Darktown: A Novel

by Thomas Mullen

  The women he met through his church were so refined and mannerly, taught from a young age to be delicate and fair. Julie was more like the women he found himself dealing with on the job, curt and in no mood for dancing around subjects. He’d never found that an attractive trait before, but he was reassessing his feelings with every step she took.

  “What can you tell me about Lily?” He told himself not to let her catch him glancing at her chest and calves but he ran the risk nonetheless.

  “Nothing. I never met her.”

  “Have you ever heard the Prescotts talk about her?”

  “Not really. I mean, I don’t really talk to Mrs. Prescott much, you know? You met her. She’s not the ‘mingle with the help’ sort. She don’t ask me about my life and I don’t ask about hers.”

  “But has she ever said anything at all about Lily, how they came to part company? She seemed to hint to me that she wasn’t too happy with how Lily had worked out.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, maybe things have been said. I assumed they weren’t happy if she ain’t there no more, but haven’t asked her a lot of questions about the last girl.”

  They crossed the street. In another block they’d be at Auburn and the bus stop. He wished she’d lived farther away, both to get more out of her and because he was enjoying watching this girl walk.

  “Has she ever said anything that made you think the last maid had stolen from them?”

  “They sure don’t leave their jewels out when I’m around if that’s what you mean. But they’re all like that.”

  “How about the congressman? Has he ever said anything about—”

  “Never met the man. I’ve only been there a few weeks, and he’s been away the whole time. Up in Washington. I don’t think he’s home much, or ever.”

  There were probably ways he could find out if Prescott had ever met Lily, Congressional calendars or something. The other day Lucius had asked his father for his opinion about Prescott; Boggs didn’t mention the murder or the investigation, saying only that a former employee of the congressman was in some trouble. The reverend admitted he didn’t know Prescott well, but he noted that the man’s politics were as good as you could ask of a white elected official in Georgia. In addition to helping tamp down the state legislature’s revolt against the mayor for hiring Lucius and the others, Prescott had recently dropped some hints that he might come around to supporting the latest version of antilynching legislation that kept failing in Washington.

  “And their son?” Boggs asked Julie. “He lives in town, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve never met him, either.”

  They were at the corner of Auburn now, and he could see the bus stop barely ten feet beyond her. Four other women stood there, three of them obviously maids and the fourth, too, probably.

  “Miss Cannon, I need you to get back in touch with me if you ever hear them say anything at all about Lily. Even the most minor thing. You might not have noticed it before, but now that we’ve had this talk, hopefully—”

  “This is my paycheck you’re talking about. I ain’t no one’s spy. And why aren’t you wearing a uniform?”

  He saw a bus a block away. She’d hear it in a couple of seconds.

  “Like I said, I’m trying to be discreet, for your sake as well as my own. And I’m not asking you to spy. I’d just like you to tell me if you ever hear anything, that’s all.”

  She looked at him as if mentally flipping to the definition of spy and trying to determine how exactly his request differed from it. Before she could figure that out, he offered her a card with his name and number and the Department crest. He’d had to pay for the printing himself, as had the other colored officers. He’d also scribbled his home number on the back of this one.

  She glanced at it, then recoiled.

  “I can’t have that on my person when I’m in their house!”

  “Then may I leave it in your mailbox for you?”

  She turned around and saw the bus coming. “Not now. My parents will see it and think I’m up to something.”

  “Do your parents often think that?”

  She put a hand on her hip. “What would most parents think of their daughter talking to a cop?”

  “Well, that’s why I’m not in my uniform.”

  “And I don’t need no card to remember. Your name is Officer Lucius Boggs and I surely can figure out how to phone the police if I need to.” He liked hearing his name on her lips. Even if he could feel his mother flinch every time Julie dropped a syllable. “Look, I gotta go.”

  The bus stopped and the other ladies began boarding. She took a step toward it, then turned to face him again and asked what he’d expected her to ask far earlier in this conversation. The fact that she hadn’t until now impressed him. “Should I be scared? Should I quit for someplace else? I mean, I need this job.”

  He wished he had a better answer for her than, “If I have any reason to think you’re in any trouble there, I’ll let you know. And you do the same.”

  He felt responsible for her then, as she boarded the bus and he caught a final glimpse of her smooth calves. Surely what happened to Lily would not be visited upon a second maid of the Prescotts’. Surely he would get to talk to Miss Julie Cannon again.

  20

  THE FARM OTIS Ellsworth had dedicated his life to was fifty miles south of Atlanta, though it felt even farther. The earth rolled gently out here, not so hilly as to be impossible to raise crops but not so flat as to be easy on those who tended the land. The farm grew sweet potatoes, green beans, and other vegetables for Ellsworth’s family, but mostly it was dedicated to something his often-hungry family could not eat: cotton. Otis tended the land with his two sons and another family who lived in a small house a half-mile from his. Working from sunrise to sunset, from can to can’t. As hard as it was, they were fortunate to have dodged the boll weevils that had decimated crops in so many other counties, sending desperate farmers into Atlanta or the grave or both.

  Here the piney woods were thick and tall, and Otis remembered playing hide-and-seek as a child, remembered stealing first kisses and then running off as if the girls might pursue him and somehow take those kisses back. A few miles outside Peacedale there had once been a mountain, so Otis had been told, but the stone had been dynamited and quarried for so many years that Otis had never laid eyes on any such landmark. The area seemed to exist in shadow all the same.

  He was driving toward town on a Saturday, a day that always held plenty of chores in store for him, as weekend was not a concept that applied to sharecroppers. Driving in his newly purchased Ford truck, which he himself had repainted just a few weeks ago, a bright red, beautiful, he thought, even if his neighbor had chimed in that it looked like a miniature fire truck now. His envious neighbor, Otis thought.

  Fifty miles from Atlanta wasn’t far enough.

  How many miles away was Chicago? he wondered. Could this truck get them there? Of course it could. Only had nine thousand miles on it, good as new. There were seats in the front, so he and Emma Mae could sit there while his sons traded shifts between squeezing up front or riding in the back, without a roof. Surely he could jerry-rig some kind of tarp over it, in case it rained.

  Unless he traded it for a sedan. The pickup had been a mighty big help on the farm this last month, and would continue to be as long as they stayed here. But if they were going to Chicago, a sedan would make more sense. Was he really thinking this? Just a few months ago, the idea of owning any kind of an automobile would have been so foreign as to be unbelievable, but here he was driving one. And yes, he truly did have enough money to trade it and pay more for a better car, one that could comfortably seat his entire family.

  Blood money, his wife had called it. That’s why you painted it red.

  What had she meant by that? He still didn’t understand it. True, it was an awful lot of money, and Lily’
s explanations didn’t quite make sense, but blood money didn’t sound right to him. Surely she’d acquired all that money in a fair way. Girl wasn’t no crook.

  The only other way she could have gotten it, he figured, was too wicked for him to believe. No daughter of his would have done that. Surely his wife didn’t think it?

  There was another explanation, there had to be. Just because he didn’t know it didn’t mean it wasn’t so. With Lily gone, he’d never know what that explanation was. It would forever be untold. So that’s how he would leave it. He was a man who could live without hearing the explanation of those things that appeared to make no sense. That strange colored police officer had felt differently, and Otis would show him those old letters if the officer really did come out here to see them, but it seemed wrong for the man to pester ghosts. Lily was gone. Otis saw no need to pick at his family’s scars. He could only pick up his family and keep moving. That was the way he’d survived as long as he had, why his parents had survived long enough to raise him, why their parents—born slaves—had managed to do the same. You keep moving. You do not look back.

  Yet look back is exactly what he did when he heard the sirens.

  He had been driving down a road that cut through the piney woods, only a sliver of sunlight making it through the tall canopy, and as he crested a small hill he glanced in the mirror and saw two police cars a few hundred yards away, closing fast. With so little driving experience, he’d certainly never seen police in his rearview mirror before. It was like feeling the devil breathe on the back of his neck.

  He pulled over. One of the cars moved in front of his and stopped there, and the other pulled behind. Dappled light creased in between some trees yet still the woods felt very dark here, and Otis very alone.

  Sheriff Nayler emerged from the car in front. Otis had seen him around town, though the two had never had cause to address each other. Nayler was tall and thin, with a bushy black mustache and a strange scar like a half moon around the outside of his right eye socket, making the eye seem to lie more deeply in that crater than normal.

  A young officer emerged from the passenger seat. He and Nayler stood at opposite sides of Otis’s truck. They both wore dark blue uniforms and the sort of tall hats that would have been more fitting on cavalry men from an earlier time.

  “Otis Ellsworth,” Sheriff Nayler said. He stood with his hands on his hips, a disappointed schoolteacher. An armed one. In the rearview, Otis could see two other cops standing by their vehicle.

  “Good morning, Sheriff, sir.” His mouth dry already.

  “Turn your truck off, Otis.”

  He obeyed.

  “Mighty nice truck you got. Paint it yourself, did you?”

  “Yes, sir, Sheriff.”

  “Ain’t ’cause it’s stolen, is it? That is what enterprising car thieves are known to do, disguising evidence of their crimes.”

  The young cop on the other side was tall, at least six five. He looked like he chopped down trees as a hobby. The Peacedale police did not seem to make uniforms big enough for him, as his short-sleeved shirt was straining from the muscles underneath.

  “No, sir. Bought it myself. From Spooner Wells. He vouch for that.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. Ol’ Spoon did tell us you paid for it. Paid cash. A lot of cash. Fact, he said he overcharged you, spectin’ you to talk him down, only you didn’t. You so flush you didn’t seem to mind.”

  Had Spoon said that? It’s true, they hadn’t negotiated. Shame mixed itself into the other horrible emotions swirling in Otis’s gut.

  The sheriff put his hands on the door of Otis’s car, leaning down to get a closer look. Otis knew not to look him in the eye.

  “Come clean now, Otis. Come clean and make this easier on yourself.”

  He was staring at his dashboard, trying to figure out what the right answer was here. What did they want to hear? What would not get him beaten, or worse?

  Movement in his rearview, then he felt the impact as the other two cops leaped into the back of the pickup. They seemed to be searching the contents of the truck, which were just some old crates and burlap left over from a recent delivery.

  “I’m not sure what you want to know, Sheriff, sir.”

  The sheriff was as motionless as a copperhead that’s already made its mind up.

  “You and your people been in this country a long time, Otis. A long time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ain’t never had no trouble out of any of you.” Otis could smell stale chew on the man’s breath.

  “We good people, sir.”

  “Then why are we getting called by the Atlanta Police Department about you, Otis? Why they asking questions about you?”

  He shook his head, but he couldn’t think up a response. The other two cops were rustling around in the back of his truck. The big cop was still standing to his right, hands by his sidearm and club. The whole town of Peacedale couldn’t have many more cops than these four, and all of them right here, watching him.

  “Why they asking me about that girl of yours, what she been up to?”

  He needed to say something. Yet all he had was, “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Whole state seems to be interested in your family, Otis.”

  He tried to swallow. A honeybee flew in his open passenger window.

  “They got a dead girl in Atlanta and I got a Negro here who’s come into a suspicious amount of money. You win some jackpot I don’t know about?”

  He tried to answer, but his throat caught. He tried again. “Been putting just a little bit away for a good while now, and—”

  “Don’t you lie to me, son,” the sheriff snapped. Otis had been a fool. He was betraying those ancestors who’d managed to stay alive, managed to skirt the narrow path between humiliation and death. “Where did you get that money?”

  “I didn’t steal it from nobody.”

  “That ain’t what I asked.”

  He didn’t say anything. The honeybee landed on his right wrist of all places. He shooed it away.

  “We oughta take the truck,” the young, big cop said to the sheriff.

  “Really?” the sheriff replied.

  “It’s stole, obviously. Oughta impound it.”

  “That’s an idea. That is an idea.”

  If they took the car, the family was in trouble. His wife was right, he should have just hidden the money away. That way, it would have been there when they needed to buy train tickets north. If the cops took the truck, did he have enough left to get north? Maybe enough to get there, but not enough to get there and then find a place to stay, and eat, while searching for a job and setting up their new lives. He’d wanted the truck, wanted it to help with fall harvest and, yes, wanted to show it off. Show the neighbors that he wasn’t a nothing, that he aspired to things, that he had things.

  The biggest mistake he’d made in his life.

  It hadn’t been far from here where the white people had killed Leo Milliner and the man’s wife, too. Story was they hadn’t been doing anything wrong, but a couple of white men had made some remarks about her that her husband hadn’t appreciated. Milliner was a humble man, word was, and smart enough to avoid confrontation, but his wife had been three months pregnant and he’d felt the need to defend her. All he’d done was talk back, a witness claimed, but the white people felt otherwise. Two hours later a pack of whites came for the Milliners at their house, free of witnesses. Beat them both, burned them up. Five months ago, still casting long shadows.

  Lily had left for Atlanta by then, but Otis had sat his two boys down, a good time to remind them of what not to do or say. Yet here he was.

  The sheriff’s hands were back on the door and his face was nearly in the truck again.

  “I’ll ask you one more time. How’d your girl get you that money?”

  Tell the truth, h
e told himself. Tell the truth and let them sort it out.

  But instead, his voice shaking, barely audible, he said, “I don’t know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know.” He felt himself near tears. He put his hands on the wheel to stop them from shaking, though he feared the sheriff would think he was trying to start the truck. “I don’t know what she did. I don’t know.”

  More movement from the back as one of the cops laughed about something. Otis hated the wetness in his eyes and tried to will it away.

  Then Nayler swore, “Goddammit!” He stepped back. The young cop on the other side stepped back, too, and drew his pistol. All Otis could do was hold the wheel tighter.

  “You all right, Sheriff ?” asked one of the cops in back.

  “Goddamn bee,” the sheriff said, shaking his hand. He took his hand to his lips, sucking out the stinger perhaps, or kissing it better.

  Otis was staring wide-eyed at the young cop’s pistol, aimed at his head.

  The sheriff took his hand out of his mouth, spat, and said to the junior cop, “Winston, I’d thank you to put that piece away before you shoot me by mistake.” Winston obeyed. Nayler asked, “You transporting a goddamn hive or something, Otis?”

  Otis tried to assure the white man he had nothing to do with the bee sting.

  Then Nayler called to the cops in the back. “Anything?”

  “Nope.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Damned sorry mess this is. All right. Let’s go.”

  Nayler started walking toward his car.

  Otis didn’t dare look at Winston, whose voice sounded insulted, almost hurt. “That’s it?”

  “C’mon,” the sheriff barked, motioning for his subordinate to join him.

  That’s it? Otis couldn’t believe it either, but one by one the cops got back into their cars, and their flashing lights were turned off. Still, he braced himself for gunshots.

  The cars drove away. No gunfire. No curses. Not even a spit of tobacco juice.