Solemn (35 page)

Fires: arson for insurance and orneriness and jilted lovers' returns to peaceful sleep. Robberies: for drugs, alcohol, rent, Christmas, boredom. That kidnapping of a woman whose pimp offered her up to his superiors, for a balance unmet and unattempted after one ho fought him all the way to the altar. The missing boy who walked to the town square for a marriage license, last seen in argument with uncles who claimed he never paid for copper he mistook as a wedding present. The cat lady who found one of two dozen she fed, not run off for a winter return but instead staked on her gatepost with no neighbors talking. A few wives who showed up with slashes at their jaws and breastbones for some husband who was too drunk to stand up or sit down for questioning. The petty store owners who could not find the hirees they had given a chance, once the cash registers broke loose. The relatives of children smacked into oblivion by parents who had issues the relatives could no longer turn a blind eye to. The crossing guards at a few busy stops in town who noted the plate numbers of one too many cars that raced through their open palms. The dog fighters who had not known it was illegal so expected payment for bloody wins and shallow graves. The ladies sudsing scalps past midnight, who gave an entire week's take to masked boys come through the beauty parlor doors with knives over squeaky voices. The property owners tired of junky cars parked on inches of their religiously tended lawns. The drivers turned bikers or walkers who claimed the mechanic was shadier than the tree they had met him under. The babysitters turned upside down after the fathers of the children came home earlier than they had said at first. The dope dealers—multiplied and multiplying.

And, a baby found in the well of a trailer park people rarely complained about or from. A gal catatonic on the road after the baby's mother made the complaint, about a man wearing the same scarf the gal held. A couple out there claim the gal carried their daughter off to be witched and cursed by a stormy accident. The gal's sister-in-law spilling secrets about one of them whose people refused to leave a black woman's fate burlesqued. And now, despite how nice her parents seemed, the gal touching all this sent damn near to Tennessee for a theft her hands simply could not have carried the entirety of.

Case closed.

Bolden watched his own daughter go off to high school, with her friends coming by, her behind lifting and her breasts falling. Much as he couldn't bring himself to talk to any preacher or shrink about it, Solemn Redvine was one of the faces his black coffee miraged as he got ready for the days. One morning his wife reminded him his workload meant he hadn't satisfied her in well over a month, when she rubbed him out of sleep before his alarm buzzed. He was too shaken from dreaming of a running black girl like his daughter to get on top. There were a few instances where he thought the back of a customer's head at the desk was this same girl coming back to ask no questions and barely answer his. He found her dactyloscopy sheet misplaced—he never filed it away—in middle of a
Mississippian
he was just about to throw in the trash.

One Tuesday afternoon, his day off, with a belly full of his wife's Bob Evans sausage and lighter coffee and apple pie breakfast, Bolden showed up at the Redvines' door like a white man with no purpose but control.

It looked different in daylight. The trailer home was calmer now. The nest emptied, the better dishes chipped, the pillows flat, the cat old, the screen door locked. When she heard the patrol car pull up, Bev ceased scolding flies. She answered before Bolden knocked. By now, they seemed to be old friends. Maybe she could have watched him grow up, or he could have watched her grow old. No matter what they were and had been, there was a tendril of trust. And, since it was early afternoon and no one needed anything painted or hauled or fixed, her husband was home matter of fact.

What next?
she thought.

Their phone was cut off. Even privilege to just talk in peace and comfort was gone in the backlash. The cordless beige thing had been a short and sweet luxury. Probably for the best it was gone. Its entourage came by too often, and they never dropped so much as a quarter or a pound cake for their use. Bev could have tried to pick up work here and there, watching kids or braiding hair or sitting seniors, in order to keep the telephone on. Now, telephone rings scared her. She hated surprises. Been too many. So, whatever shit hit the fan these days was messengered straight to the door or handed by the postman or heard on the street. But Bolden did not hesitate or waver, as if he was thinking about it, in getting out of the car. His head up and his walk easy. No bad news.

“Howdy,” Bev said to him.

“Good day,” Bolden said.

“Is it my daughter?” Bev checked in with Fanny O. Barnes every single week, sent off packages and cards, scheduled to give Solemn something to look forward to, like when she had hummed to her belly with Solemn inside. She would have heard.

“Or my son?” He sent her postcards picturing red sand or American flags from Kuwait.

“Oh no, ma'am,” Bolden told her. “I was just in the area for a matter. Stolen car.”

“Whose?”

“You wouldn't know him.”

“We all know each other.”

“How's your daughter, Mrs. Redvine?”

“She's adjusting.”

“Fine,” Bolden said. “Speaking of which, your husband home?”

“I'll go get him for you. Wait here. Oh, and nice of you to check in on us.”

Redvine came to the door with a pillow pattern punched in his face, eyes swollen and crusty. His jeans were lopsided and he hadn't sucked a cough drop to freshen his breath. He never presented himself this way, but these days he was sketchy. So far as he knew, there were no warrants for him anymore, unless one counted talk of the town. The cop was solo and his lights were off. Redvine had meant to get the beer in the morning, but Bev threatened to call Landon if he tried. She was sick of it. Only now it wouldn't be proper of him to offer. The time they could have been friends had passed.

“Hey woman,” he told Bev, “bring us some sweet tea. Real sweet.”

“It ain't cold yet, Redvine,” Bev said. “Give the ice time.”

“How you doing, Detective?” Redvine asked.

“Can't complain,” Bolden said.

“First time we met you was bringing my daughter home. Our hero. Now you got me wondering if I'm on probation.”

Bolden was kind. On an early Tuesday afternoon, folks who worked night were sleep and those who worked day were gone. Those who didn't work at all were gone, too, looking for it. Singer's was a lot more chill these days. People didn't hang out in the yards like they used to. Many had left, gone on up north or farther down south where it was building up, too. The number of empty plots was more than it had been when the Redvines first arrived. White families came in, temporarily, during travel. There was no crowd to see this latest visit of policemen come down to his crook of the world.

Bolden laughed. Redvine came down the steps and fixed up his pants. In the past, he and men had leaned on the Malibu or sat in the lawn chairs Bev propped up. But he sold the chairs to a mother giving her daughter a graduation shindig. The Malibu was gone. Only ladies sat on blankets in the grass. Redvine started to walk to the skinny path in between trailers, away from his wife's ears. Bolden followed him. They walked along just thinking, past where the Longwoods' fig and peach trees were trying to grow back, into the direction of the well.

“Where you wanna begin?” Redvine finally asked.

“At how this should end,” Bolden said.

“Well, you tell me.”

“Your girl draw a lot of commotion to her, it seems. I was just wondering how alone in that she was. It's been on my mind.”

“Solemn been dramatic since the day she was born,” Redvine answered. “She made us think she was a boy until she was damn near born. She had my wife hollering so bad. That girl had the nerve to try to push out with her bottom.”

“And then she grow up to wind up in the middle of the road by herself in the middle of the nights, and dropping out of school, running loose in festivals or parades until somebody get struck by lighting, breaking into homes her daddy sells the stuff off of. That's a bit more exciting life than most gals like her.”

“And daddies like me. I ain't appreciated all the trouble either, sir.”

At the well, Redvine leaned on it while Bolden stared down it. His escape from well waters—drinking it and otherwise—had only been by chance, he knew. The only thing put him on the other side of things the night the other King got beat—riding around with the guns to keep peace, rather than fighting to stay calm—was his own persistence to know he hated to want for anything, not a paycheck let alone a mere rich man's offer or odd reason for one. He was spared hunger for a woman to lose her child in a well, to need movers all of a sudden so he could get paid, the shameful competition of standing in line hoping more employees than usual called off so he could take his folks out to dinner. He was comfortable in who he was, with a decent promotion to leave him with a ceiling of authority—even if daily challenged, always disrespected, rarely believed. The Redvines had met their own standard—raised two kids who weren't close to threats or criminals. Bolden knew this much. He had to give them some credit for it.

“You know that woman who lost her baby out here. Pearletta?” Bolden said.

Redvine was too hungover and tired to lie today.

“She may have had affinity for you … Was it an equal one?”

“I been thinking about getting this back together.” Redvine put his hands on the scratchy rope still reeled to the steel bucket of the well's crank.

“Sure you could do it,” Bolden said.

“Nobody need it now. I got some welding experience. Lot of it, actually. Could make a rim. I'd have to bungee down, rake the bottom, siphon the top. We all got Hinckley now. Hall made a killing off us with that one. Wish I had thought of that one.”

“I done thought about how a father like you think to raise a girl so strong and quick to get all that stuff up out that house in Cleveland, without him looking or seeing or even knowing where she was. Yet you seeing it was gone got you paid anyway. As a father, I'd like to get some tips on how to get a girl to that. I could shole use her.”

Redvine knew too many cats whose pasts were just as checkered as their pants. He was not one of them. Had there been work, or at least better and more of it, he would be out and about at it now. He married a stoic woman who employed a semblance of God to keep the combustion out of his heart and his home. He hadn't been perfect. He was aware that if he done what his son did when he was his son's age he might have allowed whites to heckle him all the way to the Persian Gulf. Then he wouldn't be here to watch over his children now, best as he could. Solemn would have her whole life before her and he would make it up to her. He would buy her a real house, an attraction to a husband: maybe one who worked at a bank or doing taxes or roofing houses under the umbrella of a real company in Jackson. Landon had told him he'd help do so, but no. He would do it on his own.

“I really don't have nothing to say,” Redvine told the cop.

“It's less what you have to say and more what I want you to know,” Bolden told the man. “Solemn's been changed.”

“So have we all,” Redvine answered. “So have we all.”

“Changes can always be corrected,” Bolden said.

“They most certainly can,” Redvine said. “Don't I know it? I knew Pearletta somewhat. I looked in on her from time to time.”

“How so? For what?”

“Damn, I left my squares in the house. Do you smoke?”

“I don't. My daddy did. He still paying for 'em.”

“I'm getting there. I gotta make that change one day, too.” Redvine had dipped down to snuff. He dug into his pockets for the sandwich bag of it he kept now.

“You can make some changes right now.”

“I am. Every day I make change. I never been in position to do too much for nobody but me and mine. But if I coulda, I woulda put Mrs. Hassle in a better situation. Folks keep quiet. It's the rules. But I can tell you ain't nothing out here no accident.”

“Except Solemn doing time?”

“I'm not worried about my daughter, Detective. This will change. She got her whole life 'head of her and … This is sealed.”

“It will be. Should be. Unless she does something else, any more trouble.”

“She won't. I'll make sure of it.”

“Really?”

Bolden put himself in Redvine's shoes. Redvine had a family, a fatherhood, a property of his own, a pride. At least he dug down deep for that. He was savvy enough to be congenial from the start, with a family who were the same, so made them worth a bit more effort. They were like the Weathers in that sense, only not as loud and proud and well off.

“You're lucky I'm a black man,” was all Bolden could say.

“That makes one of us.”

They went back, leaving thoughts of the women behind to speculate on the new houses put up on the old oil fields. The new development was already finished. It had actually been done ahead of time, rushed to accommodate the interest and asking prices. They talked like all the others around them talked about it: it should have been for them, but they would be okay anyway. The moving vans were seen all around. Some of the most stubborn had even already secured agreements to mow the new people's lawns, clean their gutters, trim their hedges, lay extra concrete, and carry grand furniture into just the right corner and view for homeowners who changed their minds often. The ice was cold now, the tea sweet. Probably overly so. And despite his questions unanswered and unasked, Bolden even let Redvine lean on his patrol car while they drank it.

 

THIRTY

“Well, to me, freedom mean you got the right to speak your mind, talk about whatever come into it, and that's it.”