“Let me have it.” She slipped on her half-moon reading glasses. “Marcus, you know my chief clerk, Jenny Hail.”
Marcus raised his chin but not his gaze. He licked his lips, but no words came. His throat remained locked around the unspoken-that he had already lost all he had of any worth.
“All right, this looks in order.” Nicols reached for her pen and scratched busily. “Based on your argument and the formal appeal, I am hereby issuing a writ of mandamus against New Horizons.”
Marcus could only manage a weak, “Thank you.”
One of his new clients was a black church in Rocky Mount, his current home. The Church of New Zion had been founded with the first earnings of freed slaves. Their cemetery contained the memories of six generations, the same cemetery that now bordered property owned by New Horizons Incorporated, the world’s largest producer of sports shoes, sports fashion, and what their constant advertising called Teen Gear. New Horizons was also the largest employer in a six-county area. Currently they were building a new corporate headquarters on a hill overlooking the church. Well used to throwing its weight around, New Horizons found it objectionable that its boardroom would look down on acres of rainwashed graves. They had asked the local council to condemn the site and remove the tombs.
“As you requested, I am hereby instructing the county commission to respect the cemetery’s grandfather clause and allow the current use of the land to continue.” She settled the papers back into the folder and handed it over. “Go home, Marcus.”
“But we still haven’t heard if Rikkers and Carol’s mother will accept your terms.”
“I’ll handle those two. Go home.” She offered him a glance of shared sorrow. “Get some rest. Heal. Put this day behind you.”
TWO
The afternoon heat lacked August’s former fierceness as Marcus joined the frantic coastward rush, everyone desperate to eke out one final September beach weekend. The surrounding cars and SUVs were crammed with kids and luggage, toting surfboards and boats. Ahead of him, two young faces appeared in a minivan’s rear window. A boy and a girl waved at him. When Marcus did not respond, they crossed their eyes and mashed noses and tongues against the glass. Marcus watched them, unable to turn from the way fate and the two children mocked his hollow state.
He followed the minivan and the two clowning children to Rocky Mount, and they waved furiously when he took the exit. He drove into his sheltered corner of the world thinking of laughter and simple pleasures, and how easy it all had once seemed.
A pickup stuffed with ladders and tarpaulins and paint cans blocked his drive, so Marcus parked in the street. As he passed the grand magnolia anchoring the center of his lawn, a cardinal flitted by. Five tulip poplars did sentry duty down his property line, while an ancient dogwood and a towering sycamore sheltered the bay window of what would become his office. As Marcus climbed the front steps, he noted with vacant satisfaction that the honeysuckle was finally training itself up the garage trellis. A mockingbird sang to him across his wrap-around veranda, and the day enveloped him with the scent of magnolia blossoms and honeysuckle. On a better man, one who carried less guilt, the magic might even have worked.
He entered the Victorian manor built by his grandfather to a greeting of soft voices, sawdust, and fresh paint. Marcus crossed the domed foyer to the pair of rooms that ran the right-hand length of his house. As soon as they were completed, the front room was to become a library-conference room, the other his office. Now they were draped in canvas and shone with wet paint.
A tall black man with a face furrowed as winter fields halted his painting and looked down from his ladder perch. “How are you doing?”
Marcus surveyed the progress. “Looks like you’re almost done in here.”
The old man harrumphed and returned to daubing the ancient crown molding. From the room across the hall a woman’s voice said, “I’ll be sure to pass on the message soon as Marcus gets in, sir. Thank you for calling.” Chair rollers squeaked as Marcus’ secretary pushed away from her desk. She walked in to stand beside him and demand, “Well?”
“He ain’t saying nothing,” the black man offered from his perch.
“That’s because you didn’t ask him right.” A finger jabbed his ribs. “Marcus Glenwood, I’m not gonna put up with any of your nastiness, you hear me?”
The old man halted his painting once more. Marcus looked down at the floor and replied, “It was pretty much as I expected. They staked me out on the courtroom floor and skinned me alive.”
The painter’s name was Deacon Wilbur, and he was the retired pastor of the New Zion Church. Deacon was his name and not his title, assigned by a sharecropping daddy who could hope no higher for his firstborn, and who had died a happy man after watching his son stride to the pulpit. Like the old-timey pastors of many black churches, Deacon Wilbur supported himself and his family through a second profession. Deacon asked the secretary, “Who is they?”
“Miss Rice’s momma and that vulture she hired.” Netty Turner had appeared on his doorstep the day after Marcus had moved in, asking for any work he could give. Marcus’ secretary attended Deacon’s church when she could. “Miss Rice’s momma has more money than Wall Street. She never did forgive poor Marcus for stealing Miss Rice away. She hired herself a lawyer nasty as she is. A vulture in high heels. Wears this nail polish the color of dried blood.”
“You’ve never even met Suzie Rikkers,” Marcus protested.
“I spoke on the phone with her enough. And her own secretary doesn’t like her any more than I do.”
“Suzie Rikkers called here?” This was news. “When?”
“Never you mind. I dealt with the vulture. That’s all you need to know.”
“Netty, if an attorney calls me, you need to pass on the message.”
She planted fists on bony hips. “Just listen to you mouthing off at me.”
“I’m not-”
“Every time you met with that vulture you’d come back in here scalded. Look at you now, you’re close on parboiled.” Netty Turner had been a secretary in a previous life, before her only child was born severely handicapped and her husband vanished. Now she needed to remain close enough to respond to emergencies. There were a lot of emergencies with her son. Netty Turner considered Marcus’ arrival and his easygoing attitude toward her hours an absolute godsend. “The vulture wanted papers. I sent her papers.”
Deacon Wilbur wiped hands, broad and flat as mortarboards, on a paint-spattered cloth. “Still say it was a mistake, you going in there alone.”
Marcus tried to shrug off the day’s impossible weight. “I can’t see how having anybody else witness the ordeal would have made it easier to bear.”
“Ain’t talking about witnessing.” Deacon stuffed the cloth into the back pocket of his coveralls. “I’m talking about being there for a friend in need.”
Deacon’s kindness threatened to unravel the cords holding his mangled heart in place. Marcus set his briefcase onto a sawhorse and flipped back the latches. He extracted a manila folder and held it up. “The court has ruled on your church’s request.”
The elderly painter’s eyes widened. “It’s all done?”
“Signed, sealed, and delivered. Go on, take it. This is your copy.”
“No sir. Not before I wash the paint off my hands.” He climbed down from the ladder, his eyes never leaving the folder. “Got the hopes of a thousand living souls in that file. Six generations and a whole world of memories, yes, I need clean hands to take hold of that.”
Marcus opened the file and turned so Deacon Wilbur could read over his shoulder. “I asked the court to make what is called a declarative judgment. It basically tells both New Horizons and the county commission to leave your property alone.”
“Not mine, no. I’m just a trustee for a lot of people, both here and in the hereafter.” The old man’s voice had taken on a preacher’s gentle cadence. “You’ve made a lot of folks indebted to you.”