Seen It All and Done the Rest (24 page)

FORTY-SEVEN

W
e could see it from the street. A smelly mountain of trash where we had worked so hard all week to clear a space. Victor was standing near the house next to a neatly dressed woman who turned in our direction when we pulled up in the yard, but Victor said something to her and she stayed where she was as he hurried over to meet us.

“What happened?” I said.

Zora was already turning her technology toward the pile, but she was standing close enough to pick up Victor’s response, too.

“Somebody dumped a truck of trash on us,” he said.

I looked at him, annoyed at the obviousness of his answer. “I can see that,” I said, sounding as pissed off as I felt. “But who? When did this happen? Did you see anybody?”

Victor shook his head. “It was here when I got back. I went to church with my mother,” he looked embarrassed to say it. “And then…I wanted to show her what we were doing, cleaning up and everything, but when we got here”—he gestured helplessly at the mound—“there it was. They must have known I wasn’t here.”

The woman was still looking in our direction, clutching her purse to her stomach like it might fly away or get snatched if she didn’t hang on tight. She was a small woman, but she had a big presence, and the intensity of her dark eyes made it seem even bigger. Her dark blue coat, small, flowered hat, and sensible, low-heeled pumps completed a picture of churchgoing-black-womanhood that was as familiar to me as my own face in the mirror.

It dawned on me that this was Victor’s mother. The woman who had put him out when the crack made him unrecognizable, even to her. The woman who had climbed up this long driveway to let her son show her that he had permission to be here now. That he was working. That he had turned a corner. That he was doing this as much for her as for me. If I felt bad, he probably felt ten times worse. And my mother wasn’t standing right there looking at me, either.

“I should have been here,” he said.

Victor’s mother came toward us slowly, picking her way across the uneven yard.

“They probably would have dumped it anyway,” I said, turning toward her as she approached. “People have been throwing stuff over that fence so long they probably think that’s what it’s for.”

Victor’s mother cleared her throat. “That’s just what I told him.”

He looked at her and ducked his head the way he probably did when he was about ten years old and she caught him at some mischief.

“There’s no law against going to church on Sunday,” she said.

“None I feel bound to obey,” I said, smiling and extending my hand. “I’m Josephine Evans. This is my house.”

“I’m Betty Causey,” she said, shaking my hand with a grip that was surprisingly firm for such a small woman. “That’s my house down there on Wiley. The one with the flower boxes.”

“You ever have any problems with people dumping trash in your yard?”

She looked at Victor. “You didn’t tell her?”

“I told her,” he said, heading down by the fence to take a closer look at what we’d be up against first thing tomorrow morning. Zora was already there with her camera.

“I’ve had problems with people doing everything,” she said, watching her son poking at the bags gently with a stick. “Trash in my yard. They stole my car. Broke my front window. Kicked in my side door. Tore up my garden.”

My heart sank. Was this just the beginning? “Is it kids?”

She shrugged, still looking at Victor, who was talking to Zora as they walked around the mound. “No kids can drop that much trash in one day.”

“Then who do you think it was?”

She turned to me with an exasperated expression that made her look exactly the way her son did when he was pissed off. “I think it’s Woodruff.”

“Greer Woodruff?” I had an immediate mental picture of the boss lady at the wheel of an overflowing dump truck. “Why?”

“She made you an offer for your place, right?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you take it?”

“The offer was ridiculous. I told her my place wasn’t for sale.”

“
Bingo!”

“Bingo?”

“She wants these last four houses, yours and the three of us down on Wiley. She wants them
bad.
Her business is tied up with a lot of shady people. Now it’s time to pay the piper and she needs our houses to do it.”

“What kind of shady people?”

Victor, now close enough to hear his mother, grimaced slightly. “You don’t have any proof that it’s her.”

“Stop talking like a lawyer,” Betty snapped. “I’m just saying—”

“It’s getting late,” Victor interrupted her before she could say more. “We should start back.”

Betty Causey pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, which seemed to be a family expression of disgust.

“Would you like a ride?” Zora said.

“No, thanks. I need the walk,” Betty said, accepting the arm Victor offered. He managed to look courtly even in his worn jacket and frayed white shirt. I wondered what the minister thought when he showed up at church this morning. Knowing Betty, she had had the whole congregation praying for her prodigal son. They probably welcomed him back with high hopes and prayers of thanksgiving.

“This is my granddaughter, Zora,” I said as they moved slowly toward the sloping driveway.

Betty smiled and nodded her head. “I could have guessed it. She’s the spitting image of your mom.”

“Did you know my mother?” The idea had never occurred to me.

“Everybody knew your mother,” Betty said, stopping to look at me like I was forever missing the obvious. “She was always talking about how important it was for a woman to own the place she laid down in every night. Even if you were married, she was always telling us to be sure our name was on the deed right alongside our husband’s.” Betty smiled to herself. “They didn’t appreciate it either, but we made them add us anyway just so we wouldn’t have to keep hearing her fussing about it. And she loved her roses. She’s the one that made us all start gardening, too.”

Those were my mother’s two major passions, all right. Roses and real estate.

“Why did people stop doing their gardens?”

She shook her head sadly. “Too dangerous. We can’t be outside like that. Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, wondering if Greer Woodruff was responsible for that, too.

Betty Causey held a little tighter to Victor’s arm as they started down the driveway, but then she turned back to me.

“I remember you, too,” she said. “Always writing stuff in your little notebooks. Do you still do it?”

“No,” I said. “I’m an actress.”

She raised her eyebrows. “An actress?”

I nodded, loving her surprise.

“Well, Miss Actress,” she said, putting one foot down carefully in front of the other. “Welcome home.”

FORTY-EIGHT

I
t took most of the next day to even make a dent in the new trash pile. We would fill up Aretha’s truck and she’d haul it away and then we’d fill it up again. What Betty had said kept popping into my head as we worked.
No kids can drop that much trash in one day.
Abbie and Zora were downtown filing a complaint report with the city, and at noon one of Aretha’s friends arrived with another truck. By five o’clock, he and Victor were loading up the last of the mountain before heading for the dump. Aretha and I were sitting on the front steps, trying to decide what to tackle next, when a navy blue Cadillac pulled up in the yard and slowed to a stop. The vanity tag said
SERVANT
. I looked at Aretha, who just shrugged, as the door opened and a tall, thin man wearing a brown silk suit stepped out and smiled in our direction.

“Councilman Rogers,” Aretha said, as he reached back inside for his hat and what looked like two yard signs. I wondered if he was here to do a little campaigning.

“He’s Greer Woodruff’s boy,” she whispered to me as we stood up to greet him.

“Ladies, ladies, don’t get up!” he said, coming across the yard like he owned it, his voice a booming baritone that enjoyed the sound of itself a few decibels louder than could be called conversational. I knew a lot of actors like that. They throw their voices at you, convinced you will be powerless before its sheer ability to fill up a space.

“I’m Josephine Evans,” I said, raising my own voice just a little to be heard over the truck which was idling nearby. “The property owner.”

The councilman extended his hand. “I’m Councilman Julius Rogers, serving the people of this district for the past twenty-two years. May I first apologize for the less civilized among my constituents who have been using your place for dumping. There is no excuse for it and I will work with you to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Glad to do it,” he said. “In the meantime, you should post these signs in a prominent position to let people know that there’s a new sheriff in town.”

He chuckled at his own joke and handed Aretha two official-looking N
O
D
UMPING
signs as if that settled that.

“Thank you,” she said, heading for the toolbox in her truck. “I’ll post them right away.”

“Glad to do it,” he said again, then turned back to me. “Ms. Evans, I wondered if I might have a word with you privately, as the property owner.”

“Certainly,” I said.

Victor and Aretha’s friend were backing the truck into position for departure and Aretha was loudly pounding the first sign into the ground near the fence.

“Come inside.”

He smiled and followed me into the house. I took him into the dining room where we had established a kind of crew room with a table and four mismatched chairs. We had scrubbed down everything inside, but the real work was still to be done. As a stopgap measure, Aretha and Zora had put a cheap coat of white paint over everything, but the outlines of some of the more garish bits of graffiti were still vaguely visible in the afternoon sunlight as ghostly images of too many bad drawings of too many oversize penises. Councilman Rogers’s eyes flickered over the walls and then back to me. I turned on the hurricane lamp we were using until electricity was restored, and the images faded in the light. He smiled in a way that made me want to slap him now and get it over with.

“Squatters did a job on these walls,” I said calmly. “We’ll need a few more coats of paint to cover their artwork completely.”

“I see,” he said, pulling up a chair like a man who was used to focusing on the matter at hand, regardless of surroundings. “Well, I may be able to save you a whole lot of paint and a whole lot of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Why don’t you sit down, Ms. Evans? It makes me feel like I’m being rude to sit, but my dogs are barking today. It feels good to take a load off.”

I took the chair across from him. “What kind of trouble?”

“Just what you had the other day. Trash in your yard. Vandalism. Robbery. Home invasion. All the things for which my constituents are deservedly famous.”

I wondered what he wanted. “You mean you don’t think the signs you gave us will turn the tide?”

“I think they will be helpful, but let’s lay our cards on the table, shall we?”

Aretha stuck her head in before he could answer. “Excuse me, Jo, if you don’t need me in here, I’m going to go on and get started on the front door.”

She held up a gallon of paint that I knew was the same turquoise she had used to adorn all those front doors in West End.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Go ahead.”

Councilman Rogers waited until we heard her close the front door behind her and cleared his throat. “Greer Woodruff is an associate of mine. We have done business over the years, always for the betterment of this community and rarely for her own financial gain.”

“She’s doing all right for herself,” I said. “Lovely offices.”

“Yes, well, she is on the verge of doing a very important development deal here that I believe she outlined for you.”

“Yes, she did.”

“Then you understand how important such development can be to a depressed area like this one.”

He was waiting for me to argue, but I just looked at him. I was waiting to see those cards on the table. “Yes, I do.”

“Ms. Woodruff would like you to revisit your decision in regard to the sale of your property.”

“Or what? She’ll arrange to have some more trash dumped in my yard?”

“That’s hardly the way Ms. Woodruff does business,” he said. “I just thought when I heard about your misfortune that…”

“I think it’s exactly how she does business,” I said, talking over him, “and I’ll tell you just like I told her. My house is not for sale.”

He took off his hat and laid it on the table between us. “How long have you been away from Atlanta, Ms. Evans?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Twenty years? Thirty?” He touched the edge of his hat lightly. “Thirty-five? That’s a long time to be gone. A lot of things have changed. This town doesn’t run on high ideals and big dreams anymore. It runs on big money, the quicker the better.”

Outside I could hear Abbie and Zora pulling up. The delighted squeal that accompanied their arrival meant they had picked up Aretha’s Joyce Ann, who always greeted her mom with a whoop of the purest delight. Just the sound of it made me feel good. Councilman Rogers made me feel tired.

“This particular deal has ramifications far beyond what you may be able to see right away,” he said. “All of us can benefit if we can move with dispatch.”

There were the cards I’d been waiting to see. Whatever deal Greer was in the midst of trying to make, part of the proceeds were clearly going into Councilman Rogers’s silk pockets. I stood up.

“I do appreciate your concern,” I said, “but I’m not interested in making any deals.”

He stood up, too, although you could tell that wasn’t the response he was looking for from me. “Greer Woodruff has some powerful friends in this town.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said, leading him out the back door so we wouldn’t disturb any painting going on out front.

Joyce Ann was squealing again. She had dipped her hands in the paint with her mother’s blessing and was now making handprints all over the front door. Abbie was applauding their efforts, and Zora was capturing it all on video.

When we got to his car, Councilman Rogers tossed his hat in and gave me one last chance. “You know, Ms. Evans, I understand you have quite a reputation as an actress.”

“I have my moments,” I said.

“I’m sure you do,” he said, “but the thing is, this is real life.”

“It’s all real life,” I said. “Thanks for stopping by.”

As he headed back down the driveway, I wondered how long it would take him to report back to Greer Woodruff.

“It’s good luck,” Abbie said as I joined them at the front door.

I had met Joyce Ann only once before, but she gave me a big smile and held up her turquoise hands.

“I’m good luck!”

“Yes, you are,” I said, laughing.

They had pinned one of our big T-shirts around her like a chef’s apron.

“Blue never let me do the handprints in West End,” Aretha said. “He never really got it, but Zora said you didn’t mind.”

“I love it,” I said. “Do the handprints make it stronger medicine against the evil eye?”

“Absolutely,” Aretha said.

“Good,” I said. “Something tells me we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

“You’ve already got it,” she said, watching her daughter carefully putting more prints on the door with Abbie’s encouragement.

“Show us your hands, Joyce Ann!” Abbie said as Zora moved in closer. “Show us your good-luck hands!”