Marcus gathered up his affidavits and moved a half step away. Anyone who could silence a courtroom dramatist needed no help from him.
“You might think you can control the cards, on account of who you are and who you know.” Deacon moved closer. Hamper had the choice of backing up or rubbing chests.
He backed.
Deacon kept on coming. “You might think you’re a powerful man, given the color of this no ’count skin you’re wearing like a cheap suit. But my God knows just exactly who you are. Oh yeah. He knows exactly what you’ve done.” Another step. “My God is a great God.” And another. “He’s an awesome God.”
He pushed Hamper around the corner and into the center of the lobby. “He’s bigger than anything you know, or anything you have, or anything you’ve ever done. So I’m gonna pray to my God for your no-good, rotten soul.” Deacon leveled the only weapons he had at his disposal, his gaze and his voice and his trembling finger. “Your nasty, stinking, depraved, and wicked soul.”
When the elevator doors pinged open, Hamper flung himself into the crush. The cries of those at the back were cut off by Deacon rising to a full-on pulpit roar. “But let me tell you this. If I ever catch you anywhere near my people again, I’ll have this entire world in the streets!”
A deep black voice from somewhere behind them belled out, “Say it, brother!”
“I’ll have them marching on your home! I’ll have them crying for your head!”
A woman’s voice took up the background cadence. “I say amen!”
“You think you know some folks? I’ll call the politicians who’re just begging for our votes. I’ll tell them just exactly what it is you and your filthy friend’s been up to. You think you can do this to my people? You’re wrong! It is not going to happen.” Deacon had to lean over to fit his epitaph between the closing doors. “I’ll expose you for the scum you are!”
When the doors cranked shut, the silence lasted a profound moment. Then the entire lobby began cheering. It was the first time Marcus had ever heard applause in the Wake County courthouse.
Deacon turned around, his features seared by his own flames. He spoke to the cowering young woman. “Come on, daughter. Let’s go watch Marcus clear up this mess. Then we gotta find your children someplace healthy to live.”
They left the courthouse and went by the apartments, where Yolanda’s unit was now open and the landlord nowhere to be found. After they had gathered her belongings, Deacon asked her to introduce them to every other young woman living there. Marcus came in twice to take affidavits from women enduring the exact same treatment, then retreated back to his car. The stench of abject hopelessness was too strong for his paltry spirit to withstand for long. Deacon was made of stronger stuff, however, and did not reemerge until every one of the women had received his message. Whether they wanted it or not.
Yolanda remained morosely silent the entire journey back to Rocky Mount, save for two sharp outbursts when her children grew so boisterous she could not ignore them. Deacon used Marcus’ phone to call ahead, then turned around to say, “I’m taking you by your aunt’s home. She’s agreed to take you and your children in for a time.”
“She don’t like me none.”
“She’s family, she’s Christian, and she knows what’s right. She’s disappointed in you, the same as I am. You know that, don’t you?”
Yolanda might have nodded, or she might simply have jerked in time to her son’s bounces on the seat beside her.
“Child, you’ve known me since you were a baby. I changed your diapers. I married both your momma’s sisters. Look at me, daughter. I even helped you learn to walk. Why on earth didn’t you come to me before now?”
Yolanda found something beyond the car window of morose fascination, and said nothing. Marcus studied her in the rearview mirror, and wondered if having so much sorrow inside such a young form stripped away the ability to weep.
“It breaks my heart to see people I love go out there and make bad choices,” Deacon went on. “I know you’ve been abused. I know you’ve been taken advantage of here. Turn around and look at me, girl, I’m talking to you.”
She tilted her chin upward, but the defiance was such a paltry show she did not even convince herself.
“This ain’t just about that man back there. You knew exactly what you were getting yourself into. Don’t you shake your head. The fact that you’ve got these two children sitting here says you know all there is to know about using your body.” He turned around long enough to say, “Pull up in front of that red brick house there.”
Before Marcus cut the motor, a heavyset black woman he recognized from church pushed through her front door. They gave each other a solemn nod, but neither felt this was a time for neighborly waves.
“I am angry with you, child. I’m upset. Same as your aunt here. We know you’ve been doing wrong. All this trouble we’ve been having today is on account of bad decisions you’ve made yourself.”
The boy spotted the older woman standing on her front lawn and let out a squeal of delight. Yolanda leaned over to open his door, almost masking her shattered tremble.
“Everybody makes bad decisions, daughter. That’s why Jesus walked upon this earth, to help us with these bad times, especially the times that are all our fault. But from this point forward, you gotta play it straight. You need to start thinking about what kind of legacy you’re gonna be leaving for those children. You not careful, you’ll be watching them do the same things with somebody else. You hear what I’m saying?”
She whispered, “Yes, Deacon.”
“Marcus and me, now, we’ve put ourselves on the line for you. So this is how it’s gonna be. If you don’t want to live by our rules, we’ll love you just the same, and we’ll pray for you with our last dying breath. But we’re also gonna get those babies taken away from you, and we won’t be having you around us no more. You’ll just be left to suffer the consequences. Those are your choices, daughter. Now go say hello to your aunt.”
It wasn’t until the young mother was enfolded into her aunt’s arms that she began to weep. The great heaving sobs only made her look more fragile than before. The older woman gave Deacon a long look over her niece’s head, but did not say a word.
As the young woman fought to regain control, Marcus helped Deacon unload her belongings from the trunk. Overhead the clouds were massing for a serious summer downpour. The air was thick with humidity and dread.
When Marcus returned from the house, Yolanda was waiting for him by the car. She spoke so softly her lips scarcely moved. “That white man back there, the one Deacon lit into.”
“You mean your former landlord’s attorney, Hamper Caisse?”
“He was one of them always coming round. Messing with a lot of the girls. Scaring them bad with what he’d do if they talked ’bout what was going down.”
“If you’d be willing to testify to that under oath, I could try to have him disbarred.”
She hefted a bundle larger than she was and headed for the house. “I don’t want to be thinking ’bout that stuff no more.”
CHAPTER 3
The air smelled of superheated asphalt and coming rain. Marcus was pursued the entire way home by the rumble of gunfire over the horizon. He pulled into his drive just as the first drops started falling, big pelting bullets that pursued him across the lawn. The Victorian home had borne a striking resemblance to its owner when Marcus Glenwood had returned to Rocky Mount soon after the accident. The place that now served as both his office and home had stood derelict and empty with treelimbs lancing the walls. Windows had cupped shards of old glass like segments of teeth in an unearthed skull. Marcus had done much of the rebuilding himself. Eighteen months of hard labor had proved a sweaty therapy against the ghosts that had chased him from Raleigh and the high-wire act of big-time law.