Seeing Red

by Kathryn Erskine

  I dumped out the contents of the Rambler envelope – a bunch of invoices, receipts, and Daddy’s drawings about how to fix things. Seeing his drawings made me realize how much I missed them. Mama said it wasn’t doodling, it was the way Daddy thought things out. I could remember watching his series of drawings as he was figuring out what kind of car to buy after the Plymouth ended up in that ditch and was too rusted out to bother repairing. He started with Corvettes, which I was real pleased about, moved on to Camaros, and finally ended up with the Chevy Biscayne. I’d wrinkled up my nose. “A station wagon?”

  “It’s the most practical, with two growing boys.”

  “How about the Corvette?”

  “That’s only a two-seater.”

  “That’s all we need. Mama says those kind of cars scare her, and J’s a mama’s boy, so he can stay home with her. Me and you can go out riding.”

  He’d laughed and roughed up my hair and called me his partner. But we still got the station wagon.

  I picked up one of Daddy’s drawings of the Rambler’s brake system and smiled, even though my throat was blocked and sore. I was about to put everything back in the envelope and throw it out when I noticed one really old brownish piece of paper that was folded into thirds. When I opened it up it crackled, and one of Daddy’s drawings fell out. I stared at it because what I saw first was a stick-figure person. It was weird to see a sketch of something that wasn’t mechanical. Plus, the stick man was lying sideways next to a church, his head almost touching it. I could tell it was a church because it was a big square with a cross on top. In random places around the page, Daddy had written the number 3.

  “Why?” I asked Daddy, but I didn’t get an answer.

  I couldn’t figure out what it meant, but then I realized that the old paper it had fallen out of might be a clue. When I opened the crackly old paper up all the way I discovered it was a map! It was a pretty bad map, real roughly drawn, like whoever did it was in a hurry. It had the squiggle of the creek, but it didn’t really follow the flow. It had PORTER written on the left side of the squiggly line and DUNLOP on the right. That’s the only reason I knew it was the creek because that’s what divided our property. There was a triangle of land on the top right, the Dunlop side, that stretched from the creek to the top of the paper. It was shaded in with a few diagonal lines and underneath the triangle it said NO CONSIDERATION.

  At the top left, the old-fashioned flowery handwriting said, DECEDENT, G. FREEMAN, and underneath that, something that looked like FIERI FACIAS. Fiery faces, maybe? Either the person that wrote it didn’t know how to spell or it was some foreign language. What did it mean? “I wish you could explain it to me, Daddy.”

  Then I looked at the bottom left-hand corner. It was hard to read because there were brown splotches and tiny, pale scratchings, but I recognized the initials F.S.P. They were the same as mine! Frederick Stewart Porter. It had to be Old Man Porter!

  I looked down again and saw D.R.D. and figured it had to be a Dunlop. I squinted at the numbers that were partly covered by the brown splotches… 4 JULY 1867. Independence Day. More than a hundred years ago. And then I realized something… This had to be that old brown piece of paper Mr Dunlop gave Daddy when they had that fight at Easter! The one that made Daddy so mad.

  But I still didn’t know what it meant. I wished Thomas were around to work on this puzzle with me. I picked up Daddy’s drawing. Maybe it was the Freedom Church because that was George Freeman’s church, and George Freeman’s name was on the map. I tried to remember all the details of the Freedom Church. I knew Old Man Porter loaned the congregation the money to build. Miss Georgia’s grandaddy was the minister – that must’ve been the G. Freeman at the top of the map – and he died in the church fire. I guess that’s why Daddy had him lying down dead next to the church. But why would Daddy need to draw a picture? What did he need to figure out? Except for the 3s, the story was pretty clear. Church burns. Minister dies in fire.

  Another thing that was curious was the triangle of land marked on the Dunlop side of the creek. And the words no consideration. Did that mean the church had been on that triangle of land? Was Old Man Porter trying to hold old Mr Dunlop responsible for what he did – like burning down the church? Was he trying to take the land away from the Dunlops and give it back to the Freedom Church people? He made the old Mr Dunlop agree to something because he made him initial the map, and it was dated, too. You only do that with important stuff.

  I wasn’t sure what decedent meant, but Daddy had a dictionary lying down on one of the shelves in the desk because he never could spell too well. I looked the word up and it meant a dead person. So, the paper was from after George Freeman had died and the church had burned. I wondered if the 3s on Daddy’s drawing meant three acres or some other kind of survey measurement where that triangle of land was. At any rate, it made me mad to think that the Dunlops had gotten away with something for more than a hundred years.

  I thought about our sign: PORTER’S: WE FIX IT RIGHT. And I thought about something else. Daddy’s words. Maybe you should, son. This was what he was talking about! He’d given me that long look and realized that I was almost a man and could help him, should help him.

  “Don’t worry, Daddy,” I said, “you can count on me.”

  The shop door opened, and I quickly stuffed the map and Daddy’s drawing in my back pocket. I breathed easier when I saw it was Beau, not J or Mama. Still, even with Beau, I wasn’t ready to share this just yet.

  “I know your mama wants you to pack everything up in here and you must be working real hard…” He looked around as he said it, wrinkles lining his forehead as he noticed, I guess, that I hadn’t packed up anything. He tugged his hair with one hand and held out a bottle of Coke in the other, as his voice trailed off, “so I bought you a Coke.”

  “Thanks, Beau.” I walked down the steps from the office two at a time, took the Coke, and had a few gulps. “I’ve been working on clearing out the desk.”

  “Ooh,” he said, smiling, as he let go of his hair.

  “Hey, Beau? Do you have any idea where the Freedom Church was that burned down a hundred years ago?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Nobody knows. Not even Miss Georgia, and she’s the oldest person around.”

  I guess I hadn’t really expected to find out that easily.

  I was tipping my head back, taking another big swig, when Beau said, “But I know your daddy was looking for it.”

  My throat closed up and the Coke came out my nose. Coughing and sputtering, I managed to choke out, “He was?”

  Beau was patting me on the back, only being as big and strong as he was, I was practically falling over. “I’m okay, Beau.” I wiped the Coke off my nose with my sleeve. “When – when was Daddy looking for the church?”

  “Just recently, like a couple months before he passed.”

  So the map was definitely what Mr Dunlop handed to Daddy. “Do you know why he was looking for it?”

  “Nope. He just said it was important to him, that he had to make things right.”

  I touched the envelope in my back pocket. I knew this was a special message from Daddy! “Where was he looking?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  “Well, how did he even know what to look for?”

  Beau brightened. “The Freedom Church altar! It was a big flat rock.” He spread his arms wide as he said it. “They built the church around it.” His arms arched up to join above his head. “Your daddy, he figured that he should be looking for a big flat rock.” He drew his arms out to the side again.

  I felt my shoulders slump. “Beau. There are a ton of big flat rocks around here.”

  Beau tugged his hair. “Oh, yeah, I guess you’re right about that. Maybe that’s why your daddy never found it.”

  I sighed and leaned against the workbench, putting my Coke down. Plus, after a hundred years, even a big rock could be completely covered in these woods, what with ivy, Virginia creeper, moss, downed trees.<
br />
  “You thinking of looking for it, Red?”

  “Yeah, and I’m going to find it, too.”

  Beau grinned. “That’d make your daddy real happy.”

  I had to get as much information as possible about the Freedom Church, and Miss Georgia was the only one who’d know. I couldn’t risk getting into any more trouble with Mama, though, so I ran to the house first.

  I stuck my head in the screen door. “Mama, I almost forgot. I’ve got to go interview Miss Georgia for our class project. It’s real important.”

  She kept spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread. “What have you accomplished in the shop?”

  “I finished cleaning out the desk.”

  Her knife stopped, but she still stared down at the bread. “Did you find anything interesting?”

  “No,” I said quickly.

  She turned her head to look at me. “If you find anything unusual in there you let me know.”

  “Why?” I said. “What do you think is in there?”

  “Nothing,” she said as quickly as I had. “But we can’t throw away any important papers about…the house or the land or insurance or anything like that.”

  “I wouldn’t.” That was the truth, at least.

  She let me go, eyeing me like she didn’t believe I was telling her everything. But there was no way I was going to share the map and Daddy’s drawing. It was like a special message from Daddy. Almost like he wanted me to find it because who else would look in the old Rambler envelope? Plus, I felt like if I solved the mystery, maybe it could help us stay right here. And even if it didn’t help, there was no way I was leaving Stony Gap until I made sure Mr Dunlop gave back the land he owed Miss Georgia. I was going to fix it right. I knew Daddy wanted that.

  I ran all the way to Miss Georgia’s with the map safely in the back pocket of my jeans. I didn’t want to tell her about it, either. Maybe it was selfish. It was like a little piece of Daddy that I didn’t want to share with anyone else. But I told myself it was because I didn’t want to get Miss Georgia’s hopes up. What if I never found the church? I couldn’t stand to disappoint her.

  Miss Georgia was on her porch, so I collapsed on the steps. “Can you tell me everything you know about the Freedom Church?”

  “Good evenin’, Red. How are you today? Other than forgettin’ your manners?”

  “Sorry. I’m fine, ma’am, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “So can you tell me about the church now?”

  “Why are you all fired up to know?”

  I had a good answer for her. I told her all about Miss Miller’s Foxfire project. “And I’m going to write down the whole story of the Freedom Church. Every bit of it.”

  She wasn’t smiling any more. “Why you want to write about that?”

  “Well, it was my great-great-grandaddy – Old Man Porter – who sold your grandaddy the land, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Then Old Man Porter gave the congregation a loan for the supplies to build the church.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I know the church burned down and your grandaddy died in the fire, but I don’t know how the fire started. Some people say lightning, but I’ve heard others say that Mr Dunlop’s great-grandaddy had something to do with it.”

  “I suspect he did.”

  “What else do you know? Like, do you know about where the church was?”

  She stared out to the right, into the distance, the direction that the Freedom Church once stood, if that triangle on the map was right.

  I could feel my heart start pounding louder because I had a feeling she knew something. She knew something more than I did. And if she told me I might be able to solve the mystery.

  “I don’t know exactly where the church was, but –” she cleared her throat – “I know for sure my grandaddy didn’t die in no fire.”

  I sat bolt upright. “What?”

  She shook her head. “The fire had been put out that afternoon. In the evenin’ he went back after the metal collection box that was in the church, hopin’ to retrieve the money he owed your great-great-grandaddy.”

  “Did he find it?”

  “He didn’t get as far as the church. He was shot within three steps of it.”

  “Three steps,” I breathed. The 3s on Daddy’s drawing! And the stick figure – George Freeman – lying on the ground almost touching the church. It all made sense. “Who shot him?”

  She shrugged. “Can’t say for sure. We think a Dunlop was involved.”

  Of course, who else would it be? “How’d you find all this out, Miss Georgia?”

  She blinked a few times and swallowed. “Because my daddy was there.”

  I guess she saw my eyes grow big and my mouth drop open.

  “Uh-huh. He was a boy about your age at the time. My grandmother, his mama, was worried about George Freeman goin’ back anywhere near that church because she knew it’d been burned down by a posse. So my daddy, he went after him, to try get him to come back home, forget about the money – which was probably either stolen or burned up. He’d almost caught up with his daddy…so he saw what happened with his own eyes.”

  I swallowed hard. It was bad enough losing your daddy. I knew that. I couldn’t even imagine seeing him shot dead right in front of you.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ima Butt

  Hearing about Mr Dunlop’s great-grandaddy shooting George Freeman made me even more bound and determined to find Freedom Church. And it made me think about Thomas and how things hadn’t changed much in a hundred years. You could do terrible things to certain people and nobody got too bothered about it, as long as those certain people were black.

  I spent all day Saturday scouring the woods on the Dunlop property, staying low so Mr Dunlop wouldn’t see me. I tried to find a big flat rock that might’ve been an altar in the Freedom Church. The best one I could find was in the middle of the creek. I knew creeks could change their course a little bit over time, and it had been a hundred years, but it couldn’t have changed that much. It’s not like they would’ve built a church right on the banks of the creek.

  As if my day weren’t bad enough, I got home to find Mr Harrison’s Chrysler parked by our house. Shoot!

  I ran across the gravel but stopped at the kitchen door, which wasn’t all the way closed. I listened through the screen and heard Mama and Mr Harrison talking in the dining room, but it was hard to hear them because J had the TV on loud watching this new programme, Kung Fu. After we watched the pilot back in February, he’d wanted to shave his head like that Kung Fu guy, Caine, but Daddy said J had to watch a bunch of episodes first to see if he still really wanted to.

  I tried to concentrate as hard as Caine in Kung Fu and pick out just the voices of Mama and Mr Harrison from the background noise. It was hard, but I heard Mr Harrison say, “Believe me, that’s what your husband would tell you.”

  “My hus-band,” Mama said, pronouncing every syllable like she does when she’s mad, “wanted to do the right thing.”

  “Betty, I think you’ve been under a lot of strain lately, so you’re a little misguided. No man would want to sell his family short.”

  “It’s not selling us short,” Mama hissed. “All I’m saying is that we should—”

  I pulled the screen door open so I could stick my head inside and hear what Mama was about to say and, shoot, that thing made such a loud creak I froze on the step.

  “Red?” Mama called out. “Is that you?” She looked out from the dining room, and I quickly acted like I was just walking in.

  “Yeah, hi, Mama. Is Mr Harrison here?”

  “Yes,” she said, her lips tight. “He was just leaving.” She looked over to where Mr Harrison must’ve been. “We’ll talk more about this later, Gene.”

  Mr Harrison walked into the kitchen, jerked his head to the dining room, where Mama still stood, and rolled his eyes, smirking at me. I stared him down. It was one thing for me to rol
l my eyes at Mama, but it was a whole different thing for a snake like him to do that to her.

  Mama held her hand to her forehead, squeezing her temples. “I have a terrible headache. I’m going to bed. There’s fish in the fridge that Mrs Scott brought by. Good night, Red.”

  There was so much I wanted to ask her about what she was saying to Mr Harrison. What did she mean about Daddy wanting to do the right thing? And why did Mr Harrison think that was selling us short? But it’d been so long since me and Mama had done any real talking that all I said was, “Good night.”

  She went in the living room, and I heard her kiss J good night. “As soon as that show is over, off to bed, okay? We have church in the morning.”

  “Do we have to?” he whined. “How come you don’t make Red go to church? I want to stay home and play, too.”

  “Good night, J,” Mama said.

  “But how come—”

  “Look, the ads are over and your show’s back on,” was all she said.

  I wondered if she knew how I felt. I couldn’t look at that pew. It reminded me too much of Daddy and how I’d disappointed him.

  It was when I was eight and still stupid. Bobby Benson, being the preacher’s son, couldn’t afford to get in trouble himself but loved getting other kids to do his dirty work. He dared me to scratch IMA BUTT into the back of the pew we usually sat behind and see how long it took people to notice. I don’t know why I did it except that he said, “Ain’t you man enough?” So, during the church picnic, I snuck in with my penknife and did it.

  It didn’t take long at all for someone to notice. Reverend Benson starting calling families that very afternoon. Daddy kept bringing it up all week. It was like he knew I’d done it. He asked me what he thought that kid was thinking, and if I were the parent of the kid who’d done it, what would I do, until we talked about it so much that the kid became me without our even saying so.

  “Why’d you do it, son?”

  “Bobby wanted to see if I was man enough.”

  He looked down at me. “Do you feel like a man now?”