Blackman's Coffin
Page 26
“We can’t make the past right,” I said. “But we can do something about the future.” I glanced at Nakayla and she nodded her approval. “I’ll be using my money to invest in gems and precious metals. Over time, I’ll be able to launder the gold and emeralds for you.”
Harry laughed. “Over time? Like my father’s watch says, time is a gift from God. I think I’ve stretched his generosity as far as I can expect.”
“That’s why we’d like to set up a foundation,” Nakayla said. “Something that will outlive you. Sam and I were thinking a fund for amputees, veterans who need extra help with job training or rehabilitation. My sister would have liked that.”
“A foundation for amputees?” Harry leaned forward and the tears seemed to evaporate from his eyes.
“Yes. Sam and I will both contribute.”
Harry searched our faces. “Do you think we could include children? I’d want to help children.”
And in his bright eyes I saw the spirit of the twelve-year-old boy in the journal, shining clearer than any of Thomas Wolfe’s marvelous words could describe.
***
Nakayla turned the car left coming out of Golden Oaks.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“One more stop.”
We took the Hendersonville exit off I-26 South onto Highway 64 and followed the franchise-laden boulevard into town. Nakayla drove across Main Street and made a few turns until 64 headed toward Brevard. Suddenly, she pulled onto the wide shoulder and stopped. We were beside a cemetery.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Oakmont Cemetery. Come on. This won’t take long.”
“Seems like I can’t get away from graveyards.”
We crossed the two-lane blacktop and walked through the gravestones.
“That’s it up ahead,” she said.
A monument was cordoned off by a wrought-iron fence, not unlike the one around the Robertson plot in Georgia, but twice as high. Climbing over this barrier would be tough.
The grave dated from 1905 and marked the final resting place of the Johnson family. An angel topped the pedestal for Margaret Johnson, wife of Reverend H.F. Johnson. The elegant marble figure stood ghostly pale against the crystal blue sky.
“This is it?” I asked. “The angel Thomas Wolfe’s father had at his shop?”
“That’s the common wisdom. It made quite an impression on a five-year-old child.”
A five-year-old child whose love of stories would one day lead him to create a journal, a story he would never finish, but whose truth would bring healing through its completion. I knew that I was part of that healing, and that I was whole, if not in body, then in soul. I understood nothing else mattered.
“If the angel’s looking homeward, then why not to the sky?”
Nakayla took my hand and centered me directly in front of the angel. The sightless eyes gazed down on me and the smooth marble lips held the trace of a smile. The right hand was lifted to the heavens, not pointing the way, but blessing those beneath.
“Home is where the heart is,” Nakayla said. “She came from the stone of the earth. She is looking homeward.”
Just like me. I pulled Nakayla close.
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