by Peter Golden
Garland, her eyes wide, watched her daughter, then said to Julian, “Take him down.”
On the ride back to campus, Otis said, “I’ma gonna kill the motherfuckers.”
“You’ll wind up on the same tree as Derrick. And what about your mother and father? It’s only you and Derrick, right?”
“So nobody pays for Derrick?”
“Somebody pays. I promise.” Julian had maintained his composure in the clearing. He had backed up the Cadillac to the tree, gotten up on the hood, uncoiled the rope from Derrick, then put him in the back of the station wagon. Otis and Kendall stood there, crying. Garland had stopped at Hazee’s to phone the Broward County Sheriff and the Negro undertaker in Fort Lauderdale. Julian had waited in the parking lot, listening to Otis repeat that the lynching was his fault and watching Kendall in her mother’s car with her head in her hands. An icy fury made Julian’s palms sweat. He thought about Derrick’s terror as they dragged him to the tree, and how his death was eating up Otis and Kendall, and what it would mean for him with Derrick gone. Live competition was one thing; competition with a ghost was another, and Julian was disgusted with himself for allowing his thoughts to drag him in that direction.
At the Wakefield house, a van from the Benton Funeral Home was in the circular drive, and two Negro men in suits were loading Derrick into it.
“Swear to me,” Otis said. “Somebody pays for my brother.”
“Somebody pays. And you want me at the funeral with Eddie, you got his number, give us a ring. Anything you need, ask.”
Garland came over to Otis. “We’ll call your parents from the house. I’ll be along shortly.”
Julian extended his hand to Otis, who gave him a clumsy hug instead before walking up the driveway.
Garland said, “Hurleigh killed that child, and the sheriff tells me the Lovewood police will handle the investigation.”
“Lovewood’s got police?”
“Two of them. And Jarvis Scales is in charge of the department. I called the mayor and gave him holy hell. He said his store’s open late, and he’ll be by in the morning.”
“Kendall okay?”
Garland looked at him as if his question had proved his ignorance—and by extension the ignorance of his race—beyond all doubt. “She’s a mess. Went to her dorm.”
There was nothing he could do here. Not now, maybe never. “I’m going back to Miami Beach.”
Garland glared at him. “Good.”
The lights were on in Scales Antiques. Jarvis was alone inspecting his display cases and making notations on a clipboard. Outside, Julian stood with his body hidden by the building and peeked through the window. The bell over the door would ring when he went in, so he held off until the mayor was facing away from him, and then he slipped into the store. Turning, Jarvis said, “Can—” but he shut up and dropped his clipboard because Julian, towering over the mayor, was pressing the Beretta against his forehead and walking him into a back room, where he pushed the mayor into a desk chair.
Julian said, “You seen Hurleigh?”
“I ain’t, but when I do he’ll answer if’n he had a thing to do with that boy gettin’ hung. But Hurleigh gone. Look out the window.”
In the fading light Julian saw a two-story, wood-frame building with double doors.
“I own that garage, and Hurleigh stay in the apartment above it. Him and his car’s gone. I wager he went to see our cousins in Mississippi.”
“It’s good you got a big family.”
“What you— Why?”
“Because if I find Hurleigh, you won’t miss him at Christmas. Now lie on the floor. Facedown.”
Jarvis did as he was told. “Lookit, heah. I been fair with the colored in Lovewood. Ask any of ’em.”
Jarvis rambled on, telling the ash-gray linoleum that every fool involved in the lynching would be arrested, but before he completed his speech, the bell jingled as Julian walked out of the store.
Chapter 10
HARLEM, NEW YORK
On a raw, blustery Monday morning, Julian waited with Eddie in the shadow of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Derrick’s lynching had made the New York dailies, accompanied by Kendall’s photograph of him dangling from the tree, which somehow she’d gotten to the Associated Press. Thousands of people were lined up along 138th Street, and the police were everywhere, on foot and horseback, and the Negroes eyeballed the white cops as if they were Visigoths come to sack Rome.
Julian said, “Otis isn’t talking about acing anyone?”
Eddie replied, “When he called, he said we’re gonna do that. Are we?”
“After I flew home, I sent the Goldstein twins down.”
Eddie and Julian passed a flask of Jameson’s back and forth until Julian’s face was as numb as his toes. Eddie said, “Kendall’s here.”
“I would’ve asked if I wanted to know.”
“Who you kidding? Look around: a nice guy from Harlem got strung up because some white people hate coloreds, so why shouldn’t the coloreds hate ’em right back? You get in the middle of that because of Kendall and you expect it to be smooth sailing? You’re the smartest moron I ever met.”
As the pews and balcony filled up with a dark sea of somberly dressed men and women, Otis stood beside Derrick’s casket, which was adorned with lilies and rested on a bench below the marble pulpit.
“Thanks for being here,” Otis said, wiping his swollen eyes with a hankie, then shaking hands with Eddie and Julian. “Come meet my folks.”
The Larkins, a stately couple, sat in the front pew. Julian had never witnessed a mother and father burying a child, but while Otis introduced him and Eddie, and they offered their condolences, Julian thought the Larkins looked as though their insides had been scooped out. When Julian turned so Otis could point out their seats, Mr. Larkin tugged on the sleeve of Julian’s Chesterfield and leveled his forefinger at the casket. “It should be me in there.”
Again, Julian said, “I’m sorry for your loss,” but Mr. Larkin appeared not to hear him.
Otis had reserved spots for Eddie and Julian five rows back on the far left side of the sanctuary. Trailing Eddie to the pew, Julian nearly ran over Garland, who was standing by her aisle seat. Kendall was facing away from him, sitting and talking to an elderly fellow next to her. Julian said, “Hello, Mrs. Wakefield.”
Giving him the once-over as if she expected him to rip the strand of pearls off her neck, Garland hissed, “You’ve been drinking.”
Julian moved on, thinking that, in all probability, the favor he was doing her with Hurleigh Scales wouldn’t improve her opinion of him. He was about to take a seat when he heard Kendall call his name. He stepped out of the pew, and Kendall, in a black velvet cloche and black silk dress, came to meet him. Her hair, flowing from under her cloche, cascaded over her shoulders in shining brown waves. He wanted to tell her that she looked beautiful, but knew he shouldn’t say that. “I saw your photo in the Herald Tribune.”
“I sent it to my friend, Simon, at the Pittsburgh Courier. It made me feel less helpless. Simon got it to the AP.”
“Derrick would’ve approved.”
“He would’ve.”
They were silent. Then Kendall said, “Can you forgive me? For blaming you.”
“It’s okay.”
“I felt—I feel so—so responsible.”
“You’re not.”
Her face was melting toward tears. Julian wanted to hold her, wanted to leave the church and take her to Café Society to hear Big Joe Turner, to the Carnegie for pastrami with Russian dressing—anything to chase her sadness away. He touched her arm, and it stirred him when she covered his hand with hers. Despite her dressy clothes, the man’s rectangular Hamilton with the cracked leather band was on her wrist.
Kendall saw him looking at it. “My grandfather left me his watch.”
The choir, in scarlet robes, filled the balcony behind the pulpit.
“It’s about to start,” Kendall said, and returned to her seat.
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br /> As the choir sang and the minister preached, Julian was preoccupied with thoughts of Kendall and only heard snatches of the service. “The Nazis ain’t got nothin’ on Jim Crow,” the preacher thundered. “Our brave son of Harlem, Derrick Larkin, was neither afraid nor dismayed. Not even a hanging tree could separate him from the love of Jesus. . . .”
After two hours Julian decided that it was crazy for him to pursue Kendall. White and colored, it wouldn’t work. And she had dreams. Julian would be in her way. He should find a white woman with a yen for a mansion in the Jersey suburbs. That idea infuriated him, since she wouldn’t be Kendall, but he meant to stick to his plan—at least until the preacher announced that Derrick’s brother and his dearest friend from college were going to perform a song.
Eddie had told Julian that Otis could tickle the hell out of the ivories, but Julian was unprepared for the music he heard as Otis played that baby grand. Julian recalled hearing the Utica Jubilee Quartet perform the spiritual on WJZ, but Otis was jazzing it up and that pounding music in a minor chord rose to the vaulted ceiling, asking, LordLordLord, why, oh why did You let my good brother die?
Then Kendall, standing alone in the center of the pulpit, sang:
I am a poor wayfaring stranger,
Travelin’ through this world of woe . . .
Her voice was darker than Julian had ever heard it, and the loneliness that he’d seen behind her radiant facade was on display for all to hear.
I want to see my good Lord’s glory
I want to walk His Promised Land
I’ll tell Him our long, sad story
He’ll heal all hatred with His loving hand . . .
Light slanting through the stained glass windows behind Kendall enveloped her in a red, yellow, and blue mist. Otis went somewhere else on the piano, somewhere beyond this broken world where the sky is saturated with sound instead of light. And Kendall, a songbird in velvet and silk, went with him, head thrown back and clapping her hands. The church followed her, this girl blown by a gale of her own making, and the clapping reverberated across the sanctuary like stone being hammered to dust.
I’m just goin’ over Jordan,
I’m just goin’ over home . . .
As the final notes of the song faded, Julian wondered if he was really supposed to be released from this life without ever loving anyone. In which sacred text was it written that he and Kendall were destined to be prisoners of their skin? And here was a better question. What color was love? Julian laughed out loud, and while Eddie glanced at him as if a few of his screws had come loose, Julian figured that even God would have to forgive him for backing out of his plan, because only in Kendall’s presence did his anger dissolve and make room for hope, and no being, divine or human, could blame a man for trying to save himself.
Chapter 11
One evening, eight weeks after the funeral, as an ice storm was transforming New Jersey into a skating rink, Kendall called Julian at his apartment.
“How— How are you?” he asked.
“Better, thanks. I’m doing better.”
Julian had been so excited to hear Kendall’s voice and—because he didn’t want to scare her off—so intent on hiding his excitement that the gift of speech deserted him. When he recovered it, the best he could do, much to his chagrin, was “I’m listening to The Lone Ranger.”
“How’s Tonto?”
Julian laughed, but he was still distracted, because listening to the radio was only part of what he was doing. The other part of him was studying a Baedeker’s guide to Paris. On Valentine’s Day, after refusing a fix-up with a friend of Fiona’s, he’d bought the guide at Brentano’s. Since then, he had given up seeing any of his regulars and spent his free time with his face in the guidebook, imagining visiting Paris with Kendall and impressing her with historical tidbits and by not having to stop for directions.
Kendall said, “I have to be in Miami the weekend of March eleventh. For a regional sorority meeting.”
That information led to a sudden change in his plans. “Me too.”
She chuckled, and Julian realized that he’d just claimed to belong to a sorority.
The operator broke in, requesting that the caller deposit another dollar. “Julian, I’m using the pay phone in my dorm, and I’m out of change. I’ll be at the Mary Elizabeth Hotel. On Saturday. Is two o’clock okay?”
“Yes,” he said, and was asking her to call back collect when she hung up.
The Mary Elizabeth Hotel was in Overtown, a colored neighborhood in the City of Miami, and Kendall, with her khaki satchel slung over her shoulder, was standing in the entranceway, under a lime-green banner with swirly black lettering: WELCOME ALPHA KAPPA ALPHA.
“So that’s your sorority?” Julian said as he held the car door for her.
“The oldest Negro sorority in the country. It was founded in nineteen-oh-eight. At Howard.”
Just the mention of where Derrick had gone to school was enough to keep them quiet, and Julian wondered if it was still too soon for her.
As he drove across the causeway, Kendall said, “We get together every March to elect officers and talk about budgets. But this year we were writing letters asking people to contact Mrs. Roosevelt and see if she’ll help Marian Anderson find a place to sing in Washington.”
The Daughters of the American Revolution, owners of Constitution Hall, had forbidden Marian Anderson, a Negro opera singer, from performing on their stage. In response, the president’s wife had resigned from the DAR and detailed the fiasco in her newspaper column. Julian had followed the story thinking that with Japan invading China and the civil war in Spain and Mussolini cozying up to Hitler, the last thing those DAR biddies should worry about was the color of a singer. Julian, having made a fortune from Prohibition, was in no position to complain about some Americans’ preoccupation with bullshit. Without the tight-ass legions busting up saloons, his wallet would’ve been a lot thinner.
Julian parked on Ocean Drive, and they walked north.
“Would you like to get an early supper?” he asked.
“You and me? At the same table? We can’t. Miami Beach’s no different than Mississippi.”
“Who says?”
“Jim Crow.”
“And how about not caring what people think? I thought we were gonna work on that.”
“We are, but it doesn’t change the rules.”
“Let me show you something.”
Julian marched up a walkway of crushed seashells toward a hotel and stood before a sign in the bottom corner of the lobby window: NO JEWS, NO COLOREDS, NO DOGS.
“Rules are supposed to protect people,” he said. “You play along, there’s a payoff. But what do these rules do for me? Or for you?”
Kendall laughed. “Or for dogs?”
They started walking again. Men and women, all of them white and dressed with the fastidiousness of well-to-do tourists, streamed past, and Kendall noticed them gawking at her and Julian. From the corner of his eye Julian saw her break into a triumphant smile, as if she’d proved her point.
Julian, more accustomed to overt hostility than subtle odiousness, saw admiration in the faces of the tourists. He’d known Jewish and Italian girls as dark as Kendall and saw nothing peculiar in a white man strolling beside a woman with a light-caramel complexion. The gawkers, he thought, were responding to the loveliness of her face and how her tight ruby sweater and coral-pink skirt emphasized the curves and swells of her body.
“They’re looking because you’re beautiful,” Julian said, and took her hand.
Kendall squeezed his fingers, then let them go.
“You don’t want to hold my hand?”
“I do, but does it have to be in Florida?”
“Where else?”
“Africa?”
She was grinning. Julian said, “The rules again? Fu—”
He caught himself before he cursed, which doubled the width of Kendall’s grin.
“Fuck the rules?”
&nbs
p; “Exactly.”
Kendall stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. Julian held her hand, and they strolled along Lincoln Road, window-shopping at Bonwit Teller, Saks, and Harry Winston, and then went south on Washington Avenue. They didn’t say much; they didn’t have to, which pleased them both, for when they reached the end of the avenue and stood outside Joe’s, a restaurant with the rugged simplicity of a hacienda, something new had sprung up between them, an ease, Julian thought, that a white couple would probably have taken for granted.
Kendall said, “We can go in?”
“Why not? They let Al Capone in.”
Julian wouldn’t have been so confident if he hadn’t stopped by yesterday to double-check his arrangements with the owner, whom he’d met last winter while eating there with Walter Winchell.
A waiter in a tuxedo uncorked a Riesling, and after they ordered the house specialty, Kendall removed a pack of Marlboros and a matchbook from her satchel. Before she could strike a match, Julian fished a gold lighter from his pocket and held it for her.
“Didn’t know you smoked,” he said.
“Now you know all my bad habits: I smoke and say fuck.” Kendall smiled. “Which do you prefer?”
“Guess.”
The game ended there. Julian smoked a cigarette to keep her company. Kendall said, “You never asked how I got your phone number in New Jersey.”
“Didn’t have to. I spoke to my mother on Thursday.”
“Did she mention the fire?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“The building behind Mayor Scales’s store burned down. Hurleigh lived in an apartment there. Rumor is that it was arson, and Hurleigh won’t come near Lovewood.”
“That’s good, right?”
Kendall peered at him. Julian had no intention of telling her about the Goldstein twins’ proficiency with gasoline and matchsticks, and he was relieved when the waiter brought their dinner: stone crabs with mustard sauce and the sides of creamed spinach and fried potatoes were renowned for keeping conversation to a minimum.