Read Those Bones Are Not My Child Online
Authors: Toni Cade Bambara
Those Bones Are Not My Child (52 page)
She’d put the kettle on, a tense energy propelling her toward the important task next. She’d set up the recorder, the tapes, paper, and the typewriter. She was going to be all right; she could feel it in the urgency of her fingers tearing open the cellophane, freeing a fresh ribbon from its wrapper. She’d sat down and put on the headphones. The keys were lined up and waiting. She’d turned on the recorder and was striking rapidly, watching the letters scurry across the page, when the paper started shuffling.
No problema, máquina
—she would insert the next page properly. Suddenly she stopped. There was a third voice on the tape, a prior voice, a conversation in fact under the interview Leah had conducted with an epidemologist from the CDC. Maybe she should have let Leah continue transcribing this tape herself. She turned up the volume and typed, the under voices increasingly familiar.
DOCTOR
: On the contrary, the term “epidemic” is quite apt, Mrs. Eubanks. Whenever the rate of an occurrence exceeds the national norm, when statistics show an increase in incidence and a rate of increase in incidence that law enforcement is unable to prevent, contain, or even accurately record, and, moreover, a sense of hopelessness colors the situation—then that social situation can be likened to the outbreak of a virulent disease. Unlike approaches in the other sciences, the public health model—
VOICE
: We don’t know where he went. Why you keep asking us about that?
DOCTOR
: —considers the victim, the disease, the agent, and the context, that is to say, the environment.
LEAH
: And “environment” would include a climate of receptivity? If the public health model is applicable to the Atlanta situation, Doctor, then you’re saying that the incidence of racism—that is, the pernicious disease of racism—could be measurably reduced?
VOICE
: Well, how would you feel if you lost your little girl?
DOCTOR
: I’d say that racism was a factor in the environment. So is the entertainment industry’s promotion of violence; so are firearms. Not that the CDC addresses the issue of gun control, per se.
LEAH
: I wouldn’t imagine so. Government funds would not be forthcoming. Not if the National Rifle Association had a say. But of course there are funds to study Black-on-Black crime, Black suicide, or the serial murders of Black children—all that good stuff.
VOICE
: ’Cause it’s none of your business, that’s what.
Zala hit the pause button. She thought back to what the children had said coming in from the zoo months ago, and how she’d barely listened. No wonder Leah had selected particular tapes for her to type. Zala continued. She wanted to have it all beautifully typed and waiting when Leah came calling. And she’d have to, for Zala decided she would not be returning to the room over the bookstore. She would make Leah come to her.
LEAH
: In assembling the medical data on the missing and murdered children, what did you have in mind in terms of the “agent”? Are
you specifically looking for the sickle cell trait or disease in their histories? I understand sickling interferes with the output of the substance that suppresses the body’s manufacturing of interferon. In other words, those with a history of sickle cell produce interferon in above average amounts. Is that so?
DOCTOR
: Ah, I’ve heard about Dick Gregory’s lecture. Of course, he’s not a medical man.
LEAH
: What’s the value of interferon?
DOCTOR
: It functions in the immune system as a defense.
KENTI
: I want to go home.
DOCTOR
: In other words, it’s valuable in cancer research? I understand there’s a growing market for it in longevity research. An acquaintance recently informed me that a Swiss clinic, long known for use of lamb placenta, is now using interferon.
Four times Zala heard the children pleading with Paulette to take them home. What the hell had Paulette been doing that she didn’t notice what was happening? Zala let the tape play on. The scientist and Leah got into it hot and heavy about racism, the scientist arguing that it wasn’t factored in because he was examining the environment of the victims and the Ku Klux Klan did not reside in high-risk neighborhoods. Zala wasn’t listening to that. She was thinking about the story one of the mothers had told at a STOP luncheon in October.
An out-of-town visitor had stood up in church when the minister asked visitors to rise. The mother had invited her home, as Zala had often done in her church. The visitor began to prolong her stay as though she intended to be a permanent houseguest. One day when the mother came in the back way, she saw the woman interviewing her children in the kitchen, the tape recorder hidden under the tablecloth’s hem. The visitor finally admitted she was working on a magazine article and knew of no better way to get a good story. Could the woman have been Leah? Zala made a note to call Sirlena Cobb, mother of the still-missing boy Christopher Richardson.
Zala had looked through the satchel, wondering what other surprises it held in store. She’d turned off the kettle when the water boiled away and had listened to Spence, side B. Didn’t he realize he was being taped? Or was this his chump way of telling her things? She’d typed it
up in a dead heat to mail to him. Then she’d found another familiar voice in her ear. The tape’s label bore a coded ID. She’d chuckled as she began typing, imagining Leah’s surprise. Her laughter, though, was short-lived as the pages piled up.
MURRAY
: Sure I knew the Spencer woman was prowling around my place. I keep a room with Miss Needles and she’s the eyes and ears of the world. She told me Mrs. Spencer was fooling around up there with her flashlight. I’m glad I had the dogs tied up good. I don’t wish the woman no harm. And I know in her heart she don’t mean me no harm. You do crazy things when you got troubles. She’ll be crazy till she shed of it. I told their boy, that Cuffy fella, anything I can do, call on me. What the colored people got in this world but one another?
LEAH
: You knew the older boy, Sonny?
MURRAY
: Sure I knew him. I know most youngsters round through here. Related to most of them one way or another. I hire them on to help me fold the papers here and load the truck. Course now, that gets me in trouble with the busybodies. They be buzzing thick putting out tales on me. But I pay those youngsters good wages for them chores. And I get after them about their schoolwork and proper rest. Treat ’em all the same, same as my own.… Now, don’t you know Mr. Spencer come to the station here one early morning asking after a made-up address so I wouldn’t be put wise. I didn’t know him right off, thought he’d come to spy on me, you know. I wasn’t hospitable right off. He had a pistol bulging in his waistband. I saw his and he sure saw mine. I ain’t going to be caught out if the killer come along. Some of these GIs are crazy. War will do that to you.… My wife used to work up at the VA and the way she tell it, these boys still walking around with poison gas in their systems. Pitiful shame what happened to our men overseas. But one of them come around looking cross-eyed at any of these boys, I’ll send him straight to his Maker.
LEAH
: You think it’s a disturbed veteran who’s murdering the children?
MURRAY
: I don’t say I do and I don’t say I don’t. First wind I got, I
figured evil ole white folks. But the papers say a colored man did it. Say he used a special choke hold. I didn’t know choke holds different from race to race.
LEAH
: You think it’s a vet?
MURRAY
: Could be. Look like nobody has hard information. Everybody tripping over the bottom lip to outthink the thinkers. I say best let the police do the job. And they better shake a leg too. Getting fractious.
LEAH
: You’ve observed … tension and strange behavior?
MURRAY
: Sure tension. Old man, a friend of mine, stay in the rooming house down there by the Am Vets Bar. Poor ole soul, he don’t know what’s going on. He don’t read the papers; he wears them. Gets up in the morning to put on the boil, come up with a played-out tea bag. So he stuffs some newspaper in there between his long johns and his undervest and zips himself up and goes out to get him some breakfast. Sees the youngsters going to school, traveling in twos and threes like the bulletins say to do. Then what happens was, he says hello … hmph.
LEAH
: Then what happened, Mr. Murray?
MURRAY
: People gone crazy, that’s what’s happening. Don’t you know I saw a policeman pull a gun on a dog the other day. On a dog! What a dog know about some gun? Well, that dog did. The police got his legs bucked, kind of squat down, arms out stiff. That dog say lemme get on away from here. This a fool here.… People high-strung.… See this? Lost that finger to a harvester combine in ’47. You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I was strapping in them days, a built-up chap. Had my own plot, a Vulcan plow, two mules in harness.… But some people can’t stand to see the coloreds with something. Poisoned the stock. Just like they did them Muslim people down in Alabama. Poisoned the well … Lost a finger. Been using a scythe ever since. Course I don’t do no more than that piece of yard of Miss Needles. Got my dealership now … Sent that scythe to my nephew in College Park. Used to be that part of Atlanta was a little village like you’d run across in Africa somewhere. But now some of it’s part of Hapeville, which people say Hateville cause that’s the Klan there, the Klan there. Sent that scythe to my nephew special express.
LEAH
: You’ve seen the flyers the Black vets put out? They’re protesting the resurgence of right-wing extremists. They feel the Klan might be behind these murders.
MURRAY
: Sure I seen the handbills. Nothing much gets by me. Didn’t hold their meeting like they said they would. Seen that. Like I said, I sure did think so in the first, till the papers say the police say a colored fella behind it all. All in all, we in a world of trouble. That’s what I say. I just look after these youngsters, so on that day I can say I done my best, now I’ll take my rest … like the song say.
LEAH
: You knew Sonny Spencer?
MURRAY
: That boy had a fine mind. Speak right up. Wouldn’t stand for no foolishness around him. Now if Sonny Boy had been out there that morning when Meachum was trying to find him some breakfast … Now see, you don’t hear much about folks like Meachum. People say Atlanta, average person think big homes, big cars, pretty women looking like the cover of them magazines. Average person don’t want to know about Meachum. Who he? Where he went to school? How much money he give his church? Nare cross their mind that we ain’t got to go through all that who-struck-John. Just give the man a tea bag and a can of tuna fish and let him cut the grass so he can live. Folks like Meachum freeze to death every winter and you don’t hear a thing about it. They tell you about the wrecks on the highway, but you don’t hear a thing about folks freezing to death, now do you? This a good town. Can’t find no better people nowhere better than Southwest Atlanta. But if you poor, it can be cold … same all over the world I expect.
LEAH
: Mr. Murray, what happened that morning when Meachum said hello to the children?
MURRAY
: What happened was this. The children commenced to running. Some woman at the bus stop started screaming and beating Meachum with her pocketbook. I’m laughing now but it wasn’t funny then. Life’ll drive you crazy if you can’t grab you a laugh on the run. See, Meachum got nare tooth in his head. He don’t put in a good appearance, his clothes and all. But what kind of way is that to treat a person? Bunch of men run up and wrench his arm up behind his back.… What kind of way is that to do?
LEAH
: And you feel if Sonny Spencer had been on the scene …
MURRAY
: Maybe.
LEAH
: You said, Mr. Murray, when I first asked if I could speak to you, that you could understand why Mr. and Mrs. Spencer suspect you.
MURRAY
: Listen at it and it’ll size up. The killer can get to the children. Could be a teacher or one of them parkees. Could be a person like me who hires on youngsters. Read in the paper where the children had jobs. Now, the killer knows the streets, be up and down and across that map that was in the papers. Cab driver maybe. Delivery man. I’m a delivery man … Okay now. Lots of them children disappeared around places where children be, like parks and movie shows. Let’s figure the killer using a youngster to get the drop. I go around with my nephews all the time … Two last things now. Paper say nobody saw nothing forcible to recollect. So figure the killer the police or dressed like the police, or a minister, or an old man like me.… Course, the papers lie. I know for a fact that many of the youngsters in the families and some neighbors too saw the boys being taken off by force. But we’ll pass over that … Last point now, the time gap. Big gap between the killings of ’79 and the killings in ’80 starting up again. Could be the killer was in jail or some mental home them four months. Could be the killer was called out of town. My mother passed in ’79 and I was out of town for four months getting things squared away.… How that sound to you? I don’t fault the Spencers. The woman friends with a mouthy gal up there on Thurmond. She probably put that bee in their bonnet.
LEAH
: It does sound like a good case against you, Mr. Murray.
MURRAY
: You know, for all I know they could have the police on me. One time I kept catching a little blue foreign job with one brown fender in my rearview. Two or three times it was back there. I said to myself, “Get reconciled, Murray. That Spencer woman dogging you all over the city.” Then the little foreign job with the odd-lot fender turned off and went on about its business. I had to laugh at that myself. Couldn’t laugh long, though, had three hundred pounds of newspapers waiting to be picked up, folded, and delivered over a thirty-five-mile route in less than two hours. May not seem like much to you. You got a good
education and a good job with a newspaper. But it’s punishing work, delivering. Punishing work.
LEAH
: And Sonny Spencer worked for you for a time?
MURRAY
: He did. Punishing … Got to get up early, in the dark most times, and get out there on them empty streets when other people warm in bed, and that thought don’t help much at all when it’s cold. There’s a lot to my job. A lot. Got to know each customer’s preference. Some take evening, some take morning, some both, some only Sunday. All kinds of combinations. Some want it stuck in the mailbox, some it’s all right to sling it across the yard. One lady in a trailer park you got to reach under there and tuck the darn thing between the cinder blocks so the dog can’t get at it, neighbor neither. Another customer wants it placed right in the middle of the welcome mat. Don’t want it dropped, heaved, or set to the side. The middle of the welcome mat or you got trouble on your hands come collection day. And you know some people don’t pay you. And that comes out your envelope.
LEAH
: Mr. Murray, from what you’ve said, you sound like a prime suspect. Doesn’t the reward make you a little nervous that someone will turn you in?
MURRAY
: I’d say it to the police just like I say it to you. I’d like to drive you over my route. It’d ease your mind. You’d see what it takes to do what I do. Got no time to be murdering people.… Sure it bothered me, Mr. Spencer coming around like that. I was embarrassed for him. Grown men should act like grown men and not play the fool asking after a made-up address. But it hurt me. It hurts me to hear you say they think I interfered with their son. But if they think so, let them tell me to my face in front of the police. And front of my lawyer too. ’Cause I don’t bother nobody and I sure ain’t going to stand for nobody bothering me. You can tell them that.
LEAH
: Thank you very much for talking with me, Mr. Murray. I appreciate your spending so much time explaining things.
MURRAY
: You don’t fool me, you know. I ain’t fooled for a minute. I know you thinking about that reward yourself. Tell the truth?