Those Bones Are Not My Child (27 page)

The man with his name on his cap seemed more disapproving of Bible Man’s support of the speaker than the chuckler’s remark about his wife. He scowled. His wife clung to his arm. He scowled some more. The son and daughter looked uncomfortable.

“Tell me we aren’t a cosmopolitan people!” Speaker shouted. “Tell me we aren’t one big family with kinfolks scattered all over the world. Mississippi, Grenada, Alabama, Soweto, Brooklyn, St. Ann’s Parish, Brixton, Bahia, Salvador, Christiansted, Mobile, Chattanooga—” he was breathless. “Charleston, Frogmore, Mosquito Island, Kingston, Robbins Island, Parchman Farm Prison, the projects, ya mudder’s kitchen, Catfish Row. Whatchu think?”

Bible Man beamed an angry eye around the crowd. “No fairyland
place somewhere. Gotta fight the good fight.” He stomped the ground and shook the Good Book.

“And people, good people, right here in Atlanta, in ‘Lovely Atlanta,’ someone is killing our most treasured resource, our most precious people, our future—our children.”

The two gents grabbed Zala’s hands when she slipped and scraped her legs on the brick wall. They patted her hands and urged her to sit back down. There was a lot of commotion in the park, but all she was aware of was the plane overhead streaking something illegibly in the blue. On the ledge of the Trust Company Bank she saw a woman with a wild look brandishing a crowbar. The woman threw back her head and shrieked rockets across the park.

“Did you hear what I said, Africans?” Speaker looked up and waited for the plane to roar past. “Thirteen or more children kidnapped, eight of them murdered. With our permission? With our consent?” He pivoted slowly, then crouched suddenly in a movement so swift, so percussive, several people close by recoiled. His hand shot out toward the sidewalk and people turned. Two white policemen were approaching the park with Burger King bags. They moved into the orbit of Speaker’s churning finger.

“And what are the police doing about it? Or, better yet, what are they
not
doing?”

The two patrolmen exchanged a look, glanced around the park, then at their bags soaking through. The newsdealers moved in behind them. The martial-arts trio closed around Speaker. The students spread out on the walk, hemming in both the policemen and the businessmen, now hugging their jackets and loosening their collars. The family in stitched caps looked around at the gathering.

“That’s not a rhetorical question,” Speaker said, still crouched. “What haven’t the police been up to?”

The shorter cop opened his mouth to say something but didn’t. The taller shoved through the students and ordered the strummers in prairie clothes to get off the grass.

“Where I come from, we always know who kills young Bloods,” Speaker said over the head of the short cop. “They shoot ’em in the back for fleeing the scene of the crime, though there’s been no crime till that moment. But they shoot ’em in the back to, uh, arrest them. Or they
shoot ’em in the chest because they swore they saw the flash of a knife, though there’s been no knife except the one in a blue pocket for planting. But they shoot ’em in the chest in, uh, self-defense. Or the young Blood dies of, uh, complications on the way to the precinct. Or the Blood, uh, hangs himself in his cell out of, uh, despair.”

The tall cop was coming around behind Speaker, trying to break through the martial-arts trio. They stood like pyramids, arms bulged across their chests, mouths in an O, breathing in and out, rippling muscles through their clingy polos. A cup of soda dropped through the bottom of one cop’s bag. The dog bounded over and caught it, then raced over to his mistress. But nobody cheered. The old gent on Zala’s right let go of her hand and stood up.

“Whoa time,” he said, hitching up his pants with his elbows. “That kind of talk is for the old days.” He turned to the businessmen who were trying to find an exit through the crowd.

“Old days?” Speaker whipped out a newspaper from his back pocket and snapped it open. “Latest issue of the
Thunderbolt
, good people.” As he pivoted, showing the front page, Owl Woman handed him another paper, the
Torch
. “Note the photo at the top of
Thunderbolt
. African people superimposed on the bodies of apes. Note the bottom-half photo—our boys in blue palling around with the good ole boys in white sheets. And look here—note this ‘survivalist’ camp in the woods. Do you recognize faces on the targets?”

“Let’s break it up,” the tall cop ordered. The short cop had his hand on his holster. “Let’s move it. Move it.” A few people got up and discussed the Black leaders they recognized on the bull’s-eyes. Others scrambled for buses. The businessmen squeezed behind the old-timer and hailed two cabs at the curb. Bible Man was urging Speaker to continue when the short cop told Speaker to get off the wall, he was defacing public property.

“Oh, wow,” the boy with his name on his cap said. The cop turned red. The boy’s father nudged the boy’s mother and she thumped the son’s shoulder.

“Where are his manners?” the reddened cop said, trying to appeal to the boy’s mother and other females. “Wearing his hat in the presence of ladies.”

Owl Woman smiled as Speaker slowly peeled the knit cap from his
head. Heavy ropes of dreads sprang alive and tumbled down around his shoulders. Zala leaned forward, the old gent gripping her elbow.

“Whoa time,” Old-Timer bellowed over the cheers. “You keep saying where you come from this and where you come from that, but you don’t say where you come from, fella.”

“The Black community, father—the Black community.”

One of the martial-arts trio pulled up the liberation flag and held it high. There was more cheering. Only Owl Woman showed an interest in what Old-Timer was going to say next; she gave him the mike. Others had turned toward the street, where a patrol car was pulling up between two buses whose drivers were waiting to see how things would work out.

“No, sir,” Old-Timer said, nonplussed to discover that the mike didn’t throw his voice. “That’s talk for the old days,” nonplussed again to discover the businessmen he then turned to for support were gone. “Sure, sure, there are still gangs running the street getting themselves in trouble, but these kids you say were what?”

“Lynched.” Speaker’s lips were curled back, his gums showing. There was a hush. Then his teeth parted a little and his tongue looked swollen. “Noose South, father, Noose South.”

The gent gripped Zala’s hand in his for a moment, then got up and released it. He pressed through the people and tugged on his friend’s belt and walked him away just as two new cops came into the park. Their arrival encouraged the other two cops to swagger, the short one with his hand on his holster, the other barking commands. The man with his name on a cap motioned his family toward the flowerbed gap in the wall, pushing his son along, who continued to watch over his shoulder. Taking their sweet time, the students got up and brushed off their clothes. Now what would happen? Zala got up. Would authority be challenged, the right to assembly recited, or would the police just burn them all? A god who beat up on his people and threw megatantrums at the first sign of disobedience gave bullies the right. She looked up at the ledge of the First Georgia Bank wondering how to call the wild woman down and smuggle her out of the park with the sheep.

B
efore we go any further, Spencer, let me review.” Mac planted his elbow on the desk pad and broke open a fresh box of paper clips. “I don’t understand why the date of the attack on the mechanic is important. But I do see the significance of the station’s location. I recall that on the map outlining the death route there were eight or nine points in the Memorial Drive area, and so—please,” he said when Spence leaned forward as though to interrupt. “We’ve both been so distracted, I’m not sure we’re listening to each other or even to ourselves.”

Mac hooked several clips together and tried to resume his train of thought. “I think I’ve lost my third point. In any case, let me jump right to my main objection, if you don’t mind my playing devil’s advocate for a minute. You keep offering assumptions as though they were implications. But in terms of hard evidence, what have you got actually? As for the list … well …” He twirled the loop of clips around his finger.

“Look, I don’t pretend to be an expert at detection, Mac. But I’ve read enough mystery novels to know that a paramount principle of investigation is, don’t let your theorizing get too far ahead of the physical evidence. The Task Force are deliberately ignoring evidence in favor of theorizing without it. They’ve put together a composite profile of the victims while at the same time they’re (a) dismissing eyewitnesses; (b) letting suspects go; (c) refusing to look at two-thirds of the cases; (d) not listening to the parents’ versions of what they think is going on; (e) rejecting the links that both the STOP investigators and the STOP members have noted. Also …” Spence held on to his pinky finger, straining after more points to argue with. He found himself staring blankly at the calluses on his hand.

“Why not apply that principle to yourself, Spencer. You’ve reached conclusions based on what?—hearsay, hunch, anecdotal data. Question: Did the mechanic identify his attackers as policemen, or is that one of your ‘contributions’? Now, you’ve arrived at the following conclusions, if I’ve heard you correctly: one, the three white men are police officers; two, these same officers have managed to divert crucial files to offices other than the special investigative team’s; three, they have otherwise interfered with the investigation because, four, they seek to cover up their involvement in kidnap and murder. Is that right?” Mac pleaded for patience with one hand and mumbled an apology. With the other hand, he picked up the ringing phone. “She’ll be back in a sec,” he said for the third time, meaning his secretary.

Spence picked at his calluses and mentally drew a frame around the phone, labeling it “The Telephone as an Instrument of Torture.”

He’d gone to pick Zala up at the screening room yesterday. Arriving early, he’d sat in the back, his mind elsewhere, not immediately registering what he was seeing. He thought he was looking at ordinary, everyday objects—a telephone, a radio, a set of jumper cables on a table-top. When a cattle prod and a water hose were introduced, they pricked his memory. He changed his seat, moving closer to the projector and the sound, gripping the armrests when the tortures began, horror made mundane by the innocuous ordinariness of shirtsleeves, tweezers, soda bottles, eyedroppers, file cabinets, time clocks, cigarette lighters, saws. South American montage growing out of a sandwich on waxed paper next to a salary check—boots, tires growling in driveway gravel, thousands rounded up and detained in a stadium. The junta, hit lists, government by torture. The bullet-ridden corpse of Che Guevara; the attacks on the Tupermaro in Uruguay; the overthrow of Allende; the forced sterilization of Andean laborers; the wholesale slaughter of the Quiche Indians in Guatemala; Argentine Jewry one percent of the population, twenty percent of the disappeared. Strikers in U.S. companies in Central and South America disappearing. The Women of the Disappeared petitioning the government, appealing to the populace. Amnesty International’s statistics. Floggings, chemical zombification, arrests and executions without trial. The interrogated bound and gagged, suspended from poles, and beaten. Cables plugged into crank-up radios. Jumper-cable pinchers attached to nipples. Electric prods slid past the penis to the anus, then shoved. The utter silence in the
screening room when the leader went white, flickering in its sprockets.… Then the fuzzy color of shaky camera shots: the streets of Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. of A. An anti-Klan demonstration, an interracial gathering. Gun-toting whites leaping from cars and trucks, a freeze shot of the FBI informant in the lead. Dressed in hunter plaid and heavy boots, the white men spring open the trunks of cars for heavy-duty weapons, taking aim in the direction of the camera. “Commie!” “Nigger!” “Kike!” A second camera telephotos the men firing. Falling bodies and pandemonium. Clear, interior close-ups of the killers and their attorneys talking calmly into the lens. Patriotic duty. Ridding God’s country of the dangerous and the inferior. A voice over the rolling credits brings the audience up to date: defendants acquitted, plaintiffs appealing to a higher court, FBI disavows the involvement of its agent. Lungs starved in the screening room had gasped for air.

“Sorry,” Mac said, taking up the paper clips again. “You were about to tell me why the date of the attack on the mechanic is significant. One second,” he said before Spence could pull himself back to the present. “I’ve got to get these gifts wrapped so I can stop thinking about them and give you my undivided attention.” Mac swiveled his chair around to face the bookcases, then got up and flung the lower cabinet doors open. “In late July, you say?” He slid out a tray of scissors, tape, and twine. “You were saying?”

Spence massaged his temples. “Late July,” he mumbled. “Months after the Dewey Baugus case was closed and pretty much forgotten.”

“So?” Mac pulled on the tape without much success. He sank down in his chair and looked attentive.

“July, Mac. Just after the families staged the sit-in and forced the authorities to set up the Task Force.”

“Meaning?”

“Why beat Gaston up then? Not for vengeance, not so many months after the Baugus trial. Hell, that makes no sense at that late date.”

“You’re operating on the premise that acts of that nature are sensible? Tell me about it,” Mac said, rocking in his chair the way he always did when he’d mouthed a phrase he thought currently hip.

“The beating was to silence Gaston in the future, not to punish him for the past. It was a warning, a threat.”

“He knows something, in other words? Tell me, are you any good at wrapping? I’m all thumbs.”

“He may not realize how much he knows. But as the children’s case breaks …” Spence studied the counselor’s face. Usually it was placid, encouraging, the middle-aged lines counterbalanced by the boyish features; now his brows looked like tormented caterpillars, his mouth a gash in his face. “So I’m sticking close to the mechanic,” Spence said.