The Reservoir (22 page)

Tommie comes back from the edge of the sea, applause receding around him like wavelets slapping the shore. He asks Evans for some water, and drinks an entire glass. It seems as if his soul has separated from his body and is lingering above the back of the room, watching in detached curiosity. Behind him, Willie swishes his fan over Tommie’s neck. Why did he not let Willie take his place? All he can do now is hope and pray for mercy at the hands of twelve men who won’t meet his eyes.

• CHAPTER TWENTY •

I
T’S ALREADY
getting close to day’s end, but Hill wants to gallop on to the finish line if he can. He sends the jury out to see if they can come to a decision before too long. Evans and Tommie go to the judge’s waiting room. “If we can get past the one hour mark,” Evans says, “it’s a good sign.”

“But what’s your feeling now?” Tommie wants to know.

“I don’t see how they could convict on the evidence they have, Tommie. I really don’t.” He looks at his young charge with sad eyes. “I think we’ve done nearly all we could.”

“I know you have, Mr. Evans, and I want to thank you for it, and I’m sorry you’ve had to take so much trouble over me. I hope after this is over, we can go on where we left off.”

“I don’t see why not, as long as you change your name.” Mr. Evans smiles and grips Tommie’s shoulder.

Outside, the crowd steadily grows thicker and louder, and twice officers have to go out and request quiet so that the jury can have some peace. Willie looks in on his brother. “I’m going out and wait in the carriage,” he says. He won’t say what he’s thinking—that he can’t bear to sit in the courtroom for this part.

“Go on,” Tommie says, “I’m fine. Take Aunt Jane with you, if you want.”

“She’ll wait in there.” Willie thumbs toward the courtroom.

Inside the courtroom, Crump has gone over to speak with General Imboden, who has been attending the trial regularly, his place reserved right behind Colonel Aylett. Imboden stands and clasps his old friend’s hand. “Not a more valiant effort in twenty years,” he says. “This Mr. Meredith is something, isn’t he?” Crump agrees, and they laugh about what a good rat chaser Wren actually is, then turn to other topics of the day and their mutual friends.

A full hour has not quite gone by when the sergeant comes in and, in a solemn voice, tells Evans that the jury is ready. “Not good,” Tommie says. He feels hollow and strangely light as he stands and follows Evans back into the courtroom. When they have taken their seats, Hill calls the jury in.

A few minutes later the jurors are standing in two rows with expressionless faces. The clerk calls each of their names, and each answers. Then the clerk says, “Thomas J. Cluverius, please stand up.” Tommie pulls his hand away from his aunt and rises.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” says the clerk, “look upon the prisoner. How say you? Is he guilty or not guilty of the felony charged in the indictment?”

In the three seconds before the foreman can clear his throat, Tommie’s mind leaps back nearly twenty years. He’s following his brother down the creek from their old house upcounty, before they moved in with Aunt Jane. There had been a storm and the water was high, and they wanted to keep walking and exploring. Their little brother, Charles, had tried to tag along, but they’d made him go back. Willie told Tommie that the creek joined with the Mattaponi River and that there were Pamunkey Indians living somewhere down there. Even then Tommie thought he would remember this day when he was old, as old as his father.

The woods began growing thicker and darker, and in places it was hard to stay with the creek because of the tangles of vines and roots along the bank. At one point the bright oval leaves of a pawpaw tree caught the sunlight, and the boys peeked between limbs onto the creek. There had been soldiers marauding as recently as last summer, and their mother was not convinced that there were not still stragglers, deserters, vagabonds, and cutthroats—Union or Confederate—abroad in the countryside. “I’m hungry,” Tommie announced.

“We’ll find more berries and keep going,” Willie decided.

Tommie wanted to go home now, though he wouldn’t say it. He was afraid of a lot of things—at the moment, snakes. To go on would mean crossing another creek, more of a swamp, where there were certain to be snakes. They started in and were soon up to their calves in rusty water, their feet squishing the bottom. Tommie stepped up on a cypress knee and thought maybe he could cross on just roots and knees and that if he fell and hurt himself they could go home. But then he heard his little brother crying somewhere behind them. Now everything was all right, because they would have to take Charles home.

“We’ll never get to the river now,” Willie said. Charles was sitting in a patch of brown sand at the edge of the creek, crying quietly to himself. His legs were covered with scratches, and the two older boys saw that their own legs were also scored and torn by brambles they had hardly noticed. Tommie wasn’t worried about getting in trouble, because if they were punished Willie would take the larger share.

At the bend in the creek where Charles sat, the water moved more swiftly than in the straight parts, and there were little eddies whirling and shifting as if guided by some unseen hand beneath the surface.

The creek whispered and murmured.

What was it murmuring? Why did it keep whispering the same silvery phrase over and over? There was a little island of trees and shrubs out in the middle, and Willie started wading toward it without a word. Tommie went in after his brother. They could tend to Charles later.

Willie and Tommie reached the island without hearing the plop of their brother going under. They looked back to see if he had noticed their triumph and to figure out a way to get him there as well. Willie was the only one who could swim—he’d learned to dog-paddle at the edge of their neighbor’s pond that summer. Tommie wanted to learn so that he could fly out across the river on the rope swing.

But Charles was not where they last saw him. Willie began shouting. “Must of went home,” he said. Tommie shook his head, because his brother said it wrong, not the way his mother would. Still, he liked the sound of his brother’s voice, its confidence and hopefulness, like a wise old frog.

When they realized their brother was gone, they headed back, thinking to overtake him around every twist in the creek, every stand of shrubs they broke through. With each failed sighting, they picked up their pace. At home the first words from their father’s mouth were ones Tommie knew all along he would say: “Where’s Charles?”

And then they had to go all the way back, both of them, with their father and a colored man named Cato, while their mother ran for help, and they were tired and it was after noon and they hadn’t had their dinner. Willie didn’t seem to care about any of that—he was suddenly like one of the grown-ups.

When Tommie imagined it later, he saw Charles looking into the flat dark water, drawn to his own silhouette and the way the overhanging limbs of trees were painted upside down on the top of the creek. There was something about it that made him want to test the perfection of it, to break up the ghost of the trees by planting his foot in the middle of the scene. When he was standing in the water up to his knees, he noticed his brothers wading in above their waists to an island downstream. He started to the island as well, but within a few steps the sandy bottom dropped away and he found himself falling. The last thing he knew was the blue-white flash of a kingfisher darting downstream, into a liquid sky. His last breath broke the surface of the copper water, and the rippled mirror flattened again and the trees were repainted in perfect order, as if nothing had disturbed their timeless tranquil image.

The rest of the episode fractured into little pieces that settled on the bottom of Tommie’s mind, where they occasionally stirred to the surface—how the men came and found Charles caught against the submerged trunk of a tree just downstream of the island, how they tried to blow air into his lungs. And how for days and days his mother cried, and that before they took Charles away she dressed him in clean Sunday clothes that Tommie himself had once worn. And how Willie was never the same after.

“Is he guilty or not guilty of the felony charged in the indictment?”

The foreman steadies his voice. “Guilty,” he says.

Then each member of the jury in turn says, “Guilty as charged.”

After the last juryman has spoken, a tremendous and awful silence expands within the courtroom. When the verdict had been relayed to the crowd outside, a shout goes up. People lean over to congratulate the prosecutors. But almost as quickly as it arises, the clamor dies, and the crowd, having heard what it came for, begins to disperse.

There’s a buzzing in Tommie’s ears that won’t stop. That’s it then? No discussion of a lesser charge? It does not seem as though he is really here, in his own body.

Evans has an arm around his shoulder. “That’s just the first inning,” he tells Tommie. “There’s still a long way to go. We have more tricks to pull.”

Aunt Jane cannot open her eyes to look at her nephew, nor can she even rise to her feet. Tommie leans over and kisses her. He wants to tell her it’s all right, but his mouth has gone dry and nothing comes out. She seizes his hand and focuses on it, her body beginning to shake with sobs. Two jurors come by and tell Tommie they had no hard feelings, and Tommie nods politely and says, “I understand.” Then he shakes hands with Evans and the Crumps. “You did all you could,” he says.

Out in the police carriage, Willie sits waiting for his brother. He hears the triumphant shouting in the street. “Guilty!” And all he can think is—my brother, my brother, my brother. When Tommie gets in beside him, the only thing Willie can manage is a glance through blurred eyes.

“It’s all right,” Tommie says, avoiding his brother’s eyes. “It’s not over. We’re making a motion for a new trial tomorrow. And, failing that, there’s a writ of error, appeals, pardons.”

Willie nods, but his shoulders convulse and his face runs with tears. He’s embarrassed to look up.

The silence is too awful, so Tommie takes it upon himself to talk. “It could be worse,” he tries, with a grim little laugh. “I could’ve been lynched … I wonder what’s for supper tonight?”

Officer Birney, whom Richardson has recently promoted to sergeant, has volunteered to drive Tommie the past few days. He says, “I think they were making beef sthew over at the cookhouse today. I’ll go ahead and thend out for thome if you’d like.”

“I think beef stew does sound good.” Tommie realizes how hungry he is, after eating almost nothing the past twenty-four hours. “I can’t help thinking of robin pie,” he says. “We used to have it this time of year, but I haven’t tasted any in I don’t know how long.”

Birney laughs. “I don’t know if I can thcare you up any robin pie, but I think it would be all right if your brother wanth to thtay to thupper with you thith evening.”

“That would be fine,” Tommie says. “And send out for some Trixy cigars, would you, Sergeant? And a tin of caviar? Maybe a bottle of Christian and White’s old blackberry wine, and a tub of Antoni’s ice cream? I’m planning quite a party.”

“Well, I don’t know about all that, but we might find you thome orangeth and a bottle of lemonade.”

Tommie disappears inside himself momentarily, the forced levity costing him too much pain. Willie takes up the slack and says, “If you want ice cream every day, I’ll see that you get it.”

When they are back in Tommie’s hallway, other prisoners come to their barred doors, and even though they know what his return means, one of them asks, “So how did you fare?”

“They found me guilty of murder in the first degree,” Tommie sings out, almost laughing at how absurd he sounds. Willie, coming behind, offers to clean the man’s plow, but Tommie quiets him down.

At his cell, Tommie turns to his brother and offers his hand, but Willie reaches his strong arms around him and holds him to his chest for a moment, until Tommie can feel the beating of his brother’s heart against his own.

“I have to tell you something,” Tommie says, “but you have to promise never to repeat it.” Willie agrees and he sits on the edge of Tommie’s cot, watching his brother pace back and forth, five steps up and five steps back, over and over as he spills his tale.

• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE •

O
NE
S
UNDAY AFTERNOON
in February, I went over to visit Ma and Pa. Pa was out offering advice to a friend about a horse. It was just as well, because what I really wanted was Ma’s opinion on premarital pregnancy. The fact is, Lillie had told me she was pregnant, and, Willie, I’d been with her—only twice, but it doesn’t take but once. Anyway, you know Ma had been starting in on the jug earlier and earlier in the afternoons, and I was counting on her being in a tipsy haze and not making any hasty conclusions—she’d probably forget about it later.

She was quite merry, singing a tune and actually doing some housework. She was cleaning the front window, and she saw me coming and gave me the brightest smile I’d seen in some time. After she’d hugged me, she began talking a flood tide, and I was thinking she could’ve been a preacher if she’d been a man. She was telling me about her relatives, about her half-brother and her niece, Lillie’s mother. This niece, you know Hannah Walker, had always looked up to Ma, asking her advice on clothes and boys and even whether she should marry Howard Madison. Ma had said no, but Hannah went ahead and married him, and for some time afterward was estranged from our family. Yet later she asked Ma whether Lillie ought to go live with Aunt Jane.

She went on at some length, and I was wondering if there was a point to it and whether I’d get a chance to ask what I wanted to. Clearly something was on her mind, but it seemed only mildly interesting. Then she went out back to get me some chicory root for my coffee, even though I said I didn’t want any. I stood and looked around at the projects she’d started and left unfinished—the hemming work on the table, the polishing rag on the andiron. There was a book on the mantelpiece lying on its side, spine out.
Pilgrim’s Progress
. I picked it up, and it opened on a folded piece of foolscap—a letter dated the previous week and addressed to Ma. I scanned it, and the phrases leaped off the page:

Dear Aunt Eliza,

I write you with a heart heavy with sorow … know how we sent Fannie Lillian to live with Aunt Jane because of her difficult nature? Well the truth is that I wanted her to go … said if he lifted his hand to her one more time I would call out the sherf and I didn’t care if he hit me for doing it … He was at her for some time, ever since she became a woman. It is a horible crime against nature and his own flesh & blood and I know I stand to be judged for letting it go on for so long … I thoght it had stopped but last summer when she was over here to teach the girls I chanced to go out to the barn looking for a length of string to tie up my beans and I saw something Im ashamed to write about. They were over in the corner behind the hay bales where it was dark but I know it was them laying together I saw there legs … I like to have died … scared of God’s jdgmnt on all of us … don’t know if I will send this or burn it … never ever tell a living soul … say a prayer for us, Eliza, could you? … I feel so blessed that finelly that girl is far away living on her own & maybe now we will have some peace.

Much Love, Hannah.

When Ma came back in and saw me holding the letter, she stopped short. “Where did you get that?” she said. “You weren’t supposed to see that.” She took it from me and was on the point of dropping it into the sputtering little fire she had going. “Did you read all of it?”

I nodded.

“Well you have to forget you ever saw it.” She dropped it on a tongue of flame and watched the edges curl.

I later wondered if Ma hadn’t left the letter out on purpose, so that I might find it and lose all interest in Lillie. But by then it was far too late.

Tommie pauses in his story, trying to gauge his brother’s reaction, but Willie will not take his eyes off the concrete floor. When asked if he wants to hear the rest, Willie nods slowly, his broad shoulders lifting and falling with his breath.

Lillie was supposed to arrive in Richmond on Wednesday, March eleventh, so I could take her to a lying-in house. I didn’t know it, but she’d missed her train. I’d gotten there on Thursday and decided to stay an extra day just to make sure, though I was hoping she’d changed her mind and simply wasn’t coming. So on Friday morning, I headed out of the Davis House at nine-thirty and went down to the
Dispatch
office, opposite the American Hotel.

I got a newspaper, looked around to see if I recognized anyone, then crossed the street and stepped smartly into the hotel. Scanning the register, I came across the name I didn’t want to see: F. L. Merton, Roanoke City. It was just like her to pick a place she liked the sound of.

I exited the hotel and crossed Main again and took from my jacket pocket an envelope containing a note I’d written in my room that morning: “Meet me at the post office at eleven o’clock.” That seemed like a busy enough place that no one would take notice of us. I wrote “Merton, Room 21” on the envelope and spotted a thin, light-skinned negro boy leaning against the wall. “I’ve got a job for you,” I said. The boy was wearing a clean white long-sleeved shirt and brown corduroy pants; he looked casually at me. “Take this across to the American Hotel over there and hand it to the clerk at the desk,” I told him. The boy looked at me as though he didn’t speak English. “I’ll pay you,” I said, trying not to be impatient.

“I’m waiting for my uncle,” the boy said. “He a Knights of Labor man. We’re going back to Washington today. The climate doesn’t suit us here.”

“I don’t blame you,” I told him. “You folks were right to complain about those hotels. It’s a real shame.”

The boy, who I guessed was fourteen or fifteen, hitched up his pants and put on a countrified accent, rolling his eyes. “Now boss, what was that task you hiring me fo?” I gave him the envelope and the boy made a show of ambling, elbows out, across the street. When he got back I asked if he’d done as I told him, and he shook his head and said, “Nawsuh. I tried to, but a bellboy stopped me and said he’d take care of it.”

“That’s fine,” I said, handing the boy a nickel. He shook his head, eyeing the coin as though he wanted to take it. I’d never seen anything like it, but I didn’t wait for him to change his mind. “Well, good luck to you then,” I said, pocketing the nickel and heading up the street.

At the Planter’s Bank I withdrew ten dollars, making now thirty-six dollars in my pocket—it would have to do. I continued, stopping in at Lumsden & Sons jewelers to ask about a breast pin Nola had sent with me several weeks before for repair—I always enjoyed doing these little favors for people back home, and that day they served as convenient stops. No, the pin was not ready, nor were Aunt Jane’s shoes up at Griggs’. I still had twenty minutes, so I stopped at Schoen’s for a mineral water and a smoke. A college mate named Martin Harrison came in and we said a few words of greeting, nothing out of the ordinary.

At the post office I inquired about receiving a money order from King and Queen. If Magdalen House—where I was planning to take Lillie—required a substantial down payment, I figured I could wire Aunt Jane … or you … to send me money, saying it was for a diamond ring for Nola. Finding that King and Queen couldn’t send money orders, I decided to simply wait for Lillian. I wondered how many people who knew me had already spotted me, and whether that was good or bad. The important thing was that I had not been seen with her. I’d always thought of the city as an anonymous place, and now not so.

And there she was, walking up the street, wearing a black overcoat and red shawl, like a fat red-winged blackbird. She smiled as though she was on holiday. “Let’s go,” I said, stepping out onto the sidewalk. “Have you eaten?”

“You have a way with words, Tommie,” she said. “Yes, I had breakfast at the hotel, and it’s great to see you, too. You needn’t walk so fast.”

“We should keep moving,” I said. “And if you could put your veil over your eyes—”

She did as I said. “Don’t be cross with me,” she told me. “If I’m smiling, it’s because I’m trying to keep my spirits up, not because I feel happy. I came exactly what time you told me to, and now you could at least tell me where we’re going.”

“There’s a house on Spring Street that can take you in,” I said, though I didn’t know for sure if that was true.

She wanted to know how far away it was, and whether we could take the streetcar. “I get tired easily these days,” she said.

I told her it was about a mile and since the streetcar didn’t go that way we could walk slowly. I wanted to know what had happened to her and told her I had been worried when she hadn’t showed up.

She moved closer to me on the sidewalk, her hand brushing against mine. She told me she’d missed the train and felt terrible, with no way to reach me. And then last night the train was six hours late. It was after three in the morning when she got in. “I thought maybe you would meet me at the station,” she said. I told her I didn’t even know if she was coming, and she said, “What did you think I was going to do, Tommie?”

I winced at her raised voice. We went on another block in silence, and then I told her about the place we were going to and how nice it was (though, of course, I didn’t really know). “They may not be expecting you yet,” I said, “but I know once they see you it’ll be fine.”

“You mean you haven’t spoken to them?” she asked. “What kind of place is this?”

“It’s a very respectable lying-in establishment recommended to me by the director of the Church Institute.” That was completely true.

“But you’re not coming in too?”

“They don’t want to see me, they want to see you. They don’t want couples, you see, just unmarried women, and if I went in with you it might look—well, just not right.”

“Oh, Tommie, no,” she interrupted, “I won’t go into a place like that by myself. I couldn’t do it.”

I wished I were anywhere in the world but there then, any other person in the world, even an old gray-haired negro I saw pushing a cart of vegetables down the street. I could tell her what I knew about her father right then. We would have a scene right there on the sidewalk, but I wanted to try to do the right thing by her first. I swear I did. And, besides, I didn’t know how she was going to take what I had to tell her. “I’ll walk you right up to it,” I said. “It’s better if you go on by yourself.”

“I won’t do it,” she said, and I recognized the firmness in her voice—that determined, iron-willed little spirit inside that small body I’d once found attractive.

We turned onto Spring, the tower of the penitentiary looming on a knoll not far away, its weather vane pointing east—some weather coming in. Down the block a scrape involving about ten boys was in progress. A rock went whizzing a few feet from our heads. I held up my hands and in my most authoritative voice said, “Could I ask you boys where I might find the Magdalen House?”

One of them pointed it out, his companions making rude noises off to the side. I thanked him and the boy touched his cap, and then they all went on trying to put each other’s eyes out.

The building was a three-story brick pile, with dormer windows and a double veranda on the side. I knocked and a matron of about thirty-five years greeted us. Her hair was hidden nurse-style in a kerchief, but she had a demure face and manner. It was my last real hope and I hesitated. The matron smiled politely and introduced herself as Miss Pilcher—her soft brown eyes reminded me of Lillie’s, and I wondered if she had ever been in the same predicament.

“My cousin here is in the family way,” I said, “and we—she was wondering if she might stay here through her confinement.” I took the place in at a glance—even though it was in a bad neighborhood, it looked pretty nice. Just off the receiving room was a friendly dining room, with the smell of bread baking and a ceiling fan hooked to a belt and pulleys. A needlepoint “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord,” hung in the hallway, along with a benefactor’s portrait.

“Yes,” Miss Pilcher said, “unmarried mothers are welcome to stay here until they can be out on their own.”

I felt the rope around me loosen just a little—I thought there might yet be an escape. “That’s just fine,” I said. “I’ll bring her things around later.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “We don’t have a bed just now. We had one yesterday. But there should be one this evening. We’ll need a letter of reference from a family member, preferably in the Richmond area, and a deposit of twenty dollars for the stay. Of course, you’re welcome to give more, since we depend on charitable donations. Or, if you can’t afford it, we have a work program.”

Lillian stood there apparently neither embarrassed nor concerned, waiting for me to speak. But now Miss Pilcher addressed her. “Would it be possible for one of your parents to come tomorrow to work out the details?” Her expression was so kind and serene it reminded me of something I couldn’t remember just then. “I know Miss Elder would prefer that.”

“That’s not possible,” I blurted out. “They’re dead. So, no, that wouldn’t be possible.”

Miss Pilcher kept smiling encouragingly at Lillian, who was now pouting. “If you’re under age we’ll still need a reference from your nearest of kin.”