by Tom Lowe
He looked up toward the house partially hidden behind sickly pines, the blockhouse painted olive green, a blue minivan on jacks, smoke curling from garbage burning in a rusted fifty-gallon drum near the dirt drive. A skinny black man in dungarees and a white, loose-fitting tank top split firewood with a double-blade ax, stopping to watch Jesse pull away from the dented mailbox at the foot of the man’s gravel driveway.
Jesse drove fifty yards farther without seeing another house. Just as he was about to look for a spot to turn around, he saw one last mailbox. Slate gray. And, from the distance, he could see something red, not much bigger than a large strawberry. Driving closer, the strawberry became defined, portraying a cardinal perched on a small a branch. Green ivy snaked up the wooden post supporting the box. Jesse grinned. “You’ve arrived at your destination.” He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and turned into the driveway.
The house was wood frame, brown veneer siding, small front porch, and rose bushes blooming below the windows. The yard had patches of Bermuda grass scattered between the areas of sandy ground. No cars in the driveway. Jesse could see someone sitting on the porch in a foldout metal chair. He parked and walked up to the porch, the sound of a barking dog coming from somewhere in the neighborhood. “Excuse me, ma’am…are you Mrs. Franklin?”
A black woman in her mid-eighties sat in the chair, a paper bag at her feet, a Folgers coffee can for a spittoon. She was snapping green beans and putting them in the bag, her fingers and knuckles twisted from arthritis. She wore a red scarf on her head, purple summer dress with white polka dots, face deeply wrinkled, eyes puffy from allergies—suspicious from familiarity. She reached into a plastic bucket, lifting out a handful of beans, cutting her eyes up at Jesse. “What you won’t?”
“Ma’am, your granddaughter, Sonia, sent me.”
“Why she do that?”
“My name’s Jesse Taylor. I grew up not far from here. I wound up in the Florida School for Boys for nothin’ really. Sonia told me about two of your sons that were there. I remember Eli.”
She stopped breaking the green beans, turning her head toward Jesse. She said nothing. He nodded. “Sonia was tellin’ me about how Elijah never returned home. Said the warden told you Elijah broke out and ran away…but you don’t believe that, right?”
“You knew my boy, Elijah?”
“Yes ma’am. He was quiet. I didn’t know him really well.”
“You know who kil’t him?”
“I have a good idea…the same bunch who killed Andy Cope.”
She angled her head studying him. “Why you here now…after all this time?”
“Because a fella I knew just killed himself. He was in that school about the same time your boys were there. The stuff we went through, the beatings—the…it’s something that never leaves you. It changes you for the rest of your life. A boy we knew, Andy Cope, was killed in there, too. Miss Franklin, the state’s gonna sell that place and some developer will build tennis courts, golf courses and houses all over there—over the boys buried somewhere on that land.”
She stopped snapping the beans, shifting her weight in the chair. “Ol’ death come in my house last year and took my husband. He was sufferin’ with the cancer. Death had no right to take my baby, Elijah, away from me. Time don’t heal a mama when her child be kil’t on account of a mean person. They tol’ us Elijah run off, but we know’d better. We had nobody to hep us, exceptin’ God. Is my prayer finally bein’ answered? Did God send you?”
Jesse grinned and shook his head. “No ma’am. I’d probably be the last guy on earth God would send to do anything.”
“Why?”
“Just the way I turned out, I suppose. Maybe I can do somethin’ good with the time I got left. I believe Eli, Andy Cope and no tellin’ how many others, are buried on the reform school property.”
“I want to bring my boy home. My husband’s in his grave behind Shiloh Baptist off Leaning Tree Road. You know where that’s at?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Rest of my family’s there, too. I pray I can find lil’ Elijah’s body and take him home to be with the family. ‘Spect I’ll be there ‘fore too long.”
“Maybe we can find Eli and Andy Cope. Sonia said your other son, Jeremiah, might know somethin’ about who killed Andy. Do you know who that could be?”
She snapped a green bean, her nostrils widening. “He tol’ me about it when he got outta there. It was after Jeremiah had night sweats so bad I couldn’t keep a dry T-shirt on my boy. He cried and I’d rock my son back to sleep. Them men’s hurt him…they hurt him real bad. He ain’t never been the same. Police never cared.”
“What’d he tell you about them killing Andy Cope?”
“He said, mama, they kil’t a white boy in there. Shot him down like a dog with rabies. He seen the man…the one who done it. But he wouldn’t tell me his name.”
“Where’s Jeremiah?”
“He brung me these here beans. He’s a picker. Sometimes I don’t see him for months on account of the harvest here and there.”
“If he’s here, Mrs. Franklin, whereabouts might that be?”
She lifted the open coffee can to her mouth, spitting a dark stream, the hint of snuff tobacco in the air. “He stays in a bus.”
“A bus?”
“An old school bus. It’s what he likes. Mr. Haines took a liken’ to Jeremiah. Sold him some land and an old bus forever parked on that land. It’s a pecan grove off Stevenson Road. The old bus is down by a creek on the back of the property. It don’t run. Best tell him his mama tol’ you to visit.”
Jesse nodded. “Much obliged.”
She looked up at him, sunlight popping through the limbs of a cottonwood tree, brushing her face in soft light. Jesse could see her eyes glisten. “After all these years, I don’t pull the covers over me at night without thinkin’ ‘bout my boy, Elijah. Hep me find lil’ Elijah, wherever they put him. I want to bring my boy home ‘fore the Lord takes me home. Can you hep an old woman?”
“I’m gonna try.”
FIFTEEN
It was a rare night, even for night skies around the Atlantic Ocean. No wind. No clouds. Stars hanging like holiday ornaments. The atmospheric conditions were optimum for those with telescopes and curiosity. The midnight hour was approaching, and Max was taking me for a walk around sea oats and sand dunes near the marina. I’d spent the last hour doing research on the former Florida School for Boys, and the late night walk was a welcome relief.
We headed back down L dock, Max scurrying, stopping, sniffing. We walked by dozens of boats, most dark and quiet. But this is a marina and for some, a license to host non-stop parties. We strolled by a houseboat with multi-colored Japanese lanterns hanging from all corners and most of the ropes. I heard people laughing, and then a woman’s high-pitched laugh, the smell of burning marijuana twisting from the open salon doors and windows, the revelers trying to sing Wild Horses along with the Rolling Stones.
We walked by the 42-foot Sea Ray, the boat that I’d seen the older man entertaining the twenty-something brunette, him drinking scotch, her sipping rum punches. The windows and salon doors were open. No sign of the woman. Through the open hatch, I heard the staccato clatter of heavy snoring, Max pausing and raising her ears, then trotting down the wide dock.
We walked by Nick’s boat, the sounds of Greek music and a woman’s laughter coming from St. Michael. Dave’s boat was fairly dark, bluish wavering light from his television flashing through two porthole windows.
We boarded Jupiter, all 38 feet snug in her slip, the rubber bumpers, groaning as the hull drifted close to the docks. “What do you say we go topside, Max? I don’t feel like buttoning Jupiter down and turning on the canned air. “
She snorted. I lifted her under one arm and climbed the steps to the fly bridge. Earlier, I’d unsnapped and rolled up all of the isinglass. I set her on the sofa, and I eased into the captain’s chair, a mild breeze from the ocean escorting the briny scent of salt in the air.
>
I looked over the marina, lights from boats reflecting off the dark water, a sailboat halyard tinkling against the tall mast, tie-down ropes groaning in a rising tide. I couldn’t remember a recent time the sky was as bright. The last time was deep in the Caribbean. Tonight was the kind of starry night that inspired artists like Vincent Van Gogh to interpret and paint the universe.
I thought about what Curtis Garwood had written describing the man he called the Preacher. I thought about the Southern Cross tattoo Curtis had mentioned. The Southern Cross of Justice. Max jumped up into my lap and curled into a dachshund ball. I scratched her behind the ears. I looked at the large compass in front of me, locking on the S for south. Then I followed the sightline due south.
And there it was.
A small cross in the night sky. Compact but an impressive constellation. Four bright stars, just above the southern horizon on a hot summer night in Florida. It looked like a cross slightly tilted to the left, a faint fifth star in the lower right side. I remembered something I’d read studying Dante’s Inferno years ago. In Purgatorio, Dante called the Southern Cross the Crux. He’d attributed four human virtues to each star: justice, temperance, prudence and fortitude.
I wondered about the faint fifth star. What did it represent, if anything? Was it a virtue or a darker component of the human psychological profile? Maybe it meant free will. Was it really there, a pure free will? Or was it more like the off and on dim light of the dim fifth star? A free will, something we believe is part of our psyche, yet find there are forces that bend that will to suit their agenda. Maybe it’s not free. Maybe it’s learned or borrowed. What kind of will, human desire, compels grown men to inflict crippling beatings on children? What kind of free will voluntarily strips human flesh from live Death Camp prisoners in Germany and fashions that skin into lampshades?
I looked at the ancient light from the cross falling to earth, traveling through space and time from a small constellation so far away. And I thought of an ink tattoo on an old man’s forearm, the ink probably faded, but the original influence still there, right below his skin, right behind his hard eyes.
The last time I remembered seeing the Southern Cross was when my wife Sherri and I took our final trip together. She wanted to sail before she became too ill to sail. We chartered a 40-foot Beneteau out of Grenada enjoying seven splendid days and nights at sea exploring the islands. It was a night not unlike tonight that we were sailing south on a fair wind from Carriacou to St. George.
The Southern Cross was our prime navigation tool, hanging over the bow-sprint at the edge of the horizon, a nightlight from the heavens. We followed the light of the cross, the wind to our backs, the deep purple night sky a backdrop to an interstellar show. I remembered Sherri laughing, the wind in her hair, a glass of chardonnay in one hand. She danced on deck and began singing. Her voice was still strong, and she sang with flirtatious and unfiltered passion. She smiled at me, singing the lines from a Crosby, Stills and Nash song called Southern Cross. ‘When you see the Southern Cross for the first time, you understand now why you came this way. ‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small…but it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a new day.’
She’d walked back to the helm, smiling, the moonlight seemed trapped in her brown hair. The boat slipped through the clear water, creating a slight green phosphorus trail in the warm sea. It was a night I’ll never forget. She took my hand from the helm and touched her face with the tips of my fingers. We kissed and then we made love under the stars, the light from the Southern Cross guiding us on our journey.
I rubbed Max’s head as she slept in my lap. I propped my feet up on the console, and watched the night sky. A meteor soared across the sky in a fiery rooster-tail streak, the marina bobbing in tethered slumber. I wanted to reach out and knock on heaven’s door. Instead, I stared due south at the smallest constellation with perhaps the most symbolism. The twinkling four stars were mesmerizing with bright light as if a heavenly cross was sowed at the foot of the visible universe. The dim fifth star was there, too, in the shadow of the Southern Cross.
I wondered how Vincent Van Gogh might paint that.
SIXTEEN
Jesse Taylor felt for his gun under the truck’s seat. He’d pulled off Stevenson Road after passing a rusted sign that read: Shelled Pecans ½ Mile Ahead. A barbed-wire fence ran along the boundary of the land, pecan trees growing as far as the eye could see. Jesse parked under an oak tree on the opposite side of the road. He pulled up his right pant leg and slid the .25 caliber pistol into the ankle holster.
He locked his truck and walked across the road, the steamy air pirouetting just above black asphalt baking in the sun, the drone of grasshoppers flying over the property. Jesse approached a locked cattle gate, a single sign in the center with hand-written words that spelled: No Trespassing. He looked around and then climbed the gate, jumping onto the sandy soil. He followed the dirt road, not much wider than a trail, the road twisting through the grove, pecan shells cracking under his boots.
After a quarter mile, Jesse spotted an old school bus parked under the pecan trees along a creek at the base of the property. Much of the yellow paint on the bus had faded. Vines grew up the sides. Brown rust spots were under the windows and along the back emergency door, below the words: Stop When Red Lights Flash. He stood behind a large pecan tree, lifting his pistol out of the holster and slipping it into his back pocket.
Jesse took a deep breath and walked up to the front of the bus, the door wide open, the whirr of a bee circling around the right front tire, the rubber faded and cracked but the tire was still inflated. He knocked on the open door. “Jeremiah, your mama told me where to find you. She was snappin’ beans you brought her, right there on her front porch. She reminds me of my grandma, the way she took a liken’ to snuff.”
Silence. The bee returned, flying near Jesse’s face. He swatted it, turning his head and sidestepping. “Damn bee!”
“Why you got a gun in your pocket if’n you talked to my mama?”
Jesse whirled around to face a tall black man. Jeremiah Franklin stood ten feet away. He wore bib overalls, a white T-shirt with holes in the center, his bare arms muscular, large hands, steady coal black eyes, a bit of gray in his hair. He held a three-prong pitchfork in one hand, staring at Jesse. “I’m hopin’ you don’t reach for that pistol in your pocket.”
Jesse raised his hands, shook his head and smiled. “No…hell no. I’m not reachin’ for my gun. A man never knows if he’ll walk up on a rattler in this country.”
“What you want wit’ me?”
“Jeremiah, do you remember me? I’m Jesse Taylor. First time I saw you it was below the Bellamy Bridge on the Chipola River. You and some old man were fishin’ and ya’ll were hookin’ blue gill like nobody’s business. I was fishin’ just down river from you and never got a bite. The old guy you were with sort of took pity on me and showed me the right way to thread a worm on a hook.”
“That was my grandfather.”
“He was good with a cane pole. It wasn’t long after that I was sent to the Florida School. My stepfather told the law I stole his car. I was barely fifteen. How is a few minute joyride and comin’ back home stealin’ a car? Anyway, you came into the school not long after your brother, Eli, was sent there. I think ya’ll were about a year apart in age. I guess kids like you and me were lucky. We walked outta there. Your bother and others like Andy Cope didn’t.”
Jeremiah said nothing. He held the pitchfork, his dark black skin glistening under the Florida sun. He stuck the pitchfork in the soil. “I remember you. Why you here now?”
“Because another one of us died, a fella named Curtis Garwood…you might recall him, too. Anyway, he killed himself, and in the suicide letter he wrote a lot of it had to do with his suffering through the years because of what happened to him at that school. Curtis said he heard them shoot Andy that night. It was pourin’ rain, but he heard it. Said the man’s voice sounded like the bastard we called th
e Preacher. What’d you see that night?”
He folded his large arms. “What makes you think I seen anything?”
“Because your mama told me what you told her when you got out. Look, man, I served in Nam, and nothin’, not a damn thing I saw and experienced, and I saw the worst, none of it affected me like what they did to me in that school. They had no right, Jeremiah. We were just kids. The shit they did to the white kids wasn’t nearly as bad as what they did to the black kids. I remember you told me you saw the hand of a little black boy in the hog trough. Did you see ‘em shoot Andy? Who pulled the trigger?”
“Ain’t nothin’ you can do. Them days are gone, buried, man. Nobody cared then and nobody sure as hell don’t care now. Look at all the hate in this country. Ain’t nothin’ changed.”
“I’ve changed, or maybe I’m changing. Took me all my life, but I finally figured if I’m not contributing to good then I’m part of the bad. After I read Curtis’s obituary, I read a letter he wrote to an investigator who’s working for Curtis’s sister. Curtis said he heard Preacher’s voice that night before they shot Andy. This thing could get some momentum and maybe a grand jury will do something. If nothin’ else, we might get court orders to hunt for bodies on that land before it’s a fuckin’ golf course. You want a smoke?”
“Don’t smoke.”
“Mind if I do?”
“Long as your lighter ain’t in your back pocket?”
Jesse grinned. “I don’t blame you.” He lifted a cigarette pack from his shirt pocket, shook one out, pulled the lighter out of his front jeans pocket and lit the cigarette, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. “Man, I wouldn’t blame you if you ran that pitchfork right through me. Like I say, the black kids got it worse than the rest of us.” He smiled. “But at least you can use your hands to pick an apple off a tree. Preacher got pissed ‘cause I tried to use my hands to cover my ass when he was beatin’ me, blood flying on the walls of the White House. So he had another man hold my wrists, putting my hands on a block to teach me a lesson.”