A Time to Stand

by Robert Whitlow

  “Is she asleep?” Adisa asked.

  “No,” Aunt Josie said as her eyes fluttered open. “Where have you been?”

  “I went to the Jackson House for lunch and then stopped by to order the flowers for the cemetery from Mrs. Bohannan. She’ll have them ready late this afternoon.”

  “Oh, yes,” Aunt Josie said with a slow nod. “You’re sweet to do that for me. My short-term memory is awful. Tell me about the flowers.”

  As soon as her aunt asked the question, Adisa realized her short-term memory was flawed as well.

  “I need to call Mrs. Bohannan right now!”

  “Why?” Shanika asked.

  “To tell her not to include any yellow flowers in the dahlia mix for the cemetery.”

  Without waiting for a response, Adisa stepped into the hallway. Mrs. Bohannan answered on the third ring.

  “You know, I remembered that after you left the shop,” the florist said. “Josie never orders yellow flowers. I’m substituting purples. She’ll love it.”

  Relieved, Adisa returned to the hospital room and delivered the news.

  “That’s okay,” Aunt Josie said. “You’ve had a lot on your mind recently. Shanika was telling me you got a big promotion at work and will be moving all the way up to Boston. I’m proud of you but sad, too.”

  Adisa looked at Shanika in shock. “Uh, I didn’t know she was going to do that,” Adisa said.

  “It was going to come out eventually,” Shanika replied.

  “And she knew you’d be worried that it might upset me,” Aunt Josie said. “But all I’ve ever wanted for you girls is to love the Lord and walk in his favor for your lives. Knowing this makes me feel better than any medicine they could pump into my body through that tube in my arm.”

  Adisa managed a smile. There was no use mentioning to Aunt Josie and Shanika the news about the recent threat to her job. Pulling herself together, she patted Aunt Josie on the arm.

  “Seeing you improve is the most important thing in the world for me,” she said.

  They divided the rest of the afternoon between chatting and Aunt Josie napping. Adisa let her aunt direct the conversation and gladly followed any trail the older woman wanted to explore.

  Adisa left the hospital and arrived at the flower shop at 5:55 p.m. Mrs. Bohannan was standing behind the cash register. The dahlia sprays were on a table beside the doorway that led to the rear of the shop.

  “I wasn’t going to close until you got here,” the florist said. “How’s Josie feeling?”

  “She’s been asleep for a couple of hours, but before that she was talking and taking in liquids. The big problem is the partial paralysis on her right side. She’s weak but okay on the left. It looks like she’s going to have to change her dominant hand for a while.”

  “Can she feed herself? That’s always a big deal.”

  “Only with the left hand. The therapist is working with the right side.”

  “How about walking? I can’t imagine not seeing her going down the sidewalk with that stick in her hand. Something about it always makes me feel hopeful. If Josie is praying, then God is listening.”

  “She was able to make it to the bathroom and back using a walker. We’ve got high hopes for her continued progress.”

  “Time doesn’t wait for anyone,” Mrs. Bohannan replied, shaking her head. “And in our business we see it from the beginning to the end.”

  Adisa could see flower arrangements for newborn babies and the sprays going to the cemetery. She took out her debit card and paid for the flowers.

  “Thanks so much,” Adisa said. “This will mean a lot to Aunt Josie.”

  It was a short drive to the cemetery where a large but unknown number of ancestors on her mother’s side of the family lay buried beneath the red clay. Most graves from the past one hundred years were marked. Aunt Josie owned a plot directly beside her sister with a tombstone in place. The marble marker listed her name, “Josephine Marigold Adams,” along with her date of birth. The only thing to be added would be the date of death.

  Years earlier there had been a church beside the graveyard, but it burned down in the 1920s, and instead of rebuilding, the congregation merged with another fellowship in town. Thus the cemetery lay in perpetual solitude. An ancient iron sign identified it as “Western Cemetery.” Adisa didn’t know the specific origin of the name, but the most likely explanation was that the two acres of land lay west of the center of Campbellton. Adisa parked near an ancient sycamore tree with a thick, gnarly trunk. In front of the tree was an old marble bench with the words “They rested from their labors and received their reward” inscribed on the front.

  Adisa was alone, but other people had recently been there. Arrangements of fresh flowers lay in front of several tombstones. By Sunday evening the graveyard would be filled with color. Adisa took out the bundles of flowers. Her shoes barely made any indentation in the coarse grass that was dense, not soft. Going to the newer section, she carefully walked between the graves to the place where Aunt Josie’s paternal grandfather, Alonzo Adams, was buried. Like Aunt Josie, he’d walked the roads of Nash County praying and quoting Scripture. Aunt Josie often joked that Alonzo walked everywhere because he didn’t own a horse, but in more serious moments, she made it clear to Adisa and Shanika that Alonzo was a godly man who loved the Lord and other people, thus fulfilling the two greatest commandments. Adisa placed the flowers on the headstone and stepped back for a moment of silence. She divided four other sprays among the graves of other relatives, many of whom had lived their entire lives within ten miles of where they now rested.

  With one group of flowers still in her arms, Adisa stepped into a section that looked unoccupied but was probably the most crowded piece of ground—the resting place for the bones of an unknown number of black residents of Nash County who died in the years 1820 through 1865. Many of the bodies beneath the soil were of those who had been snatched from their home villages in west Africa, sold by their black captors to English or American ship captains, and brought to slave markets in Savannah or Charleston for eventual sale to labor-starved landowners. Others were the descendants of the first generation in captivity, men and women born in a new world who died before the end of the Civil War and the great Emancipation Proclamation. Sadly, many of those freed by Abraham Lincoln’s edict soon fell back into a form of serfdom caused by the oppressive sharecropper system.

  Adisa’s ancestors belonged to every group. She didn’t know the real names of her earliest relatives, but they’d been assigned surnames such as Adams, Johnson, and Stanley by those who owned them, and first names such as Peter, Tom, Sally, and Bessy. Adisa’s name had African roots. Her parents failed to research it closely and didn’t know it was more commonly given to boys than girls. Adisa didn’t care. It was her name, and she owned it proudly.

  No gravestones marked any of her antebellum ancestors. Granite and marble tombstones cost money. The simple wooden crosses planted in the ground at the time of a slave’s death had long ago returned to the soil. Only a few simple unadorned rocks that peeked up from the soil at random spots confirmed the presence of the remains of a person who’d lived and died toiling under the Georgia sun.

  Aunt Josie and one of her brothers had dipped their toes into some genealogical research of the family, but the information uncovered was sparse, and Adisa didn’t know many details. The first members of their clan were scattered across Nash County on different farms. There weren’t any massive plantations like those in Mississippi or Texas. Few records existed, and those that did contained haphazard references to birth, death, marriage, and that tragic word, “sale.”

  Because no one now knew where their earliest relatives were buried, people had adopted the ritual of strewing flowers randomly in hope that a petal or blossom might fall on the place where a loved one lay. Adisa walked with measured steps across the grass while dropping single stalks. The air was still and the birds were more interested in capturing dinner than singing. Adisa reached the edge
of the cemetery. With only a few flowers left in her hand, she turned and crossed the oldest section of all.

  Adisa dropped her last strand of flowers. When she did, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck suddenly rose up, and she shuddered. It wasn’t a creepy feeling, just a sensation that arrested her attention. Stooping, she stared at the ground. A heavy stalk laden with many blossoms had landed on top of a partially exposed rock, a smooth gray stone about six inches long and four inches across. Adisa bent over and touched the stone that was buried so deep in the ground it wasn’t a threat to stub a bare toe. The unadorned rock was surprisingly cool to the touch after the warm afternoon. Close connection to the earth kept its temperature more constant than the air above.

  “I wonder who’s buried here?” Adisa asked softly under her breath.

  She stood up but stayed in the same spot. Glancing to her left, she could see the flowers she’d dropped to the ground. Adisa inspected the entire graveyard in a way she’d never done before. She was connected to this place and those buried here. Maybe that’s what Aunt Josie and others felt when they came here. If so, it was easier to understand why it might be important to them. As she stood in solitary silence, Adisa felt a strength and confidence. It was an unexpected moment of encouragement she needed after the phone call with Catherine Summey and the worry connected to Aunt Josie’s illness.

  Returning to her car, Adisa lowered the window and sat quietly. She didn’t want to leave. Her life was so frantically busy that any quiet time she experienced was usually the result of mental and physical exhaustion. This was different. She was at rest, yet fully alive.

  Adisa’s thoughts then strayed to the young black man gunned down less than ten minutes from the cemetery. Racism in Adisa’s lifetime was less than the hatred and cruelty of the past, but that didn’t mean the slate was clean. Surrounded by departed generations who knew brutal oppression, she offered up a silent petition that things would be better before her time came to rest beneath the soil. It felt especially right that she, an Adams, should pray.

  ELEVEN

  LUKE WAS COOKING hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill in the backyard. Their property backed up against an undeveloped wooded area. Luke knew at some point it would likely sprout homes instead of pines and hardwoods.

  He was using lump charcoal without any of the additives found in standard charcoal. Luke disliked the artificial flavor imparted by a propane gas grill, and when natural charcoal first appeared on the market he immediately bought it. He ground his own hamburger meat, buying boneless beef ribs that he mixed in the grinder with uncooked bacon. The fat in the bacon held the meat together so it didn’t fall apart on the grill and added the unique richness only bacon can offer.

  This evening Luke was focusing on cooking as a diversion from revisiting his earlier meeting with Theo Grayson.

  “I think the odds are greater than fifty percent that the grand jury will indict you,” the lawyer had told him.

  “How is that possible?”

  “Here’s what the law says.”

  Grayson had then pulled a black statute book with gold-embossed binding from a bookcase and began to read:

  A person commits the offense of aggravated assault when he or she assaults:

  1.With intent to murder, to rape, or to rob;

  2.With a deadly weapon or with any object, device, or instrument which, when used offensively against a person, is likely to or actually does result in serious bodily injury.

  “I don’t see how I could be guilty of that,” Luke said. “I didn’t intend to murder Hamlin.”

  “I can see why you’d look at it that way. But this law has been on the books a long time, and the courts allow intent to be inferred by action. If someone shoots another person without justification, then the necessary intent can exist. It’s up to the jury to decide if that’s the case.”

  Luke was unconvinced. “What if Hamlin dies? Do you think I’ll be charged with murder?”

  “Are you sure you want to talk about that?”

  “Yes. Otherwise I’ll be asking myself questions I can’t answer.”

  Grayson reopened the black volume to a place he’d tabbed with a tiny yellow marker. “Either murder or manslaughter,” the lawyer replied.

  Luke had learned about the legal distinction between the two charges in one of his criminal justice classes, but that had been theoretical. Grayson began reading again:

  A person commits the offense of murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being. Express malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take the life of another human being which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof. Malice shall be implied where no considerable provocation appears and where all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.

  Luke remembered being confused about the ancient English term “malice aforethought,” words his professor discussed with way too much enthusiasm.

  “I didn’t drive down the street, get out of the car, and pull out my gun intending to kill anyone.”

  “Which is the express malice provision in the law. You’re clear there. It’s the second part that presents the problem. If a jury doesn’t find enough provocation for you to shoot to kill, it can conclude that you had an ‘abandoned and malignant heart.’”

  “That’s crazy. When Hamlin started running toward me, I was scared. And then I heard a gunshot.”

  “Which brings in the possibility of a voluntary manslaughter charge.” Grayson turned several pages and adjusted his glasses before continuing:

  A person commits the offense of voluntary manslaughter when he causes the death of another human being under circumstances which would otherwise be murder and if he acts solely as the result of a sudden, violent, and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a reasonable person; however, if there should have been an interval between the provocation and the killing sufficient for the voice of reason and humanity to be heard, of which the jury in all cases shall be the judge, the killing shall be attributed to deliberate revenge and be punished as murder.

  The convoluted verbiage of the statute lost Luke, but his palms felt sweaty and it suddenly became uncomfortably hot in the office. Grayson looked up and spoke. “If you had a reason to be upset, it would be considered manslaughter, not murder. It’s common in murder cases to charge a defendant with either murder or manslaughter. That way, the prosecutor has a better chance of getting at least some kind of conviction.”

  Anger against Deshaun Hamlin rose up in Luke. If the teenager had simply obeyed orders, stopped in the middle of the street, and put his hands over his head, he would be going to basketball practice, and Luke would be enjoying his job as a police officer.

  “I believed Hamlin was going to shoot me and fired my gun in self-defense.”

  Grayson closed the statute book and held it up. “In that case, you’re not guilty of aggravated assault, manslaughter, murder, or any other crime in the state of Georgia.”

  The sun slipped below the horizon and shadows covered the graveyard. Adisa’s thoughts lingered upon the hardships faced by those buried in the cemetery. Catastrophic upheaval could appear like a tornado and tear families apart and scar people physically and emotionally. How her ancestors faced extreme adversity was a mystery to Adisa, but she suspected that for many, faith played a major role. In a profound irony, the “peculiar institution” that enslaved them brought them to a new world where they heard the gospel and experienced spiritual freedom. Salvation of souls in the slave quarters didn’t excuse bondage, but it explained why the music the slaves produced often contained an overcoming message of hope.

  Adisa returned to the hospital where she found a note from Shanika on the bedside tray. Her sister had gone to Aunt Josie’s house for a few hours’ rest. Aunt Josie’s eyes were closed and her breathing regular. There was a knock on the door. Dr. Dewberry entered.


  “I’m glad you’re here,” the neurologist said. “I just finished reviewing your aunt’s chart, including the assessments from the therapists who’ve been working with her for the past few days. Do you want to talk here or in a conference room down the hall?”

  The way the doctor asked the question made Adisa think it would be better to meet privately. She glanced at Aunt Josie, who hadn’t stirred at the sound of the conversation.

  “Privately,” she said.

  Adisa followed the doctor into a windowless space barely big enough for four chairs and a small table.

  “Based on the MRI scan and the location and scope of the hemorrhage, your aunt is doing remarkably well,” the doctor said. “Other than a few problems with her short-term memory and getting tired easily, she seems close to normal from a mental standpoint.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “True, but you’ll notice swings in cognition for quite some time before she settles into a baseline of functioning. At that point, the hope is that she can avoid another episode. The more challenging issues relate to her physical capabilities. She has limited use of her right arm; however, she has sufficient mobility in her left arm to feed herself and perform basic activities of daily living. Her left leg is in good shape, so we want to keep it active in therapy while we work with her right leg. I can justify keeping her in the hospital for at least a few more days. After that, she will need placement in a skilled nursing facility or with comprehensive care in her home environment.”

  “My sister and I are already talking about the options. Aunt Josie has lived in Campbellton her whole life. All her friends live here, and she has a lot of connections through her church. Tons of folks will visit and help out if she’s at home.”

  “Informal arrangements are fine for a few days, but I think it’s likely she will need regular assistance for weeks or months. Does your aunt have the resources to hire a home health-care worker?”