She glared at him in disbelief. He saw anger mixed with dignity. Mainly anger, though. Charlie shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun. “Are you Minnie Doe?” he asked, resuming his approach. “I want to talk about Forsyth County.”
She regarded him suspiciously. “Minerva. Nobody calls me Minnie anymore. And why would I want to talk about Forsyth County?”
He stopped. “I’m writing a book about a man named John Riggins. Died in 1937.”
“Riggins is my maiden name.” Her eyes narrowed further. “How’d you find me?”
He took a step forward. “I looked you up in the phone book after I listened to an interview with Jasper Riggins.”
She put a hand on her sagging bosom. “Lord, he passed on more than a decade ago.”
“So did the man who interviewed him. I was finishing a book on what happened in Forsyth County back in 1912, and I stumbled across the tape.” Now Charlie was on the sidewalk, just a few feet away from the woman, who stood with her arms on her hips, appearing at least temporarily interested in what he had to say.
She fanned herself as beads of perspiration appeared on her forehead. “John Riggins was my father. Died before I was born. Murdered.” The last word hung in the air, ugly and alone.
“Yes ma’am, that’s what I understand. He must have been very brave to stay in Forsyth.”
“You’re writing a story about it seventy years later?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s important.” At ease with the weirdness of his task, Charlie felt no further explanation was necessary. Certainly not if he could get his foot in the door without one.
“And you want me to talk to you about it.”
“If that’s all right.”
“It’s not.” She turned and walked away. Over her shoulder, she said, “Got other things on my mind.”
He followed slowly up the sidewalk. She stepped onto the small porch and eased into a weathered wooden rocker, which took up nearly half the available space, with the welcome mat and potted plants taking up most of the rest. Looking down on him seemed to calm her. She rocked for a moment before she spoke again. “What did you say your name was?”
He smiled hopefully. “Charles Sherman. Charlie.”
“You’re a reporter.”
“Yes.” He reached up to hand her a clipping of Crenshaw’s eight-month-old article. “I finished that book. Now I’m writing about your father.”
She looked at the story, then glanced at his face like she was checking an ID. “Well, as you may have noticed, I can’t help you right now. Can’t even invite you in. Power company cut me off even though I paid the bill. I always pay my bills.”
She leaned forward to hand the clipping back to him. She had a gardener’s hands, clean but weathered and short-nailed. Lined and familiar with work. A pair of dirty cloth gloves lay beside the chair.
“Did you pay it this morning? Maybe they haven’t credited—”
She waved off his assertion. “I gave the money to Demetrious the day before yesterday to get the money order, just like I did last month. Can’t find my checkbook. Didn’t know I was late until they hung a cutoff notice on the door.”
“Who is Demetrious?”
“My grandson. I haven’t seen him since I gave him the money to pay the bills.”
“Uh … maybe that’s part of the problem,” Charlie suggested.
“Humph. Might be. He’s never done me this way before, that I know of. But now I’m stuck. I don’t have a car anymore.”
Charlie seized the opportunity. “I can give you a ride to the bank or the power company.”
“I had to sell it to help pay my house note. I took out a loan to get my roof fixed. Some men from Augusta. I got a raw deal. Interest is high. Whoo-wee. They call them Irish gypsies.”
“Oh. Them.”
“You heard about them?”
“They’re everywhere.”
“They need to be in jail.”
Charlie shifted his feet awkwardly, figuring he’d stay until he was asked to leave. She gave him an irritated look, then wagged a finger at the clipping. “Is that book getting published?”
“Yes ma’am.” He pulled out a letter from Joshua Furst he’d brought to prove his legitimacy and stepped forward to offer it to her.
She glanced at the letterhead without taking it. “So you’re writing about my father. Hmm. It’s important because it happened up in Forsyth County … after they said we all got run out, is that it?”
Who could say these things? “I started working on it yesterday. I have no idea where it will take me.”
She rocked. After what seemed to Charlie like an eternity, she spoke. “Call me crazy, but I believe you. I had a dream that someone would come to me about my father.”
“When?”
She shut one eye and looked at the tiny porch’s ceiling with the other. “I don’t know. But it’s fresh in my mind.” She looked back at him. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m not. I can’t explain why, but I was meant to do this.”
She mulled the statement for a moment. “All right. I’ll take that ride. Need to pay the phone bill, too. Wait here.” She went inside. Charlie rushed to the van and cleared off the passenger seat, then the floor, moving papers and tools so that she could sit beside him.
Minerva came out clutching her purse and climbed into the van. She stared at the monkey wrench on the floor between them. “I thought you were a writer. Looks more like you’re a plumber.”
“I’m a handyman on the side,” Charlie said. “Mouths to feed.”
“I heard that.”
The engine grumbled to a start and Charlie drove off. He took her to Citizens Savings to get cash. On the way to the power company office, she told Charlie that her father’s cousin Jasper, a lifelong bachelor, had left her some money when he died, but she’d spent it keeping her daughter out of jail and trying to raise Demetrious. “Although that is proving difficult,” she added, “since the boy doesn’t want to grow up. And now he’s messed up the simple task of paying the utilities before they got cut off. All I have is my pension and Social Security. I retired early, never dreaming I’d be spending so much money raising other people’s children.”
“What did you do before you retired?”
“I was a teacher. Atlanta schools. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t, but I’m not surprised.”
“Why’s that?”
He laughed. “I’m just not. I don’t know why. Maybe because you talk better than I do.”
“I take pride in my diction,” she declared. “Now if I could only keep Demetrious from dropping out of school. I’m afraid he’s beyond my help. When I get hold of him …” She trailed off and looked out the window. Charlie saw defeat in her eyes. The money she’d given the boy was likely long gone, spent on nothing she’d want to know about.
“Well, what do you want me to tell you?” she asked, turning her attention back to Charlie. “I’m not sure I have much to share. Like I said, I never knew my father. He died before I was born. Nine months before. Aunt Lizbeth told me I was the last thing he did. I don’t remember my mother. Her name was Lettie. I was the last thing she did, too. Died right after I was born. She drowned.”
“I don’t know much about your mother other than that. Your father died a terrible death, I’m afraid.”
“Hard to imagine.” She shook her head sadly. “It always seemed odd that he was up there after everybody else got chased out, though.”
“There were reports of a few others. But we—Professor Talton and I—couldn’t prove they existed. I’d always wondered if their names appeared on the census even though they were gone, you know, maybe so the county revenue commissioner’s kinfolk could farm their land without paying taxes, or something like that.” He paused for a moment as he recalled that Talton’s manuscript had originally listed two black residents in Forsyth County in 1940, but the good professor had struck through that number.
Mine
rva looked out the window. “People need to know their past. Too many lies have been spread. Everybody talks about 1954 and ‘I have a dream.’ Well, I’d been teaching ten years before I saw white children in my classroom. Some poor kids from Cabbagetown in 1970. That’s history. So … what do you want to know?”
“Everything. You married?”
“My husband’s gone. Never found another man.” She paused, as she did frequently. “I met James Doe after I started teaching.” She chuckled lightly. “My car broke down one day and he rescued me. He was a mechanic by trade, and he pulled his car over and helped me. Went to a store and came back with a fan belt. Replaced it right there on the side of the road. Within a year, we were married even though he was a few years younger than me. He was drafted and went to Vietnam. Didn’t come back. We had a baby girl, but he never saw her.”
“What year did he die?”
“I don’t know that he’s dead. Haven’t heard from him in forty years.”
“Oh.” Awkward. Charlie drove into downtown Decatur. He pulled into a parking space in front of the Georgia Power office and asked, “Do you want me to go with you?”
“No, I’m fine.”
While she was inside, Charlie furiously scribbled notes on his legal pad.
She returned, clutching a receipt. “They say the lights will be back on by the end of the day.”
“Good. Glad that’s taken care of.”
After a side trip to pay the phone bill, he drove her home. Meanwhile, Minerva continued her story. “I was expecting Shaundra—my daughter—when James went off to basic training. I raised her the best I could, but she was always finding trouble.” She watched a cop making a traffic stop, then turned back to Charlie. “Shaundra got pregnant with Demetrious and claimed she didn’t know who the father was.” Minerva shook her head. “She was an adult by then, but she couldn’t take care of herself, let alone a child, so it’s been up to me to raise him, old as I am. He was doing all right until high school. Held back his freshman year. Now he cuts class so much he’s not going to graduate. Running with bad people, too. My house is supposed to be his address, but I don’t know. He stays with his mother sometimes, but she keeps moving.”
She flipped her hands up. “Honestly, I don’t know where else he ends up some nights. Comes and goes as he pleases. I didn’t think he’d do that with the power company money, though. I’m afraid he’s gotten mixed up with gangs. So, Mr. Sherman, that’s my life. I spend a lot of time worrying about where my daughter and grandson are and what they’re doing, and … well, I can’t say that has much to do with your story, but I do have some things that might help you out. Letters, pictures, and such.”
“I’d like to see them. Anything that would help me get to know your parents.”
When they returned to her house, she invited him inside. The place was neat, its furnishings modest. A throw rug covered the living room’s worn wooden floor. An old TV equipped with rabbit ears sat on a cart in the corner. Jesus pictures and needlepoint adorned the walls. Minerva pointed to a framed picture among the bric-a-brac on an end table. The photo showed a smiling youth in a black suit and tie. “That’s Demetrious in his go-to-meeting clothes. He doesn’t dress that way now, oh no. He dresses like a gangsta.” It took her awhile to say the last word, one she obviously despised.
Minerva directed Charlie to retrieve a footlocker from her bedroom closet and carry it into the living room. “Don’t slide my treasure chest on the floor,” she warned him. She opened the shades and blinds so they could see and started digging through it as he booted up his computer on battery power. The strong scent of mothballs reminded him of his grandmother’s dark closet back in Missouri.
“Can we open the windows?” he asked. “I think I may be part moth.”
“Go ahead.”
After Charlie caught a breath of fresh air, Minerva showed him her family memorabilia: a Bible with the family tree filled in back to 1840; a diploma from Savannah State College, where John Riggins had graduated in 1934 with a degree in agriculture; photos of John and his bride Lettie and their correspondence. Best of all, a journal Riggins had kept. Charlie was ecstatic. “I’d like to make copies,” he said.
Minerva glanced over the papers. “You can do that, but they’re not leaving my eyesight.”
Charlie nodded, recalling Kathleen’s possessive attitude toward Thurwood’s manuscript. He read through the journal and took notes on his pad, which was bathed in the western light that cut through the living room window and fell on the coffee table.
When the power came on just after five o’clock, Minerva offered him dinner. “Nothing much, just what I’m having,” she said.
“That’s fine.”
Soon after that, he was staring at a small plate containing kid-sized portions of Chef Boyardee ravioli and canned peaches—exactly what he fed Ben and Beck when he was in a hurry. Karmic payback, he reckoned.
“Thanks,” he said. After eating quickly, he returned to the task of getting to know John Riggins, a lanky, dark-skinned man, and Lettie, short, plump and slightly fairer. Charlie surreptitiously held the photo up while watching Minerva rock her way through the evening news. Hmm. Perhaps the old photos had darkened over the decades.
“It’s getting late,” Charlie said when he realized the sun was setting. “I don’t want to bother you anymore today, but I’d like to come back. This stuff is fascinating.” He shut down the computer.
“That would be all right.”
As he slipped his laptop into its case, he heard a car squeal to a stop. Then arguing and yelping, the sounds of a scuffle, a thump on metal, a car pulling away, and a long wail of anguish.
“Oh Lord, please don’t let it be what I think it is,” Minerva said, choking back a sob. “I’m afraid they just dumped him out there. You look. I can’t bear it.”
Charlie inched toward the living room window, fearing a shotgun blast or automatic weapons fire. When he peered out, he saw a girl standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. A middle-school student, he guessed, maybe five feet tall, thin and knock-kneed, her short hair pulled in tight pigtails with ragged ends. Her face may have been pretty, but it was puffy from crying—and maybe a beating. She wore blue jeans, a T-shirt, and windbreaker, with a backpack slung across her shoulder. She looked lost. “It’s a girl.”
“What?” Minerva got up and brushed away a lace curtain to look out. “Oh dear Lord.”
“Do you know her?”
Wearing a worried look, she shook her head. “No. Don’t think so.”
When Minerva opened the door, the girl called out, “Are you D’s grandma?”
The old woman made a face. “Who is D?”
‘Demetrious.”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“Takira. I heard he stay here. I need to talk to him.”
“Haven’t seen him.” Minerva started to close the door, then paused. “Baby girl, what’s wrong?”
“D won’t talk to me. And I need some money.”
“What you need money for, child?”
“I missed my period. I need a pregnancy test and I don’t got a place to stay. They’ll beat me if I go back home.” This all poured out in a plaintive, rapid-fire delivery. It was the most eloquent and succinct description of a living hell Charlie had ever heard.
Minerva looked wide-eyed at Charlie, whose mouth was hanging open.
“Come in, girl. Mr. Sherman, looks like we’re through for the day.”
“So, I’ll come back, and—”
“You can bring a copier or something if you want.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“Monday,” she said firmly.
The girl trudged in and slumped on the sofa. Charlie left, giving her a sympathetic smile. She averted her gaze and stared at the floor. As Charlie drove off, he saw two teenage boys walking in the street. He couldn’t make out their faces in the darkness, but fear crept into his gut. All kids in this part of town looked sketchy, if not downright dangerous.
And these two had predators’ eyes. He shuddered, glad he had a metal frame and 170 horsepower between his hide and them.
He turned the corner and sped off, his mood improving immediately. After all, this was a major accomplishment. John Riggins was no longer unknowable (which would have made him the deal-breaker in the contract), but a real-live dead human being, someone Charlie could write about with authority and confidence, since his subject had possessed the good grace to tell so much about himself in his journal.
Yes, a good day overall.
* * *
Later that evening, Charlie called Susan to tell her he’d completed Flight from Forsyth. She congratulated him, and then quickly changed the subject, saying he could either cough up $150 a week for after-school care or go back to picking up the kids. He chose the latter, since he missed Beck and Ben—and had more time than money. Also, she was willing to give him a key to Thornbriar, indicating a further thawing—but without mention of icing or licking.
Meanwhile, there was other work to do. On Saturday, Charlie started building a deck near Little Five Points, so his return to Minerva’s house was delayed by several days. He knocked on her door Thursday morning, balancing his computer atop a new scanner still in its box. Minerva answered, her expression grim. “Something wrong?” he asked as he stepped inside.
“We did the test, and now we know. The girl is pregnant,” she said, closing the door. “Claims D is the father. Lord, now I’m calling him that.”
“The father?”
“No,” she said, irritated. “D.”
“What does he say?”
“He came by after you left the other night. He called her all sorts of names and stormed out. I haven’t seen him since.”
He fidgeted. This was all very terrible, and furthermore, he needed to get to work.
“Eighth grade,” Minerva said. “Fourteen. She’s staying with me now, since her mama kicked her out. I want to turn that hateful woman in for child abuse and neglect, but I’m afraid she could get Demetrious arrested for statutory rape. I don’t believe in abortion, or in babies having babies, either.” She sighed. “This is like Shaundra all over again. Worse by ten years. And if Demetrious is …”
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