Belle City

by Penny Mickelbury

  "Uncle Grady Allen! Catch me!" the little boy sang out and launched himself at the old banker, who caught him on the fly. Jonas initially had tried to restrain JJ. A two-year-old's exuberance was sometimes too much even for him, and Grady Allen was, he guessed, at least seventy—even the man's grandchildren were grown. But the old man loved the interaction with the little boy and never seemed to worry about what was happening to his crisp white shirt or his silk tie or the gold watch chain across his vest.

  "You're not his uncle," Horace snarled, "and I am his grandpa!" As if those facts were in doubt. "And we're supposed to be having a meeting, in case y'all forgot."

  Jonas reached for his son. "Come here, JJ, and give your papa a big hug."

  The boy flung himself at his father and buried his face in his neck. Jonas held him tightly, amazed, as always, at the intensity of his feeling and wondering, as always, if his own father had ever loved him as much since he'd never displayed his love.

  "What is it you want to discuss, Horace?" Grady snapped open his pocket watch, and the message was clear: I've got plenty of time to play with a little boy but not much to listen to you.

  "The situation in Europe is what I want to talk about. War, to be exact."

  "Why do you want to talk about the war in Europe? That's got nothing to do with us, and I hope we keep it that way," Jonas said.

  "That's where you're wrong, Jonas," Horace said. "Everything they do over there is tied to us, and everything we do over here is tied to them. It's almost like that Atlantic Ocean's not even there. If some of those boys are spoiling for a fight, you can bet a dollar or two that some of our boys will be right in the middle of it."

  "I still don't see what that has to do with us, especially since I haven't read or heard about anybody in our government backing such a notion. Just the opposite, in fact," Jonas said, shifting in his chair so that he could better hold a yawning JJ; the boy would be asleep in just a few moments. "All those neutrality acts the Congress has passed over the last few years—they mean we're not going to war."

  "Don't you believe it. Roosevelt's not gonna sit still and watch them Germans and Italians take over all those countries like they been doing."

  "Nothing Roosevelt can do about it. It's none of his business," Jonas said.

  "And anyway," Grady said, finally joining the conversation, "it's illegal for any American business to sell guns or any kind of war weapon to European countries. Not that we have any weapons to sell. So how is it you think you can make a dollar?"

  Horace grinned widely. "The other part of that law says those countries have to pay cash for anything they buy."

  "So what? You want us to sell the German government Doc Gray's house and farm?" Grady laughed.

  Horace scowled. "We should buy up as many pairs of underwear and socks and shoes as we can. We should buy up cans of soup and beans and...and...bags of rice and sugar and flour—stuff people are gonna need. And we'll be the ones who'll have it and who they'll have to buy it from."

  Jonas had to admit there was a certain logic in the idea. "But why would they come to us? Why not a businessman in their own country?"

  "'Cause they're gonna be at war—they're already at war—and war uses up lots of things real fast. That's the good thing about war: It's a big, greedy machine that just—"

  Grady pushed back from the table so fast and stood up so quickly that his chair tipped over, and he rushed from the room without a backward glance, slamming the door.

  Jonas sighed. "You can't seem to not make him mad, Horace."

  "Now what's wrong?"

  "He lost a son in The Great War, and I lost a brother. We don't think there's too much good about war at all."

  Horace hung his head in momentary shame; he'd forgotten about Grady's son and Jonas's brother. "I guess First Bank of CC won't be giving us a loan for our goods in stock business. That's what I think we oughta call it, by the way: Goods In Stock. Whatever people need, we've got it in stock. And we don't need Grady Allen. That fella at State Bank has been after me for a while. We can get a loan from him."

  "You don't get it, do you Horace? We are partners. That means we discuss plans, especially for a new business. You don't go off on your own."

  "I don't need to discuss my ideas and plans with you. That's a good idea and you know it, Jonas, whether or not you think war is good for the economy. There's gonna be a war, and people are gonna need basic supplies, and somebody is gonna sell those supplies, and it might as well be us."

  "It is a good idea, and there's nothing stopping you from pursuing it." Jonas hoisted JJ up on his shoulder. The boy weighed a ton. Audrey could barely lift him.

  "Then why don't you want to be in on it?"

  "Because it involves too many things that I know nothing about, and they're things I don't care to learn anything about, including the laws on international trade. We'd have to hire a bunch of lawyers and accountants who do understand those things, just to make it possible to do business with people I don't think I want to do business with." He headed for the door, Horace close on his heels. "And anyway, I really don't believe there's going to be another war," he said, once they were outside. "At least not one involving us."

  Horace gave him a look, a mixture of disdain, disgust and disappointment. "And my daughter thinks you're so smart. You think the whole world is just gonna let Hitler and that crazy Italian take over all those countries? And I'll bet Hitler's good and mad now." He gave a wild cackle. "First that Jesse Owens wins all those gold medals, then the other day Joe Louis whipped that Schmeling. Ol' Hitler's prob'ly tryin' to figure out how he can take over America."

  Jonas lay JJ down on the backseat of the car and turned to Horace. "You're glad that Jesse Owens and Joe Louis whipped the Germans?"

  "That's what they do. They run and they fight. That's what they're good at, so no, I don't mind that they won. Besides, I made a lot of money on that fight."

  "I've got to go."

  "You going home? I'll go with you, make sure my daughter's all right, see if she needs anything."

  "My wife is fine, you don't need to check on her, and anything she needs, I'll get for her." JJ stirred and whimpered. "I've got to go."

  "Audrey told me the new baby, if it's a boy, she's gonna name it after me."

  "If he's a boy, he'll be a he and not an it, and we haven't decided on a name yet," Jonas said, not telling the whole truth. Audrey did want to name their next boy after her father, but Jonas, if he had a baseball team of boys, wouldn't name one of them Horace. He'd name one Edward, but that's as far as he was willing to go. Besides, he wanted a girl next—a boy and girl—that would be perfection.

  Horace looked at his watch. "You really don't want any part of stockpiling goods in advance of the war, huh? Well, your loss. But you do make a good point about lawyers and such who know about international law. I'm gonna go to the office right now and start makin' some calls."

  "I'll be there later. I'll take him home, then go check on Rachel at the store."

  They got into their respective cars, doors slamming almost simultaneously. The older man started his engine first, backed too fast out of his parking space, and screeched off. Jonas sat for a moment, thinking too much about his father-in-law, then forcing all thoughts away and clearing his mind because thoughts of Horace upset him. He started the car, slowly backed up, and just as slowly headed toward home, constantly reaching into the backseat to make certain his son was in no danger of rolling off. What Horace didn't know—what he and Audrey didn't want either of her parents to know—was that she had been having a very difficult time with this pregnancy. That's why Jonas took JJ with him as often as possible—that and because he enjoyed the boy's company. Audrey simply could not keep up with him, and they'd had no household help in months. Nobody in The Crossing had any help because, since the Beau Thatcher incident, Colored domestic staff from Belle City had refused to make the journey to Carrie's Crossing, either by car or bus no matter how much they needed the money—and t
hey all needed the money. What Jonas had not known was that for years, Colored men had been vanishing from Belle City—all kinds of men. They'd leave going to work or to the barber shop or to a baseball game and just never come home. What happened to Beau Thatcher was the straw that broke the camel's back. Add to that the Sadie Hill story—and that was a story everybody, Colored and white knew—and Colored people literally feared for their lives every time they left the safety of their homes.

  JJ woke when Jonas picked him up, and he was glad he didn't have to carry the boy into the house. "You've got to stop growing, boy," he said.

  "I like growing, Papa."

  "You do? And why is that?"

  "I get big like you."

  "In that case, I guess you'd better keep growing. But maybe we should ask your Mama, see what she thinks."

  "Yaaaa! Go ask Mama! Go ask Mama!" he yelled when Jonas opened the door. Then he had to run to catch him before he took a flying leap at Audrey.

  She'd been lying down on the couch in the solarium and was barely in a sitting position when they entered the room. She's too pale, Jonas thought as he swooped JJ up into a flying bird, catching him just before he launched himself at his mother. "Tell your Ma why you're not going to stop growing," he said, settling him on the couch beside her.

  "I grow big like Papa."

  She put her arms around him and kissed him. "Yes, you will, my boy," she said. Then to Jonas, "How was your meeting?" Meaning, What did my father want and did you argue with him? Jonas knew that his dislike of her parents—and he actively disliked them both—was hard for her to accept, and he truly did try to limit his negative responses, especially verbal ones, and especially in JJ's presence. He told her about the meeting, omitting what Horace had said that upset Grady. He told her only his reaction and the reason for it. "It does sound like it would be an awful lot of work," she said.

  "I've got an idea about something else," he said, an idea had sprung into his head that very moment. "What if I called Mack and asked for his help organizing a...a...I don't know exactly what to call it—a transportation group. Some way to safely get help back and forth between here and BC. At first, we'd have to do all the driving—white folks, I mean. We could probably get Grady to talk to the police chief and tell him what we're doing and to leave people alone. Then, after a while, the Colored could do all the driving or ride the street cars. I bet most people would even pay a few cents a week to help out. I know I would."

  "It's a wonderful idea, Jonas. Really wonderful. Thank you."

  He lifted JJ into his lap and sat next to Audrey. "Here's another thought: Suppose we turn that little building out there into a maid's room or servant's quarters. We'd have to run some water out to it and some electricity, but it would be private. Nobody working in this house would ever have to fear being locked in."

  She leaned into his embrace and wept. He held her, not really alarmed, because he knew enough by now to understand that her pregnancies caused wide and wild swings of emotion. He'd witnessed it in his mother and his sisters but hadn't understood it. Now he did.

  "Those poor people, Jonas. They shouldn't have to live like that, in fear all the time."

  Jonas agreed with that thought but said nothing for fear that it would lead to a discussion of her parents' beliefs, and that he didn't want. "I'll call Mack tonight. I'm sure he's at work this time of day."

  "Maybe not tonight," Audrey said. "Wouldn't it be better if we could say for certain that people would be willing participate? I could make some calls then you could say how many people were willing to drive, even say how many jobs were waiting."

  And so two weeks later, Jonas made his call. Mack was often at work until nine o'clock at night during the summer months when it was light that late, so it was Ruthie that Jonas talked to when he called that evening. They hadn't talked to each other since that night in 1921 when the Colored Thatchers left Carrie's Crossing for the last time, and their initial conversation now was hesitant and stilted. Ruth congratulated him on the birth of his son and Audrey's new pregnancy. Jonas said he already felt overwhelmed at the thought of two children and asked how she managed five. She laughed and said, "Don't think about it." He laughed and the ice was broken, and Jonas told her the reason for his call. She listened intently, as was her way, then she thought about what he'd said before she spoke, and though he couldn't see her, he remembered how her eyes focused and seemed to darken when she was deep in thought, and he felt a pang of loss so intense it caused a pain in his chest. Finally she spoke.

  "That is a very good idea, Jonas, and I certainly will help. People here need to go to work and not be afraid. I also like the idea of using the old schoolhouse as a private residence for your housekeeper. Maybe others will do the same thing for their live-ins, at least until people have had time to forget what happened to Sadie."

  They spent another half-hour talking, working out the details. Ruth promised to get a list of people willing to participate—maids, cooks, gardeners, chauffeurs—and to call when she had the necessary commitments. Jonas had thirty job offers, and Ruth expected no difficulty in filling them. Jonas hung up the telephone with a sense of satisfaction. Not only had he performed a useful and necessary service to and for his neighbors, but he had bridged the gulf of distance between Ruthie and himself.

  ***

  –Belle City–

  Beau

  Beau knew more people than he could begin to count, and more different kinds of people. For such a solitary man, for such a private and internal man, he was a people magnet. All those years of driving a mule cart and later a horse cart and finally a truck all over town picking up salvage, and later, all those years of delivering cases of illegal whiskey back and forth across Belle City, put him in the path of good people and some not-so-good people and some truly bad people. Beau treated them all the same. He spoke to everybody he encountered: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. He tipped his hat to every woman he encountered: Grandmothers, mothers, aunties, sisters, teachers, cheap women, for sale women. He had been known to give a dime or a dollar when asked, and to give much more than that when not asked—when he saw the need. So when Beau Thatcher asked for a favor, he didn't have to ask but once, and the request wafted over the Colored neighborhoods of Belle City like the scent of fresh baked peach cobbler on a summer afternoon. What Beau wanted was the name of the white police officer who had put him in the work camp. He knew that Grady Allen knew the man's name but he would not ask, partly because he didn't trust white people, not even the "good" ones like Grady Allen, but also because he didn't want anybody close to him knowing that he was looking, and that would have included his sister and brother-in-law had he known that they knew the white policeman's name. And perhaps if he'd known that, he'd not have had the thoughts he was having, that plagued him: He needed to kill this man just as he had needed to kill Tom Jenks. He wanted the man's name and anything else anybody could find out about him. Nobody asked why Beau Thatcher wanted this information because anybody who knew him knew why. They also knew to forget that Beau had ever asked and, if it came to that, to forget they'd ever known Beau.

  The information came quickly and in greater detail than he could have wished for. The white policeman's name was Gilbert Edwards, and he had an unreasonable hatred of Colored people. Beau had encountered more than a few white people like that—people whose hatred of Colored people was a raw, festering ugly thing that contorted their features and sometimes their very bodies. Mr. First used to say that hating Colored made them feel better about themselves since the only thing that separated poor white people from poor Colored people was skin color, but Beau thought it was more than that, though he really didn't care why he was hated. He knew it to be unreasonable and ridiculous since the rigidity of the laws of segregation made it impossible for Colored people ever to have gotten close enough to white people to do anything to warrant such hatred, so he didn't waste time trying to understand it. He merely avoided them. The only white people he'd ever had re
gular contact with were Jonas Thatcher and Grady Allen. Jonas he hadn't seen since the end of Prohibition, and prior to his brief stint as the man's chauffeur, the only time he saw Mr. Allen was when one of his relatives needed a new motor vehicle. In addition to all the other things he owned, Grady Allen also owned the local Ford and Packard motorcar stores, and he would sell a car to a Colored person for the same price he sold them to white people. He was the only white man Beau knew of who didn't charge Colored more for the same things, whether for food, clothing, or an automobile. This did not mean, however, that he liked them or considered them friends. Business was business. Mr. First had taught him that and both Jonas and Mr. Allen reinforced it. That they didn't seem to hate him, that they didn't appear enraged by the very fact of his existence, is what had made it possible for Beau to conduct business, and both men had profited from their business relationship with him.

  What Beau did not understand at all were those white people who violently hated Colored people but still sought them out. Gilbert Edwards, he learned, was such a man. He spent considerable time in the most disreputable Colored establishments of the Fourth Ward. He drank, he got drunk, and he beat people, men and women—the women after he'd forced himself on them and then refused to pay. Friday and Saturday nights, Beau was told, he could almost always find Gilbert Edwards parked in one of two unpaved alleys well off the main thoroughfare and in so broken and ragged an area that even longtime Fourth Ward residents wouldn't know they existed.

  Beau wore his oldest clothes and shoes and rode the trolley car across town. Even though he was well-acquainted with the East Side of Belle City, and had been given explicit directions, he still got lost. This was as ugly and desolate a neighborhood as he'd ever seen. He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets, one of them cradling a knife, the other a lead pipe. He had only enough money to ride the trolley car back to the West Side and hoped that nobody would jump him and take it; he didn't want to have to walk around here any longer than absolutely necessary.