Jonathon King - A Visible Darkness

"It wasn't long before my grandfather's organizing talents were recognized, and in the early 1920s he was made a foreman. He knew how to drive a flatbed truck and, starting with his own family, would pick up a dozen or more folks along old Hammondville Road and get them to the fields by sunlight. At the end of the day he would assist with the counting and ledger-keeping so my momma and grandmother would walk back home on the dirt track all the way back to their house and get to making dinner. They made fifteen cents a bushel picking."

She paused to refill my cup. I was still considered a newcomer to South Florida, but under Billy's pushy tutelage, I'd become a fan of the area's short, barely one-hundred-year history. Ms. Greenwood told the stories with a flawless memory forged of repetition, bedtime recreations and dinner table discussions. I could not see McCane sitting here, with a middle-aged black woman, listening with any form of discerning ear.

"One day, when Momma was only nine, she and my grandmother went to a store near the railroad track to shop. They'd gone there for years but this day a new owner had taken over. When they got to the front door the man looked up from his counter and said, 'Ya'll go round back and they'll take care of you.'

"Momma said grandmother just stopped and stared, not uttering a word. The man looked up again. 'They's new management now. Ya'll coloreds got to go round back.'

"Momma said she could feel grandma's hand tighten around her own, but nothing came from her lips and finally it was my momma who turned her eyes to the man and said 'No, sir.' And they both turned and walked, hand in hand, back to their house.

"When they told my grandfather, who was by now a respected foreman, he said he'd take care of it. But the women had something else in their heads. In a month they'd set themselves up a wooden building right along the dirt road that led to the fields and stocked it with flour and coontie and molasses and bags of processed cane sugar. Their store was one of the first black-owned businesses in the area and no one, black or white, ever went around to the back door."

She looked out in silence into the greenness of her late mother's yard, then spoke to whatever vision she was seeing there.

"My momma was not a weak woman, Mr. Freeman. She did not hold much to depending on others. I suppose I should have been strong enough myself to make her come live with me instead of letting her stay in this old house, but she was hardheaded. Too hard- headed for me."

I shifted my chair, using the scraping sound to bring her back.

"Did she ever mention this life insurance deal to you? Explain why or how she came to sell it?"

A wry grin came to the corner of her mouth and she slowly shook her head.

"I'd like to say I should have known, but I didn't have any idea such a thing could be done. About three years ago, I must have been whinin', tellin' Momma about trying to get the money together for my son's freshman year at the university. I was probably grumbling about wages at the hospital, cryin' about the mileage on the car. She took it in, like she always did. When we were kids, she'd tell us to shut up and be thankful for the things we did have. But you know, somehow, a little something extra would show up for a birthday or at Christmastime. That was her way. So then about two years ago, out of nowhere, comes a bank note. A present, she says, for her grandson's tuition, $20,000 to get him through four years. She hands it to my son and then to me she gives a $18,000 cashier's check and says 'Here's your car, baby. You got to pick it out.'

"Now, we always knew Momma hoarded and saved money. She was the one who somehow paid my first year to nursing school. This time she told us it was money from insurance, but she said it was from a policy on my father, and that she'd kept it since he died. She wanted to give it to us. She felt it was an important time in our lives to have it and it was important to her that we did have it."

She stopped and looked me in the eyes. Her own were tight and dry.

"Only half of her explanation was the truth, Mr. Freeman. But when she got her mind made up, you didn't argue with Momma."

"And you didn't find out about her selling her own policy until after her death?" I said.

"We had Mr. Manchester go through her things. He found it."

"But you were already suspicious?"

My question forced her lips into a hard sealed line and I could see the muscle in her jaw flex.

"My mother was not in good health, Mr. Freeman. She had cancer and she knew it was coming. But she was not ready to die. When I walked into this house it did not smell of death, it smelled of violation," she said. "When I found her on her bed I could not feel peace. I could, in my bones, feel anguish. I don't care what the medical examiner says. I will go to my own grave believing my mother was killed."

All I could do was nod.

"Yes, ma'am. I can appreciate that."

She did not offer more coffee and I was relieved not to have to decline. We both pushed back our chairs and she led me around outside, past the old-time Florida room, to the front of the house.

"I hope I have been of some help, Mr. Freeman."

"Yes, ma'am, you have," I said.

We cleared the front corner and I saw them over her shoulder, the three men from the corner. They were in the street at the end of the driveway, hands in their pockets, heads bent together like they were in some loose football huddle.

When she spotted them Ms. Greenwood raised her voice.

"Beans, what you want?"

The middle one, the leader, stepped out.

"What up, Ms. Mary?" he said, his eyes acknowledging her and cutting to me to define his question.

"This is Mr. Freeman. He's a friend of Ms. Philomena. He's helping me."

All three of them took me in, head to toe, as if they could judge the truth of her statement by the cut of my clothes.

"Alright, Ms. Mary. You say so," the leader said and led his troop back toward the corner.

I turned back to her as I unlocked my truck.

"Neighborhood security?" I said, motioning to their backs.

A grin, part amused and part deprecating, pulled at the corners of her mouth.

"Respect," she said.

Again, any response would only show my own ignorance. I climbed in the truck and backed away.

Eddie was leaving the west side dope hole, his business with the Brown Man done.

Eddie knew all the dealers near his neighborhood, had done business with them, and those who proceeded them, and those who proceeded them. When he was a kid he was a huffer, getting high on glue shoplifted from one of those craft stores and then squirted into a plastic sandwich bag. Breathing in the fumes he could make it through the days just floating, not ever hungry, always moving, never in one place, just drifting through the streets, becoming invisible.

He'd picked up the huffing habit by watching. Kids behind the ficus hedges at the bus stop, older dropouts in the alley behind Murcheson's Gas Station. He watched, his face down and eyes probing. When they left he'd inspect their trash, figure out their methods and find out a way to get his own, because Eddie was not stupid. Eddie could always find a way.

When he got older he moved up to smoking weed, drinking whatever booze he could steal from his mother's house or find discarded in the backstreet bins. The day he watched a young white couple being taught by one of the neighborhood dealers to smoke cocaine from a tiny metal pipe, was a turning point Eddie never saw coming.

Crack.

The first time was a wonder to him. The high soaked into his head and body like a huff of glue gone wild. It burned his insides with a tingle and a rush that rolled him back on the milk crate he was sitting on and turned the whole alley into a soft place racing with a warm fire. And when it passed, Eddie wanted more, and more.