Dreamland Burning

by Jennifer Latham

Some drove. Most walked. A few pedaled bicycles. There were children, too—so many children. And old women and old men and everything in between, struggling under the weight of their belongings and their situation. I thought about the Brightwaters, huddled together in the dark of Angelina’s quarters, and wondered if Freddy had stopped crying over his dog.

  Then Joseph was pointing to a figure ahead of us, telling me to stop. “I know him,” he said. “Please.”

  The young man had an ancient musket slung over his shoulder, so rusty I doubted it had been fired since the battle at Gettysburg. Even so, he shrugged it off into his hands as we drew near.

  “Gideon?” Joseph called out. “Gideon Wright, it’s me, Joseph Goodhope.” The musket’s muzzle dropped, and Gideon squinted against the headlamps as he walked to the passenger side. Then he must have seen my pale skin in the moonlight, for he backed up a step and raised the musket high.

  “It’s all right,” Joseph said. “Will’s helping me.”

  Gideon took a step closer, face dark with suspicion, saying, “Why?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Joseph said.

  “Why are you helping him?” Gideon asked me direct. And though I wasn’t exactly sure, his rusty musket inspired me to come up with an answer quick.

  “Because of Ruby,” I said.

  At that, the musket dropped and Gideon scowled even better than Joseph could, saying, “That girl’s like a skeeter bite on the ass!” He stared at me hard, and I looked from him to Joseph and back again until suddenly the three of us were laughing. Nervous and quiet, but laughing nonetheless. Then Gideon slung the musket over his shoulder and leaned against Joseph’s door, tapping a finger on the metal. He told us there was a line of armed colored men at the southern edge of the Negro quarter, fighting to keep bands of renegade whites out of colored neighborhoods. “There was some fighting down at the Frisco tracks earlier,” he said. “But it’s been pretty quiet for a while now.”

  “Then why’re you leaving?” Joseph asked. Gideon said how his ma had gone up to stay with her sister in Claremore earlier that day, and it didn’t seem worth risking a belly full of lead just to stick around and see what would happen. “Plenty of folks took off already,” he said. “But there’s others staying, thinking what happened at the courthouse was just a misunderstanding. They’re locked in their houses now, praying for sunrise to put things right.”

  I could tell by the way he said it that Gideon considered those people fools. Far as I was concerned, he was right; I’d seen the hate in Vernon’s eyes and heard the evil in his voice at the shop. For men like him, the old normal wasn’t an option anymore.

  Then Joseph asked had Gideon seen Ruby or his ma, and Gideon’s face pinched up.

  “I thought you knew,” he said.

  Joseph stiffened. Said, “Knew what?”

  “Well… that they took her,” Gideon replied.

  Then Joseph opened the door of the truck so hard it pushed Gideon back. And he grabbed Gideon’s collar and yanked him up and shook him, shouting, “What do you mean, they took her?”

  Gideon kept calm. “Three white men. They found your ma looking for Ruby down along Archer and they took her. Leastways, that’s what I heard.”

  Joseph let go. Whispered, “Where?”

  Gideon said he wasn’t sure, but word had got round they were holding Negro prisoners in Convention Hall. Then Joseph turned even quieter, asking had they hurt her. Gideon looked at the ground.

  “Well, did they?” Joseph demanded.

  And Gideon looked sorry as could be, saying, “She was alive. That’s all I know.”

  I leaned over towards the passenger side, saying Joseph’s name loud enough for him to hear. He looked at me, all dull and numb. Then Gideon put his hand on Joseph’s shoulder and said he was sorry.

  “We have to find Ruby now,” I said, strong as I dared. Joseph nodded and got in the truck, and Gideon turned north and started walking.

  “Eliza Clark turned me down for prom so she could go with Gideon,” Joseph said as we pulled away. “It’s tomorrow, you know. She was supposed to be with the decorating committee at the Stradford Hotel ballroom tonight, getting things ready. She was so excited.”

  I tried saying I was sorry, and not just for the Booker T. Washington prom that seemed unlikely to occur. But I had to stop and clear my throat and try again. The second time it came out right.

  “Do you think they got Ruby, too?” Joseph said by way of a response.

  I had no answer for that. Joseph looked out the window and didn’t seem to notice.

  “Won’t be any colored folk dancing in Tulsa tomorrow night,” he said. Then he swiped at his eyes with the back of his sleeve and let me drive on.

  Rowan

  Hello?”

  Geneva’s voice was wary when she answered the phone.

  “It’s Rowan Chase,” I said.

  Insert awkward silence.

  I tried again. “The one with the remains in her back house?”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “It’s just that people don’t usually call me.”

  Which was sad and honest and perfectly Geneva.

  “I don’t have the genetic results yet, if that’s what you’re after,” she said. “I won’t have them for at least another week.”

  “It’s not,” I said.

  “Then what do you want?”

  She didn’t mention the accident or seem to have any idea I’d been there when Arvin died.

  “I was just wondering if you had any new information,” I said. “About the skeleton.”

  Nothing.

  “Hello?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “There’s a big hawk overhead. I’m on a dig in Tahlequah.”

  Again, perfectly Geneva.

  “So is there anything new?” I asked.

  She was quiet. Maybe she was thinking about how to respond. Maybe she was still looking at the hawk.

  Eventually, she cleared her throat and started talking in the calm, clinical voice she used when the subject was her work. “As a matter of fact, my friend Bob—the one I sent the pistol and holster to—finished his report yesterday.”

  “Can you tell me what it said?” I asked.

  “I don’t see why not. He used the original manufacturer’s marks and serial number to trace the gun. It’s a Colt M1911, purchased by the US Army and stamped by someone named…”

  I could hear her notebook rustling.

  “A. L. Hallstrom. He inspected military M1911s from 1916 to 1917. Bob says the gun parts were all original, and the gun itself was produced in 1917. The holster was standard issue. It was stamped with initials, too…”

  No rustling that time, just a pause.

  “Here it is. The initials were V. F., but Bob said the first letter was modified at some point after the gun was distributed. He isn’t positive, but he thinks it was originally an R. He searched World War One draft registration cards, and the best match he could come up with was a Raymond Fisher from Decatur, Georgia.”

  I scribbled down what she said on an empty page at the back of my Calc notebook and asked if Bob happened to mention anything about Raymond Fisher coming to Tulsa.

  “No,” she said. “But it’s possible. He went AWOL while he was on leave for his mother’s funeral in 1919 and was never found.”

  “Did she live in Tulsa?”

  “Decatur.”

  “Still, he could have been the killer,” I said, more to myself than to her. My hand had cramped from writing so fast, and all kinds of scenarios were playing out in my head.

  “Or the killed,” Geneva said. “According to his draft card, Raymond Fisher was black.”

  I didn’t go to Arvin’s candlelight vigil in Reconciliation Park that night. Part of me wanted to be around other people who cared that he’d died, but another part knew the funeral the next day would be hard enough. So while people gathered in Greenwood to remember him, I sat on one of the chaise lounges by our pool, listening to peepers and staring
west at the glow of the refinery lights along the Arkansas.

  Their flare stacks were dark. Some nights, flames shot out, burning off waste overflow. I used to pretend those stacks were dragons breathing fire into the night when I was little. I knew better; my father was an oilman, after all. But even as a kid, I’d liked the idea of dragons better than the thought of burning petrochemical waste.

  Dad came out after a while and lay down on the chaise beside me.

  “How you doing, kiddo?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Cloudy tonight.”

  It was a nothing comment. Dad isn’t usually big on chitchat unless he’s working his way up to something bigger. I knew the best thing to do was ignore his small talk and let him get to the big reveal on his own. That night, it didn’t take long.

  “Your mother just got a call from her friend in the district attorney’s office,” he said. “They haven’t announced it yet, but they’re not charging Jerry Randall. They’re calling it self-defense.”

  I looked at the clouds and blinked back the stupid tears in my eyes.

  “What are you thinking?” Dad asked.

  “Rowan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think they made the right call?”

  “They didn’t believe me, did they?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. But even if they did, I’m not sure your statement would be enough to prove the case. Then again, your mom’s the lawyer, not me.”

  “What does she think?”

  “You’d have to ask her. But one thing I do know is that she believes you, and so do I.”

  A train whistle sounded up where the tracks crossed Peoria.

  “Are you okay, kiddo?”

  “As okay as I can be,” I said.

  We sat there for a while, looking west, until a column of flames flared up into the western sky.

  “One of your dragons is awake,” Dad said.

  “There’s no such thing as dragons, Dad.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” he said softly. Then he left me alone to stare at the sky, imagining the flames were for Arvin, wishing dragons were real after all.

  There hadn’t been any public announcement about Arvin’s funeral, so the size of the crowd at the cemetery surprised me.

  “Let’s stay in the car,” Mom said. “You can watch from here.”

  Some of the people were from the clinic. A few more looked like they might have known Arvin from the street. Other than that, everyone was a stranger. They were black, mostly, and went from a toddler in a miniature three-piece suit all the way up to an ancient jelly bean of a woman pushing a walker in front of her.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  Mom looked out the window. “Family. Folks he grew up with.”

  I watched people get out of their cars and walk slowly to the fresh grave. It was my fault I was surprised. I’d never stopped to think that just because Arvin lived on the street, it didn’t mean there weren’t people who loved him.

  There were no reporters in the crowd, though, or anyone else who looked obviously out of place.

  “I want to be with them,” I said.

  Mom and Dad traded a quick look of parental concern. Then Mom dug out her lipstick for a fresh coat, and Dad got out to open my door. Tru waved when he saw me. Mom excused herself to go say hello to Dr. Woods.

  Once the service started, Mom and Dad stayed at my side—through the pastor’s homily, the kind words and memories from childhood friends. The last person to speak was a short woman in a dark blue suit and a peacock-feathered hat who turned out to be Arvin’s aunt Tilda. Her eyes stayed dry, but by the time she was done, the rest of us were a mess.

  Afterwards, Tru came over to say hello and offered to drive me to the reception in his boat-sized Cadillac. “I can bring her home, too,” he told Mom and Dad. “It’s really no problem.” They gave each other the look again, but I could tell they were relieved not to have to go.

  “I’m good with that,” I said.

  Mom asked if I had my phone, which was like asking if I’d remembered to bring both kidneys. Then she and Dad took off and Tru drove me to his house. And even though we barely said a word to each other, there was nothing uncomfortable about it.

  We ended up in Brady Heights, an old neighborhood that had been just white enough and just far enough away from Greenwood to escape burning in the riot.

  “Home sweet home,” he said, swinging the Caddy into the driveway of a yellow bungalow with a magazine-worthy garden. “Welcome to Mama Ray’s.”

  For the record, my knowledge of gardening begins and ends with the name of the guy who does ours. But even I could tell that Tru’s front yard was something special. There were flowers everywhere, and bushes, plumed prairie grasses, and trees with blooms cascading from their tops like Fourth of July fireworks.

  Inside, the house was like one of those reconstructed historical rooms at the Smithsonian. The purple velvet sofa and chairs were old and formal. The floor and tables were made of dark, heavy wood. The lamps looked like they’d been around since electricity was invented. And there was an abundance of doilies. Seriously—they were everywhere.

  “Mama Ray?” Tru hollered.

  “Be right there!” came a voice from the kitchen. Based on the garden and the furniture, I was expecting a rosy-cheeked, unscarred, grandmotherly version of Tru.

  I was way, way wrong.

  For one thing, Mama Ray was black, and as far as I knew, Tru wasn’t. Plus, she wasn’t even that old. Forty, maybe forty-five, with a short-sleeved gray silk shirt that showed off seriously ripped arms. Her hair was in a medium-length Afro pushed back off her forehead with a silver headband.

  The surprise must have shown on my face.

  “You did it again, didn’t you?” she said.

  Tru grinned like he’d just pulled off the best prank in the world.

  “Shame on you, Truman!” Mama Ray smacked his shoulder, then shook my hand with both of hers. “He does that sometimes—lets people think I’m his mother just to see their reactions. But he ought to know better after everything you’ve been through.”

  “Aw, she likes it when I tease her,” Tru said. Then he got all fake serious. “For the record, Rowan, Mama Ray didn’t give me my life, but she did save it.”

  “That’s not true,” Mama Ray told me. “Truman saved himself.”

  Tru got serious for real then. “Mama Ray’s the youth pastor at Grace Emmanuel,” he said. “I used to go to their Tuesday soup kitchen. It took three months of sitting next to me while I ate grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, but she finally talked me into rehab. Gave me her spare bedroom when I got out, too. If it weren’t for Ray, I’d have been back out on the streets and using again inside of a week.”

  Mama Ray smiled. “We all make choices. I just gave you a few options that hadn’t been available before.”

  A car door slammed outside. Voices carried in from the driveway.

  “Truman, sit this poor girl down before everyone arrives,” Mama Ray said. “She looks wrung out.”

  Tru led me to a loveseat. Mama Ray opened the front door and let in Dr. Woods and a stiff-looking black woman in a black suit. Both of them hugged Mama Ray like they’d known her forever and started toward me. Tru kept behind them, mouthing something I couldn’t make sense of. Then I noticed the bottle of Diet Coke in the unfamiliar woman’s hand and smiled. I’d finally spotted the mythical J’Neece.

  Who, as it turned out, was very sweet and apologized for not introducing herself at the clinic. “I meant to,” she said. “There’s just always so much to do.”

  Dr. Woods put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “J’Neece is a miracle worker. We couldn’t survive without her.” Then she asked about my symptoms, how I was doing, and said I should call her if I needed anything.

  More people came after that. Lots more. The ones who knew me said hello, the ones who didn’t I watched. At one point, there were so many bodies streaming in, arms ful
l of hams and casseroles and desserts, that Mama Ray just threw open the door and got out of their way. And it hit me then that, for the first time in a long time, I was in a room full of people whose skin looked like mine. School, the country club, Utica Square, the Brady—in most of the places I went, I stood out. Yes, Dad was white, but Mom wasn’t. Which meant that to the rest of the world I was black. At Mama Ray’s, I wasn’t the awkward line in a poem. I fit the meter. I rhymed.

  And suddenly, I was breathing deeper than I had since Saturday. Mourners sniffled and hugged and talked quietly. I liked that some of them wore bright colors. One woman had on a green pantsuit and a scarlet hat. Another had chosen a flowered dress and support stockings that stopped at her knees.

  Arvin’s aunt Tilda was one of the last people to arrive. She zeroed in on Tru straightaway and pushed through the crowd, using the pie carrier in her hands to nudge people out of her way. Once she got there she hugged him, holding on so she could speak straight into his ear. Tru pointed to me, and Aunt Tilda raised a you-stay-right-there-young-lady index finger before she disappeared into the dining room with the pie.

  What? I mouthed at Tru. He gave me an eyebrow wiggle and went to greet people with Mama Ray. Next thing I knew, Aunt Tilda was on the loveseat beside me.

  “Hello, Rowan,” she said. “I’m Tilda. It’s good to know you.”

  Guilt, frustration, and helplessness started up a nasty free-for-all in my chest, and the headache I’d been fighting all day thumped with my pulse. This woman had loved Arvin. By failing him, I’d failed her, too.

  “I’m so sorry for what happened,” I choked out.

  She patted my hand and studied my face calmly, saying nothing about the tears in my eyes or the way I was pressing my lips together and blinking fast to keep them from falling.

  “The newspaper didn’t give a lot of details,” she said. “But I know you’re the one who was there. You gonna let it keep you down?”

  It wasn’t what I’d expected at all; her nephew was dead, and there she was, asking about me.

  She leaned sideways, pressing her shoulder into the velvet of the loveseat. “What I mean to say is, are you the sort that stays down or the sort that gets back up?”