The Dying Ground (35 page)

I
had to wash away the blood.

That was my primary thought as I guided Felicia through the front door of the cottage. We made it inside without being noticed by anyone in the front house. Upstairs Felicia remained motionless, vacant, as I stripped the wet clothes from her body. I tried to still my thoughts as I cleaned her up. I had to remain focused and not let my mind wander to the divide Ihad crossed so easily in one night. I couldn’t acknowledge it yet, not while she was still in my care. But it was there. There in my shallow breathing, the clammy sweat that covered my body.

I turned on the shower and pushed Felicia inside. The smell of iron was strong, the wet, rusty metallic scent that would blister in my nostrils for the rest of my life.

I tossed my clothes in the corner and climbed in under the spray of water. Felicia was slumped against the wall as far from the onslaught as she could manage. I reached out and grabbed my toothbrush from the sink. I ran the tip across a bar of soap
and picked up her hand. I worked the bristles gently beneath her nails, scrubbing intently to wipe away all traces of her crimes. She collapsed against my body. I put my arms around her and remembered her saying that my arms never felt safe. I wanted to make up for that. I loved Felicia beyond reason so I held her there, under the steady stream of water, until we were both washed clean. We stayed that way until the water ran cold.

In my bedroom I pulled back the sheets and motioned for her to climb inside. Not until then, not until she moved her feet to climb inside, did I notice the anklet, my anklet that I’d given to Billy to return to her, dangling from her leg.

It broke my heart.

I’d bought it as a gift for her before I even asked her out. The second week of school, after sitting next to her only four times in class, hearing her laugh only once, I bought it. When she sat down next to me that first day and slipped the gum on my desk I knew. I knew the way Daddy Al said he knew when he saw Gra’mère for the first time at a bus stop in Louisiana. I knew the way Midnight Blue did when he saw Desiree in that New Orleans alley. I knew the same way Felicia did when she saw Billy in Crowning Glory.

I knew so much that I ran out and spent a month’s salary on jewelry that represented who I thought she was: a butterfly, something light and pretty, something that you could barely feel if you held it in your hand. That wasn’t her at all. It was the way I might describe her love for me, but not who she was as a person. Felicia was pretty, there was no question about that, but there was nothing light about her. Despite her flirting and laughter there was a heaviness at her center, and it was the heaviness that bound us together. I recognized it; it felt familiar. We never shared it, but maybe for a while my presence allowed her to put hers aside. I wanted to believe that.

I watched her as she turned away to face the wall. After a
while her shoulders rose and fell with her breathing, and I relaxed, relaxed enough to think past the moment I’d just reached.

In the bathroom I gathered up all the clothes and towels and anything else with traces of blood. Outside, I went around the main house to a brick barbecue pit Daddy Al built years ago. It had a chimney that stretched up and over the cottage. I threw all the items inside and doused them with lighter fluid. I struck a match and waited until the flames caught on my discarded jeans, crept to my rugby shirt, and spread to Felicia’s clothes. I closed the door and watched the smoke snake up into the sky.

The sun was up but the streets were still quiet. The air was thick, indicating yet another scorcher of a day.

I went to the car, grabbed my duffel bag from the trunk, and took Felicia’s clothes from the backseat. My bare feet sank into the pebbles of the driveway as I made my way back to the house.

“Maceo.” Daddy Al stepped onto the back porch of the main house. He wore his pajamas and looked every minute of his seventy-one years. “You’re not in Louisiana.” He said it as if he had never quite expected me to go there in the first place. He also didn’t seem surprised to find me in my underwear with black smoke billowing from a rarely used barbecue. We both tried to ignore the smoke and the acrid smell that enveloped the backyard.

“No, sir. I’m not in Louisiana.”

“That’s your bag?”

“Yeah.” I held up the duffel.

“Then you’re not leaving today?” His voice cracked with unmistakable age. I shook my head, but he wouldn’t accept that. “You lost your voice or something?”

“No.”

“I asked you a question.”

“No, I’m not leaving.”

“I see.”

“How’s Cissy?”

“I don’t see where that’s your concern.” His hands trembled. I could see how tightly he gripped the doorknob. “I didn’t see a lot of things for a while, but it’s clear now.” He paused. “Well, you got one bag, you might as well go ’head and pack the rest.”

Right then I heard Alixe’s voice. She had told me I would lose more than her, and the warning had come true.

“This don’t mean nothing but what it means, Maceo. I’m still your granddaddy. I’ll never turn you away. I’ll never stop loving you.” He meant what he said, but it had been the first time since I was a little boy that he referred to himself as grand-daddy and not father.

“I’ll start packing up as soon as I can,” I answered.

He nodded and turned to go back in the house. I understood his decision. I had made the choice for him when I crossed the line. My journey to this place was filled with zigzags as I danced around my destiny, crossed back and forth, from black to white, and finally gray. With each turn, with each choice, another part of me died and became harder. I was shocked by Billy’s death, less so when I heard about Jorge and Sera’s, numb when Reggie and Smokey died before my eyes, cold as granite when I held my own gun. A part of me was gone, had been gone for a long time, but it took the death of a friend and the disappearance of the woman I loved to understand that I’d only been fooling myself.

Maybe Holly had always known it was just a matter of time for me. Maybe Daddy Al knew it too. I was the only one who had ignored the obvious. Without an anchor, I was no different from any other boy seduced by the game. I had willingly stepped onto the dying ground.

I
nside the house I dropped down beside Felicia to fall asleep. I didn’t dream in colors or pictures, but as I drifted off I heard sound, bright vivid sound. I heard the wail of car horns from Billy’s funeral, the anguish in Regina’s voice as she sang, and the call of the wild: “Hustla down!” That marked the end of youth for me. I heard it all, but I saw not a single picture to go with it.

When I woke up the space beside me was empty. The sheets were cold and no longer held the promise of another body. I knew right then but I still hoped. I hadn’t lost that. I hadn’t lost the ability to hope in the face of the obvious.

The house was quiet, the sky outside the window pitch black, and she was gone. As I walked down the stairs into a dark living room, a familiar image projected onto the mirror across from the television. It was Reggie, on screen, leaning into Billy’s casket.

I’d forgotten about the tape in my bag, but she had found it.
It all came clear. Those were the sounds I had heard in my sleep: the replaying of Billy’s funeral. I walked toward the TV to turn it off and saw Felicia’s anklet hanging from the knob. As I pulled it off I knew with complete certainty that I would never see her again.

Not even in my dreams.

That was my sacrifice. That was the price Daddy Al spoke of, that Alixe warned me about, and it stung to my core. The rules of the game would forever divide us. The drug culture bred a dying ground that expected a sacrifice of whatever you held most sacred.

I had given in abundance.

But you know what killed me the most?

I knew at that moment, with all the ashes scattered around me, that I would do it again even if I reached the same destination each time. I would travel the same road a hundred times, because at the beginning of each journey I would have the hope that somehow, one way or another, it would turn out differently.

I could hope each time that she would be mine.

I have many people to thank for their contributions to
The Dying Ground.
I never, not even for a second, believed this was a solo journey.

First and foremost, my four pillars of strength, the Tramble Women: Judy, Nicole, Nichelin, and Nichelia. It’s so easy to battle the winds of life, and take the chances that I do, with your love as my shield. I have been truly blessed by each and every one of you.

Daniele Spellman and my six-month tenure at Spellman Artists Colony—complete with meals and generosity of spirit. That is a gift I can never repay.

My agent at ICM, Richard Abate, to whom I am forever thankful for his enthusiasm, honesty, advice, and dedication. Richard, your input was an integral part of this process.

My editor at Villard Books, Melody Guy. Melody, what a bonus you are. I thank you for making the transition as smooth as possible.

Charles A. Murray, founding member of the IHOP social club; your inspiration could never be measured.

Jonathan Mosley, the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had. Lets face it, we are bona fide family now and I couldn’t love you more.

Barbara Skelton, for creating such a loving environment, then allowing me to call it home. Kobe and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

The girlfriends, my beautiful and colorful tribe of Warrior Women, sassy and true to the core: Dioni Perez, Angela Scott, Lori Buster, Stacy Green, Christine Marino, Julie Larson. I adore each of you without restraint. It’s just not possible to have better friends.

Nolan Coleman, Sr., my sweet granddaddy, and the real life inspiration for Daddy Al—I love you. Eliza Willie White Coleman, who still cheers me on the loudest—I can hear you. And my beautiful grandmother, Versie, who gives meaning to quiet grace—you’re my heart.

Malcolm Spellman, your life and love are all over these pages. I’ve lost the key that unlocks the two of us.

The following contributed in unmeasured ways to this book: Keith Adkins, Manie Barron, Karen Rupert, Eve LaDue, Valerie Joyner, James M. Marshall, Tamar Love, Chastity Whitaker, Maurice Newburn, the staff of the Albany Library, Tessa Loehwing, Marjorie Weingrow, Anne Healy, Dave Miller, Anita and Jorge Otano, Peter Fredman, Peter Crooks, Grace Lee, Jim Kravitz, Beth Waldman, Lisa Lamoureaux, Anne Reid, Emy Mendoza, Kathleen Dodge, Megan Gaynor, and Kobe, my funny little muse. Thank you all.

Lastly, I am grateful to all my angels, whether they are known to me or not.

Nichelle D. Tramble
New York, New York

I
’ve always been curious about the roads people take to adulthood. What does it take to get them there? What do they sacrifice along the way? What do they gain? These were all questions I tried to answer when writing
The Dying Ground.
I allowed my main character, Maceo Redfield, to pause at the lines of demarcation, to ponder the result, but still continue to go further and further away from his own center of gravity.

What was a challenge to me as a writer was first trying to understand how a person could willingly travel into a world of crime. The second challenge was to keep Maceo a sympathetic character while he made that journey. I didn’t want to write about the traditional bad guy with a hard-knock life. I wasn’t interested at all in writing a character who was forced into a life of crime by circumstance. My goal was to present a young man with a background most people would envy. His family, the Red-fields, are almost too good to be true, but that’s still not enough.
Neither is his enrollment at a prestigious university, or his incredible athletic talent. All that pales considerably to the seductive world of drug dealers, and Oakland’s dope game in the late eighties, and that was an interesting dilemma for me.

I read something by Grace Paley once in which she urged writers to “write what they don’t know about what they know.” That was just the most amazing, straightforward advice I ever heard, and that’s what I’ve tried to do here. There was so much I didn’t know about the history of Oakland, the drug culture, and the male point of view, but I tried to infuse it with enough of my own knowledge to make it believable and real.

The death tally mentioned in the book—did that really happen?

I dramatized this a bit for the sake of the story but I didn’t stray too far from the mark. There was a gleeful but gruesome fascination with the murder rate in 1989. The drug wars at the time were ferocious. There were headlines that simply stated the murder rate as it escalated but there was not a daily countdown in
The Oakland Tribune.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

I enjoy a lot of contemporary authors, mostly women. I read first novels religiously, and I’ve come across quite a few in the past couple of years that just blew me away. Joy Nicholson wrote
Tribes of Palos Verdes,
which I thought was wonderful. Maureen Gibbon’s
Swimming Sweet Arrow,
T. Greenwood’s
Breathing Water, Marchlands
by Karla Kuban,
The Fires
by Rene Steinke, and
Jumping the Green
by Leslie Schwartz were a few I really loved. In general I like Ashley Warlick, Kristin McCloy, Susanna Moore, Alison Moore, John Gregory Brown, Sheila
Bosworth, Pat Conroy, Marita Golden, James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane, Walter Mosley, Michael Connelly, Anne Rivers Sid-dons, and David Payne. I could go on forever, because there’s no way to avoid Toni Morrison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Baldwin, Gloria Naylor, Jamaica Kincaid, Milan Kundera, Isabel Allende, Amy Tan …