We Are All Good People Here

by Susan Rebecca White

  • • •

  Eve was already in a booth sipping a Coke when Daniella arrived at the Waffle House in Avondale half an hour later. Daniella sat across from her. The place was nearly empty.

  “God, I haven’t had one of these in years,” Eve said, sipping her soda through a straw.

  “Too decadent for the comrades?”

  Eve gave a weak smile. “Pretty much.”

  “Look, before we start, I think I should offer to represent you as my client. That way whatever we discuss is protected by attorney-client privilege.”

  “Do you need money for our attorney-client privilege to go into effect?”

  “Do you have money for a retainer?”

  “I’ve got about three hundred dollars on me.”

  “Okay, we’ll set the retainer at one hundred dollars, you can sign this form, and we should be good.”

  As Daniella was getting the form out of her briefcase, Eve looked at her shyly. “Wow. You’re, like, the real thing.”

  “That’s what happens when you go to law school,” Daniella answered. “So I’m presuming you know about the explosion that took place last night on Linwood Avenue?”

  Eve’s eyes filled with tears. “Warren and I had a fight last night, a big one, and I slept over at a friend’s. When I tried to return to the house this morning, around eight thirty, the street was shut down. There were fire trucks and police cars all over and someone said a bomb had gone off.”

  “So, what did you do? Ask around? Find a newspaper?”

  Eve shook her head. “I guess I should have, but I didn’t. I just—I was in shock. I mean, Warren must have been behind it, and if he was there when it went off . . .”

  Eve looked at Daniella plaintively and said in a choking voice, “Don’t tell me yet. I don’t want to know just yet.”

  “Okay. We can take it slow. Let you digest things bit by bit. You say you went by the house around eight thirty this morning. But I didn’t get your call until around nine forty-five. What were you doing between the time you went by the house and when you called me?”

  “I was at a church. Hiding out. I hadn’t stepped foot in a church in I don’t know how many years, but I went up to Druid Hills Presbyterian, just a couple of blocks from where we lived. The sanctuary door was unlocked. I couldn’t believe it. I went in and sat at a pew and thought of the words to every hymn I could remember. Somehow doing that made it so that I could breathe. I sat there for a long time, letting the hymn verses run through my head, and then clear as day I heard this voice say, ‘Call Daniella.’ And so I left the sanctuary and found a pay phone. I looked up your firm in the white pages. Kept calling until someone finally answered.”

  If Eve was telling the truth, then that meant she didn’t know anything about J.T. “Do you know a man named J. T. Higgins?” asked Daniella.

  “Yeah, he lived in the basement of our house. Not our house really, we just rented it.” She caught her breath, raised a hand to her mouth in surprise. “Oh God. . . .”

  “His body was found among the rubble.”

  “That can’t be! It has to be a mistake! He worked the graveyard shift. Always.”

  “He called in to work sick. He had pneumonia.”

  “Oh my God. I saw him. I saw him yesterday and he looked terrible.”

  Daniella motioned to Eve to keep her voice down.

  “I asked him if he was okay. Oh my God, poor J.T.”

  “They think there was probably another person killed in the explosion. They found a pair of dog tags engraved with the name of Ho Chi Minh.”

  “Warren,” Eve confirmed. “I knew it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Daniella, watching as tears ran down Eve’s face, as she wrapped her arms around herself, as she opened and closed her mouth, like a fish pulled from water.

  Neither spoke for a few minutes, as Eve wept and Daniella watched, periodically handing her napkins from the dispenser on the table so she could blow her nose, wipe her face. When she finally seemed to be under control, Daniella asked her to describe, in detail, her whereabouts from the night before. She was not at all convinced that Eve was telling her the whole truth.

  “I was with Warren, at the Linwood house. And then sometime around seven, I drove to the bookstore, where I saw you. Afterward I went to my friend Jane’s—she lives near Piedmont Park. Jane used to be in Smash, but she dropped out a little over a year ago, turned herself in and everything. I went to her house because I wanted to leave Smash, too. I wanted to know how she did it.”

  “What exactly is Smash?” asked Daniella.

  Eve sighed. “It’s a collective—a tribe. We thought—oh God, Daniella, it sounds so dumb saying it out loud. We thought we could bring down the United States government by bringing the war home, by being the vanguard who would force people to pay attention to the atrocities being committed in our name in Vietnam. We thought we would start the revolution and then working-class and black kids would join with us. . . .”

  She paused, rubbed her temples with her fingers, looked pleadingly at Daniella. “I promise, at one point it all made sense. Everything was just going to hell in this country and we thought the revolution was at hand. I don’t even know who was in Smash other than a handful of guys who circled in and out of our apartment in New York, plus Warren, Abby, me, Jane, and a guy named Mack. Like I said, Jane surfaced. Mack took off for Canada, I think, and Abby went underground. For all I know, that was the entirety of the collective, though Warren always said there were Smash tribes in every city.”

  Just then the waitress arrived at the table, dressed in uniform, holding a pen and an ordering pad. “Welcome to Waffle House,” she said. If she noticed that Eve had been weeping, she gave no indication of it. “What can I get you?”

  Daniella hadn’t even looked at the menu. She scanned it briefly while Eve ordered hash browns.

  “Covered and smothered?” asked the waitress.

  “Just plain,” said Eve.

  “Grilled cheese and a Coke,” said Daniella, adding, “Thank you.”

  After the waitress walked away Daniella leaned forward in her seat. “Look, I’m going to ask you some tough questions, and I need you to be completely transparent with me so we can figure out the best plan for going forward.”

  Eve nodded, lip trembling.

  “Did you or any other members of your collective plant bombs other than the one that presumably went off last night at the Linwood Avenue house?”

  Eve shook her head. “Not that I know of. Warren did keep dynamite, and a book on building bombs, but the book was more a historical artifact than anything, written about seventy years ago. Warren really loved the old-school anarchists, J. H. Most and Emma Goldman and such, and that book was his homage to them. I do remember Jane and him poring over Popular Mechanics magazines, back when we were all living together in a house in Little Five Points. That was around the time of the Weathermen townhouse explosion; I think they were just trying to figure out what might have gone wrong with their bomb. And I remember Warren and Abby once getting into a discussion about how you could use a drugstore alarm clock with the minute hand removed to set off a blasting cap. But that was all I ever heard or witnessed—just talk. I never saw Warren, or anyone else for that matter, making a bomb or in possession of one.”

  “Eve, from what you’re describing it sounds like he most definitely knew how to build a bomb. Come on. Be honest with me. Be honest with yourself. You said the two of you had a fight before you went to the bookstore. Are you absolutely sure it wasn’t over the bomb he was planning to detonate?”

  Eve shook her head. “I promise, the only thing Warren was planning was to go underground. We were already pretty much off the grid, but he wanted to truly disappear, like with a new birth certificate and everything.”

  “So what was your fight about?”

  “I told him I was done with Smash. I told him I wanted to turn myself in, that I wasn’t going to have a baby and be looking over my shoulder all the
time, afraid of being exposed.”

  Oh. She was pregnant. Of course. That was the protrusion Daniella had felt when they had hugged.

  “How far along?” asked Daniella.

  “My period’s been irregular for a while now, so I don’t know for sure, but I think about two months?”

  “How did Warren react to the news of your pregnancy?”

  More tears fell from Eve’s eyes. “He wanted me to have an abortion. We know a guy.”

  “Are you considering it?”

  “I have no business having a baby. I know that. But I can’t have an abortion. I just can’t. Everything has been dead in me for so long, and now there’s this life taking root. I’m not going to kill it. I’m not going to be responsible for killing one more thing.”

  Jesus, who else had Eve killed? Daniella must have shown her alarm, because Eve grabbed her arm. “I don’t mean literally. I mean, killed one more part of myself.”

  “Look, you really can tell me anything,” said Daniella, steadying herself. “I’m acting as your attorney. And with all of the switchbacks about where we were meeting today, it’s pretty obvious you think you’re being followed.”

  “The brown shoes are everywhere,” said Eve. “The good thing is they’re so fucking obvious they’re pretty easy to spot.”

  “What are brown shoes?”

  “The brown shoes. You know: Hoover’s guys, the Feds.”

  Jesus. Was she wanted on federal charges?

  “Tell me what you could be arrested for,” said Daniella. “Tell me what they’ve got on you, so we can figure out how to go forward.”

  “I just want to go home,” said Eve, burying her head in her hands. “I’m just so tired and I want to go home.”

  “Look, if the FBI were to walk in right now and recognize you, would they arrest you for the murders of J. T. Higgins and Warren St. Clair, or would they charge you with, say, evading arrest during a protest?”

  “Daniella, I swear, I didn’t know anything about the bomb that went off last night. I knew that Warren had a supply of dynamite, and I knew that he liked to talk of just ‘blowing up the whole system,’ but I thought he was all talk. I really did. A month or so ago he even talked about driving down to Fort Benning, figuring out where Lieutenant Calley lived, and blowing the place up. But he had no plan. He just liked to talk a big game.”

  “Wait. He talked about bombing Fort Benning? Eve, you have to tell me these things! That could have been where he planned to detonate the bomb last night, and he accidentally set it off before he left the house.”

  “I’m telling you, he was all talk.”

  Their waitress returned carrying a grilled cheese and soda for Daniella and hash browns for Eve.

  As soon as she was out of earshot, Daniella said, through clenched teeth, “Warren clearly wasn’t all talk, and the dynamite clearly wasn’t just some prop, because at some point he must have used it to build a bomb—the bomb that went off in the Linwood house, killing not only him but J. T. Higgins. That was action, Eve. That was murderous action.”

  “I never thought he would go through with anything. I really didn’t. He was . . . I don’t know, kind of a pussy when it came to actual violence. The rest of the group gave him shit for that all the time. Abby used to call him the Cowardly Lion.”

  “So maybe he was building the bomb to prove that he wasn’t all talk.”

  “But there was no one left for him to prove himself to! I’m telling you, everyone had bolted. It was just the two of us. And I just keep thinking about how upset he was with me for choosing the baby over him, for leaving him, just like everyone else had. Maybe he just, I don’t know, felt so alone that he built the bomb with the intention of killing himself, not knowing poor J.T. was at home. . . .”

  She paused for a moment, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I’ll never see him again.”

  Daniella grabbed both of Eve’s hands in her own. “I know this is really hard,” she said. “And I wish we had more time for you to take all of this in. But I need to ask you something: Would you be willing to share everything you know about Warren with the authorities, including that he talked about bombing Fort Benning?”

  “I don’t know. It feels like I’m throwing Warren under the bus.”

  “Honey, Warren is dead. He’s already under the bus. There’s nothing you can do to hurt him.”

  “But is it wise to mention the Calley threat? Wouldn’t I be in more trouble if I told them I knew about his plans, even if I didn’t think he would go through with them? Like you said, Warren’s no longer here . . . so why reveal anything I don’t have to?”

  “Because they need to understand why he was building the bomb in the first place,” said Daniella. “Because they probably need to put some extra security on Calley, just in case Warren was working with someone else we don’t know about.”

  Daniella paused for a moment, hesitating, but then pushed through her apprehension. “Also, I’m wondering if it’s possible that the reason you decided to leave Smash was because Warren’s talk was turning from theatrical to deadly.”

  The two women stared at each other for a long, intimate moment.

  “Yes,” said Eve, nodding along. “I knew it was time to get out when Warren started talking about bombing Calley. I just needed to figure out how to do it. I was scared to tell him I was leaving, so I needed to find a smart way to extricate myself.”

  Oh God, what had she just done? Was it moral to plant a rationalization in a client’s head? Was it legal? Daniella took another bite of her sandwich, tasted the molten goo of the American cheese, the crisp of the fried bread. She washed it down with a sip of Coke as she watched Eve pick at her hash browns like a small child faced with soggy broccoli.

  Dammit. She was a lawyer; Eve was her client, and she was going to represent her to the best of her ability.

  “Here’s what I think our plan should be: I’m going to contact Bob Powers, one of the partners at my firm, who can help with the details of your surrender. He’s old-school, he’s well connected, and he knows protocol. He’ll be a good person to have in your corner, and I have a hunch he’ll be interested in your case.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a feeling. I’ve heard him lament that chivalry is dead, that sort of thing. I think he’ll feel chivalrous helping you. After we contact Bob, we’re going to contact the police, assuming Bob agrees that’s the best way to proceed. We’ll tell them that you are going to turn yourself in for any outstanding warrants. More important, you are going to tell them that you are willing to share any and all information that you have about Smash, including, of course, that it was you and Warren St. Clair living in the house on Linwood Avenue and that you knew he kept dynamite but did not believe he was building a bomb, until he ‘joked’ of trying to kill Calley at Fort Benning, at which point you still didn’t know if he was serious or not. But you decided it was time to surface, turn yourself in to the authorities. Hopefully your friend Jane will be willing to confirm that you spoke with her about turning yourself in before the bomb exploded.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this,” said Eve. “I’m just so tired. I just want to sleep.”

  “You’re going to pretend your life is a movie,” coached Daniella, “and take it scene by scene. Our meeting right now is one scene. The next will be consulting with Bob Powers. Then the next scene will be dealing with all legal matters. I’ll be with you the whole way. All you have to do is show up. Just show up, and life will push you forward.”

  Chapter 11

  LIFEBOAT

  Atlanta, 1972

  It had been seven years since Robert Benno Powers—Bob—made partner at Henritz & Powers at the age of thirty-four. No doubt the fact that his late father had been one of the firm’s founding partners helped when Bob finished law school and applied for the position of associate, but making partner was certainly not a fait accompli. He had been expected to work diligently and without complaint, which turned out t
o be a very good thing, as legal work and playing squash were the only two things he could manage with any competency during the immediate years following Marian’s death.

  In 1958, the summer after Bob received his law degree, also from Emory, more than four hundred guests packed the pews of St. Philip’s for his and Marian’s wedding, which was followed by a blowout reception at the Driving Club. Four years later, Marian had died in the plane crash at Orly Airport in Paris. She was one of 103 members of the Atlanta Arts Association on that plane, all of whom were taking part in a month-long European art tour.

  Though Bob could not take a month off work to accompany her, he had encouraged her to go. His work was so all-consuming that he couldn’t even take a week off to join her at the tail end. But just because he had a demanding job didn’t mean she should deny herself the experience of a lifetime, especially since they wanted to start a family soon. Why not take a grand tour before motherhood, enjoy one last fling before full adulthood kicked in? Besides, her best friend, Betty Miller, was going, and the two of them could keep each other company. As for Bob, he would miss Marian, of course, but he wouldn’t have time to feel lonely, as he was helping with a major bank merger and was going to be working around the clock.

  Well, and then there was Stella, with her bright red lipstick and curly yellow hair. She had a little girl’s voice and a high-pitched laugh, which Bob knew would irritate him if he ever spent any real time with her, her flighty demeanor so different from Marian’s soothing, steady countenance. Their entanglement was insignificant, beneath him—still, he had let himself stray. He figured that he and Stella could enjoy just a few more encounters and then he would end things before Marian returned, would end things for good and settle fully into his adult life. Three weeks into the trip, Marian telephoned from Paris. He was surprised she would make such an expensive call, but he understood once she shared the news that they were going to have a baby. “I suspected before I left,” she said. “But now I know for sure.”