Dreamland Burning

by Jennifer Latham

  “Load it,” he told me, pointing to a box of shells. Mama’s expression went faraway distant, and the color drained from her cheeks altogether. When I hesitated, feeling suffocated by all the things I didn’t know about or understand, Pop picked up the box of shells and rattled it in front of my nose. “You deaf?” he snapped.

  I said I wasn’t and cracked open the Springfield’s barrel, thankful Pop was too busy filling his ammunition belt to notice the shake in my hands.

  “Hurry up,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  And I did as I was told because he was my father. And because it hadn’t yet occurred to me that I had any other choice.

  Rowan

  The rest of the day that Arvin died was a blur of uniforms, ambulances, and sirens.

  I spent a long time at the hospital—five hours, maybe six. One CT scan, lots of different people asking me to rate things on a scale from one to seven, seven being the worst.

  How much did my head hurt? Seven.

  How nauseated was I? Three.

  How hard was it to concentrate? Eight.

  Nobody asked how it had felt seeing the Suburban hit Arvin, or hearing his bones shatter. I guess there wasn’t any scale for that.

  I cried a lot, too. “Post-concussion symptom,” the neurologist said.

  Bullshit.

  After the hospital, Mom gave me enough painkillers to muffle the bad thoughts and set them adrift. She curled up next to me in her pajamas, and when I woke in the middle of the night, sobbing, she gave me two more pills, kissed my forehead, and feathered her fingertips against my back until the drugs kicked in and I fell back to sleep.

  The next day, the police came.

  Detective Bennet was a youngish black woman dressed in a pantsuit that pulled tight across her hips. Her partner, Detective Bland, looked like a mall Santa shaved clean for the off-season. I was propped up on the leather sofa in Dad’s darkened study with an ice pack on my neck and a blanket pulled up to my chest. Mom had pushed the coffee table back and moved two armchairs close to me. She stayed at the foot of the couch, resting her hand on my ankle. Dad leaned against the bookshelves by the door.

  Detective Bennet had me describe the accident. After that, she asked what the other driver had done when he got out of his truck. I didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t know if I could. Dad asked the detectives if he could speak with them in the other room.

  When they came back, Detective Bennet apologized for having to interview me when I wasn’t feeling well, and said she just needed me to tell her what I remembered after Mr. Brightwater showed up.

  I had no clue who she meant.

  “The indigent,” she said. “Arvin Brightwater.”

  I wanted to scream at her that he wasn’t Arvin the indigent, he was Arvin the person.

  Mom squeezed my ankle gently. Instead of screaming, I kept my voice calm and told them Arvin had come over to the car to try and help. “He wanted to take me to see Dr. Woods,” I said. “She’s a doctor at the clinic where I work…”

  I lost it a little then. Mom handed me a Kleenex, and everyone waited until I could start again.

  “That’s where I met Arvin,” I said. “Dr. Woods takes care of him.”

  Detective Bennet nodded and asked if Arvin had said anything to Mr. Randall.

  “Mr. Randall?” I said.

  “The other driver.”

  I started to shake my head. Bright ribbons of pain reminded me to stay still.

  “No. Arvin was only paying attention to me. But the man—Mr. Randall—he was so angry. He told Arvin to get away, and when Arvin wouldn’t, he pushed him and…”

  I swiped at my tears. Detective Bennet glanced at her partner. Mom caught the look and said, “We need to wrap this up, Detectives.”

  Detective Bennet started to argue, but her partner stopped her, saying, “That’s fine, Mrs. Chase. We’ll come back when Rowan’s feeling better. For now, I’d just like to know if there’s anything else she can tell us about Mr. Brightwater’s death. Anything at all.”

  I kept my eyes on Dad as I spoke.

  “When he—Mr. Randall—pushed Arvin, he called him a goddamned ni…” The word stuck in my throat like the last thing you feel before you throw up. “He called him the n-word.”

  Dad didn’t look away. But something shifted in his eyes, and Mom’s grip tightened on my ankle.

  Detective Bland’s lips pinched into a tight frown. He didn’t believe me.

  Mom stood up. “I’m going to have to insist that you let my daughter rest now, Detectives.” Her voice was smooth and cold—a frozen plane of ice with a river of anger flowing beneath it.

  Detective Bland looked like he wanted to say something. Whatever it was, he kept it to himself and stood up.

  “Thank you, Rowan. We appreciate your help,” he said. Detective Bennet looked unhappy, but she didn’t argue. Dad led them to the study door. Once they were gone, Mom sat back down.

  “You did good,” she said.

  “It doesn’t feel that way,” I whispered.

  “You told the truth.” She handed me another tissue. “Will you drink some orange juice if I get it for you?”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “You’ll try.”

  I needed to blow my nose but knew it would hurt too much.

  “This is what you meant about things being complicated, isn’t it?” I said.

  Mom nodded.

  I closed my eyes. The pain quieted, and I felt the air shift as she moved away.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  Mom came back and knelt beside me. “I know you will, sweetheart,” she whispered, and kissed my temple so softly it didn’t even hurt.

  James brought me balloons and a stuffed elephant on Monday morning. At first he sat far away, like I’d break if he breathed on me too hard. I pointed at the chair closest to me and told him not to be an asshole.

  “Your mom wouldn’t let me in yesterday, and she threatened bodily harm if I stay too long or upset you today,” he said, switching seats.

  “She’s just worried. I spent most of yesterday crying,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised. How are you?”

  “Today? Mad. Really mad. A man I should have treated better is dead, and I’m not sure whether it’s because he was black or because he was poor or because some people are just plain evil. And you know what? I’m starting to think no one’s going to do anything about it. Arvin’s probably going to end up just another murdered black man whose killer gets to walk. They may as well dump his body at a construction site and forget about it.”

  James seemed surprised at first. Then he leaned closer with this really intense look on his face.

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “About Arvin?” I said. “There’s nothing I can do except hope the DA will press charges. But that still leaves another dead black man who deserves better than he got. I want to figure out who the skeleton was. For real, James. And I want to know who killed him.”

  “I’m in,” James said. “Where do we start?”

  “With minor fraud.”

  “Um…” He was appropriately concerned.

  “Relax. All I need you to do is go to the title company, pretend to be me, and pick up the title to our house. It’s what I was on my way to do Saturday morning.”

  “That seems a tiny bit illegal,” he said.

  “It probably is, but no one there knows I’m not a guy. Rowan goes both ways.”

  James gave me his wickedest smile. “Quit talking dirty, Chase. You know I’m not interested.”

  It was the first time anyone had treated me normally since Saturday, and I had to roll my eyes to keep from bawling. It hurt so bad I nearly cried anyway.

  “I need you to do this for me,” I said. “Even if I could drive myself, that asshat nearly totaled my car.”

  James was quiet. I think he was only pretending to think it over, but my skin was too thin to deal with teasing just then
.

  “Please,” I said. “If I hadn’t been on my way to get the title, there never would have been an accident in the first place.”

  James tried to say something. I cut him off.

  “The police buried the skeleton’s file at the bottom of their cold case stack, and the only real investigator trying to figure out who he was can barely carry on a conversation with the living. If we leave this thing unsolved, Arvin will have died for nothing.”

  James was quiet. I could hear Dad and Mom talking in the kitchen. Not actual words, just their voices rising and falling.

  “If I get arrested for impersonating you, your mom had better go all pro bono on my ass,” James said.

  “Don’t be stupid. If you get arrested, Dad will make a phone call and fix it.”

  James stood up. “Okay. I’ll give it a try. But if they ask me for ID or act suspicious, I’m out of there.”

  “Deal.”

  “You know you’re the only person in the world I’d do this for,” he said.

  “Because you love me, right?”

  He tilted his head, serious and soft all at once.

  “Yes, Chase. Because I love you.”

  At first, I thought Mom was just checking on me when she peeked in later that morning. But when she saw I was awake, she told me I had a visitor and opened the door wide for Tru.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Truman,” Mom said.

  Tru gave her his full-on smile. “Yes, ma’am. And don’t worry—I won’t stay long. My nephew’s a wide receiver at Booker T. and took a late hit last season that knocked him out cold. I know all about concussion protocols.”

  Mom tilted her head and gave him her you-interest-me look before she left. People don’t surprise her very often. Not in a good way, at least. I think she kind of likes it when they do. Then she ducked out, and Tru put a clean mayonnaise jar full of black-eyed Susans on the table next to me and said the best thing he could have: “Rowan, I am so, so sorry.”

  I burst into tears. He sat down and waited quietly until I was done. At the exact right moment, he started talking again.

  “Mama Ray sent the flowers. And I came to tell you in person that you shouldn’t come back to work until you’re ready. But if you’re up to it, Arvin’s funeral is Thursday at six, and all of us from the clinic are going.”

  He offered me a tissue and took one for himself.

  “If you can make it,” he said, “it’ll be your big chance to see J’Neece from billing. We’re having a reception at my house afterwards. She’s bringing the Diet Coke.”

  I laughed, ignoring the pain it sent shooting through my head.

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “And, Tru?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call in sick.”

  He looked at me like I was nuts. “Are you kidding me? Besides, your mom called Dr. Woods to tell her what happened. Did you know they went to high school together?”

  “Only since Friday.”

  “Well,” he said, “even as we speak, a completely overwhelmed lady from the temp agency is at the reception desk trying to deal with Mrs. Penfield. That woman shows up like clockwork every Monday with some fatal disease she read about online. Someone really does need to cut off her internet.”

  I laughed again. It still hurt, and it still felt good.

  “Thank your mother for me, please,” I said. “For the flowers, I mean.”

  Tru winked and grinned. “Mama Ray’s gonna like you,” he said. And suddenly I understood why he never kept his meth-wrecked smile hidden. It showed where he’d been, what he’d gone through.

  It was proof he’d chosen to survive.

  I ditched the prescription painkillers Tuesday morning and switched to ibuprofen so the sharp edges of my grief could come into focus.

  It was awful.

  So was the headache that started up as soon as I opened my laptop. But I was sick of lying still, trying not to feel things all the way. If the neurologist could have seen what I was doing, he would not have been pleased.

  I started with the Victory Victrola Shop listing in the 1921 Polk Directory, then backtracked—1920, 1919, etc.—until the listing disappeared in 1916. That meant the shop had opened in either late 1916 or early 1917. After that, I worked forward. In 1929, there was a Victory Radio Shop listed instead of the Victory Victrola Shop. The address was the same, though, and the proprietor was still Stanley Tillman. His home address never changed in all those years, and he stayed married to Kathryn. But there was no William E. Tillman, student, listed under Stanley’s entry past 1921, or anywhere else in the directory for that matter. And in 1937, Stanley Tillman and the Victory Radio Shop disappeared from it altogether.

  After I’d poked around for an hour, it felt like a roller derby was going on inside my head. I set my phone alarm for thirty minutes, closed my eyes to rest, and made it a full fifteen before I got impatient and turned the alarm off.

  That’s when I started digging around the Tillman family tree, found a historical newspaper database, forked over $19.95, and read the obituary.

  Mr. Stanley George Tillman of Tulsa suffered a fatal heart attack the morning of Friday, September 3, 1937, in the Victory Radio Shop on Main Street that he had run successfully for twenty years. Mr. Tillman moved to Indian Territory from Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1899 and married Kathryn Elizabeth Yellowhorse in 1902. He is survived by his widow, who resides in Pawhuska. The where-abouts and disposition of his son, William Edward Tillman, are unknown.

  That made for an awful lot of question marks around William Tillman, including why his initials were all over the Victrola receipt from the dead man’s pocket.

  Payments rendered by J. Goodhope towards one Victor Talking Machine Company Victrola Model XIV

  J. Goodhope.

  I pulled up the 1921 directory, scrolled to the Gs, and found one entry.

  Goodhope, Della (wid Theodore), cook

  Nut-n-Honey Café, Greenwood av, r 114 Jasper st

  It was close, but that was D. Goodhope, not J. I tried to find 114 Jasper anyway, just to see where Della had lived, only there was no such address in Tulsa anymore. I did find a historian’s map outlining the boundaries of the area affected by the race riot, though, and there, inside the shaded zone where everything had burned, was a little stretch of Jasper Street.

  Which meant Della Goodhope’s house had probably been destroyed in the riot. But since her husband’s name had been Theodore, and since there was no other Goodhope listed, I let that particular thread drop. Besides, any woman living and working in Greenwood had to have been black. And I remembered enough from Oklahoma History to know that Jim Crow laws would have kept black people out of a Main Street Victrola shop anyway, so J. Goodhope must have been white.

  Still, I liked the name Nut-n-Honey Café, and that got me wondering about what Greenwood must have been like before the riot. I found pages with stories from survivors. Descriptions of what happened. Photos of smoke pouring out of the Mount Zion Baptist Church roof and of black men walking down Greenwood as white men held guns to their backs. I also found statements from white Tulsans denying there had been anything more than a few scuffles that night. But when I stumbled onto digital copies of a black-owned newspaper called the Tulsa Star, I felt like I was really getting a glimpse of what life in Greenwood had been like before the riot.

  There were stories about how bad race relations were, not just in Tulsa, but all around the country. I found an editorial that argued toy companies should make brown-skinned dolls, and a bunch of others calling on black people to stop settling for second best. The writers questioned the way things were and talked about how much better they could be.

  And there were advertisements that painted a picture of life in Greenwood: luxury rooms at the Red Wing Hotel, top-notch service at the Alexander Laundry, laughter and tears on-screen at the Dreamland Theatre. There was even an ad for radium water treatments at the Washington Bath House, which couldn’t have ended well for
anyone. And then, on the last page of a December edition from 1921, I found an ad for the Nut-n-Honey.

  When You Ask What’s For Dinner And She Says, “Nothin’, Honey,”

  Take Her To The Nut-n-Honey Café.

  FINEST IN HOMESTYLE COOKING

  YOU MUST TRY OUR PIES

  And that was all my bruised brain could take. So I closed my laptop, shut my eyes, and dreamed of pie.

  WILLIAM

  You can think yourself into all kinds of trouble when you’re alone in the dark, especially when there are mice in the walls, and creaky wood floors, and a gun on your shoulder, plus your own heart thumping so loud in your ears that it near drowns out the rest.

  The Springfield was loaded and I had two full boxes of extra shells thanks to Pop. Any other day, I’d have been tickled pink if both he and Mama had sent me off driving on the very same night. But sitting there in the shop under Pop’s strict orders to shoot anyone who tried to come through the door, I was anything but. Still, push come to shove, I’d have done as he said. For if there was one thing I knew, it was that you didn’t carry a firearm unless you were prepared to use it.

  Back at the dining room table, Pop had told Mama and me how the crowd of white men around the courthouse was growing by the minute. How carloads of armed Negroes had come and gone, offering to help Sheriff McCullough keep Dick Rowland safe. And how three white men had gone inside the courthouse to try and drag Rowland out, only to be ejected posthaste by the sheriff’s men.

  “This whole city’s a tinderbox waiting on a match, and I’ll be damned if I let a bunch of hooligans ruin everything I’ve worked for!” Pop said. “It doesn’t help that there’s a group of white rowdies heading across Sixth Street, aiming to snatch weapons from the National Guard Armory. If they manage it, every fool and scoundrel east of the Arkansas’ll be armed and up to no good. We have to protect what’s ours, William. If anyone tries to come in the shop, you shoot first and ask questions later. Understand?”