Richmond Noir (7 page)
He hangs up.
I check the photos I took of the dead man. I must’ve thought I was doing a portrait study or a mug shot. None of them show his right hand.
Next morning I’m at the corner of the Lowe’s parking lot where I’ve seen brown men gathering looking for work. A dozen or so guys cycle through, hired by circling SUVs and pickups with law-abiding citizens behind the wheel. I show the workers pictures of the dead man, talk to them in my awkward, rusty Spanish. They’re nice to me, patient. They admire my white beard.
Señor Barbas
one of them calls me. Mr. Whiskers. I figure they think I’m a cop, INS, or a crazy street person, but I hang around anyway, boring them with stories about my travels in Mexico.
Another man, however, who’s been in Richmond awhile, gives me the nickname that sticks. “General Lee,” he says. “El hombre a caballo.” The man on horseback. We’re only blocks from the statue, and he isn’t the first to note the resemblance, especially if I haven’t been eating enough fiber or I’ve just watched what passes for the evening news. I was once mistaken for a Lee reenactor while walking past the Confederate Chapel on my way out of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The city’s full of memorials to the leaders of the armed rebellion against the legal authority of the United States—the same one nation under God indivisible that the devoted admirers of those memorials like to wax pious about with a mystifying lack of irony.
The conversation turns to politics. They have questions about the Civil War. Mexicans understand revolutions, revolutionaries. They’re curious why the losers got the statues. It’s complicated, I tell them. Fortunately, they understand class and race too.
I get a few odd glances from the people looking for workers. A neighbor from a few blocks away whose name I can’t recall spots me, and he seems genuinely alarmed to see me sitting on the fence with the Mexicans. I approach to reassure him or to offer to do light carpentry, I’m not sure which. He only knows me because dog and I used to walk by his house, but she hadn’t been able to make it that far in over a year.
“How’s your dog?” he asks me. Of course he’s going to ask me. Everyone’s going to ask me. He just happens to be the first.
“She died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She lived a good life.”
He tosses his head toward the workers. “You doing research for a story or something?”
“We were just talking about the Civil War. Can’t become a true Richmonder, become assimilated as it were, without talking some Civil War trash, right?”
It’s supposed to be a joke, but he doesn’t crack a smile. “Do any of these guys do tile work?”
I get out of the way of commerce. Antonio, who’s hung around for the whole General Lee gringo show and looked stunned when I first showed him the pictures of the dead man, asks how old my dog was. “Quince,” I say. Fifteen.
“My oldest sister,” he says in English. “She have a dog. In Kansas City. She crazy about that dog.”
I give him the pictures of the dead man. I’ve written my phone number on the back. “I found him, okay? I pulled him out of the river. I have to do something. Maybe you know someone who knew him. Maybe someone else will know.”
As I walk home through the Fan, the word sticks in my mind, a quick, stabbing chant,
quince, quince, quince
. When I get home there’s a message from my ex-reporter friend who kay-aked over to see the site only to find there’d been a bonfire, still smoldering. Teens, they’re saying, drinking, getting out of hand, or maybe homeless. Or illegals. Damn them all to hell!
I walk through the house with a garbage bag, gathering up every tennis ball, veterinary prescription bottle, squeaky toy, busted leash, food dish, rawhide, etc., getting down on hands and knees if necessary until I’m sure I’ve found them all, then I put the bag in the trash can in the alley.
My wife returns home from work desolate and exhausted from having to hold it together all day at some inane training about terrorism. We have a quick dinner, narrate the fragile bones of our days, and go to bed early. She wants to be more engaged by my story of trying to help the dead man, but neither one of us has anything left. “Be careful,” she says, and falls asleep. I lie awake awhile and finally get out of bed.
A little after midnight my phone rings, and I take it. I’m at my computer, staring at the screen, at the Google photo of a time when the dead man was still alive. It’s Antonio with an address out Jeff Davis Highway, a trailer park. Can I come now? Some of the people I need to talk to just got off work. Others have to go in early. Two men are arguing in the background in rapid-fire Spanish too faint and fast for me to track. Sure, I say.
It’s a grim, tired place, but affordable. If it has a name, I don’t see it. There’s a certain coziness about the old trailers crammed in close together, the sounds of TVs and radios, cooking smells. I roll through slow, my General Lee beard must look like Casper floating by. A woman watches me pass through a tiny trailer window. She must be bent over her kitchen sink. At number seventeen, several somber men are waiting for me. We go inside where there are several more men and a single woman packed into what is likely the largest living room in the park. The men whose voices I recognize from the phone continue their argument. Not everybody thinks inviting me was such a great idea. Enough, several say. Let the man speak. So I tell my story. They’re not taking any chances on my Spanish. A woman named Irayda translates.
Then they tell her their story, and Irayda tells it to me, though I get the gist in Spanish. They were working with Felix—Felix is the dead man—when the man who hired them—the man who lived in the big house up above—showed up to hurry them. People were coming to his house, and he didn’t want anyone to see them working, but it was a big job and dangerous because there were some large trees and not much room to get out of the way if anything went wrong.
The big white tree came crashing down on Felix while the man from the house was there shouting at them. He told them not to call 911 or they’d all be arrested and deported, and they could dig Felix out and take him to the hospital just as fast themselves. They started digging. They didn’t have enough shovels for everyone. One of the men went back to the truck to get some more, but they couldn’t get Felix out before he died. The man said he’d call 911 after they took off, so they wouldn’t be arrested. They had left the man alone with Felix’s body Wednesday night. Then I showed up at Lowe’s the following Tuesday with his picture. Antonio stayed with Felix’s son when he first came to Richmond. His son was killed in a robbery last year.
Irayda says, “They appreciate what you’ve done for Felix, but they would like you to stop now. If it was only them, it would be different, but they must consider the welfare of others—their families, their neighbors, their children. They know whose house it is. Things are hard enough already, the way things have been lately. You understand?”
I wish I didn’t, but I do, so I don’t give her any argument. I shake hands all around. She leaves when I do, driving to a more affluent part of town. Probably here legally, well-educated, from a prosperous family back home in Mexico or Guatemala—maybe she knew Felix, or maybe she just wanted to help.
I miss my turn, or something inside me refuses to take it, and I head for the house of the man promising on the radio to keep America safe for Americans or some such gibberish. I twist and turn through streets all named with a bit of the lord-and-manor about them. Once you get anywhere close to the river-fronting properties, the roads are all private. If I hadn’t pored over the Google photo, I don’t think I would’ve known which one to take. I roll right up front. I’m surprised there’s not a fence or something. Maybe there’s a virtual fence, like the one in Arizona. The lights are on. Someone’s home.
And quite a home it is, stretched to make room for windows on one side and plenty of pavement on the other. Several cars much nicer than my Civic are parked here. They’re all wearing the host’s bumper sticker on their ass. Sounds like a party going on, people talking and laughing over Cuban jazz. Campaigning must make for some late nights, or maybe he just can’t sleep. The air is heavy with the smell of charred wood. Must put a damper on the festivities.
I button up my shirt and tuck it in, ring the bell, and smile into the camera. General Lee calling. The candidate himself opens the door, and I tell him I’m a constituent wanting to discuss the issues. He has to shake my offered hand, an old white man, and I hang on, pumping his hand, so honored don’t you know, herding him inside. He can’t stop me. It’s not nice to body block the elderly. There are a dozen or so folks, still all dressed up for a fund-raiser, standing around having a nightcap with the candidate. He has to make nice with an audience present. Virginia politicians know all too well a cell phone can bring down a senator.
A couple of big-chested fellows are eyeing me. Security obviously. Can’t have too much of that. Everyone else is watching to see if I’ll be amusing. There’s a black lab sitting at the end of a long empty sofa. It’s porcelain. Behind it is a wall of windows. “Would you look at the view?” I say. It’s a dark night. The room is lit up bright. All there is to see is a bunch of white people reflected in the glass against a black backdrop, like a painting on black velvet of white-faced dogs playing poker.
“You can’t really see anything with all the lights on, I’m afraid,” says my host, chuckling amiably, professionally.
“It’s always something, isn’t it? Trees. Lives. Bright lights. I just came by to tell you I’m not voting for you. I don’t like your stand on the issues—immigrant labor and watershed management in particular.”
The two security guys have been moving in until they’re standing on either side of us like we’re about to huddle. One reaches inside his jacket and keeps his hand there. His right.
The candidate turns off his bright smile, so I can see inside, where he’s actually a good deal meaner than he might first appear to be. But I already knew that. “I’m afraid it’s late Mr. …?”
“Lee.”
“Mr. Lee. Perhaps if you’d come by my office we could discuss the matter further.”
I have to let it go. I have to consider the welfare of others. “I’d rather not.” I give it one last look, and they all follow my gaze, all of us glancing back. Mr. Whiskers looks like a faux full moon in the foyer. “Killer view.”
He’s standing right beside me. He makes a little grunt like I hit him in the gut. Nothing like the sound he’d make if I actually hit him. Nothing like the sound Felix must’ve made when several tons of tree came crashing down on him. But something.
I show myself out. The security guys watch me drive away, back to the public roads on the other side of a virtual fence, keeping the borders secure.
When the key turns in the lock, I still expect to hear dog struggling to her feet. Before she died I thought this silence would be better than listening to her gradual decline. Not so. Not yet, a little over a week now.
My wife’s up, watching a muted television. Wal-Mart is cutting prices.
“How you doing?” she asks.
“Better, I think. What about you?”
“Someone asked at work today how my dog was doing.”
“What did you say?”
“I said she had a good life.”
“That’s what I said too.”
“Did you find out anything about the dead man?”
“His name was Felix.”
I sit down beside her, and we hold each other in the silence and manage not to cry.
T
hey dumped Benny by the river, wearing nothing but a green paper gown. Ambulance must’ve pulled over, rear doors fanning open. Bet the driver didn’t even step out to help her. Just kept the engine running when they left Benny by the side of the road, all disoriented, shivering from the cold. No clothes, no shoes, no idea where she was anymore. Started making her way toward the water, all sixty-three years of herself crawling down the craggy rocks, bare feet slipping over the algae. Rested just next to the James for lord knows how long. All numb now.
There’d been rain out west, so it wasn’t long before the river swelled. Couple of hours and the surface probably rose right up to her, currents taking her away. Carrying her downstream for half a mile. Two miles. Maybe more—I don’t know. Depends on where they ditched her in the first place, doesn’t it? Can’t shake this image of her floating over the rocks, half naked, whisked off into the whitewater. The rapids dragging her body along before bringing her back to Belle Isle.
This island had been our home.
After they shut down the Freedom House on Belvidere, you either had to migrate up to Monroe Park or toward the Lee Bridge, where the nearest mission was nestled into this neglected valley on the south side of Chesterfield County, about a mile’s walk beyond the city limits. It had been home to some battlefield long forgotten by now. Perfect for a skirmish during the Civil War—not much else. Only neighbors now were a couple of dilapidated factories, the soil all soaked with arsenic. Just about the only thing you could build on top of that poisoned property was a homeless shelter. And this mission—their doors didn’t open unless it was below thirty-five degrees. Come 6 a.m., you were woken up and tossed right back into the street no matter how cold it was. Locked their doors until the thermometer reached the right temperature again.
Me and Benny tried our hand at it for a couple nights, hefting everything we owned back and forth over the Lee Bridge, just looking for work. Got all of our belongings on our backs, like a couple of ragged privates marching with fifty pounds of provisions slung over our shoulders. Just praying for the mercury to sink below thirty-five. That one degree’s the difference between you and your own cot—even a cup of watered-down coffee—or freezing to death on some park bench.
Can’t call that home. Nobody should.
Richmond’s labeling all this shifting around
revitalization
—but I’m not buying it. Pushing us out to the periphery. Forcing us to find a new home every night. Their Downtown Plan has nothing to do with me. Never had Benny’s better interests in mind. When I first met her, couple years back, the boys-in-blue had just busted her lip for sleeping out in Monroe Park. She shuffled her way into Freedom House after curfew, an icicle of her own blood hanging off her chin. Weren’t that many cots left at that hour, so she took the one next to mine. Dropped her plastic bags, all her junk spilling over the floor. I leaned over, thinking I’d lend a hand, getting a slap on the wrist for my troubles.
Don’t touch my stuff
.
Just trying to help
.
Help yourself is more like it
.
Asked her what her name was. Her jaw refused to move much because of the cold, just enough to keep her teeth chattering, so when she answered—
Bethany
—I didn’t hear the
tha
part. Her tongue missed the middle syllable, like the needle on a record player skipping over a groove.
Sounded like she said
Benny
.
No funny stuff now
, she warned, brandishing her wrinkled finger like it was a blade.
I’ll have you know I’m a respectable lady
.
There have got to be thirty years between us! The hell are you expecting me to do?
Just better watch it, young man. I’ve got my eye on you
.
Most folks made their way to Monroe Park after Freedom House closed its doors—but that was a trap, if you’re asking me. Used to be a training camp for Confederate soldiers. Military hospital after that. Lot of cadets ended up dying on that patch of land. Too many homeless ghosts out there now. People who spend the night there end up disappearing. Some say this city gives you a bus ticket to any town you want, one-way, no questions asked—just hop on board and
bon voyage
—but I’m betting that’s a rumor the boys-in-blue spread around town so you drop your guard and follow the brass right into the paddy wagon. Act like some mutt trusting the dogcatcher—transfixed by the biscuit in one hand, not even paying attention to the net in the other.
Benny’s vote was Monroe. Mouthing off about the handouts down there. College kids managed a meal plan in the heart of the park, serving up soup on Sundays or something.
Step in there, Benny
, I said,
and you won’t be walking out ever again
.
You’re just being paranoid
.
Sure shut down Freedom House fast enough
—
didn’t they? Sure don’t see the Salvation Army marching into Monroe to save the day. I’m telling you, Benny
—
the police own that park!
Then where the hell are we gonna go?
That left Belle Isle. You got the Lee Bridge reaching right over the James River. Just another memorial to another dead Confederate general. Connects the south side of the city to the rest, shore to shore, like a stitch suturing a wound. Got the James bleeding up from that gash, no matter how many bridges there are sewing up this city. But nestled in between the concrete legs of Robert E. Lee, there are about fifty-four acres of public park, all wrapped in water. The river splits, rushing down either side of the isle, its converging currents forming a sharp point at the tip. A real diamond of an island. Only way to reach land is to hoof it. Got this footbridge slung under the interstate, a little baby-bridge suspended from its father. You can hear the hum of automobiles passing along the highway just above your head—but down there, once you’ve set foot onto the island, it’s like the city doesn’t exist anymore. Sound of cars just melts away.
We’d be like
—
like our own Swiss Family Robinson down here
.
More like Robinson Crusoe
, Benny said, shaking her head.
No one’ll bother us
, I
promise. As long as we stay on the far side of the island, away from the footpaths, no one’ll even know we’re here
.
You’re crazy, you know that?
No more missions, no more shelters
, I said.
We’ll never have to set foot on the mainland again
.
Yeah, yeah
—
just lead the way, Friday
.
There are ruins of an old hydroelectric plant tucked away on the far side of the island. Closed its doors in ’63, the electric company gutting out all the iron, leaving the concrete behind. Nothing but a husk now, all empty. Good for a roof over your head when it gets raining. We set up camp in one of the old water turbine rooms. Have to crawl through this hatch just to get in. The air’s damp down there. Soaks into your bones if you’re not bundled up enough. But the walls keep the cold wind from nipping your nose. Made that room a hell of a lot better than sleeping in some refrigerator box. The generator was long gone, the rotors removed, leaving behind this empty shaft as big as any room in those mansions you see lined up along Plantation Row. We’re talking ballroom here. Perfect fit for all of Benny’s stuff She hefted a whole landfill’s worth of accumulated junk along with her. A dozen plastic bags busting open at the seams, full of photographs. Toys. Anything she could get her hands on.
Home sweet home
, Benny said. Started decorating the place right away, slipping her pictures inside a rusted wicket gate like it was some sort of mantelpiece. All the shorn cylinders were now full of photographs, every severed duct a shelf for her past.
Who’s that?
I asked, pointing to this one black-and-white snapshot. Cute little brunette smiling for the camera.
She looks familiar to me
.
Who do you think?
You’re telling me that’s you?
Damn right
I
am
.
Didn’t recognize you under all that baby fat
.
Yeah, well
—
they fed me better back then
.
The island’s supposed to be vacant once the sun sets. Every day, like clockwork, this ranger comes to lock up the footbridge. Not like that ever keeps the kids away. Teenagers always sneak in after dark, building bonfires. Spray-painting the walls.
We had a whole novel’s worth of graffiti wrapped around the place. Couldn’t really read what it said. The words were barely there anymore, losing their shape. Tattoos fading into your skin, reminding you of different times. Times when those tattoos would’ve meant something. An eagle, a globe, and an anchor.
Semper Fi
. Nothing but blue lines now, wrapping around your arms like ivy overtaking a statue.
First time Benny saw the ink on my forearm, we were trying to keep each other warm while those teenagers broke beer bottles against the other side of our living room wall. Had to keep quiet, holding each other. That’s when she noticed the lower fluke of the anchor, all fuzzy now, diving down deep into my skin. Gave her something to trace her finger along. Watched her run her pinkie over the lower hemisphere of the globe.
Bet it’s cold there right about now
, she said, pointing to where Antarctica would’ve been.
Colder than here
—
that’s for sure
.
We were in the thick of December by then, the temperature dropping off into the low thirties. It was only going to get colder the deeper into winter we went. That meant less visitors. Less dog walkers. Less joggers. Less families. Less of everything.
You know this used to be a prison camp?
Sure feels like one
.
During the Civil War
, I said.
Over five hundred thousand Yankee soldiers, right here. Couple thousand at a time, freezing their asses off in the open air.
You’re lying
.
It’s true
.
The more we talked, the more our breath spread over each other. Good way to keep warm. Our mouths were our radiators now.
Since when did you become such a history buff?
They used to march prisoners over the bridge
, I said.
Corralled them together like cattle. They went through the whole winter out here like that. Freezing. Starving
.
Sounds familiar.
Slid in next to her. Nestled my knees into the back of her legs, just where they bent. Had my face pressed against her shoulder, breathing into the bone.
They’d bring a surgeon out to check up on the men in the morning, figuring out which limbs he had to saw off from the frostbite
.
Everybody in this city’s a goddamn Civil War aficionado
, she said, inching off without me. Figured that was the end of the conversation—up until Benny turned back around, asking,
So you gonna hold me, soldier? It’s cold out here
.
Yes, captain
.
Fell asleep first. I was always falling asleep before Benny—drifting off to the sound of her cough, these short retorts right at my ear, like some soldier in the trenches, the sound of musket fire just over my head.
Brought my daughter to Belle Isle once. Couldn’t even tell you when anymore. Years ago. A different life. Packed a picnic and everything. Had to get there early, just so we could lay claim to one of the broad rocks resting along the river. We’re talking prime real estate here. You ended up battling the sunbathers for the best spread. The Battle of Belle Isle.
Don’t go out too far, hon
, I said.
You’ve got to be careful about the currents
.
Benny always had to hold me when I woke up. Wrap her arms around me so I didn’t buckle, bring me back to the present tense.
You’re okay, you’re okay
, she’d say.
Just another bad dream, that’s all
.
Everywhere you step on this island, there’s another history lesson under your feet. Signs saying what happened at that very spot, almost two hundred years ago. Nothing but plaques in the ground. Never would’ve realized this place could hold so much pneumonia, so much dysentery. That’s Richmond for you. Too much history for its own good. Whole city’s a graveyard. It’s only when you have no home to call your own that you can see this place for what it really is. You’re standing on the graves of men no matter where you step.
The prison camp had been directly below the highest mount on the island, overlooking the river. I remember bringing Benny up there, showing her the view for the first time. We could see the Capitol building up north. To the west was Hollywood Cemetery, on the other side of the James. Petersburg wasn’t but so far off, if you squinted hard enough.
Can’t see why those soldiers wouldn’t just swim for it
, Benny said, shaking her head.
Lord knows
I
would
.
They’d try
, I said.
End up getting shot right there in the water. Their bodies would drift downriver. Never set foot on dry land again
.
How do you know about all this stuff?
I
just pay attention is all
.
Pay attention. A good parent pays attention.
Let’s
go down there
, she said, pointing toward the north side of the island.
Where?
Those big rocks
—
down there. Where the sunbathers all go
.
I’m not setting foot down there, Benny
.
Why not?
It’s off limits to us
.
There’s a dam still standing, upstream, left over from the hydroelectric plant. Steers most of the water northward, around the bend and into the rapids. There are signs posted all around the island, warning families about the rapids.
Always have a parent supervising swimming children
, they say.
Don’t let your kids go out too far unattended. A
bit of the river’s funneled south through this concrete canal, into what’s left of the turbines. Generated enough electricity to light up half of Richmond back in the day. Benny’s body slipped around the south, into the canal. If she hadn’t been dead when she entered the water, she was once she washed into the turbines. Her green paper gown was wrinkled, clinging to her skin like tissue. One sock on her left foot, nothing on the right. Reminded me of those sheep you see getting their coats shorn clean. Once the wool’s been buzzed off their bodies, what’s left behind seems so much smaller than what was there before. Pink skin. Thin frame. Legs don’t even look real.
