Seeing Red

by Kathryn Erskine

“No.” I still hadn’t quite decided if that was where I was going.

  “I know it’ll mean the world to her to have you tell her the truth.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “And also –” he put the plate down on the kitchen table with a clank – “it’ll mean the world to your daddy.”

  I felt the sigh come out of me more than heard it. I was worn out like I’d just been in a fight. And lost.

  I let the kitchen door slap behind me as I headed up to Miss Georgia’s.

  Orange sunlight was trying to peek through the morning mist as I stood in the wet grass for a while, staring at Miss Georgia’s front porch. Looking up, I could see the blue painted ceiling, Miss Georgia’s sky. Finally I crossed the path and walked up the steps, one at a time.

  I knocked on her door. Softly. Kind of hoping she wouldn’t hear. Then at least I could tell Beau I went. I tried. But she just didn’t answer.

  “Come on in, Red.”

  My eyes dropped down to my shoes, and I pushed the door open.

  “I knew you’d come back, Red. You’re not one to run away from things.”

  If I could’ve melted through the floor right then, I would have. I closed the door behind me with a click.

  She turned in her wheelchair and looked at me. Really looked at me.

  I stared at the fire. It was the only light in the room. It was quiet for a while before I got up the nerve to speak.

  “Miss Georgia? I got something to tell you. And it’s not good.”

  “You know you can always talk to me, Red.”

  I wasn’t sure she’d feel that way after she heard what I was going to say. “My daddy told you that Porters were somehow involved in what happened to your grandaddy, right?”

  “He did.”

  I swallowed. “Well, it was more than just involved.”

  “Huh.” She looked at her hands in her lap, and her voice was pained. “He was part of the posse,” she whispered.

  I shook my head. “It’s worse than that.” I swallowed again. “See, he was thinking the church wouldn’t have the money to pay off their debt, so he’d be able to take over the church – and all the land.”

  Miss Georgia turned to me. “But they could pay. They were gettin’ ready to—”

  “I know. That was the problem.”

  Miss Georgia’s face looked as grey as her hair.

  I took a deep breath. “He had to stop them from paying off their debt so he could take their land.” I paused, because I really didn’t want to go on.

  “What are you sayin’, Red?”

  “My great-great-grandaddy made a blood oath with old Mr Dunlop to kill your grandaddy before he had a chance to pay his debt, so he could take his land back.”

  For a fleeting moment I thought she was going to laugh. “Red, how in the world did you come up with that?” Her eyes narrowed. “Is this some story Ray Dunlop been tellin’ you?”

  “No, ma’am.” I slowly pulled the folded-up map out of the back pocket of my jeans and held it out to her. “It’s something Old Man Porter wrote himself.”

  She stared into my eyes but reached her hand out, touching the paper but not actually taking it. I wished she would because it felt almost painful to hold that thing. For a while, it was like we were frozen, our hands on either side of the map, neither of us wanting it.

  Finally she took it, her hands shaking as she unfolded it. I watched her lips as she mouthed the words Decedent, G. Freeman and cringed when she took a sharp breath in. She eyed the rest of the document, squinting when she got to the bottom of it. She pointed at the initials. “What does that say, Red? It’s too small for me to read.”

  I almost groaned out loud. It was the last thing I wanted to read. My own initials. “F.S.P., my great-great-grandaddy’s initials, and a Dunlop’s initials. And the date. Fourth of July 1867.”

  She turned her head to look at me. “That why you were askin’ about the date my grandaddy died? That why you wouldn’t believe me?”

  I nodded.

  She looked back at the map and pressed her lips together until water came out of her eyes. Finally, she said, “It’s true, then.”

  I hung my head and whispered, “Yes, ma’am.” I backed away to the wall opposite the fire and slumped against it. I looked down and saw, rather than felt, my hand clutching my stomach, just like Daddy had done when we heard Mr Dunlop’s gun go off.

  “I’m really sorry, Miss Georgia. I’m so, so sorry.” Sorry seemed like such a weak word. I wanted a word that was a whole lot more powerful than the kind of word you use when you bump into someone by accident. “I wish it’d been different. I wish it’d never happened.”

  Miss Georgia’s face was frozen, along with her whole body. I couldn’t help staring at her. I wanted her to start yelling at me, calling me and my family names, or throwing stuff, because that’s what we deserved. I kept waiting, but the only thing that happened was some water coming out of her eyes.

  “You must hate me, Miss Georgia.”

  Her voice was real quiet so I had to strain to listen. “Why would I hate you, Red?”

  I thought of Beau’s words as I destroyed Old Man Porter’s desk: He’s still your people.

  “Because of what…my people did to…your people.” It was too hard to say it again, to say, My great-great-grandaddy paid someone to murder your grandaddy.

  She was silent for a while before saying, “Well, ownin’ up to it, that counts for a lot.” She stared into the fire as she fingered the map. “Old Man Porter was a piece of work. We knew he was a two-faced, lying—” She stopped herself. I don’t know why. She didn’t need to stop on my account. “He didn’t want us around. Your great-grandaddy was only some better, but your grandaddy, he was a decent man, yes he was. And your daddy, well, we all know what a good man he was.”

  I looked away. I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic, because my daddy had hidden the truth from her, a pretty important truth.

  “I-I’m sorry Daddy didn’t tell you the whole truth.” I looked at her, almost like I was asking her a question. “I don’t know why he didn’t.”

  She nodded. “Maybe he was hopin’ it wasn’t true. Maybe he was still gettin’ used to the idea. Maybe he was comin’ around to it.”

  I shrugged. That answer didn’t make me feel any better.

  “I suspect your daddy was hopin’ to find the church, and he was goin’ to tell me the whole story once he could give me some good news along with the bad.”

  I froze, because that was exactly what I was planning on doing until I ran into Beau. Maybe that’s what was going on. Maybe Daddy wasn’t going to keep it a secret for ever. Maybe he was going to fix it right in the end. I hoped so. But I guess I’d never know for sure.

  “I think he would’ve tried to fix it up right,” Miss Georgia went on, “because that was his way. But he didn’t have the chance to finish.” She looked at me.

  I nodded and stood up straight. “I’ve been trying to find the church, too, but I guess I was looking in the wrong place. I’ve been all over the Dunlop property, but the piece of land the Dunlops got from Old Man Porter for killing your – as payment – probably isn’t where the church was. Freedom Church must be on our land.”

  She coughed several more times, her whole body shaking. I started to get her some water but she grabbed my arm. After she quieted down and took a deep wheezy breath, she leaned forward, and pushed against the wheelchair.

  “Be careful, Miss Georgia.”

  Her arms were shaking as she pushed hard to get herself up.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to be doing that,” I said, getting ready to catch her if she fell.

  She waved me away with one hand, but that made her fall back down into her wheelchair, kind of flopped over to one side.

  “You okay, Miss Georgia?”

  She took several breaths before she spoke. “You’ll have to get it, Red.” She pointed to the floor, in her bedroom. “Under there. A box.”

&nb
sp; I got up and walked over to the doorway. I looked inside and saw her bed. It was one of those high ones that you could fit a lot of stuff under. I went in and knelt down by the bed. At first I couldn’t see anything, but I reached under and felt around until I bumped something. A box. I reached my other hand in and pulled it out.

  It was half the size of a shoebox and a whole lot more beautiful. Made out of orangey wood, it had different patterns running through it from the knots and rings that were in the tree. It looked like somebody oiled it every day to be so shiny that it glowed like a pool of golden light.

  I brought it over to Miss Georgia and handed it to her, but she said, “Open it.”

  When I lifted the lid, a whiff of cedar rose out of the box. It smelled sweet, like it had been saving itself up to make the whole room smell nice. The inside wood of the box was beautiful, too. There was only one thing inside. It was about the size of a baseball, a ball of some kind of white cloth.

  I looked up at Miss Georgia and she nodded.

  Slowly, I picked up the ball and a piece of the cloth fell away and I saw it was a long strip, so I started unwrapping it. Somehow I knew that what was inside was sacred.

  When I got to the end of the cloth, there was a rock, grey with splotches of black and white. The firelight made the white sparkle and the black stand out sharp and strong.

  “It’s a piece of the Freedom Church altar,” Miss Georgia whispered.

  I stared at it. “I figured it was just granite. That’s what I was looking for.”

  “This here’s the rock you lookin’ for, Red. It’s granite, all right. Speckled granite.”

  “I never knew it was so beautiful.” I picked it up out of the box. “How did you get this?”

  “My daddy chipped that piece off himself.” The flames in the fireplace surged and I swear it felt like the rock was burning my hand. I dropped the stone on the floor but Miss Georgia didn’t seem to notice. She kept on talking. “I showed it to your daddy. Now I’m givin’ it to you.”

  I picked up the rock again. “I’m going to find Freedom Church, Miss Georgia, I swear.”

  “It would sure mean a lot to me if you did, Red.”

  After we sat in silence for a while, she said she wanted to look at her porch again, so I pushed her wheelchair out there. She looked up at the ceiling. “I like what you done out here. So far.”

  “So far?”

  “I don’t see that peace symbol you were talking about painting for me.” She tried raising an eyebrow but it only went up halfway. Still, I smiled back at her.

  Sitting on the steps, I tried not to peel the paint like I used to. It was warm for November. The sun had burned through the mist and the sky was blue and cloudless.

  “Feels like I can see all the way to Freedom,” she said, and looked out towards our property, struggling to sit up in her wheelchair. She was squinting and leaning her head out so far it looked like she was trying to find someone in particular. Finally she sat back with a sigh.

  “I’ll find it, Miss Georgia. Don’t worry. I’ll keep looking.”

  “You’re a good friend, Red.”

  I didn’t know about that. I didn’t feel like I’d been a good friend to Thomas. And I sure didn’t feel like us Porters had been good friends to Miss Georgia’s family.

  She sighed again, looking over towards our place. “I sure do like to think that the good souls are the ones who’ll win in the end.”

  I looked out at our land, too – even though some of it wasn’t our land. And even though I wasn’t convinced of it, I said, “They will, Miss Georgia.”

  She made a sound like the sheriff’s Kiss of Death. “Who is they, Red?”

  I turned to look at her. She was bent forward, her eyes peering into mine. “Who you callin’ they, huh? They,” she said, “is you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The Stone

  As soon as I left Miss Georgia’s I started combing our property line looking for where Freedom Church might’ve been. I searched for hours until I heard Mama calling. Something in her voice made me run to her as fast as I could.

  Mama stood by the shop, her eyes so full of water she looked like she was drowning. She kept lacing her fingers together, then pulling them apart.

  Beau had reached her, too, lumbering over from the What-U-Want. “What is it, Miz Porter?”

  “It’s…Miss Georgia.”

  I felt my heart pounding. “What happened? Is she all right?”

  Mama shook her head. “She’s…dead.”

  There was a silence and then a gasping sigh that might’ve been me or Mama or Beau, but it sounded like it came out of the shop itself.

  Miss Georgia’s son asked me to be a pallbearer at the funeral, along with family members, including his grandson – who I’d met before but I’d never really gotten to know because he was four years older than me – and Thomas. Even though I saw him at the service, me and Thomas didn’t talk to each other. Mostly what I remember of the funeral was my black shoes, either plodding along as I was holding the casket, or stiff on the floor between the pews. I remember hearing singing and crying, and feeling bodies around me, but not seeing anything at all except my black shoes.

  After the service and burial, we went back to Miss Georgia’s house and my eyes started seeing everything again. I looked for Thomas but could only see his grandparents. I saw Mrs Reed, Miss Georgia’s grandaughter, and Anthony, her great-grandson. I saw exactly where Miss Georgia had been sitting just a few days before, and what she looked like, and what she said and did. And I knew what I had to do.

  I found Mr Jones out on the porch. I sat on the railing, waiting for him to finish talking to Mr Reynolds, and rubbed my hand against the smooth paint feel of the porch posts. I could still catch a little whiff of that new-paint smell. I thought about all the times I’d sat there talking to Miss Georgia, or even just sitting there saying nothing, sometimes in the light, sometimes in the dark, sometimes when it was cold and sometimes when it was so hot you could barely breathe.

  “Hey, Red.”

  I looked up and it was Mr Jones, his face looking more wrinkly and his hair greyer than I’d remembered.

  “Hey,” I said, sliding off the railing. I pulled the piece of the altar stone out of my pocket and fingered it for a moment. “Your mama gave this to me. It belonged to her daddy.” I sighed before handing it over. “I think it should stay in your family.”

  “Oh, I remember that.” He reached out and touched the stone, then raised it and looked at it against the setting sun. He sat down on the porch step. “It’s part of that church.”

  I sat down next to him. “Freedom Church. I’m going to find that church, you’ll see.” I stared at the stone in his hand. “I’m sorry about what my great-great-grandaddy did. And I think we should give you some of our land because—”

  “It’s not so much a question of the land, but it was important to my mama to find out what happened and set things right.” He yanked at his tie, loosening it some with one hand while the other hand still held the rock. “That’s why I hired young Mr Reynolds for her.”

  “What? You mean…you’re his client?”

  “Me and my mama, that’s right.”

  “So that’s why she liked him all along!”

  “Yeah, she told me I had to find a good lawyer from Richmond, and the Reynolds family is good people.”

  “What did he find out?”

  “He’s still working on it. But I think that any claims my family had have been pretty well buried.”

  “But Freedom Church is most likely on my property.”

  He shrugged like it wasn’t news to him. “Even if you found it, I don’t know that my family can make a claim. Bill – Mr Reynolds – is having a hard time finding any paperwork.”

  I swallowed. “Did he tell you about the map?”

  “He did, but he said it’s circumstantial evidence and there’s no one around to attest to it.”

  “What does that mean?”
/>   Mr Jones smiled. “There’s no one who can prove what that document actually meant.”

  “I think it’s pretty clear.”

  “Maybe, but in a court of law? That’s different.”

  “Shoot, what’s the point of being a lawyer if you can’t prove anything?”

  Mr Jones chuckled. He tossed the stone up a few times, snatching it out of the air on its way down.

  “We’d give your land back to you, anyway.”

  “Well, that’s real kind of you, Red, but your mama’s got to take care of herself and her boys, too. She doesn’t have your daddy around any more.”

  “But it wouldn’t be right if we kept what wasn’t ours to begin with.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not like I’m moving back here, anyway.”

  “But what about your daughter? And your grandson? Your mama thought she might like it here.”

  “Oh, yes. Carolyn wants to go back to her roots. I swear, she would trace her roots all the way back to Africa, if she could.”

  I felt kind of sick thinking about my own roots, and I put my face in my hands.

  “Well, you got to remember, she’s the great-grandaughter of a slave, a freed slave, but still. I know that sounds like a long, long time ago to you, being so young and all.”

  “No, sir,” I said, my voice muffled in my lap. It didn’t sound long ago at all. In fact, seeing as how I was the great-great-grandson of a racist murderer, it wasn’t nearly long enough.

  “Son?”

  I looked up and Mr Jones had one eyebrow raised, just like Miss Georgia. “I’m glad you were here for her. You were like one of her own. I think my mama wanted you to keep this.” He gave the stone back, closing my hand around it. He stood up and pointed his thumb into the darkness beyond Miss Georgia’s porch. “Looks like someone wants to talk to you.”

  It was Thomas. I could barely make him out in the light coming from the front window. He stood a little away from the cars, his suit jacket thrown over his shoulder and his MIA bracelet reflecting the light. He was making marks in the dirt with his shoe. He eyed me but then looked away, like he couldn’t quite decide if he wanted to talk to me or not.

  I took a deep breath, stood up, and walked over to him.