Four months after they buried Mamma Dear, Woodrow buried Daddy beside her. That was really when Woodrow decided he was going to come home to Hartsville, and when he told Joellen what he had decided, she said that was fine with her, she didn’t like living up north anyhow.
There was no work he could get in Hartsville that paid anything like what he was making on the cops, and they didn’t even know what a pension for colored people was in Hartsville, so that meant he had to stay on the cops, put in his time, and then retire to Hartsville.
That had been a long time ago, and at the time he’d thought he could sell the house that Mamma Dear and Daddy had sacrificed so much for, and maybe buy a little farm in Hartsville. Let somebody else work it on shares, not work it himself.
That hadn’t turned out. With the trash moving into the neighborhood, you couldn’t sell the place at hardly any price today. But he and Joellen had been able to save some money, and with his police pension, it was going to be all right when they went home to Hartsville.
Several times in the last couple of years, he had been offered different jobs in the Thirty-ninth District. Once the Captain had asked him if he wanted to help the Corporal, be what they called a “trainee” (which sounded like some kid, but wasn’t) with the administration, but he told him no thank you, I’d just as soon just work my beat than be inside all day. Another time, another two times, they’d asked him did he want to do something called “Community Relations.”
“We want people to start thinking about the police as being their friends, Woodrow,” a lieutenant had told him, a colored lieutenant. “And with your position in the community, your being a deacon at Third Abyssinian Baptist Church, for example, we think you’re just the man to help us.”
He told the Lieutenant, “Thank you, sir, for thinking about me, but I’m not interested in anything like that, I don’t think I’d be any good at it.”
What Woodrow thought he was good at was what he did, what he wanted to do until he got his time in and could go home to Hartsville, South Carolina. He worked his beat. He protected old people from getting hit in the head and having their grocery money stolen by some punk. He looked for new faces standing around on corners and talked to them, and told them he didn’t like funny cigarettes or worse sold on his beat and that he had a good memory for faces.
The punks on the street corner could call him Old Oreo, or Uncle Tom, or whatever they liked, and it didn’t bother him much, because he knew he was straight with the Good Lord and that was all that mattered. The Bible said all there was to say about bearing false witness against your neighbor. And also because he knew what else the punks who called him names told the new punks: “Don’t cross that mean old nigger, he’ll catch you alone when there’s nobody around and slap you up aside of the head with his club or his gun and knock you into the middle of next week.”
He liked to walk his beat. You could see much more of what was going on just ambling down the street than you could from inside an RPC. A lot of police officers hated to get out of their cars, but Woodrow was just the opposite. He liked to walk, say hello to people, be seen, see things he wouldn’t have been able to see driving a car.
Officer Bailey was not surprised to get the call telling him to meet the Sergeant, but when he got there, he was surprised to see Lieutenant Foster H. Lewis, Sr., standing by the car, talking to the Sergeant.
He and Lewis went back together a long time. He was a good man, in Bailey’s opinion. God-fearing, honest, hardworking. But Bailey was a little worried when he saw him. Lewis was assigned to the Ninth District.
What’s he doing here?
Maybe he’s been sent to talk me into taking one of those special jobs in Community Relations the Lieutenant had talked to me about and I turned down.
When the Sergeant saw Bailey coming, he shook Lieutenant Lewis’s hand, got back in his car, and drove off. Lieutenant Lewis stood in the middle of the street and waited for Bailey to drive up.
“How are you, Woodrow?” Lieutenant Lewis said, offering his hand.
“Pretty good, Lieutenant. How’s yourself?”
“We were riding around-” Lieutenant Lewis said, interrupting himself to point at the new car parked at the curb. Woodrow saw that it was an unmarked car, the kind inspectors and the like got, and that a black man was behind the wheel.
“-and we had some time, and I thought maybe we could have a cup of coffee or something.”
“I can always find time to take a cup of coffee with you,” Woodrow said. “Right over there’s as good a place as any. At least it’s clean.”
“The Sergeant said it would be all right if you put yourself out of service for half an hour.”
“I’ll park this,” Woodrow said.
When he came back from parking the car, he recognized the man driving the car.
“This your boy, isn’t it, Foster? He wasn’t nearly so big the last time I saw him.”
“How do you do, sir?” Tiny said politely.
“Well, I’ll be. I recognized him from his picture in the paper. When they arrested those dirty cops.”
They went in the small neighborhood restaurant. An obese woman brought coffee to the table for all of them.
“Miss Kathy, this is Lieutenant Foster, and his boy,” Woodrow said. “We go back a long way.”
“Way back,” Lieutenant Lewis agreed. “When I graduated from the Academy Officer Bailey sort of took me under his wing.”
“Is that so?” the woman said, and walked away.
“When Foster here finished the Academy, they sent him right to Special Operations, put him in plain clothes, and gave him a car,” Lieutenant Lewis said. “Things have changed, eh, Woodrow?”
“You like what you’re doing, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I was thinking the other day that if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t,” Bailey said.
Lieutenant Lewis laughed.
“You don’t mean that, Woodrow,” he said.
“Yes, I do mean it. Don’t take this the wrong way, boy, but I’m glad I’m not starting out. I don’t think I could take another twenty-some years walking this beat.”
“I was telling Foster that walking a beat is what the police are all about,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
“Well, then, the country’s in trouble,” Bailey said. “Because we’re losing, Foster, and you know it. Things get a little worse every day, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that anybody can do about it.”
“What I was trying to get across to Foster was that there’s no substitute for the experience an officer like yourself gets,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
“Well, maybe you’re right, but the only thing my experience does is make me tired. Time was, I used to think I could clean up a place. Now I know better. All I’m doing is slowing down how fast it’s getting worse. And I only get to slow it down a little on good days.”
Lieutenant Lewis laughed politely.
“I was thinking, Woodrow,” he said, “that since Foster hasn’t had any experience on the streets, that maybe you’d be good enough to let him ride around with you once in a while. You know, show him the tricks of the trade.”
“Good Lord,” Officer Bailey laughed, “why would he want to do that?”
Lieutenant Lewis glanced at his son. He saw that it was only with a great effort that Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., was able to keep his face straight, not let it show what he was thinking.
“My father is right, Mr. Bailey,” Tiny said. “I could probably learn a lot from you.”
That response surprised and then delighted Lieutenant Lewis, but the delight was short-lived:
“The only thing you could learn by riding around with me,” Officer Bailey said, “is that Satan’s having his way, and if you have half the brains you were born with, you already know that.”