THE WRONG PERSON

Memphis was distracted. All day long he replayed his meeting with Theta, the excitement of their narrow escape from the police. The way she’d looked at him when it was clear they’d made it, with gratitude and a little shyness. Memphis had wanted nothing more at that moment than to sweep her up into a romantic kiss. In fact, it was thinking about that kiss that had nearly gotten him in trouble. That morning when he’d gone to Mrs. Jordan’s beauty shop to write their slips, he’d mixed up Mrs. Jordan’s regular gig with Mrs. Robinson’s washerwoman’s gig because his mind was elsewhere.

“Memphis, where is your head?” Mrs. Jordan had tutted good-naturedly, and Memphis had apologized and run their numbers to Floyd’s Barbershop just ahead of the clearinghouse posting.

Papa Charles had called a meeting at the Dee-Luxe Restaurant, one of his own, to discuss the previous night’s disastrous raid. He assured everyone that the situation was minor, a misunderstanding that was already on its way to being worked out, and that the padlock would be off the doors of the Hotsy Totsy very soon. But Memphis could tell that beneath Papa Charles’s elegant manners and calm speech, he was nervous. He had that tic in his jaw that Memphis had seen a few times before, when he’d had to deal with a drunken, belligerent customer or a hopped-up bootlegger. But still, Memphis’s thoughts were on Theta.

Theta, Theta, Theta. He’d met the girl of his dreams—a girl who had the same dream he did—only to lose her in the crowd. Just as it felt his destiny was shaping up, it was lost again. He didn’t know where she lived, where she was from—he didn’t even know her last name. And that crazy bird was back, dogging his every step.

“Shoo!” Memphis waved his hands at the crow. “Go on, Berenice! Git!”

Now Memphis was late to pick up Isaiah from school. He entered the classroom with apologies, but Isaiah wasn’t having any of it. On the street, his brother’s mood was stormy as he kicked a rock ahead, then chased it into the gutter so he could kick it again. “You were ’posed to be here at three o’clock!”

“I had some business to take care of, Ice Man.”

“What kind of business?”

“My business. Not yours.”

“Next time, I’ma walk myself home.”

“I won’t be late next time.”

“Prolly stepping out with that Creole Princess,” Isaiah grumbled.

Memphis stopped. “Where’d you hear that?”

Isaiah laughed. “Saw it written in your book from last night. Memphis got a gir-rl! Memphis got a gir-rl!”

Memphis grabbed Isaiah’s arm. “You listen here: That notebook is private. It belongs to me. You understand?”

Isaiah’s chin jutted forward. “Leggo my arm!”

“Promise me!”

“Let go!” Isaiah tore away, running ahead on the busy street. He was unpredictable when he was mad, and just as likely to tell Octavia everything as not.

Memphis softened. There was no need to take out his frustration on Isaiah, no matter how annoying he was. He hurried to catch up, saying, “Don’t be mad, Ice Man. Come on. Let’s go over to Mr. Reggie’s for a hamburger. You can sit at the counter, on the stools that turn around. Just don’t turn too much and vomit up your hamburger.”

Isaiah stopped. His nose was running. “I want chocolate.”

“Then you’ll have chocolate,” Memphis promised.

Memphis worried about Isaiah. It was by accident that Sister Walker had discovered Isaiah’s special talents. About six months ago, she’d moved to Harlem and come around to pay a call on Octavia. She said she was an old friend of their mother’s and was saddened to hear that she had passed.

“Viola was a fine woman,” Sister Walker had said.

Octavia had sized her up and found her wanting. “Funny, she never mentioned you to me. And we were close as can be.”

“Well, I expect even sisters keep some secrets,” Sister Walker had answered. That hadn’t sat well with Octavia, Memphis could tell.

But when Miss Walker offered to tutor Isaiah in arithmetic, a subject that gave him trouble, and to do it for free, Octavia relented. One day, while Sister Walker used the cards to teach him multiplication, Isaiah started calling out the cards ahead of time, and Sister asked if there were other things he could do. She said it was a skill that might help Isaiah in the world, and she started pushing him to work at it like it was a subject in school. Memphis didn’t see how Isaiah’s skill was something that could move him up in the world, like wailing on a trumpet the way Gabe did or solving mathematical equations like Mrs. Ward up at school could do. And if Octavia ever found out what really went on at Sister Walker’s house, she’d pitch a fit the likes of which they’d never seen. But it mattered to Isaiah. It made him feel special and happy like before, when their mama was alive and playing hide-and-seek with them while hanging the laundry from the clothesline in the garden they’d shared with the Touissants in the house on 145th Street. Memphis could still hear his mother’s laugh as she’d say, “All right, now. Let’s see if you two are as good at putting away these sheets as you are at hiding yourselves in them.”

Those had been good times, their father coming home from his job with the Gerard Lockhart Orchestra with a jovial, “Well, well, well, what have the Campbell brothers been up to today?” Memphis missed the smell of his father’s pipe in the front parlor. Sometimes he’d walk in front of the tobacco shop on Lenox Avenue just to light the memory of it in his mind.

“Watch out for Isaiah,” his mother had said to him. She was skin and bones then, lying in the front room, the sickness robbing her of the playfulness he’d always loved about her. Her eyes had a hollow look. “Promise me.” He’d promised. Three days later, they’d buried her out in Woodlawn Cemetery. The Gerard Lockhart Orchestra relocated to Chicago, and Memphis’s father with it, until he could save enough to send for Memphis and Isaiah. But there never seemed to be enough, and there they stayed, in the back room at Octavia’s. Isaiah was all that was left of those happier times when their family was all together, when you only had to walk through the door to hear somebody laughing or calling out, “Who’s that knocking at my door?” and Memphis held tightly to his brother. If anything happened to Isaiah, he wasn’t sure he could survive it.

But all that was the past, and he wasn’t going to dwell there. The night before with Theta had given him new hope. She was somewhere out there in that city, and Memphis meant to keep looking until he found her again.

At the pharmacy, he and Isaiah took two seats at the counter and Mr. Reggie put their order on, pressing two hamburgers against the grill with a spatula, making a comforting hiss of grease and heat. He scooped them onto plates and served them up, along with a soda for Memphis and a chocolate shake for Isaiah. Isaiah got to work spooning the thick ice cream into his mouth, dribbling half down his chin.

“Looks like I’m just in time.” Gabe dropped onto the stool next to Memphis. He grabbed Memphis’s hamburger and took a generous bite from it. “Mr. Campbell. Just the man I wanted to see. Alma’s having a rent party. We going. Oh, and get us some good hooch.”

Gabe handed him a thick wad of bills.

“Not in front of Isaiah,” Memphis whispered.

“He doesn’t know what we’re talking about. He’s enjoying that shake,” Gabe said.

“Don’t know what?” Isaiah said.

Memphis flashed Gabe a You see? look.

Gabe pursed his lips and folded his arms across his chest. “Little man, you got some kind of magic ears over there?”

Isaiah grinned. “No, but I do have powers.”

“Isaiah,” Memphis warned.

“Oh, do you now? I see how it is,” Gabe teased.

“I bet I know how much money you got in your pocket,” Isaiah said, turning all the way around on his bar stool.

“Isaiah, Gabe doesn’t have time for your games now,” Memphis said sharply. “Eat your food.”

Isaiah’s eyes narrowed. Memphis knew that look well enough to know that trouble generally followed it.

“You got a five, a one, and two quarters. And a address for a lady named Cymbelline.”

Gabe emptied his pocket. His eyebrows shot up. “How’d you know that?”

“Told you! I got the gift. I can prophecy, too.”

“He can’t do any such thing. Isaiah, quit telling stories,” Memphis said, flashing his brother another warning look.

“I can say whatever I want,” Isaiah snapped back.

“He can say whatever he wants,” Gabe said, grinning. “Tell me something else, little man.”

“I can see people’s futures sometimes.”

“Isaiah. Quit it now. We’ve got to get home, anyway—”

“Hold on, now, brother. Boy’s about to tell me my future. Maybe he knows something about the recording. So tell me, Isaiah, am I going to be Okeh Records’ newest star?”

“I gotta be touching something of yours.”

“Mr. Reggie! Excuse me, Mr. Reggie!” Memphis said quickly. “What do we owe you?”

“Hold on a minute, Memphis,” Mr. Reggie called. He carried two plates of food in his hands.

“Tell me,” Gabe whispered, extending his hand. Isaiah took it in his own and concentrated. After a long moment, he dropped Gabe’s hand very fast and backed away, his eyes big.

“What did you see? Don’t tell me—is she ugly?” Gabe joked.

“I didn’t see nothing,” Isaiah answered, and Memphis didn’t even correct him. He looked up at Memphis with very big eyes, and Memphis knew that whatever Isaiah had seen, it had spooked him.

“Get your coat now, Ice Man.”

But Gabe wouldn’t let it alone. “Come on, now. What do you see for your old pal Gabriel?”

“Under the bridge… don’t walk under the bridge,” Isaiah said softly. “He’s there.”

“What bridge? Him who? What’s gonna happen to me if I do?”

“You’ll die.”

“Isaiah!” Memphis growled. “He doesn’t mean that, brother. He’s just playing around. Say you’re sorry, Isaiah.”

Eyes big, Isaiah looked from Gabe to Memphis and back again. “Sorry, Gabe,” he said in a small voice.

“You just playing, Isaiah?” Gabe asked.

“That’s right,” Isaiah whispered. He kept his head down.

Gabe’s face relaxed into a grin that was part relief, part annoyance. “Little brothers,” he said, shaking his head. He clapped Memphis on the back. “Don’t forget about that other business, Memphis.”

“I won’t,” he said.

Blind Bill Johnson sat in the corner nursing the cup of soup Reggie had been kind enough to give him. The soup was thin but warm, and he had eaten it slowly while the scene at the counter unfolded. Now, his soup finished, he lifted his guitar onto his back with a grunt and tapped his cane out into the streets of Harlem. The air was scented with coming rain. He didn’t like rain. It reminded him of Louisiana, back when he was a sharecropper’s son with two good eyes, picking cotton all day, and the rain would about drown a man just trying to make his quota. It reminded him of the day the owner, Mr. Smith, hit him with a strap for playing guitar instead of picking cotton, and how later, the man’s half of the crops failed—browned to wisps—and they found Mr. Smith’s bloated body in the river, swelled up like a bag of rice gone bad with rot, and the whispers went around that Bill Johnson wasn’t a man to be trusted, that there was something of the Mabouya about him. That he’d stood at the crossroads at midnight and cursed at Papa Legba. That he’d spit upon the cross. That he’d sold his soul to the Devil.

It was raining the day the men in the dark suits came to the camp. It was the crops that had caught their attention. Word had spread that Bill Johnson might have done it. That he could put an old dog down when it needed mercy or that, when he was angry, he could hold a butterfly in his hand and it would fall dead. The men in dark suits sat, cool and patient as you please, all bland smiles and quiet courtesy, in Mrs. Tate’s parlor, drinking lemonade from sweaty glasses.

Bill was brought to them. He was a strapping man of twenty then, six feet tall, his skin a smooth dark brown and free of the brands his ancestors wore with shame. Bill sat on an old cane chair with his hands on his knees while the men asked questions: Did Bill want to help keep his country safe? Would he like to ride with them and talk?

Bill had wanted out of the fields and out of Louisiana, with its white-hooded men who set the night ablaze with their crosses. He’d gone with the dark-suited men, had ridden in the back of their car with the curtains over the side windows. He’d done the things they’d asked. He’d told them about the toll it was taking on his body, showed them how his spine bowed and his hair grayed. He was only twenty, but he looked fifty. The men had smiled those same bland smiles and said, “Just one more, Bill.”

And when his sight shriveled up to tiny points of blurry light that finally faded to black, they sent him away with nothing but his guitar, a raised scar on his skin, and a handshake of warning to keep quiet. His sight was gone, his body used up and broken. And his gift—if that’s what it could be called—seemed to have deserted him, too. How many times had he railed to the sky and wished he could have the gift back? And then, suddenly, about three months ago, he’d felt the first stirrings of hope. All he needed was the right spark to get it running again.

Now, as the Campbell brothers barreled out of Reggie’s Drugstore, setting the little bell over the door to tolling, Bill could hear them arguing. The younger Campbell brother had the gift—that was perfectly clear—and the older brother wanted to keep it a secret. That was smart. It wasn’t good to let on to anyone about secrets like that. The wrong person might find out. Someone you didn’t even know was dangerous.

The first raindrops splatted against Bill’s dark glasses and he frowned. Damned rain. Without thinking, he rubbed the scar on his left hand and tapped his cane downhill.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 607