was in charge of the investigation. He, apparently, was the one doing the shouting.

  “They’re leaving?” Hilton asked.

  “I’ll be damned.” Curt opened his car door and climbed out. Hilton sat motionless, watching the doorway.

  The shout rose again: “I said, bring your ass out here! . . . You too, miss . . . I’ve got somebody I want you to meet.”

  And there he was. Flanked by three FBI agents and a dark-haired woman wearing cutoffs and a bodysuit, there emerged Charles Ray Goode in jeans, muddy work boots, and a white undershirt. Just over six feet tall, Hilton judged. Light brown hair to his shoulders, strong jawline, clean-shaven. He ambled down the steps from the trailer door with his hands in his pockets, not appearing at all uncomfortable in the company of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He looked almost bemused.

  “What’s going on, Charlie?” the old man with the cane called.

  “Believe your own eyes, Jack,” Goode called back. “It’s official now. It’s finally a crime to be a white man in the United States of America.”

  The blond agent pointed toward the car where Hilton sat and gave Goode a rough nudge. “Over there,” he said.

  Hilton quickly set his coffee down and opened his car door, wanting to be at full height when he faced Goode. As Goode sauntered toward him, their eyes met for the first time. His eyes were pale blue, nearly translucent, bewitching Hilton with the intensity of their hatred. Goode’s face was innocuous, but his eyes spoke on their own.

  he’d have almost thought of it himself

  “I don’t think you’ve had the honor of meeting this gentleman in person,” the crew-cut blonde agent said to Goode when they stood before Hilton. “This is Hilton James. You remember. You’ve been threatening to kill his wife and children.”

  Goode nodded politely. “I’m afraid I don’t know nothing about birthing no babies,” he said nonsensically, still staring at Hilton dead-on. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miz Scaw-lett.”

  “You’re a real smart-ass, aren’t you?” the agent asked, his cheeks red. “That’s useful. You’re really going to crack up the other guys in your cell block at the federal pen.”

  “Believe what you want, officer.”

  The woman, too, stared at Hilton with poison, blaming him for disrupting her day and her life in front of the neighbors. She linked her arm around Goode’s. Hilton, watching them, felt more numb than enraged. So here Goode was, close enough to touch. Curt walked to Hilton’s side, probably to be sure he wouldn’t spring at Goode. Curt would see those eyes, too, and know. Couldn’t they arrest him for what was in his eyes?

  “You look a little peaked, Mr. James,” Goode observed in a sickly sweet voice. “I don’t think you’re getting enough sleep.”

  “Thanks for your concern.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Goode,” Curt said, bristling. “It’s over. We got you. Let all that shit go, man. It ain’t worth it.”

  “Again,” Goode said, very deliberately, “I must repeat, I have no idea what any of you is talking about. And if there’s nothing else here, I believe I may have some constitutional rights left.” He smiled at Hilton, displaying rows of straight white teeth. “That okay with you, bro? Perhaps we’ll meet another time.”

  “You know the way, motherfucker.” The words leaped to Hilton’s lips from a hidden wellspring. “Try me.”

  “You’re real dumb for a smart man, Goode,” the FBI agent said.

  Ten minutes later, Goode and his girlfriend were back inside of their trailer with the door and thin white curtains closed. Most of the police cars, as well as the crowd, were gone. Only Curt, Hilton, and the blond agent remained in conference over the hood of Curt’s car.

  The agent shook Hilton’s hand and introduced himself. He appeared to be in his late twenties but was older in his deportment. “Sorry to put you through that, but I was trying to unsettle him. It’s not an easy job.”

  “I was hoping he’d spend the night in jail,” Hilton said, rubbing his throbbing fingers. Goddammit. Had he fallen to the floor and crushed his hand while he slept last night? His fingers hadn’t hurt the day before. whatever you can touch is real

  “Unfortunately, we came up dry here and at his workplace. He’s doing drywall with his brother’s firm, but they’ve got a shabby dot-matrix printer. No match. He doesn’t even have a pocketknife here. I’m pretty sure Goode has been expecting us.”

  “He’s smooth, all right,” Curt said.

  “He has a history with the FBI I can’t discuss with you,” the agent said, looking at Hilton earnestly, “but it’s enough that we’re going to keep him under surveillance. He has a shadow from now on, Mr. James. I can’t promise you the same for your family, but we’re going to see about getting some occasional surveillance at your home,
too, especially at night.”

  Hilton explained the precautions he’d been taking after the more recent notes, and the agent nodded his approval. “Looks like you knew what you were up against,” he said.

  “I don’t take chances with my family.”

  “Smart man.”

  They agreed on a time he and Dede would visit the local FBI office to make a formal statement and complaint, and the agent warned Hilton that his office had already gotten calls from the press. A story was likely in the next day’s paper, he said.

  “I’d better get on the phone with my wife and let her know what’s going on before she sees it on TV,” Hilton said. “Listen, I can tell her you all are going to get this guy, right?”

  The agent exhaled, glancing back toward the trailer. “He’s slippery, Mr. James. But whether or not we can ever charge him, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about any more threats.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “Well, between his military record and his FBI file, I’m hoping we can pull up some evidence to link to those threats. The rest may be up to Mr. Goode.”

  Following the agent’s gaze, Hilton noticed a shadow from where Charles Ray Goode stood behind his curtains in the trailer window, parting them slightly to gaze outside at the trio. His features were obscured in front of a lamp, but Hilton was almost certain he could see his eerie, empty eyes.

  we’ve found someone to do our weeding

  No, Hilton thought as a sharp breeze tinged with the scent of salt water tripped into his nostrils. The rest may be up to me.