Cion (9 page)

Out of embarrassment that she should be doing all this work for me I offered to help, but she would have none of that. Instead she ordered Obed to take me shopping for clothes at the Kilvert Community Center.

“You gonna scare people in that getup,” she said.

I discovered what it meant to “shop for clothes.” Men’s, women’s and children’s clothes of all types and styles were displayed on rails and on a number of rickety tables on the porch of the smaller of the two buildings that comprise the Kilvert Community Center. Other garments were in piles on the concrete floor. There were also shoes and handbags and old suitcases and cushions and books—all second-hand items donated by philanthropists for distribution to the poor citizens of Kilvert. People are free to come any time of the day or night to select the clothes they want at no charge. I chose the pair of jeans and the black and red check shirt I am wearing today. Obed suggested I take more and assured me that the stuff was free. Those who know me from way back will remember how impossible it was for me to take alms even at the worst of times. People change. Corrupted by the learning that initially happened as a by-product of a foolish quest to find meaning in my mourning, I have changed too. I have had a brush with the world, and therefore am no longer the simple professional mourner of yesteryear. But there is one aspect of me that has not changed: the guilt that eats me for a long time after partaking of the charity of my fellows. I told him that it was not necessary to take more than I really needed. After all, I still had a set of some of my civilian clothes in my suitcase.

On the porch of the main building I could see seven or so brooding elders in a row of seats lining the wall. Among them was Mahlon Quigley. I wondered what occupied their thoughts as they stared vacantly at the blue sky. I would not be surprised if they were lamenting a disappeared utopia as every generation before them has done and every generation after them will do. It is the way of brooding elders the world over, this longing for the “good ol’ days” that never really were.

“You know why they call us WIN people?” asks Obed, bringing me back to the present.

“Oh, is that what you call yourselves?”

“We don’t call ourselves that. Other folks do. Know why? ’Cause we got three bloods in all of us, homeboy. We got the White blood and the Indian blood and the Negro blood. Get it? WIN people. My Indian side is Shawnee. That’s why I tell you this is Shawnee hair. If you look at them pictures you gonna see Harry Corbett had hair like this.”

“But Ruth told me Mr. Corbett was Cherokee,” I say.

Suddenly the man is angry.

“She don’t know nothing, man. She just wanna screw up things for me.”

I am mystified how being Cherokee instead of Shawnee will inconvenience him. In any event there is no difference between Shawnee and Cherokee hair, is there?

“I seen you, man,” he says, still angry. “I seen you conversate with my mama. My mama…she don’t like nobody but you.”

What’s all this sudden bitterness? Can it be that mama’s little big boy is getting jealous? For the rest of the way to Athens he is quiet. Perhaps fuming inside but not showing it outwardly. Mercifully the noisy tortilla chips are finished. Only the burping muffler continues unabated.

The rayless sun now looks like a giant moon in a silver-gray sky.

The meeting takes place in the tiny office of the Athens County Mediation Council on the third floor of a Court Street building. Beth Eddy sits on a sofa directly facing me and Obed. We are sitting in easy chairs. A coffee table separates our territories. She looks quite different from the slip of a girl in sleepwear that I saw on the night of the parade of creatures. This time she decided to respect the occasion with a black pants suit that has a long jacket, possibly reaching her mid-thigh when she is standing. The blouse is white and maybe silk or some synthetic material that pretends to be silk. Her feet are shod in black closed-toe pumps. This office outfit tells me that she takes her appearance before the mediation council seriously. She is petite, yes, but she looks fearless and confident in her thick spiky brown locks. When we enter the room her clear oval face and big brown eyes return my greetings with a smile. That gives me some hope.

There are two mediators on chairs facing each other: a man and a woman. Both quite mature and gray. Both friendly and informal in their attire of jeans and T-shirts. Each has a number of loose sheets on a clipboard. Occasionally they jot down notes. They smile a lot, even at Obed. Hopefully that will make him feel at ease. He is a bit uncomfortable when he first sees Beth. He becomes even more fidgety when he sees the grinning face of the male mediator. It is before the woman’s arrival. I wonder why the man seems to give him the jitters and I pat his back, asking him to relax. He whispers his problem to me when the man goes out to get pop from a vending machine on the first floor: he had a terrible encounter with the man some years back. More than twenty years ago, in fact. The man used to work at Kroger. Obed had previously learned from his father that he—Mahlon, that is—used to steal bottles at the back of the store where they were kept and then sell them at the front. Those were the days when pop came in real bottles, not plastic, and one was paid two cents for every bottle returned to the store. Little Obed, hoping that history would repeat itself and in the process enrich him, gathered bottles from the Dumpster behind the store and attempted to sell them at the front, as his daddy had done before him. It didn’t register in his little greedy mind that pop bottlers had long since gone for non-returnable bottles. The man shooed him away. Angry at being denied his God-given right to participate in the capitalist system, Obed dumped a garbage bag full of pop bottles on the floor of the store and dashed away for his life. But he could not outrun the man. Soon he caught up with him. “Yeah, he beat the shit out of me,” whispered Obed. “You could beat the crap out of kids back in them days and nobody would say nothing.”

Now his fear is that the man will be prejudiced against him. But the man does not seem to remember him. He is all smiles as we all introduce ourselves to one another. After realizing that I really did not have a direct role in the events in question he says that only the parties involved in the dispute should be in the room. I cannot sit in to support Obed since Beth has no one to support her. It would not be true mediation with supporters and advocates in attendance. I am about to leave and wait for Obed outside when Beth tells the mediators that she does not mind my presence. She, in fact, pleads that I stay. I know. It is the result of the talk we had yesterday. She sees me more as her support system than Obed’s.

The man explains the mediation process. It is not a trial. Mediators are not judges. They merely serve as neutral and impartial guides to enable the conflicting parties to reach a solution that is acceptable to both parties. Theirs is not to establish guilt or innocence. Theirs is to help the disputing parties reach some kind of reconciliation. This will not be forced on the parties; the parties themselves must work toward finding an acceptable solution. All decisions reached through this process will be the disputing parties’ and not the mediators’. Everything said in this room will remain in this room. We therefore must share our ideas freely and respect confidentiality.

“We all hope that by the end of the process Obed and Beth will reach an agreement,” says the man. “But even before we start the process we need to reach our first agreement: we are going to listen to one another, aren’t we?”

Both Obed and Beth agree that indeed they are going to listen to each other.

The mediators display great excitement at this, but I suspect they are faking it. The woman says, “You see, it shows that we are capable of agreeing on something.”

This gives me hope that Obed will cooperate and forget all ideas of “walking.” But I am wrong. After the mediators ask the parties to tell their stories, and when Beth gets to the point where she switches on the light and spots the cowering flesh-and-blood Nicodemus, Obed shouts that it was not him. He was never anywhere near the sorority house that day. In fact, he does not even know where the sorority house in question is located. In any case, he goes on with his rant, how does Beth know it was not the real Nicodemus who fondled her breasts? Where does she get off blaming a poor man just because he is poor and is not white and is not from the university?

Beth is astounded. She starts to weep and the female mediator hands her a box of tissues. I spring to my feet and, begging the mediators’ pardon, drag Obed out. In the passageway I tell him how disappointed I am in him: “Do you think you can just piss on all the trouble I took to get this girl to agree to withdraw the case if we have mediation? I tell you, if you continue this way I will not be in your corner anymore and for sure you will find yourself in jail.”

We return to the room and Beth is able to complete her story without further interruption. The woman mediator is curious to know why she wants mediation in what should rightly be a criminal case…why she doesn’t let the police and the courts handle the matter. Beth tells her that she could feel the sincerity in my voice when I begged her to withdraw the case and believed me when I said the young man had no evil intentions. Now that she has heard Obed’s denial she will not withdraw the case and doesn’t see the point of the mediation. The man suggests that perhaps Beth and I should have a private talk to decide whether the mediation should be salvaged or not. He gives us thirty minutes. The woman is not pleased with these repeated attempts to save Obed’s ass, as she delicately puts it. She is obviously disgusted with him and would like to see him rot in the county jail where he rightly belongs. I must admit that I share her disgust, though I think I must not give up on him just yet. Otherwise what am I going to tell Ruth?

I suggest to Beth that we go to a coffee house downstairs and see if we can sort this matter out, without Obed. I ask him to wait in the hallway and not dare go anywhere until we come back.

Over steaming mocha I once more plead with her to withdraw the case and continue with the mediation. She admits that she is more inclined to withdraw the charges because she hates the adverse publicity that will surely follow court appearances. However she will definitely brave the publicity if Obed refuses to show remorse. Already she is taking a lot of flak from some of her sisters for even considering withdrawing the charges. If the breast fondler gets off free, they argue, that will help perpetuate sexual assaults on women, which have increased in the city lately.

I feel very sorry for Beth Eddy. She looks fragile and all the confidence I’d seen earlier has disappeared. She confesses that she feels partly responsible for what happened. She went down to the basement to provoke the ghost. I can see her anguish and this makes me mad at Obed. I am no longer interested in persuading her to withdraw the case, and I tell her so. She must not be scared of publicity, I now argue, because she is the victim here. The press will be sympathetic to her and will expose Obed for the scoundrel he is. Yes, Ruth will find out about it and will be unhappy with me for not letting her know in the first place. But really Obed does need to learn a lesson. I am sick of his attitude: his lack of appreciation for the trouble I took to set this up and for Beth’s readiness to forgive.

It is Beth’s turn to talk me out of the case. There was a rape in Athens a few weeks ago, she tells me. It was in the papers every day and the case dragged on and on, with lawyers questioning the reputation of the victim. She doesn’t want to go through that. She fears that her reputation will be tainted by the revelation that the girls enjoy playing naughty games with the real Nicodemus. Lawyers always manage to dig up such scandals. She can do without the publicity. After all, she was not actually raped. The scoundrel merely touched her breasts in the manner that Nicodemus had touched them before…to her pleasure. Yes, the mediation should continue.

“Okay, but if that boy continues with his silly stunts I’ll insist that you do not withdraw the charges,” I tell Beth. And I mean it. “I think it’s high time our breast fondler learned a lesson.”

After this the mediation continues without further incident. I notice that the mediators listen very attentively. After each side has given its story they summarize the key points, all the while complimenting both parties for trying to work out their differences. Obed’s story is a very simple one. Yes, indeed, he went to the sorority in the spirit of the day. He had heard of the ghost of Nicodemus, who had died at the sorority house more than a hundred and fifty years ago, when it was one of the stations of the Underground Railroad. He decided to appropriate Nicodemus’s identity because there were rumours circulating that he haunted the sorority house and the girls enjoyed his company. He thought he would share in the ghost’s good fortune because in any event Nicodemus was his relative who was mercilessly murdered by slave catchers. He really did not have any intention of committing a crime. All he wanted was to scare the girls, and then proceed to the Court Street parades to enjoy the evening.