as long I say so, Miss Ballinger, and there is nothing in the world beyond that.’
‘Yes, there is,’ Esther said.
‘What?’
‘Me. What I want. And I don’t want to stay here.’
‘All right,’ Ben said wearily. He pulled himself heavily to his feet. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Home,’ Esther said, but without conviction or affection, as if Bearmatch were nothing more than a little patch of earth where she’d been set down and kept in place by the force of an immense and unrelievable gravity.
Esther’s house looked like almost all the others in Bearmatch. Its unpainted wood had turned dark gray, and large patches of rust spread out across its tin roof. The front porch slumped downward toward the unseeded front yard, and two of the three wooden steps that led up to it had broken years before and never been replaced. Flaps of torn screen hung from its sideposts, and several slats were missing from the splintery rail that ran along its edges. A large Double Cola thermometer had been nailed to the front door, and as Ben stepped up to it, he noticed that its thin red line stopped at the number ninety-two.
‘My daddy goes off during the day,’ Esther said as she opened the door. ‘He comes home when it suits him.’ She swung the door open and stepped away. ‘Come on in.’
The floor creaked loudly as Ben stepped inside the house. For a moment its bleakness overwhelmed him. There was a shaky rocking chair in one corner and a small sofa in the other, its springs entirely visible beneath the worn upholstery. A stack of unpainted apple crates leaned uneasily from the far wall, and just in front of it, two sawhorses supported a single sheet of plywood.
‘That’s the dining table,’ Esther said. ‘In case you’re wondering.’
Ben looked at her. ‘I figured it was.’
‘I’m not crying over it,’ Esther told him. ‘I’m just pointing it out.’
Ben glanced about. ‘Where do you want me to sit?’
Esther nodded toward the sofa. ‘Right there,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the coffeepot on.’
Ben eased himself down onto the sofa and waited. Outside the front window, the air was graying steadily, and the cool breeze that wafted through it seemed already heavy with the coming rain. From time to time, he could hear the casual talk of various people as they passed by the house, but they seemed very far away. Only the front room was near at hand, and he let his eyes drift around it like a languidly weaving smoke. There was a small portrait of Jesus on the Cross on one wall, and an enormous calendar advertising The Alabama Bank and Trust Company on the other. In between, there was only the blank wooden wall, its uneven slats rising unsteadily toward a huge square beam. An enormous old coal stove sat in the center of the room on a base of tightly placed red bricks. Its black funnel rose like a crooked finger to the roof and then passed on through a circular hole in the sheeted tin. Thick gobs of whitish caulking sealed the space between the flue and the roof, and some of it had cracked with the heat, peeling away in slender strips which now fluttered slightly in the summer breeze.
The adjoining room looked much the same, and Ben could see its bare walls clearly from his place on the sofa. An iron bed rested against the far wall, flanked on either side by two overturned apple crates. A small plastic ashtray sat on top of one of the crates, a kerosene lamp on the other. The wall behind it was bare, except for a magazine page which had been taped to it, a blurry color poster of a Negro singer, complete with ruffled shirt and light-blue tuxedo, his hands wrapped passionately around a microphone as he crooned into it.
‘That’s Doreen’s room,’ Esther said as she handed Ben a cup of coffee. ‘You want to see it?’
‘Yes.’
He followed her into the room and allowed his eyes to sweep it. Despite its bare essentials, it was undoubtedly the room of a young girl. A small metal shelf held a few old dolls, a game of Chinese Checkers and a tiny plastic record player.
‘She liked Smokey Robinson,’ Esther said as she nodded toward the poster. ‘She liked them all. Elvis. Little Richard. I think she wrote them letters.’ She shook her head. ‘From the way she acted, you’d of thought she could hear them.’
Ben’s eyes snapped over to her. ‘What?’
‘Oh my,’ Esther said softly. ‘You couldn’t have known, could you? Doreen was deaf. She was born that way. She never heard a thing in her whole life.’
Suddenly he saw her face again, oddly gray on the dark ground, and more isolated at the moment of her death than it would ever be possible for him to imagine.
‘I just didn’t think about anybody not knowing that about Doreen,’ Esther explained.
Ben walked over to a small cigar box which rested on a scarred wooden stool beside her bed. ‘What’s in here?’
‘Open it.’
It was filled with costume jewelry, strings of plastic pearls, snap beads, a few rhinestone necklaces and a single ivory cameo.
‘This was her mother’s,’ Esther said as she picked up the cameo. ‘My sister gave it to her before she died.’ She returned it to the box. ‘You said something about a ring.’
‘A large one was found in the pocket of her dress,’ Ben said. ‘But it didn’t look like any of this, and it was way too big for Doreen.’ He closed the lid. ‘It was way too big for almost anybody.’ He walked to the small square window that looked out onto the muddy alleyway behind the house. A skinny yellow dog, its rib cage clearly visible beneath its hide, was hungrily sniffing its way down the shallow ditch that ran beside it. Not far ahead of it, the rusty frame of an old car, its tires torn off, its windows shattered, rested in a weedy lot. A large spotted cat watched the dog anxiously from the car’s dented hood, then leaped into the brush and disappeared.
‘She was almost too old for toys,’ Esther said as her eyes moved over the little metal shelf.
Ben continued to stare out the window. Rows of dilapidated shacks lined the unpaved roads, and the mounting clouds seemed to draw a dark curtain over them, as if to shield them from his eyes.
FOURTEEN
The first thunder could be heard rolling in from the north by the time Ben made it back to headquarters. Dozens of squad cars surrounded the area, and police barricades seemed to sprout up at every corner. Lines of young Negroes were being funneled into the underground garage, while still others were being moved to the large parking lot which spread out, flat and gray, behind City Hall.
Ben parked across the street, then walked up the stairs and into the building. He could see Luther sitting nervously in the Chief’s outer office. He looked as if he had been summoned to his own execution, and Ben hurried up the stairs to the detective bullpen before he could be spotted.
Even before he walked through the double doors of the bullpen, he could hear loud voices coming from the room. The loudest one belonged to Breedlove, and when he walked into the room, he was not surprised to find Daniels standing alongside him. A tall slender Negro stood quietly between them, his eyes glaring straight ahead while they screamed at him.
‘You’re going to keep these fucking kids out of this!’ Breedlove yelled.
The young man did not move. His eyes remained calm, his face utterly expressionless.
‘Did you hear me!’ Breedlove demanded.
‘We have a constitutional right to demonstrate,’ the young man said coolly.
‘You don’t have shit!’ Breedlove shouted. He stepped in front of the man and shoved him backward, pressing him against the wall. ‘You hear me, Coggins? Huh? You hear me, Leroy?’
‘The constitutional rights of the United States apply to the children of the United States,’ Coggins intoned.
‘Bullshit!’ Breedlove shouted. ‘Bullshit on your fucking rights.’
Daniels laughed slightly, then stepped forward, pressing his face near Coggins. ‘You know what kind of shit these kids could get caught up in if you keep using them, Leroy?’
‘They are demonstrating for their constitutional rights,’ Coggins said. ‘Sacrifices must be made.’
‘You want them dead, Leroy?’ Daniels asked. ‘You want them shot down in the streets?’
‘They’ll be blood and hair all over the place if this keeps up!’ Breedlove screamed.
Coggins closed his eyes wearily. ‘I came up here to discuss having the children you have gathered in the parking lot – probably more than a hundred of them – to discuss bringing them inside before it begins to rain.’
