The Dying Ground (10 page)

“G
randdaddy, you in there?” I pushed open the garage door and found Daddy Al dozing in his favorite chair. A blues station played on the radio while my Doberman, Clio, reclined at his feet.

The garage space had been made over into a woodshop and was Daddy Al’s domain. The woodshop was adjacent to the main house, a three-story structure that at various times had housed the aunties, relatives, and stray friends. My own house, a two-story place I called “the cottage,” sat at the back end of the property, with my front door facing the back door of the main house and the entrance to the woodshop. I’d lived there since my fifteenth birthday, and the setup allowed for easy monitoring of my comings and goings by my grandparents.

Inside the woodshop, on Daddy Al’s worktable was a headboard for my Aunt Cissy’s bedroom. I fingered the wood, lingering
on a small detail: a trademark pineapple, a West Indian symbol of fertility that he included on all his bedroom pieces.

I closed the door behind me and motioned Clio forward. She came over to receive her customary pat and returned to her place at his side. She was my dog, but she preferred Daddy Al’s company.

I walked around the table and sat in an unfinished chair across the room. I had a clear view of Daddy Al from my position, and through the window I could see Gra’mère’s silhouette as she moved around the kitchen. The two of them had been married for over forty years and in that time they had raised six girls, me and Holly, and countless friends of their daughters.

Gra’mère was godmother to at least one hundred babies in the San Francisco Bay Area. After relocating to Oakland from Louisiana, she opened the Celestine Home for Young Ladies, named for her murdered sister. What started as a small operation grew to encompass three Victorians bought dirt cheap in the heart of West Oakland. Many of the lost girls, who fled small Southern towns for the West Coast, made their first stop on Seventh Avenue and their last stop at the Celestine Home.

Gra’mère, along with Mrs. Johnson and other members of the Eastern Stars, a philanthropic club for Black women, taught hygiene, child rearing, cooking, sewing, and etiquette. Most of the girls arrived on their doorstep pregnant or with a baby in tow, but by the time they left they had learned basic skills to help in their survival. A few went on to become teachers and nurses; almost all made one of the founders godmother to their children.

By the time she retired, Gra’mère had seen over six hundred girls flow through the doors. The city of Oakland honored her with a lifetime achievement award for her work at Celestine. That she saved many lost girls from ruin was small consolation for not being able to save her own sister. So even in
retirement her work as savior continued. She would never and could never turn away a stray.

“What’s bothering you, Maceo?” Daddy Al asked from his chair, his eyes closed in thought.

“You awake, huh? Is that how you fool burglars?”

He patted Clio’s head. “You know burglars ain’t coming nowhere near here.” I nodded in agreement. Clio had scared off more than one person who’d wandered into our backyard. “Ain’t you suppose to be at the bar?”

“I’m heading up there after dinner.”

“Move your chair over here closer to me. I’ma get back to work.” He stood and turned on the light above the worktable. “I’m trying to finish this piece to give to Celestine for Christmas.” Celestine was Cissy’s given name and the only one Granddaddy used. “She’s wanted this bed ever since she saw one at the homeplace in Louisiana.”

“That’s all she talked about when she got back.”

“And there ain’t no way Antonia’s letting the original leave her mother’s house.”

I took a seat where he indicated. Clio, sensing my mood, actually joined me.

“I heard about Billy.” Daddy Al continued to shave the wood of the headboard. His knowledge of my grief didn’t surprise me. He and Holly talked on the phone at least twice a day. “I’m sorry about him and about Felicia.”

“She disappeared.”

“She’ll turn up. Too much blood was spilled.” He continued to shave. “You know, back in Louisiana people used to believe that if you buried somebody face down with eggs in the palm of their hands it would drive their murderer out into the open.”

“Did the family do that with Gra’mère’s sister?”

He stopped working and looked directly at me. “There wasn’t a need for that.”

I gave him a wry smile. “Black justice, Southern style.”

He resumed work. “Sometimes that’s all you have. And all you need.” I looked at my grandfather’s strong dark hands, his fingers the size of Andouille sausages, knowing he’d used them once to kill a man. Even at the age of seventy-one, Daddy Al possessed the vitality of a man half his age. He’d spent his entire life working and had a solid rock-hard body to prove it. In youth he’d stood a powerful six foot, with dark serious eyes and a head always covered with a work hat, or a dapper Borsalino in his off-hours.

“You believe in murder?”

He stopped and looked at me. “Cutty called over here and told me about you and Holly at the shop. Don’t do nothing silly behind that girl, hear?”

I dropped my head, feeling the sting of tears for the first time that day. In the silence of the workroom I knew he was searching for a story to help me through my pain.

“You know your Aunt Rachel ain’t your grandmother’s blood daughter.” I nodded at the age-old information, wondering how that was relevant to my situation with Felicia.

Any visitor to our home knew the difference because Rachel called Gra’mère Miss Antonia while the other daughters simply called her Momma. Miss Antonia is the name Daddy Al used when he first met Gra’mère. He dropped the formality once they were married, choosing to call her Lady Belle instead, but Rachel kept the old name alive.

“Rachel’s mother was my first wife, Elizabeth. She wasn’t pretty like Lady Belle, but she didn’t have as easy a life either. Her mother ran away when she was a little girl and her father, Papa Cray—that’s what we called him in the parish—raised her by himself.

“I knew Elizabeth my entire life but I never thought much
about her. She was quiet and shy because of a lame leg, but she was sweet.” He began to chop a new piece of wood with steady, even blows.

“Papa Cray was probably one of the cruelest men I ever met. Just full of hatred. His father, the sheriff, was white, and he didn’t acknowledge Cray in public, but Cray was able to get away with a whole lot of shit ’cause of his daddy.

“One night when I was seventeen years old I took a walk to cut cypress knees.”

He paused, and when he continued his voice had dropped a notch.

“While I was cutting I heard this pitiful sound. I thought an animal was wounded, so I walked to the edge of the creek, and I saw that man doing things to that child.” He stopped to wipe sweat from his forehead.

The story chilled me to the bone so I offered him a reprieve. “You don’t have to tell me—”

“I went over there the very next morning and asked for Elizabeth’s hand. We had never talked a word about it, but she stood by my side while I spoke to her father. Papa Cray laughed at us both and said, ‘Sure you can marry her, but it don’t mean nothing.’ We were married the very next day and she moved in with me, Mama, and Daddy.

“I didn’t love her then like a husband loves a wife, but I grew to. And she loved me for saving her life. I promised her every night before we slept that I would protect her. And I did. She never went anywhere on the property without a guardian.

“When she got pregnant I think that was the happiest I ever saw her. Rachel was born in May, and Elizabeth loved that little girl with a fierceness. Papa Cray disappeared around that time so we all relaxed a little bit.

“Then one day Daddy and me went to see about some horses and Mama went to midwife. Elizabeth stayed home with Rachel.”

I saw Daddy Al’s eyes glisten from the memory but I made no move to stop him. Like I’ve said before, I was born to violence and these stories were part of my legacy.

“When we got back that night the house was dark and I knew something was wrong. Me and Daddy ran into the woods and found Elizabeth unconscious under a tree. Papa Cray had raped her and cut her up real bad. Rachel was sitting right next to her mother, quiet as a tomb and covered in blood. When I picked her up she started screaming. I had to carry them both just so Rachel could feel her mother.

“I laid Elizabeth on our bed and we cried all night, like children. The doctor came to patch her up—the white doctor, so I knew the sheriff had sent him. I waited until sunrise and then I went to find Cray.”

He paused and looked toward Gra’mère’s silhouette in the kitchen window.

“He was sitting at his kitchen table like he’d been waiting on me. I killed him with my own hands and then I set the house on fire. I wanted Elizabeth to see the blaze from our bedroom window.”

I shook off a chill as Daddy Al reached for his pipe. I watched as he tapped the pipe to rotate the tobacco. Somehow I knew his tale of long-ago violence was a bad omen for Felicia.

“I left the parish that night and went to Rayville, over near the Mississippi border. I let a year pass, enough time for the sheriff to cool down, and then I went home in the middle of the night. My father told me the sheriff had died the week before. I ran upstairs and Rachel came right into my arms, though she hadn’t seen me for a year. Elizabeth was in a chair by the window, and she didn’t move when she saw me.

“When Cray attacked her he destroyed something inside of her. She wasted away the year I was gone.”

He took a puff on his pipe.

“She hung herself from shame after I got back, and I’ve believed in murder ever since.”

E
ight o’clock at night, and the heat still held everyone in check. With my grandfather’s words ringing in my ear I rode the three blocks to the Nickel and Dime with the windows down, hoping the slight breeze would bring some relief. I had the evening shift at the bar, and hoped it would keep my mind off of Billy and Flea.

I waved to neighbors gathered on their porches and children as they tumbled through lawn sprinklers. The sidewalks were packed, the streetlights casting an eerie yellow glow over the busy scene.

The bar was walking distance from the house but I drove whenever I had the closing shift. More often than not, locking up meant driving home a regular who’d had a little too much to drink.

The Nickel and Dime was a neighborhood bar with an attached restaurant operated by my twin aunts, Josephine and Cornelia. Daddy Al had owned the place since 1950. The majority
of the patrons were Southern natives and graduates of the canneries and shipyards. But on the weekends we got a large number of younger people looking to drink cheap before hitting the nightclubs. I worked about twenty hours a week for pocket change, and since my rent was free I was rarely strapped for cash.

Otis Payne, the security guard, sat on a stool at the front entrance. He was dressed in a grimy T-shirt, his uniform top folded neatly beneath his wide butt. His gun was holstered at his belt, barely covering a hole in his T-shirt.

“Hot enough for you, Maceo?”

“It’s not hot enough for you, I guess. Daddy Al gonna be steaming if sees you out here like that.”

Otis waved me off. “I got it covered. SueSue over at y’all house. She gonna call when Albert leave coming up here.”

“That’s your plan?”

He nodded.

“You know if SueSue get ahold of some food she’ll forget all about you.”

His eyes widened at the thought of his wife’s legendary appetite. He reached for his shirt. “It ain’t right, me sitting out here in this furnace when y’all got air-conditioning inside.”

“I’ll have Vicki bring you out some water.”

I was halfway through the door before I heard him mutter, “Put something in it besides ice cubes.”

Inside, the oval bar in the center of the room was packed three deep with regulars and a mixed bag of weekenders, all thirsty, clothes damp with sweat. The dance floor and the surrounding area were almost empty of people. I could see the two cocktail waitresses, Vicki and Pam, working double-time to cover the tables and booths at the edges of the dance floor.

The room was dark, the only light coming from the candles shining dimly inside water glasses. The cracked red Naugahyde
of the booths had faded to a dull burnt orange. In the far corner, the house band, heavy on the blues, adjusted mikes and checked equipment. They weren’t due to play until nine, but they always arrived early for an hour of free drinks.

I slid my bat under the bar and ducked under the opening. I’d barely adjusted my baseball cap before three orders were shouted in my face. Paulie Mourning, the other bartender, winked and kept on pouring.

Easter Lilly, a neighborhood working girl who only did business Monday through Friday, sat at the end of the bar with two glasses of top-shelf brandy. I knew from our many late-night conversations that she was a “suffering alcoholic.” She suffered for every day she couldn’t end with a bottle of brandy, but she’d been sober for three years and change. She had her own form of AA, Saturday night at the Nickel and Dime, smelling the fumes of the best brandy we had and watching the surface of the liquor for messages. So far the messages had kept her from picking up either glass.