A Question of Mercy (25 page)

“You mean like a ghost?” Jess said.

“I don't know. He can show up in dreams, or sometimes just a spirit-thing in my room. Scare me to death first time I seen it.”

Jess was leaning toward Zella. She knew about spirits too.

“That man never did get the hang of being dead.” Zella shook her head hard. “I swear, I wish he'd just go on to where he's going. Leave me be.”

“You want to go lie down awhile?” Jess asked. “Maybe you're coming down with something.”

“I be all right. This coffee'll help some. Anyway, we got lot more work to do in the garden before we can quit. You ain't even started yet on your flowers.”

“I will,” Jess said.

Zella finished her coffee and leaned back in her chair. “What you got there, Mr. Will?”

“Something I want to show somebody.” He hesitated. “Don't know what to think about it.”

“Lemme see,” Zella reached out.

“It's something in the
Birmingham Herald
. Yesterday's paper,” he said.

“What's it say?” Jess asked. She thought it might be about the man found dead. “Is it about Ezra?”

“I knew that man,” Zella said. “He used to come around the house where we lived on Ninth Street and not that many white men come around there. We'd find empty lighter fluid cans everywhere. Somebody saw him drinking it once. I felt kinda sorry for him.” She opened her palms into the air, like a preacher. “But I don't hold with suicide. That is strictly against the Law of God.”

Jess kept her eyes on Will as he flicked the paper, straightening it out, then folding it. “Well, this is in the personals,” he said. “Somebody wanted by the police, says here.” Will made a point of not looking at Jess. He bit thoughtfully into his biscuit. “Here's a photo. Look.”

It was the old school photo of Jess.

“Let me see.” Zella took the paper. “Looka here, Jess. This looks like
you
.” She laughed. “‘Cept she younger.” She looked from Jess back again to the photo, then to Will. “Did you think it was Jess, Mr. Will?”

Jess peered over Zella's shoulder. She felt trembly and wondered if her face looked distorted. Will still did not look at her.

“Wonder what she did,” Zella said. “Probly some man looking for his wife who run away. She mighta had good reason.” Zella turned to the front page. “Now here is a
real
jailbird if I ever seen one!” She pointed to a photo of a man with a number under his chin, arrested for assault and battery. “He is a
bona fide
outlaw.”

Will let the subject of the photo drop, but Jess felt cold. She wanted to read the personal ad, all of it, and watched where Will laid it down.

Shooter and Ray ran fast into the kitchen, chasing each other, yelling that one or the other, was “It.” Zella struck one long arm at the boys. “Go on outta here. You kids go on now.” She swatted at them again, and missed.

“Let's get to work,” said Jess. “I've got begonias to plant.”

“I can't eat begonias.” Zella went to the sink, took a wet dishrag, and shook it out. “I'm finishing up those tomato stakes and I got to plant my okra.”

“Too late for okra,” Will said.

“You just watch.”

Will listened to the women for a while as they discussed specific plantings—their words like little songs sung by fishes. Zella touched Will's shoulder on her way out.

“C'mon, honey,” she said to Jess, and Jess followed her into the backyard. They worked for almost an hour before Zella brought up the photo in the paper. “That girl look a lot like you, you know that?”

Jess admitted that she did.

“So if it
was
you I don't want to know about it. Keep me ignorant. You know what they say about ignorance?”

“‘Ignorance is bliss?” Jess said.

“Yeah.” Zella Davis laughed, a chuckle. “But if that be true, I oughta be happier than I am.”

She propped another stake into the ground and pushed it down hard with the flat of her hand. Jess dug a circle of holes for begonias and began to lower them in, one by one. A nice wind blew high in the trees.

“That's gonna look real good, honey,” Zella told her. She could see that Jess did not want to talk.

“I'm going to need some more fertilizer,” Jess said. Her voice sounded as if she might cry.

“Let me see can I get you some.” Zella went across the yard into the shed, and stayed until Jess had gathered herself back into a state of calm. A drone of flies hovered over the door of the shed. Zella came out with a bag of fertilizer. “This'll be enough,” she said, and dropped it onto the broken sidewalk.

In the house the phone was ringing. Maybe a wrong number—just a thin mistake in a thin blue day. The phone was still ringing, but the two women sat on the ground with the delirious songs of birds around them, and, higher, the sound of geese.

— 35 —

F
rank O'Malley had been the one to answer the phone that day. His editor wanted to know about the article he was writing, and asked if it was finished. It wasn't. He told his editor that he needed to verify his facts.

Frank had been writing for the paper for almost a year, but, until he wrote the Ezra article, no one paid much attention. He couldn't help but imagine how the story about Jess might be a big exclusive, but didn't know if he could write it. For two nights he had worked until four a.m., and today fell asleep on the porch.

Jess found Frank the next morning. He looked dead on the porch step. She squatted down to look at him closer. His arms were thrown above his head as though someone had said “Stick ‘em up.” His t-shirt lay hiked up above his jeans and the dark hair beneath his navel curved in a line going down into his pants. His shorts were showing, at least the elastic, just below the place where the jeans pulled away from his hips. His breath came slow and soft.

He sat up quickly and frightened Jess. She jumped. “I thought you were asleep.”

He looked at her sideways. “I couldn't be drafted because I have a bad heart. I'm embarrassed about not going like everybody else.” He had the look of a man who had more hope than the moment deserved.

Jess turned away from his face, knowing the direction this could go. “No, that's okay. I shouldn't have asked you.”

His voice got soft now, like he was cursing. “You're so beautiful. How'd you get so beautiful?” He edged closer to her. He smelled like sleep.

Jess was still squatting, and stood up fast. She pursed her mouth.

“Okay, Okay,” he said quickly. “But let me ask you something about that photo in the
Birmingham Herald
. I know it's you. The police were looking for a young man named Adam, who was about to be sent away because he
ran after little girls. I know Adam was your stepbrother and that he drowned in a river. He was nineteen and retarded. So …” he hesitated.

Jess nodded, but heard those words:
I saw you
. She pictured the brown and white car shouldering her whole burden.

“What happened?” he asked. “What made you run away?” Frank's tone had turned hard and business-like.

Jess made a small sound in her throat. “He didn't try to hurt me, if that's what you're thinking.” She kept shaking her head. Frank leaned to put a hand around her shoulder. She found it hard to breathe. “They were going to send him to an institution, Cadwell, where they do awful things.”

“I know Cadwell and about places like it,” Frank told her. “They're mostly in the South. Do you know those practices are against the law in other states?”

“Against the law?”

“Most of the South still practices eugenics.” Frank stood up. “That's what it's called.”

“How do you know about this?”

“I looked into it. I did some research on those places. I'm not getting this for the paper,” Frank said, but he didn't sound certain. Jess experienced a chill in her body.

“Don't ask me anymore.” She kept shaking her head. “I've said too much.”

“Listen, I just …” Frank fell backwards, stepping off the porch and into soft mud. “I want to help you.”

Later that day Edward Booker telephoned the boardinghouse. Will answered and called Jess to the downstairs booth.

“Jess.” His voice sounded good. “Sam is home. He called here looking for you. I told him everything.”

“Is he okay?”

“His leg was hurt, and he had punctured a lung. But he's okay now. He's already walking.”

She had thought so often about Sam coming home, seeing him again;, but, since she arrived at the boardinghouse, Sam had receded in her mind. Her father's words made him real again. She imagined his face close up, his hands—big as plates.

“Tell him to come get me,” she said. She felt a new center forming in herself. “Will you tell him that?”

“Yes. Yes. I'll tell him.”

“What exactly did you say to him, Daddy? About me?”

“That Adam drowned and that you ran away. That Clementine had blamed you for Adam's death.”

“I'll quit my job tomorrow,” she said. Her voice was steady. “I'll start packing.”

“I can't wait to see you.” She could hear her father's voice rising with hope, then trying to gain repose. “And you're really okay?”

“I'm fine,” she said.

Before her father hung up the phone she heard him heave a sigh. She imagined him collapsing in his chair, relieved.

The first person she told was Frank. She took him out into the backyard and told him that Sam was back home and that he was coming to get her. “Sometime in the next few days,” she said.

Frank nodded. “I meant it when I said I wanted to help.”

“I know,” she said. Her mind was clear. The war was over and Sam was home.

A jet flying high made them both look up. They watched white smoke trail down the sky, falling like a ribbon dissolving, loosening, becoming invisible again.

Honey's Last Stop was about to close, and Jess and Maggie had only three customers left. It was Jess's last day at work. Frank would arrive soon to walk her back to the boardinghouse. Jess had not seen the brown and white car in weeks. She was wiping down the counter when Maggie said that somebody in the last booth had asked for coffee, so Jess walked over with a fresh pot. She wore a shiny white uniform, and a small hat that sat on the back of her head.

Jess held the pot over the table ready to pour, until she saw that the man looking up at her was Sam. She studied his face and hair as if she had never seen him before. “Sam?”

He stood and held her. “I drove all night to get here,” he said. “Jess.”

She put her face in his shoulder and felt that she was looking down from a high place. She leaned back, making sure she was seeing and holding the right man.

“Why did you leave like that, Jess?” Sam shook her shoulders, as though he were angry, then held her close again. “What's going on?” She didn't answer, but felt the slap of his words. She breathed in the smell of him before he suddenly held her at arm's length.

“Tell me. Nobody's heard from you since April?” He shook his head. “I got back home and learned that the police were searching for you.” He still had his hands on her shoulders. “Damn, Jess.” Sam looked like a man begging for his life.

She stepped away from him. “Please, Sam.”

He sat back down carefully. “Adam's dead. They think you did something to him.” His voice grew loud.

Maggie walked toward them, but Jess waved her away and sat in the booth across from Sam.

“Listen,” she said.

“Did Adam hurt you, Jess?” Sam asked. “I need to know what he did.” Everyone was suspicious of Adam, who was always the least likely suspect.

“No. No.”

“But he was getting all those treatments. Maybe he got messed up. I keep thinking that he …” Sam couldn't bring himself to say what he was thinking.

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Then what?”

“I can't talk about it here.” She reached for him across the table. He leaned toward her. “I worried about you too. My dad said you got hurt. Your leg?”

“I'm okay. I'm not even using crutches anymore.” A slice of darkness crossed his face, a film over his eyes. She asked if he wanted to tell her about it.

“No.” Sam looked pale, thinner than the person she remembered. His body looked angular, bent, and used. They were both different from what they had been.

“How did you know where I worked?” she asked.

He looked at her curiously. “A young man at the boardinghouse said you'd be at the diner. Frank something.”

They heard Maggie cashing out the last two customers. Jess leaned forward to whisper, “I know Clementine blames me.”

“Yeah. Because you ran away, and because you never wanted him to go to Cadwell.”

“Maybe I
am
guilty.”

“Not unless you held his head underwater,” Sam said. “Did you hold Adam underwater and drown him?”

Jess looked out the window of the diner. “No.”

“I know you didn't do that, Jess.” Sam had an older face. “Jess, why did you stop writing to me?” he asked.

She moved to get up, motioning to Maggie that they were leaving. “After April,” she said, “I was just trying to get by.”

“I know how that is.” Sam stood, then said, “Who's that Frank guy? He sure got interested when I said I was looking for you.”

“He's a reporter for the
Gazette
. He lives at the boardinghouse.”

“He got a crush on you?”

“I guess he might.” Jess took Sam's hand.

“Well,” he said. “Can't blame him for that.”

Sam and Jess went toward the door. Maggie stood ready to lock up. Jess introduced Sam to Maggie, and they left. Everyone else was gone. Outside the diner Sam held Jess close and kissed her face. “I missed you so much.” She leaned into the warm smell of his neck, and couldn't believe the strength of his arms around her.