Only the Strong (30 page)

Sharps fetched his gold toothpick from his breast pocket and slid it between his teeth. Shortly after his arrival, he'd sworn on the grave of his cousin Ike Allen that he would avenge his name and make things right. The time was near, he decided. But first he was going to get Goode's money.

PeeWee had returned while Sharps was ruminating. Earlier, using the power of the ring, he'd disabled the doctor's car according to his business partner's instructions. That task accomplished, stealing from the Pie Lady's booth was almost beneath his dignity.
He raised both pies and smiled proudly. “Lemon meringue and sweet potato,” he said. “Just like taking candy from a baby.” Startled, Sharps nearly choked on his toothpick. When he recovered, he glared at PeeWee. “For the last time,” he warned, “if you keep on interrupting me when I'm thinking, I'll slice you from stem to stern. That's a nautical phrase, motherfucker. You know, nautical. Ships and shit.”

Inside his house on Lewis Place, Ananias Goode sat and watched his wife. Lawrence had been given the day off so that he could enjoy the festivities in the park. The day was growing old. Goode made no move to turn on a light. The gloom suited his mood. He sat listening to the wheeze and hum of the machines while clutching a pillow on his lap. Occasionally he snuck a glance at the still form in the bed, the limp swirl of wispy strands barely visible beyond the edge of the blanket. Finally he got up, leaving the pillow on his chair, and went to a table in the corner of the room. He picked up the phone sitting on it and dialed a number.

“Miles? It's me. Yeah, I know. Half of the North Side's in the park. I decided to sit it out and apparently so did you. I called you because…I want you to pray for me.”

Miles Washington's voice was as sonorous over the phone as it was when issuing thunderous sermons from his pulpit. “I pray for you every day. You know that. Why the special request? Has something happened?”

“No,” Goode replied.

“Is something going to happen?”

“Just do that for me,” Goode pleaded, his voice nearly soft as a whisper. “Just pray.”

He hung up the phone and stared at his hands. He stood like that, unmoving, for several long minutes. Then, sighing, he grabbed the pillow from the chair and stepped toward the bed.

Artinces sat on a park bench staring at the water. Behind her, Park District employees dismantled the booths and began to cart them
away. The drama of the afternoon had played to a satisfying climax. Rose's baby boy made his entrance into her reliable hands, with the joyful outcome dutifully recorded by a
Citizen
photographer. Now she sat waiting for the three women to emerge through the curtain of shadows formed by the gathering dusk. They'd return to the dock where she'd seen them earlier, she figured, and once again try to stare her down. She planned to confront them, ask them why they were taunting her and why they wanted her to suffer. She had once considered the possibility that they
were
her, variants of former selves, or phantom images of women she could have been. But she'd come to doubt that: everything about them—their wardrobe, the expressions on their faces—bore the marks of an earlier time. She attacked the mystery as she would any complex case, and her investigations had at last borne fruit: she was now certain she knew who they were. She felt them watching her while she worked on Rose. She'd even cast a hurried glance around the crowd and though it turned up nothing, she knew they'd been there, looking over her shoulder—close enough, perhaps, to touch her, as they had in her dream.

But as evening fell they apparently had other appointments, promises to keep or break. She stood, stretched, rubbed her eyes, and sat back down. Finally she gave up and left the park, taking one last look around as dusk dissolved into the surrounding black.

TROUBLE

C
HARLOTTE SKIPPED THE FESTIVITIES IN THE PARK
, having had enough of celebrations of black pride for a while, maybe forever. Instead, she spent most of the day at the riverfront, listening to Mozart and dreaming of boats. Artinces had recently abducted her favorite jacket, a lightweight men's houndstooth, and personally escorted it to Kirkwood Cleaners. Undaunted, Charlotte rescued a pale-blue seersucker from a veterans' thrift store. She wore it at the riverfront with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and her linen plaid cap pulled low over her brow. She sat directly on the cobblestones with her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins.

Gateway was more of a barge city than a boat city. Charlotte made do with a mud-splattered tug patrolling the muck just off the wharf. Behind it, in the near distance, a paddle steamer decorated to look like Mark Twain's plaything made slow circuits, stopping now and then to discard its cargo of tourists and pick up another group. When it neared the Gateway City shore, the pilot-host's booming voice blared over a tinny PA, interrupting Charlotte's reverie. But it was only a temporary annoyance, one she quickly
overwhelmed with the Queen of the Night's piercing aria from
The Magic Flute
. The soprano sang in German, but Dr. Harrison, Charlotte's music appreciation teacher, had provided the class with an English translation.

On the steamer, the tourists, once animated, were now still. Shadowy stick figures, they clutched the rails as the boat wheeled around a final time.
The vengeance of hell boils in my heart,
the Queen declared, her crystalline voice ringing above the cobblestones,
death and despair flame about me!

Charlotte had been listening to the same song all day on an eight-track player she'd bought from the man known as Playfair. Artinces couldn't hide her puzzlement on the day Charlotte brought it home.

“Why would you buy that? It's probably stolen.”

“Probably,” Charlotte said in response. The tape player sat on the kitchen table while she made tea. She'd noticed that Artinces was freshly bathed and powdered and a little jumpy, as if she was in a rush to get out of the house. She smelled faintly of flowers.

“How can you be so casual about it?”

“Didn't you casually bring home that bird in the hall? Where do you think it came from?”

“I bought it for you, to keep you company. Anyway—I don't have time to argue with you.” Artinces stood in front of a glass-front cabinet and checked her face in the reflection.

“I know,” Charlotte said.

“What do you mean, you know?”

“I mean I know you don't have time. It's Wednesday.”

Artinces stopped primping. But she didn't turn around. “What about Wednesday?”

Charlotte got up and grabbed the teakettle before it started whistling. “You tell me. You're the one who's always running off.”

“You know, there was a time when young people addressed their elders with respect. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with my hi-fi in there.”

“Except it's stationary,” Charlotte said, remembering Playfair's sales pitch. “With eight D batteries, you can take this baby anywhere. Plus it's got an AM radio.”

As it turned out, her exchanges with Artinces, sometimes warm and sometimes cool, left her more than prepared for her first encounters with Dr. Leonora Harrison.

“One might ask about the proper role of music in life,” Dr. Harrison had said on the first day of class. “Or one might ask if life without music is even possible.” Tall and stylish, Dr. Harrison had imperious features that were completely out of harmony with her joyful approach to her life's work. “In this class, you will learn how to progress beyond mere hearing,” she promised. “By semester's end, you will know how to
listen
.” Fond of waving a conductor's baton as she played recordings and lectured, Dr. Harrison was just the first of a number of instructors at River Valley A&M who made a lasting impression on Charlotte. They were smart, confident, and dedicated. Willing to urge students past their preconceived limitations, they never concealed their desire to see them succeed.

Charlotte enrolled as a pre-med major in the College of Agricultural and Natural Sciences, one of four colleges serving 3,000 students on the 170-acre campus. Colored Union soldiers had founded River Valley right after the Civil War. Until the turn of the twentieth century, its curriculum focused on farming and trades, a reflection of Booker T. Washington's then-dominant influence. Over time, the faculty members and trustees who favored the W.E.B. Du Bois approach to self-improvement won a hard-fought majority. Their victory eventually led to an expansion beyond River Valley's industrial-education roots and the recruitment of students like Charlotte.

“I will play a song and you will identify it,” Dr. Harrison commanded one day. She marched to her desk, lifted the tone arm on her portable record player, and touched the needle to the record.

Propulsive drumbeats filled the room, followed by the eager blare of a clarinet. “‘Maple Leaf Rag'!” someone hollered. Charlotte turned and spotted a slim, well-dressed young man whose appearance seemed out of step with the times. A sharp part was razored into the left temple of his short hair, and a thin, impeccable mustache lined his upper lip. His short-sleeve shirt and tie made him look less like a like a super-bad soul brother than a refugee from the Montgomery bus boycott.

“Composed by Scott Joplin, of course,” he continued, “but performed in this case by…Sidney Bechet.”

“You are correct, Mr. Conway,” Dr. Harrison said. “Next time, please do us the courtesy of raising your hand.”

“Sorry, Professor,” he replied. It was clear that he wasn't apologizing at all. “I lost control of myself.”

Four notes into the next song, he interrupted again. “‘Für Elise,' Beethoven. How about something challenging, like his Fifth Symphony?” He chuckled, amused with himself.

Dr. Harrison lifted the tone arm from the record. With one hand on the hip of her tailored skirt, she raised her baton and aimed it at the impudent student. “Really, Mr. Conway. I warn you not to push me. Especially on the first day of class.”

Conway, whom Charlotte would soon learn was better known as Percy, stuck out his bottom lip in a bold parody of pouting. “Yes, ma'am,” he said. Charlotte snuck another glimpse. He looked sharp, almost jittery with intelligence, and he was the color of lightly toasted bread. Percy caught Charlotte looking at him and winked at her. She grinned and looked away.

A saucy clamor of horns introduced the next song, and a bold brassy voice followed them.

              
I can't sleep at night

              
I can't eat a bite

              
'Cause the man I love

              
He don't treat me right…

“Bessie Smith?” a voice offered.

Dr. Harrison frowned. “Remember, we raise our hands in this class. But you were close. Anybody?” She scanned the neat rows of desks, ignoring Percy's raised hand. He stretched, leaned, and gestured wildly, eliciting giggles from his classmates.

Dr. Harrison sighed. “Mr. Conway.”

“The singer would be Mamie Smith. The song would be ‘Crazy Blues.'”

“You are correct, Mr. Conway, very good. Now, no more from you. Let someone else have a chance.”

“Fine,” he said. “My work here is done.” He leaned back in his seat and folded his arms.

Dr. Harrison's next selection made Charlotte sit up straight in her chair. A woman's voice, crisp, lilting, and nearly startling in its beauty, leapt from a cushion of fluttering strings. As it rose, Charlotte heard flights of fluty warbling that she could hardly believe came from a woman's throat. Riding on waves of horns, the voice seemed everywhere at once, a covey of songbirds flushed from their grassy enclave and sent soaring into the sky.

              
So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr.

              
Verstoßen sei auf ewig,

              
Verlassen sei auf ewig,

              
Zertrümmert sei'n auf ewig…

Charlotte couldn't understand the words but she recognized that hearts and lives were at stake. Orders were being given, oaths sworn. The song ended long before she realized it.

A nudging in her ribs made her jump. It was Percy. “It's okay,” he whispered, “you can breathe now.”

Dr. Harrison broke down the aria for the class. She explained that the Queen of the Night, much like the blues queens with whom the students were far more familiar, was venting her frustration through song. In this case, her daughter had been on the receiving end. Charlotte had never known a mother's wrath or passion, but had never imagined it could sound like that. She knew it would be impossible to get those notes out of her head. She didn't want to. After the last class of the day, she headed to the campus library and checked out everything it had on Mozart and
The Magic Flute
.

At the checkout counter, she was amused to find Percy's signature confidently scrawled on the checkout slip at the back of each book. Evidently he had a thing for Mozart. On a whim, she left her findings on the counter and returned to the stacks. She grabbed a book at random off the shelf:
Physics and You
. Only a single individual had checked it out: one Percy Conway. She crossed the room and pulled another title.
An Oral History of Appalachia
. Flipping to the checkout slip, she found it again: Percy
Conway. In a far corner, she slid a good half-dozen volumes, each of them more obscure than the last, and each weighed down by a thick layer of dust. Percy's signature was in all of them.