Till You Hear From Me: A Novel (14 page)

“Don’t you worry about a thing, daughter,” he said, starting to play again softly. “For now, we’ll just keep our own counsel. How does that sound?”

It sounded great, even though I wasn’t really sure what he meant. “Okay.”

His fingers paused on the keys. “Do you trust me, daughter?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, just don’t forget it.”

“I won’t.”

He started the song again. “Good night, then.”

“Good night.” I stood up, but first I had a request. “Daddy?”

“Yes, daughter?”

“Can you sing the words?”

“Of course.”

It was an old Duke Ellington tune. One of my mother’s favorites. As soon as he started singing, the words all came back to me in a rush. I headed down the hall to my room, half expecting to hear my mother’s voice join in the way she used to, but all I heard was the Rev.

Which was, of course, easier said than done.

FIFTEEN

A
T 3 A.M., THE
A
TLANTA AIRPORT HAS A GHOSTLY QUALITY
. M
OST OF
the arrival gates are empty. Departures are sporadic. The stores, newsstands, and last-chance-to-tank-up-before-the-flight bars are closed until morning. Cleaning crews move like wraiths through the largely deserted concourses, lost in their own thoughts or talking furtively on their cell phones, sneaking a personal moment on company time. That was one of the things Wes liked most about being his own boss. He didn’t have to ask permission to do a damn thing. It wasn’t always easy, but it was always worth it.

The plane had touched down on a small runway, far removed from the giant carriers that disgorged hundreds of people at a time. Wes had been on private planes before, but not enough to get tired of them and never one as nice as this. It had six huge seats covered in soft gray leather, a giant flat-screen TV, complete with computer hookups, and a small bedroom with a shower. The towels were monogrammed HGM after the plane’s owner, Herman Gilmore Murphy, an oil tycoon who saw Barack Obama’s election as the
worst single moment of his lifetime, not because of race, but because of what Herman called the new president’s “Socialist agenda.”

Wes thought Herman was a classless buffoon who wasn’t half as smart as his millions made everybody tell him he was, but that didn’t mean he’d turn down an offer to fly like the rich guys do all the way to Atlanta. They sent a car for him at ten thirty and by eleven thirty, he was settled comfortably in the lap of the kind of luxury to which he hoped to soon become accustomed. It was the most relaxing flight he’d ever had.

When they arrived in Atlanta, Wes thanked the flight crew, and thanked himself for arranging an early check-in at the Four Seasons. Wes was officially staying at his father’s house, but he was a firm believer in one of his mother’s favorite expressions:
It’s a sorry rat ain’t got but one hole
. Camping out in his old room was fine for strategic purposes, but he needed a neutral base of operations with highspeed Internet connections, twenty-four-hour room service, and a comfortable, private place to meet with other as-yet-unknown members of the team he’d pull together to get the job done. One of the mini suites at his favorite midtown hotel was just the ticket. Whether or not he ever actually slept there was beside the point.

At the bottom of the escalator, Wes joined other early risers waiting for the train to the main terminal: two guys in business suits and BlackBerrys and a young woman in Army fatigues with elaborate cornrows and world-weary eyes. Years ago, before security got so tight, Wes remembered an old man in faded overalls and a tattered straw hat who used to stand beside the train doors, holding a homemade sign that said “Repent” in big block letters. Wes wondered if anyone had ever been moved to do so by the man’s silent witness. He doubted it. That kind of decision didn’t usually manifest in airports.
Airplanes
, maybe, especially when flying through bad weather, but once people got back on terra firma, they tended to be better able to keep the serious soul-searching at bay until the next crisis.

The ride was only a few minutes and when the train hissed to a stop and deposited him at the bottom of the final escalator that would drop him off at rental car row, Wes spotted a tall, stocky brother in a dark blue suit holding a neatly hand-lettered sign, but this one bore not a spiritual command, but his name: “W. Harper.” He smiled to himself.
A private plane and a private car? These guys are really trying to make a good impression
, he thought.

“I’m Wes Harper,” he said to the driver.

“Welcome to Atlanta,” the man said pleasantly, reaching for Wes’s bag without being asked. “I’m Julius.”

“I wasn’t expecting anybody to meet me, Julius.”

“Yessir,” Julius said, without offering an opinion. He was in the business of agreement, not speculation.

Wes waited until Julius settled in behind the wheel. “I’m headed for the Four Seasons on Fourteenth Street,” he said.

“Yessir.”

It was a gray day, but not too cold. In New York, they were expecting six inches of snow. In Atlanta, it looked like rain.

“Take the streets through town, would you?” Wes said as the stadium loomed up ahead. “I haven’t been home in a while.”

“There’s been lots of changes,” Julius said, easing the car off the exit ramp at Andrew Young International Boulevard. “But you know what they say about Atlanta.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing changes but the changes.”

SIXTEENN

T
HERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT THAT BED
. A
S SOON AS MY HEAD HIT
the pillow, I was down for the count. Even after my extended nap and relatively early bedtime yesterday, by the time I opened my eyes, the Rev was already up and rattling around downstairs. He grinned at me when I presented myself at the kitchen door a few minutes later. He was, of course, wearing his usual dark blue suit, starched white shirt, and a pale yellow tie. The clock on the microwave said 6
A.M
.

“Good morning, daughter,” he said as two pieces of toast popped up from the toaster behind him.

“Good morning,” I said, glad he had already made coffee. “What are you doing up this early?”

“On my way downtown for a breakfast meeting,” he said, buttering the toast and putting it on two plates, one for him and one for me.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and reached for the sugar.

“Then over to Athens for lunch and a talk at the university. Tomorrow I’m headed for Macon all day.”

“Was it something I said?” I teased him, taking the chair I always sit in next to the Rev, who was, of course, at the head of the table.

He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I wish you’d told me you were coming. I’m all over the state for Black History Month and it’s too late to cancel anything.”

February was always a whirlwind of speeches, sermons, rallies, and remembrances. Why should this historic
first ever with a brother in the White House
February be any different? Miss Iona’s contention that the Rev couldn’t find an audience anymore didn’t seem to have any basis in fact.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do and I’ll probably go roam around the neighborhood for a while to see what you all have been up to without me.”

“I’ll be back before dinner,” he said, sipping his coffee and checking his watch. “I’ll fix you something nice.”

I shook my head, savoring the buttery perfection of the toast. “How about I’ll fix
you
something nice? I haven’t completely lost my touch.”

The truth was, I hadn’t cooked a meal in months and on my best days, I wasn’t that great, but as long as you keep it simple, cooking is like sex and bike riding. Once you start, everything comes back pretty quickly.

“It’s a deal,” he said, obviously pleased at my suggestion. “Want to ask Eddie to join us?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to him enough last night.”

The terrible sound of the Rev’s front doorbell blasted through the toast-scented air. I jumped about a foot in the air, but the Rev just smiled, stood up, and deposited his cup in the sink. “Good, then go on and ask him while I go grab my briefcase.”

Like a lot of the older men in West End, Mr. Eddie liked Lincolns. When I opened the front door, he had parked his gleaming black Town Car out front and was standing there, tall and elegant in a charcoal gray pin-striped number and a dark gray homburg. I knew from years of traveling with him and the Rev that his overcoat was neatly folded on the backseat until they reached their destination, but he always wore his suit jacket. It used to cover his holster. Now it was probably just habit.

In the bad old days, Mr. Eddie was armed when the Rev would go around to these little towns like Moultrie and Americus, trying to let people know they hadn’t been forgotten; that they were a part of this great rush toward freedom, too, the same as anybody in Atlanta or Montgomery or Birmingham. The small towns were the most dangerous, but they had always been the Rev’s special constituency. He was as close as most of them would ever get to a Martin Luther King Jr., or a Malcolm X, and when he raised that magnificent voice of his from the pulpits of these tiny churches at the edge of some isolated two-lane road, he made just the possibility of freedom
irresistible
. I’ve heard my father give a hundred speeches, preach a thousand sermons, and at the end of every one, I wanted to jump up and join something, march somewhere and demand something. At the very least, I was ready to shake my finger in somebody’s face.

These days, all he was asking people to do was register to vote and the person who still made sure he got there on time to deliver that message was Mr. Eddie. When he saw me, he immediately took off his hat like the gentleman he always was, even when I was just a little girl. He’s the first man who ever pulled out a chair for me at the dinner table. He still does it.