Chapter Eight

With his socks stuffed in his shoes, his shoes tucked under his arm, and his jacket tossed over his arm, Devin tiptoed across Rowena’s Oriental rug to her bedroom door, glanced back at her still asleep under the covers, and opened the door as quietly as possible.

He’d already heard a rooster crow from somewhere out in one of the neighboring yards, but if he hurried, he’d be home before Margaret was any the wiser. Like so many other mornings, he would just sneak into the house through the French doors in the library, and claim he’d slept all night on the library sofa.

As he exited into Rowena’s hallway, and softly closed the bedroom door behind himself, Devin felt a stab of guilt and regret. Deep down he knew that Rowena deserved better than this, but their fates were sealed. If it was possible for him to feel love, what he felt for Rowena was the closest he’d ever gotten. She was the only person who had ever understood him, and the way she explained things made sense to him. But that was all beside the point. He’d be ruined if it ever got out that she was any more than his mistress.

It was no real secret that the men in his family had colored mistresses, at least as far back as his great-great-granddaddy, but if he was going to achieve his rightful position in the Klan, sooner or later he’d have to give up Rowena.

Right now, though, it was too early in the day for Devin to be weighed down with such matters. He crept down the hall past Rowena’s daughter’s room, past the boarders’ rooms, down the stairs and out the door from the screened-in back porch.

He needed to sit to put on his socks and shoes, but instead of having a chair, the porch was cluttered with stacks of wooden crates. He took one of the crates and sat down.

As he finished tying his second shoe, Devin heard the rooster crow again. He looked up to see the blush of the April dawn give way to a wash of brilliant sunlight. He had to get going. He stood, buttoned up and tucked in his shirt, put on his jacket, pushed open the screen door, and hurried down the porch’s rickety wooden steps, up the backyard walkway to the alley gate.

He was halfway down the walkway when the wood-frame screen door clapped closed. The double bang clobbered his head with pain, making it impossible for him to take another step. “Agghh!” he cried, and winced at the throbbing in his skull. “Frigging rot gut.”

As far as Devin was concerned, all this prohibition nonsense had gone far enough. It was 1925, and after seven years, the feds were still telling everybody what they could and couldn’t make, what they could and couldn’t sell and what they could or couldn’t drink.

Thanks to the two-timing politicians, and those meddling teetotaler dames, a decent bottle of booze was getting damn hard to come by. From what he heard, even the Catholics’ communion wine was just watered-down grape juice.

Lately, Rowena’s bootleg whiskey was getting just as bad. The batch last night had tasted like a drugstore cold remedy, or something out of the backwoods. Whatever ingredients her suppliers were using to make the stuff wasn’t helping his stomach or brain none too much either.

As he waited for the pain in his head to subside, he gave thought to his whereabouts. He was smack in the middle of Five Points, the neighborhood his father used to call Spook Town and Jigville.

When he slipped into the neighborhood late at night, the surroundings looked like any other working-class neighborhood. And in the speakeasies hidden here and there, most of the patrons were white, so he still felt at home. It was just in these early morning hours, when he left Rowena’s, that it was hard to ignore.

Across the fence in the next yard, a pretty, young taffy colored woman was hanging sparkling white bed sheets on a clothesline. Devin admired the steady way she went about her work. He nodded hello to her, but she kept her gaze averted, gathered her wicker basket, and fled into her house.

A formation of cackling geese drew Devin’s attention skyward. The pain behind his eyes and the back of his skull throbbed anew. He shielded his eyes against the bright morning sun and watched for a moment as the birds flew north for the spring.

“Lucky good-for-nothing bastards,” he groused and continued on the two or three steps to a gate. He knew that the gate didn’t have a latch, so just gave it an easy push. It swung wide open and he went out to a rutted dirt lane.

That was one of the qualities Devin liked about Five Points, its relationship to the unadorned and genuine. It might have only been a three-square-mile area in northeast Denver, but their community maintained an air of hospitality he couldn’t remember experiencing on his own side of town. He’d have traded the paved alleys any day for what he sensed existed in Five Points.

As he walked up the end of the alley to where he’d parked his Olds, Devin observed that nearly every backyard had a portion staked out for a garden. It made him think of the melon patch he’d had when he was a boy.

He saw an old man seeding one of the gardens and felt tempted to stop and help, but then he berated himself for the impulse and hurried past.

He switched thoughts to how pleased he was with himself for having been so clever to park in the alley this time. He had solved two problems: the need to make a quick getaway in case the cops raided Rowena’s speakeasy, and, more importantly, the need to keep his secret life a secret.

He’d paid an old drunk two bits to keep an eye on the Oldsmobile, and to wipe the dew off of it come daybreak. It was better service than he got from the college boys who worked summers at the country club.

The aroma of coffee and bacon wafting from a nearby kitchen caught Devin off guard. Damn he was hungry. Margaret would just have to fix him breakfast when he got home. And she’d better do it with a smile.

“Wait a horse’s ass minute!” Devin said aloud as he stopped in his tracks. Again, he shielded his eyes against the sun, only this time to make certain they weren’t playing tricks on him.

Sure enough, he was a stone’s throw from the end of the alley, but there was no Oldsmobile, just two shiny black Model Ts parked bumper-to-bumper.

He walked up to the front car and kicked its back tire. “Shit, I know this is where I left it,” Devin said, and scratched his head.

The driver’s side door of the Model T that he’d kicked swung open, and a short, heavyset man stepped out. He was wearing a tan-colored cashmere overcoat and a large-brimmed dark brown hat that shaded his eyes.

The man threw a set of keys into Devin’s chest, but Devin’s effort to grab the keys failed, and they landed in the dirt.

“It’s around the corner,” the man said in a gravelly voice, “parked in the front.”

Devin’s heart froze at the thought, because the Grand Dragon Dr. Locke took it personal when any Klansman violated Klan laws, especially if that man was an officer. Any violation branded him a traitor.

Traitors died.

Consorting with a colored woman was just about the worst violation possible. “If it’d been up to me, all this talk would’ve been over,” the man said to Devin evenly. “But the boss says he owes you a favor. If you don’t have the two grand you owe him by Saturday night, next time the cops’ll find your wheels. Only they‘ll be reeling it up from the bottom of Sloan’s Lake with you in it.”

“Capisce?”

“Sure,” Devin said, glancing over his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see that a gun was poked through an open window of the Model T.

Hoping to conceal his nervousness he added, “It was always my intention. I just got caught up in uh, in uh ... in business. You know how it is.”

The man gave Devin an expressionless face. “Boss don’t go in for excuses. Just wants his cash.”

With that, the man walked back to his Model T, got in, and sped away. The second Model T, with the gun still pointed out the window, followed closely behind. Mud and debris flew from under the tires of the cars and splattered onto Devin’s face and jacket.

Devin stooped to pick up his ring of keys. Every one of the keys had been bent or broken off.

⟞ • ⟝

Margaret rang the kitchen bell again. Walter still didn’t answer, which wasn’t like him. She leaned over the upstairs banister and called to him. “Walter?”

As Margaret waited for a reply, she heard the back door open and close, then the sound of footsteps and the scurrying of Goldie’s paws across the kitchen’s linoleum floor. Goldie was Kyle’s dog, but she followed Walter everywhere. Margaret felt relieved. Walter hadn’t answered the bell because he was outside with the dog.

Margaret called to Walter once more. “Walter, can you come here please?”

Goldie rushed in first with her coat of silky golden hair flying and her paws clacking across the foyer tile. The retriever darted up the stairs and nuzzled against Margaret’s calves, begging to be petted.

“You old spoiled thing,” Margaret said as she reached down to pat the retriever’s head, “Where’s Walter?”

Margaret didn’t realize that Walter was looking up at her. His arms were full of firewood. It was spring, but the house somehow always held a chill. “Yes, Mrs. Browne, is everything all right?”

Walter’s voice startled Margaret, but its soothing timbre caused her to blush. She stopped playing with Goldie and took a small step back. She didn’t want Walter to see her like this and to possibly misunderstand. She spoke without looking over the banister at him.

“My husband just called. He said to pack a picnic lunch for the family. He’s taking us to the mountains for the afternoon.”

Walter was quiet. Margaret thought she could sense his puzzlement. As she waited for Walter to respond, she watched Goldie trot back down the steps to him.

Walter seemed to hesitate as he spoke. “Are you quite sure he said to the mountains? The weather’s still a little cool for sitting outdoors isn’t it?”

“We’ll just wrap up good,” Margaret said. “Fresh air is exactly what Mother Browne needs. Now please, Walter, hurry. Devin wants us ready to go as soon as he gets home.”

Margaret couldn’t help herself. She stole a glance down at Walter but just as quickly wished she hadn’t. His expression betrayed his disapproval. It was a look he boldly displayed more and more often. Maybe Devin was right. Maybe the coloreds were forgetting their place.

Margaret decided to overlook the matter for the time being and rushed back into Mother Browne’s room. She was going to have to search her mother-in-law’s closets, and perhaps even the trunks in the attic for an adequate coat and hat. It had been years since the family had been on an outing together.

⟞ • ⟝

Kyle glanced in the Oldsmobile’s rearview mirror to see his grandmother who was sitting in the back seat. She was staring blankly out the window.

“Hey, Gram,” Kyle said loudly in deference to Mother Browne’s diminished hearing, “hold tight, we’re taking a curve.”

Kyle yanked the auto’s steering wheel to the left and leaned into the driver’s side door as if he was swerving around one of the loops of the City Park Speedway. He screeched, imitating the sound of tire rubber burning against road.

He stole another glance in the mirror. His grandmother was still gazing out the window, seemingly oblivious to his daring.

“That’s okay, Gram,” Kyle said as he relaxed back against his seat, “you’re still my favorite girl.”

Kyle looked forward again but slowed his maneuvering of the steering wheel to cruising speed. His father was outside the Olds motioning to him to roll down the window.

Devin reached in through the window opening and slapped Kyle in the back of the head. “Out of my damn seat, boy.”

Tears welled in Kyle’s eyes but he quickly blinked them back. He was determined to prove that he was a man now and could take whatever his father dished out. He slid across the seat to the passenger side of the Olds, and lifted himself backward over the front seat into the back seat. He took special care not to jostle his grandmother.

As Devin took over the driver’s seat Kyle suddenly felt like a child again. Mother Browne was still peering out the window as if nothing had happened.

Kyle thought about his grandmother as he watched her and wondered what the heck she was looking at. Sometimes he didn’t know if he loved her, hated her, or just plain missed her. Since her stroke there’d been no one, except maybe his stepmother, to take up for him and stop his father from always hitting him.

His father began to bam the car’s horn. After a minute, he changed to pressing on it for long intervals causing it to blare almost continuously. Kyle hated this ritual between his father and stepmother.

Finally his stepmother rushed out of the house and joined them in the Olds. As his father turned the ignition key, Kyle couldn’t help but think about how odd it felt for the whole family to be going somewhere together. Still, for all the years in between this and their last outing, little had changed. As always, they rode in silence.

They were only a few minutes from the house when they turned west onto Colfax Avenue and headed toward the mountains. Thirty minutes later, they were in the foothills with Red Rocks Park just ahead. The park’s prehistoric formations of sandstone slabs jutted out of the earth at dramatic angles. Devin drove through the entrance of the park and followed a winding road up to a bluff.

They parked at a picnic site. The blustery weather had apparently discouraged any other tourists. The picnic tables were empty and the fire pits cold. Not even a deer was in sight.

Devin led the exit from the Olds and everyone except Mother Browne helped unload something from the trunk.

“Anybody want to help me get a fire started for hot dogs?” Margaret asked as she spread out a red and white check tablecloth on the picnic table.

“Boy, you do it,” Devin said to Kyle. “I’m going to take photographs.”

“Oh, Devin,” Margaret said with a sigh, “we just got here. Can’t the picture taking wait?”

“You starting in already?” Devin said, glaring at his wife. “I thought if I did something nice, you’d at least go the day without griping for once.”

“Devin, you know that’s not what I’m doing. It’s just that I thought …”

“Thought? Thought what?” Devin said with a smirk. “You see that’s the problem right there. Who asked you to think? When I want your thoughts I’ll let you know. Right now I’m going to do what I said and I don’t want to hear any guff.”

Devin turned his back to Margaret and looked for Kyle. Kyle was helping his grandmother walk to the picnic table but glanced up just enough to see the familiar look of veiled resignation. Devin walked away from them, toward the forest, but Kyle didn’t follow.

Devin stopped, turned on his heels, and glared at Kyle. “Didn’t you hear me, boy? I said you’re coming with me.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Kyle said as he placed his grandmother’s shawl on her shoulders.

“Don’t get smart, boy. I never mouthed off to my old man a day in my life and you’re not going to do it with me. Now let’s get a move on. I need to find an interesting backdrop for the family photograph, and I want to take the picture while the light’s still good. You see what you can find in the direction of those pine trees, and I’ll check over along the bluff.”

Devin walked to a distant grouping of boulders that were sitting on the edge of the bluff. Kyle headed toward the grove of tall evergreens.

Once among the trees, Kyle found a slightly worn path that led into the forest. He couldn’t resist the urge to explore, and decided to look for the photo setting on his way back.

He followed the path and smiled at hearing the crunch of pine needles under his shoes. Before he realized it, he’d gone so far on the path that the picnic tables had disappeared from view, but he kept going.

After awhile, the path broke into two directions. Kyle allowed his instinct to guide him to the right. After a short distance, the path forked once more, and again he went right.

He sensed that he might simply be going in a big circle. If his guess was correct, he would end up somewhere near where his father had gone, but it was probably time to be getting back.

Kyle turned to go but heard a strange sound nearby, the sound of quick, sharp jabs, like maybe metal hitting rock. He moved toward the sound until it seemed to be just on the other side of a large berry bush, but something in his gut told him to stay hidden.

He crouched low behind the bush and used his hands to part a slight opening between its branches. Kyle could just barely see his father across the way on the bluff. The sound was the scrape of a shovel against one of the boulders near the edge of the bluff as his father dug dirt from beneath the boulder.

Kyle let go of the berry bush branches and stood. He was motionless but stared into the gray sky trying to figure out what his father was doing. Nothing realistic came to mind.

When he returned to the picnic site he was out of breath from running, but his timing was perfect. His father was approaching from the direction of the bluff, and calling to everyone.

“Let’s all go down to the bluff,” Devin said as he neared the picnic table. “I found a great place for us to take a family picture, and if we go now the lighting will be perfect.”

Margaret looked with dismay at all the food she’d arranged on the table and the places she had set. There was even a canning jar emptied of its pickles and refilled with wildflowers for a centerpiece. Her eyes met Kyle’s but he quickly looked in the direction of his father.

Devin was waiting for them. He called to his family again. “Come on, let’s get going. The light is changing every minute. It’ll be too dark before we know it.”

Curse words spilled into Kyle’s thoughts, but for the sake of his grandmother and stepmother he kept them to himself. Instead, he helped his grandmother up from the table and circled his arm around her waist to help her. The three of them walked down to where his father waited.

As they neared the bluff and the boulders where Kyle had seen his father digging out the dirt, Kyle felt his stomach knot.

Devin arranged each member of his family into place in front of the boulder, and hurried back to the tripod where the camera sat aimed at them. He checked the composition of the picture in the camera’s viewfinder.

Margaret was on the right. To her left was Kyle, and on Kyle’s left, Mother Browne. A backdrop of trees and the boulder framed Margaret and Kyle, while a swath of sky and an edge of the boulder shone behind Mother Browne.

After a last adjustment to the camera’s lens, Devin ran back and stood to the right of Margaret. He activated the camera’s shutter with a button that was at the end of a long cord attached to the camera.

The loud click of the camera and the bright flash of its light bulb startled Mother Browne and caused her to lean back suddenly against the boulder. The boulder moved.

At first, there was just an uneasy creaking sound, but then it amplified to an ungodly cracking noise as the boulder tore from the earth and rolled backward, disappearing over the ledge of the bluff.

As fast as his instincts would allow, Kyle lunged for his grandmother and grabbed her arm before she could continue her fall backward. She cried out feebly as he yanked her toward himself and closed his arms around her frail body.

I’m so sorry, Gram,” Kyle said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, but everything’s all right now.”

Margaret rushed to her mother-in-law and stepson and flung her arms around both of them. For the first time in years Kyle didn’t pull away from her.

The three of them just stood there, frozen in place as they listened to the earsplitting sound of the boulder crashing against the rocks below. Devin was still standing apart from them. A cloud of rust-colored smoke and debris bellowed up from the mountainside and dusted them all with a reddish residue.

Margaret tried to shield Mother Browne’s eyes and mouth, while Kyle held Mother Browne steady. Despite everything, she seemed unaware that they’d all barely escaped with their lives.

“Come on, Gram, let’s go back to the car,” Kyle said.

As he and Mother Browne walked toward the Oldsmobile he could plainly hear the heated exchange between his father and stepmother.

“How in heaven’s name could you allow such a thing to happen, Devin?”

“Hell, she’s old. What do you care?”

“Devin, she’s your own mother.”

“So what? I’m sick of waiting for her to die. That money my father left is rightfully mine and I intend to have it one way or another. I need it.”

Kyle paused to let his grandmother rest and used the moment to look back. Margaret was reaching for Devin’s shoulders, but he pushed her away and slapped her to the ground.

His stepmother lay there, in a heap, sobbing into the dirt and holding her stomach crying, “My baby, my baby.”

⟞ • ⟝

As the Brownes drove back into Denver, the sky darkened with storm clouds and a driving rain. West to east, Colfax Avenue was littered with stalled cars and accidents. An old pickup heading south on Federal Boulevard hit a pocket of water at a stop sign and nearly sideswiped the Olds.

Eventually, they pulled into their driveway in one piece. Devin got out of the car without a word to anyone. Just as he reached the front door, Walter came out to meet the family with an umbrella, but Devin brushed past Walter nearly knocking him to the ground. Walter quickly recovered and ran to the car to hold the open umbrella over Mother Browne and Kyle as Kyle helped her out of the car.

Walter leaned into the Oldsmobile’s open door and spoke to Margaret. “Wait here, Mrs. Browne. I’ll be back for you as soon as we get Mother Browne inside.”

Margaret nodded but kept her face forward so that it stayed hidden in the darkness.

Walter reached out to take Mother Browne’s free arm but Kyle pushed him away. “Keep your hands off my grandmother, nigger,” Kyle said, and rushed Mother Browne into the house without the shield of the umbrella. For a long moment, Walter stood speechless.

Margaret got out of the car and stood beside him. She went to touch his sleeve but drew her hand back just as he turned to look at her. The light escaping from the house shone onto the side of her face. Even in the night and the pouring rain, Walter could see that Margaret’s cheek was black and blue.

Their eyes locked in an eternity of words unspoken. Ever so gently, he touched Margaret’s shoulder, but a booming thunderbolt rumbled the night and sent them both running into the house.