Close to the Broken Hearted

by Michael Hiebert

  “You mean the door was unlocked?”

  “I don’t rightly know, Dewey. It don’t actually say. Maybe he knocked. I dunno. Whatever happened, he demanded that the owner free all the black folk he’d been keepin’ as slaves.”

  “What did the owner say?” Now Dewey sounded more interested.

  “He said he didn’t like people tellin’ him what to do, is my guess,” I said. “All it says here is that a gunfight broke out inside that plantation between my grandpa from a hundred fifty years back and a half dozen other folk who either owned the plantation or worked for the guy who did.”

  “So your however many greats grandpa was a Union soldier?”

  “No, that’s just it. He was a Confederate. I suppose he just didn’t agree with slavery. That’s the part that makes him a hero.”

  “Did he die?”

  “No. In the end, it says, and I’m reading it straight off the paper now, Isaac Jacob Lee Teal won his battle and walked out the front door of that big white house with one hundred and ten black men jumpin’ up and down around and behind him, all hootin’ and a-hollerin’.” I actually embellished that a little for Dewey’s sake.

  “That’s what it says in the records you got?”

  “Well,” I admitted, “not quite. I made it more dramatic.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “The next day the same Union navy that took the port attacked Fort Pulaski. They had more soldiers and better guns and the fort surrendered within a day. But word ’bout my ancestral grandpa must’ve spread because he came marching toward the captured fort, over the hills and through the trees with all the black men still following him.”

  “Why was they still followin’ him?”

  “Guess they didn’t know where else to go. Will you quit interruptin’?”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, the Union navy captain didn’t arrest my great-great-great-great-great-grandpa. Instead they allowed him on board their ships and made him an honorary Union soldier. He was even given a medal for what he done and everythin’.”

  There was a bit of a pause, then Dewey said, “So your great-great-great-great-great-grandpa was a bit of a traitor, you’re sayin’.”

  I got real mad. “No, Dewey. He was a good man who believed everyone should be free.”

  Dewey laughed. “I’m just kiddin’. I think that’s a neat story.”

  “Me too. I’m real happy I got these records. I can’t wait to meet my new grandparents now.”

  After hanging up the phone, I leafed through the rest of the document. There were other pages listing the line of daughters for the Teals, then these were followed by similar pages for the Fowler lines. All of them went back approximately the same number of years as the first one I had examined.

  There were also cross-reference pages showing who married who and things like that, and even a tree structure that kind of explained how all my uncles and aunts and great-uncles and -aunts all connected. A lot of it I couldn’t understand very well, but I still found it all very interesting and exciting.

  But absolutely none of it compared to the story I’d found about my great-great-great-great-great-grandpa Isaac Jacob Lee Teal.

  That man was a true hero.

  That’s when my sister, Carry, walked into the house, carrying a small plastic shopping bag. I guessed she’d been down at the mall with her friends where she usually hung out. I was about to tell her about Grandpa Isaac Jacob Lee (who was her ancestral grandfather, too), but she spoke before I had a chance.

  “Come on, ass face, follow me.”

  “Mom told you not to call me that!” I said.

  “Whatever.” She walked into the living room and turned on the television.

  I sat there, thinking I should really go see what she wanted, but then part of me thought I should just stay put, her being so rude and all.

  “I told you to come here!” she demanded from the other room.

  “Why should I do anything you tell me?” I shouted from the kitchen.

  I had forgotten that there actually was a reason. The devil pact I’d signed with my sister the day we made the swords had somehow completely slipped my mind. Now it was about to come back and bite me in places it turned out I really didn’t like being bitten in.

  “Because we have a deal, remember? When we made the swords? Time to pay up.”

  Curious, I wandered into the living room.

  Carry was sitting on the sofa with her socks off and one foot up on the coffee table. In her hand she had a bottle of brand-new purple nail polish. “Today,” she said, “you learn how to paint toenails! Aren’t you the lucky boy?”

  “Uh-uh.” I shook my head, slowly backing out of the room.

  “Yep. You said anythin’. And this falls under anythin’. Now get over here and pay up.”

  It was horrible, demeaning work, painting Carry’s cheesy toes. I kept asking myself: What would Dewey think if he could see me now? Every time I tried to speed up the process, she’d slow me down and tell me to make sure I did a good job. When I was finally done with both feet, it was like someone had stopped sticking me with a hot poker. I was so glad to be finished.

  I quickly bottled up the polish and handed it to her.

  She twisted her foot in the sunlight falling in through the window behind her, looking at her toes gleaming purple in the afternoon light. I had to admit, they didn’t look half bad.

  “You did all right,” she said.

  “I’m just happy I’m done.”

  Then she said something that froze me to my core: “For now.”

  “What do you mean?” My eyes went wide. My hand trembled.

  “You’re doin’ this every week for the rest of the summer.”

  “Am not.”

  “Am too.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  “You gave me your word. What’s Abe Teal’s word worth?”

  She had me there. My mother had drilled it into my head that you’re only as good as your word. I consoled myself with the fact that she’d at least cut the job off at the end of summer.

  With a hung head, I slunk back into the kitchen, leaving the smell of fresh nail polish and the sound of canned laughter from the television set in the living room behind me.

  CHAPTER 22

  The next day, Chris was holding out a report in his hand as Leah took her seat at her desk. “Ask and thou shalt receive,” he said.

  She looked at him. “Eli?”

  He nodded. “Yup.”

  “Anythin’ incriminatin’?”

  He gave a little shrug. “I dunno. It just came in ’bout ten minutes ago. I skimmed it. Nothin’ stood out at me as bein’ particularly nasty. Other than shootin’ a three-year-old, but we already knew ’bout that one.”

  Leah scanned the first page of the report. There were notes from all Eli’s parole board hearings. They spilled on to the second and third sheets. “No wonder he got out early,” she said. “He was like teacher’s pet in prison. I’ve never seen such nice things said about anyone in one of these things.”

  Chris had his elbow on his desk with his hand supporting his head. “Maybe our preacher man really done gone an’ changed his ways.”

  Leah flickered her eyes at him above the page she was reading. “Nobody’s this nice in prison. Eli was up to somethin’. That’s what it tells me.”

  “Why, Detective Teal, ain’t we a mite cynical?”

  “No, I’d say I’m a mite realistic. This ain’t my first bull ride.” She quoted from the page: “ ‘A strong influence on his peer group with an attitude that’s a welcome diversion from the normal dreary and contemptuous one that seems to infiltrate this establishment.’ ” She laughed. “Of course they’re dreary and contemptuous! They’re in goddamn prison! What the hell do they expect?”

  “Apparently, what they like is someone who is a welcome diversion from that,” Chris said. “Someone like Eli Brown.”

  “I’ve been to his house. The man was pretty
contemptuous to me.”

  “Actually, he wasn’t far off of contemptuous with me, either. Hmm.”

  “I think we definitely have a suspect,” Leah said. She turned the stapled page over and found a page full of basic background information, including priors, education, family records, basic stuff.

  She quickly looked it over. Other than the murder of Caleb Carson, it contained nothing unusual, but then she hadn’t expected it to. She already knew Eli Brown had no prior run-ins with the law, and the rest of the information was basically useless to her.

  Then something caught her eye.

  “Whoa, Nelly,” she said. “I think we just got ourselves a Bingo!”

  Chris pulled his chair in close and looked at the page from the side. “What’s that?”

  “Look under family records,” she said. “Check out the name of his deceased wife.”

  Chris found the part on the page she was referring to and gave a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  There it was, typed right there in black and white:

  Wife: Catherine Anna Brown nee Atkinson (Deceased). Died 1984 of stroke.

  “I think we just found our link between Sylvie and Eli Brown,” Leah said. “I mean other than through little Caleb.”

  It took one call to the Alvin public records office to find out that Argo Atkinson was the father of Catherine Atkinson and another call to the Mobile public records office to discover that he was alive and well and living up in Tuscaloosa.

  “So, Eli Brown’s father-in-law purchased the property as quickly as he could snatch it up after Tom Carson hanged himself,” Leah said to Chris after putting down the phone. “It all seems a little too convenient to me.”

  “Definitely something fishy goin’ on.”

  “I think the reason we haven’t seen no development on it is on account of Eli’s been in prison up until now. I think he plans to go ahead with that little ‘project’ of his.”

  “Could be.”

  “And you said his grandson was down from Alabaster? I bet that ain’t no coincidence either. Did he seem like the business type to you?”

  “Hard to tell. He was just wearin’ a T-shirt and jeans, but he could be. Probably just got out of college or might still be in college, I dunno.”

  “I bet he’s here to help Eli throw this thing together.”

  There was a silent spell between them. Outside the window, two yellowhammers dipped in and out of sight.

  “Still doesn’t tell us why this would amount to Sylvie bein’ harassed,” Leah finally said.

  “That’s what I was thinkin’.”

  “Unless . . .”

  “What?”

  “Unless they was worried she still had claim to the land.”

  “That would be impossible. You said the bank put it up for auction. And that was eight years ago,” Chris said.

  “Maybe Eli thinks different.”

  “Still, what’s the point in harassin’ her?”

  Leah thought this over and shrugged. “Well, if he could get her to the point that she went off the deep end and actually became hospitalized she’d be much less of a threat to anyone. You gotta reckon, if what we’s sayin’s true, she’s gonna have some kinda reaction when he starts buildin’ on her daddy’s plot of land.”

  “You reckon?”

  “I reckon so. She hates Eli Brown more than anyone. And she probably has every right in the world to.”

  “So . . . ,” Chris said. “What do we do next?”

  “That’s a good question.” Leah drummed her fingers on the desk. Outside a monarch butterfly fluttered among the tops of the hydrangea bushes that barely came up to the bottom of the window. “I suppose we have another talk with our favorite old preacher.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that. You or me?”

  She smiled with a bit of a wicked grin. “Oh, you ain’t gettin’ this one.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Me and Dewey rode our bikes down Hunter Road and over to Church Street where the Full Gospel Church was. Full Gospel was Alvin’s black church, and we’d been there before. I knew Reverend Starks quite well and he always seemed happy to see us when me and Dewey dropped by. Today being a Thursday, I didn’t know whether or not he’d be around. Church services were normally held on Wednesdays and Sundays, but I thought Reverend Starks lived in the church so I suspected we might catch him there if we were lucky.

  My mother had told me she had asked Sylvie Carson to come to church with us next time we went on account of all the troubles she’d been going through lately. My mother thought it might bring her some comfort. Well, last time I was at Full Gospel, it was during the end of one of their services, and there was so much singing and happiness I couldn’t imagine a place more comfortable than that. Certainly not Clover Creek First Baptist where we usually went. I had nothing against Reverend Matthew, but his sermons could put a gerbil with a sugar rush to sleep.

  So, even though it was a black church, I was going to ask Reverend Starks if it was okay for us to come. Especially given what my great-great-great-great-great-granddaddy did for him and his people.

  I hadn’t mentioned any of this to my mother yet. I figured I’d wait and see if I could get permission from Reverend Starks first and then surprise her with it. This didn’t seem like the sort of surprise that I’d get reprimanded for. Although, when I thought it through now, I realized if I included the part about my ancestry it was going to cause some complications to the story.

  The church was an old wooden building painted white and had square stained-glass windows. It looked similar to Clover Creek First Baptist where we normally went, only Full Gospel was an older building and wasn’t taken care of as well as Clover Creek. I don’t think it was because anyone purposely neglected it, I think it was more on account of they didn’t have the money to paint it as often or to put in as many gardens around it, and stuff like that. The paint on the boards was starting to come off. It definitely could use a new coat.

  The church door was closed as me and Dewey rode our bikes into the churchyard and up to the entrance.

  “So what do we do?” Dewey asked. “Knock? Or just see if it’s unlocked and go inside?”

  “I dunno,” I said. I had no idea of the etiquette of what to do at church when it wasn’t in service. “I suppose knocking can’t hurt.”

  We set our bikes down on the ground and, with swords at our sides, climbed the steps to the church doors and knocked on them. Because they were made of thick, heavy wood, our knocks were not very loud.

  We waited for a while, but nobody answered.

  “I don’t think he heard us. Try the door,” Dewey said.

  “You try it,” I said.

  Slowly, he reached out his hand and grabbed the handle and pulled. Nothing happened. I saw him let out a breath he’d been holding. “They’re locked.” He sounded relieved.

  We tried knocking again, but again our knocks weren’t very loud and again nobody came.

  “We could try kicking it,” Dewey suggested.

  I stared at him. “We ain’t gonna boot the church door.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a place of God, Dewey.”

  “Oh.”

  He didn’t mention kicking it again, so I suppose that was explanation enough.

  We stood there another minute until finally I came up with an idea. “You know, if Reverend Starks lives here, he doesn’t live in the actual main part of the church. I mean, where would he sleep? In the pews? I bet there’s another door in the back. One that goes into the part he lives in.”

  “That makes sense,” Dewey said.

  We walked around the church to where four large willows grew, their long branches draping like huge umbrellas with tiny flowers that shook gently in the breeze. One of the willows was close enough that it touched the side of the church.

  I’d never noticed before, but the church was actually shaped in an ell. You couldn’t really tell from the other side, but another building
came off the main one. This building didn’t have the stained-glass windows or any of the decorative religious look that the other did. It was just a normal houselike building, with small windows and a small porch. It was white, like the rest of the church, only the trim back here was all done in forest green. If this was where Reverend Starks lived, he had a very small house.

  We walked up the two steps to the porch and knocked on the door. This time our knocks sounded like real knocks.

  “Coming!” a deep voice called out from somewhere on the other side of the door.

  “I hope it’s him,” Dewey said nervously.

  “Who else could it be?” I asked.

  A half moment later, Reverend Starks answered the door. Only, he wasn’t dressed the way I was accustomed to seeing him. He was dressed like a normal person in dark green pants and a striped shirt. I nearly didn’t recognize him until he smiled and I saw his gold-capped tooth. Then I knew it was him. There was no mistaking Reverend Starks’s smile or that tooth.

  “Abe! What a delightful surprise!” He took my hand in both of his and shook it. “And Dewey . . . right?”

  “Yes, sir!” Dewey said, shaking his hand, too.

  “What brings you boys round these parts? Been a while since I’ve seen you.”

  “I wanted to talk to you ’bout somethin’,” I said.

  “And he wants to ask you somethin’, too,” Dewey added.

  I glared at him.

  “Is that right?” Reverend Starks said. His voice was deep and full. “Well, why don’t y’all come inside?” He looked around the yard. The sun glittered off his eyeglasses. “Nice to see the rain’s stopped again.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Let’s hope we get back to that sunny spell we had a week ago,” the reverend said. “I was quite enjoyin’ that.”

  “So was we,” Dewey said.

  Reverend Starks led us through a small kitchen that was very neat and tidy, down a narrow hallway, and into a small parlor that contained a little divan with a floral pattern and two chairs, both upholstered in burgundy, situated around a low cherry table.