The Stones Cry Out (3 page)

"You need to understand Southside. We have white slumlords who don't want to pay their property taxes. That's what we’re watching. Not rooftops. Why would anybody be looking up there?"

He had a point – even the local news missed the fall -- but I didn't want to grant it. The scream that shattered the mayor's speech sent the TV cameras whirling, capturing nothing but blur. And then two sickening thuds.

"If we could find the woman who screamed first, we could move this investigation forward. She cried out long before the bodies landed, meaning she saw something. Meaning, one person did happen to be looking at the roof."

"You want a name?" He arched an eyebrow. "You think I know everybody who was out there?"

"I think you can spread the word among your constituents, Mr. Mayor. Let them know the FBI needs information about what happened. Tell them the information is not for the police. Let them know it's for a civil rights investigation."

"And because it's civil rights,” he smiled, “they'll line up to talk."

"Pardon me for being blunt, but if nobody wants to cooperate, we can’t conduct a full investigation."

"You still don't get it." He dropped his hands, leaning forward. "These people care. They care plenty. But this issue goes back to problems inflicted on my people–
my constituents
--over an extended period of time. The wound is old, Agent Harmon. And the wound is still open."

And my supervisor couldn’t care less.

"Mr. Mayor, while your constituents are busy not talking to the FBI, the police are busy mounting an airtight case against Mr. Holmes. Silence only helps the police."

“I’ve heard.” His lip curled. "I've heard what the police are saying."

This morning's Richmond
Times-Dispatch
ran another story on the deaths, this time with details about Holmes' background as a prize fighter. An assortment of "unnamed sources" speculated that the former boxer probably tried to throw the cop off the roof, but fell during the struggle.

"When a jury hears Mr. Holmes was a boxer, the prosecutor’s closing argument is a foregone conclusion. Boxer beats cop, dies in the struggle. Case closed."

"Is that your theory, Agent Harmon?"

“I need statements, sir. Six hundred people were standing there."

His desk was polished, a glassine wonder of civic power, and the mayor ran his hands under the rim of the desk, appreciating his own reflection. When he spoke again his voice had dropped to a threatening purr.

"Agent Harmon, nobody cares if that cop did chase Hamal Holmes up there."

"Then we can close this?"

"What concerns me—and my
constituents
—and the jury comprised of my constituents is the use of deadly force. Unnecessary, deadly force. It wouldn't be the first time some lily-white Richmond cop targeted the black man."

I waited, staring at his upside-down reflection in the desk glass. "The law's pretty clear on cop killers."

"You don’t really believe that fine young man busted into an empty factory? There's nothing in there. That was the point behind our demonstration. Empty buildings. No jobs. No taxes being paid."

"But breaking and entering--"

"Breaking and entering? Hand me a thimble, I'll show you how much water that'll hold in a Richmond courtroom."

"Except right now it's the only theory going. And nobody’s helping me figure otherwise."

He pet the beautiful desk again, frowning. Then he stood and buttoned the beautiful gray suit.

"I have to be somewhere,” he said. “But I can tell you for a fact that Hamal Holmes was an outstanding citizen in this community. Go visit to his gym. You’ll understand what I’m saying. Then try coming in here and telling me I'm wrong."

For more than four centuries, the James River plantations have witnessed man's great and terrible nature. In the early 1600s, thirty colonists climbed aboard a tiny wooden boat in England and survived a transatlantic crossing with little more than painted boards and providential prayers. Their ship eventually made its way to the bay now called Chesapeake and then traveled up the waterway now known as the James River. On December 4, 1619, the surviving colonists hosted America's first Thanksgiving on a rolling spread of land. They considered minor rations an abundance to be dedicated to God.

Not long after that, the Powhatan Indians slaughtered every last one of them.

It would be several decades before Benjamin Harrison came to that same location along the river that flowed to the sea. Harrison soon began siring his political dynasty and named both his house and land Berkeley, for the parish those first colonists left behind in England. In the burgeoning New World, Harrison grew wealthy from his crops, fought the English, and signed the Declaration of Independence. His son would later serve as president of the United States, following the other Virginians -- Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe. The state became known as the mother of presidents.

But The War of Northern Aggression -- as it’s known around here -- exerted the greatest impact on the area, particularly for places like Berkeley. Union General George McClellan’s troops camped inside the storied mansion, burning Harrison's furniture for heat. And spite. Meanwhile another Union general stood on Berkeley's riverbank and surveyed the destruction. The battle of brother against brother had torn apart all that was noble about the South. Standing on the land where those first colonists were murdered, the general began composing a mournful tune for the trumpet. The requiem would later come to close military days: "Taps.”

The war nearly destroyed the James River plantations. McClellan seemed determined to annihilate every cultivated inch of Richmond. Not satisfied with turning Berkeley into a brick ruin, he traveled further downriver to a plantation named Evelynton. It belonged to Edmund Ruffin, the Rebel who had fired the first shot of the Civil War. Providing McClellan with both a literal and symbolic target, Evelynton’s fields were salted by the Union troops. When Ruffin finally returned from the Lost Cause, he was the proud owner of several thousand acres of infertile farmland. Later, Ruffin carried his shotgun into the barn, wrapped himself in the Confederate flag, and fired what some considered the last shot of the Civil War.

But the suffering and loss barely touched one plantation along the James River. It survived nearly unscathed.

Weyanoke.

I drove east from Richmond on Route 5, turning into Weyanoke's wide drive, and listening to the pea gravel ping my car's undercarriage. For once I felt grateful that my government ride was a complete bucket of bolts. The faded white K-Car should have been retired years ago. But my supervisor kept it serviced, year after year. She even hand-picked it for me. The blue vinyl bench seats. The temperamental AM radio that played mostly static. And the air-conditioning system that only worked in winter.

Without a doubt, the K-Car was the worst vehicle in the office.

But the odometer worked, and half a mile later I could see Weyanoke's mansion. The big house brought back memories. Too many memories. One was MacKenna Fielding’s debutante ball. Mac was the most celebrated among us girls, the fourteenth generation of her family to live at Weyanoke. She was beautiful, rich, and far more concerned about etiquette than genuine feelings; Mac had everything a Richmond girl needed to ascend the social ladder. Except that Richmond never forgot its history. Especially when the history included Robert MacKenna marrying an Indian “savage,” and a fourth Robert MacKenna, who saved his home and land during the war by offering aid and comfort to the Northern enemy.

I parked the K-Car under an umbrella of oaks and walked the herringbone brick path to the mansion's enormous front doors. A black housekeeper answered the bell and said that Mr. Fielding had gone riding this morning. Mac had gone with him.

"Would you like to wait in the parlor?" she asked.

I didn't want any more memories flashing up, especially of my father, who had escorted me to that debutante ball eleven years ago. Sitting on a wooden bench under a tulip poplar, hoping the wide shade would saw an edge off the heat, I gazed at the river below. The mansion was set directly across from an oxbow break in the water, and on this morning the turning river glinted silver in the sun. It was the first Mrs. MacKenna—the so-called Indian savage--who named this land. "Weyanoke” was a Chickahominy word that meant "where the water turns around." From a geologist's perspective, I'd say her choice was spot-on. She couldn’t have known how historians would later claim it as another symbol, insisting the river’s turnaround was a metaphor for the family that switched sides, whose Southern belles married Yankees, including some Union officer named Fielding.

"What to my wondering eyes should appear.”

I hesitated to turn around. Here came another memory, walking toward me with a smile that could melt the polar ice cap. DeMott Fielding.

"I don’t believe it,” he said. “Raleigh Harmon, under my favorite tree."

"I'm waiting for your father." I said it quickly. Too quickly.

DeMott sat down beside me, as if I'd asked. I could feel heat radiating from his browned skin.

"Hope you’re not in a hurry,” he said. “They took out the new horses. Could be awhile before they come back."

"Your housekeeper said they left at dawn." What I wanted to say was, It's ninety-seven degrees out here, humid as a steam bath—how long can these people keep riding?

He seemed to read my thoughts. "We've got three thousand acres, Raleigh. Those two will try to ride every inch of it."

I glanced at the fields. Leafy soybeans stretched across the sandy bluff above the river, washing toward the edge.

"You still living on Monument?" he asked.

Some unexpected knot had closed in my throat. The heat. I was sure of it. Pollen.

"I'm just wondering," DeMott said, “because I'm renovating one of our student rentals over on Grove Avenue. Right near your house. Looks like it hasn’t been painted since Reconstruction. You should stop by sometime."

A breeze was whispering across the water, combing through the marsh grass. A blue heron perched one-legged among the pale green blades, standing as still as a statue.

He waited for me to speak. "Oh, right. I forgot. You're an FBI agent now. Can't socialize with people like me."

"DeMott, I don't have time to socialize with anyone." That was the truth. Or half of it. Way back when, DeMott Fielding and I dated in high school. It ended after a memorable night that was memorable for all the wrong reasons, and even after I left for Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, DeMott Fielding’s name came up in conversation. My mother kept sending me the newspaper clippings detailing his arrest for drug possession.

I glanced over. He was combing his hands through his dark wavy hair, staring down at his work boots.

"My father's no animal rights advocate. But he paid too much money for those horses to destroy them the first day out. They should be back soon. See you around, maybe."

He crossed the pristine lawn, heading to the small door tucked under the house, almost buried in a hummock of land. The English basement, a cobbled subterranean room that distinguished these historic houses. Before walking inside, he kicked his work boots against a blackened iron post, a relic once used for tying up horses. The soil that fell from his treads looked loamy, rich with clay and iron.

He looked back, once. But he didn't wave.

===============

I was getting ready to leave when Harrison and MacKenna Fielding came trotting down a trail beside the river. Mac rode a chestnut mare whose plumy tail was the color of taffy. Her father's horse was black as onyx.

I walked across the field, meeting them in the barn.

Harrison Fielding dismounted like gentry, throwing a muscular leg over the leather saddle, careful not to graze the animal's sweaty flanks. He handed the reins to an elderly black man, thanked him, then turned to me.

"Raleigh, this is a nice surprise. We haven't seen you in years."

Mac jumped from her horse, flung the reins at the man named Talley, and hugged me without really touching. "DeMott said you work for the FBI, an agent -- is that true?"

I nodded.

"That’s so exciting!"