There was a sound of hurried steps on the cellar stairs and Mullins stuck his head through the open door. “He is not here, sir.”
“I was just saying as much, Mister Mullins.”
“There is something in the cellar, sir. We think you should see it.”
Again Ballard followed Doctor Johnston as he slowly descended the steps, as though the number of lights in the cellar and the high-pitched tone of the others’ voices drew him downward. When he reached the bottom of the steps he paused, as the others had done, his attention arrested by the north wall of the cellar, by its bright colors and the intricate calligraphy of lines upon it.
The wall looked to be of sandstone and the cellar terminated abruptly against it, where Ballard guessed the builders had given up on digging farther into the earth. It was covered with words, hundreds of them, that were chiseled into the sandstone with the precision of a printer’s press. Ballard stepped closer and saw that the words were names arranged in some strange chronology of Nemo Johnston’s devising. He read a few of them before giving up, none of them familiar but most of them clearly Negro: names like Quash and Addie and Toby, half of them with surnames familiar to Ballard from his slave-owning patients but the rest as obscure as the southern hands’ field songs had been when he first came south. Above the names, carved in larger type, was the legend “In my death, see how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.” The entire wall had been painted in three vertical stripes—green, yellow, and red—and the paint had run into the letters and coated them as well. Ballard stepped back from the garish colors with the hollow feeling in his gut as pronounced as it might have been had they found a charnel house here instead.
“He really has gone mad,” Mullins said. “This is the work of a demented mind.”
“No, not mad,” Johnston said. “The quotation is a passage from Poe. These names clearly have some significance to him. I suspect they have some significance to us as well. I recognize one or two of them. No, he has not gone mad, but he has most certainly gone.”
“And what of the colors?” Ballard asked.
Johnston sighed. “The colors,” he said, “are beyond my comprehension.”
He turned toward the stairs, and his footsteps sounded dully as he climbed them.
“What shall we do with the house, sir?”
Johnston paused on the stairs. “Yes, the house. I suppose there is no choice,” he said heavily. “Burn it.”
JOHNSTON AND BALLARD stood on the sidewalk as the students ravaged the bungalow, stomping and crashing inside it. Johnston muttered to himself as the sound of glass breaking raged inside until there were no more windows left.
“Couldn’t be helped, Ballard,” he said, and the younger man nodded his agreement. Ballard looked down the street, watching as the curtains on the other houses parted by inches to reveal eyes looking to assess the demolition of Nemo Johnston’s place. The woman in the house next door had come out on her porch and was crying loudly, begging Johnston to stop the men inside.
“Take it easy there, auntie,” someone yelled from a broken parlor window. “You might be best back inside your house.”
“We’re not here for you, old girl.”
But still the woman moaned and whimpered. When she saw the first candle put to a curtain in the parlor, she began to wail. Mullins and two of the others emerged from the house and looked at her strangely as they came to stand next to Johnston.
“They’re all crazy, is what I think,” Mullins said.
“That is enough, Mister Mullins,” Johnston said quietly. The house was beginning to glow from the inside, amber light flickering on the shards of glass that still clung to the frames.
“Say, here comes Doctor Evans,” Mullins said. They turned to look down the sand road and saw Evans walking toward them quickly, accompanied by another man whom Johnston recognized as Jonathan Bateman, from the Columbia Bank, as they drew near. Johnston seemed instantly embarrassed by the banker’s presence. He walked a few steps to meet him, stopping in front of the Negro woman’s porch.
“Jonathan,” Johnston said, “I would have preferred that you had not seen this.”
Bateman nodded breathlessly and held out a handful of papers to Johnston. Johnston squinted at them, then moved closer to the woman’s house, where the light from the flames next door was stronger. He frowned down at the papers, flipping through handwritten balance statements quickly but pausing at the last page, a sheet of watermarked stationery on which had been written a figure that made him catch his breath.
“The boy brought that note in this morning, sir. Since it was written in your hand, I treated it as your request.”
Johnston looked at the papers a moment longer, then handed them to Ballard and sat down heavily on the porch steps. Ballard studied the withdrawal notice, hardly believing it, then sat down himself.
“As I said, sir, it was written in your hand.” Bateman looked ready to flee down the street.
Johnston smiled so bitterly that the banker had to look away. “The paper is mine, Jonathan, as must be the ink, doubtless drawn from the well on my desk. But the hand, Jonathan . . .” He looked up at the dark night sky. “The hand belongs to another.”
Johnston’s face was still turned to the sky when he spoke again. “Evans,” he said, “I believe I recall your once saying, years ago, that we had mortgaged the school’s future to Africa. I must now concede that you were correct.”
He took the papers from Ballard and passed them to Evans. The bearded man studied them for a moment, his face coloring, then ripped them into pieces and let them fall to the ground.
“The betrayal,” Johnston hissed as the flames licked under the eaves of Nemo’s house and began to consume the tarpaper above. Behind him the old woman wailed like a banshee. “I never did him harm, gentlemen. And this”—Johnston lifted a hand toward the burning house and let it drop to the shreds of paper at his feet—“this is my recompense.” He dropped his face into his hands.
“Ah, God, the betrayal.” Johnston lifted his head, and Ballard saw that the doctor’s eyes glistened in the light of the flames. “I will never understand it, gentlemen. I treated him as if he were my own.”
Saturday
HE SITS ON THE BASEMENT STEPS with his elbows on his knees, moving the hasp he broke off the door above from one hand to the other. Through eyes burning with fatigue he looks down at the cellar floor below him, at the bones dug carefully out of the dirt, the orange twine snaked out tautly between the pine stakes. He has not been this tired since he was a resident, and it feels good to rest, to simply sit among the quiet of the bones and the cellar earth. His eyelids droop, wanting to close, but he wills them open so that he can witness this place—really see it—one last time.
He has decided, in this state half between sleep and waking, that the dead can be felt, if one is quiet and still enough: all of them who were here. Nemo Johnston must have traveled up and down these steps hundreds of times; Sara too was here; and the bones of those beneath him, who were brought here and never left. All of them have a claim on this ground.
He is not so certain about Frederick Augustus Johnston. If there is a blood connection between himself and the old professor, he cannot feel it.
His head bobs toward his chest and he jerks it back up. Great-great-grandfather? he thinks, too tired to be sure he’s got the number of generations right. It sounds right. Am I in my father’s house? Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll leave now.
No answer, of course. The question itself seems to die in the dank air of the cellar.
The silence of the bones, however, is eloquent. It is a silence he can feel in his marrow.
Their unearthly quiet.
Jacob’s heavy eyes close, and he sleeps, hearing.
“JAKE. JAKE.” Someone is shaking his shoulder gently. For a moment he does not respond, preferring to linger a minute longer at the edges of sleep and let the big hand knead his shoulder. He thinks he would be content to stay here, amid the acrid smells
of dry clay and cellar earth, in the mute company of those who have spent the century lying in it. But he knows he must wake. He opens his eyes to look on the kindly face of Adam Claybaugh.
Adam smiles, nods toward the bones, the orange twine. “You making some new friends?”
“Just calling on my last patients.”
Adam shakes his head. “You’re going to have lots of patients. This is your first day, brother.”
“It’s my last day as a PR man. You can count on that.”
“Good riddance. Out with a bang.” Adam hooks his hands under Jacob’s arms and heaves him up. He swats at the red dust covering Jacob’s jacket. “You may have ruined that tux.”
Jacob swipes at his dusty sleeves for a moment, then decides the effort is hopeless. He looks up at Adam. “What the hell use does a doctor have for a tuxedo anyway?”
“For hobnobbing with the schmucks.”
“Yep,” Jacob says as he pulls off the jacket and tosses it to the ground. “Done with all that.” He takes another look around the basement, at the grids that Sanburn and his students laid out so meticulously just a few days ago. It would have been a shame for all that work to go to waste.
Adam too is staring thoughtfully at the sectioned-off earth and the bones lying upon it. “Just heard from Sanburn,” he says. “He’s about thirty minutes outside of town.”
“Did he sound ready?”
“He sounded like he was about to wet his pants,” Adam says, and they both grin.
“This will make his career.”
“I guess it will,” Adam says. Then his face sobers as he turns to Jacob. “And how about you? What’ll you do now?”
“The way I see it, Adam, my possibilities are wide open. I could look into aromatherapy or maybe feng shui. If those don’t work out, probably chiropractic or physical therapy.”
“Seriously.”
“You know anybody who needs a doc-in-the-box, Adam?”
Adam shakes his head.
“I’m being serious. If this thing doesn’t work out, I’ll be lucky if I ever practice anything in South Carolina.”
“It’ll work out. You’ll see.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Jacob says absently, starting up the stairs. “Is Kaye back yet?”
Adam checks his watch. “Any minute now. She finished at the copy store at five-thirty. I sent her by your house to get you a fresh suit.”
“I hope she brings the black one.”
Adam laughs and they go on up the stairs, toward the light, back into the land of the quick.
HE OPENS THE heavy wooden door of Johnston Hall and steps out into the morning sunshine. It is a beautiful day, clear with a light breeze, birds singing and the late-summer light falling like gold through the trees. And it is made more beautiful by the presence of a score of reporters on the verdant lawn in front of the administration building, crowded at the base of the steps three deep, their front ranks bristling with microphones and miniature tape recorders held up to catch his words. Beyond them he sees with a feeling of triumph that two satellite trucks from the local television stations idle at the curb on Gervais. He looks into the faces below him until he spies Sabrina O’Cannon’s among them. Even the heavy makeup cannot hide the circles under her eyes, but her smile is dazzlingly white.
Like the others, she answered his four a.m. phone call only after he had rung and rung her house, but here she is, among the reporters for the local papers and the Associated Press stringers, even the regional correspondent for the New York Times. He called them all from his dark office, working through every name in his Rolodex, and now they are here with their photographers in tow, come to see if he will make good on his claim of a historic story of racial reconciliation.
Jacob turns and looks behind him, where Adam and Sanburn stand against the building, waiting their turn to speak. They nod their encouragement. Sanburn has turned out for his big day in a starched safari shirt and matching polyester slacks, and his glasses blink in the morning light as he smiles at Jacob. Jacob nods back at him, takes a deep breath, and turns to face the press.
The cameras begin to flash as he steps up to the podium he and Adam hauled out at first light. He hopes that the photographs will not show the shadow of his beard or the darkness around his tired eyes; hopes that the image of the school’s spokesman they capture will be convincing. He knows, as he spreads the page of notes for his speech on the podium, that this day’s work is charged with meaning beyond any task he has undertaken since his days in practice.
For a moment he looks out over the campus, taking in what he imagines will be his last view of it from this vantage. He sees that Kaye has taken a seat on a bench in front of Park Hall, a dozen yards past the reporters. He smiles at her and she raises a hand in salute, smiling back at him, her face almost aglow.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, “I thank you on behalf of the South Carolina Medical College for meeting with me at this early hour of your weekend. But our business today could not wait any longer. We are here to acknowledge a part of the school’s history that has needed to see some daylight for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The college has had an illustrious past, has in fact been an integral part of South Carolina’s history. But it has also taken part in the darker side of that history.”
He can hear the cameras clicking as he steps over to the blowup of Nemo Johnston’s portrait. Kaye has outdone herself in preparing it, setting it up on an easel worthy of a courtroom presentation, with Johnston’s face nearly a foot wide, his eyes full of what Jacob now sees as equal measures of dignity and pain. He pauses a moment as Sabrina’s cameraman moves to it for a close-up.
“This man is Nemo Johnston, a slave purchased in 1857 by the faculty of our school, who owned him jointly—seven physicians with legal title to the life of a fellow human being. His name had been lost to time until this week, when our Foundations for the Future renovation campaign brought his existence to our attention.” He watches as the newspaper reporters scribble faster in their notebooks.
“The result has been a week of soul-searching for the South Carolina Medical College,” he continues, stepping back to the podium. “During the last few days, I have been reminded of a medical term that bears particular relevance to the school’s relationship with Mister Johnston: retrograde memory, the ability to remember recent events paired with the inability to recall events from a patient’s more distant past. The South Carolina Medical College, ladies and gentlemen, has suffered from an institutional case of it.”
And then he begins to hear it, faintly: the sound of singing, many voices lifted up in what he guesses is an old spiritual, coming up Gervais slowly. He smiles down at his notes, hurrying to finish his speech before they arrive.
“Given this self-diagnosis, we had a choice of pursuing two options: either to ignore this portion of our past and let it lapse back into obscurity or to come forward and acknowledge Nemo Johnston as a vital part of our school’s legacy. I’m proud to say that the dean and the administration have decided on the latter course of action. It is time now for Nemo Johnston to receive his due and official recognition.”
The reporters turn toward the sound of the singing as the marchers begin to file through the university’s gates. At the head of the column, walking shoulder-to-shoulder, are Lorenzo Shanks and Marcus Greer. Greer’s mouth opens and closes around the words of the old song and his eyes fix intently on Jacob. He dips his head slightly in acknowledgment, almost imperceptibly. Jacob nods back, standing silently at the podium as the men and women pour through the gates. For a full two minutes they come, a hundred or more of them, it seems, all dressed in their church clothes and lifting up the song in a single great voice. They follow Greer and Lorenzo as they step off the brick walkway and cross the lawn a few yards back from the reporters, forming an arc around the press and Johnston Hall. The photographers are working frantically now, bobbing and dipping for the best camera angles, and watching them, Jacob breathes more easily than he has in hours
, certain that at least one of the shots they are snapping will reach a front page tomorrow.
The voices linger on the song’s last note and then fade, like a tide receding, until the only sounds are the clicking shutters of the cameras and the sighing of the wind in the trees.
“The men and women of Ebenezer Methodist Baptist Episcopal Church, ladies and gentlemen,” Jacob says quietly. “They are here to help us begin our dialogue with the Rosedale community in earnest.” Greer squares his shoulders, and Jacob looks out across the lawn at Kaye before he continues. But Kaye is gesturing now; the arm that was raised a few minutes before is crossed over her chest as she points toward one of the huge live oaks that shade the lawn.
Behind the tree, peering around its trunk like a hunter, is Jim McMichaels. His face looks haggard and wary. As Jacob watches, he turns and steps away from the tree, walking in the other direction, back toward Huger Street, the legs of his plaid pants pumping fast.
“There he is, ladies and gentlemen,” Jacob says loudly, raising a hand to point out McMichaels. “Our dean, Doctor Jim McMichaels. Let’s give him a warm greeting.”
Jacob begins to clap, and the others follow suit as McMichaels stops abruptly and turns to give them a strained smile. Jacob waves him toward the podium and he comes forward slowly, moving awkwardly through the group from Ebenezer. By the time he reaches the steps, the smattering of applause has died out, replaced by murmurs from the journalists as he climbs up to Jacob and grips his hand tightly.
McMichaels smiles as he pumps Jacob’s hand and says fiercely through his clenched teeth, “What the fuck is this, Thacker?”
“We’re coming clean, Jim,” Jacob says. “I decided it would be good for the school.”
But McMichaels gives no sign of having heard him. His eyes have moved to the easel and are fixed on the image on the back of the poster board. It too is an enlarged photograph, the most recent of the Skull and Crossbones images Janice gave Jacob, and the dean’s broad smile over the stripped flesh of the cadaver looks even more grotesque on the large scale.
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