“My uncle gave me his address, but apparently the house is underwater.”
“Who’s your daddy?”
“Jim Washington. Old blues player around here, some time ago?”
“Well now.” Kwako bobs his head to the bebop sax. He looks me over, more closely. “I guess you are a lover of diversity, then. Mm-hm. I gotta tell you, though, Elias, he’s gone.”
“Dead?”
“More or less. They got him up in Huntsville. Deaf row. Kilt his wife.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry to bear you bad tides.”
Barbara, softening, watching my face, finally sets the hammer down. “Would you like some coffee or tea?”
“No. Thank you. I think I … I think I should get back to my uncle now. Let him know.” Truth is, I don’t know what to do with myself, and this is plain to the couple.
“You sure?” Barbara asks.
I’m not sure of anything anymore. “Yes.” It’s like when Mama told me I didn’t have a place here now. A girl with no trails to follow, in, out, anywhere. A whore for warmth and certainty, but not deserving any.
Kwako pulls a card from his shirt pocket. “All right, then, if you say so. Phone don’t always work,” he says. “Seem like every time it rains or the wind blows, the lines come down ‘round here. But give a call if you want to. Sound like ‘multicultural’ right up your alley.”
I take the card. These fragments I shore …
“And I’m fulla talk, as you hear.” He laughs.
“Thank you. I appreciate your time.”
Barbara sees me glance at her quilt. “You do piecework, sugar?”
“My mama did. This reminds me of her. It’s beautiful. Yours?”
“Yes. Got more inside. You’re welcome to look.”
“Not today, thanks. I really should go.”
“Come back sometime, will you?” Kwako says. “Tell us about your fambly. Look at more quilts. We’ll give you a good price on one.”
“I will.” I shake their hands. My arm feels as weightless as cork.
From my angle on the freeway, driving back to town, Houston’s skyscrapers blaze like Zippos. Mirrored glass buildings soak up the sun. I’m still pondering Elias Woods when I cross the San Jacinto River and remember that several years ago, under this bridge, a squatter’s camp formed — “Tent City,” the media called it. Out-of-work oil laborers, desperate steel men who’d hit the road once the northern mills shut down, gathered in the mud here, living off garbage. Newspaper photographers loved it. But Tent City wasn’t the image Houston’s city planners wanted loose in the world. Along with the Chamber of Commerce, they talked the cops into chasing the squatters away.
I imagine tents, now, made of old quilts; then army tents. The river’s curves through mossy magnolias remind me of the Twenty-fourth Infantry’s camp. How must Cletus have felt after leaving Corporal Baltimore — dead, for all he knew — at the feet of the brutal cops? How must he have felt, returning to camp, breaking the news to his comrades? How did he react when Sergeant Vida Henry swore they’d taken enough shit in this cracker city, and it was time for the troops to show some balls? What did he think, later, lifting his rifle, marching into the dark?
The trial transcripts say nothing about why Vida Henry snapped, or how he was able to sway others into bucking their training and common sense. At first, in the heady fury over the cops’ behavior, the troops must have felt their cause was righteous (“To hell with fighting in France! We got to stick by our own and clean up this city, right here, right now!”). But at some point, after shots had been fired, houses damaged, people killed — including Rufus Daniels, the “nigger-baiting” cop who’d beaten Charlie Baltimore — horror must have set in, fear over what they’d done. It must have occurred to Cletus Hayes that Vida Henry had lost his mind.
I imagine them together by the bayou. I’m drifting again; I slow down, concentrate on the road, but even so, my skin no longer holds me … the night is drizzling rain. Most of the soldiers have scattered by now, hoping to make it back to camp before they’re caught. “Ain’t going back, Cletus,” Vida Henry says. He leans against a chinaberry tree and rolls a cigarette. “You know what’ll happen, we go back.”
All around us, frogs are as loud as bass drums, making it hard to think. “Maybe not,” I say. “Maybe they won’t know it was us.”
Henry laughs. “Yeah, and maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow morning white as chalk.”
“I’m not going on, Sarge. It’s foolishness. Won’t bring Charlie back.”
“You’re the one saw him sprawled there. How can you not fight for him?”
“How is this fighting for him? Shooting at houses?” My head’s as heavy as a crate of boots. I smell like mud. “I’m done.”
“Do me a favor, then.”
“What’s that?”
He offers me his rifle.
“No.”
“Save me the trouble of shooting myself. Please.”
I stand, unsteadily, start to walk away. Owls bellow in the trees. “Good luck to you, Cletus,” Henry says. “You’re going to need it.”
I stumble through blackberry brambles, bayou water sloshing in my boots. A loud click, then a lid slamming shut. The rifle report freezes my spine, but I force myself to move. Nothing can salvage this night or redeem my shameful behavior, but crossing rails past empty, uncoupled boxcars, I think of Sarah Morgan. One last time, I think of planting seeds.
Can’t we all just get along? A planner I worked with, a liberal white man who grew up in L.A. and who was profoundly disturbed by the Rodney King riots, once proposed a multifamily public housing project built around courtyards, with lush landscaping and bright ceramic tiles. His idea was that each family would sacrifice ten percent of its interior square footage to create a shared neighborhood center: mailboxes, washers and dryers, a community kitchen, a child-care room. “The shared public space will enforce a sense of collective responsibility,” he reasoned. “It’ll be perfect, especially for single-parent families, who need all the help they can get. I mean, let’s face it, right now, our public housing sucks. We have inner cities that aren’t worth caring about. That leads to a nation not worth defending. At the very least, a nation vulnerable to black rage.”
I liked him. He used to quote Walt Whitman in the office. “You know what Walt used to say? He asked America to become a vast ‘city of friends’ basking in ‘robust love.’ Now that’s a vision of city planning!”
Like all Utopians I’ve known, he was crushed when others ruled his dreams unfeasible. He quit his job and became a VISTA volunteer. Later, I heard he was killed one night in a drive-by, serving food outside a homeless shelter in a dying neighborhood, still trying to breathe life into his vision.
I went through a phase of promoting getting along. I’d hear an ofay make a racist joke, then spring the news on him I was black. Inevitably, instead of apologizing, he’d make an excuse, usually a long-winded list of his hardships. Failed athletic careers. Lost rock-and-roll dreams. School rejections. “The whole damn world’s elitist, all right?” a fellow told me once.” You people don’t have a patent on suffering.” I learned to keep my mouth shut. To expect misunderstandings and fear. To approach planning with skepticism and diminished expectations. To relinquish Eden, a city of friends.
6
AT ARIYEH’S suggestion, I meet her and Reggie at a place called the Ragin’ Cajun. Last night at Bitter’s, when she came to arrange the lunch, she told me Reggie and Bitter didn’t get along. Reggie was a tireless community activist. He’d raised funds to salvage collapsing row houses, fix them up, and convert them into a public art project.