Darktown: A Novel

by Thomas Mullen

  “Uncle Dennis?” the littler one asked.

  “Yes?”

  “If there’s another war, does that mean one of us will die?”

  Dale Jr. added, “The one of us that isn’t as good at studies?”

  Rake crouched down so they were more or less eye level.

  “We fought that war so that there won’t be any other ones. Don’t you worry. Now go inside and bother your parents and don’t talk about this anymore.”

  They “Yes, sir”ed in chorus and wandered over to the door. They’d almost opened it when Rake called after them. “Dale Jr., you start your schooling next fall?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Study hard.”

  After dinner, Rake walked Dale and the family back to their place, helping them carry home some extra Cokes for the boys and half a watermelon. Dessert had gone late and lightning bugs lit up the hydrangeas as Dale Jr. and Brooks darted ahead on the sidewalk-less road despite their mother’s warnings of imminent vehicular dangers.

  The two families lived only six blocks apart in Hanford Park, a quiet neighborhood west of the city. Nearly every house here was a bungalow, and even if they’d had second stories, those would have been swallowed up by the low, thick boughs of poplars, tupelos, and white oaks. The canopy was so thick the middle of the roads were in shadow even at midday. It wasn’t a moneyed area like Buckhead to the north of downtown, or Ansley Park and Inman Park to the east, but it had what they needed: decent schools, a nearby park, and reliable buses and streetcars for Cassie to get to the downtown stores on days Rake needed to take the car to the station. Neighbors smiled and waved as they tended their gardens or sat on their porches as the setting sun tinted the sky pink.

  Several other cops lived in the area, including his damned partner.

  When they made it to Dale’s, Rake was ready to shake his hand and say good-night, and indeed Sue Ellen had already chased the two rascals inside, but then Dale said, “Hang on a minute. I want to show you something.” Dale walked down the block, Rake following. “That’s the one over there.”

  Dale seemed to be indicating a new house half a block from where they stood. The wood was not yet painted, and the front yard was nothing but bare red soil, having been turned over to lay a foundation. Some of the windows were so new they still bore tape from the factory.

  “What about it?” Rake asked. He rearranged the items into one hand so he could slap a mosquito from his neck with the other.

  “It’s the one I told you about. Nigger put it up last week.”

  Rake’s mother had never permitted that word to be spoken in their house when he’d been growing up. The Rakestraw children had been brought up to respect everyone, no matter their color. It was years before Rake put a few things together and realized that part of her awareness of the evils of race hate could be traced back to the first war, when she was a German immigrant here and her family had been ostracized as bloodthirsty, baby-killing, nun-raping “Huns.” Rake didn’t think his mother had ever been friends with any Negroes, but after having words used as weapons against her, in the delicate teenage years no less, she’d no patience for those who employed similar tactics. Rake’s father had always backed her up on that—Rake recalled Curtis being whupped for cussing and getting in scrapes with colored children in his rebellious years—and Rake had only heard his father use the word a few times, when it was just men sitting on a porch or watching a Crackers game, far from the missus’s ear.

  Rake’s brother-in-law, however, was a big fan of the word.

  “I don’t think it’s anything you need to trouble yourself with,” Rake said.

  “Trouble myself? I ain’t troubled, Denny. I aim to do something about it. I was wondering if you wanted to help out.”

  The half watermelon was sweating through Rake’s shirt. The houses that they had passed on this short walk did not appear any smaller than the ones on Rake’s block, and the trees seemed no more prone to disease or drought, and Rake didn’t see any more rubbish on the sides of the road. Yet Dale’s house was a mere two blocks from the unofficial border with the colored section of town. This particular Negro had built his new house on the wrong side of that border.

  “This nigger’s put up his house one block from mine,” Dale said. “I’m sure you’re all nice and cozy in your new place, but what’s gonna happen to your sweet little spot if this block goes, and the next two? I’m your first line of defense. I’d think you’d want to help out here, before the problem’s on your doorstep. It’s like a damned military operation they have, you know? Trying to flank us over here and outflank us down off North Street.”

  The war analogies grated. Dale had terrible vision, disqualifying him from service in the army. It was a sore subject with him—he felt his manhood and not his irises had been called into question, according to Sue Ellen.

  Rake shifted the watermelon from one side to the other like a halfback bracing for tacklers.

  “I didn’t say I’m not concerned about the neighborhood, Dale. But I think you should maybe wait and see who this fellow is before you get up in arms about it.”

  “Who he is, is a nigger. I’d think with what all you’ve been seeing of ’em in Darktown, you’d know enough not to let them come over here. How you like your own habitation to turn out like the place you patrol all night?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Damn right it’s not, because we’re not gonna let it.”

  Rake gazed back at the new house again, worried that the homeowner in question might emerge from the building, prompting Dale to do God knew what. At the same time, Rake wasn’t exactly thrilled by the idea of Negroes moving in. He’d only been able to buy the house thanks to GI Bill financing, and he couldn’t afford to find himself suddenly staring down the barrel of a mortgage gone way out of whack with the value of a property surrounded by Negroes.

  Dale stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Me and some buddies have a few ideas we’re kicking around, if you know what I mean. We thought someone like you would be able to help us out.”

  Christ. Rake was angry at himself for letting this go so far. He didn’t want to get in a fight with his brother-in-law either, so he tried to tamp down his emotions.

  “I advise against you breaking any laws.”

  Dale smiled, as if to say, Ha, good one, I get it. But his smile faded as he saw that Rake wasn’t smiling back.

  “Well, yeah, sure. I understand you got to say that on account of your job and all, but,” and Dale lowered his voice still, “as family, as kin. As blood to my two sons. Are you going to help out?”

  There was another mosquito at Rake’s neck but he let it suck away rather than break his stare.

  He repeated, “I advise against you breaking any laws.”

  Dale was just drunk, Rake told himself. His memories of this conversation would not be clear. He would not feel offended by his cop brother-in-law. So Rake hoped.

  He handed the watermelon to Dale, who took it and stared for a moment like he had no clue what it was. Birdsong filled the air the way it tends to at dusk, which always made Rake wonder if they were frantically warning one another to hide from the night or if in fact they’d been that loud all day and he’d been too busy to notice.

  The next night, Rake and Dunlow returned to their car after taking down a report on an armed robbery at a grocer on Ponce de Leon and Boulevard. The sky above them was swirled in a restless palette of grays and pinks. The sun had just set, and either storms were imminent or God just felt like doing some wild painting that night.

  Minutes later, they were driving slowly down Decatur Street when Dunlow spied something.

  “Well looky here,” he said at a tall form loping along the sidewalk. As they passed him, the man cut north into an alley. Dunlow made a three-point turn and drove into the alley. The man stopped and turned when he felt the h
eadlights on him. He froze, raising his hands in surrender.

  Dunlow turned off the engine and got out first, Rake following.

  “Chandler, my boy. How’s life on the outside?”

  “Much better, Officer Dunlow.” The tall Negro looked somewhat relieved to see that it was Dunlow he was dealing with. Rake was not used to seeing that reaction—usually people felt the opposite way about his partner. “Much better indeed.”

  Chandler Poe had already treated himself to a fine shave and a haircut since his release from jail. His usually unkempt reddish hair was pomaded and combed.

  “Glad to hear they let you out,” Dunlow said. He stood a bit more closely to Chandler than he would to most white men. The old Southern maxim recommended you keep Negroes close so they wouldn’t get too high, and Dunlow seemed to take it literally. “You must be feeling awful grateful right now.”

  “Yes, sir, Officer Dunlow. Most very grateful.”

  The bootlegger cut his eyes at Rake, at which point Dunlow laughed. “Officer Rakestraw is with me, boy, so you don’t need to worry ’bout that.”

  “It’s just that, Officer Dunlow, I only been out a day. I ain’t yet been able to—”

  He stopped talking when Dunlow’s left hand appeared on his shoulder. Chandler was as tall as Dunlow, but a lesser weight class entirely. The hand looked as though it could have snapped the Negro’s clavicle like a wishbone.

  “Well, opportunity is knocking, boy. There’s a whole town full of nigras that’ve been deprived of your talents the last few weeks. Best get on that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The hand lingered on Chandler for another moment. Rake realized his own stomach was taut as he braced for what was next. But Dunlow merely lifted his giant hand and brought it down again. A friendly pat, perhaps with a bit more force than necessary, but that was all. For now.

  8

  LUCIUS REALIZED TOO late what a mistake he’d made in coming to the funeral.

  It wasn’t like he attended every funeral his father presided over, but this one was special. He knew the church would be packed, knew that people were upset, angry, and in need of what his father alone could provide. He was here to be a part of his community, even though with each passing moment he was reminded that he was no longer a part of it the way he’d once been.

  He felt eyes on him from the beginning. He was used to receiving attention at his father’s church, but these were not looks of love or respect. No, the funeral of James James Jameson was proving to be a very different experience indeed.

  He sat beside his brothers, Reginald and William. William, who was still at Morehouse, was the son most likely to follow in their father’s footsteps. Reginald had always appreciated life’s nonspiritual splendors a bit too much. Lucius himself had considered the pulpit, had felt the weight of his father’s expectation that he one day lead this church, had even practiced writing a few sermons in his teens. But something hadn’t clicked. He had expected to hear a voice, see some sign. What he got instead was a draft card.

  Lucius watched the reverend and was impressed, as he always was, by the man’s command of the crowd. Reverend Boggs was the same height as Lucius and a good deal wider. He often teased his son that Lucius, too, would have that physique one day, though Lucius felt the girth had less to do with genetics and more to do with the minister’s prerogative to take a heaping helping of whatever was served by families he visited to celebrate with or console. He was a busy man indeed, and there were days on which the reverend had three different dinners across town, a gastronomic sacrifice but one he managed to make for the Lord. In front of a crowd, though, that size became commanding.

  Reverend Boggs told his congregation that he knew they were angry because he was, too. He knew there were times when they wanted to cry out and accuse God of turning his back on them, because he, too, felt abandoned sometimes, he, too, wanted to know what the Big Man would say in response. Every sentence he spoke got heads nodding, the mmm hmms coming steady now like the inhalation and exhalation of a single body. But every sentence, whether the reverend meant it or not, seemed to give voice to what Lucius feared they were thinking: Why did the cops kill another one of us? When will they stop? And why didn’t your own son, Reverend Boggs, why didn’t he do anything about it?

  Lucius had met Jameson once, years ago, at a church social. He’d not had the highest impression of the fellow, but he realized that might have been snobbery talking. Jameson was uneducated, as was his mother and his siblings; his family had only recently joined the church. Perhaps Jameson had felt out of place in his ill-fitting button-up shirt and too-loose slacks and dragging vowels; maybe he’d been making so many bad jokes because he didn’t know what else to talk about around Negroes like these.

  “Triple James” was later arrested for the savage, near-fatal assault of a sixteen-year-old white boy (who survived, but in the kind of permanently damaged state that made many wish God had been more merciful and finished the job). At the highly publicized trial, some of the police officers seemed to make things up as they went along, but the jury (all-white by law) clearly had not been troubled by things like evidence or fairness, deliberating a mere ten minutes. A white boy had been viciously beaten outside a club in a colored part of town, and that was all that mattered. How this white boy had gotten to that part of town, and what exactly he’d been planning to do there—these matters had not been discussed, as they would have been disrespectful to the victim. Jameson had lived near the club and had recently been booked for another assault, so he had “a violent history,” according to the prosecution. (That assault charge had stemmed from a fight he and two other Negro teenagers had gotten into, instigated when one of them had insulted the other’s sister, and umbrage was taken, and things went a tad too far, and, though no one had been seriously hurt in the tussle, a squad car had arrived while the fight was still ongoing, and all three had been given a week in jail.) He was a black boy with a record, so the dots had not been difficult for white jurors to connect.

  Boggs felt aware of his own posture as his father preached. Please stop talking about the police and the unfairness, Boggs thought. Please get to the “Let’s all rally together” part. It wasn’t like him to question his father’s decisions in church like this, but he felt further from the reverend than usual. He was not in uniform, but he may as well have been.

  Then Reverend Boggs segued away from the murder for a moment and started another story, one his son knew so well that he saw what was coming as soon as he heard the word “train.”

  He’s going to tell the Uncle Richard story. Lucius didn’t even need to listen, he’d heard it so many times.

  Back in 1904, Reverend Boggs had been little Daniel Boggs, the son of a postman who’d proudly been wearing his uniform and making deliveries downtown for years, keeping his three sons fed and well clothed, living in a house he had bought with his own money after years of careful saving.

  And then there was that week when the hysterical white papers reported about rapes and attacks by Negroes, warning their readers that the darker race was getting more emboldened with every day that white men did not stand up for themselves. No one in the colored community quite knew where these stories had come from, or why they so suddenly seized the white people’s imagination. It was as though all the whites were possessed by something at once, a virus, and all you could do was wait for it to pass. Except that when white people caught the virus, it was other folks who got killed.

  Little Daniel Boggs had been only four, born in the first month of the new century, and he hadn’t known anything about the white people virus, hadn’t known that his father had been warned not to go out that day, that the virus was spreading, making some white people speak in tongues, beat their breasts, arm themselves with pistols and rifles and spades and butcher knives. Yet Mr. Boggs, the trusty postal carrier, walked to work nonetheless, and he even made a few deliveries until
he saw the crowds, heard the yelling.

  All that little Daniel knew was that suddenly his father was home, in the middle of the day, out of breath. Then the curtains were drawn, the lights were shut off, and the doors were locked. Throughout the day the back door would be periodically unlocked when friends and relations, in need of shelter, rapped on it, knowing well enough not to let themselves be seen at the front door.

  Soon Uncle Richard showed up, a gash where his right ear met his head, another just below his hairline, redness covering half his face. Daniel had never seen anything like it before, all that red, his favorite uncle transformed into some ghoul. Daniel ran screaming. His mother had to chase him down in the boys’ bedroom, grabbing him by the ear and hissing into it that the boy must be silent immediately. The Boggs family couldn’t let them know anyone was here.

  So Daniel sat on his bed crying as quietly as he could while the adults tended to Richard.

  Now and again he could hear them, hear how the virus was making them roam through the city.

  He heard the adults talking about fire and smoke, he heard popping sounds that apparently were gunshots, according to the expert opinion of his older brothers, who stopped into the bedroom to tell him so before going back into the parlor with the adults. The virus was tearing through different neighborhoods and there was no telling when it would hit theirs.

  It sounded close.

  It was a few hours later when Uncle Richard visited him. A faint amount of twilight through the curtains kept the room from pitch darkness. The virus continued to make strange sounds from outside, yelling and hollering and fireworks and noisemakers, even some singing.

  Richard was bandaged up, one along his ear and another on his forehead, looking like pictures of Civil War soldiers Daniel had seen in books. Richard smiled at the boy, asked if he was all right, asked if Daniel had run crying from his favorite uncle. You weren’t scared of me, were you? And Daniel had felt so badly then, so afraid to hurt his uncle’s feelings, that, even at the age of four, he lied and claimed the reason he’d been crying was because he’d broken his favorite toy train.