The Greyhound arrived in Atlanta, midafternoon, swinging into the terminal on Forsythe Street to let off passengers. A hiss of air brakes, a mechanical unfolding of accordion doors—it marked the end of the journey for Earl Lilly. Three days in the seat from LA, his dog, Melon, curled up at his feet.
He’d come on a mission, the way he thought of it. A copy of his granddaughter’s last letter stuffed into his breast pocket. What had happened to her? And why the sudden cry for help? He had crossed the country to find out.
Earl waited until all the other passengers had disembarked, then called to his dog. “Up!” was all he had to say. And Melon—a cocker-terrier mix—came wearily to his feet and nosed his way out from between the seats.
The bus driver was waiting impatiently, one hand on the lever, wanting to close the doors against the August swelter. He eyed Earl in the rearview mirror.
Earl took his good-natured time. He strung his camera around his neck and centered it just so, adjusted his dark glasses on his nose for comfort, gathered his carry-on bag, smoothed the front of his poplin jacket, and moved up the aisle toward the exit. He was making something of a show of it. And why not? He was seventy years old and a black man back in the South.
Melon followed, brushing at Earl’s pants cuff.
As they reached the exit, Earl turned to the driver, keeping his gaze off and distantly focused. He pushed his dark glasses higher on his nose, giving the man his best Ray Charles sway-and-grin. “Thank you so much for the ride,” he said.
The driver studied him with a puzzled look on his face. “You don’t mind my asking… if you’re blind, how do you use the camera to take pictures?”
“I let the dog take ’em,” Earl said in a polite tone. Then he turned, leaving the driver to ponder that image, and stepped down off the bus. “Jump!” he said. And Melon made his leap of faith to the ground.
See, it was the dog that was blind, not Earl.
Earl led the way through the wash of hot diesel exhaust, across the bus paddock, to the street, where a row of taxicabs sat parked at the curb. The first two cars in the queue were manned by Middle Eastern drivers. They stood outside the vehicles, chatting near the sign that read TAXIS ONLY. They seemed wholly indifferent to his approach, indifferent to the possibility of a fare. At a third taxi, a black woman had already prepared the passenger door for arrival.
Now she was calling to Earl’s dog, “Here, boy! Bring your daddy right on in. Let Loretta give you fine gentlemen a ride.”
Earl crossed past the two Middle Easterners, who found need to voice objection now. Loretta flipped them off and waved Earl and his dog on over.
The idea that Earl was blind and that Melon was his service dog was a ruse they played routinely. It got them onto public transportation together and into the bars along Vermont Street back in LA. And so far, it had won them a few courtesies here in the South. Few seemed to question it. The dark glasses also served to shade Earl’s aging eyes from the light. They were both getting old, he and Melon. They depended on each other for their respective advantages.
Earl folded himself into the backseat, saying, “Up,” for Melon to join him. The dog found his place on the seat, and they both settled in for the ride.
“You know where Cabbagetown is?” he said as his lady driver slid in behind the wheel.
“Sho’ do,” Loretta said, cranking the engine. “I know where e’thing is. North to Buckhead, east to Conyers. You ain’t really blind, is you?”
“How could you tell?”
She was looking at Earl in the mirror. “I seen blind folks; they’s always hesitant. You seem to know where you goin’. Dog’s somethin’ else, though. Playing along like a regular little con man.”
“He’s the one that’s blind,” Earl said.
“You say! I saw the way he come jumpin’ off the bus. Must trust his master somethin’ fierce.”
“We’ve been together for a while,” Earl said.
They had come off Forsythe Street onto Memorial Drive heading east. It had been forty years since Earl had last been in Atlanta, the place of his birth. The city didn’t seem much different really from what he remembered. Maybe a few more glass-and-chrome buildings was all. It still had the same shady streets, the same sleepy feel to it. LA, by comparison, never seemed to stop.
“What’s your name, big man?” Loretta asked, nosing the cab through traffic.
“Earl… Earl Lilly… but most people call me Little Earl.”
“Cause you so tiny and all,” Loretta said, metering out the sarcasm.
“Yeah, ’cause of that,” Earl said.
“So, what brings you two good-looking dudes to Hotlanta? Come to howl at the moon?”
“I think we’re both a little too old to be howling at anything, except in pain. Actually, I’m here to find someone,” Earl said. He fished a photograph from inside his jacket and passed it across the seat to her. “You ever seen this young lady?”
Loretta looked briefly at the photo, keeping an eye on the traffic ahead. “She a beautiful young woman. One of yours?”
“She’s my granddaughter,” Earl said. “I’m sure you get around; you ever run across her, by chance?”
“She look a little familiar. But then, I see a lot these young girls on the streets. They’s all just faces after a time. Know what I mean?”
“I guess I do,” Earl said.
“Still, I should remember this one. Pretty an’ all.” Loretta took a last look at the photo and passed it back. “What she do?”
Earl had little to go on, just the name of a gentlemen’s club where his granddaughter worked and a return address on her letters, presumably where she lived. “She tells me she’s going to school during the day. Wanting to become a physical therapist. And dancin’ nights to pay her way. A place called Bo Peep’s Corral. You ever hear of it?”
“Peep’s? Yeah, I know somethin’ about the place,” Loretta said. Her response was heavy with disdain. “Might not look it now, but I used to dance there myself. Was a good-paying job, but I got fed up with the owner. Always trying to get me to do things I didn’t want to do. If you know what I mean.”
“Still the same owner?”
“Ray Tarvis,” Loretta said, a nod to Earl in the mirror. “Redneck asshole from the word go. She dancin’ there, huh?”
“That’s what she tells me.”
“Your grandbaby got a name?”
“India,” Earl said.
“That her real name?”
“What she tells me.”
“You don’t know?”
“Actually, I didn’t even know I had a granddaughter until a few months back. I’ve never met her mother—my daughter. I went off to prison a month before she was born. After I got out, my wife and I just never reconnected. Somehow, little India ran my address down and started to write to me. Says her mother is probably dead or eaten up by the streets.”
“This town can do that,” Loretta said, grim eyes looking back at him in the mirror. “Either you claim it or it claims you.”
Earl considered the woman driver in the seat ahead of him. It appeared the town had claimed her. She may have, in fact, been pretty once. But she looked nothing short of used up these days. She was possibly only thirty-eight, thirty-nine, but could pass for fifty. She was painfully thin. Deep lines were etched in her forehead. Her eyes were darkly cratered.
“So, you were sayin’?” Loretta said.
“Well, I was getting letters from her almost every day. Exchanging pictures and the like. Then about four weeks ago they just stopped coming. Then I got one last letter asking for my help.”
“Help in what?”
“That’s just it. She didn’t say.”
“An’ you jumped on a bus and rode all the way out—what? three, four days?—just to see what she want? You gotta be grandpappy of the year, sugar. Have to hand it to you.”
“Well, I haven’t had anyone in my life for a good long time. ’Cept Melon.”
Melon lifted his head at the sound of his name. Earl gave the dog a stroke for reassurance.
“I was enjoying her letters,” Earl continued. “Made me feel connected a little. See, my life hasn’t been what you would call exemplary. You get to a certain age, you start adding up your markers. I added mine and found I didn’t have all that many. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left. Me or my dog.”
“I guess I see what you sayin’.”
“I’m guessing she needs money. I’ve got a little tucked away from my photography,” he said, lifting the camera for her to see in the mirror. “I figure maybe she wants help with her tuition and all.”
“You take pictures?”
“Photos of life on the streets. Things that just happen. Some of my work hangs in a gallery in Beverly Hills. It’s all on consignment, but now and then one of them brings a price.”
“Well, I hope financial support is all your grandbaby is asking for. ’Cause that joint, Bo Peep’s, is no place for a fine little African princess like your granddaughter. You find her, you tell her to get her ass over to Starbucks or someplace. Or”—Loretta caught his eye in the mirror to make sure he was paying attention—“she end up like me. This here’s Cabbagetown, you got an address?”
They had rolled into an aging area of the city known for the cotton mill that once turned out bags for the agricultural industry; Loretta told him all about it as she drove. There were remnants of shotgun houses along the streets—little box huts that looked like they might have housed dwarfs or something. They were intermingled with modern apartment buildings. The mill had been converted to lofts. “We becoming yuppies,” Loretta said. “That number again?”
“Six-six-two,” Earl said, consulting the envelope from his granddaughter’s last letter.
“Here you go,” Loretta said pulling the taxi to the curb.
Earl ran his eyes along the series of stores on the street; 662 was a glass-fronted building sitting right ahead of them. “That’s a postal service.”
“Yeah, it is,” Loretta said.
They sat with the engine idling. Earl double-checked the address on the envelope and compared it to the numbers along the street. He’d come all this way to find a PO box.
“You want to try the club where she works?”
“She says she works nights. I’ll have to wait until this evening,” Earl said. “You know of a hotel? Something cheap for the night?”
“I think we can find you something,” Loretta said.
Loretta routed them back a dozen blocks to the Savoy Hotel. It was a dingy old three-story, stuck between a liquor store and a dry cleaner’s. Earl paid her across the seat back, then pulled Melon to the opposite side so he could slide out first. When he was on the sidewalk with his carry-on, he called, “Out!” and Melon obeyed, leaping blindly to the sound of Earl’s voice.
“Can you wait till I see if they got a room?” Earl said to her, her window rolled down to see him off.
“Just tell ’em Loretta sent you. They’ll have somethin’, sugar. Say I pick you up around eight tonight. We go check out Bo Peep’s together.”
“You sure?” Earl asked.
“Yeah, you got Loretta’s curiosity up. Have to see how this mystery turns out.”
Earl nodded, and Loretta pulled away, leaving him and his dog alone on the sidewalk.
Earl took a moment to survey his surroundings. They were on the dark side of town, as he thought of it, not far from where he had once lived. It was mostly cut-rate, by-the-week rooming, filled with the city’s black aging and infirm. There were a few independent shops, their storefronts covered in gang graffiti, their windows secured behind iron bars. A pair of homeless men sat on the sidewalk leaning against the wall of the Savoy, their backs against the bricks. All this beneath the gleaming glass skyline that was today’s modern Atlanta.
“I told you it’d be different. And not different. Didn’t I say so?” Earl asked his dog.
Melon nosed against his pants cuff with a whimper, and the two made their way inside.
At the desk, Earl was greeted, more or less, by a kid with spiked hair. He told the kid Loretta had sent him.
The kid didn’t seem all that impressed and didn’t ask about the dog neither. But he handed him a card to fill out—his name, address, and phone number. “One night, thirty dollars.”
Earl paid in cash.
“Number four, upstairs. Second door on the right.” The kid slid a key onto the counter. He hadn’t looked at Earl once during the entire exchange.
Earl took the key and made his way to the stairs, bag in hand. Melon followed, keeping Earl’s pants cuff against his face. “Step-step…” Earl said.
They reached their room. Earl let them inside.
The space smelled of mildew and urine. The bedcovers were stained a permanent yellow. “Jump,” Earl said. And, with unquestioning trust, Melon leaped onto the bed he couldn’t see.
“My man,” Earl said, feeding his dog a treat from his coat pocket.
Earl removed his dark glasses and laid them on the dresser. The last letter from his granddaughter had been unsettling. It had been more than just a call for financial assistance, as Earl had implied to his lady cabdriver. It had been a desperate cry for help. There was something troubling going on in her life, something he couldn’t ignore.
Her letters had started coming earlier that year. First one was a polite introduction; he wrote back, and they’d grown into a pen-pal friendship as they learned of each other’s lives.
India had been consistently optimistic in her letters, looking forward to a degree from a real college. A better life. Maybe outside Atlanta, she’d hinted. Leaving the idea hanging at the end of an ellipsis, waiting for his response.
Yeah, maybe he could help her find a job, he’d written. LA being “exciting” and all for a young woman.
The last letter had been nothing like the previous correspondence. It was one word. Help! Nothing more. It was in an awkward blocky print, almost as if a child or someone of limited education had written it.
Earl took his camera from around his neck and crossed with it to the window. Beyond the tattered curtains, the buildings cast their late-afternoon shadows across Mitchell Street. He focused, framing the shot to capture the disparity between the richest-of-rich and the poorest-of-poor. Maybe he’d do a series of photos on the theme. He clicked off four shots in rapid succession.
He’d been told on occasion that his work looked like crime scene photos. The style had come to be known as urban evidentiary, a term the good-looking Beverly Hills gallery owner had coined to give Earl’s work a brand. Earl didn’t know what it meant exactly. But he had to admit, most of his work had a haunting, disturbing quality. Maybe something of his past, his own life, was wrapped up in it.
Earl let the curtains fall shut. He was tired and had a dark sense of foreboding about his granddaughter. Melon was already lying quiet on the bed, maybe absorbing his dark mood from his master.
Earl crossed back to the bed and set his camera on the nightstand. He stretched out on top of the covers next to Melon and closed his eyes.
It was a little after four. He would nap until dark, then set out to find the girl.
Just as she’d promised, Loretta was waiting at the curb when Earl and his dog came out of the hotel. It was a little after eight.
She drove them north into midtown, telling Earl a little about the place they were headed. “Bo Peep’s Corral, mostly just topless lap dancin’ and all. But they’s a VIP room where you can get just about anything you want, you got enough money. You best watch yourself, though. This place,” she warned, “no place for a black man. This is still the South, sugar. And Peep’s is filled with rednecks.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Earl said. “I just want to see if she’s there and know she’s all right.”
“Just the same,” Loretta said.
They arrived at the gentlemen’s club, which was in the trendier part of the city. A beefy young bouncer in a tuxedo that was tight across his chest stood, arms folded, at the entrance.
“Maybe I better wait,” Loretta said.
“I’m not planning on any personal services. I won’t be long.”
“You want to leave your little buddy with me?”
“No,” Earl said. “I almost lost him in a fire once. Now he goes where I go.”
Earl slipped his dark glasses on and adjusted the camera around his neck. He withdrew a retractable white cane from his belt for good measure and extended it, then stepped out. “Jump!” he called. And Melon followed.
At the entrance, the bouncer stopped him with a hand on his chest. He lifted Earl’s camera and looked at it; studied the dog at Earl’s side a minute. “Okay,” the bouncer said, and let them pass.
The place was dark and smoke filled. Heavy-metal music blared from loudspeakers. A tall brunette, undressed down to her G-string and high heels, was on the runway, grinding her pelvis provocatively against a brass pole mounted center stage. Young women paraded past in scanty attire. Waitresses—Bo Peeps, one and all—moved about the room in exaggeratedly short blue-and-white-gingham skirts and belly-tied blouses. Young white boys lined the runway, mesmerized by the woman above them on the stage. Others sat brooding at tables in the dark, beyond the lights.
Earl was the only black man in the place, he noticed. He tapped his way with the cane to the back. Melon followed at his cuff until Earl found a seat, then he curled up beneath his chair.
“What can I get you?” a waitress said, appearing almost magically and before Earl’s butt had even adjusted to the hard chair. She was bent toward him, her tail jacked high by her spiked heels, showing lots of cleavage. A routine.
“Glass of water,” he said, staying with his own routine, eyes off and distantly focused.
“There’s a two-drink minimum. I’ll have to get you two and charge them like they’re beers,” she said.
Earl nodded.
The waitress went off to get his order.
Earl sat, eyes skyward, pretending to use his ears to draw life from the sound-filled room. From time to time he would sneak glances at the faces of the young dancers who passed. There were two black girls among the exotic mix of women. One was just mounting the stage as the music shifted to a sultry beat, replacing the brunette who gathered up the tossed dollar bills on her hands and knees before slinking off, liquid-hipped, toward the back. The other black girl was just starting a lap dance for a table full of young professionals in suits and ties. The group cheered her on as she lavished attention on one of their comrades. Neither of these two women was his granddaughter, and neither was half as pretty.
Earl considered the possibility that there were other young women offstage, in the dressing rooms or someplace. And from where he was sitting, he could see through parted curtains into the VIP room. It was currently unoccupied. It occurred to him that maybe it was India’s night off. But it was a Friday and more likely that all of the staff would be on duty. He waited. The waitress brought him his two glasses of water and Earl gave her a twenty without looking up.
Earl sipped his water.
“You want a dance?” a young blond woman asked, appearing over his shoulder. She was dressed in a sheer camisole and white lace panties. Earl waved her off without looking directly at her.
He sipped some more water and watched the room for signs of India.
Only minutes had passed when Earl noticed a man at the corner of the bar looking at him with interest. He was barrel-chested, balding, midsixties maybe, with a mass of dark chest hair showing through the open front of his Hawaiian shirt. Earl had the impression the man had been observing him for some time.
He pretended not to see. He sipped his water, eyes turned skyward.
But now the man was sliding off his stool and coming Earl’s way. This was Ray Tarvis, the owner. Earl was sure of it.
The man pulled a chair close to his.
Tarvis said nothing at first. Then he nudged Earl to get his attention. “Hey!” he said.
“I’m the owner of this place,” Tarvis said. “I noticed you’re not interested in my girls dancing for you. You’re not here to drink. I’m wondering to myself just what the hell a blind man gets from spending twenty bucks for water.”
“I like the music!” Earl said, swaying his head in time to the beat.
“Yeah, well, you can get music a number of places, pop. But I don’t allow cameras in my club.”
“Don’t intend to take no pictures,” Earl said. “How could I?”
“Then what are you doing with it?”
“Was a present from my sister. A little joke among us. I like the way it feels.”
“Uh-huh. Well, we don’t allow dogs neither. I think you best go.”
“You mean you don’t allow Negroes.”
“If you weren’t fucking blind you’d see I keep a number of young black girls in my employ. I’m trying to be nice.”
“Nice would be allowing me to stay,” Earl said, not backing down.
“All right!” Tarvis said; his patience had run out. He rose to his feet, dragging Earl up by the elbow. “You can take your water with you. Just get out!”
Melon suddenly came out from under Earl’s chair, baring his teeth and issuing a deep, sustained growl at the voice that had become threatening.
“It’s okay, boy,” Earl said. “We’ve worn out our welcome, as usual.”
Earl extended his cane and moved off toward the exit, tapping his way between the rows of tables and chairs. Melon fell into formation at his cuff and together they left the club.
Tarvis followed them all the way through the door. He stopped just outside the entrance, next to the bouncer, and watched until Earl and his dog were inside the taxi and its door was closed. Then he smacked his bouncer upside the head and turned and went back in.
Loretta was slumped far down in her seat behind the wheel. “He gone?” she asked.
“He went inside,” Earl said.
Loretta straightened. “Man told me if he ever saw me near his club again he’d kill me, no questions asked, and I believe him.”
“He reminds me why I didn’t come back to this town,” Earl said.
“Why I should be gettin’ out myself. No luck finding little India, huh?”
“I didn’t see her.”
Loretta turned worried eyes on him in the mirror. “Friday night, there’s only one other place she could be.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Atlanta boys’ club,” she said.
“Boys’ club?” Earl repeated.
Loretta threw a quick glance at the bouncer near the entrance, then turned to look at Earl directly across the seat. “I didn’t want to tell you this till I was sure… but I been worried she might not be here.”
“Why do you say that? And why do you—”
“Care?” Loretta said, finishing his thought for him.
Earl studied Loretta’s eyes, the woman inside them. She was harboring pain, he could see it now. “It was you,” he said. “You were the one who sent the last letter, not my granddaughter. But how would you know…”
Loretta lowered her gaze.
“Don’t matter who I am!” she snapped, her eyes coming back to challenge his.
Earl examined the woman he’d only just met but now believed to be his daughter. He saw her in a somewhat different light than he had before. More determined than pathetic. More feral than beaten. “Where’s India?” he said.
“They’s a house out in Walton County, a cabin twenty miles from here, tucked way back in the trees. I was hoping we’d find India at Bo Peep’s, and everythin’d be all right. But now my worst fear is she’s out there with them.”
“Them who?”
“The boys. They got this little club, see. An appreciation-of-little-black-girls club. Five of them, including Ray Tarvis. But they ain’t throwing no charity benefit out there, huh-uh! They’re mean and cruel and like to take their aggressions out on sweet young black females.” She avoided looking at him.
“How do you know all this?”
Loretta brought her eyes to his now. There were tears streaming down her cheeks. “Kept me out there for nearly a year once.”
Earl felt his heart cave in. The anguish in her eyes was born of deeply guarded pain. Melon stirred on the seat next to him.
“Why didn’t you just go to the police?”
Loretta’s eyes were pleading now. “Daddy, they is the po-leece!”
Earl stared at the daughter he’d never known. He recalled that his estranged wife’s grandmother was named Loretta. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, off the pained, crippled expression on her face. “Can you take me to this boys’ club?” he said.
“I was so hopin’ you’d say that. I had no one else to call; I got no one. And I wouldn’t get two steps inside ’fore Tarvis would put a bullet in me and drop me in the bottoms someplace.”
“I understand,” Earl said. “The world can be a hard place. Just take me to her.”
Loretta wiped at her tears and turned back to the wheel. In minutes, they were on the freeway headed east.
There was nothing left to say between them. Earl sat quiet in the back, Melon dozing next to him. Loretta kept her eyes on the road.
By the time they reached the outskirts of civilization, the moon had risen full above them. Loretta exited the interstate and followed back roads into the piney hillscape. Soon, she pulled off onto the gravel shoulder and brought her taxi to a stop.
“I don’t see anything,” Earl said.
“It’s through those trees. I’d like to go, but they see me, they’ll deal with both of us the same way, no questions.”
“Get the car off the road, out of sight,” Earl said.
Loretta produced a handgun. “You want to take this along.”
“No, I’ll handle it my way.”
“There’ll be a guard out front.”
“Don’t worry,” he said.
Earl opened the door and stepped out with his cane and dark glasses in hand, his camera still strung around his neck. “Jump!” he called to Melon. And together, they set off through the trees—blind dog and seeing-eye master—to face whatever fate held for them.
“You stay close now,” Earl said to Melon, putting his dark glasses on.
Melon gave him a whimper in return.
In minutes they arrived at a cabin set deep in the woods. There was a single light over the porch. A muscled young white boy in blue jeans and a tank top stood guard outside the door.
Earl came out of the trees, tapping with his cane, Melon at his cuff.
“The hell you doing, old man? You lost?”
“Come looking for Masta Tarvis,” Earl said, laying it on thick.
“Yeah, well, you got the wrong place. This here’s private property, so just turn your black ass around and head on back the way you came.”
Earl never stopped walking. He continued tapping his way forward, ignoring the threatening glare, until he was face-to-face with the man.
The young guy was a good head shorter than him, Earl now realized, and probably half his weight. But Earl was also a good fifty years older. He couldn’t let this boy get the first strike.
“Nigger, you deaf as well as blind—”
In one swift move, Earl came up with a right and drove a huge fist into the young man’s face. It caught him square on the nose and dropped him like a loose sack of grain onto the porch decking. The force of the blow also drove pain up Earl’s arm and into his shoulder, and for a second he thought he might cry out.
He rubbed at his shoulder until the pain subsided. “Stay,” he said to Melon. Then he dragged the boy off the porch, letting his head bang on its way down the steps. He found a section of the telephone line leading up the side of the house and used a switchblade he found in the kid’s boot to cut a long section of it free. He wired the kid’s feet and hands and cut a slice of his shirt away and used it to gag him. Then he dragged the still-limp body into the trees and dumped it there. All the while, Melon remained on the porch.
Earl returned to him and let them both quietly inside.
The cabin was dark but for a wedge of light that spilled from a room at the end of a long hallway. He could hear men’s voices, bawdy laughter and crude talk, over the wash of southern rock. He crossed down the hallway, the switchblade closed but cupped in his right hand. Melon followed.
Through the open doorway, Earl saw what he had feared the most. His granddaughter was on the bed naked and spread, tied to the bedposts. Four men were ganged around and over her. All were in their late fifties to early sixties; flabby white bodies, hairy backs and legs. They spouted crude epithets as they worked, prodding and jabbing with implements to coax some life into their crippled prey.
This was the Atlanta boys’ club, minus one—Ray Tarvis—and they were preparing for another round.
Earl stepped into the room and tapped his cane hard on the floor twice. It brought four faces swiveling toward him.
“Jesus Christ!”
“What the fuck?”
“Who the hell are you?”
The protests came in unison.
Earl didn’t respond. He raised his camera and clicked off a series of auto-shots in quick succession, capturing the men, their naked bodies, the implements in their hands, and the girl tied spread-eagle on the bed.
“Now, wait a minute,” one of them said, stepping away from the bed, a bottle of Southern Comfort in his grip. The other men came to join him, the gang of them standing there, genitals dangling.
Earl snapped another shot.
There was a stunned moment in which no one moved. Earl was broader and at least a foot taller than any man in the room. But there were four of them. He no longer felt the need to keep his eyes distant. He slipped his glasses off and leveled a steely gaze their way.
Just then, Melon began to bark. Another man had entered the room behind Earl. “The fuck you doing here?”
It was Ray Tarvis, come to join his club mates for the festivities.
Earl put his glasses back on and stepped to one side, his shoulders in line with his flanking opponents’.
“Who the hell is this asshole? What’s he doing with the camera?” the man with the bottle wanted to know.
“He’s fucking blind!” Tarvis said. “He ain’t seen a thing!”
“He sees enough to take pictures!”
Tarvis studied Earl more closely now, trying to peer beyond the lenses of his dark glasses.
Earl tipped the glasses forward on his nose and looked across them, let the man see the truth of the matter for himself.
“You’re going out in a fucking box!”
Tarvis started forward, then—
Chick!
—the sound of the switchblade clicking open stopped him in his tracks. The other men had closed a step. They also halted.
“I see you all understand the language of the streets,” Earl said. “I took it off your boy.”
Earl pointed the knife alternately at Tarvis and at the gang of men.
Tarvis grabbed a heavy ashtray from a nearby dresser and hurled it in Earl’s direction. It whizzed past Earl’s head, missing by inches. Tarvis followed with a charge. “Give me the goddamned camera!” Tarvis cried, rushing Earl, head down like a bull.
Earl let the cane drop and caught the man about the neck with one big arm. The momentum of his charge rocked Earl back a step, but he used his size to quell the force. He wrenched Tarvis’s head upward so he could see the bed, the girl, the savage damage that the men had inflicted. He still had the knife pointed toward the men.
“Take a good fucking look!” Earl said.
There was nothing but hate in the man’s eyes. “Fuck you!” Tarvis said. “And fuck the little whore!”
Earl brought the blade around in a swift arc and buried it deep in Tarvis’s stomach, just below the rib cage.
There was an expression of startled disbelief on Tarvis’s face. Earl let it linger there a moment. Then he shoved the knife up hard beneath the ribs and held on until the light in Tarvis’s eyes flickered and died.
Earl let him drop to the floor. Melon let out a chuff.
The others had remained fixed in place, unsure of Earl’s prowess, perhaps, or just insecure in their naked vulnerability. But now they started forward as a group.
Loretta suddenly burst into the room. She had her gun out. Her eyes were wild with fear.
It halted their advance.
“Cut the girl loose!” Earl said to them.
A couple of the men moved to carry out his orders; the other two glared at him as if trying to say We will remember you and there will come a time.
Loretta handed the gun to Earl and rushed to her daughter’s aid. The girl-child lolled, made dopey by the weight of Rohypnol or some other rape drug. But her eyes were aware and shifting between Earl and her mother.
Loretta dragged her to her feet, gathered her clothing, and dressed her as best she could.
When they were at the door and ready, Earl popped the small memory card from his camera and held it for the men to see. “You try to fuck with me or my family ever again, not only will this go to the media, but I’ll come looking for each of you myself.”
There was little of what could have passed for shame on the four white faces. Earl considered for one brief moment the idea of opening up on them with the gun. But the priority for now was to get his daughter and granddaughter to safety. “Are we clear on all this?” he asked, fixing his eyes on each of the men in turn.
“What about him?” one man asked, motioning to Tarvis lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.
“I understand you’re all members of Atlanta’s finest,” Earl said. “I’m sure you got ideas how to make a body disappear, make a crime as though it never happened.”
Earl could see by their eyes they were already considering the possibilities. He backed his way to the doorway with Melon at his cuff. And with his daughter and granddaughter, he fled off into the moonlit Georgia night.
AT THE GREYHOUND bus terminal at four in the morning, Earl bought two one-way tickets to Los Angeles. His granddaughter was still docile and quiet, but she was starting to come around.
Loretta had managed to clean her up and get her properly dressed for the trip. And India herself had managed a smile.
“Take good care of our little girl,” Loretta said. “See she get a good education.”
“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Earl asked.
“It’s too late for me,” she said, pride overriding the sadness in her eyes. “Will you be all right?”
“I’ll let you know. But I don’t think the mystery of what happened to Ray Tarvis will ever be solved. A Jimmy Hoffa kinda thing. Still, I wish the rest of the bastard boys’ club could receive some evens.”
Earl studied his daughter, feeling a certain sense of guilt-layered pride. She was a survivor, at the very least. And though he couldn’t change the past, he could give her some justice for the pain and humiliation both she and India had suffered.
Earl took Loretta’s hand and folded the memory card from his camera into it. “What’s this?” Loretta asked, looking down.
“It’s a bit of justice,” Earl said. “Put it in an envelope and send it anonymously to the Atlanta Journal.”
Loretta brought her eyes back to his. “It’ll stir up a hornets’ nest that could come back on you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Earl said. “I’m an old man with an old dog and just as blind as I need to be. I’ll take what comes.”
Loretta gave him a strong hug and wished him and her daughter well. Then she turned toward her taxicab parked at the stand.
Earl put his arm around his granddaughter. And together they watched Loretta gather a waiting fare from the curb and drive away.
“Been some kind of visit, eh, Melon?” Earl said to the dog at his feet. “And we got a new member of the family to share our house with.”
Melon chuffed and nuzzled India’s ankle to show his approval.
“What about you?” Earl said to his granddaughter. “You ready for a new life?”
India gave what passed for a smile and boarded the bus ahead of him.
The driver was waiting to close the door against the heat.
Earl pulled his dark glasses from his inside pocket and slipped them on. He adjusted the camera around his neck, extended his cane, smoothed the front of his poplin jacket.
He was making a show of it. And why not?
Even a blind man could see he was seventy years old and a black man back in the South.