Richard Powers - The Time of Our Singing

“Ruth. Listen to me. You know that Da would never have let this go by without an investigation. Not if there had been the smallest thing to go after. Any suggestion at all.”

Ruth stared back. I was failing her, attacking. But she still needed me for something I couldn’t understand. “The man is a white man. He has no concept of such things. He needed it to be an accident. Otherwise, her death is on his conscience.”

And Ruth: she needed the opposite. Mama murdered, and by someone we’d never know. Someone who might not even have known us. It was the only explanation that left her anyplace in the world to live. I lifted up the sheaf of copies, their body of evidence. “What are you planning to do with this?”

They looked at each other, too tired to enlighten me. Ruth shook her head and lowered it. Robert grimaced. “Black person’s never going to get a case like this looked into.”

I had the bizarre sensation they wanted me to get Da — some white person — to press the case. “What on earth do you want from me?” I heard the words leave my mouth and could not take them back.

Ruth pressed her clenched fingers against her lips. “Don’t worry, Joey. We don’t want anything from you.” Robert shifted in the booth. He looked down on the bench between them as if he’d dropped something. I felt a surge of admiration for the man, based on nothing but his willingness to be here. “We just thought you’d want to know how your mother…” Ruth’s voice turned liquid. She took the copies away from me and slid them back into her satchel.

“We have to tell Jonah.”

Some mix of hope and hatred rose in my sister’s eyes. “Why? So he can call me crazy, just like his little brother did?” Her lip trembled, and she bit it in, just to make it stop.

“He has a better head for… He’ll want to know what you think about this.”

“Why?” Ruth said again, her tone now pure self-defense. “I’ve been trying to tell him something like this for years. I can’t say shit to him without him busting my ass. The man despises me.”

Her mouth crumpled like a rear-ended car. Her eyes welled over and one glinting thread started down the walnut of her left cheek. I reached over and took her hand. It didn’t pull away. “He doesn’t despise you, Ruth. He thinks you don’t—”

“Last time I saw him?” She flipped her hand up toward her new hair. “He said I looked like a doo-wop backup singer. Said I sounded like Che Guevara’s diary. He just laughed in my face.”

“He was probably laughing in pleasure. You know Jonah…” I wasn’t halfway through the sentence when it hit me. “Hold on. You mean you’ve seen him recently?” She looked away. “He never told me… You never said anything!” I took my hand away from hers. She scrambled for it back.

“Joey! It was only five minutes. It was a bleeding disaster. I couldn’t say anything to him. He started shouting me down before I even—”

“One of you two might have told me. I thought something had happened to you. I thought you might be in trouble, hurt…”

She hung her head. “I’m sorry.”

I looked at her. The little girl who’d sung “Bist du bei mir” at her mother’s funeral. “Ruth. Ruth.” Another syllable and I was finished.

She didn’t look at me, but rooted around in her satchel for her wallet. Pay and run. Then she stopped and blurted, “Joey, come with us.”

My eyes widened and my right hand pointed downward: Now? I turned to Robert. His face set into that look: If not now, when? The fire — their theory about it, our argument — was just a passing item on a more sweeping agenda. “Come… Where are you going?”

Ruth laughed, a good alto laugh, from the gut. She wiped her eyes dry. “All sorts of places, brother. You name it, we’re headed there.”

A grin like the sun broke across Robert’s face. “It’s all happening. Anything we work hard enough at.”

I kept still. I was just happy, for a second, to have my sister back.

“We need you, Joey. You’re smart, competent, educated. People are dying, in Chicago, down in Mississippi. My God, over in Bed-Stuy. People dying by miles, because they refuse to die by inches anymore.”

“What are you…?”

“We’re working for the day, brother. It’s easy. We’re everywhere.”

“Are you with some kind of organization?”

Ruth and Robert traded glances. They made an instant negotiation, appraising my file and deciding on discretion. Robert may have made the call, but my sister agreed. Why should they trust me, after all? My side was clear. Ruth reached across the table and took my elbow. “Joey, you could do so much. So much for people like us. Why are you…?” She glanced at Robert. He wasn’t going to help her. I blessed the man for refusing, at least, to judge me. “You’re stuck in time, brother. Look at what you’re peddling. Look who’s buying. You don’t even see. How can you play that jewelried shit while your own people can’t even get a job, let alone protection under the law? You’re playing right into the power-hoarding, supremacist…” She checked her volume. “Is this the world you want to live in? Wouldn’t you rather work for what’s coming?”

I felt a million years old. “What’s coming, Ruth?”

“Don’t you feel it?” Ruth waved at the plate-glass window behind me — the world of 1967. I had to keep from turning around to look. “Everything’s shaking loose. It’s all coming down. New sounds, everywhere.”

I heard Jonah singing, in a funky falsetto, “Dancin’ in the Streets.” I raised my head. “We play a lot of new music, you know. Your brother is very progressive.”

Ruth’s laugh was brittle. “It’s over, Joey. The world you’ve given your life to has played out.”

I looked down at my hands. I’d been playing some piece on the tabletop. As soon as I noticed my hands, they stopped. “What do you suggest I do instead?”

Ruth looked at Robert. Again, the warning flash. “There’s more work to do than I can begin to tell you.”

An awfulness came over me. I didn’t even want to look at the evidence. “You two aren’t involved in anything criminal, are you?” I’d lost her already. I had nothing more to lose.

My sister’s smile tightened. She shook her head, but not in denial. Robert took a chance far bigger than mine. “Criminal? Question doesn’t mean anything. You see, the law has been aimed against us for so long. When the law is corrupt, you no longer need to treat it like the law.”

“Who decides this? Who decides when the law—”

“We do. The people. You and me.”

“I’m just a piano player.”

“You’re anything you want to be, man.”

I backed into the corner of the booth. “And who are you, man?”

Robert looked at me, ambushed, reeling. I’d gone for anger; I got pain. I heard my sister say, “Robert’s my husband.”

For a long time, I could produce no answer. At last I said, “Congratulations.” All chance of feeling glad for them was lost. I’d have played at their wedding, all night long, anything they wanted. All I could do now was accept the news. “That’s great. How long?” Ruth didn’t answer. Neither did her husband. The three of us twisted in place, each sentenced to a private hell. “When were you going to tell me?”

“We just told you, Joe.”

“How long have we been sitting here?”

Ruth wouldn’t look at me. Robert met my eyes and murmured, “Actually, we weren’t going to tell you at all.”

My back slammed into the booth. “ Why?What have I done to you?”

Ruth swung her face toward me. Her look said, What have you done for me? But she saw me, and broke. “It isn’t you, Joey. We didn’t want the news…to get back.”