BY THE TIME LUTHER GOT OUT OF THE CAR, HIS SISTER HAD already closed the space between herself and Nick Simon and now stood glaring at him. It made for a stark, almost ridiculous contrast, the big white gunnery sergeant in his dress uniform, a cigar cocked in one corner of his mouth, towering over the smaller Negro woman, whose print dress ended just above her dirty, blood-scabbed knees.
Luther moved toward his sister, calling her name. George moved toward his brother, doing the same. And then, both men stopped short. It struck Luther that whatever came from this confrontation had been coming for a long time. Maybe it needed to finally happen.
“You’re Nick Simon,” Thelma said. “You’re George’s brother.”
He sneered at her, gave a tight nod. “And you’re Thelma,” he said.
“Yes, I’m Thelma,” she confirmed.
Then she punched him in the face.
The blow was hard enough that Nick’s head snapped back and his cigar flew. Luther thought, inevitably, of his mother doing the same thing when Floyd Bitters came to her door and he wondered if Annie Hayes’s feisty courage had somehow leapt across time and death to possess her daughter. Or maybe this was just how any mother would behave toward someone who threatened her family. Maybe they all turned into Cassius Clay.
Luther wanted to get between his sister and the marine before something worse happened, but he was rooted like a tree by his own fascination. Likewise, the other three people in the parking lot—Adam, George, and George’s sister, Cora—stood still as statues in the park.
When Nick’s head came back around, he had a hand to his jaw. Thelma had tagged him good, but the marine refused to give her the satisfaction of wincing in pain. Instead, he smiled at her. “Pleased to meet you, too,” he said.
Thelma was not amused. She leveled her index finger. “I know you don’t like me,” she said, and her voice was steel. “I really don’t care. But in the future, you keep it between you and me, Nicholas Simon. Whatever you have to say, be man enough to say it to my face. Don’t hide behind a child.”
Nick’s eyes darkened. “You’re callin’ me a coward, lady?”
Thelma did not flinch. She pointed the index finger behind her toward Adam, but her eyes never left Nick’s face. “You see that boy back there? That is my son. You see his eye? That happened because of you. So what I am telling you, Nicholas Simon, is that if you ever hurt my child again, I will see you dead. That’s my promise to you.”
Nick laughed. Or at least, he tried to. But while his mouth opened in a scornful bark, his eyes refused to cooperate. Instead, they watched Thelma warily as if here was some new and threatening creature they had never seen before. He turned his astounded face first one way and then the other, making a show of looking about to see if anyone else was finding this as funny as he was trying to. Finally, his eyes returned to Thelma. “You’re going to kill me? Really? How you going to do that, lady?”
George spoke quietly. “It’s time for you to go, Nick.”
Nick ignored it, slapping at his chest. “I’m a United States Marine, honey! That means I’ve been threatened by experts.”
George hardened his voice. “Nick, you need to go.”
Nick turned, as if he had forgotten George was there. “Some sweet little missus you got there, big brother,” he said, pointing. “Said she’s going to kill me. Did you catch that? This is what you choose over us?”
Luther took a step. “You heard what he said, man. Time to go.”
This brought another forced laugh. “Oh, you too now, huh? You want to get in on it, too, is that it?”
“Nick.” He spun toward this next voice. His sister was standing at the driver’s side door of her car. “Let’s go,” she told him.
“Oh, come on, Cora. You’re not going to let …”
“Georgie’s right. It’s time for us to leave. We don’t belong here.” She got behind the wheel of the car without waiting for an answer. Luther thought she looked terribly sad.
Nick turned in a circle, as if searching for a friendly face. Whatever he saw made his shoulders go down. Then his eyes flickered. “Fine,” he muttered in the petulant voice of a child, “but I want my cigar back. She knocked it out of my mouth with that sucker punch. I paid two bits for that smoke.”
Again, he turned, eyes scanning the pavement. Luther watched him. Thelma and George watched him. He squinted into dark corners of the parking lot. He did not find the cigar. Luther was on the verge of telling him again that he had to go, cigar or no cigar.
Then he heard a slow footfall. Luther turned and was surprised to see Adam moving around the Buick coming toward them, his gait halting. Slowly, he crossed the few feet separating him from his mother and Nick Simon.
He passed behind Thelma without stopping, then grimaced in apparent pain as he knelt to reach into a patch of brown grass clustered about one of the support beams holding up the exterior balcony at Luther’s front door. He came up with the cigar stub, which he silently presented to Nick. Nick looked at it, then took it, knocked off a few stray blades of grass, and stuck it back in his teeth.
He regarded Adam’s ruined face and for a moment, Luther thought he might say something. Then he grunted, shook his head, and went around to the passenger side of his sister’s Cadillac. He slumped low in the seat, puffing on the cigar.
Cora lowered her window. Her eyes were filled with luminous sorrow. They lingered on George—“Georgie,” she had called him—and her brother gave her a nod, mouthing some farewell Luther could not hear, though he was only a few feet away. Then the white woman looked at Thelma and the grief in her eyes took on a certain wonder.
She put the car in reverse and backed it out slowly. Luther moved to one side to give her room and she wheeled the Caddy down the narrow driveway toward the street. Luther heard her as she accelerated into traffic.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Adam broke the silence, “Good night, everyone,” he said. “I’m going to bed.” He climbed the stairs without waiting for a reply.
As they heard him let himself into Luther’s apartment, George looked a question toward his wife. “It’s a lot to deal with,” she explained. “Plus, I’m sure he’s tired. We’re all tired.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Luther. “Only thing I want right now is some shut-eye.”
But finding shut-eye would prove impossible. Six hours later, he was wide awake in a tangle of sheets on his foldout couch, having long since given up trying. Exhausted though he was, Luther could not still his mind, could not impose silence upon it. Instead, he just lay there, as the night pushed toward the dawn. He heard the occasional car go whooshing past on Davis Avenue, heard the light snoring of his nephew, who lay on the floor beneath a thin blanket with a couch cushion as a pillow.
He tried not to think of Adam’s bright, raw pain—
“I am her rapist’s son.”
—or of Thelma, down on her knees, kissing that white man’s hand and telling lies that betrayed her very self. He tried not to think of the fracture that now divided them, that consigned mother and son to opposite shores of guilt and shame. He tried not to think of how many of his own demons these last few days had awakened.
Luther tried not to think of many things, but he thought of them all anyway, his worries circling like relay runners on some endless track, one leading to another, that one leading to another, that one leading back to the first. Adam muttered something unintelligible, and Luther marveled that the rest of his family was able to get any sleep.
Which is when he saw his bedroom door open and Thelma come creeping through, wearing a thin nightdress. She paused in the darkness to get her bearings, turned toward the shadowy lump that was her only child and stood there a full minute, looking at him, listening to him breathe. Then she moved through the room, silent as a wraith but for the creak of the door as she pulled it open and stepped out onto the balcony.
Luther gave her a moment. Then he swept the useless sheets aside and padded after her, clad in red pajamas she had given him for Christmas two years back. When he opened the front door, he found her sitting on the top step, smoking from a pack of cigarettes he kept on his nightstand.
She turned at the sound of him. “Luther,” she said. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No such luck,” he said. “Ain’t been able to sleep.”
“Same,” she said.
He sat beside her, shook a cigarette from the pack between them and lit it. “Surgeon general ain’t gon’ be too happy about you pickin’ up the evil weed again,” he told her.
Thelma regarded the cigarette burning between her index and middle fingers. “You’re right,” she said. “I was doing so well, too.” She took a deep drag.
Luther leaned around so that he could see her face. It was troubled. “Thelma, are you okay?”
After a moment, his sister shook her head. “No,” she said, “I am not.”
“Anything I can do?”
Another shake of the head. “I’m just tired, Luther. I just feel so tired.”
“Tell me about it,” said Luther. “A twelve-hour drive will take it out of you.”
A sad smile. “I wasn’t talking about the drive,” she said.
“I know,” admitted Luther.
Thelma said, “He’s right, you know.”
“Who’s right?”
“Adam. He told you I never hugged him. He was right. I didn’t realize it until he said it.”
Luther sighed. “I’m sorry you heard that, Thelma.”
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. He raised his voice and it woke me up and I heard him say that.”
“Did you hear him ask me why I ain’t never liked him?”
She shook her head. “No. I must have dozed back off. He asked you that?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you say?”
“What could I say? I told him it wasn’t never about him. It was about the white bastard who, you know …”
“Raped me,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Luther, “who raped you.” He breathed out a stream of gray smoke.
“For the longest time, I could never say that word,” said Thelma. She stubbed out her cigarette, flung the butt away. “It was like, if I didn’t say it, it didn’t happen. Foolish, huh?”
“Not foolish,” said Luther. “You get by the best you can.”
A moment passed. Then she turned toward him. “Luther, what am I going to do? I think I may have lost my son.”
He shook his head with more determination than conviction. “He be all right. Just got a lot to sort through.”
“I can’t imagine. I don’t even know what to say to him.”
“Maybe say nothin’,” suggested Luther. “Maybe let him come to you when he’s ready.”
“Does he hate me?”
“If he hate anyone, I think he hate hisself. He called himself ‘the rapist’s son.’”
“Oh, my Lord,” said Thelma.
“I don’t think he understand how you can love him, comin’ out of that. I told him if he could have seen what I seen, up there on that mountain, he wouldn’t have no question.”
“You told him about that?”
“Yeah. I still don’t know how you did it.”
Something inexpressibly sad drifted into her eyes then. “I don’t know, either,” she said. “I just knew it had to be done.”
“That fool actually thought you were tellin’ him the truth,” said Luther, marveling. “About havin’ feelings for his brother, I mean.”
Thelma’s smile was rueful. “It’s what he needed to believe,” she said.
“If you hadn’t loved that boy—I mean, loved him hard—ain’t no way you could’ve done that. I know it wasn’t easy.”
“Hardest thing I’ve ever done,” said Thelma. “It made me feel … dirty all over. It still does. I wish I could just unzip my skin, climb out, and leave it behind. That’s how dirty I feel. I swear, I was in the tub for an hour, trying to get rid of that feeling, water hot enough to cook a lobster. I like to scrubbed my skin off, but it didn’t help.” She chuckled. “You know, with all these people using your bathroom, I bet when you get your water bill, it’s going to be … going to be …”
And then her voice crumbled, and she wept. Luther put an arm around Thelma’s shoulder and drew her to him. “Shush,” he said, softly. “Ain’t nobody studdin’ no damn water bill.” He felt her shudder against him as she cried, felt the warm dampness of her tears on his chest.
After a moment, Thelma said, “You know, when he was looking for me in that ship, to … to rape me, that man called after me like a dog. Did I ever tell you that?”
“No,” said Luther. Beyond what she wrote in her letter, Thelma had never told him anything about that day. He had never been sure he wanted to hear. Now he kept very still.
“Yeah,” said Thelma with a little nod. “‘Here, nigger, nigger, nigger.’ That’s what he said. ‘Here, nigger, nigger, nigger.’ Just like you call a dog.”
“I’m so sorry, Thelma,” said Luther.
“I’m sorry, too,” she murmured against his chest.
“Hateful bastard,” said Luther.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s something I’ve never understood, Luther. Why are they like that? Why do they hate us so bad? What did we do to them for them to treat us that way?”
“I don’t know.”
She drew back from him now. Her eyes were glistening and earnest. “I mean, we didn’t buy and sell them like cattle. We didn’t rape them and use them and cheat them. We sure as hell didn’t burn them. They’re the ones who did all that to us. If anybody has a reason to hate, we do.”
Luther thought about it for a beat. Then he said, “Maybe that’s the reason.”
She frowned. “How do you mean?”
Luther shrugged. “Maybe when they see us, it reminds them of all the dirt they done to us, knowin’ we ain’t never done nothin’ to them even though we had plenty reason. Maybe they can’t stand it.”
Thelma considered this, pursed her lips. “So that makes them do more dirt?”
Luther shrugged in reply.
“That makes no sense,” she said.
“Don’t none of it make no sense,” said Luther. “It never has.”
They fell silent then. Luther lit another cigarette. The two siblings sat there, each lost in their own thoughts, as the rising sun began carving shadows from the darkness.