“Uh-huh.” Maxwell raised an eyebrow cynically. “I’m having visions of Lyle being pretty stingy as he goes through a little black book, holding back a few numbers for the occasional booty call.”
“Not cool,” Lyle replied, feinting a punch toward Maxwell’s chest. “You know I’m clean, baby. With Jake’s ongoing counsel, I’ve walked the straight and narrow for two years, six months, three weeks, and —”
“You’re scaring me, man,” Maxwell said, a hand raised to shut his friend down. “I was having fun with you.”
“I’ll give you my black book, if that helps,” Lyle continued. “I just thought, given as you’ve probably been working so hard, you’ve forgotten how to lay a rap. I figured you might want me to call some of them for you first —”
“Burn the book,” Maxwell replied, rising from his seat. “I’m gonna go grab some popcorn or something. Either of you want anything?”
“Not so fast,” Jake said, standing and blocking Maxwell’s attempt to stand. “You just not interested in dating? Or have you already met someone?” The naïvely hopeful look in Jake’s eyes actually warmed Maxwell’s heart; Jake was a true shepherd of souls, clearly hopeful that God had already sent his friend a Mrs. Right.
“I’m just not ready for dating, guys,” Maxwell said, leaning back in his seat but keeping his hands on knees for balance. He had to choose his words carefully now. “You know how nasty my breakup with Tiffany was. I haven’t even kissed a woman since we broke off our engagement.”
Lyle smiled. “What have you kissed? Okay, I’m stupid. Look, man, I stand by my advice. You listened to your heart on that one. You know you’re not some racist.” He looked over at their friend for affirmation. “Ain’t that right, Jake?”
Silence enveloped the friends for a minute as history hung in the air. All had dated white women through the years, and Jake’s sweet wife, Meghan, was a bleached blonde of Eastern European descent. Stacy, Lyle’s wife, was the type of black woman who trumpeted her Native American ancestry, and she embodied the racial diversity of Lyle’s past loves: There was hardly an ethnicity he had not sampled through the years.
So three years earlier, when Tiffany had insisted that Maxwell’s decision not to marry her was driven by a belief that he was too good to marry a white woman, these two friends had been the perfect sounding boards. Maxwell was still grateful today for the care they had taken in helping him examine his thinking through prayer and meditation, but he didn’t need to relive all that. The drama that followed in the weeks after Tiffany first leveled her charges, and his attempt to prove his honor, had led to a new relationship, though it was one his friends agreed would not lead to marriage: Nia.
“Why don’t we let this drop, guys,” Maxwell said, rising from his seat. “No need to rehash old history. Frankly, I may have stumbled onto a dating lead of my own.” He nearly swallowed the words as soon as they escaped.
Did I just say that?
15
So who’s the lucky lady?” Jake asked the dreaded follow-up, flanking Maxwell, along with Lyle, as the three crossed the empty soccer field. Maxwell bought a minute while they meandered past the teams’ benches, tousling the hair on Luke’s head and shooting the breeze with one of the coaches, an acquaintance from the old neighborhood.
As they turned toward the concession stand, though, Lyle resumed the conversation. “Out with it, Doc. Who’s the target of your affections?”
Too tired to run, too honorable to lie, Maxwell tried to sound offhanded as he said, “Well, you know I’ve been working a bit with Julia Turner on the plan to save Christian Light —”
“Oh, I got you,” Lyle said, snapping his fingers. “I’m sure there’s quite a few beauties serving on that board, huh? Probably some nice twenty-something babes, if I had to guess? Black, white, or brown?”
Maxwell set his tongue deep within his mouth, realizing immediately the turn the conversation was about to take. As the men took a place in line at the snack stand, it took Jake’s perceptive radar to move the conversation forward.
“I think we already have our answer, Lyle,” Jake said. “Am I right, Maxwell? You’re dating” —the pastor gulped, apparently needing to gather strength to speak the words —“you’re dating Julia Turner?” Even coming from Jake, it sounded more like a taunt than an honest question.
“Huh?” Lyle crossed his arms, tapping a foot anxiously. “Now, there’s an idea I didn’t see coming. You’re dating Julia?”
Maxwell felt his forehead crease as he pivoted and bore a stare into Lyle’s humored gaze. “Why would that be a great mystery?” Ever since Nia had come into his life, Maxwell’s sensitivity to the way American culture judged black women’s beauty had spiked. Sure, he had shielded his twin sisters from a few white boys’ cracks early on in their childhood, but the girls had always looked to their father for ultimate protection. As a grown man, though, Maxwell was increasingly determined not to repeat his youthful endorsement of the idea that when it came to beauty: “White was right.”
Lyle’s stance stiffened as Maxwell stared him down. “There something you need to tell me, man? All I did was ask a question, now you’re looking like you want to throw down.”
“Have you even seen Julia Turner in recent years?” Maxwell asked, letting the heat in his eyes recede. “She’s a beautiful woman. There’s no reason to act like she’s some mud duck no man could find attractive.”
Lyle frowned. “When did I call her a ‘mud duck,’ Maxwell?”
“You didn’t have to, it was written all over your face. Why don’t you act like a man who loves his own race? Just because she’s not Halle Berry’s twin, she’s not worthy?”
Lyle shot a long arm out, a hand ensnaring Maxwell by the shoulder. “Hey, just who are you trying to take to school —” Something caught in his peripheral view and he suddenly released his friend. “Oh, shoot.”
“Dr. Simon!” Edna Whitlock-Walker-Morrison waved eagerly from her spot behind one of the concession stand’s cash registers. Maxwell quickly realized her presence made sense. Her grandson played soccer in this league, and Edna had mentioned that due to her son Pete’s demanding schedule as a police detective, she took his place working the stand at least once a month.
Happy to escape his heated conversation, Maxwell stepped up to Edna’s register. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. “Your boy’s team win today?”
“They kicked some butt, did Grandma proud,” Edna replied, eyes twinkling. She smiled at Maxwell, though he noticed her eyes searching to his left and right, a sense of recognition filling them. “I know you come to see your friend’s boy play sometimes.” Her eyes swung toward Jake and Lyle. “Aren’t these two some of your and Eddie’s old classmates?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jake replied, stepping to the counter and extending a hand. “Pastor Jake Campbell, Bread of Life Church. We’ve met a few times over the years.”
In a flash, Lyle was on Maxwell’s left, his hand extended as well. “Mrs. Morrison, Lyle Sharp.” He nodded toward his friends. “You look good, ma’am. May I just say, your faith is a real inspiration.” Laying a hand to Maxwell’s shoulder, he continued. “The good doctor has shared your testimony. I must say you are a walking example of God’s grace amidst trials.”
A whisper from Maxwell, out the side of his mouth, as Jake ordered a tray of nachos from Edna: “Lay off it.” Lyle’s ability to spin bull was admirable in a few settings —a tense courtroom or a club filled with beautiful women, for example —but to see it used on Edna made Maxwell feel dirty. In truth, Lyle had been second only to Forrest in criticizing his decision to hire Eddie Walker’s mother as his office manager. What had his exact words been? “You don’t know what type of grudges she’s harboring, man. She may tell people in the community what they want to hear —that she’s at peace never knowing whether someone played a role in Eddie’s incapacitation —but you know she must look at all of us who were there that night with suspicion.”
Once his friends had
paid for their food and moved along, Maxwell slid aside for the next person in line. “I’ll see you Monday then, Edna.”
“Okay, Doctor,” she replied, taking a $5 bill from the next customer before turning toward Maxwell. “Would you mind, though, if I called you tomorrow about something?”
Maxwell shook his head, hands raised in self-defense. He had a sense what this was about. “Edna, Bruce and I are meeting with a new round of donors tomorrow for brunch. I promise, we will find a way to keep the clinic doors open. Your employment is secure.” He didn’t know how long his promise was good for, but all Maxwell had left at this point was blind faith.
“I trust you, honey, really.” Edna handed her change to the customer, then sighed when she realized her line had evaporated. “Can you lean in a little bit?”
Maxwell humored her, his chin hovering over Edna’s soda fountain. “What’s the concern then?”
“It’s my son —my other son, I mean, Pete. He’s not acting like himself, Doctor. It’s a long story and I can explain, but I really would like if you would talk to him.”
Maxwell narrowed his eyes despite himself, a feeling of dread chilling his veins. “What do you mean?”
“I pray I’m wrong,” Edna whispered, “but I think it’s about Eddie.”
16
The plane ride back from New York felt several hours longer than the ride in. For nearly the first hour, Cassie and Julia let a tense silence dominate. Julia flipped through several educational journals, while Cassie used her BlackBerry to update some analysis on her agency’s highest-priority properties. The only real communication the entire stretch was just after the plane hit a sudden air pocket that shook the cabin.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Julia whispered loud enough for her friend’s benefit when things settled down. “I could use an easy way out of all this, but that’s not quite what I had in mind.” She was pleasantly surprised to hear Cassie break out in a light titter.
“Well, we can’t avoid it forever,” Cassie finally said when she had completed her property review. “Could that have possibly gone any worse?”
“Sure,” Julia replied in a deadpan tone, “we could have gotten so tired of Toya’s attitude that we left her in the same shape as Eddie.” She pinched herself for that one. “Forgive me, Lord.”
Cassie hugged herself, trying to believe just how varied all four women’s recollections of the night in question were. She tried to summarize each one in her mind now.
• • •
Cassie’s own general summary began with the one agreed-upon fact. Eddie had come to Cassie as she stood munching a hot dog at the postgame bonfire. “I found a stray dog over there,” he had said, a convincingly hurt look on his face as he pointed a hundred yards away toward the forested area flanking the Christian Light soccer stadium. “He’s a little cocker spaniel. Can you help me lift him, get him out here, so when my big brother comes, we can take him home?”
Cassie had been confused as to why the boy would ask her instead of one of the male teachers or coaches. Eddie’s urgent concern had distracted her from the inner alarm that she now assumed she had failed to hear. With the bonfire crowd dying down, and most families and staff heading toward their cars, Cassie had taken pity on the loner. She figured she could help Eddie and be back before her stepfather arrived.
Everything in Cassie’s memory shifted into fast-forward from there. Following Eddie into a clearing in the woods, where he suddenly turned and pulled her close. “I really like you, Cassie,” he said. When he swooped close for a kiss, she had slapped him, out of shock. Apparently just as shocked, Eddie slapped her with an open hand. In another blink, he had wrestled her to the ground, tore open her jacket, and planted his hands atop her cheerleader sweater.
In Cassie’s recollection, this was when the other girls showed up. With Eddie’s hand on her throat, she had looked up at the sudden rustling of bushes to see Toya, Terry, and Julia, like three chocolate-covered Amazon beauties, emerge from the night’s growing shadows. Their movements were urgent, their stances were defiant, and as they encircled her and Eddie, Cassie felt she had already been saved.
Cassie had no memory of any words spoken during the entire encounter —by her or anyone else. Her next recall was the sudden flash of Eddie’s knife, the unexpected terror filling the girls’ eyes as he brandished it and held her hostage. Maybe she blacked out at the realization —because for Cassie, her next memory was of tables turned, of Toya pulling her to her feet as Julia and Terry wrestled with Eddie. Then, a howl from the white boy that Cassie would never forget, a pained shriek that took her years to wipe from recurring nightmares.
By comparison, the detailed nature of everyone else’s accounts had embarrassed Cassie. If only those had matched, at least.
In Julia’s version, Eddie had drawn the knife as soon as the girls told him to get away from Cassie, then pulled her to her feet. “I’ll cut her throat open, try me,” he had insisted. Minutes passed, with the girls trying to reason with Eddie, insisting that if he just walked away, they wouldn’t tell what had happened. Meanwhile, the boy grew increasingly anxious and depressed. “Oh, man,” he said once if he said it a hundred times, “my mom will kill me.”
Julia insisted Eddie’s mom never needed to find out, and kept up her pleas until deciding he was incapable of letting Cassie go. In Julia’s recall, it was she who eventually lunged at the couple, grabbing Cassie by the shoulder with enough force to tear the cheerleader away from Eddie’s grasp. In response Eddie swung out and caught Julia’s hand with his knife, a move just reckless enough to embolden Toya and Terry, who both rushed the boy and helped Julia seize the weapon from his grasp. In Julia’s memory, she had wound up on the ground beneath Eddie, his knee on her throat as Terry held his arms and he shouted one epithet after another. “Kill you all!” The phrase sprayed from his mouth three, maybe four, times before Toya appeared at his side with the knife.
“Let’s go” was what Julia recalled Toya saying. She poked the edge of the blade against Eddie’s neck until he removed his knee from Julia’s neck. “Julia, help Cassie to her feet,” Toya said. “I have the knife, so let’s just go.”
Still struggling to hold Eddie still, Terry looked between Julia and Toya in confusion. “What do I do?”
“Just hold him,” Toya replied before flipping the knife over to Julia. “What’s that?”
Julia had followed Toya’s pointing finger to the sight of a chipped brick resting a few feet away in the short grass. Toya had moved in long, quick strides, hefting the brick and returning to the circle, where the girls struggled to hold Eddie still.
“Let me go!” The boy strained forward, his head jutting toward Toya, though the other girls kept him from reaching her. “Let me go, and maybe I’ll —”
That was the moment Toya, eyes cooling, raised the brick and slammed it against Eddie’s forehead. As his screams pierced the air and the girls let him fall to he ground, Julia recalled Toya’s reply as they stared at her in shock. “Now he can’t chase us!”
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” As they had sat around the restaurant table two hours earlier, Toya had broken protocol, interrupting before Julia could complete her account. “I did not bash that boy’s head in without provocation. Are you out of your mind, Julia? I grabbed the brick as insurance, to keep him away from us. I wasn’t going to use it without reason.
“It was when I turned to help you get Cassie to her feet, that she” — a finger jammed in Terry’s direction —“lost hold of the boy and he charged me.” Toya’s eyes nearly bulged as she insistently searched their faces. “You all remember that, right? He got his hand on me! Another second and he’d have bashed my head in with that brick!”
“You didn’t hurt him the most, Toya,” Terry said wearily. “I mean, you did get him good, but he kept cursing and coming at us. If anything, that pissed him off so much, he was determined to get the knife back and cut us then. That’s why when he rushed you, I hopped on his back and started doin’ anyth
ing I could to keep him down. I must have kicked him in the head ten times.”
Julia had scratched her head in confusion. “Terry, didn’t you wind up with the knife last? How did that happen?”
“I —I took it from you and gave it to her, I recall that much,” Toya replied. “Even after we’d kicked and beaten Eddie’s head in, I was convinced he was crazy. I knew we weren’t getting away from that confrontation easily. And I knew Terry well enough” —a nervous glance toward her former best friend —“to know that she was on the same page. You were always tougher than me when it counted, Lady T.”
“So nobody stabbed him?” The question had erupted from Cassie as if she were suddenly visited by the spirit of Detective Whitlock himself. “I’m sorry, everybody, but I blacked out for most of this. The last clear memory I have of Eddie is that he was bleeding, I think from his waist. That couldn’t have happened from his getting kicked and beaten in the head, could it?” Eerie silence wrapped the women as Cassie’s words echoed inside each one’s head.
Patting her friend’s hand now as their plane sped them toward home, Julia had clearly gone back to that critical moment. “God forgive me, Cassie. I think all I did today was open Pandora’s box,” she said. “It seems our respective memories are as worthless as a three-dollar bill.”
“They’re all colored by self-preservation,” Cassie replied, her voice growing smaller with a sinking realization. She was returning home without any of the solutions she had prayed for. “Julia, I wanted you to be right, the Lord knows I did, but how do we go to the authorities with the truth, when all we’ve learned today is that there is no such thing?”
17
Stepping in front of the podium, Maxwell turned toward the overhead screen and used his laser pointer to accentuate the major closing points on his slide. “To wrap up, the Christian Light Board of Advisors has made enormous progress in our first six weeks of existence. On our three most crucial metrics —fund-raising, volunteers, and in-kind donations from local community suppliers and vendors —we are already ahead of plan.
God Only Knows Page 10