Solemn Read online

  “I’m a good woman,” Stephanie said. “You too. So, really, what would you do if you were in my position? Your man got another woman in the car and bed and whatnot, and you ain’t none the wiser? Or they think you aren’t. Honestly, that’s the killing part. I’m not dumb. What would you do?”

  Bev but could come up with no answer better than, “I’d kill him.”

  Solemn came from behind for another praline, prepared to beg if she had to. The eavesdropping made her think: man supposed to oochie coochie with the girl everybody knew they got and see him with all the time that’s it … if not, hell.

  “If I wasn’t raised so right I’d get him on one of those talk shows and make him take a lie detector test,” Stephanie continued.

  “Aw, that’s embarrassing … You’ll never live it down,” Bev offered.

  “What we need is Oprah,” Stephanie said. “We need Oprah to just come on down and let us vent on her stage, what we put up with every day. We need to come together…”

  “How ’bout we start with the book club idea you talk about first? That’d be the easiest wish. Might be nice for everybody to do the book club, like we said.”

  “It’s not about everybody. It’s about me. I could’ve gone to college, been a professional, made something of myself. To give it up for a man, just to realize your trust in him weighs more when you’re half full…” Stephanie hiccupped.

  “I never realized you wasn’t happy, Stephanie,” Bev said. “That makes me unhappy. ’Cause I gotta say, you one lady I really thought was really happy.”

  “Well, you be happy for me and for yourself then … Earl adores you,” Stephanie said. “Y’all good eggs.”

  “Thank you. Likewise.”

  “None of us, none of us, gave two cents ’bout them crazy-ass Hassles. Never even went over there. I don’t know. They just acted weird. But you and your husband … Y’all be blessed. Nice of y’all to at least go over there so much, help her move.”

  “Redvine ain’t help none to move her,” Bev said. “He had to take some work on that day. Shole coulda used him though. Good God, that woman had so much stuff…”

  “Well, he had to do what he had to do. He was good to them before then—”

  “Redvine ain’t even know the Hassles. Never met ’em at all.”

  Stephanie looked. She thought about it.

  Nobody knows how to love anybody anymore, she better left unsaid.

  One tear.

  TEN

  They met in spring at a secret rally in a ghosted, sand-floored, hijacked barn. He had sat near her, pretending to explain everything and everyone being discussed: Mumia, Assata, Diallo, many many more than two Kings and one X. Roaring about the big-city troubles lifted them above Mississippi and their lives. She was drawn to well enough about him, felt in her mouth the smell of his breath at her earlobe. They stayed behind drinking cans of no-name beer, and she had never had a drink before. Once everybody else went off to bed or the same, the two of them tumbled into groping each other amidst the bottle caps, cigarette butts, and protest notes. They did it atop a bale of hay raked to the back of the barn, a remnant of the fled sweet potato farm’s past vitality. They slept there. A rotted rafter gave in. It clashed down before the sun came up, and they were both embarrassed to wake up that way. Then, he walked her four miles home to Bledsoe proper in the morning and apparently doubled back to his own home on the outskirts.

  Since the Redvines were stuck in a trailer park with no phone, Akila had to wait for days to know if Landon would call her. Even when he did, her mama was stingy with his message. When he called back, her mama warned her not to tie up the phone. Their touch-and-go continued with rushed sightings and fooling around in an eccentric variety of locations. Finally, she learned where he lived, planted herself there in innocent dates in his kitchen and living room; Mrs. Redvine seemed to enjoy their dates more than Akila or Landon did. And his little sister was chatty with her, eager and clingy, as if she were a long-lost relative and not a stranger. Then Akila discovered all the antics before got her pregnant. She was recommended to wait for Landon if he had to go off to work, for all his effort to do better so he could do right by them all. He ran off to the Army, his “movement” friends who had no jobs doing the same. It was outrageous.

  To prime her own self for her own long haul, Mrs. Redvine gave rosy lectures to the girl Landon made a mother before a wife, unlike she had taught him. She wanted Akila near. Akila held the baby who was Landon and therefore she was Landon, too. The canning and pickling and preserving was just the excuse used to get Akila there.

  When the baby came, Akila included Mrs. Redvine generously in the resulting child’s life. She preferred Mrs. Redvine actually. Her own mama was too contorted into outrage with her, in premonition her grandson would wind up just as fatherless as her own children had. But Mrs. Redvine would have never had that. With her own young daughter so strange and Landon so far, Mrs. Redvine poured her vessels of knowledge and expertise upon her grandson’s mama and maybe daughter-in-law: how to avoid lumpy gravy, how to dart thread through a needle’s eye without spit, how to reverse a scorched pot or pan, how to hotwire a car, how to recognize the situation where this was necessary, how to pin clothes on the line without wrinkles, how to respect the black man with no carrying on necessary. And, according to Mrs. Redvine, Akila was more than welcome to join the new book club, soon as she and Stephanie got time to get it started.

  “With all that mess over here, over there, everywhere, we have to be light and fluffy for our men, not so muscular and knowing,” Mrs. Redvine counseled.

  This encouragement worked. It sent Akila to work at Home-Away-from-Home Motel, right on the Trace headed out of town: fluffing towels, cleaning toilets, scrubbing cracked bathtubs, making firm and skinny beds, leaving flat shreds of soap for the next guests, greeting the few tenants who enjoyed a tab instead of a lease.

  And just a few months after Landon sent his first letter to describe his uniform, Akila and her mama crowded around the television to hear the president tell them the United States was in a war. She was sick for the rest of the week: couldn’t draw milk or even eat anything herself. “War” meant there would be dusty yellow explosions at the roads, men with black boots and huge guns outside the stores, screaming people fighting at the Greyhound station, chaos and fear, bottleneck traffic, pickup truck and motorcycle gridlocks on Natchez Trace Parkway, an exploding volcano on top of a lottery-filled tunnel in the unreachable distance, white people at the door to say her baby’s father was dead. But nothing changed.

  “You fine?” Akila asked Landon, when he suddenly appeared in the spring, peeking behind her and into the house where his son cried, wearing his uniform and a smile. He was still tall. Nothing at all about him was blasted off—no holes in his face, or tears in his legs, or torn arms, or gouges in his torso. If anything, he looked entirely better than he had when he left Mississippi. He looked slimmer, rested, no longer so angry about something, less confused and more patriotic.

  It was an illusion they made love past.

  On Good Friday, Akila finished her shift. She walked past Louise, the white narcoleptic front desk attendant who always told the night manager how tardy Akila Montgomery was. Every single day. She got warned but not fired. Akila heard Louise snoring and then she glanced through the open guest registry to spot a blank space at 28. She fingered the master key in her apron pocket and latched the cubicle door shut just as Louise fluttered awake, mumbling something about spilling Melissa tea and pulling up the nightshades. Akila puttered to the side of the motel to stand under the building’s side light and in its glow, where Landon would find her. He pulled in shortly with the aid of her mama’s peachy Mustang. Akila walked to the car. They hugged. She was hungry for more than the silent emotions Landon’s short and tardy letters conjured. Once alone with him, she settled their baby on the side of the bed lest he wake up. Landon Junior would just have to cry it out. She pulled Landon and felt herself pushed toward the d
resser top, where they stayed for two hours or more.

  When Akila was spent and sleeping, the creaky ceiling fan above him cooled Landon’s chest. The baby slept between him and Akila, his woman. Honky-tonk twitched from the clock radio in the room. There was a fly inside, near the barbecue he planned for them to spread out into breakfast. Then a flashlight was into the room, gliding across the opposite walls, robotic speech and beeps, from a walkie-talkie. Landon shot up and Akila, too. The baby remained still, ambivalent and at peace, sleeping alongside a man for the first time.

  “Landon?”

  Landon motioned for Akila to stay silent. Then, he turned so his body covered her and the baby. The light and voices strolled down the sidewalk encircling the motel. Landon rolled himself around and slid from under the covers onto the floor. He crawled to his bag rested on the chair in the room. He pulled out a Swiss Army knife. There must have been others beyond those with the lights. When someone pounded on the door, Landon nearly jumped straight off his feet. The pounding continued. Landon reached behind him and placed the blade in the back of his pants.

  “Take the baby in the bathroom,” he told Akila. She did.

  The door had no peephole. Landon peeked behind the only curtain to see a police officer standing against a backdrop of a squad car in the parking lot. He saw the officer in front of his door motion to another to join him. Knowing law and its realities, Landon pulled the knife out of his pants. He felt the blade graze his back. But it was no longer concealed. It rested on the window’s ledge in plain sight for all. The pounding got harder.

  “I gotta put on some pants!” he shouted. “I hear you. Lemme put on some pants.”

  He tripped while he placed his legs in his pants. He had a United States Army uniform in credentials. He had an address in town, two parents in it. He was with a woman and child, both unharmed. He could, though he didn’t, forget the address of the barn and church where he met men and they plotted to take down the blue suits. But he wasn’t supposed to be in the room. He could pay. Akila could explain. She knew the manager’s home number, accessed often when the baby was too colicky for her to come in or she had no ride. She could call him if there were questions. Sunglasses at night were never a good sign, and a white officer wore them. Landon cracked the door.

  “Can I help you officers?” he asked.

  One cop, black, stretched his neck to try to see inside. Landon widened the door only a bit more, so there would be no request.

  “I’m Sergeant Nichols,” said the white one, sunglassed. “You got ID?”

  The flimsy construction meant the door rested open without Landon having to do much for it. He walked to the dresser and retrieved his shirt. His name, Private Redvine, was marked on the insignia near what was his breastbone when he was dressed. The police officers shifted slightly back and nodded their heads.

  “We checking in about a woman who was in room eleven,” the black cop explained. He seemed benign, familiar even.

  “What happened?” Landon asked.

  “Well, it could be a variety of things from what we found over there. We still have to investigate the whole place and situation.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Landon said.

  “We hope if you had, you would have left by now,” Sergeant Nichols said.

  “Maybe she just checked out,” Landon offered.

  “It’s a little more than that,” the unidentified officer explained. “She was supposed to have checked out. Guess that happens all the time here. But the front desk clerk checked the room tonight to remind her of the bill. It wasn’t a good scene.”

  “When you arrive here, Private Redvine?” Nichols asked.

  “Maybe about eight, nine o’clock?” Landon answered.

  “Did you see anything looked strange, worth telling?” the black cop asked him.

  “No I didn’t, Officer…?”

  “Oh, forgive me. Bolden.”

  “Pleased to meet you Officer Bolden,” Landon answered. “Have we met?”

  Bolden peered at Landon as well. They saw so many faces in and out of their minds, all day long in that job. It was impossible to pinpoint anyone for sure. He could have been staring at a pickpocket picked out of a lineup or an FBI’s Most Wanted List inductee and he would not have jumped to conclusions. The worst place he saw familiar faces—dead and alive—was in his dreams. It was why cops dropped like flies. Hanson had by now, unreplaced. Commissioner had a talk with Bolden about picking up the slack.

  “Maybe you seen me ’round,” Bolden said.

  “Well, now that we’re all properly acquainted, I can honestly say I’m just home from the service. I came straight into the room without looking around too much at all. I didn’t see nothing.”

  “Well, according to the register, you didn’t even see the front desk to pay,” Nichols informed him. “Your name or occupancy is not listed.”

  Landon bristled.

  “How you get a key to get in the room, my man?” Bolden asked.

  “Must be some kind of misunderstanding,” Landon told them. “I can’t be responsible for how the employees do their jobs. Obviously, I didn’t break in here.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Sergeant Nichols said. “But, of course, as customary we need to know everybody on the grounds. So far, names match up to the rooms where everybody supposed to be and this one ’sposed to be empty. May we come in and look around?”

  “There’s nothing in here,” Landon said. “And I haven’t done anything.”

  “That’s what we planning to confirm,” Sergeant Nichols said, with his hand on the door to let Landon know he had no choice.

  Akila’s light-pink work dress spilled over the ledge of the bed’s headboard. Her sandals pointed in opposite directions, one back and one front. Bolden slipped on the baby’s bottle. Sergeant Nichols started for the closed bathroom door. Something about Landon’s swiftness behind him caused Nichols to grab his arm. Akila had wrapped a towel around herself. She sat on the toilet with the baby cradled near her breasts. Akila stood up. There was no way to catch her towel and hold on to the baby, too. The men turned away while she covered herself, stretch marks leading to bright indigo nipples.

  “Officers,” Landon said. “We weren’t even here that early or near this room. I’m here legitimately with my fiancée and my son and we’re being disrespected.”

  “We mean no disrespect,” Sergeant Nichols said. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of what happened in this other room.”

  “Shouldn’t you be out in the backwood somewhere, looking for killers?”

  “Prolly,” Bolden remarked.

  He was seasoned in the job, against his heart and will. He wondered if it was time for him to tend bar alongside his dream girl Tammy, who had him coming back to I’ll Be Good for nearly a year now. She was a break in the headaches he got, like after the senior he found decomposing facedown in her greenhouse or the few farm-accidental limbs mauled to stumps turned lifelong conversation pieces. And the woman missing from room eleven made him think of his new girlfriend: dark skinned, bartending, wild haired, narrow hipped, an exuberant face, an eager smile. And now he had privilege of making accusations in a young couple’s chosen den of iniquity, possibly interrupting their pleasure and shaming the woman in the process. One of his friends from high school—who got expelled—had found good money in running bulls crazy so he could catch the sperm and sell it to farmers near and far, to keep the cattle giving. Almost as much for one splash as Bolden made in two or three days. But, how many times could…?

  “Thank you for your time,” he told Landon.

  “You’re welcome,” Landon said. His son began to stir awake. “We’ll be sure to visit the front desk and straighten out this mistake come early in the morning. For now, we just want to get back to sleep.”

  “Understood,” Bolden said. Landon’s looked like a face he could trust.

  * * *

  The next morning, Akila was too petrified to go to the office and try to retur
n the master key without Louise or her boss noticing. Landon had no appetite, not even for the delights between her legs. They showered only out of good manners, to leave quick. Akila could explain the missing key as a mind harried by motherhood, the backbone currency she learned she could pay off her humanity with. In the shower she most surely had been the last to clean, Akila determined: the keeper of this place would have to copy a new master key, she wasn’t coming back, and Landon would have to marry her to make up for all this drama put on her. Given the controversy, they went through no great pains to obscure themselves on the way out. They had no comment on a strap of yellow tape around the corner of the motel where a woman guest had once been. Many people would hear her name again the next week, when the story was printed. And now was not the time for Akila to displease Landon, as she saw any words about the controversy would. “Baby, this shit ain’t none of our damned business,” he told her.

  And so she did the best she knew how to do for who and where she was at the time. She heard, but she didn’t listen. Nonetheless, she obeyed.

  ELEVEN

  Her maiden name was Weathers and that’s how she signed everything now. She was the daughter of a Jackson banker and homemaker who did not see her for several months before the last time. They made reports. Several. Pearletta Weathers once bounced around adjoining counties with other college dropouts. The marijuana use marched to acid and mushrooms before it landed on the heroin they had no prior context for. Before Gilroy, she favored white boys. So she flip-flopped. She idolized rock music to draw even more of the white. She met them in their parts of the world. Her dressed-up and impressive parents traveled to the junctions, visited local motels, tore up the seedy parties in the park where those types collected. They paid off the outstanding tuition. The only benefit they could see in Gilroy Hassle, untalkative but mannerable, was that they could keep a tab on Pearletta then. Maybe. Since she had never brought the baby to visit—and it was so far from Jackson and the trailer couldn’t really keep nobody for too long without an outworn welcome—to them the biggest disadvantage of the death was Pearletta again unleashed. Most recently, they waited on her call for two months. Pearletta had checked into Home-Away-from-Home last week.