♱

GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN

• • •

A tombstone is heavier than one might think.

Turning right on Broadus Coker Street—the sunglint blindness splays across the windshield—casting a sightless void into which shadowed recollections of his past begin to purge. It comes to him stealthily, no, sneakily, no, cunningly.

Weathered Army-store combat boots charging into the oblique night. Blind hands drag the monument loose off its footing, with a dull grind of stone on stone. Then the heaving. Fingers tucking under into the paste of dew and milled granite. The slab’s wet pressure on the chest. Those first feeling steps forward into the gloom.

Only in this part of Livingston, seldom-visited and Georgia-clay poor, may this long-interred memory be brought to light, a memory elsewhere ever unremembered. He can’t think it away, for undoubtedly he will be nearing Superba Street . . . and the house . . . the one he abandoned it in.

His mind’s eye blurs into myriad questions: Was it a prank? An excuse to indulge in the taboo? Or was it just random evil? Sin as if by chance might’ve beckoned to him, like a long unseen ex-lover calling up unexpectedly and asking for a place to stay; first the kittenish coyness, then the stray’s intimacy. Despite this interrogative ambiguity, these declaratives are clear: He wasn’t dared or goaded. It wasn’t planned. It was as compulsive as compulsory. It came to him on such a ruinous whim, and he’s borne the deadweight of ever-unremembrance over this past quarter century. Why did he have to see this through?

♱

IN LOVING MEMORY

• • •

Summer 1994. He was living in the dank basement of his drummer’s house, a then necrose Craftsman built in the twenties on what would become the further ungentrified Superba Street; a place he ingeniously fled to from his middle-class upbringing in the suburbia of Northridge Estates. The basement in which he stayed stood partially finished, or somewhat less than partially, as did most of the rest of the house. His only source of electricity was from a plug in a light-socket adapter; the shower was made from painted roofing tin; mushrooms grew out of the carpet. But he didn’t care because he lived unsupervised for the first time, which gave way to his sense of right and wrong, or rather, the amorality of youth.

Despite his unreconstructed side of town feeling so hazardous that he kept a shotgun tucked in the rafters above the couch he made his bed, he decided that the ideal graveyard for possible larceny was in the even more dangerous segment, Rock Black Bottom. For Rock Black Bottom residents, he surmised, wouldn’t be so civic-minded as to watch over the yard of the last plots of land one owns, making the stealing of a headstone go likely unnoticed or even disregarded. With a plan hatched, his drummer drove them out in his pickup, he did the deed, and they hauled it, all 120 pounds of it, back home.

Surreal is the only way to describe the scene of a fourteen-year-old girl’s headstone sitting on a living room floor. The fact that this basement living room doubles as a bedroom and kitchen only enhances the stark uncanniness. There—among the band equipment, the couch/makeshift bed, the antique microwave, the mandatory empty liquor bottle collection, the clock stopped at 4:20, and the stacks of Ramen noodles—it lay with a combination of eeriness yet attraction, like a cursed artifact to a skeptic, totemistic yet a mere object. Alva Freeman was her name. She died in 1901. He had no sense at the time of the significance of that last name, of what he had done.

♱

A LIFE MEASURED IN MEMORIES

• • •

Continuing down Broadus Coker, he passes through the intersection of Flannery Street, the reflection of his 7-Series glides down the windowed wall of Sporty’s Barber Shop. It's there the nausea of it all hits. In the unmoored morals of youth, such an event as grave robbery is almost trivial, and though he has since skirted the line that divides sin from sainthood several times under the pressure of getting ahead, he has found himself to be an overall decent middle-aged man. Not quite righteous but definitely not base. Educated. Successful. Accomplished. Married with children with an American-Dream home. It sickens him to think about what he did that night. The middle-aged perspective indeed damns what were mere follies of youth. But, worst of all, there is . . . how he simply abandoned that girl's headstone to that condemned house on Superba . . . in hopes his acts would be forgotten and discarded . . . carted off with the trash.

Stopping his sedan at the five points with the Hop ‘N Shop, he seizes up. Being late, he has chosen this rarely-taken shortcut, all while knowing that from the five points, right and two streets up, lies Superba Street. Go left at the five points . . . down Myrtle . . . take the quick cutoff to the boulevard and his errand at Ledbetter’s Jewelry . . . he won’t even have to see the Superba street sign. But he is drawn to the right of the five points, to Superba. Something wants to at least glance down Superba. The turn signal signals, the car turns, slows, stops at the old address. It still stands.

He blushes red from white guilt as he peers out of his BMW at the elderly black man on the porch swing and at a home that he expected to be a vacant lot. Pansies grow in window boxes, and the palette of the shutters and trim goes well with the siding. This man has resurrected the domicile from doom. As he focuses from the broad tableau back to the man’s face, the man looks at him with only slightly squinted eyes, an expression akin to half-recognizing an old acquaintance, or clandestinely noting the presence of a potential enemy. Hidden inside the dark tint of the Beemer’s window, he cringes into his seat from envisioning the scene of what he is about to do, of what he feels compelled to do. How does one begin to ask about such a thing?

Deep breaths breathed deeply. Deep breaths breathed deeply. The mantra repeats and repeats. Calmer, he finds the resolve to ask after the whereabouts of the tombstone.

The man from the porch swing meets him at the fence gate and with a broad hand on an outstretched arm greets him.

“Reverend Luther Pines, but people call me ‘Pine Box,’ for I’ve laid so many down low,” the preacher calls to him.

When he responds with his name said aloud, it sounds impotent in comparison. After the handshake, his gaze adverts down to his shuffling shoes, noticing the four matching brogues of his and those of the preacher’s steady shoes; then, his gaze returns to the preacher in time for him to say. And there really is no way to say what he must say next. But he’ll say it nonetheless.

“Is there a tombstone in your basement?”

A cycle of expressions courses through the preacher’s face: the church-door smile solidifies into funeral solemnity; then, with a cock and upward tilt of the head that makes the eyes look on askance, the expression morphs to one judicial but piteous. Finally, with eyebrows rising and with a slap of his thigh, the preacher bellows joyfully up into the air.

“I knew you’d one day come! I knew a man wouldn’t live his whole life long having done what you did and not seek penance! Holy is the rod and the staff!”

The preacher runs his thumbs under his suspenders and leans back, his tie bowing around a heaving chest, as if he is about to announce an altar call, right here at thefence line. Will anyone answer it? Instead, he says rather softly as his head levels and his eyebrows lower to a concerned ridge:

“Come with me.”

The gate is opened for him. Must he go to the pastor’s study for a devotional?

♱

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN . . .

• • •

The basement is not the same; he is not the same. The tombstone is the same. Its permanence equal to its heft, immutable among the many seasons. The two stand before it.

“I can’t believe you kept it so long.”

The pastor looks up to the ceiling. “Let’s just say that I prophesied that someone would return. I knew someone would have to want to make this right again.” He turns abruptly. “But, tell me, why did you steal it?”

Shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve never been able to tell.” Shrug.

“Hm-mm. It is a question that I have pondered for some time.”

He nods his head, as a child eager to learn the Sunday school lesson.

“In my line of work, I often think of things in terms of how they affect others,” interlacing his fingers, “for don’t we all wish so badly for neighbors to treat neighbors as themselves?” The hands spread apart as if to embrace.

Another childishly eager nod.

“When you did it, how did you think it would affect others?”

“I didn’t care about others. It was all . . . internal . . . I guess . . . I wanted to rebel . . . Rebel, against myself in a way.”

Nearing him, “But nonetheless, how did it affect others?”

“I mean, it didn’t really affect anyone.”  He raises his hand in a sign of surrender and innocence. “The graveyard was overgrown; the church was shuttered long ago.”

Bowing his head slightly, as if to equalize the difference in height, “Would you say, then, that you thought no one would care?”

Nod.

More softly spoken, “After all these years, did you prove it to yourself . . . that no one cared?”

Nod. Tear.

Hand-on-shoulder, “Now, that’s how you treated your neighbor. Did you treat yourself that way . . . feel that no one cared about you?”

Nod. Tears.

Eye-to-eye, “You proved that as little as you mattered, so did this awful act.”

Nod. Tears. The first gasp of a sob; then, the onrush of a bawl. “I’ve been.” Gasp. “I’ve been looking for an answer for so long.” Gasp. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

A moment for composure is allowed. Then the hand on the shoulder. He clenches. “But . . .”

“But what?”

The clench releases. Stepping away, beginning to pace, “But what you must realize is that this little teenage prank mattered. It had a larger impact in a larger system. It’s not just about you and your own self-forgiveness. It’s about your neighbor’s forgiveness.”

“But . . . but I didn’t harm anyone.”

“No one? Let me ask you this: why did you choose this graveyard, among these neighbors?”

“I . . . I . . . I don’t know. Because it was the roughest part of town. I thought no one would care.” As he says the words while standing in such a part of town, the irony of his flippancy begins to creep in. Sucking up a sniffle, “Listen, I know where you're going with this. It's . . . it's not what you think." The childish nod becomes an indignant shake.

Turning to face him and standing erect, “It’s not about just you or what you’ve personally experienced. It’s about how it affects others too. Others you don’t even know. The church shuttering, the overgrowth of the graves, the plight of the neighborhood—those were the actions of a system. A system you supported with this deed.”

Waving off the implications with his hands, “I wasn’t thinking like that at all. I wasn’t even thinking at all. I’m not a racist.” His face hardens. “I’m not a racist.”

The baritone resonates, elbows cross, “You have to be honest. We’re in the small-town South. You chose the blackest part of town. In doing so, you chose to steal the only marker of this Freeman girl. Free-man: the first free-born daughter of a freed slave from the oldest black church in the county. Not only is our history condemned; it is literally taken piece by piece. You erased the only memory of her. You contributed heftily to—" The preacher catches himself, realizing he is beginning to sermonize.

The head shake ceased, he gives only a glare.

A tone bittersweet with resignation, arms by his side, “Look, whether you believe this personal or systemic, spiritual or moral, a penance or a pardon, there’s nothing you can say, but there’s what you can do, my neighbor.” A breezy sigh with relaxed shoulders, “Let’s pray over it first.” In the dimming sunset streaming through the hopper window, the whispered words echo with quick decay on the basement blocks.

♱

BELOVED FATHER AND HUSBAND

• • •

DISPATCH: 371, we have multiple reports of suspicious activity in Freedom Memorial Church Graveyard. Gray, late model, BMW, parked with driver out of car.

Car 371: 10-4. That’s that restored church on Pennington?

DISPATCH: 10-4

Car 371: En route.

♱

REST IN PEACE

• • •

The trunk of a 7-series could easily fit several tombstones, and it pops from a button on the fob. The figure of his cemetery streetlamp shadow looks surrealistic with a rectangle in place of the normal tubby torso, like a phantasmagoric sketch in dark charcoal. The stone feels parched from its years kept unweathered, and an eerie chill pervades its surface.

Just as he begins to lumber, the silhouette of his labor in the yellow glow of the streetlamp is abruptly scattered by brightly flashing blue. The sound of two car doors opening. Footsteps. How to explain this inexplicable act?

The blue strobing leaves traces of images in the intermittent dimness, traces of the figures before him, traces of the object in his hands. These glimmers of the outward world shuffle to an array of inner ones, a slideshow terrible and ominous: BLUE FLASH. BLUE FLASH.—The degrading mugshot—Blue Flash. Blue Flash.—The licensure board meeting—Blue flash. Blue flash.—The last time locking the practice—Blue flash. Blue flash.— Gale packing—Blue flash. Blue flash.—Grocery store—Blue Flash. Blue Flash.—ALONE.—Blue Flash.— PORCH.—Blue—BOTTLE.—Flash.

Pistols pointed at him. “Put down the headstone and show me your hands! Do it now! Do it now!”

Utterly entranced now by the strobe, he teeters, trembling. He’s never fallen as an adult.

No slips, trips, or trust falls. The strange sensations of a backward collapse. The smack of pavement. The slab’s smoosh. Crushing rib cage on compressing heart. The forced expiration of final breath with the shock of intense weight. The flickers of blue swelling to flickers of white, interposing on the blackness, he sees himself from the outside for the first and final time. The tombstone is still heavier than one might think.

♱

HIS DUTY DONE, HIS HONOR WON.

• • •