The Stones Cry Out (4 page)

"Yes," I said. "And I wish this was a social visit."

She glanced at her father, her face suddenly slack.

Mr. Fielding looked unfazed. He had a rich baritone, honeyed with the tones of Old Virginia. "Why don't we take this into the house?" he said, pronouncing the last word “whoos.” "Otherwise, I might confuse our conversation with the smell of my horses."

===============

Weyanoke's walls were three feet thick and solid brick. During the war, a Confederate cannonball managed to penetrate one of those walls, and the hammered iron sphere remained there, a hostile souvenir from the Rebels who claimed the MacKennas and later Fieldings were traitors to the South. I glanced once at the cannonball, now resting beside a window in the sun-drenched parlor that overlooked the river. It was an odd reminder of this family’s history.

The housekeeper carried in a silver tray. Iced tea and crystal glasses.

"Thank you, Connie," Mr. Fielding said. "Leave it on the sideboard."

MacKenna, still wearing her riding boots, walked across the room and dropped into a floral chintz wingback. She fanned herself with a paper napkin from the tray. "Every year, I think I'll get used to this heat and every year it gets worse. How is that possible, Raleigh -- doesn't that just defy science?"

Her father handed me a glass of tea, ignored her question. "Tell me what brings you to Weyanoke."

But when I began explaining the mayor's civil rights complaint, Mac suddenly gasped.

"I can't believe those men died!"

"Sugar,” her father replied, “it's six stories to solid concrete. Nobody can survive that fall."

"But it's just so
awful
!"

He turned back to me. "Raleigh, I already talked to the police. I don't accept any responsibility for this accident. Yes, that factory does belong to me, but this was some kind of freak accident. Of course, I'm sorry it happened, but I can't stop thieves and squatters from finding new ways into these places. Property ownership in that neighborhood is an elaborate game of cat and mouse.”

"Through thin air." Mac shivered. "It must have been so frightening."

For a moment, Mr. Fielding stared at his daughter. His tan face bore an indulgent expression, a man amused and slightly annoyed by somebody he loves very much. When he looked back at me, the amusement was gone and the annoyance was no longer slight.

"Raleigh, what is it you need from me?"

"The mayor, and the mother of Hamal Holmes, both claim he didn't break into the building. I'm sure you're aware the mayor is accusing you of fostering crime by not taking care of the place."

"Once again, his
honor
-- " he smirked -- "has boiled another complicated situation down to black and white. Literally, black and white. You can't possibly take him seriously, Raleigh."

"The FBI has opened the civil rights investigation. So, yes, we are taking him seriously. The fact remains, those men fell from your building. Somehow Mr. Holmes got inside --"

"Are you implying this is my fault?"

Mac slipped deeper into the chair's wings, so far back I could only see her long legs in the riding boots. When I didn't answer his question, Harrison Fielding refilled his glass of tea, sipped, then launched into a lecture about ethical tax evasion.

"I own dozens of buildings on Southside,” he began. “At one time, these were highly productive enterprises. I would like more than for that kind of productivity to return. A blessing for everyone. But that future is not mine alone to create. It was the city that ran my businesses into the ground. All their petty regulations and limitless taxes and invented violations. Now my buildings are empty. And they are under constant siege from looters and crooks of every kind—including looters and crooks who somehow get voted into office."

"Unpaid taxes aren’t helping the situation."

"Yet the city continues to raise tax rates. Why is no one asking about where that money goes? They should. Because I can tell them. It goes straight into the pockets of politicians, into feel-good social programs that keep people from getting real jobs. You know what Southside has become? A welfare state."

I was about to remind him how the federal government views tax evasion, but he wasn't done arguing his case.

"Please tell the mayor that when the city starts protecting business owners, when it starts supporting free enterprise, I’ll pay my taxes. But until then I can’t find a compelling reason to comply with their extortion. Consider this my version of civil disobedience—surely the mayor will understand that terminology. And, yes, in case you're wondering, I do pay my state and federal taxes, so do not bother with notifying your colleagues in the IRS." He smiled, coldly. "I'm withholding Richmond's money. Because Richmond is the problem."

"Oh, Daddy!" Mac jumped up from the chair. Her boots left a trail of dry soil on the polished pine. "For goodness sake, you're talking to Raleigh. A family friend."

She took her father’s free arm with both hands, squeezing him affectionately before tossing back her long dark braid. Sunlight poured through the mullioned windows and was caught by the broad facets of the diamond ring on her left hand.

"Daddy's like all the Fielding men,” she said. “Always making a point. Isn't it tiresome, Raleigh? I could die from the boredom."

I didn't know what to say. And didn’t think Mr. Fielding was answering, so I finished my tea and left my card on the silver tray. Harrison Fielding nodded as though acknowledging receipt, and Mac escorted me to the door. An ebony braid plaited down her back like an arrow.

"Congratulations on your engagement," I said.

She stopped, offering me her hand for inspection. The geologist in me guessed it was a canary diamond, three carats. Maybe four. And the geologist perversely wondered which impurity turned the diamond yellow—iron, titanium—and whether the rock came from South Africa or Sierra Leone. But Mac wouldn’t want to hear about impurities. Or blood diamonds.

"Who's the lucky groom?" I asked.

"Stuart Morgan. Do you remember him? He was in DeMott's class at St. Christopher’s."

"Sorry, I don't recall."

"Well, he's just wonderful. Perfect. The wedding’s early September. Here, of course. Down by the river."

"Sounds lovely."

"DeMott's best man." She leaned in, her voice a whisper. "I'm so glad that drug nonsense is over. You should see him, Raleigh. He's really come around."

"I'm glad things are going well for you, Mac."

"Good seeing you too."

In the silence that followed I figured we were both considering the last time we saw each other. Four years ago. At my father's funeral. He was murdered.

"Please say hello to your mother," she said. "We do think of her often."

And with that, she opened the massive front door. Outside the sun blazed across the cut grass, turning the lawn white.

"Oh my goodness," she exclaimed. "I'm not going anywhere. It's atrocious out there!"

That evening, as a sunset cast soft amethyst hues over Richmond, I parked the hideous K-Car near the statue of the great General Robert E. Lee. The Confederate hero was riding his faithful steed Traveller into bronzed eternity, pointed south. Both man and horse were the epitome of gentility.

When my great-great-grandparents built their three-story brick house on Monument Avenue, Lee's statue stood alone in a grassy field. That was in 1900, when this section of town was Richmond's far outer edge, and when the urge to commemorate the war was just beginning. But other Civil War memorials soon appeared on the road -- J. E. B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis -- and before long the cobblestone street was renamed Monument Avenue. In the antebellum aftermath, it became the city’s most exclusive address.

These days it was my mother who lived in the big house along with our boarder, a photographer named Wally Marsh. I lived in the carriage house across the slate courtyard but spent as much time as possible in the main house. But this evening the house was empty. In the fridge, I found a pitcher of cold lemonade and carried it out to the courtyard. Sitting at the wrought iron table, I could just barely see Lee's profile through the magnolia leaves. The trees hadn't been cut back in four years. Not since my father died.

Sipping my drink, I closed my eyes and listened to the evening traffic. It thrummed softly over the cobblestones, a meditative rhythm like a hummed chant, and my mind began to drift over the day, returning to that conversation with the mayor.

Was it possible for six hundred people to miss two men falling off a roof?

Possible, I decided.

But not probable.

Most likely, LuLu Mendant had it right. An antique wound plagued this city, an inherited devastation, and it visited generations who never saw combat, who never lived as slaves, yet claimed those injuries as their own. The wound was old, the mayor said. And the pain was still fresh.

When I opened my eyes, my mother was standing on the steps outside the kitchen’s French doors.

"Raleigh Ann," she said, "be sure to drink up that lemonade."

Nadine Shaw Harmon's brunette hair spiraled from her pretty head. Walking toward the patio table, she made music. Silver bangles singing and three-inch stilettos clicking across the slate. Her dog walked behind her, a faithful canine whose full name was Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. The name was plucked from thin air. My mother did that with words. Often.

Madame trotted to my chair, panting, then crawled under the table. The slate was slightly cool from the shade of the house.

"What's in the lemonade?" I asked.

My mother only smiled.

"Didn’t Wally make the lemonade?" I asked. That was the only reason I decided to drink it. "Then please tell me what's in it. In case some weird side effect hits me."

"I added a little valerian. That's all."

"Valerian. What does that do?"

"It's an herb."

"An herb. What does it do?"

"It helps you sleep."

"You mean it's going to knock me out."

"Raleigh, your bedroom light was on all night. You are ruining your circadian rhythms. You need to sleep."

I took a deep breath. The air smelled of warm stone and dusk and summer green. I let the sigh out slowly, and smiled. "Have you been at the camp?"

She clapped her hands. The bracelets chimed. "There was a woman with the worst skin disease you ever did see. Like Job's affliction! But the Lord is going to heal her soon. By His stripes, we are healed."

After my father died, my mother attached herself to a Pentecostal church twenty miles north of town. An odd and rustic place with summer tent revivals, the camp was full of sincere women in calico dresses who took God at His word. They were good and generous people. They also believed make-up was a grave sin, and yet they had not tossed out my mother, who comparatively speaking looked like she was dragged over the Dillard's make-up counter.

She picked up my glass, sipping to taste it. "Oh, I used too much honey."

"Honey. That’s what I tasted. Lemonade needs sugar."

"Sugar will kill you, Raleigh." She said it matter-of-factly. "You should have heard this preacher today. He came all the way from South Africa, a colored man. He was just marvelous. You could feel God flowing through him. And he told us about that apart tide problem they had."

"‘Apartheid’?"

"And he read from the book of Micah. Do you remember how much your father loved that book? He had every verse memorized.”

I reached down to pet Madame. Her black fur felt warm, luxurious and comforting.

More than twenty years ago, David Harmon married my mother Nadine Shaw and adopted her two young daughters: me and my older sister Helen. He treated us like his own, and we loved him, but he worshiped our mother. Which was the only explanation we had for why he shrugged into his blue wool coat on a cold November night when sleet was falling from the sky and walked three blocks to the neighborhood market: My mother was craving shortbread cookies.

But between our house and the Strawberry Street Market, somebody stole his last breath. They emptied a .45 into his body and left him in the alley behind the market.

No suspects have ever been found.

At the time I was working in Washington, DC, a forensic geologist in the FBI's materials analysis lab. After his funeral, I took some time off then tried to go back to work. But I couldn't sit behind the microscope anymore. Six months later, I entered Quantico. I never told my mother. Ten months after his death, I made it to graduation day but my sister refused to come to the ceremony because I was joining “the Gestapo.” As the sky over the Academy gathered for a summer storm, I walked down to the training ground and read aloud the book of Micah. When I came to the crucial lines -- the ones my father quoted so often they were tattooed on my brain -- I could only whisper.

"‘And what does the Lord require of you?’" I now said aloud, to see my mother’s face light up. "‘To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’"

I waited for her to say something, but she only shifted her eyes, staring into the distance.