I liked it.
I wanted more.
Geneva was lying on her stomach in the back house when I got home, sifting dirt through a mesh screen. She lifted her head, said hi, then ignored me.
At least that time I knew she wasn’t trying to be rude. Succeeding, yes, but definitely not trying. So instead of standing around feeling awkward, I poked through the odd collection of stuff she’d arranged on top of her storage bin.
Her Five Star was there, opened to a page with a sketch of the hole in the floor and an outline of where the skeleton had been. There were four numbered dots inside that, and a key to what they meant at the bottom of the page. At least I think it was a key, because Geneva wrote in some kind of shorthand I couldn’t read. Not that it mattered much; the four objects on top of the bin spoke for themselves.
Two were rusty, dirt-crusted nails. Another looked like a button. And the fourth I had a sneaking suspicion about that Geneva confirmed.
“It’s a tooth,” she said from all fours. “A human one. Help me up?”
I gave her my free hand and pulled her to her feet. She brushed her palms off against her cutoffs and pointed at one end of the tooth with her pinky finger.
“Those are the roots,” she said. “When they’re intact and there aren’t any signs of decay, it can indicate that the owner didn’t part with the tooth voluntarily.”
“You mean someone pulled it?”
“Or knocked it out.”
I asked her if it could have happened when the skeleton got hit in the back of the head.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It wasn’t his. I cataloged him yesterday, and the only tooth missing was a second molar that he lost a long time before he died. He didn’t have third molars, either. Those are wisdom teeth. But I don’t think he had them to begin with. Some people are born like that. Would you like to know what else I found?”
I said I would. Geneva settled onto a stack of tile boxes to talk. Once she got rolling, she didn’t stop.
“Well, for starters, the skeleton did belong to a man. I fed his long bone measurements into FORDISC—”
I interrupted to ask what that was.
“It’s a forensic database that helps me calculate things like height. Your skeleton stood just under six feet when he was alive. Also, I narrowed down his age at the time of death to somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four. Usually I can get closer than that, but all the surfaces touching the ground had degraded. I had to go by how completely the growth points at the tips of certain bones had attached to the main shafts, how fully the plates in his skull had fused, and how completely his teeth had come in. But that’s all part of the game. Sometimes the forensic gods smile down on you, sometimes they give you the finger.”
I laughed. Geneva looked a little insulted; she hadn’t been joking. “Sorry,” I said. She shrugged.
“Beyond that, it doesn’t look like he had any major disfiguring diseases. The size of his right humerus bone and scapula show he was right-handed. He broke his left wrist when he was young, but it healed up well. And from the marks his muscle attachments left on his bones, I’d say he had a naturally sturdy build. I don’t think he did much manual labor, though. The attachments weren’t robust enough for that.”
“You figured all that out already?” I asked.
“Yes.” She put the nails, the button, and the tooth into little plastic bags.
“It’s pretty amazing that you can learn so much from a skeleton.”
Geneva acted like it was no big deal. That’s when I gave up trying to compliment her and asked if there was anything I could do to help.
She shook her head. “No, thank you. I have a system.”
“Okay, then,” I said, figuring she’d be glad if I left. “I guess I’ll see you later…”
Her eyebrows went up. “Don’t you want to know about the holster?”
“The holster?”
“The one that was attached to the front of his belt,” she said. “I forgot you didn’t see it. Anyway, I sent it off to a gun expert friend of mine along with the pistol you found. He should get his report to me soon. Oh, and I sent a tooth from the remains off to the crime lab in Oklahoma City. They’re pretty backed up, so I doubt I’ll get confirmation for a few weeks.”
“Confirmation?” I said.
Her eyebrows went up all over again, and her head tilted sideways. “Of the skeleton’s ancestry. Didn’t I tell you? I’m ninety-nine percent sure the man you found was black.”
WILLIAM
The Tulsa sky can turn on you quick. One minute you’re rolling up your sleeves under wide-open blue, the next you’re dodging raindrops and hailstones and tornadoes.
All things considered, though, that spring was gentle enough so even empty bank accounts didn’t keep the Pied Piper warblings of Al Jolson and Nora Bayes from luring customers into the shop. And even though Pop couldn’t keep Victrolas moving out the door as fast as he’d have liked, my own skills kept record sales brisk. Enough so that after Pop finished tallying the week’s transactions in his ledger book one fine afternoon, he said, “It doesn’t look as if you’re harming my bottom line any, William.” Which was as close to a compliment as he ever got.
But even as I was starting to earn a smidgen of respect from Pop, there were things about the way he did business that I’d begun to question. Like his credit policy.
Never once in all the time I worked with him did I ever see Pop keep a white man or woman from taking delivery of their phonograph, even when they had a balance left to pay off on installment. “Good faith terms,” Pop called the arrangement. And though more than one cheat disappeared without paying his debt, Pop considered it necessary and proper to continue extending terms to white customers.
Negroes were held to a different standard altogether. For when it came to brown-skinned customers, if they were short one single dollar at delivery, he’d load the machine back onto the truck and return it to the shop. In fact, Joseph was the only black customer I ever knew of who managed to coax a payment plan out of my father. And the fact that he’d done it ate away at Pop something fierce.
Whether it was Joseph’s intelligence or his negotiation skills that bothered Pop more I couldn’t say. But one thing was sure: as time passed and it became clear that Joseph was going to pay off his balance on time, Pop started taking each five-dollar installment as a thumb in the eye.
As for me, I figured those payments proved Joseph was as good as his word. Had it been my decision, we would have delivered the Goodhopes’ Victrola early and been done with it. Pop had no such inclination, however, so I made sure to record each and every one of Joseph’s payments on the ledger sheet I’d drawn up. Pop would have considered the exercise useless, but I most certainly did not.
And neither did Ruby, the sneak. For nearly getting hit by a milk truck wasn’t enough to keep her from turning up eventually to pester me about the receipt and every other little thing under the sun. Most especially on Tuesday afternoons, when Pop had me mop the storeroom.
I resented that job, partly because the cast on my wrist made it so hard, but mostly because the ammonia I used puckered up the inside of my nose and made my eyes water. It was so bad that I had no choice but to keep the back door open, hoping to catch whatever miserly breeze might blow in from the alley.
That’s how Ruby found me.
One minute I was alone, the next she was sitting on a Victrola crate with her feet swinging and a sly grin on her face. It was only a few days after the milk truck incident, and the funny thing was, it didn’t surprise me to find her there. Nor did it bother me, for against my better judgment, I’d grown fond of that girl.
“Where’s our receipt?” Ruby said that first day. “You promised.”
I told her Joseph had refused to take it. And she grinned her silly little grin and said, “I know.”
“What do you mean, you know?” I asked. And she laughed and told me she’d been hiding nearby when I showed the paper to Joseph. “He’s stubb
orn sometimes,” she said. I grumbled under my breath how stubborn must run in Goodhope blood, which set her to giggling until I took a halfhearted swing at her with my mop. She made a face and told me not to be a bad sport, then turned serious and tried to stare me down, saying, “You should give me that receipt. I’ll keep it safe.”
Of course I told her no straightaway, thinking how much trouble that thing would cause if word of it got out. Mischievous as Ruby was, I figured she’d have a grand time flashing my handiwork to all her friends up in Greenwood, telling how Stanley Tillman had spit in Jim Crow’s eye.
Then she hopped up from the stool and stamped her foot, saying, “You will too give it to me, Will Tillman, or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” I snapped. “Get run over by a milk truck to spite me? Raise such a ruckus that Pop comes back here and tans your hide even darker than it already is?”
Which made her go quiet, searching for just the right mean thing to say in reply, until she finally gave up and blew me a raspberry.
From then on, that was how my Tuesday afternoons went. Ruby would come in the back door uninvited. The first few times she nattered on about the receipt. But before long she quit mentioning it altogether and stuck to more entertaining topics, like the neighborhood boy who’d built an airplane out of milk crates and paid his little brother a dime to climb inside before he pushed it off the roof for a test flight. Or how she let the best pitcher in class copy off her work because he was so dumb that if she didn’t, their teacher would keep him in at playtime and her baseball team would lose.
And she talked about Joseph, too, so that before long I knew as much about him as I did any classmate or friend, Clete included. Like the fact that he was sweet on Eliza Clark, who’d turned him down flat for the Booker T. Washington prom. And that he’d gone door-to-door when he was eleven, taking any odd job folks would pay him a few pennies to do so he could buy Ruby the Raggedy Ann doll she wanted. Then, when he’d finally earned enough to purchase it, he’d painted its cloth skin with strong tea so that it looked more like her.
Before long, my Tuesdays with Ruby had become the best part of my week. Her stories kept my mind off the ammonia fumes, and it soothed me when she spoke of things that made her happy: how she always pinched the boys she liked up high on the inside of their arms because that was where it hurt most, and how the flowers on the blackberry bushes in her backyard were turning into little green baby berries that her ma would bake into cobblers come late June. One time she asked me did my own ma make cobblers, and I told her my pop was partial to pies, so that’s what our maid mostly fixed. Ruby’s eyes softened then, and she breathed the word Peeeach? all quiet, like a prayer. And when I said yes, Angelina baked peach pies, she sighed, “Peach pie is my faaaaavorite. Mama bakes the best ones in the whole wide world.”
And peach was my favorite, too. Only I didn’t say so at the time.
What I did instead was sit on the crate beside her and take Joseph’s receipt out of my wallet.
“What’s that?” she asked.
I unfolded the paper. “See for yourself.”
She tried to snatch it from my hand, but that time she wasn’t fast enough.
“I’ll hold it,” I said. Which made her face start to go mad. But then she thought better of it and leaned up against my arm so she could read the entries. And the scent of her, all sweat and laundry soap and roller skate grease, was so close to Nell’s that it chipped away at the frost I’d carried inside me for three long years.
“Thank you, Will,” she said quietly, and stood up, leaving a cool spot on my arm. And for whatever reason, I blurted out that she should stay away from the cigar shop down the street and the man who owned it, too. Especially the man who owned it. Ruby squinched up her face as if she didn’t know what to make of me. Then, sneaky as heat lightning, she reached up and pinched the inside of my arm so hard my eyes teared up.
“Can’t boss me, Will Tillman,” she said, and stuck out her tongue and darted out the back door before the sting of her pinch had passed.
Few things feel sweeter than a cast coming off, especially when you’ve had it on for too many weeks and the skin underneath the plaster has started itching worse than a nettle sting. After Doc Broward cut the foul thing away one warm May afternoon, Mama set me down with my arm over a washbasin and scrubbed the dead skin off with lemon juice and buttermilk. Then she rubbed warm honey all over the tender flesh, wrapped it in bandages made from a soft old bedsheet, and had me sleep that way. Which was a bother until I woke the next morning and washed the whole mess off and found pale new skin and a bone knit up good as new.
I suppose it was that fine feeling, along with the promise of a few hours’ liberty in the hot spring sun, that kept me from saying no when Clete barreled out of his house before school, calling, “You been savin’ up your allowance, Miss Goody Two-Shoes?”
And besides, there’s only so long a boy can behave before the fires of temptation heat up all the mischief inside him so hot he’s got no choice but to let off some steam. So I told Clete I did indeed have money, and when he said, “Go back inside and get it, then, ’cause you and I have mischief to be about,” I did just that, hollering to Mama how I’d forgot my hat. Then Clete and me stashed our schoolbags under his back-porch steps and made for the river like the devil himself was after us.
It was a fine morning indeed, with cicadas clicking their one-note love songs and a melancholy train whistle singing low from the north. We ran across the Midland Valley Railroad tracks into the tangled thicket of green standing between us and the Arkansas River. And when we stopped in a clearing, all red-faced and out of breath, Clete punched my shoulder hard enough to push me back.
“That’s for nothin’,” he said. Only both of us knew it was a lie; that punch was for everything that hadn’t been right between us since the Two-Knock. Far as I could tell, it was me who should have socked him, and not in the shoulder, either. And I thought about asking him if Addie had heard right, that he’d fallen in with the Klan. But I was too drunk on temporary freedom to let old grudges ruin things, and only gave him a halfhearted shove in return.
We walked south along the tracks, past the sound of hammers and workmen shouting from the unfinished rooftops of Maple Ridge’s newest homes, Mama and Pop’s among them. And we kept going until we reached the spot where the railroad’s trestle bridge crossed the Arkansas and there were no buildings in sight. Clete dug two hooks and two lengths of fishing line out of his pocket and handed one of each to me, and we cut green switches off a bush and smoothed them with our pocketknives and tied lines at the ends to fish with bits of cheese from Clete’s lunch.
The water was low and lazy, and the only things nibbling were Clete and me, finishing off what was left of the cheddar. But the lack of fish didn’t bother us one bit as we sat there watching stilt-legged herons stalk across sandbars and hawks float by overhead. We didn’t talk much, sensing, I suppose, that it could only lead to trouble. Though Clete did tell me how he planned to convince his father to let us drive his new Cadillac automobile out to Sand Springs Park for the Central High Junior-Senior Powwow come Memorial Day.
“Trolleys are for chumps,” Clete declared, picking a length of duckweed off his hook. Then his voice went braggy and embarrassed all at once, saying, “Besides, it’s what my girl wants.”
“My ass, you got a girl!” I laughed, choking on my own spittle in the process so that I set to coughing near hard enough to keel over.
“Serves you right,” Clete grumbled. And I could tell from the way the tops of his ears went bright red that I’d hurt his pride. So once I’d got control of my cough, I said, “All right, Romeo, what’s her name, then?” And Clete got bashful again and fiddled with the duckweed and mumbled, “Eunice.”
“She ugly?” I asked, mostly joshing. But Clete glowered and said, “She’s the prettiest girl you ever saw. Prettier than Adeline Dobbs, and Eunice never slapped me, neither!” Which sent me to my feet, ready to fight. Clete g
ot up near as fast, and if it hadn’t been for the whistle and roar of a freight train barreling towards us, our day might have ended badly right then and there.
But that train knocked both of us back on our heels as it thundered past. Cleared our heads, too, so that after the noise let up, we dropped our fists and gave each other the evilest of eyes and let things be. Then Clete asked did I want to meet Eunice and her friend Imogene, for he’d told them just the other day that he might bring me by.
I asked how old this girl was. Clete told me nineteen and asked again did I want to go. And I said all right, since the shine had worn off of fishing altogether.
He led us north along the river, walking fast enough to let me know I’d gone soft working in the store. The sun beat down hot. The cloth of my shirt stuck to my back. And I wondered just how far north this Eunice girl lived. Clete marched on, silent, and with a set to his jaw that told me he’d more important things on his mind than chitchat.
It wasn’t until we’d cut east, away from the water, that I starting thinking how little I actually had in common with my friend. We were the same age, true, and lived near each other and went to the same school and church. But past that, our similarities ran thin. Once upon a time, two mitts and a baseball had been enough to hold us together for days on end. Now even fishing hooks couldn’t do the job. And it occurred to me, too, that I’d started looking forward to Ruby’s Tuesday visits more than I missed the old days with Clete.
Finally, somewhere around the time I started blinking back soot from the Frisco rail yard, Clete stopped in front of a livery stable. “This is it,” he said, and I near asked if his girl was a filly or a mare. But I thought better of it and followed him inside, past a greasy-headed attendant who barely nodded our way, and up a narrow flight of steps.
A woman met us at the top, saying, “I didn’t expect to see you back so soon, Cletus!” And then we were in a parlor of sorts, though it was a stretch and a kindness to call it such. The stripped-down wood floor was full of splinters. Two gaudy velvet couches faced each other from opposite walls. A floor lamp threw just enough light to show that the woman had red hair and one too many buttons open on her dress. And there was a strong air of wariness about her, as if she’d seen enough of the world to know it couldn’t be trusted.
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