Those Bones Are Not My Child (54 page)

He’d driven away with the same half-minute’s worth of camouflaging concern that people showed to the situation in the targeted neighborhoods. What a pity, what a shame. Meaning, if only those people out there would go away, we’d all look better, fare better, rest easier. He’d gone downtown beating himself up with those thoughts when the smell suddenly enveloped him. It had filled the limo on Peachtree Street and forced him to slide all the windows down and pull into a parking space across from the Fox Theatre. He’d been taking a round about route to Gaston’s, not quite letting himself in on his real plan, which was to get to the Task Force and see about the bodies. But he couldn’t chance going there or to the coroner’s, not with the smell of death in the car.

It had been a call from the authorities, not the boastful phone tipster who’d sent the police to the Stewart-Lakewood area, not the two bodies still not identified on the radio, but dynamite and boots that got Spence to the Task Force office. And for once, unlike the previous trip to Atlanta he hadn’t had to ask for Detective Dowell to help find Sonny’s records. For right there on the table in a scramble of photos was Sonny’s, his file, opened; the files of Christopher Richardson and Earl
Lee Terrell propped against a can of pencils to one side. On the back of Sonny’s dental record something had been scribbled.

“Oh, that,” the officer had told Spence. “We thought we had him. But he’s still at large.”

The obscenity charged straight for his heart, but he remained absolutely still. The phrase richocheted off the plywood nailed over the transom and coursed its way through the maze of tables and partitions. Muscles hard, fingers gripping the wood of the officer’s chair, he was totally still. He’d learned how to do it, how to stand so absolutely fucking still even he couldn’t distinguish between his cams and the landscape. Let the other grunts race around chasing tail, running off at the mouth Abel Baker Condition Red, squirreling away Baby Ruths, grenades, Dexedrines, smokes, steaming up their uniforms and entangling their rifle straps in shrubs. He would be still. He’d learned how watching rigor mortis set in.

So he’d stood motionless, rain pelting the windows, phones ringing, red creeping up the side of the officer’s face. A composite sketch fell away from its pin on the corkboard and drifted down to the baseboard, where it lay like a slumped-over corpse. He neither blinked, winced, nor heard the apology when the officer shot out of the chair, its wheels banging into Spence’s ankle. Then he’d looked down at the chipped tooth, the crooked grin, and something gushed in him. He’d wanted to remain hard and still, but most of him had turned to mush. And the part that didn’t was beating in his throat.

“Awww, man, get it together,” Spence scolded himself over the hum of the heater.

Now he gunned the motor for the downhill run on Northside Drive. Cars below were stuck in the flood of the underpass where ice dripped and rain collected. He flicked the
Newsweek
cover closed and pushed the pedal to the floor. With the rush came a raging impatience as the limo took the upgrade. Cars, mailboxes, buildings, everything that stood between him and the TF office he wanted to demolish, wanted to sail in through the double doors and get back the file, the face, the strands of hair, the breath on the cellophane tape, the tooth prints, the X rays, wanted to undo the click that had ghosted the bones, that had captured the smile.

He wrenched the limo away from the median and back on course
and followed a trailer rig around a curve. It was funny, all while he’d been absorbed in big-bucks making it, he’d been an heir and didn’t know it. He’d become a man of property at last, thanks to a relative from out back there. He laughed, leaning toward the glove compartment, at the last minute remembering that he’d removed the papers Rayfield had brought him. His uncle had rushed in, his father trailing behind, unable to meet Spence’s eyes. Spence had stored them in a strongbox he found in Cora’s attic. Each time that kite rose, he stomped it down flat again. He’d come thudding down the steps from the attic to check on the children.

They’d abandoned the tight fetal positions of Atlanta to resume their old sleeping positions: Kofi facedown hugging the mattress, steering his spaceship to a newly chartered asteroid; Kenti on her back, one leg bent, her arms up over her head, fingers gently curved in toward each other on the pillow, her face to one side in a dreamland pirouette. Cora had come up behind him in her bathrobe to ask what he was looking at. He was looking at absolution. He felt exonerated. He’d been right to get them out of Atlanta. His eyes told him that.

Though for a long time he could never be sure what he was looking at from moment to moment. Seven years had passed and the sights and sounds had not been expunged from Spence’s inner eye. Bodies hung on wire. Cracked earth strewn with fires. Orange and black napalm smoke. White phosphorous figures dropping pongi sticks and running down the road of Quang Ngai, flesh flapping like old wallpaper.

There’d been a lieutenant in his unit who had no sympathy for the spaced-out games men at war played to keep the horror at arm’s distance. “Everything we see we are responsible for,” he’d say, scorning drugs, tinted goggles, and self-induced madness. He reserved his most scathing rebukes for the white-collar boys in lab coats back in The World who kept inventing things that made life unlivable.

Spence sat up straight and flicked on the wipers. He exhaled and felt quiet again. But he didn’t trust it. He remained on guard as the trailer rig pulled into a lot where a new fast-food restaurant was being erected.

He’d been living outside the wire too long and gotten careless. He let the wheel slip between his hands and suddenly heard metal buckling, glass crackling, hard-knocking things grinding against each other, and a hot spewing up under the hood. But there were no spongy gobs of lung on the dashboard, no gray spatter on his sleeves. He was
still breathing. He was still there, his life not yet unspooling along Northside Drive.

Someone was making a racket, pounding on the door. A brother in a thick, woolly poncho was running around the limo, whacking the hood, hitting the fender, coming around to the passenger side and yanking on the door. The woolly poncho gave Spence heart. It wasn’t the rubber kind used to wrap the dead in till a supply plane could drop body bags.

“Get out!” The brother stuck his head in the window. Picket teeth on parade and a tiny gold nose bead in his left nostril. “C’mon, jim, slide over.”

The brother threw his weight against the door, then pulled. Papers flew out. Spence was pulled out to his feet. The brother was feeling him up and down, making him lift an arm, coaxing him to speak even as he continued to talk nonstop.

“My fault … my fault! I was trying to avoid the roadblock down there. Last time I got stopped, there was a computer foul-up that got me confused with some guy with unpaid tickets. You look bad, jim—don’t pass out on me! What’s your name? C’mon, you know your own name!”

“Spence … Nathaniel Spencer.”

“Great. That’s great. Where you live? C’mon, Nat man, you know where you live. Tell me where you live. And keep moving.… C’mon, talk, man—don’t fall out on me! Where do you live?”

“On the route … not far from … but not anymore.” Spence was reaching for his wallet, but the brother pushed him against the car and propped him up with the stick he’d pounded the car with. Spence could see now that it wasn’t a stick but a rolled up magazine. Part of an address label said Mr. Claude Russell. Well, Spence thought, nothing wrong with my eyes.

Two cops were coming up on either side of the nose-bead brother just as Spence was making out the California address on the label. He looked up and squinted. He was pretty sure there were two cops, not double vision from a concussion.

“I’m all right,” Spence said.

“Well, I’m not, jim. My license, my wallet, my rental papers—shit, everything I own is in my hotel room.” Claude turned and looked past one of the cops to the crumpled Chevette at a tilt on the median.
“Awwww, shit,” he said, dropping his arms. Claude’s
Newsweek
plopped to the ground. Spence leaned down and picked it up.

“What do you want to do, sir? You sure you don’t want a doctor to look you over?”

“I’m all right,” Spence told the patrolman, though he was puzzled. How had he gotten to the service station? Had he been carried? He remembered staring down at the Claude’s feet—the black Chinese slippers, the thick white socks. The next moment, the officer was leaning over him in the chair. A definite break in continuity. No big deal for a ’Nam vet, Spence thought, discovering as he stood up that he was now clutching two copies of
Newsweek
. Someone behind him reported that Mercer was sending the company tow for the limousine. Spence nodded and walked to the window. The treaded rubber carpet underfoot felt familiar.

“Sure now? We can run you over to Grady.”

“I’m all right.” Spence looked out of the window to get his bearings. The Chevette was being dragged to the service station on the end of a tow chain. The limo stood scarred but unperturbed near the intersection. Several yellow cones were around it to deflect traffic. Spence wondered how much time had elapsed between the spotting of Claude’s shoes and his coming into focus against the ribbed runner on the garage floor.

“We can take him in,” one of the cops said, less concerned than his partner with anyone’s health.

“If you want to be a hardnose,” the other added, touching his cap like a pitcher. “Based on the information he’s given …” He waited, pencil poised for Spence to signal that he could close his notebook.

“You look a little shook up.” Claude gave Spence a pleading grimace.

“It’s all right,” Spence said and, hearing himself, realized he’d been talking all along, had been holding up his end of the conversation. He had asked to see papers, instructed the officers to make note of the information. His own notes, together with his license, registration, and insurance card, were curled up in the magazines. He took a deep breath. A car pulling up toward the window swung around to the premium gas pump. MEET YOU IN THE RAPTURE, its bumper sticker said. Next to the license plate was a metal plaque that read, GOD IS MY CO-PILOT. The combination struck Spence as funny.

“I’ll make good, believe me,” Claude said, stepping between the two cops to touch Spence’s shoulder. Spence nodded. The two officers translated his nod as agreement to let the insurance companies handle things and went out the door. Claude gave them a parting wave, then increased his grip on Spence’s shoulder. “I’ll see to everything. Trust me.”

It was not until they were going up in the hotel’s rear elevator that Spence thought to ask for one good reason why he should.

“Smokey,” Claude said, picking at the stitching in the green quilted padding on the walls. “We prevent forests.”

Spence studied the face, subtracted a few years, changed the clothes to various uniforms, but still could not find in the man pulling threads from the wall pads anyone who’d been with him on defoliation missions in ’Nam.

“What outfit? What year?”

“Talk civilian, jim. Memories ain’t good for the health.” But all the way down the corridor, he spoke of nothing else. He’d been an airman,
IOIST
Division, Jimi Hendrix’s old outfit. Spence would not be dissuaded. He had questions. Even while telephoning the lawyer, he bombarded the brother with questions.

“You worse than the law. But them cops were decent, jim. You don’t know how lucky you are. Cops, man. Philadelphia? New York? Chicago? Detroit? L.A., man.” He was shaking his head as he moved around the room picking up clothes, searching for papers to verify his story.

“I’m lucky?” Austin’s voice came on the line.

“Only in a manner of speaking, Nat.” Claude upended a flight bag on the bed, explaining that he’d expected more from Atlanta. “I thought there’d be skywriters announcing the latest news of the case. I don’t know—some meetings, marches. Something,” he said, going to the table to get matches. “Atlanta. Atlanta. Great place to be Ozzie Nelson.”

While Spence fought off the overwhelming desire to drop down on the bed, Claude talked about the efforts he’d made to plug into community work in Atlanta. He listened as Austin went through his calendar trying to reschedule in Spence’s left ear.

On the night table was a Ziploc bag of photographs. Spence shook them out. None were of Claude; not as an airman, anyway. They were
mostly of women and children. He sat down on the bed and reached for the joint Claude passed. The brother hadn’t come up with his papers, but he’d found something just as good in the bottom of the flight bag. “Who are you?” It wasn’t the question Spence intended to ask, but it was close enough. Spence took a toke and hoped he could take the brother at his word. He could feel himself falling over onto the pillow and hoped Claude Russell could be trusted to at least take the joint from his hand before they both went up in smoke.

Zala came down the stairs in the City Hall Annex. From inside, looking through the window set below street level, it seemed to be raining upward. Heavy drops hit the sidewalk and split in two, then sprang up. Gullies ran from a hump in the street pavement, threatening to flood the building of the community relations bureau. Someone was at the door. A good push and a couple fell in.

“It’s like going through the car wash,” the woman said breathlessly, not closing the door behind them. She whipped off her rain bonnet and shook it. The man, already on the stairs, unbuttoned the top of his trench coat and scratched the head of the fox terrier whimpering inside the coat.

Zala secured the door as the woman ran up the stairs calling endearments to the pooch inside her husband’s coat. When the door to the office overhead was opened, conversation drifted down to Zala. A group of community workers were discussing the Angela Bacon case. The driver who’d run over the girl had been indicted on a hit-and-run murder charge back in the fall—on the same day Aaron Jackson was found, Zala found herself thinking, linking dates second-nature by now. Released on bond despite a lengthy record of criminal violence, the driver had been scheduled to return for trial in January.