It was a nice morning. Not too hot, not too sunny. I stopped for a chai at the coffee shop James thought was pretentious—the one next to the barbecue place where people line up for ribs an hour before it opens. Gray clouds hung low around the Art Deco spire of Boston Avenue Methodist. Semis on the Broken Arrow Expressway made the overpass vibrate under my tires.
Half a block past that, I clipped the edge of a pothole hard enough to send hot chai splattering down the inside of my thigh. I cursed and set the cup down quick. Then I saw the cat—frozen in the middle of the road, staring at my car with its tail tucked and its hind legs sunk low.
I hit the brakes.
Slammed forward and back as the seat belt locked.
There was no thump, no yowl. Out the corner of my eye, I saw it bolt, unhurt, toward the sidewalk. Relief and adrenaline jacked through me all at once. Then I was rocketing forward again, so hard that white-hot pain sang through my ribs as they hit the seat belt again. My chin jammed down into my chest before the back of my head whipped, slingshot fast, into the headrest behind me.
The world went black. And when the light came back, everything was slow. Blurry. Quiet. Then a man’s voice was trampling my ears. It was muffled, but loud and angry enough to make my eyelids flutter open against light that seemed too bright to be real.
“… the hell are you doing, stopping in the middle of the street?”
I rolled my head toward my window. The man was waving his arms, cell phone in one hand, running his words together so fast I couldn’t make sense of them. A knob of pain pulsed at the bottom of my skull. The man opened the door and snapped his fingers in front of my face, his cheeks pale with anger.
“Hey! Don’t pretend you can’t hear me. I’m sick of you people acting like…”
Wisps of pain wrapped around each syllable in my head. He kept shouting, on and on and on. The chrome grill of his massive pickup was in my rearview mirror. So was a second figure coming toward us—grizzled, black, and dressed in a dirty shirt and fatigues three sizes too big.
I knew him.
Arvin.
“Hey, you’re my girlie friend from Jackson!” he said, peeking around the truck’s driver. The black and gray stubble on his chin reminded me of my grandfather’s funeral, of the smell of candles and gardenias.
“Back off, buddy,” the driver barked. “Go back to the gutter you crawled out of!” Arvin ignored him and tried to get closer to me. “Gotta get you to Dr. Woods, young lady,” he mumbled in his raspy voice. “She’ll make you all better.”
“Arvin…” My voice floated in the air like a ghost.
“I said back off!” the driver shouted. And when Arvin didn’t, the man put both hands against his chest and shoved.
“Goddamned nigger.”
That time his words were calm. Deliberate. Cruel.
Arvin’s arms flew up. He pedaled backwards, tripping and stumbling into the second traffic lane behind him on the one-way street. Then there was a horrible crunching thud, and Arvin’s body flew up and over the hood of an old gray Suburban. The back of his head hit the street. The Suburban lurched to a stop. The woman inside was screaming.
Arvin didn’t move. Sirens wailed louder and louder, ping-ponging around in my thousand-pound head as flashing red and blue lights filled my mirrors. The siren stopped. The wisps turned into angry fingers of pain squeezing the sides of my head. Then a policeman was coming toward us. The truck’s driver watched Arvin’s body like he expected it to stand up and come at him.
He didn’t need to worry.
Arvin wasn’t ever going to stand up again.
WILLIAM
Our trip to Greenwood was touch and go at first. It took me three tries to back the truck out of the driveway. Two to start forward. And every time I managed to gather a little steam, a stop sign would show up and throw a wrench into the works. Angelina sat behind me in the truck’s cargo space, out of sight and holding on for dear life as we jerked along. It was for her sake as much as my own that I started ignoring the stop signs altogether.
The sun was only just starting to drop at that point, meaning sunset was still a ways away. But there was a quietness to the streets I didn’t like. People were about, to be sure; men, mostly, headed in the direction of the courthouse. A few children played in yards, too, and every now and again we’d pass a woman sitting out on her front porch, snapping beans or darning socks. Even so, the air had a hushed feel to it, like the city was holding its breath.
It was a different story altogether in Greenwood. As soon as I headed north off of Archer, the tension in the air got thick enough to chew. Shopkeepers and clerks stood in doorways. Men huddled in groups of threes and fours, talking. Until they caught sight of me, that is. Then everything stilled as their wary gazes followed our progress up the street. After Angelina realized where we were and came up to sit beside me, those gazes turned curious.
More than anything else, I wanted to find Angelina’s family quick so we could turn around and go home. For though the truck was unmarked, the white of my skin made us stand out bright as a signal fire. As soon as the Dreamland Theatre marquee came into sight, though, I knew things wouldn’t go easy. There were cars on the street in front of it, and more black men than I’d ever seen assembled in one place. Enough so I hadn’t room enough in the street to pass.
It felt like a thousand faces were staring at me as the truck lurched to a stop. Looking back, I reckon there were fewer than a hundred, but fear makes everything bigger and worse. It didn’t help that some of those men held rifles and shotguns. Pistols, too, though many appeared unarmed. And I’m not ashamed to say that the sight set my hands to shaking, especially when a man tall as a chimney and dark as soot came to my window.
“You oughtn’t be here,” he said. Then Angelina spoke up with an authority I’d never heard in her voice before, saying, “You let us through, now. We come to fetch my boy and his family, and you got no business stopping us.”
The man didn’t back off one bit, only asked who her boy was. “Samuel Brightwater,” she replied, after which the man turned and pointed, saying, “You mean that Samuel Brightwater over there?” Then Angelina was out of the truck and marching into the crowd, parting it like Moses did the Red Sea.
I wish I knew what words passed between her and her son, and that I could say he joined us in the truck. Only I don’t, and I can’t. For after a conversation that seemed to go on forever, Angelina returned alone and got in without looking back.
“You’ll want to take your next left, Mr. William,” she said.
I asked was he coming. Angelina motioned with her chin towards the opening in the crowd in front of us and said, “He’s got plans of his own. Best be on our way.”
And you know, that was the first time I ever managed all the levers and pedals just right, so that we started up Greenwood without so much as a sputter.
Other than offering a word here and there to guide our progress, Angelina kept quiet until we stopped at the curb in front of her son’s house. It was small, with an outhouse in the back and a yard full of dirt and bull nettles. The porch was swept clean, though, and the little boy who ran out onto the front stoop to greet us had creases ironed into the sleeves of his shirt. “I’ll just be a minute,” Angelina said. Then she left me alone in the truck, pretending there weren’t eyes watching me from behind every curtained window on the block.
True to her word, Angelina came back out quick with the boy from the porch plus two more. All three wore caps and faded overalls, and each carried a sack over his shoulder. The older two looked worried and angry all at once. The littlest one was bawling.
“Get in,” Angelina told them when they got to the truck. They did as she said, sitting on the floorboards. The youngest sniffled and hiccupped, and Angelina said, “Hush now, Freddy,” and shut the back door. I asked what was wrong. “Doesn’t want to leave his dog,” she replied through the passenger side, pointing to a scruffy brown mutt straining against its chain to peek around the
back corner of the unpainted shack. The little boy snuffled. “That’s enough!” Angelina snapped. The boy did his best to be still. And though Pop had never let me have a dog of my own, I was about to say how Freddy should fetch the thing and bring it with him. Only before I could, Angelina marched back, unlatched the chain, patted the dog’s head, and left it standing there with its ears perked high.
“Dog can take care of herself,” she muttered when she got back. Then she motioned for Freddy to come closer. She wiped his cheeks and nose with her apron, kissed his forehead, and told him that was the end of the matter.
Only it wasn’t. For as soon as Angelina returned to the house, the boy started crying all over again. “Shush,” the oldest said. “Lulu’ll be fine.” And Freddy came back at him angry, saying, “You don’t know that, Sam. You don’t know nothin’!”
I turned around just in time to see the littlest boy’s heel come down hard on the top of Sam’s foot. It must have hurt, too, for Sam winced. But he held his tongue and didn’t kick back.
“I’m Will,” I said, hoping the interruption would settle things down.
“Samuel Jr.,” the eldest replied. “This is Marcus and that’s Freddy. Where you takin’ us?”
“To my house,” I replied.
Which made him knit his brow and ask, “Why?”
I had no good answer for that. I knew bad things were brewing. I knew there was a Negro man at the courthouse who some white folks wanted dead. I knew there were Negroes gathering outside the Dreamland, too. And, more than anything, I knew I was half out of my mind with worry over Ruby. But that’s not what I told Sam. To him I said, “In case something bad happens, I suppose.” Which made his forehead pinch even tighter. “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean why are you taking us to your house?”
“Because my mama told me to,” I replied, for that was the honest-to-God truth of the matter. And it must have made sense enough to Sam, for he leaned his back against the side of the truck and kept quiet. Then it occurred to me that maybe I should ask him if he knew what was going on in front of the Dreamland.
Sam nodded when I did.
“Well then, what?” I asked.
And he told me how folks were worried that white men were going to lynch Dick Rowland before he was tried in court, and that the people gathered at the Dreamland—his pa included—were trying to decide what to do about it. “Some of ’em believe it’d be best to send an important man like Mr. Gurley down to talk to the sheriff,” he said. “If it weren’t for Mr. Gurley, there’d be no such place as Greenwood at all. But there’s others who think things have gone too far for talk.”
I asked him which side of that debate his father was on. Sam shrugged and said his pa didn’t figure any man deserved to die until God, or at least a judge, had decided he should, no matter what the color of his skin.
Then the Brightwaters’ front door slammed shut, and a short, slight woman locked it up. She and Angelina came to the truck together, carrying a heavy-looking sack between them.
“Mr. William, this is my daughter-in-law, Grace,” Angelina said. I tipped my cap to her and hopped out to hoist the sack into the truck. Grace looked surprised. Then her lips trembled and she thanked me, which made my cheeks turn hot.
After that, Angelina climbed in and told me to drive due west, as that was the quickest way out of Greenwood. And it seemed such a fine idea that I was clear to Cincinnati Avenue before I recognized the opportunity I was wasting, stopped the truck, put it in idle, and faced my passengers.
“Any of you folks know Joseph or Ruby Goodhope?” I asked.
Five worried sets of eyes peered back at me. Three heads shook no. But the middle boy, Marcus, grimaced and reached up to the inside of his arm like it pained him. “Do you know them?” I asked him direct. And he squinched his lips up tight and nodded a little and said, “Don’t know Joseph, but I know her.”
“You know where she lives?” I asked. Marcus shook his head. But Freddy sniffled and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve, saying, “He’s lyin’.” Marcus scowled, and Grace looked at him stern and told him he’d best tell me the truth. Marcus hung his head and hunkered down further. “Yeah. I know where she lives,” he said. “Only I don’t wanna go there.”
Then Grace turned stony like only a mother can, and Marcus shrank even smaller.
“I’ll show you,” he said. So I turned the truck around, stalling once, and steered back towards the heart of Greenwood. And over the engine’s putter, I heard Marcus grumble to anyone who cared to listen, “I can’t stand that Ruby Goodhope. She pinches.”
In the end, Marcus never did get pinched. Leastways, not that night. For the only person we found at Ruby and Joseph’s house was their mother, distraught over her two missing children and scared near to death by the sight of a six-foot white boy standing on her front porch.
Angelina smoothed things over. She introduced herself and asked the woman’s name, which was Della. Then she told Della how I knew Joseph from him making deliveries to my father’s store, and Ruby because she tagged along. She didn’t know to say anything about the Victrola, for that was a surprise I wasn’t about to ruin. Then Angelina said my mama was a kind soul willing to open her home to Negro women and children until the trouble down at the courthouse blew over.
Looking at Ruby and Joseph’s mother, so scared and worn in her faded blue dress, I knew I had to invite her along. But after I’d done it, she looked as if the idea made her sick at her stomach. “Thank you kindly,” she said. “But I’ll just wait here till my babies come home.” Then she forced a smile for my sake and cast a worried look up and down the street. And Angelina patted her arm and told her we’d be praying her children got home soon. “Best be going now, Mr. Will,” she said after that, nudging me towards the street. “Sun’s almost down and your own mama will be worrying.”
I didn’t want to leave until I’d found Ruby, but I drove straight home anyway. And Mama had been worrying; I could tell by the nervous chirp in her voice when she met us in the driveway. “Back the truck up to Angelina’s door, William,” she said, loud enough for every wag-tongued busybody in the neighborhood to hear. “I don’t want you dropping that mattress in the dirt.”
Which I understood straight off was her way of telling me we couldn’t let anyone catch sight of Angelina’s family, so we should pretend we were unloading a mattress into her quarters. And though I made a hash of the job, stopping and starting and stalling and cursing under my breath, I eventually got the truck’s back end close enough for Grace and her family to scoot inside without being seen.
After that, Mama had me park the truck where it belonged. Then the two of us went into the main house, and Mama wrapped a plate of sandwiches inside clean bed linens and told me to carry them out to Grace and Sam and Marcus and Freddy, who I found cramped and sweating but grateful nonetheless. While they ate, Angelina came back into the big house with me and fetched a glass of lemonade with mint in it for Mama. And Mama said it was dark enough then for Angelina to take a whole pitcher of the stuff back to her guests.
As for me, I was too full of nerves and worry to stay inside. So I took my ragged school copy of Macbeth out onto the front porch and set about trying to make myself read. Only the bulb was flickering and there were so many mosquitos that I felt more like a snack than a scholar. I kept at it, though, swatting and muttering and watching a steady trickle of automobiles roll by.
Some stayed closed up and quiet as they passed, others were so full there were passengers standing on the running boards. Those were the rowdy ones, with men whooping and carrying on loud enough so I could make out each and every word they said.
“Gonna put ’em in their place tonight!” one man hollered. And a few minutes later: “Sheriff better turn that boy over if he knows what’s good for him!”
Even without the mosquitos, those voices would have been enough to make reading old Mr. Shakespeare near impossible. Yet I sat there pretending to try, wondering what was
afoot at the courthouse, until maybe half an hour had passed and one of those sets of headlamps coming down the street turned into our driveway so fast the tires squealed.
It was Pop in the Model T. Him and the iron in his eyes. He wasted no time on greetings as he strode past, saying I should follow him inside. And when he led me to the parlor where Mama was waiting, her gaze fell on me first, calmer than it had any right to be.
Pop asked straight off if Angelina was in her quarters. Mama replied yes. Then Pop said I should go out and tell her to lock her door and stay put for the night. I looked to Mama, who nodded and said she’d have no further need of Angelina anyway. So I hustled back, and Angelina cracked open the door before I’d even knocked, just wide enough for me to hear sniffling behind her. It was Freddy, I supposed, still worrying over his dog. Then I delivered Pop’s message to Angelina, adding, “He doesn’t know your kin are here.” And the whites of Angelina’s eyes shone scared against the dark as she whispered, “I can hear them, Mr. Will. Even through the window glass, I can hear those men driving by, calling for that poor boy’s blood.”
There was nothing I could say; leastways, nothing that would make her feel better. But it didn’t matter, for Pop’s voice boomed across the yard, telling me to come back inside. And Angelina shut the door so quick I near lost a finger.
I crossed the lawn at a jog, shaking my hand and gritting my teeth from the pain. But I forgot all about it as soon as the porch light came on and Pop stepped outside with the long barrel of his Remington resting against his shoulder.
“Fetch your Springfield,” he barked. “Now!”
Which loosed the invisible strings holding me back and sent me hustling inside to get my hunting shotgun from Pop’s gun rack. Back in the parlor, Mama sat, white-lipped, watching Pop slide a round into the Remington’s chamber.
Dreamland Burning Page 15