T. Bunn - The Great Divide

Deacon answered for him, “Marcus is here because I asked him to come. My friend said Darren might be accused of something he didn’t do.”

“They haven’t told me a thing. I been sitting here over an hour and I still don’t know nothing.” Oathell was too tired and too angry to try for nice as he asked the white lawyer, “What you so dressed up for?”

Marcus rose to his feet. “Sometimes a suit helps to get things moving. You know who’s in charge here?”

“That man with his gut hanging over his belt. Sergeant Richards.”

Marcus studied the policeman, who in turn was pretending he had not noticed any change in the waiting room, although every other cop in the place had been casting wary glances in Marcus’ direction. Marcus asked, “Is there anything about your brother I ought to know before I talk to the officer?”

Something in the way the man spoke, soft yet strong, distant yet right there with him. Not talking from the mountaintop like a lot of the white managers at IBM. No. This white lawyer was all right here, right now. Just like on the fishing boat. Nothing superior about this man. So Oathell was able to say, “Darren is about the biggest man you’ll ever meet.”

“Stands close on six foot fourteen,” the pastor agreed. “And strong. Played ball until his knee gave out, when was that, his junior year in high school?”

“Naw, it was his senior year.” To Marcus, “Darren’s never gone looking for trouble in his life. He’s a good man. Real good. But he knows how to fight and he don’t take nothing from nobody. That’s a problem ’round these parts.”

“And he stutters,” Deacon said.

“Yeah, but he’s so quiet most people don’t know how bad he talks.”

“All right.” Marcus walked over and said to the man by the desk, “I’d like to speak with my client, please.”

Sergeant Richards was known to be the Piedmont’s ugliest man, and dumb enough to take pride in the fact. Oathell watched the pockmarked face shift around, the dull brown eyes widen as though he were finally spotting this white man. “Your client?”

“Darren Wilbur.”

The smirk poked up one puffy cheek. “The Wilbur boy’s got himself a fancy-pants lawyer, huh.” He dropped his eyes to the papers in his hand. “Well, he’s gonna need one.”

“What are the charges?”

“Armed robbery.”

Oathell gasped and would have launched off the bench, except for Deacon’s reaching over and placing one hand on his leg. Steady.

Even so, the sergeant looked Oathell’s way. And grinned. His teeth were as brown as his eyes. “Yeah, he came screaming and shouting his way into the 7-Eleven over by the highway. Waving this big old pistol around, looks like a cannon in the videotape.”

Marcus nodded, giving the statement calm thought. “You caught the whole thing on tape?”

“Sure did.”

“And Darren’s face is clearly visible?”

“Naw, the boy’s so tall he stepped outta the shadows and just sorta loomed over that poor girl at the counter. Scared her to death, having him wave that cannon-”

“And the video has him screaming and shouting at her, isn’t that what you said?”

“Foulest language I ever heard.” Another smirk in Oathell’s direction. “Judge is gonna love it.”

“I’m sure the judge will,” Marcus replied, still very calm. “Especially once I put Darren on the stand and let the jury hear how bad his stutter is.”

The man shifted around fast enough for his belly to bounce off his belt. “What’s that?”

“Didn’t your arresting officer mention that fact? Or maybe he didn’t even bother to notice. All he wanted was a big black man to collar and close the case.”

“That boy has a stutter?”

“Why don’t we bring him out,” Marcus replied, “and let the man speak for himself.”

Richards weighed twice what Marcus did, him with the beefy red arms sticking out of his short-sleeved shirt, the knuckles on his hands scarred and twitching. But all he said was, “Jimbo, run on back and bring out that Wilbur boy.”

“Sure, Sarge.”

All eyes were on the pair now, and everybody in the room heard Richards say, “I heard about you. You’re that Glenwood fellow.”

“That’s right.”

“Sure.” The smirk again. “Word’s gotten ’round about you. How you done got your tail whipped over Raleigh way. So you figure you can move in here, start playing your big-city games, is that it?”

Marcus said nothing.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Richards gave a wet chuckle. “I give you about a week.”

Darren appeared in the doorway leading back to the pens, wearing a T-shirt so tight his muscles looked carved onto the cotton itself. The cuffs on his hands glinted like pure evil, enough to have Oathell wishing he had a gun. Instead, he swallowed down the rage, rose, and walked over, all calm on the outside.

“O-Oathell, y-you g-g-g-g …” Darren swallowed and tried again, but like always when he was excited, the words just wouldn’t come.

“It’s okay, little brother.” Silly thing to be saying to a man towering up there near the ceiling. But Darren was his little brother and always would be. “Everything’s fine.”

“B-b-but I d-d-d-didn’t d-d-d …” The effort to shape that short little word twisted his head up and to one side.

“I know you didn’t. Just hang on, man. We got us some help this time.”

Marcus said, “Screaming and shouting, isn’t that what you said, Sergeant?”

The sergeant snarled, “Jimbo, take off those cuffs.”

“I assume you’re going to be dropping all charges,” Marcus said.

The policeman’s face was a choleric red. “Don’t you go assuming a thing, city boy. Not even how long we’re gonna let you hang around these parts.”

Marcus raised one hand, motioning Oathell and his brother and the reverend out of there. Oathell didn’t need a second invitation. He grabbed his brother’s arm, like holding on to warm granite, and pulled him forward. “Let’s go, Darren.”

Marcus said to the sergeant, “Nice to know I can count on the local police to do their job.”

“Sure can, city boy.” The sneer was pure wicked. “Any time you need an escort outta town, you give me a holler.”

A northeast wind blew in with the dawn, lacking its customary burden of cold hard rain. Marcus stepped out onto the veranda and breathed in the Atlantic’s salt-laden gift. Although the ocean lay a hundred and fifty miles farther east, the cry of gulls seemed to mingle with the cardinals and jays. A third breath, and he sensed that summer was now gone. The humid sweltering heat might return for a day, causing the earth to shimmer in abject apology for the discomfort it caused. But from now on the day’s heat would come as a visitor, not reign as king.

By nine-thirty the house was a hive of activity. Deacon Wilbur was completing the kitchen trim and cabinets. Darren had arrived with him, and been set to sanding the sweeping banister and oak stairs leading to the second floor. The sanding machine with its high-pitched whine was like a toy in the young man’s massive hands. Another painter, a friend of Deacon’s with the worst overbite Marcus had ever seen, was hauling tarps upstairs to drape and paint the hall and guest bedroom. Deacon had reserved the master suite for himself later that same afternoon. There was a new air to the work, a sense of haste Marcus had not noticed before. One that suggested the job was nearing completion.

By ten Marcus had met with four new clients. Two were from the church. Two had driven over from Princeville, a place of dark hovels and deep despair since the previous year’s floods. Although his conference room and office were essentially ready, the doors were not hung and the furniture remained stacked in the garage. Netty fielded calls and ran the fort from her front room while Marcus held his preliminary interviews in the kitchen. If any of his clients minded discussing legal problems while seated at a breakfast table with Deacon perched on a ladder ten feet down the hall, they kept it to themselves.