The Dark-Thirty (9 page)

“I see,” said Madam Zinnia, cutting a lovely yellow rose. “Think about it, little one,” she said, putting the bloom in the girl’s hair, “then tell me, what have you learned from all this?”

“Being the youngest is hard!”

“What a good lesson to learn. I hope you will remember that when you are a big sister … one day soon.”

“Really? Oh, wow! Wait until I tell Adam.”

“But remember,” the woman called, “you must be patient.”

A sunbeam tickled Josie awake. Mama called her to breakfast, but the kitchen table was only set for three. There was no sign of Adam. He was gone—or had he ever been?

Mama was talking on the telephone. When she hung up, she was smiling. She ran to hug Daddy. “That was the doctor’s office. Something wonderful is going to happen,” she said. “We’re going to have a new baby come January. I hope it will be the brother you’ve been wanting.”

Josie clapped her hands and turned round and round, laughing. “I don’t care if it’s a boy anymore. Oh, and I’m going to be the best
big sister
in the whole wide world.”

“I bet you will,” Mama said, laughing too.

Josie was delighted that she was finally getting her wish, but deep down inside she wondered about Adam. Had it all been just a dream? Hopping onto her bicycle, she rode as fast as she could to Madam Zinnia’s house.

It was empty and there was a
FOR RENT
sign in the yard. “Where did Madam Zinnia go?” Josie asked the mailman, who happened to be passing by.

“Madam who? I deliver to a Madam Zonobia, a palm reader over on Lee Avenue. But nobody’s lived in this house all summer.”

Josie looked at the well-kept flower garden and the lovely yellow rosebush by the side of the house and smiled.

F
rom the age of sixteen Leddy had been an activist, committed to nonviolent action against racism and discrimination. While in college, she’d participated in sit-ins, freedom rides,
voter registration campaigns, and peace protests. Later, working in Memphis, Leddy had met and married Lieutenant Joe Morrison, U.S. Marine Corps. Two months before their son Nealy was born, Joe had been shipped out to Vietnam. He was killed six months later.

With her husband’s funeral still fresh in her memory, Leddy heard the news that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been killed in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel. Although violence was contrary to everything Dr. King had stood for, Leddy longed for a physical outlet for her rage. “What is this world coming to?” she whispered.

On the morning of June 7, 1968, Leddy addressed a small group who’d gathered outside the storefront office of the Center for Progress Through Peace, where she worked. “Yes, it’s true. It’s true. Robert Kennedy is dead. Martin was for peace and he was killed. Malcolm X said fight back and he was killed. Robert Kennedy said stop this senseless war, and now he’s dead!” Leddy was screaming at this point. “Anybody who stands up for right gets shot in this country! Robert Kennedy is dead! Love, peace, equality, justice, and freedom have died, too!”

Someone snatched the mike and pulled her inside the building.

“Hey, cool it.” It was Germaine, director of the C.P.T.P and a veteran civil rights activist. “Don’t start a riot,” he said firmly, though his eyes were gentle and kind.

Since Joe’s death, Germaine and his wife, Sylvia, had been like parents to Leddy, taking mother and son in, giving Leddy a job.

Leddy wouldn’t deliberately hurt Germaine or the Center. But she felt herself spinning out of control. She trembled with emotion. “That’s it! I’m sick and tired of cooling it! I’m burning up with
cool!
” Leddy paced back and forth as she talked. “I was
cool
when a woman put a loaded shotgun to my head just because I was sitting at an all-white lunch counter. I stayed
cool
when firemen turned hoses on me for peacefully protesting the murder of innocent children in a church bombing. I was
cool
when they murdered Martin Luther King. And I was
supercool
when they told me that little Nealy would never see his father, because Joe had been killed in a place most of us can’t pronounce. Don’t talk to me about being
cool
, Germaine! What has being
cool
done for me? Nothing!”

“Okay, okay,” Germaine said gently. “Just calm down, now.”

Leddy covered her face with her hands and
wept. “I’m so tired,” she sobbed. Germaine handed her a tissue, and she wiped her eyes. “For all our efforts, what has changed, Germaine? Are people living in better housing? Are people getting good health care? Is it really better now than it was ten, twenty years ago? I wanted so much more for my son.”

Germaine sighed. “So did I. We all did.”

Germaine and Sylvia and all her friends at the Center tried to talk Leddy into staying, but she’d made up her mind. She was going to get out of Memphis.

“I realize now,” she said, stepping on board the bus, “that there’s no way for me to change the world, but I do have something to say about the piece of earth where I live. We’re going where I hope it will be better.”

“When you get settled, write us,” Germaine said with fatherly concern. “Take care.”

Orchard City, situated in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, seemed an ideal spot to make a fresh start. Using some of her military survivor’s benefits, Leddy bought the old Lippincott place up on Orchard Mountain. What the new home lacked in modern conveniences, comfort, and style, it made up for in beauty and peace.

The rural community received the outsider coolly at first, thinking she might be the advance of a hippie invasion. Leddy didn’t care. Nealy seemed to thrive in the new environment, and Leddy took joy in watching him romp and play freely in the solitude of their mountain home.

But that peace was shattered when Nealy disappeared into the woods out behind the house one spring morning. Leddy charged into Sheriff Pete Martin’s office, on the verge of collapse.

“My baby,” she cried, gasping for breath. “I—I was hanging out the wash. Nealy was beside me, but when I turned around, he was gone. He must have wandered into the woods. I looked and looked. Please come. I need help.”

“Don’t get yourself in a stew,” the sheriff said calmly. “Nealy ain’t the first youngun who’s gone and got hisself lost in the woods. Usually we find ’em perched on a ledge too scared to move.” His words were meant to be kind, but Leddy was unconvinced.

Sheriff Martin put together a search party and they combed Orchard Mountain from bottom to top and back down again. Nothing. Not a clue.

When they hadn’t found Nealy by nightfall, an uneasiness settled over the searchers.

“A two-year-old ain’t got much chance up here alone,” Leddy overheard one of the men say She knew it was true. Orchard Mountain challenged the best hikers and hunters, and some of them had to be brought out by helicopter.

Finally Jay Wilson’s hounds tracked the boy’s trail to a ledge, where they found his brown teddy bear.

“It’s Nealy’s favorite toy,” Leddy told the sheriff. Her lip quivered, but she refused to cry. “He—he called it Boo!”

Sheriff Martin couldn’t hide the concern on his face. Leddy saw it and responded. “If he fell from that ledge,” she argued, “then where is his body?”

“Wild animals …”

The story preempted the Vietnam War news for three days running. A Boy Scout troop came from Knoxville to join in the search, and a motorcycle club also helped. Germaine and Sylvia even came to aid their friend but by the end of the week the media had withdrawn, and the volunteers had, one by one, given up hope and gone home. “I’d keep a-looking,” Sheriff Martin told Leddy, “but without leads, I don’t know where to start.”

Germaine and Sylvia were the last to leave. When Leddy was alone, she let herself cry. “I’ll never stop looking for you, baby,” she sobbed. Then she dried her eyes and pulled herself tall. “I know you’re not dead. A mother knows such things.”

Leddy refused to leave her mountain home for more than an hour at a time, hoping Nealy might come back. Day after day she went to the woods and called the boy’s name over and over.

“Ain’t a bit natural,” the women said when they heard her pitiful cries. “Leddy needs to forget about that baby. He’s dead for sure, and holding on to hope when there ain’t no hope just ain’t natural.”

Leddy knew what they were saying, but she stubbornly refused to despair. “My baby will be back,” she said. “I know it.”

Leddy’s faith paid off. One year, two months, three days, and four hours after his disappearance, Nealy was found on the steps of the Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church, naked as a jay and smelling like he’d tangled with a family of skunks. Except for a few scratches and a lot of chigger bites, he seemed none the worse.

Reverend Clyde Anderson sent somebody to get Leddy Meanwhile, he declared Nealy’s return a miracle and Mother Jacobs sang “Amazing Grace.” There hadn’t been that kind of spirit in the AME Church since Old Abe, the town drunk, put down the bottle and joined church. The whole congregation was moved to tears when Leddy laid eyes on her son for the first time in more than a year.

The boy’s return raised a lot of questions, and Sheriff Martin decided to reopen the case to get answers. Where had Nealy been? Who with? Why was he taken? Why did they bring him back? Or did he find his way back alone?

The investigation began with Nealy being given complete physical and psychological examinations at the university hospital in Knoxville. When asked about his experiences, the boy offered no help. He made a lot of sounds, but the team of pediatricians who examined him thought it was just baby talk.

Sheriff Martin joined Leddy in the conference room.

“Except for your son’s delayed communication skills,” Dr. Jamison, the chief doctor, explained to Leddy, “little Nealy is in remarkable shape.” The doctor groped for words. “But he
shouldn’t be. Your son’s body shows signs of extreme trauma.”

Pointing to the x-rays, the doctor said, “There have been severe injuries to his spine, lungs, liver, and spleen. Such injuries should have killed him. But through some miraculous healing process this child got well. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Another doctor immediately began his report. “I’ve examined Nealy’s lab work, and frankly I don’t know what’s going on. His blood cells look healthy, but they are slightly altered—a mutation of some kind we’ve never seen before. We’d have to do many more tests to determine that.”

Next, the child psychologist introduced herself and gave her report. “Mrs. Morrison, contrary to what we suspected when we saw the x-rays, Nealy has no brain damage, either. He’s alert, responsive, interacts well with others. Your child is a healthy, active three-year-old—and very, very bright. However, his verbal skills confuse me. I don’t agree with my colleagues that it’s just jibberish. I’d like to do more tests, too.”

Leddy looked at Nealy playing on the floor. He seemed curious about everything, pointing first to one thing, then another, and jibber-jab
bering nonstop. “I must admit your reports are disturbing. But tell me this. Is my son okay?”

“We don’t have a lot of answers,” Dr. Jamison said. “But one thing is for sure. Somebody has taken very good care of this child. He’s in excellent physical condition.”

“Who?” Sheriff Martin interrupted. “That’s what I want to know. Who took this child, and why? I don’t believe in the little green men in the spaceship,” he said.

Leddy raised her hand for them to stop. “I don’t care about who, why, or where. Nealy is back with me, and that’s all that matters.”

The doctors pleaded with Leddy to let them study the boy longer, but Leddy wouldn’t allow it. “Don’t you think my child has been through enough? Maybe later I’ll let you do more tests, but not now.”

And she retreated to the mountain and began piecing their lives back together.

It didn’t take long for Leddy to start noticing things about Nealy—curious things that troubled her. He refused meats and sweets, choosing a fresh apple over a piece of Leddy’s homemade apple pie every time.

But stranger still was the rate of Nealy’s hair
growth. Even accounting for longer styles, his hair needed to be trimmed almost every day. Leddy noticed something else. Nealy no longer sucked his thumb and he was potty-trained.

“Who helped you break those habits but didn’t teach you to talk?” she wondered.

The boy was full of sounds, but they made no sense. As he tried to understand or make himself understood, Nealy got confused and cried. Sometimes the child wept softly, for no reason Leddy could figure out, or he’d stand in the backyard looking toward the woods, making guttural noises.

The doctors had told Leddy that Nealy had delayed language skills. They suggested she talk to him a lot and read to him regularly. But reading time was the most frustrating part of the day for both mother and child. Though Nealy seemed eager, he lost interest as soon as Leddy began.

“Oh, Nealy,” she said, on the verge of tears. “I’m trying so hard. Please be patient with me.”

“
Toi ben tu
,” Nealy said, snuggling against her. “
Toi ben tu
,” he repeated.

Leddy didn’t know what the boy meant, but she smiled and kissed him. “I love you, little boy. And don’t you ever forget it.”

Then one day Leddy stumbled on to something.
“Let’s have a glass of orange juice,” she said, showing Nealy the carton.