He lacked a chinstrap beard, otherwise he could have been the other man’s brother—same light brown skin, same clipped Afro. No facial hair and no Jamaican accent, though. He spoke pure New York without even a hint of the South. No slight softening and slurring of the words, which so many Northern-born blacks pick up from their expatriated elders or from summers with grandparents and cousins who still live below the Mason-Dixon Line.
I longed to ask him how many generations removed from the South he was, but I was afraid he’d take it wrong, so I told him my name and he said that he was Jim Williams. “Actually, all my friends call me James, but if you run an elevator, you get tired of people saying, ‘Home, James,’ so Jim’s what I’ll have them put on my badge if I get this job.”
“Do you know Antoine?”
“No, I heard about him at the pizza shop down the street. How he walked off the job, so I went right over to the managing agent and applied. I don’t know if they’ll take him back if he wants to stay, but it’s my chance to get in here.”
“Good luck,” I said and let myself into the apartment just as my phone rang. It was Dwight. “Elliott Buntrock called. Wants to know if we’d like to meet him down in the Village for dinner. Okay with you?”
“Sure,” I said. “You finished with your class already?”
“Not yet. This is a ten-minute break at the halfway point. Josh and I will probably stop in somewhere for a beer when the class ends, but I should be back by five. Buntrock said eight o’clock, so that’ll give us plenty of time.”
By the time I finished wiping down my boots and disposing of the evidence of my shopping trip, it was almost three.
My phone rang. Emma again. School must be out.
“Didn’t you get my message?” she wailed.
“I’ve been busy,” I said. “What’s up?”
“It’s Lee. He’s in really,
“Wouldn’t what?”
“Wouldn’t post a dirty picture of Ashley Osgood. I mean, it’s not her, of course, but it was on his Facebook page and it came from his phone, but he didn’t do it.” My niece’s distressed words streamed through the phone like rushing water that drowned any coherence. “And now Ashley’s all upset and Dad’s furious and Mother’ll probably make him take his page down and—”
“Whoa, slow down, Emma. I’m not understanding you.”
“Don’t you have your laptop up there?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’ve sent it all to you. Didn’t you even look at it?”
“Sorry, I—”
“Just look at it, okay? You’re good at figuring out stuff. There has to be a way to prove that Lee didn’t do this.”
I promised that I would look and then call her back as soon as I could.
Lee and Emma are eighteen and sixteen, the children of my brother Zach and his wife, Barbara. Zach’s next to me in age, the second of what the family calls the “little twins,” to differentiate them from Haywood and Herman, the “big twins.” He and Adam are number ten and eleven in an unbroken string of brothers. Unbroken till they got to me, that is. I’m told Adam really resented my birth, and sometimes I think he still believes that the only reason he got born in the first place is because Daddy didn’t want to quit till he got a daughter.
Zach’s an assistant high school principal and has always been pretty tolerant of me, but his wife, Barbara, and I were never particularly close, although that’s beginning to change a little. She heads up our Colleton County library system and she keeps her two children on a fairly short leash. She recently admitted that she had always envied the way the kids in the family seem to confide in me. My brothers and other sisters-in-law put it down to my unwillingness to finish growing up and settle into a conventional adult life. Until I decided to run for judge, I was still doing some of the same things they were—drinking too much, driving too fast, smoking the occasional weed—so the kids rightly figured I would understand when they found themselves on the verge of getting busted.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed in my stocking feet, it took me a few minutes to power up my laptop and find Emma’s message. She had forwarded me the picture that had appeared on Lee’s Facebook page around noon today. I immediately clicked on his page, but the picture was gone, so I went back to Emma’s download.
At first glance, I thought it was exactly what people were supposed to think, and I was appalled. Especially since it was captioned, “Hey, y’all, Ashley let me take her picture last night. Who knew girls shaved their thangs?”
Then I took a second look and realized that it was a close-up of somebody’s closed armpit that I was seeing.
Once I interpreted all the text-speak abbreviations and disjointed phrases, Emma’s frantic message was that this picture had been posted on Lee’s password-protected Facebook page.
But he’s never told anyone the password. The picture’s on his phone even though he says it’s been in his locker all day and he’s the only one who knows the combination. Ashley’s freaking. She went home early and now her mom wants Lee’s hide. Dad wants to believe him, but you know how he can’t show favoritism and all the evidence is that Lee did it. Please, Aunt D. Can’t you or Uncle Dwight think how somebody could get his phone out of his locked locker and then could post something like this on his FB page????
Teenage boys are notorious for pulling stupid stunts without thinking or caring about the consequences, which is why many a young man’s last words before he winds up in a coffin or a hospital bed are, “Hey, y’all! Watch this!”
Rural South or urban North. Makes no difference. Look at the boys in this building who think it’s funny to take off with an unattended elevator.
