The Fugitivities Page 5

  “You know Vernon never married?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “But he had a woman. I’m talking back in the day. Before you were born. Wonderful woman named Evelyn Jones. One of the strongest, most beautiful women I ever seen. You would have liked her. I know she would have liked you. She was so damn smart. Her and Vernon met at night classes at Atlantic Community College. She came from poor folks, at a time when Atlantic City was beginning to decline, but she was doing good, you know, and she had a smile that just…it just had you wide open soon as she walked in the room. And your uncle Vernon was gone on this woman. But, you know, she was very proud…She had that poor working pride, tough as nails, boy. She wouldn’t bend, and she never asked for help. Always figured things for herself, did things her own way. And that was okay with Vern, but what happened was she was so proud, she wouldn’t say when she wasn’t well. They had been seeing each other almost a year, and Vern is in the bathroom and sees some blood in the sink. Come to find out she’d been sick for months but hadn’t allowed that she was, didn’t want to bother him about it and figured neither of them could afford the doctor. Well, Vern loved this woman, Jonah. He says, ‘You have to see the doctor. I’ll pay for it.’ Finally, he convinces her to go, and you know what, she has a cancer, but now they got it too late. And she got real sick, and Vern took care of her and then moved with her to be by her family. She died the same year. Like that. Wilted and all shriveled up…it was terrible. Your uncle, he never really recovered from Evelyn. In fact, he kind of retreated from the whole family, kind of like me, but in a different way. Threw himself into work. I would hear sometimes about a woman here and there, but it never lasted more than a few months. A few times I think because he was abusive, wasn’t treating them right. Didn’t treat himself right either. You know, I wasn’t so surprised when I heard. He’s had a lot of problems the last few years, gained a lot of weight, always seeing doctors. Tellin’ him he has to exercise and all that. We had so many arguments about him needing to get better that I finally just gave up. I didn’t want you to be around his troubles. For a long time, I was angry at him for having put the family through such concern about his well-being, for his refusal to get better, but as I flew over here, I got to thinking that maybe his depression went deep. For him, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. It was like he only had that one love, and that was it. And that loss came between him and the world, and between us, and now…”

  His father made a gesture to finish the sentence. They sat for a while in silence, watching the crowds circulate through the eatery line with their trays.

  His father snapped back into logistical mode. “Come on, I want to get us to the motel early so you can get a good night’s sleep. I want you up and sharp for the service tomorrow.”

  * * *

  —

  The following day, under the beleaguering Jersey mugginess of an overcast summer’s morning, Jonah and his father joined the rest of their kinfolk in a long shimmering line of wide-crowned brims, flitting fans, tie clips, pocket squares, brooches, impeccable footwear, peppery wafts of cologne and grandmotherly jasmine, that overflowed the parking lot and spilled over onto the corner of Elm Avenue. Muted gasps of delight rose in the air as cousins and elders exchanged strong effusive clasps. As with all large families, a peculiar energy hovered over any Winters reunion, and it gained in strength now, as the reunited prepared to enter Mount Zion Victory Baptist Church for Vernon Winters’s homegoing.

  Since the time of Grandfather Earl’s passing, they had multiplied considerably. Jonah had no idea he had so many cousins, aunts, folks who had driven all the way up from Florida, from the Carolinas, from DC and Baltimore, down from Mount Vernon and New Rochelle. And Vernon was beloved by the people of Pleasantville. A city councilman, members of the local school board where he had donated heavily to after-school programs; even two or three white folks showed up from the Honeywell office and were greeted just as warmly.

  The whole service, Jonah was in a daze. The minister spoke. The siblings gave testimonials. They sang “Lord Keep Me Day by Day” because it was known to have been one of Uncle Vernon’s favorites. The piano and the choir led the assembled, old folks and young, family and friends, neighbors and coworkers, in sending Vernon Winters home.

  I’m just a stranger here And I’m traveling through this barren land

  Rapturous vowels thundered around their heads and the rolling march of foot stomps charged the air with the acknowledgment of the one whose journey was won, who watched them now, from a building not made by hand.

  Then it was announced that a young lady, Jonah’s cousin Esther, would line a hymn she had practiced for the occasion: “A Charge to Keep I Have.” Little Esther couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, and her range and tone weren’t perfect or even sweet exactly, but she laid it out. Everyone was on their feet and called back to her. Go ’head. They clapped her on. Lord, Jesus. The voices raised the hymn together until its unearthly roar was only praise and the praise took the body before it took the voice.

  To serve the present age, My calling to fulfill

  From out her tiny frame, songful Esther moaned the lines with utter ferocity. No one could deny. She was there with him, and she brought the church with her in her singing. Jonah felt all the hairs on his neck stand on end and the shivers run down, and he saw that even his father was crying.

  O may it all my powers engage. To do my Master’s will!

  Esther stretched it out. Mmmhhhmmm. Yes, Lord. She stretched it out. She left nothing, allowed no one to feel they were not hand in hand with the one they had come to see off to the other world. Somebody give Gawd some praise for that one, someone shouted. And the church gave forth.

  When the pallbearers emerged, the sun had broken through and glinted off the chrome trim detailing the hearse, and off the waiting Cadillac Escalades and Lincoln Town Cars and the sunglasses of so many men in dark suits you would have thought a statesman were passing through. They had lined the street and spilled over into the parking lot of the Rite Aid, which faced the church. Uncle Vernon was buried just a few minutes away in the family plot at Greenwood Cemetery, a modest burial ground between Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenues. They had a spot for him next to the elders, Earl and Liza, who rested together. After the burial, there was a reception at his aunt Ella’s house, and Jonah found himself pressed into a near-continuous embrace as paper plates piled high with a seemingly never-ending procession of sweet potato pie and oxtail and fried chicken and peas and greens and all the cake you could eat to feed the riotous laughter, tale-telling, well-wishing, and greetings and goodbyes. It was moving and exhausting all at once.

  When they finally left a little after midnight, Jonah’s father, who’d had a bit to drink, asked him to drive, which he did, rolling very precisely within five of the limit at all times, the music soft and no words between them, all the way back to Atlantic City. When they got to the motel, instead of getting out of the car, his father rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. After a moment, Jonah took one from his own pack, and they sat that way in the motel parking lot, looking like a couple of gangsters. Jonah’s father looked like he had something to say, and Jonah waited for him to say it. Finally, his father took an envelope out of his coat and placed it on the dashboard.

  “This is for you, from Vernon. He left you and all your cousins, each and every one of them, a portion of what he had, what he made for himself. That’s a remarkable thing. A great gift, and I don’t want you to take it lightly. There are a lot of ways to go about life. No matter which way you go, you’re gonna need money. And, more importantly, you’re gonna need to know how to handle money. When he was sick, your uncle decided to make some decisions about what he wanted for after he was gone. And he wrote it all out. Take that envelope, it’s yours. I have no control of what you do with its contents. But as your father, I’m asking—no, I’m telling you, son, thi
nk on it. Think on it careful now. Remember, this man worked hard for that money. Nothing came free to him in life. Nothing comes to no one free.”

  With that, his dad stepped out of the car, leaving Jonah with the envelope. He thought about opening it there but felt no rush to do so. He exited the vehicle and locked it for the night, then headed toward the waterfront.

  The boardwalk was eerily vacant. Down the shoreline, the lights of the Taj Mahal loomed in the murky distance like an anglerfish. A woman rolled by in a Power Chair, indifferent to his gaze. He had walked a bit down the boardwalk before he gave up and headed back inland. On Atlantic Avenue, he came to the Breezy Point, a tiki-themed joint just off the strip. It was almost as devoid of people as the boardwalk. The lounge area had big bay windows facing the Econo Lodge Riviera, and he took up a seat there. Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” was playing at a tepid volume on speakers behind the bar. A suite of large, muted television screens were running SportsCenter highlights, while the screen farthest away, at the end of the bar, showed a news story about a unit of marines getting ambushed in the Korangal Valley. A waitress appeared to take his order. A Braves tomahawk was visible above her tiki-themed apron, and she had a tattoo of an ankh on her inner wrist. She was too attractive for Breezy Point, but perhaps not attractive enough—or, rather, light enough—for the casino floor, especially at the Taj Mahal.

  “What can I get you?”

  “Do you have something not too floral but not too bitter—actually, forget it, do you have Budweiser?”

  “Is that a question or an order?”

  “Maybe both?”

  She smiled forgivingly and walked away, leaving Jonah to turn his attention to the envelope in his hands. Inside there were two separate sheets. One was a letterheaded set of instructions to get in touch with Rhonda Rollins, a Philadelphia-based attorney. The other was a plain paper letter autopersonalized to his attention, evidently formatted in an outdated version of Microsoft Word. As he looked these over, the waitress returned with his beer. He thanked her and looked around. As far as Jonah could tell, he was her only customer. He could tell, too, that she was watching him examine the materials in his hands. It didn’t matter. He took a sip and began to read.

  To my nephew, JONAH WINTERS,

  If you are reading this, I have passed. Attached to this letter, you, like all of your cousins, will find instructions with my lawyer for how to retrieve the inheritance I have left you. Since I love all of you equally, it is my wish that you all receive equal shares. Since there are many of you, this means nobody is going to walk away with a fortune. I do feel it’s best this way. I would have liked to leave you each $10,000, but with the tax and the lawyers and fees that must be paid, it could not be that much. Instead, you are each receiving $6,500. Whatever you may think, this is a very great deal of money. If you are wise, any one of you can use it to build a company or start a family or get an education. Yet these are not conditionals. Only YOU can decide how best to use these funds. I believe in hard work, and I hope all of you do too. I believe in education, and I hope all of you will try to go to college and make your parents proud. I also believe in offering a helping hand. And so I want to leave you, instead of with more instructions, with a little story, a true story from my childhood.

  When I was a boy, your grandfather (my father), Earl Winters, worked in the casinos in Atlantic City. It was a grand destination back then, not the seedy place it has become. But back then, things for us were also harder. In the summer, me and my brothers used to pick up white folks at the Steel Pier and push them around in rickshaws for a nickel. I went to the Indiana Avenue School, which was for colored students only. I liked school, but I was often in trouble. When we’d get into trouble, sometimes we’d have to go sit or stand in the hallways with the school janitor, a big man everyone called Pop. One day, because I had been bad, I was sent to “cool it,” and I found myself sitting with Pop and talking. He wanted to know what was bothering me. I told him these kids were bugging me, that I felt stuck here. And he said, “Well, you can’t let these things get you down. You can’t let things stand in your way.” He said, “You know, if I’d been that way, I never would have become a ballplayer.” Well, I had no idea Pop had played ball. But Pop’s real name was John Henry Lloyd, and he was one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game. He was a real legend back in the days before Jackie Robinson, when black folks played in the Negro League. I was stunned.

  “And now you’re here?” I asked him. I was a kid, so I didn’t know any better, and that must have hurt him the way I said it. But he wasn’t bothered by it at all.

  “Sure, I’m here,” he said. “But I’ve also been there. I did those things. I set those records. I heard the crowds shout my name. No one can take from me what I done. Where I’ve been. What I seen. And even if all the records of all my games were lost, and nobody even remembered my name, God would know, and I would know, and I am well with him. You see boy, time is like God’s great wax cylinder. He keeps track of everything, and what I’ve done and who I am are fixed that way for good, like a line engraved in God’s hand.” Pop had huge hands, and after that talk, he got up and took my little one in his, and he walked me back to class. To this day, I have not forgotten that. Make your lives whatever you will with where my helping hand will take you. Don’t go making excuses. Work hard. Do something righteous with your life.

  Faithfully,

  Your Uncle Vernon

  They drove back to Newark the next day and dropped off the car at the airport lot where they had picked it up. His father was very agitated now, and he ended up arguing with the clerk about the cost of the rental. Then suddenly it was time to part, and they were hugging warmly, Jonah assuring his father he would stay in touch. He felt a sense of relief once he was on the train heading back to New York, but when he did finally reach Penn Station, a terrible sense of emptiness overwhelmed him, a void in the midst of the surging crowds. Back at his apartment, he found Isaac eating takeout and listening to records. They talked a bit about the funeral. Isaac’s grandparents were still living in Detroit.

  “So I guess you haven’t gone through it like that,” Jonah said.

  Isaac looked away toward the window with their fire escape. When he answered, it was without looking back and in a tone of voice Jonah hadn’t heard before.

  “Nah, I been to a lot of funerals. Too many.”

  Jonah had willingly let his phone battery die on the trip and hadn’t charged it for days, so he assumed he would have a million messages and reminders waiting on him. It turned out, apart from reminders to pay his phone bill, the only one trying to reach him was Octavio, who was trying to get him to confirm he was down for the trip to Brazil. He must have left thirty messages ranging from one word to rambling non sequiturs to just random background scratches and a huff.

  “So what’s the word?”

  Because Jonah hadn’t replied, Octavio had followed with, “I’m going to assume this is a no.”

  Jonah rang his number, not expecting him to pick up.

  “Yo. Why’ve you been avoiding me?”

  “I had some family stuff to take care of. I’m in, actually. Let’s do this.”

  Jonah could hear Octavio’s voice change from grim to glorious as he first sputtered disbelief before whooping his enthusiasm.

  “Alright, then, alright,” said Jonah, trying to calm his friend down. “So when we leaving?”

  “How’s July 1?”

  “ ’Til?”

  “Open ticket.”

  “Open ticket?”

  “Yeah man, we come back when we’re done, not when we feel like we’re supposed to. I can even get us tickets through my friend’s mom, who’s a travel agent. You good to pay me back?”

  “Yeah, I’ll cut you a check next I see you. When can that be?”

  “There’s a launch party for a literary journal this
Friday,” Octavio replied. “A couple friends are in the first issue.”

  Jonah could imagine the kind of time he’d have. Literary parties were infamously the worst gatherings of any kind in New York City. You could guarantee zero dancing, stilted conversation, nasty sexual tension, quipsters, conservative outfits, liberal politics, and much playing at being adult. There would be enough booze to get everyone seriously sloshed, but not enough of a good atmosphere for anyone to willingly want to be there. Token minorities were de rigueur.

  “I don’t know. Could be a drag.”

  “C’mon, man, these parties are for networking. I’m doing you a favor. Plus, you’re the one who wants to be a writer. It’d be good for you to meet real ones.”

  Octavio’s dig was a shot that should not go unchecked, but he didn’t have the energy to take up the fight. Besides, a night out would take his mind off the funeral, the money, the command of little Esther’s voice, the solemn charge to keep.

  “Alright then,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

  5

  In New York everything that matters occurs as part of a “scene.” Octavio had made inroads in the film scene and these networks overlapped significantly with the adjacent literary one. Jonah would pick him up after his shift got out at the Reggio, and they would fortify themselves at a local dive before making an appearance at an apartment in cozy book-lined apartment in Cobble Hill or Fort Greene or a chic loft in Tribeca. One of the bigger events of the season was the launch party for a new lit mag with a radical name and a sleek green cover. Octavio was tight with one of the founding editors whom he had known from his school days. The comrades funding the publication and staffing the key positions on its masthead reflected the city’s superconducting private school to Ivy League pipeline. The word on the street was that the most talented writers would be gravitating to its pages, attracted by the considerable sums on offer for fairly predictable content and by the “hot” interns prominently featured on the magazine’s elegant, minimalist website.