Grace

by Howard Owen

  Grace continues unbroken into the area where VCU is gradually eating the city, bulldozing the old bars and cheap-eats places of my youth. Then it becomes houses again, an outlier to the Fan that has come up in the world since Sam McNish bought his place for a song and made it into Grace of God.

  It goes on westward, a block off Monument Avenue, where we memorialize Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, and Arthur Ashe with no sense of irony.

  Like Grace of God and its guiding light, they are all ours, for better or for worse.

  LAQUINTA COLE’S place is within eyesight of the kiddie park, in one of those truncated sections of Grace. There are so many cars near her house that I have to park two blocks away, on the other side of Broad.

  I stub out my Camel and go up the front steps. When I walk in the unlocked, cracked-open front door, I get some looks, but there are so many people here that you could feed yourself on chicken, potato salad, and collards for two days before they figured out you weren’t family or friend. And my dusky demeanor (“Not quite white,” is the way I overheard one woman on the Hill describe me once when I was about ten years old) gets at least my little toe inside the door.

  I’m halfway to the big table and the big women around it when my passage is blocked by a bronze battleship.

  “Can I help you?” the man asks. It doesn’t sound exactly like a question. I recognize his voice from the phone earlier.

  I tell him I’m that reporter, the one who called. He does not seem impressed. With his log-size arms folded, he looks more like a bouncer than a mourner.

  I know I’ve seen his big ass somewhere before. At about six five and way on the other side of three hundred pounds, he would stand out in a crowd. And if that didn’t do it, the squinty, like-to-fuck-you-up eyes, graying beard, and a nose that has stopped a few ill-conceived punches would have finally cashed a check at my memory bank.

  The light bulb goes on.

  “Big Boy? Big Boy Sunday?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Who wants to know?”

  Franklin Sunday is about my age. I know because he played for Armstrong when I was a schoolboy flash, or thought I was. Even then nobody but the newspaper called him anything but Big Boy, for good reason. I still remember an end sweep we tried to run my senior year. The pulling guard wasn’t much bigger than me, and when he turned the corner, with me right behind him, there was Big Boy, the right defensive end. He picked the guard up, literally lifted him off the ground, and flattened my ass by throwing him into me.

  He looked down at us and asked, “What else you got?”

  I know Big Boy from later dealings too. On the night cops beat, he was always on the periphery. You’d hear a rumor that he was behind some drug-deal-gone-bad shooting or the disappearance of somebody whose absence seemed to have been involuntary. He was the guy off in the background, always with two or three other bad characters flanking him, maybe leaning on a car no journalist could afford, watching the cops try to find somebody who saw the most recent East End shooting. (Almost nobody ever did.)

  He did a couple of years in prison for second-degree man-slaughter, probably that little because the victim was what the prosecutors call “NK,” as in “needed killing.” But that was a long time ago.

  I have never actually introduced myself to the man, haven’t really been in a position to do so until now.

  My recollection about our high school football days doesn’t get much more than a nod.

  When I mentioned growing up in Oregon Hill, he does react a little more.

  “No shit?” he says. “Man, I thought that place was white as rice.”

  He hesitates.

  “No offense,” he says, “I mean, you don’t exactly look like the Caucasian persuasion.”

  “A little of this, a little of that,” I tell him.

  He nods.

  “Listen,” he says, lowering his voice, “this ain’t exactly a good time, know what I mean? Maybe later.”

  I agree with him but tell him that Laquinta Cole had invited me over, said she wanted to talk about it.

  He looks doubtful, but then Laquinta herself comes in from the overcrowded living room. She recognizes me from the park the other day and steps between me and Big Boy.

  “It’s OK,” she tells him, putting a hand on his elbow. “I’m good. Just want to talk about it. Let somebody know Artesian was a good boy, that he didn’t do nothing to bring this on.”

  Big Boy gives me a look that tells me I probably shouldn’t do anything to further upset the grieving mother, then wanders off in the direction of a just-delivered bucket of KFC.

  She leads me to a room that has only half a dozen people in it and asks them for some privacy.

  I sense I’m better off just jumping right in.

  “Tell me about Artesian.”

  She goes on for about twenty minutes, with no interruption from me. There’s no mention of the boy’s father, who I assume is long gone.

  “He was always trying to look after me,” she says. “ ‘Momma,’ he told me one time, ‘I’m gonna take care of you. I’m gonna get you a big house, and you won’t never have to work again.’ He wasn’t no more than seven when he said that.”

  She talks about how he tried to look after his little brother and sister. I guess that’s them I saw wandering around from hug to hug, looking lost.

  Laquinta takes a breath.

  “They got that man that did it,” she says. “That so-called man of God. I trusted him, he seemed so, I don’t know, so good. Now I hope they fry him. But I bet they don’t.”

  And I bet they’d better, if Sam McNish is guilty. In a city that’s half African American and keeps score, anything else would not be well-received. I’m sure the commonwealth’s attorney and L.D. Jones and everyone else can see “Ferguson, Missouri,” written all over this one.

  Then she says something that catches my ear.

  “It’s just like the other ones, and nobody got caught for them.”

  “The other ones?”

  I’m mostly sure I know what she means, from the research I did earlier, but I want to hear her say it.

  And she goes on to tell me about the last two boys who went missing.

  “They just disappeared, like the ground swallowed them up,” she says. “The police seemed like they weren’t that interested. One of ’em told Patrice Fetterson that her boy had probably got mixed up with drugs and gangs and all. But that was bullshit, pardon my French. That boy was as good as gold, good as ’Tesian.”

  Neither of the boys seemed to have any connection to Sam McNish, although Mrs. Cole says at least one of them was involved in another after-school program, before Sam started his.

  She shows me some of the medals and awards Artesian had won. It’s my opinion that we as a country are suffering from award inflation. Cindy told me one of her nephews got a youth basketball trophy for being the most enthusiastic. He apparently never got to play much, but he yelled a lot. Still, Artesian Cole’s trophies are impressive. He seems to have been the most valuable player on whatever kiddie team he was on, he had perfect attendance, and his grades seemed to range from A to A minus.

  I promise his mother that I will work all of this into the story I’ve decided I’m going to do for tomorrow, the one they damn sure better make room for.

  She thanks me for coming. I thank her for her time. There isn’t much else to say without being an insincere asshole.

  I mention the other two missing boys that showed up on my search, the ones who vanished back in the nineties.

  “Hadn’t heard about them,” she says, shaking her head. “But you know, people disappear around here and it doesn’t seem like it’s that big a deal. It is to us, but not to nobody else.”

  I can’t say much to that.

  On the way out, I nod to Big Boy Sunday, who is standing in the yard talking to a couple of guys with tattooed necks.

  He walks over.

  “You gonna write something about Artesian?” he asks me.
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  I tell him that I’m headed to do that right now.

  “Do right by him,” he says. “By his momma too.” He puts a slight pressure on my arm and gives me a look that is downright inspirational.

  Looking back on the porch, I see the little girl, Artesian’s sister, who must be all of five. She waves and I wave back.

  BEFORE I can get started on the two stories I want to write, I get a call from my favorite police chief.

  He confers a few choice names on me, as I figured he would. He accuses me of running information that was off the record. He’s right, although I explain to him, as best I can between rants, that he forfeited that off-the-record crap when he burned me by arresting the guy, handing the story to the TV guys, and leaving me sitting here with my thumb up my ass.

  I tell him that, if he wants to complain to my boss, fire away. I can’t be any deeper in the doghouse than I am now for holding off until the good-hair folks on the local network affiliates already had it.

  “It was . . .”

  “An ongoing investigation.” I complete the tired excuse for him. “That’s fine, L.D., but when you ask for my help and then want me to sit on what you tell me, I need a little love in return.”

  “Well,” he says, “you haven’t heard the last of this. And it’ll be a cold day in hell before you get anything else from me.”

  I mention, as he is hanging up, that I hope he enjoys the story I’m writing for tomorrow’s paper.

  “I’d tell you more about it,” I say, because I know he’s still there, listening, “but it’s an ongoing investigation.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wednesday

  This morning, our dwindling readership found out that Artesian Cole’s murder might not have been a one-and-done, random act. Actually, a lot of them learned about it on the eleven o’clock news last night. Somebody coded the story wrong, and it was released as soon as the copy desk finished with it rather than being embargoed. Thus, our faithful reader, eating his cornflakes and reading what he already heard on TV last night, is asking his wife, “Tell me again why we subscribe to the paper?”

  I don’t have nearly enough information on the other four boys who’ve gone missing, going back twenty years, but I did manage to get up with relatives of two of the four.

  “It’s like our lives just stopped,” was the way the mother of the first boy said. “There’s not a day I don’t think about him.”

  L.D. Jones, who probably lost some sleep over this one, has already released a statement, probably written by Peachy Love. The police, the statement goes, take all crimes very seriously, and they never close the books until justice is done.

  That was hardly the consensus of the eighty-six people who had already weighed in on our website by the time I had my first cup of coffee. The verdict there was: fire all the police and let God sort ’em out. If L.D. Jones were not African American himself, the rage level might have been a couple of notches higher. Plus, L.D. has only been the chief for seven years. He’s made enough missteps on his own without having to inherit the past.

  The story doesn’t come right out and say that there’s been a serial killer out there molesting and murdering young black boys for the past twenty years. We let the readers draw their own conclusions. All we do is insinuate.

  Many of the online ranters have, in addition to calling for the dismantling of our police department, insisted that we execute Sam McNish as soon and as painfully as possible. Who needs trials? The people have spoken.

  THIS PROMISES to be a busy day. In addition to the actual workday, starting at three or thereabouts, there’s Artesian Cole’s funeral. And assuming a mob hasn’t stormed the jail and hauled him away to rough justice, I will be talking with McNish, in the company of his esteemed attorneys.

  I knew Marcus couldn’t keep his hands off this one.

  I call Sarah at the paper before I leave for Artesian’s funeral.

  “You wouldn’t believe the calls we’re getting,” she says.

  I tell her that it’s heartening to know that some of our readers still have vocal cords and do not communicate exclusively by tapping their fingers on keyboards.

  “It wouldn’t be so damn heartening if you had to listen to all this crap.”

  The black community tends to blame our paper for a variety of sins, many of which we are guilty. Although I personally was still in short pants when we urged white people to leave the city rather than integrate the schools, we do inherit the sins of editors past. Like L.D. Jones, we catch heat because we’re the ones here to catch it.

  Sarah is writing a story for tomorrow on what the other workers at Grace of God, and especially the ones involved with the Children of God program, think about all this. She tells me that there is a lot of sympathy for Sam McNish, but there are a couple of them who said he wasn’t exactly an angel.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, the younger ones thought he was pretty cool, but some of the older ones, almost as old as you . . .”

  “Watch it.”

  “They said sometimes they could smell beer on his breath when he came back from wherever he’d disappear to in the middle of the day, and one of them said she was pretty sure she smelled dope on him.”

  “What a shock.”

  “And there was this other thing, although I can’t use it.”

  “What?”

  “Well, one of the women told me, off the record, that she thought he might have had a thing going. With Stella Barnes.”

  “And Mr. Motive rears his ugly head.”

  Sarah sighs.

  “So,” she says, “you’re going with the woman-scorned angle?”

  “I’m not going with anything. I’m just trying to find some daylight here.”

  I tell her I’ll see her after the funeral and after I meet with Sam McNish.

  “Be sure and ask him if he’s been hooking up with Stella Barnes.”

  “You think?”

  THE FUNERAL services at the Ashe Center start at eleven. I get there at ten fifteen and the place is already packed. There must be three thousand people. I wind up sitting on the bleachers, about half a mile from all the ministers and choirs. At least I can get out quick if this thing runs long.

  A couple of mourners recognize me and ask me when my paper is going to get off its ass and do something about all these black boys disappearing. I could say that what little is being done is being mostly done by me, but this is no time to get in an argument. This is a time to shut up and take it.

  And God knows the service does run long. It’s almost as long as the one they did for Arthur Ashe himself. I covered that one. I had no feeling in my butt for two days.

  Four preachers, three choirs, and a handful of volunteers are there for the long haul. The crowd doesn’t seem to mind it. I am amazed at how no one but me appears to be in the least bit of a hurry to get anywhere else. There is a certain grace in giving the departed’s kin as much time as they need to validate their grief.

  Sitting beside Laquinta Cole in the front row is a hulk that has to be Big Boy Sunday. He has his arm around her. The light finally penetrates my thick skull. Big Boy is Laquinta’s man—front door, back door, whatever. I know he doesn’t live with her. I’ve already checked on that, but he’s definitely large and in charge.

  “Lord,” one of the preachers inveighs, “we know you have made room among your streets of gold, in one of its finest mansions, for Artesian Cole. We ask that you look kindly on his loving mother. And we ask you to help us understand, if not to forgive, the depraved human being who took Artesian from us, who lured him in with the promise of a better life and then betrayed him in the most heinous way possible. Give us the strength to forgive.”

  “Ain’t enough muscle in the world for that,” a man two seats down mutters, to a chorus of “amens.”

  The preacher might as well have said Sam McNish’s name. I think this crowd has already rendered its verdict. My story on the four other boys has only turned the flame up hig
her.

  I sneak out as gracefully as I can at twelve forty-five. On the way, I make eye contact with L.D. Jones, standing there by the exit door in full police regalia.

  He says something to me. I can’t read lips very well, but I think he said, “Bastard.”

  I MEET Kate and Marcus at the jail. He’s dressed to the nines, even by Marcus’s standards, and I realize he must have been at the funeral too.

  Sam McNish looks like he’s lost ten pounds he didn’t need to lose and he definitely could use some sleep. He’s been a guest of the city for three nights now. He’s spent most of his adult life trying to help our future felons avoid places like this.

  “So,” Marcus says after a bare minimum of pleasantries, “did you do it?”

  Despite the fact that he is wearing jail garb, McNish seems surprised that anyone would even ask such a question.

  “Of course I didn’t do it. You know that.”

  “I don’t know it,” Marcus says. “Nobody knows it. As a matter of fact, I just came back from a funeral where about three thousand people are cocksure that you did do it, that you’ve been messing with and killing young black boys for twenty years or more.”

  McNish seems to accept the fact that his innocence is more obvious to him than it is to the public.

  “What can I do?” he says. “How can I prove I didn’t do it? How can I prove a negative?”

  Kate cuts in.

  “You can start by walking us through that day.”

  He looks at me.

  “I’ve already told him what happened. It’s already been in the paper, hasn’t it?”

  “Well,” Marcus says, “tell us again.”