A Jar Full of Light

by Rae Walsh

  Sheldon looked from Raj to the can in front of him, and back to Raj.

  "It says black beans," Raj added helpfully.

  Sheldon scowled. "Thanks," he said. "Considerate of you. But let me as you a question. Have you ever had a problem with 'eyes?'"

  Raj stared at him. "Do you mean, do I need glasses? Like you might want to look into?"

  "No, do you worry about eyes looking at you?"

  "How else would people look at me?" Now Raj looked alarmed.

  Sheldon sighed, tapping his index finger against his forehead. He had a raging headache. "Never mind. Did you have a question?"

  Raj nodded, snapping his fingers. "Yes! Sorry, there's a customer here with a complaint."

  "You can handle complaints now, you know," Sheldon said with another sigh.

  "I tried that," Raj answered. "But he only wanted to talk to you."

  Sheldon lifted an eyebrow at that. Strange. He handed Raj his clipboard and walked to the customer service desk slowly. To his surprise, the person standing there was Daniel.

  "Daniel?" he asked, puzzled. "Do you have a complaint?" Only after he spoke did he see how pale Daniel was. His hands were jammed in his pockets, his light brown hair sticking up, what looked like a few days of beard growth on his face.

  "A complaint? No," he said, looking confused. "I needed to talk to you, and you weren't in your office, so I asked your new manager where you were."

  Sheldon turned to look at Raj, who had followed with the clipboard. He smiled, unabashed. "He said he wanted to talk to you," Raj said, "and he looked upset. I assumed it was a complaint."

  Sheldon started to say something, then gave it up, shaking his head. "What do you need, Danny?" he asked. "Oh, and Raj, you can go finish counting that stock." Raj walked off, muttering about his college degree.

  "Can we talk in your office?" Daniel asked. Sheldon took a closer look at him. No, Daniel was not doing well. He looked shaken.

  Sheldon led the way to his office and shut the door after Daniel came in behind him. Daniel looked out of place in Sheldon's cluttered, antique-filled little office. He wore a plaid flannel shirt and a pair of Carhartt work pants, his hands were still in his pockets, and his shoulders were bunched up around his ears. Sheldon patted Daniel on the shoulder, and he flinched, hard, banging his elbow on the door.

  "What's going on?" Sheldon asked. "Whatever it is, I promise we'll make it okay." You thought you could fix things, he heard Theresa say again. Did he really do that? Always? Ugh. "I mean, just tell me what's going on. It doesn't have to be okay."

  "I don't think it can be okay," Daniel said. "The vandal struck again this morning. Someone spray-painted horrible, racist things on George and Mercy's office building. They used the ’n’ word and called Mercy a monkey." Daniel shuddered. He looked as though he might cry.

  "What?" Sheldon felt the blood drain from his face. "I have to go over there."

  "I just have to finish telling you…" Daniel said. "The police came and questioned me this morning, Shel. I swear to you, I didn't do it. I would never. But they're watching me. The bank CCTV caught it. The vandal is wearing a ski mask, but he looks like me—my height and weight, and he's wearing black boots like mine. But Sheldon. It wasn't me."

  Daniel's eyes were tortured, rimmed with pink, with dark shadows underneath. Sheldon reached out, and this time Daniel didn't flinch as Sheldon patted him on the arm. Sheldon changed his mind and pulled his old friend into a hug.

  After a moment, he stood back and looked at him. "I believe you. We'll work this out. Right now, let's go talk to George and Mercy."

  "I can't," Daniel said. Sheldon started to reassure him, but Daniel shook his head.

  "No, the police say that because I'm a suspect, I can't go near the law office, or even near George and Mercy. This is a hate crime."

  Sheldon's stomach dropped, and he felt as though he might throw up. George and Mercy had been through too much. How could this have happened to them?

  "You go," Daniel said. "Give George my love. Tell him that I would never do this. Not in a million years."

  "I will," Sheldon said. He was out the front door in a flash, jogging up Aveline's main street. The Jacksons' law office wasn't far, and soon Sheldon could see a small crowd was gathered on the sidewalk outside. His throat tightened as he felt the urgency of getting to his friends. It was another ridiculously sunny day, unsuitable for the rage that was building inside Sheldon's ribcage. Francisco, George, and Mercy stood huddled together just in front of the stairs, a little way from a cluster of policemen. Sheldon could tell that his friends were praying. As he drew near, a car squealed to a halt, swiftly parallel parked, and Faith jumped out, running straight to her parents, into their arms. Francisco stepped back to give the family a moment, and Sheldon went to stand beside him. Francisco had been crying, Sheldon could see.

  "I just heard," Sheldon said.

  "How?" Francisco wanted to know.

  "Daniel," Sheldon told his friend. "He's rattled. The police are circling him."

  "It wouldn't be the first time I've made a bad judgment call in my desire to think the best," Francisco said. He gave Sheldon a long look. "Do you think it was him?"

  Sheldon looked at Francisco, startled. "You're wondering if Daniel wrote that?" he asked, gesturing at the ugly words on the building. They were so violent, so hateful. So uncaring of what the family had gone through, losing their son, never getting justice, and the sheer volume of hate mail they'd received for attempting to press charges. "How could you ask that?"

  "From what I know of Daniel, he couldn't," Francisco said. "But, I'm confused." He nodded his head toward the other end of the street. "Here comes your lady."

  "My what?" And then Sheldon turned his head, and Theresa was there. As distraught as Sheldon was, she still took his breath away. He felt winded, as though he'd run a lot farther than two blocks. Her long hair was woven into two braids, and she wore red leggings and a long black coat. Her face was a mixture of rage and sorrow.

  "I don't want to interrupt them," she said, not bothering with greetings, "but I really want to give them a hug."

  "Give them a few minutes," Francisco said. "You're close to Daniel, right, Theresa? Do you think he would do this?"

  Sheldon couldn't believe how much Theresa's face changed in just a few moments. She turned to Francisco, her small face pale and afraid, her lips pressed tight.

  "I'm going to say this very, very clearly," she said. "I know with every part of me that Daniel did not do this. He would never. It wasn't him. It's wrong for you to doubt him," she looked back and forth between Sheldon and Francisco, and Sheldon wanted to protest that he hadn't doubted him, but when he looked deep inside himself, he knew it wasn't entirely true. There was a tiny part of Sheldon that wasn't sure. Theresa gazed fiercely at them for a moment longer, then walked over to Mercy, who had stepped back from hugging Faith. Mercy turned and opened her arms. Theresa walked into them and hugged her hard.

  "Two things," Francisco said. "One is that I really like her, Sheldon. Look how she doesn't even hesitate to walk into a tricky situation and give a hug. The other is, how can she be that positive… unless…?"

  "Unless?"

  "Unless she knows who did it."

  Sheldon looked at Francisco, his eyes wide.

  "You think…what? You think she might know who's doing this?"

  Sheldon turned to watch Theresa—his small, mighty friend who pulled and pushed at him at the same time. Sheldon’s thoughts whirled. She had left Aveline so suddenly, all those years ago. She often seemed afraid.

  "We're calling a town meeting," a voice said. Sheldon came back from his thoughts to see George. Sheldon clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. He didn't know what to say. He felt like anything he did say would intrude on something he couldn't understand.

  "I'm sorry, George," he said finally. "I'm sorry people are like this."

  George nodded once and rubbed at his forehead. "Meet at the church at seven o'cl
ock," he said. "Everyone should be there."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The rest of the day dragged. Sheldon tried to focus on work, but it was as though his brain cells had been muffled with a large, ugly scarf. At the same time, his mind couldn’t rest. He saw the words on the Jackson’s office building, Faith’s pinched lips as she stepped out of the car, the way George looked as though he had been punched. He saw Theresa’s pale, fierce face.

  He would never. It wasn’t him. How could Reesey possibly know that? Was she guessing? Or was Francisco right? Did Theresa know who was defacing the walls of Aveline with hate speech? If she did, why hadn’t she told anyone?

  Sheldon paced. He tried to take deep, calming breaths. Pacing and breathing did nothing to slow his thoughts. He glanced at his watch. Six o’clock. Finally. He left Raj in charge and walked up to his apartment, feeling like an old man. He had just enough time to eat before the town meeting. He sautéed vegetables with a few cubes of tofu, reheating a bowl of rice from the day before. He sat down at his table and looked at his window, already dark. All he could see was the reflection of his kitchen and his tired face, pale in the light of the pendant lamp above his table.

  You did this last time. Thought you could fix it.

  It was too hard to love Theresa. He ate without tasting his food, washed his dishes, and went to the coat rack by his front door. He pulled down a dark brown pea coat and herringbone scarf. He flipped the pea coat so that it flared out as he put it on, tied the scarf around his neck, and gently pulled a fedora onto his aching head. At the last minute, he added a walking stick. He didn’t know why he was arming himself with accessories. He only knew that he had to if he was going to make it to the meeting.

  A memory, a whiff of remembrance.

  Sheldon was around seven or eight. Sitting on the floor of the shelter with his dad, crying. His father talking.

  “Mom is very, very sick,” he said. “That’s why she’s in the hospital.”

  “Was it her sickness that made her scream?” he asked his dad.

  “Yes,” his dad said. “It was.”

  When they got their apartment, years later, the rooms were bare. At first, Sheldon and his dad didn’t even have chairs. When they did get chairs, there were only two, and they didn’t match. Sheldon slept on a stack of blankets on the floor. His dad was worn out at night when he finally got home from work. They didn’t talk about Sheldon’s mom much anymore. Sheldon read library books on his pile of blankets in the long, lonely evenings. One bright day, Sheldon’s dad told him that he had got a job in a nearby town called Aveline.

  “We’re going to move there,” he said. “I’ll be the janitor at the university.”

  “Will we have furniture?” Sheldon wanted to know.

  “Is that really your first question?” his dad asked, laughing, reaching out to ruffle Sheldon’s hair.

  Sheldon looked down at his hands.

  “You want furniture pretty badly, don’t you?” Sheldon’s dad asked softly.

  “Yes,” Sheldon said simply. He couldn’t explain what was in his heart, which was that his mother had made pillows into a nest for Sheldon, for him to read beside her on the couch every night before she had got so sick and started screaming and pulling her hair out and set a fire, and the police had taken her away that night.

  Sheldon liked the new town. He liked their new apartment. And he loved the lake.

  One night his dad woke him up, late. “Come on, kid. We’re going to get some furniture.”

  As they drove down to the university, Sheldon got worried. “Why are we getting furniture in the middle of the night? We’re not stealing it, are we?”

  His dad laughed. “Of course not, silly,” he said. “All the students are leaving for the summer, and they throw their stuff out, so they don’t have to move it. We’re doing a good deed if we rescue a few unwanted things and give them a home.” He parked the truck and got out.

  Sheldon flinched at the idea of people just throwing their possessions away. He ran to keep up with his dad.

  They found a lot of great stuff—nearly perfect things that took Sheldon’s breath away. They piled the furniture into their pickup, moving quietly, so no one would wake up and say, “Hey, why are you stealing our trash?”

  They found two beanbag chairs, perfect for making nests. A small table. (Like it was made for us, Sheldon’s dad said.) Two wooden chairs. The chairs matched. Dishes. And best of all, a bookshelf.

  On second thought, Sheldon thought, standing in front of his coat rack, he wanted his silver-tipped walking stick, the one he only used for special occasions.

  He went to fetch it from his bedroom and looked around at his apartment, filled with things he had rescued. Maybe Theresa was right. Maybe he was always trying to fix things. And maybe it would never work.

  Sheldon was conscious of a tight pain around his sternum as he jogged toward the church, a little late now. The memory had nearly wiped him out.

  The sanctuary was nearly full, and it smelled like incense. Sheldon looked around, and though he saw Sam, Katie, Dorothy, and Maddie, he didn’t see Theresa. He sat beside Maddie at the end of the pew.

  “Where’s your mom?” he whispered.

  Maddie shrugged. “She wasn’t having a very good night,” she said. “So, she stayed home to throw pots.” Maddie shot him a look. “Stuff like this is hard for her. Meetings and scary things like racism.”

  “Yeah,” Sheldon told her, “but she was the first one today to give Mercy a hug. After Faith, of course. She runs straight into scary things sometimes, which is very brave.”

  Maddie’s face cleared, and she dabbed at her eyes quickly with the backs of her hands.

  “Maybe you should tell Sam that,” she said. “He was pretty hard on her for not coming.”

  Looking along the pew, Sheldon could see that Katie’s arms were crossed over her chest, and Sam’s jaw was clenched. “Oh, dear,” Sheldon said. Maddie shifted, a half-smile on her face.

  Then Francisco stood up and began to speak.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “All right, friends,” the reverend said from his place behind the pulpit. “We have serious work ahead of us. Something insidious has taken up residence in our town,” he said. “Something that wants to threaten the haven this place has become.”

  “Well, it’s to be expected, isn’t it?” called a man in the back row. “With your big plans for this place.”

  Sheldon groaned.

  “Thanks, Rich, we all know your opinion on immigrants,” Sam shouted, half rising out of his seat, and Sheldon leaned forward and popped his eyes at his friend. What on earth? Sam knew better than to feed trolls. Katie put a hand on Sam’s arm. Sheldon peered back at Rich, who was sitting next to Lenny. The two of them slouched in the pew, arms crossed over their chests, body language saying that they didn’t feel they needed to be there.

  “We know who did it,” said Cam, from his spot across the aisle from Sheldon. “It’s that creepy postal worker. He’s always been a weirdo, and we let him continue looking through our mail, hands all over our stuff. We need to get rid of him.”

  Sheldon was surprised at Cam. He’d never heard him talk this way before. “Cam,” he said, “first of all, Daniel’s not creepy. But more importantly, innocent until proven guilty, right?”

  “What else do we need?” Rich asked. “We have footage.”

  “We have footage of a person wearing a ski mask!” Sam shouted.

  Oh my, Sam was in a shouty mood tonight.

  George stood. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves.” He took a breath. “I’m not even sure that identifying the perpetrator is the main thing right now. I feel that most of all, we need to recognize that this evil thing, the racism that has dogged our steps for hundreds of years, is with us today. And it will continue to be with us unless we eradicate it.” He had fallen into his lilting tone, half pastor, half lawyer, and the people in the church were silent, transfixed. “What does that mean for u
s? What does it mean for the people we are inviting to live here with us? What does it mean for the most vulnerable among us?”

  George was middle-aged, not very tall, and wore his hair shaved close to his head to disguise his balding. But he looked fierce and powerful as he faced them.

  “Perhaps our family was mistaken to think we were coming somewhere safer than the place we left. Or that the memories of Zion’s death would be less painful here. But I don’t think we were wrong to assume that in this place we can form a shelter of agreement. That we can support each other. Maybe if we can start by admitting the wrong in ourselves, we can rid ourselves of this evil.” He smoothed his left hand over his shirt, a gesture Sheldon had seen him make hundreds of times. Sheldon had tears in his eyes. “I want to tell you, my friends, that if you are under any delusion that this is the exception, that this has nothing to do with you, you are wrong. The evil of racism has stirred against my brothers and sisters since the beginning of this country. It has never ceased biting at our heels, and we are tired. We need you. We need our dear friends to help us.”

  He blinked, seeming to come back to himself. He grinned. “Sorry,” he said, “You can take the man out of the courtroom, but you can’t take the courtroom out of the man.”

  There was laughter in the room and then cheers, mostly from Sheldon’s pew and Carlo, who was always loud, everywhere. A few of Aveline’s other black citizens called out, “Thank you!” and “Amen!”

  Francisco gave George a hug. Sheldon sat in his pew and thought about his own casual belief that racism couldn’t touch them here. “Look at us!” he had thought to himself. “We have a Salvadorian pastor, a pair of black lawyers, and a hundred professors of different races.”

  And yet, here it was. Hate building up, reaching out to strike at them all. Sheldon felt a sudden wave of exhaustion, but then he looked up and caught Mercy’s tired, traumatized eyes. She gave him a slight smile and shake of her head, and he dipped his head, remembering.