Four Spirits (58 page)

 

THE BULLHORN VOICE SAID,
“All right. All right. Y'all done good. F.B.I.'s here. F.B.I.'s ready to look at these nonviolent colored people.”

Gloria saw the gray satchel of the newspaper vendor swinging before her eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Let's carry these people out of here.”

HOLDING EDDIE AND HONEY BY THEIR LITTLE HANDS, TJ
led the boys from the parked car toward Joseph Coat-of-Many-Colors Church. He registered the poverty of this church, an abandoned shoe box house, with a crude pyramid made of plywood mounted on the flat roof as a steeple. Not even a cross on top. When TJ and the children passed inside, he saw a cross on the altar table. The cross was two rusty concrete rebars wired together.

Because the aisle was narrow, Agnes and Diane walked behind TJ and the boys. This was Charles Powers's old church, and it was at his mother's request that the service would be here.

Of course the people would burst the seams of the building if they all tried to crowd in here, but it was way early now, and TJ knew people would not shove in but stand all around, in the churchyard and in the gravel streets. They would sort themselves out in the slots between the houses, all of them mere cabins or a few shotgun houses as poor as this one converted into a church. This early, only a few people sat inside scattered on the backless, gray-painted benches.

Joseph Coat-of-Many-Colors. Here the windows were not the color-infused glass shattered at Sixteenth Street. Here the glass was simple window-pane, painted thinly with house paint, a checkerboard of many rectangular colors. TJ appraised the workmanship. The paint on the glass—red, yellow, blue, frank colors—had been applied with care. Nothing slapdash. The bristles
of the brush had left their straight, vertical marks, and through these narrow streaks in the colors came the sunshine.

The coffins had already arrived. Four of them. Closed, thank God. Against his will, TJ saw again the little Korean girl, coffined only by the steep sides of a ditch, naked with most of her body burned black and crisp by a flamethrower. Her straight black hair, her forehead and open eyes were untouched. She wore her hair in bangs. TJ closed his eyes, but eyes open or closed, he could not bring down the shade on that memory. From behind, Agnes was touching him. Maybe she'd seen him flinch his eyes closed, tight as a fist closing. Maybe she thought he flinched at the sight of the four coffins. Agnes had known all four of them from night school—Christine Taylor, Arcola Anderson, and their friend, the crippled white girl, and her fellow student Charles Powers.

The coffins matched, each upholstered in gray cloth, and TJ wondered which was which. He saw a boy holding to the end of one coffin. He had his arms around it, as well as he could get them around it. His cheek rested on the gray cloth, and he was crying sideways onto the upholstering. His mother stood there sniffling, one light-toned baby up in her arms and three others, a girl about nine and two little dark fellows whose hands were held by their big sister. Somebody had given the little boys, younger than Honey, tiny green bow ties to clip under their chins. TJ touched his own bow tie. The mother was fighting back her tears, but the boy, maybe seven or eight, who embraced the coffin wore his pain on his face. His tears flowed unabated, and TJ's tears began to flow in sympathy.

“I believe that must be Charles's family,” Agnes whispered and nodded. “Here's Gloria.”

TJ was startled: Gloria had green eyes like a white person. She said the coffin next to the Powers family was Christine's. TJ didn't sob, but his eyes wept steady streams of tears.

Gloria stood beside TJ and Agnes and the children. All of them looked at the coffins, the pulpit, and the altar table where four red roses stood in a brass vase in front of the pulpit. No other flowers. On the table, a white cardboard sign folded like a tent read: “Memorial donations accepted for Freedom Groups.”

Sitting off to the side were four white people. Two young ladies, and a man who looked like a movie star, all tan, with wavy light hair. A broken-down, work-weary white man, not too old, old before his time, took a wrinkled handkerchief from the side pocket of his shabby suit and blew his nose.

“After you've gone up,” Gloria said, “I'll introduce you to Cat's brother. He came back home from the Peace Corps for the funeral, and her father.” She spoke sympathetically but businesslike. “And that's Stella. She was a teacher, with us.” Yes, TJ had seen her through the classroom window that hot night before he was beaten.

Somebody began to play the piano softly. TJ was surprised the church had a piano. When he looked over at it, Agnes explained that Mr. Parrish had had the piano trucked over from the college. A white man with red hair was playing softly. Five white people.

TJ thought he'd never heard a white man play so sweetly. He wondered if there were going to be a lot of white people there, but he knew better. Not down here in the Quarters where the street wasn't even paved, and it having rained last night. Hell, rain or no rain—none of the power would come, he knew that. TJ wished the city would send a representative. Just one official white man.

“Let's go on up,” Agnes said quietly, and they led the children to the coffin.

“This is your mama's last bed,” Agnes explained to the children. TJ couldn't say a word. He squeezed the hands of the little boys. Diane began to cry first, and then Eddie and Honey. “She wants you to kiss her box,” Agnes said, sobbing, “and tell her good-bye.”

TJ let go of the boys' hands, even though he hated to, even for a second. Though Agnes set Diane free to be with her mama, she kept on talking to the children. Standing behind the younguns, Agnes told them about how in heaven Christine was loving them and would always love them. How they could always find her in their hearts. After a while, Agnes moved closer and touched their shoulders, and told them that their mama had planned ahead for them, planned should anything ever happen to herself, TJ and Agnes LaFayt would take care of them and love them. “And we do,” Agnes said. “Now let's go sit down, and just think about your mama, and hold her in our hearts.”

TJ could hardly bear it. He thought he'd rather been beat to death than have this happen.
Suffer the little children
—what had Jesus meant saying something like that? Then Gloria asked him how was he feeling, and he got his voice again. Her eyes were pretty and kind, even if they were green, and she looked right into him, like she knew how bad he was hurting, and she was hurting too. To TJ, the young woman seemed remarkably calm. Not uncaring. No, she cared.

TJ knew he looked a sight with the lump still on his forehead, but it didn't show up as bad as it would have if he'd had gauze on it. His pant leg covered up the swelling on his leg.

Here came three white people in wheelchairs, and a blind man with a white cane with a red tip. The movie star man, the brother, got up to greet them. He led the blind man up the two steps to the coffin on the far right, and the blind man's eyes rolled up as he touched the gray cloth and moved his lips. So that was the coffin that held the crippled white girl. One after the other, the brother was picking up the handicapped people out of their chairs, marching up the altar steps holding them in his arms, and letting them stretch their hands down to touch the coffin. Then he carried them back to their wheelchairs.

The movie star was a compact man, but TJ knew he must be awful strong to tote them so easily. One woman and one man were just thin little people, but one of the handicapped women was plump and wore a tight black dress and a black hat with a few black feathers—she was a fashion plate. After the wavy-headed man got her out of the chair, he had to hitch her up higher, the way you did with something heavy, though it was hard on the back. Dangling in the air, her plump feet looked swollen where the black patent leather high-heeled shoe cut into her hose. Long ago, TJ had watched how feet dangled, when he gave up his white buddy. When somebody pulled him away from TJ's chest, hitched Stonewall up in his arms, and carried him away to put in a bag.

Suddenly TJ sobbed convulsively. And there was Agnes's arm around his shoulders, and he made himself stop for the children's sake. He wished he'd worn his army uniform though. Even if it was a bit tight now. He looked again for the feet of the plump, crippled white woman. There she was, in black, sitting in her shiny wheelchair. Her feet were pale and clean, rising like biscuit dough around the curve of her black pumps.

The fourth coffin had to hold the young woman, Arcola Anderson, but her folks weren't here yet. Still the pews were starting to fill up with the early birds. The piano man kept playing, softly and well. It was comforting to know who was inside which coffin. TJ's gaze traveled up the two steps, and for a moment he dwelt with each of them: the young man, Charles Powers, on his far left, with the wet spot where the little brother had cried; then Christine; then came the pulpit surrounded by three chairs covered in threadbare red velvet, and on the
other side, it was Arcola Anderson, and then the white girl, Cat, inside the coffin on the far end.

Starting to get hot, TJ thought, and he knew what with the rain last night, it would soon be awful humid, too. Hot as August. Somebody else was thinking the same, because men all around were lifting up the windows. Raising the painted windows was like taking off a mask. Now anybody could clearly see how run-down this neighborhood was, and TJ felt ashamed that it was such a poor place. He and Agnes had a good house in a former white section, not a Quarters house. Still, he glimpsed some zinnias or marigolds here and there around somebody's doorstep. Nothing like Agnes's expensive dahlias, all shapes and sizes, looking like fireworks and sparklers in front of their porch.

Straight through an open window, a honeybee flew in. It buzzed directly to one of the roses on the altar and disappeared for a moment into the heart of the red flower. TJ nudged Agnes. “Lookie,” he said.

They were sitting close together now, what with the crowd congregating, and he could feel Agnes's side expand, almost like a chuckle.

“I know,” she said. “Here they come.” She did chuckle, just once. Three more bees flew in, straight to the altar. Each bee had its own half-opened rose. All through the service, TJ would watch them, how they crawled around the petals, ducked inside, fretted the golden centers with their feet.

“They say your heart got four chambers,” TJ whispered to Agnes.

She just smiled and nodded, clasped his hand.

Now he took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped his forehead of the sweat and his cheeks of his tears. Over the wound on his forehead, he just patted tenderly. Every child there, even the tot in Charles Powers's mother's arms, was well behaved and nicely dressed, but they seemed sealed in grief and pain. Heat and humidity and the smell of dying leaves had already invaded the church.

To help the time pass till the service, TJ made himself think the words to the melodies the piano played.

When he started feeling faint, he took out the individually wrapped peppermint pinwheels from his pocket and gave one each to Agnes, Diane, Eddie, and Honey. Agnes had Honey stand up and sit between them. Now each child sat next to an adult. From inside all their mouths, TJ heard the peppermints clacking softly against their teeth and small slurping sounds.

The church was full before Arcola's parents came in. Her father burst in like
a steam locomotive. He ran down the aisle and threw himself sobbing on his daughter's coffin. His wife tried to lead him away, and Gloria went up to help, too, pulling gently at his shoulders. Finally Gloria leaned her face down next to his ear and whispered something long. Then he straightened up, and Gloria calmly led the parents to a reserved space close to their daughter's coffin; TJ watched them settle across from him and his. The man had lost his only child, and God had given three to TJ, all in the same hour.

I WATCH THE REVEREND MR. LIONEL PARRISH, MY BOSS,
come in behind the altar, through a little door I never noticed existed. Appropriately, it is a “Christian” door, one with a raised cross in the upper portion, and below it, two sections suggest an open Bible. From the outside, the minister enters dramatically, with a flash of the ordinary world behind him. I remember that day when the face of Christ was blown away and the ordinary sky presented itself. Mr. Parrish's right hand is done up in a big white bandage, which all can see, and Mr. Parrish uses it to wipe his forehead. All can see the sign of recent violence, but I see the splatter of blood blooming out of the bare palm when, at the White Palace, he raised his hand in prayer. From my safe place between the stems of the stools, I saw the bullet enter his raised palm. Now the gauze bandage is pristine white, and I must focus on this place and this time.

I turn to see if Mr. Parrish's wife and children are here. And there they are, nearly halfway back. His wife, Jenny, has the saddest face I have ever seen. Not torn with pain, like Arcola's father or little Edmund Powers. Just sad. The resignation I have seen so often on the faces of my people, here intensified. Her face looks carved. Jenny Parrish sits with their four children, two on each side of her. The youngest are close to her sides.

It is a long way between me and where Jenny is. This was a four-room shotgun house, but all the walls have been removed, a few supports left standing. I look back the length of the house, with the dividing walls removed. From the platform, Mr. Parrish is signaling at me. He wants me to sit in one of the three
chairs with him, close to Christine, who was my friend. But they were all my friends. He wanted Stella to sit up there, too, but she has said she can't, that she doesn't deserve to, so one chair will remain empty.

Stella sits close to her living friend, Nancy.

There is Sam West from school walking toward the front. He's wearing a sports jacket and nice pants. He approaches Stella and kneels in front of her. “You doin' all right?” he asks her, but he looks over her head and not into her eyes. Still, it's remarkable that he's gone down to greet her. I can't hear what she says because she's facing the front. He shows her a fan he has in his hand. “You get too hot”—he's looking sideways—“give me the sign. I come fan you, Miss Silver.”

She holds out her hand to him. At first he doesn't see it, then he jumps a little and shakes hands.

For the first time, he looks in her eyes. “We thank you for coming,” he says. “I don't know what to say.” He shakes his head back and forth and looks down. “I so sad about all this. Charles was my bes' friend.”

She nods, but he is looking at the floor. Then he straightens up and walks back to his seat.

One by one, Cat's brother carries her friends to her coffin to say good-bye. Once, Cat told me, he carried her all the way up Vulcan to see the view.

I walk up the two steps and take my place on the platform.

Now I look out at a sea of faces, all black. Way in the back, I see Dee, Christine's sister. I will her to come forward, but she doesn't budge. I go down from the platform to fetch her. My mama and my four aunts, dressed in dark clothes, watch me, but my father's hand covers his whole face. When Dee sees me coming, she shakes her head
no
. I stop. I glance at my mama, and with two motions of her head, she tells me to let Dee be and that after the service she will take care of Dee. I return to the platform.

The only white people here are the ones I know, clustered close to the front, and Cat's white handicapped friends. No, here comes a white man I don't know. He is extremely well dressed, in a light gray suit. It even has a matching vest and a fine gray silk tie. His hair is white, but it looks a little creamy, like butter frosting set off by the gray suit. He wears shiny glasses, and he has his mouth tucked tight and grim, as though he's afraid of crying.

Everybody is looking at him as he makes his way down the aisle. But he doesn't walk importantlike. He walks quickly, rather bravely, just to say “I'm here.”

Stella looks back, sees him, and is surprised. She scoots sideways, crowding the others, to make room, so he can sit next to her.

Later I find out that this is Mr. Fielding, who owns the big department store where Stella works at the switchboard. Later I learn what he is whispering into Stella's ear: “I'm here to be with you, young lady. Like your father would be, if he could.”

Now Mr. Parrish rises to begin the service. He will speak, and we will answer, as in a responsive reading. He speaks quietly.