Shadow of the Wolf Tree (14 page)

20

Kenwood Avenue, Hyde Park, Chicago

SATURDAY, MAY 27, 2006

They had spent the night with Friday's girlfriend, Tara, in an apartment (the size of a box on the back of a move-it-yourself moving van) on the seventh floor of a building in Lincoln Park.

The friend had a thirty-pound dog the color of a caramel with sinister pale blue eyes and floppy pointed ears, a cross between a Jack Russell and an extraterrestrial. Head on the thing looked like something out of a
Star Wars
bar scene. It was named “Cooper.”
Like some third-grade nerd-in-training whose uptight helicopter mommy carries his viola to school for him every day.

Friday slept on a couch, Service on the floor with the dog sitting by his head, staring at him all night long, snarling whenever he tried to roll over.

The newspapers this morning were full of anguish and anger over the Cubs losing the previous afternoon to the Braves.

“Mistakes,” he told Friday as they had sour coffee and sweet rolls at Starbucks on North Sheridan. “You make too many errors, you lose. No mistakes, maybe you win or maybe you lose, but too many errors and you lose, end of discussion.”

“Are we talking baseball or something else?” she asked.

“Life,” he said. Why hadn't he married Maridly Nantz? This failure was the major regret in his life.

Their appointment with Rillamae Thigpen was set for 10 a.m. They were on Kenwood Avenue a half-hour early and found on-street parking a half-block from the address, a four-story gray-stone building, whose architecture reminded Service of the homes of mine owners in Calumet a century ago. The Kenwood Avenue houses reeked of money.

“This what you expected?” he asked Friday.

“No way,” she said. He wasn't sure what he'd expected.

They went up a steep set of stone steps to the main door of a four-story town house and knocked on a door that wouldn't have been out of place in Buckingham Palace.

A small woman came to the door. She was barely five feet tall and bent over by scoliosis. She wore a black tracksuit and gold workout shoes, had short white hair, manicured fingernails with red polish, dangling gold earrings, and sparkle-arkle rings on several fingers. “Mrs. Thigpen?”

“I've spent my life in a classroom and thus value punctuality,” she said in a soft, sure voice. “Welcome to my home. Please come in.”

She pointed them to a room with twelve-foot ceilings and lined with bookshelves, all full. The ceiling was done in ornate plasterwork outlined in what appeared to be gold leaf. Friday rolled her eyes.

The woman pushed a tea cart into the room and set it between her wingback leather chair and her guests. “I'm sorry, but it's decaf,” she apologized. “You know how doctors are. Shall we begin by reviewing your credentials so I can ascertain your authenticity?”

The two officers took out their badges and identity cards and passed them to her. She studied each set and passed them back with a thank-you. She then poured tea for her guests and herself, took a sip, set it on a saucer, and sat back. “I believe you're interested in Elmwood.”

“We got your name from Helmi Koski.”

“How is she?” the old woman asked with shining eyes.

“Buzzing around the nursing home,” Service said. “In charge.”

Thigpen's eyes flashed pleasure. “That's my Helmi.”

Silence, more than a minute of it. Neither Service nor Friday spoke.

“We met Christmas Eve, 1927,” Thigpen began. “The sheriff commandeered a train to take us to Crystal Falls, and from there by wagons up to the poor farm, where they fed us and gave us clothes. Helmi and her sister, bless their hearts, came up the hill from town through all that snow to bring us coats and winter boots.”

More silence.

“She had never seen a black person and wanted to touch my skin to determine if it was different,” Thigpen said without rancor. “It wasn't an insult; it was the purest curiosity from a young girl in a small town. Helmi is very candid, entirely honest, a woman of absolute integrity. Two minutes after we met, we both felt we would be friends for life.”

Another interval of silence, and Thigpen said, finally, “And it's true: We have been friends for life. Who would think a little white girl from the Upper Peninsula and a little black girl would be friends all these many decades?”

The lugubrious pace was driving Service crazy, but he took his lead from Friday, who seemed in no hurry to push the woman along and get to their questions.

“You left Crystal Falls and returned to Chicago,” Friday said during one of the intervals.

“Yes, but not back to where we'd lived before. You must understand—my father was a proud man. We left Chicago to follow his dream, and having failed, we repaired with tails between our legs to an even more humble venue.”

Repaired
? Service thought.
Humble? Who the hell is this woman
?

“Can you tell us what you mean about following his dream?” Friday asked.

“He was from Arkansas, a country boy. He worked as many as three jobs at a time to support us, but always with the idea that he would one day buy land in the country.”

“His dream was land?”

Long pause before a response. “Isn't that true for anyone who's never owned it?”

“He
bought
land in Iron County,” Friday said.

“It was to be legally ours
if
we worked it and successfully harvested potatoes for five years.”

“That didn't work out,” Friday said, prompting the woman gently.

“One winter was all we could manage. The land was poor, the weather extreme, life difficult, and the culture foreign. All of us were hardened by life, no matter our ages, but those winters. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“You didn't qualify for the land,” Friday said.

“Of course not, dear. There's no doubt in my mind we all would have succumbed had we stayed any longer.”

“How do you feel about what happened? It must have been terrible.”

The woman looked at Friday and smiled. “I know this must sound foolish, but it was, nonetheless, the
most wonderful year
of my childhood. We were in those big woods. We picked berries in summer, had fresh fish, deer meat—wonderful. In spring and early summer, the fields were filled with a plethora of wildflowers.”

“What about potatoes?”

“They grew. They were about all that
could
grow in that rocky soil,” she added with an ironic chuckle. “The problem wasn't the crop; it was the short growing season, and the other farmers. We lacked the emotional tools or the technical expertise to do what we went there to do.”

Service sensed there was a lot more story buried in the woman, and that it wasn't going to come out easily. He poured a decaf tea and wished he could smoke.

“I think my father realized very quickly that we were doomed, but he tried to endure, and he tried to keep up my mother's spirits. My sisters and I were happy enough, but my mother was decidedly not. We once had a mother bear and her two cubs by our cabin, and Mama locked herself inside and wouldn't come out for a week. From then on, she walked around with a firearm, even when nature compelled her to use the privy.”

“Did you live east of Elmwood, or north?” Grady Service asked.

The woman tilted her head and looked at him. “North, with the Reverend Browning's group.”

“There were groups?” Friday asked.

“Not officially, but the land was distributed in two general areas, you see, part of it east of Elmwood and part of it to the north. My father thought the land to the north would be better than that to the east, and he was prescient. The eastern section was lower, darker, less productive.”

“Reverend Browning?” Friday asked.

“A godly man,” Thigpen said. “He was our pastor in Chicago and my father convinced him to be part of the undertaking. We promised to build him a church when we got stabilized, which never happened.”

“Browning was the leader, or was it your father?”

“Neither. The leader was Mr. Washington Lincoln, a golden-tongued scoundrel.”

Another agonizing silence passed before she picked up the story.

“He came to our neighborhood in 1924 and told everyone he had served with Pershing in the Great War and been decorated for valor. He even had three medals and a handsome doughboy uniform to prove it. It was Mr. Lincoln who brought Roland Denu to Reverend Browning's church to tell us about the land in Iron County.” The old woman sighed and closed her eyes. “We didn't even know Michigan had two parts! Can you imagine our geographic naivete?”

“Scoundrel?” Friday asked.

Geographic naivete
? Service thought.

“Mr. Lincoln never served with General Pershing in France. Did you know that his nickname Black Jack came about because the general had commanded black soldiers in the Southwest when he was a young officer?”

Service didn't know, and didn't see how it related.

“Mr. Lincoln did serve with the general in 1916. He was in the Twenty-fourth Cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers. They pursued Pancho Villa into Mexico, but Mr. Lincoln deserted during the expedition, and years later appeared in Chicago, claiming he had served in France. I can't imagine why, other than to arouse sympathy.”

The woman took another sip of tea. “My father was initially skeptical of Mr. Lincoln, but he was so fixated on having land that he convinced himself the adventure would be to our family's benefit. He worked tirelessly to convince others to join us. We left Chicago in the late spring of 1926 with eight families—about fifty people, if I remember correctly. Each family was promised two hundred acres of land, a mule, and a modest monthly supply of staples—flour, sugar, molasses, that sort of thing. If we worked the land for five years, the title was to be ours, free and clear.”

Service couldn't stand it anymore. “Who actually owned the land—Denu?”

Rillamae Thigpen exhaled deeply. “That was certainly a commonly held belief, but patently untrue. My father learned that Denu was only a figurehead. The land was actually owned by a Chicago man named Van Dalen, a lawyer and land speculator—what today we'd call a developer.”

“Why keep ownership secret?” Detective Friday asked .

“Who knows the heart of another?” Thigpen replied. “Or the heart of a white businessman, to be more to the point . . . no offense intended.”

“Did any of your group ever meet Van Dalen?”

“Yes, of course. He came around regularly, but was using a different name, passing himself off as a Roman priest, Father O'Neil.”

Service and Friday exchanged looks.

“My father knew right away that Father O'Neil wasn't a real priest. My father was Roman and we had been raised in the church. After our return to Chicago, we became Methodists.”

“I don't understand,” Service said.

“Of course not, Detective. This was more than eighty years ago and I believe that I am the last survivor. Mr. Lincoln, of course, did not engineer the expedition to raise potatoes.”

The officers waited for further explanation, but none was forthcoming.

“If not potatoes, what?” Service asked.

“Will you excuse me for a moment?” Rillamae Thigpen said. “The Lord has blessed me with the mobility to answer nature's calls, but not a bladder to allow me to sit too long between those calls.”

Friday got up and wandered around, looking at bookcases, and at one point said, “Holy cow!” with no explanation.

When Thigpen returned, she sat down in her chair, this time perched on the front edge.

“You have a lovely home,” Friday told the old woman.

“Thank you. My husband Charles and I acquired it 1970. By then I was a full professor at the University of Chicago and he had built a successful practice as a thoracic surgeon, working out of Northwestern University Hospital.”

“What did you teach?” Friday asked.

“Mainly contemporary African American literature. I earned my bachelor's from the university in 1941, my master's in 1944, and my doctorate in 1950. Early on I was fortunate to realize that teaching was my calling, and that Chicago was where I was meant to be. I retired in 1982, but until two years ago still conducted lectures emeritus to graduate students. It's too much of an effort to get out of the house now. I wouldn't trade my life for any other. Charles's family also was in Iron County, you see. We met there when we were children. When we returned, our families went their separate ways. I didn't meet Charles again until many years later when he was trying to get into medical school. We were not childhood sweethearts, but when we fell in love as adults, it took, and lasted until he passed on in 1988.”

“Do you know that happened to Washington Lincoln?” Service asked.

“No. You see, he did not return with the rest of us.”

“No?”