“He’s in the room?” Jamison asked.
“Been in there about an hour.”
“Any information?”
The tone of the exchange at this point had lowered to sober revelation, the sound of a doctor revealing a prognosis of cancer. The patient wanted to know how long; the doctor said two months. The patient didn’t cry; he asked what his odds were of survival.
“Nothing from him yet,” Emmit answered Jamison. “We’re working on him.”
“Can I see him?”
“Not a good idea. He’s beat up pretty bad.”
“What?” Jamison tried to push past Emmit again.
This time, Emmit stopped him with his whole body.
“Don’t be stupid. He’ll see your face.”
Jamison tried again, but Emmit pushed him back into the wall.
“Wait! Wait!” Emmit held Jamison back. He could feel his muscles tighten. “I’ll be right back.” He made sure Jamison wouldn’t move and went into the room of whispers and whimpers.
Alone in the hallway, Jamison was still trying to keep up with his breath, with his reality. Most people couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be in a place like that, at a time like that, but there he was, body shaking to numbness, so many questions he couldn’t keep up. Somehow, his thoughts kept going back to Tyrian. He’d see his face and then Dax’s. Tyrian had a red ball. Dax had a microphone. Both were smiling.
Emmit came out of the room in a rush.
“He’s blindfolded,” he said. “You come in and go right into the corner. Don’t say a word.”
Jamison was still. He looked at Emmit like he was a character on a life-sized television screen. Not real. Pixels come together to express some alternate existence.
“You hear me?” Emmit asked. He grabbed Jamison’s arms and pulled him into the dark place.
There were four brothers in the room. All were in black. Jamison knew two of them—Scoot and Emmit. Dax was sitting in a chair beside a king-sized waterbed with dirty crumpled sheets all a mess in the middle. He was falling over in the seat. A rope held his back in place. His head was hanging to the side. A black slither of fabric covered his eyes, but Jamison could see a gash on the side of his face, blood dripping from his mouth.
Emmit pushed Jamison into the corner farthest from the bed where darkness fell over him like a solid form.
The brothers nodded at him and turned back to their business with Dax.
One of the brothers Jamison didn’t know was sitting in a chair in front of Dax. The chair was turned backward and he was sitting casually with his legs wide on the back of the seat. The other one was standing over Dax with his fists balled for action.
The brother in the chair continued what had been an ongoing exchange of questions and no answers.
“So no one’s giving you any information? We’re supposed to believe a low man like you, fresh out the gate, just has all the right moves? Just knows where to be and when?” The brother laughed.
“I told you already. I’m not working for anyone,” Dax cried defiantly.
“Lie.” The brother in the chair nodded to the brother standing over Dax, and he hit him so hard a tooth flew out of his mouth to the floor.
“See, that’s what happens. You lie to me, you get hurt.”
Dax coughed up blood and spit it out.
“Tell him something, man. You ain’t looking too good,” Scoot said, laughing. “Don’t know how long you’re going to last.”
“Fucking faggot,” the brother in the chair said before slapping Scoot five.
“Is that what you are?” Scoot asked. “You dress up in a skirt and blouse? Yeah, that’s you.”
“Who you dressing up for, Morehouse man?” the brother in the chair asked as the other brothers laughed.
“Fuck you!” Dax barked, and his mouth met two more jabs from his captor.
The brother in the chair sighed mockingly. “I hate to see this. A brother going out like this on some bullshit.” He paused for a second. “Look, you’re going to have to give us something. If you want to make it out of here alive.”
“I told you, I don’t know anything. I’m just a journalist.”
Emmit jumped in growling then. “Stop lying, motherfucker. We know you’re with the FBI. That they’re feeding you this information to take down Mayor Taylor.”
“What? The FBI? No. No?” Dax struggled.
Emmit went close in on Dax, and grabbed his throat. “We know they contacted you, boy. Stop bullshitting. Tell us what we need to know or you won’t walk out of here.”
“No—no—please don’t—” Dax cried after Emmit kicked him and his seat to the floor and Dax could feel him hovering over him. “I don’t know who he is. He just tells me where I need to be. What the stories are.”
Jamison unknowingly stepped out of the dark place.
“He said there was corruption in the mayor’s office and that he was about to go down,” Dax added fretfully. “Said it was in my best interest to follow the stories. That’s the truth. I swear it. That’s all. I don’t who he is. I swear I don’t.”
Emmit stepped back from Dax and looked at Jamison.
Another brother stepped to Dax, who was crying and repeating his claim as if it were a plea for his life. The brother reached for black gloves in his pocket.
Scoot nodded to him.
Everyone stood in place as Emmit walked to Jamison and grabbed him to drag him out of the room.
At 2 AM, Val woke to the sound of water running. She rolled over to see the light on in the bathroom and was about to roll back over, but then she heard a voice.
It was Jamison’s, as she expected, but there was something about the sound. It was cracked and weak like Tyrian’s after a fall. And where there might have been pauses for a response, she heard an ongoing lost nervous chatter that made her call out to her husband.
“Jamison?” Val was already getting out of the bed to see what the matter was in the bathroom.
Jamison was standing at the sink, bent over with his hands in a pool of water he kept splashing in his face.
Val stood in the doorway and watched this cycle repeat itself between bits of conversation Jamison was having with his reflection.
“What the fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Jamison would bring his soaking hands to his face and rinse. He’d stand and look at his face in the mirror. “Fuck! What the fuck!”
“You okay?” Val whispered, almost afraid to interrupt him.
“Fuck, man! What the fuck!” Jamison’s washing became more intense. As he brought the water to his face, drops went splashing to the floor.
“You need anything?” Val knew not to touch him. Not to try to intervene between him and whatever he was in the mirror. She’d never seen Jamison like that, but she just knew to step back, keep her distance.
Jamison stopped washing and stood and looked at himself. When Emmit had walked him to the car, his arm over Jamison’s shoulder, he’d revealed Dax’s fate.
“You get home, son. You stay there,” Emmit had said.
“What about him? What’s going to happen?” Jamison had asked.
“He knows who we are. He’s not going to cooperate. We have no choice.”
“Jamison?” Val called sympathetically.
Jamison looked at his eyes. His chest. His heart beating so fast through the black hoodie. He began to fight with the hoodie, trying to get it off, cursing “fuck” the whole time.
Val came into the bathroom to try to help him, but he pushed her away and pulled the hoodie off, throwing it to the floor.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Val was crying then. “Tell me what’s wrong. What happened? Where were you?” Val was thinking there was something with Keet. He’d promised he’d be back.
Jamison was facing his nude chest in the mirror now. He was shaking uncontrollably. Spit and tears were mixing at his chin.
“I didn’t want this. None of this. I didn’t want this,” he cried to the mirror. He remembered Emmit’s face as he’d
stuffed Jamison into the car to send him home. “And I told you to stay away from the jail, didn’t I, son?” Emmit had brought up. “Told you it wouldn’t be no good. See what happens when people do what they’re not supposed to do? Keep your promises.” Emmit had closed the car door, and as he pulled his hand away, Jamison noticed the ring. The fraternity ring. Right on his pinky finger. A black fist on top of a phoenix. Their symbol in the middle. The vision burned through his brain. Screamed at him. Hollered like a drum in the middle of a desert. Everything was dead.
“Shit is crazy. He’s just a kid. A fucking kid,” Jamison contemplated with himself.
“Who, baby? Who is it?” Val pleaded. “You’re scaring me.”
“No, this isn’t happening. Can’t be happening. Not me!” Jamison turned from his face and bolted out of the bathroom to the bedroom. “It can’t be. It’s not real! No!”
“What is it?” Val asked on his heels.
Jamison got the remote control and turned the television back onto the news.
“Oh, you mean the story about you at the jail? Is that it? What’s got you so upset?” Val asked.
The light from the television poured into the dark bedroom, demanding silence.
A reporter was standing in front of Grady Memorial Hospital with tears in her eyes.
“I apologize for the tears, but this really hits us hard here at Fox Five News,” the woman said into the camera. “Reporter Dax Thomas was a rising star whose potential was without measure. His future was quite bright. But as reported at the top of the hour, tonight that light has been snuffed out. Dax was the victim of a violent home invasion. He fought for his life. He lost that battle just a few minutes ago here after being rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital.”
Jamison and Val stood in the middle of the bedroom floor watching the television.
The reporter turned to a police officer in full uniform. It was the brother Jamison had seen standing over Dax’s body, reaching for the black gloves.
“Officer Webb here is a spokesman for the Atlanta Police Department. He’s been on the scene all night. What information can you share with us about this tragic loss?”
“Well, all we can confirm now is that Dax Thomas was involved in an apparent home invasion. There are signs of a struggle in the home. Some bullet holes in the walls. We can’t confirm who was shooting just yet. But we do know Mr. Thomas died from a fatal gunshot wound to the head.”
“Any suspects?”
“No comment. We’ll be sure to inform the people of Atlanta of any progress when we can.”
“A Mother’s Love”
One man was dead. One man was dying. Inside. Inside of his house. On the couch. In the den. Lights off. Television on. For days. For nights. Two weeks passed. A mother was growing worried.
Mrs. Taylor was that mother, and one dewy late summer morning, she returned to her son’s doorstep to terminate the matter of her worry after a morning walk she begrudgingly took with her doctor’s orders.
Her daughter-in-law had come to her room the night Dax Thomas had been murdered. Val was hysterical, pointing down the hallway to her bedroom, crying that Jamison was going crazy. With her bedroom door open, Mrs. Taylor could hear cracking and breaking, trashing and thrashing about in the room down the hall. She hopped out of her bed like any mother would if she heard such a thing coming from her child’s room at 3 in the morning. No robe on. No slippers. Her sagging breasts dented the fabric of her nightgown just above her navel. Her wig was off. Two gray plaits flanked her shoulders. In her son’s bedroom, she found Jamison in the middle of a tirade. He was throwing anything he could get in his hands. Crying. Sobbing. Hollering about a boy being dead. “Just a boy. Just a boy.”
A clock barely missed Mrs. Taylor’s head at the door. She hardly moved. With the fortitude of a sergeant sent thrice into combat, she stood at attention and held her hand up to keep Val out of the room.
“Stay out here,” she’d ordered the woman before stepping into the room and closing Val out. Mrs. Taylor moved into a corner and let Jamison wreck his world until he was exhausted. Soon, her little boy was sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed crying into his knees. Funny how he looked so small to her. How every man could always look like a little helpless, grinning baby boy to his mother. She was the only person who could never be surprised by his tears. She’d seen them first. Nursed most of them herself. Mrs. Taylor sat on the bed and moved Jamison’s head to rest it against her knee. “Tell Mama,” she urged with a stern voice black mothers reserved for business they knew their sons would bring in from the street. “You tell your mama everything.” And Jamison told. Everything. About the phone call he’d made. About how his fraternity brothers had killed that reporter, put the body in that house, and planted their own evidence. About how he was responsible. Back straight up, eyes dry as egg shells, Mrs. Taylor held her son’s head tight to her knee and let his tears run down her leg. He said how he’d never wanted this. How he wanted it all to stop. To go back. To stop everything.
“Shhhh,” she began to quiet him as he got louder. “Shhh.” She rocked and rocked. “Shhhh.” Soon Jamison was quiet and a mother was giving orders. The first thing she told him was to never repeat what he’d said to her to anyone else in the world ever again. Not to Val. Not to Leaf. Not to Jesus Christ if he came down to earth himself. Never. Second, she said, “Let this shit go.” There wasn’t anything he could do about a dead reporter. Third: “Watch your back. Never stop watching your back. I don’t care what you thought this was going to be. I don’t care what it is. You watch your back like I told you to do. You never stop. We may not be in the West End anymore, baby. But the trick is that the West End don’t stop when you get on the highway.”
Two weeks later when Mrs. Taylor stepped into the house after her walk, she was sure Jamison had followed two of those points, but the lasting evidence of the mayor being holed up in the dark den watching television meant he wasn’t exactly letting it go. She vowed to put that motion in order right then. And she knew she could do it. If she had to lift Jamison off the couch herself and carry him on her back out of that house and down to city hall to work, she would. It was just a matter of positioning.
But there was more than that to her matter of worry. There was the silver Maserati she’d seen parked around the corner. A man sitting inside. Her daughter-in-law sitting beside him, shaking her head like she was arguing with him. Mrs. Taylor had been approaching the car from behind, but she knew Val’s facial silhouette. She’d studied it the way a lion memorizes the angles of the lock keeping his cage closed. She’d stopped in her tracks. Watched for a few seconds and turned around to return to her son dying of a dream deferred.
“Get up! Get your ass up!”—there was tough love when Mrs. Taylor walked into the den in her orange velour sweat suit and brunette walking wig. She left the light off, and went right for the window curtains—the shock of daylight would be far more of a threat to dilated eyes.
Jamison moaned like a sleeping giant at the white light. A thin beard was growing in from ear to ear. He had on glasses with one arm missing, boxers, and flip-flops. A bag of apples he’d been eating since the day before was on the floor beside the couch where he was lying. “Close that. I can’t see.” His hand was shielding his eyes from the light.
“Good. Now, get up. Tired of you laid up in here on this damn couch.” Mrs. Taylor went for Jamison’s feet first.
He pulled away from her and huddled in annoyance into the corner of the sofa. “Mama, stop!”
She continued to prod, standing over him. “Get up! Get out of this house!”
“I can’t. I’m sick!”
“Sick? Well, what’s wrong with you? How are you sick? What’s aching you?” She shoved her hand through his force field of flailing hands to pat his forehead and feel the lymph nodes beneath his chin. “And don’t tell me what you told that white boy, because I been your mama since you been on this earth and ain’t not one of those summers found you with a flu. Not u
nder my watch, they ain’t!” Mrs. Taylor continued her fake health inspection as they tussled, and gave up with, “Ain’t nothing wrong with you, boy!” She walked to the television and turned it off after an elongated search for the hidden power switch. “Now, get up!”
“You’re killing me!”
“No, you’re killing you!”
The word “kill” sat in the air for a second.
“I can’t go outside.” Jamison looked at the window.
“Sure you can. One foot in front of the other. How long you think that white boy can run city hall? Cover for you? Before he starts thinking he is you? Before other people start thinking he is you?”
“That’s not how it works.”
“You tell me how it works then. You going to quit at being mayor because things are getting hard?”
“This ain’t hard,” Jamison said, looking at his mother. “This is—this is bad. It’s crazy. Out of control.”
“Then get control. Take control.”
“I don’t know if I want to. If I can.”
“You have to. Too many things out of order around here. Everywhere.”
Mrs. Taylor sat beside Jamison and told him about Val parked around the corner in the gray Maserati.
“It could be anything. Don’t jump to conclusions,” Jamison said, trying to consider why the color and the make of the car sounded so familiar to him “You sure it was her?”
Mrs. Taylor ignored this. “What kind of married woman sits in a car around the corner from her house arguing with another man? Wasn’t nothing right about it.”
“Maybe it was nothing,” Jamison said.
“And maybe pigs shit potato salad. And maybe the Easter bunny is real. You know I don’t make mistakes like that. Do I?”
“No, Mama. You don’t.”
“Exactly. Now, something ain’t right with that girl. I been telling you that from the door. She ain’t good enough for you and she’s trifling. Now, beauty fades, son.”
“Please don’t give me a lecture. I’ll get up. I’ll leave the house. Just don’t lecture me.”
“No, you listen to me.” Mrs. Taylor stopped Jamison from leaving her side. “Apples don’t fall far from the tree. What you see in her mama is what you’ll be looking at in ten years. I told you that about that Kerry and her mama. And when Val’s mother left this house, what did your maid tell you?”
His Third Wife Page 14