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H
er eyes. Flat, waiting, always waiting. Not patient, not hopeless, but suspended. Cee. Ycidra. My sister. Now my only family. When you write this down, know this: she was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine. Who am I without her—that underfed girl with the sad, waiting eyes? How she trembled when we hid from the shovels. I covered her face, her eyes, hoping she hadn’t seen the foot poking out of the grave
.

The letter said “She be dead.” I dragged Mike to shelter and fought off the birds but he died anyway. I held on to him, talked to him for an hour but he died anyway. I stanched the blood finally oozing from the place Stuff’s arm should have been. I found it some twenty feet away and gave it to him in case they could sew it back on. He died anyway. No more people I didn’t save. No more watching people close to me die. No more
.

And not my sister. No way
.

She was the first person I ever took responsibility for. Down deep inside her lived my secret picture of myself—a strong good me tied to the memory of those horses and the burial of a stranger. Guarding her, finding a way through tall grass and out of that place, not being afraid of anything—snakes or wild old men. I wonder if succeeding at that was the buried seed of all the rest. In my little-boy heart I felt heroic and I knew that if they found us or touched her I would kill
.

F
rank walked down Auburn Street across from the station on Walnut. A hairdresser, a short-order cook, a woman called Thelma—finally he got the make of car and the name of an unlicensed cabdriver who might take him to Cee’s suburban workplace. Arriving late because of the delay near Chattanooga, he spent the day up and down Auburn Street collecting information. Now it was too late. The cabdriver wouldn’t be at his post until early the next morning. Frank decided to get something to eat, walk around awhile, then look for a place to sleep.

He ambled along till twilight and was on his way to the Royal Hotel when some young in-training gangsters jumped him.

He liked Atlanta. Unlike Chicago, the pace of everyday life was human here. Apparently there was time in
this city. Time to roll a cigarette just so, time to examine vegetables with the eye of a diamond cutter. And time for old men to gather outside a storefront and do nothing but watch their dreams go by: the gorgeous cars of criminals and the hip-sway of women. Time, too, to instruct one another, pray for one another, and chastise children in the pews of a hundred churches. It was that amused affection that led him to drop his guard. He’d had lots of sad memories, but no ghosts or nightmares for two days, and he was desperate for black coffee in the mornings, not the wake-up jolt whiskey once gave him. So, the night before the gypsy cab would be available, he strolled down the streets, taking in the sights on his way to the hotel. Had he been alert instead of daydreaming, he would have recognized that reefer and gasoline smell, the rapid sneaker tread as well as the gang breath—the odor of scared children depending on group bravery. Not military but playground. At the mouth of an alley.

But he missed it all and two of the five sneaks grabbed his arms from behind. He used his foot to stomp one of theirs and in the space left by the boy’s howling fall, Frank swung around and broke the jaw of the other one with his elbow. That was when one of the final three brought a pipe down on his head. Frank fell and in the blur of pain felt the body search followed by limping and running feet. He crawled toward the street and sat in darkness against a wall until his eyesight cleared.

“Need help?” The silhouette of a man framed by a streetlight stood before him.

“What? Oh.”

“Here.” The man held out his hand to help Frank up.

Patting his pockets while still wobbly, Frank cursed. “Damn.” They’d stolen his wallet. Grimacing, he rubbed the back of his head.

“Want me to call the cops, or not?”

“Hell, no. I mean, no, but thanks.”

“Well, take this.” The man stuffed a couple of dollar bills in Frank’s jacket pocket.

“Oh, thanks. But I don’t need any …”

“Forget it, brother. Stay in the light.”

LATER, SITTING IN
an all-night diner, Frank remembered the Samaritan’s long ponytail catching the light of a streetlamp. He gave up hope of a good night’s sleep at the hotel. His nerves were taut and pinging so he chose to stay as long as he could there, playing with cups of black coffee and a plate of eggs. It wasn’t going well. If only he had a car, but Lily wouldn’t hear of it. She had other plans. As he poked the eggs his thoughts turned to what Lily must be doing, thinking. She had seemed relieved at his departure. And, truth be told, so was he. He was now convinced his attachment to her was medicinal, like swallowing aspirin. Effectively, whether she knew it or
not, Lily displaced his disorder, his rage and his shame. The displacements had convinced him the emotional wreckage no longer existed. In fact, it was biding its time.

Tired and uneasy, Frank left the diner and wandered aimlessly down the streets, pausing suddenly when he heard a trumpet screech. The sound came from down a short flight of steps ending at a half-open door. Appreciative voices underscored the trumpet’s squeal, and if anything could match his mood it was that sound. Frank went inside. He preferred bebop to blues and happy-making love songs. After Hiroshima, the musicians understood as early as anyone that Truman’s bomb changed everything and only scat and bebop could say how. Inside the room, small and thick with smoke, a dozen or so very intense people faced a trio: trumpet, piano, and drums. The piece went on and on and, except for a few nodding heads, no one moved. Smoke hovered; minutes ticked by. The pianist’s face was slick with sweat, as was the trumpeter’s. The drummer’s, however, was dry. Clearly, there would be no musical end; the piece would stop only when a player was exhausted at last, when the trumpet player took the horn out of his mouth and the pianist tickled the keys before executing a final run. But when it happened, when the pianist and the trumpeter were through, the drummer was not. He kept on and on. After a while his fellow musicians turned to look at him and recognized what they must have seen before. The drummer had lost
control. The rhythm was in charge. After long minutes, the pianist stood and the trumpet player put down his horn. Both lifted the drummer from his seat and took him away, his sticks moving to a beat both intricate and silent. The audience clapped their respect and their sympathy. Following the applause a woman in a bright blue dress and another piano player took the stage. She sang a few bars of “Skylark,” then broke into a scat that cheered everybody up.

Frank left when the place emptied. It was 4:00 a.m., two hours until Mr. Gypsy Cab was due. His headache less active, he sat on the curb to wait. It never arrived.

No car, no cab, no friends, no information, no plan—finding transportation from city to suburb in these parts was rougher than confronting a battlefield. It was 7:30 a.m. when he boarded a bus filled with silent dayworkers, housekeepers, maids, and grown lawn boys. Once beyond the business part of the city, they dropped off the bus one by one like reluctant divers into inviting blue water high above the pollution below. Down there they would search out the debris, the waste, resupply the reefs, and duck the predators swimming through lacy fronds. They would clean, cook, serve, mind, launder, weed, and mow.

Thoughts of violence alternating with those of caution rushed through Frank as he watched for the right street sign. He had no idea what he would do once he got to where Cee was. Maybe, as with the drummer, rhythm
would take charge. Maybe he too would be escorted away, flailing helplessly, imprisoned in his own strivings. Suppose no one was home. He would have to break in. No. He couldn’t let things get so out of control that it would endanger Cee. Suppose—but there was no point in supposing on unfamiliar ground. By the time he saw the correct street sign, it was too late to pull the cord. He calmed down while walking back several blocks before arriving at the M.D. sign on the lawn of Beauregard Scott’s house. Near the steps bloomed a dogwood tree, its blossoms snow-white with purple centers. He considered whether to knock on the front door or the back. Caution suggested the back.

“Where is she?”

The woman who opened the kitchen door did not question him. “Downstairs,” she said.

“You Sarah?”

“I am. Be as quiet as you can.” She nodded toward the stairs that led to the doctor’s office and Cee’s room.

When Frank got to the bottom of the stairs he saw through an open door a small white-haired man sitting at a large desk. The man looked up.

“What? Who are you?” The doctor’s eyes widened then narrowed at the insult of being invaded by a stranger. “Get out of here! Sarah! Sarah?”

Frank moved closer to the desk.

“There’s nothing to steal here! Sarah!” The doctor
reached for the telephone. “I’m calling the police. Now!” His forefinger was in the dial’s zero when Frank knocked the telephone out of his hand.

Knowing completely now the nature of the threat, the doctor opened his desk drawer and pulled out a gun.

A .38, thought Frank. Clean and light. But the hand that held it shook.

The doctor raised the gun and pointed it at what in his fear ought to have been flaring nostrils, foaming lips, and the red-rimmed eyes of a savage. Instead he saw the quiet, even serene, face of a man not to be fooled with.

He pulled the trigger.

The click from the empty chamber was both tiny and thunderous. The doctor dropped the gun and ran around the desk, past the intruder and up the stairs. “Sarah!” he shouted. “Call the police, woman! Did you let him in here?”

Dr. Beau then ran down the hallway, to where another telephone sat on a small table. Standing next to it was Sarah, her hand pressed firmly on the cradle. There was no mistaking her purpose.

Meanwhile Frank walked into the room where his sister lay still and small in her white uniform. Asleep? He felt her pulse. Light or none? He leaned in to hear breath or no breath. She was cool to the touch, none of the early warmth of death. Frank knew death and this was not it—so far. Glancing quickly around the little room, he
noticed a pair of white shoes, a bedpan and Cee’s pocket-book. He rummaged in the purse and shoved the twenty dollars he found there into his pocket. Then he knelt by Cee’s bed, slid his arms under her shoulders and knees, cradled her in his arms, and carried her up the stairs.

Sarah and the doctor stood locked in an undecipherable stare. As Frank passed around them with his motionless burden, Dr. Beau cast him a look of anger-shaded relief. No theft. No violence. No harm. Just the kidnapping of an employee he could easily replace, although, knowing his wife, he dared not replace Sarah—not yet anyway.

“Don’t overplay your hand,” he told her.

“No, sir,” answered Sarah, but her hand remained pressed down on the telephone until the doctor descended the stairs to his office.

Once Frank had fumbled and eased his way through the front door and reached the sidewalk, he turned to glance back at the house and saw Sarah standing in the door, shadowed by the dogwood blossoms. She waved. Good-bye—to him and Cee or perhaps to her job.

Sarah stood for a moment watching the pair disappear down the walkway. “Thank the Lord,” she whispered, thinking that one more day would have surely been too late. She blamed herself almost as much as she blamed Dr. Beau. She knew he gave shots, had his patients drink medicines he made up himself, and occasionally performed abortions on society ladies. None of that bothered
or alarmed her. What she didn’t know was when he got so interested in wombs in general, constructing instruments to see farther and farther into them. Improving the speculum. But when she noticed Cee’s loss of weight, her fatigue, and how long her periods were lasting, she became frightened enough to write the only relative Cee had an address for. Days passed. Sarah didn’t know if her scary note had been received and was steeling herself to tell the doctor he had to call an ambulance when the brother knocked on the kitchen door. Thank God. Exactly the way old folks said: not when you call Him; not when you want Him; only when you need Him and right on time. If the girl dies, she thought, it wouldn’t be under her care in the doctor’s house. It would be in her brother’s arms.

Some dogwood blossoms, drooping in the heat, fell as Sarah shut the door.

Frank raised Cee to her feet, draped her right arm around his neck. Her head on his shoulder, her feet not even mimicking steps, she was feather-light. Frank got to the bus stop and waited for what seemed like an eternity. He passed the time counting the fruit trees in almost all the yards—pear, cherry, apple, and fig.

There were very few passengers on the bus back to town, and he was relieved to be relegated to the back, where bench seats allowed the two of them space and protected passengers from the sight of a man carrying, dragging, an obviously beat-up, drunken woman.

When they left the bus, it took a while to locate a gypsy cab parked away from the line of licensed taxis waiting, and more time to persuade the driver to accept the probable ruin of his backseat.