Reverend Cook Richmond was already there. He was one fine-looking specimen of a colored man, keen-creased and crisp in his tailored, camel-colored, double-breasted suit. In the guest speaker’s high-backed chair, in the pulpit of Spain Street Zion A.M.E., sitting easy as a fat cat lying on a sunny window sill. His arms resting on the oak arms, legs crossed, the toe of his shiny brown oxfords tapping slightly to some tune in his brain. His gaze was fixed over their heads somewhere at the bottom of the balcony. There were no deacons fussing around him trying to look important. And a close, crane-neck survey by nearly every sister in the church gave evidence that there was no unfamiliar woman of elegance equal to his who might have been Missus Richmond. Interesting.
It was getting close to the time. The assembling congregation was starting to settle down, anxious for it to start, but they were probably going to be in for an extended service so they were still not prepared just yet to get in their sermon-ready frames of mind.
Ushers were shuttling up and down, greeting, seating. There was a harmonious hum to the greetings: polite recognition and proper respect for the deserving to the degree that either was appropriate. Special salutations for Old Mother Johnson, bless her heart, Don’t she look good. And Elder Leonard, and how well he was holding up.
Young Brother Jefferies (Junie) on the organ, bless him, noodling an improvised medley of hymns. He was in their secret prayers in the hope it would help him—heal his—wasn’t no way to say it but to say it—heal his swishy, sissy ways.
Looking like satin angels for the world, the choir, at Junie Jefferies’ signal, entered in formation from the rear of the pulpit, strutting proud in their shiny new robes.
Vienna among them as they got settled, double-checking their hymnals, clearing their throats, saw Branch enter and refuse the offer of being ushered to a seat. He indicated he would stand, and as against custom as that was, he was allowed to remain at the rear corner of the right-hand aisle.
Scanning the church Vienna saw that by some mystery of group perception Branch’s presence was almost instantly noticed. His entrance was the only thing, she thought, that could have diverted attention from Reverend Richmond. It ran through the church as if a horsefly had buzzed it and moved ear to ear through the church. Women began puffing themselves up at the unexpected sight of him.
“Ain’t them robes something!”
“Girrrrllll, how you doing?” Church Mother Daniels said. “You looking goooood.”
“You too. And I like that hat,” Mother Johnson praised in her rough-edged purr.
“Aw, thank you. Look like it took me forever to get going this morning.”
“Well it certainly doesn’t show.”
“Thank you. I wasn’t going to miss this for the world.”
“Me neither, you know—” Cut off in mid-sentence as Junie gave the downbeat and the choir began to hum “Oh Ship of Zion.”
There now, see, Junie’s jumping the gun, lots of folks still to be seated and . . . and then that blind boy got up and started singing, bless his heart. Mother Johnson whispering how his mama had designed and made all the robes. His mama, Pearl. The two senior women nodding to each other how that Pearl Moon was a real go-getter.
Her son singing, “What ship is this that’s landed at the shore?”
Looking at the watch her son Chepheus gave her last Christmas, Mother Johnson whispered, “Eleven o’clock sharp.”
“On the dot!”
Maybe Junie just following instructions, they thought, as they a-men-ed with reconsidered admiration and approval. The tone of it said just the fact of Reverend Richmond starting on time was a whole sermon in itself.
“Oh, Glory hallelujah!” Son sang.
“It’s the old ship of Zion, hallelujah!
It’s the old ship of Zion, hallelujah!”
And the choir coming in with the chorus,
“Don’t you see that ship a-sailing,
Going over to the Promised Land?”
The boy singing,
“What kind of Captain does she have on board?
Oh, Glory Hallelujah.”
“Don’t he sing good?”
“Mummm,” Mother Daniels half approved, “but it ain’t like Sister Ryder.”
“No, Lord. That was her song.”
Unannounced Reverend Richmond eased into position at the pulpit as smooth as oiled silk. He gave the text and topic of his upcoming sermon.
They looked at each other. Hadn’t never seen it done like that. Raised their eyebrows, being patient. Must be the way they do it up in Riverton. Drum-patted the back of one hand with the fingers of the other. Waited to see.
“My theme,” he said, “is a brand new day and a brand new time.”
Hallelujah.
Simply by being punctual, Vienna thought, Richmond is saying he’s professional. Not like any of the other of those old-timey Chilton jack-legged preachers. Operating on colored people’s time like they still did, with their services starting anywhere from a half hour to forty-five minutes late was like the attitude of doing just enough to satisfy the white man. That might have been all right in its day, but not anymore. The whole world was changing—war in Europe, A. Philip Randolph and Walter White meeting with Roosevelt to get rid of government discrimination and let colored boys get a fair fight in the army—and this Reverend Richmond’s starting on time was like saying, what he say his theme was, Hallelujah, a brand new day and a brand new time? Well, the white man didn’t get rich and powerful by showing up late. Reverend Richmond was showing by his manner, attire, and punctuality how to go about it in a brand new way. That was just what Zion A.M.E. needed, Hallelujah.
“She has landed many thousands,” the boy sang.
“She can land as many more.”
Surprised latecomers whose usual habit was to make an entrance, nodding and being noticed, were unceremoniously being rushed to seats by composed but impatient ushers. Is this saved? Excusing themselves, squeezing by the already seated, who gave them smug, less than Christian looks, as if to say, it was time to put behind them those old ignorant ways of showing up late because you assume things going to start late, amen. Let that be a lesson to them.
Reverend Richmond saying just above the singing, “There was a time for plowing and planting and plucking. A stone gathering and a stone throwing time.”
Oh, glory Hallelujah!
“A time for tearing down, and building back up . . .”
“She sails like she is heavy-ladened . . .”
“A time for laughing and crying, dancing and mourning . . .”
“But she’s a-sailing mighty steady
She’s neither reeling or rocking.”
“A time to be born and . . .”
“But she’s a-sailing mighty steady
She’s neither reeling nor rocking.”
“Time for tearing, and sewing, and hating, and loving, and a time for moving on, crossing over from the old to the new,” he said, enunciating in his crooner’s voice like an English professor.
Professional. That was what his starting on time said to any with sense enough to hear it and take it to heart.
Junie Jefferies, his robe sleeves flapping like butterfly wings whipping the choir to an upbeat finish.
“Oh is your bundle ready? Hallelujah.
Oh is your bundle ready? Hallelujah.
A-men!”
Reverend Richmond turning to watch Son as he moved a few steps back, wiping at his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Isn’t he a blessing,” Richmond said.
“A-men,” agreed the church.
“Isn’t he a blessing,” Richmond said again.
“A-men,” agreed the church.
“Amen!”
“Isn’t he a blessing?” Richmond repeated.
“A-men,” agreed the church.
The reverend then said he wanted Son to stay right there to help him because he was going to dispense with the usual way he conducted a sermon. He was going to get right to it, because he didn’t have much time to get to all he had to do.
They encouraged him to get to it.
That was when Mother Johnson, in her raspy bulldog growl with the same indignant inflection that she said most things, always making even her most damning accusations sound like questions from the Old Testament God, said, “What you doing with that gun in here, Mister?”
At the same time the first shot went off like a car backfiring, and the pandemonium began.
Chap had strongly suspected that Sunny Bob’s disappearance wasn’t about the payoff money Sunny Bob was delivering to the local officials and police for Chap. Sunny Bob did not work just for Chap. He also did distribution, or was a bagman in the employ of a legitimate syndicate of Chilton businessmen with semi-legitimate silent partners outside the city. Those partners, Chap suspected, were the Finkleman mob. They ruled part of the underworld activities in Riverton. The Finklemans, who had money and muscle, had been making overtures to Chap and white real businesses and estate owners about partnering with or buying up some Chilton properties. Chap’s having to guess at whom and why told him the outcome would likely not be in his best interest.
Another possibility was Rudolph Lyons, aka, Ruddy the Lion. He was the head of the biggest Negro numbers racket in Riverton. The Finklemans were his backers. Reverend Richmond’s big church in Riverton was one of the venues used by Ruddy the Lion to launder money. Whether it was the Finklemans directly or Lyons through them it meant trouble for Chap. That was why he had sent for Branch.
The bullet hit the reverend in his torso. He took a step back, not even raising his hands to the ballooning red wound. The second shot, from a different point in the church than the first, was also to his chest already leaking blood. He didn’t stagger, he just tilted straight back like an axed tree, falling back against Son.
Branch knew the two out-of-place-looking Negroes were together, damn it. Same type and quality topcoats, suits, and fedoras, their right hand in their coat pockets. He had spotted and tracked them from the time they entered about four or five minutes apart a couple of minutes earlier. They had muscled their way into aisle seats on opposite sides of the church. They didn’t look nervous but they did look out of place. They were there for a reason, all right, and it wasn’t for coming to Jesus. But because it was his first time in the church, he hadn’t known whom to ask about the two men.
Too late. Richmond was down. Branch’s gun already out of his under-the-arm holster and aimed at the first shooter standing halfway down the aisle to his left above those crouched down in the pews around him. The man had turned to move back up the aisle. Branch’s shot entered his center chest a couple inches below the four-in-hand knot of the shooter’s tie, splattering tissue, blood, and spine bone.
Satisfied without checking that his first shot had inflicted sufficient damage to the shooter on his left, he swung his Colt around to his right. Amid the rush of scrambling, screaming congregants, the second shooter, perhaps aware that his partner had been shot, perhaps not, was trying to make his exit by, through, or over the panicked crowd who were doing their best in the confused press of bodies to back away from him and the pistol still in his hand. Branch whistled a loud, sharp single note. It pierced the air like an eagle’s cry.
Still fighting his way out, the man heard the whistled note above the noises echoing through the church. He turned to look over his shoulder. The bullet entered his temple, snapped his head back, and he spun around and crumbled sideways, his arms thrown up as if signaling a touchdown. His errant shot, squeezed off in a death spasm, angled into the ceiling. A shower of plaster chips and dust sprinkled down on the confusion like snow.
In the basement Pearl had already stopped picking up after the choir members, having heard the upstairs commotion of people and chairs. Ada, picking up the strewn hangars and tissue paper and delivery boxes the robes were brought in, stopped too, having heard what sounded like a big branch snapping off a tree, and three more. Pearl knew they were pistol shots and was looking for her purse.
“Purse?!” she said to Ada, who had dropped her handful of wire hangers. The girl pointed to the floor by the long table near where Pearl was standing. Pearl stooped, picked it up, unsnapping open the large plastic tortoiseshell clasp handle and had one foot up on the bottom step as she pulled the blue steel snubbed-nosed pistol from it, and dropped the purse, its contents of folding money, change purse, receipts, identification, compact and lipstick, hair comb, everything raining and rattling, clattering to the floor. Her skirt pulled up with her free left hand. She was taking the steps two at a time and rushed up to and through the door at the rear of the pulpit into the screaming and scrambling.
Outside on Spain Street Horace Bradshaw, Horse, the colored dayshift foot patrolman, with his night stick, pistol, handcuffs, whistle, and badge 79, exited Kellwood’s Restaurant and stood under the canopy, watching Arthur Fuller hurrying across the street through the unexpected rain that had turned the day cement gray. The fool was gesturing behind him, to the church, Bradshaw guessed. What now?
Arthur stopped at the curb, not even enough damned sense to step up under the canopy, Bradshaw thought. “Get out of the street,” he told him. Arthur did, but still stood in the rain. The smell of liquor leapt from him like a shout. He just stood there dripping. Waiting. Bradshaw exhaled gray smoke at him. It evaporated in the distance between them like a rabbit under a magician’s cape.
“What?”
Without looking behind him Arthur pointed and spoke in a loud, conspiratorial whisper. “Horse,” he said, “The devil in there claiming souls.”
So sick of sorry Arthur Fuller, the only white man that Bradshaw almost felt pity for, he didn’t know what to do.
“Who, fool?” he bothered to ask.
Then several men and women came, exiting Spain Street Zion A.M.E., and shouting to Horse, and anyone, that they were shooting and killing inside. He threw down his cigarette as a few more rushed out of the church. The cigarette sparked, sputtered, and hissed to death on the wet street. Some reverend had been shot as far as he could make out.
Bradshaw hoped it was a white gunman. He didn’t have time to reckon why white men would be shooting up a church chucked with colored people any more than he had time to reckon why a Negro would. He just hoped it, and started running toward the gray-stoned structure, his service revolver in his hand.
Bradshaw didn’t mind rousting and occasionally cold-sapping a colored man when the situation called for it, but he wasn’t that crazy about the prospect of having to shoot one.
Bradshaw, as he leapt to the church’s top step ordered, “Call for help!”
Did he remember a car parked outside the church when moments ago he went in to Callwells? Was there a white or colored man at the wheel?
He heard screaming from inside as he eased the heavy front door open and entered the vestibule. A couple of elderly people were crouched in the small foyer, hiding or scrunched down praying. With his left hand he gestured for them to remain silent and with the sharp gesture of his gun hand he motioned them to git, angry with them for their old cowering attitudes.
No more shots had been fired. A short couple of minutes ago he’d been standing out of the rain under the awning of the restaurant, picking fried pork chop from his teeth with his fingernail. Now with his back against the wall he took a short snort of air, collecting himself, his pistol gripped chest-high. It was the first time in two years on the force his gun had left his holster in the line of duty. With his left hand he pulled the inner door left open.
Vienna wondered if this was the trouble Branch had predicted on the side porch that night. Whether or not it was, he was in the middle of it, brought to him without his seeking it. She did not think to scream, or to duck. She watched as if she was seated next to him in the dark at the King picture show, eating popcorn and watching him on the silent screen. He was different from Twin Collins, fancy-dressed in jingling and shiny outfits, silver, and silk bandana. Branch, his arm extended, pistol in his hand, was more like a vengeful William S. Hart. She saw the pistol kick but she did not hear it fire, did not hear any of the sounds around her, had not since Mother Johnson shouted. She saw the gun steadied as it swept to Branch’s right and stop, seemingly without its being aimed and kicked again as it fired, and she watched him move then through the scramble as easily as if she were on his arm as they were leaving the King after a Thursday night double feature. He moved through a dusting of plaster floating from the ceiling, like dandruff on his brown suit.
Then, as if someone had flicked a switch, Vienna heard the screaming again. And she felt the trembling throughout her body at the sight of the bedlam, Branch at the center of it, standing with his back to her and the choir that was still dissembling themselves from their hiding places.
Patrolman Horace ‘Horse’ Bradshaw opened the carved oak vestibule doors, his gun raised.
Branch, his right arm raised above his head with the .45 showing, let Patrolman Bradshaw see that he had it, and let him know he had done with it all that he intended to do at that time.
Pearl and Hughes reached Richmond and Son from different directions and at the same time knelt beside them. The reverend was face up, lying three-quarters on top of Son. The boy was saying he was all right. He was all right, mama, he was all right. Hughes rolled the dead preacher off the boy and Pearl lay down prone on top of her son, asking for additional reassurance that he was all right.
Upon his opening the door all went still and quiet in uncertain anticipation. It was like a children’s game of Freeze. The congregation pressed, crouched, clinging, cringing against the floor, walls, corners, or each other, not knowing if Satan or salvation would enter. At the sight of Horse what passed among them was the slow realization that the first of it was over. The violent thundering storm had stopped and was being followed by what they hoped was a soft rain, like the gentle patter of drops spattering against the stained glass window, and sanity, or what had previously passed for it, was returning through the opened door in the form of the wet colored policeman, a gun in his hand.
Horse looked about the scattered space to the right-hand aisle at Branch Ottley, Chap’s cowboy, his right arm up, what looked like a M 1911A1 Colt .45 Automatic in his right hand. A DOA Negro in an overcoat, his left temple oozing blood, lay next to a fedora, and what looked like a Smith & Wesson lay at the cowboy’s feet.
It was all so quick, as Vienna and most of the others interviewed by the police said. It all just happened at once.
They began moving in two waves, one toward the widening circle around Reverend Richmond and Son, the other toward the door where Horse stood blocking the exit. Bradshaw had been handpicked by Police Chief Captain Francis Mahoney for what the chief thought was Bradshaw’s guard dog-like loyalty, and allegiance to him over any ties he might have to the Negroes he was hired to keep guard of, and therefore he had the good sense to follow the orders of his superior officer. Bradshaw, with only a slight tremor in his voice, told the cowboy to lay his pistol down. To Bradshaw’s relief Ottley did.
Next, the young policeman announced, even though he was ordered to move by no less than Mother Johnson on the arms of two black-suited, white-gloved ushers, Deacons Hildebrand and Jenkins, that until reinforcements, meaning Chief Mahoney, arrived, and took official charge of the situation, no one was leaving.
And so it was, until, sirens screaming, tires screeching, Chief Mahoney in his rain slicker and plastic cover on his cap with the patent leather bill entered, the wedge at his phalanx of heavily-armed patrolmen to put down and straighten up the mess and supervise the cleaning up of the carnage and incarceration of the congregates.
Unnoticed in the confusion, Ada brought Pearl’s purse up and got her pistol and with it under a robe hung over her arm she moved, unseen, back into the basement and out of the door there and took it home to tell Chap what had happened.
Big Horace Bradshaw was born and raised right on Evans Street. He had been All City center for the colored Lincoln High Panthers. Nicknamed Horse, who on offense was as protective of his quarterback as a mama bear of her cubs, and on defense was a nose-busting, head-cracking bruiser, who with a teeth-bared, red-eyed fury hunted and brought down ball carriers.
Horse Bradshaw knew the rage that boiled in the bellies above and within ‘lo’ Dunbar: fear of and anger at cursed, savage niggers; anger at and fear of damned hateful crackers. He also knew what was expected, no, demanded of him by Captain Mahoney, the mayor, and council and citizens above Dunbar. They made it plain enough.
They thought it was as simple as black and white, as them and us. He thought they had no idea, A, how wrong they were, or, B, how good he was at his job.
To keep its denizens in line was to keep them alive. And if it took the slight injustice of a lumped skull, or boot in the butt, a night or two in the tank to keep his flock safe, then so be it. Well worth the price, and everybody was better off for it, whether they were like children with stinging hands or burning butts too temporarily painful to understand the long-term benefits of a spanking. None of their hissing and spitting at him behind his back as he strolled his beat, his twirling nightstick whistling its little tune punctuated by its snapping rhythm as it hit his palm, mattered to him.
He was, he thought, whether they knew or appreciated it or not, their guardian and secret spokesman, negotiator and best friend. He saved them, he thought, from a bigger world of hurt in the long run. For he knew the depthless possibility of evil that lay in the tree line of the white folks’ fear. He’d seen it at the bottom of the pile at a goal line stand. He saw it in the Captain’s grease-soaked lunch bag each morning, heard it in the angry ring of the desk sergeant’s phone with a white citizen’s complaint about being bumped into on the street by some nigger bitch, or eyeballed by some young or old, big or little man or boy, felt it every-where. However rarely acknowledged and unappreciated his part in that was.
The more emotionally controlled were, with reassuring tones, calming children and weepers, patting the backs of hands, fanning the faint and frustrated who, under their hats, had sweated out their hot-combed hairdos, and whose mascara and skin-lightening face power was streaked despite their fanning. There were sprinklings of individual prayers, evident by closed eyes and silently-mouthed words. Some slumped in their pews looking upward. Grade school boys, squirming with their pent-up desire, eyed each other, trying to communicate with only their facial expressions their desire to whip out their pistols and have a running gun battle among the pews, or even better be out in the open of the playground; they were rehearsing their stories to tell in school. They squirmed and twisted their mouths and their eyebrows danced—until they were warned for the last time. Knowing better, they did not even protest their innocence but sighed and turned away from each other and tried to sit still.
After what Vienna would describe as the moments of pure pandemonium was the long wait to get out. Within about ten minutes every policeman in Chilton was there. It was announced everyone in the church were being detained until their statements could be taken and their contact information obtained.
Under the chief’s command lines were formed, and like third graders at an assembly, the congregates were marched slowly forward to be interviewed one by one by uniformed policemen and plainclothes detectives.
They don’t know what they’re doing, an usher said to an usherette. They’d never had this kind of killing before. They were only used to a crap game razor fight, with a victim bleeding to death because of the perpetrator’s indifference or medical neglect.
The three bodies, photographed from all angles before the coroner, in his golf clothes, had finally been found and had them declared dead, were bagged and hauled off to the morgue.
—
Daisy Wood, soprano who sang next to Vienna in the Zion AME choir, and did day work for Mr. Jacobs, the manager of First City Bank, and his wife, sat next to Vienna as they were waiting to be interviewed. Daisy listened to everybody complaining until she whispered to Vienna, “He’s trying his best to do a good job.”
“Who?”
“Horace Bradshaw.”
“Oh.”
Vienna found Bradshaw in the crowd, pointing parishioners to one of the four policemen taking names, addresses, and statements.
“He loves his job,” Daisy said. “Being useful in his hometown.”
Vienna could feel Daisy trying to hold herself back in her praise of Bradshaw.
“That’s all he wants to do. Be useful, helpful to us.”
Vienna nodded. Branch had been handcuffed and taken away.
“If it had been a white policeman first through that door,” Daisy said, “no telling what would have happened.”
Vienna smiled at Daisy. Honest to Jesus, she thought, there is somebody for everybody.
It was Horse Bradshaw, Daisy said, who had been the first law officer on the scene and was the other hero of the day.
Why him? Vienna wondered. To Daisy she said, “I wouldn’t tell that to Mother Johnson I was you.”
Mother Johnson, bless her feisty old soul—in her almost brand-new taffeta and chiffon dress that Pearl Moon had made especially for her—and Sister Durham, who was well traveled and therefore knew that Mother Johnson’s dress was superior to anything women of taste were wearing in Chicago, Harlem, Detroit, or Riverton, were still giving Horace the side eye. It was Horace who had blocked her first attempt at an exit and had made her go and sit back down until the chief arrived to decide what was to be done. Whether everybody was to be taken down to the station or interviewed in the church was a decision the brass would have to make, Horace explained, but until then nobody was to leave.
He must have had her confused with sanctified country Negroes like them in that Reverend Prophet Riley Cook’s so-called church that got happy and fell out, flopping like landed carp, or walleyed, snake-handling, red necked Southern Baptists who lay on the church floor. Mrs. Paul Johnson in Church Street Zion A.M.E. did not care how many people had been killed, or how many more had no home training, pistols or no pistols, she would not stand to be ordered around in that fashion.
Everybody agreed with her but his or her complaints were given no more weight than Mother Johnson’s.
“Mysterious Father,” Mother Johnson began, her usually raspy voice like a sharp handclap. It was as if the volume of a radio had suddenly been turned up on a conversation in progress. The others around her hushed, but most did not look her way for fear her wrathful gaze was focused on them. “You who have taught us not to argue with or question the hard lessons You teach. And once again shown us what the absence of Your presence in the hearts of men looks like.”
There was an edge to her voice and a set to her countenance as if she were scolding a child who should have known better, especially after all of the talking-to’s it had had. She paused. It was Pearl and Son she was focused on.
Pearl had her arm around his shoulder. The darkening red of the slain minister’s blood on the boy’s white shirt was like a splotched bull’s-eye. She was whispering to him. He was nodding. Both of them were as calm as if they were watching butterflies on a sunny bench in Perkins Park.
Mother Johnson continued, “In our puny understanding of Your mysterious wisdom, and under the protection of Your loving, guiding hand, You allowed that cowboy man to defend us with his sure and steady aim, Mysterious Father.”
“Amen.”
“And we know we must thank You for nestling that child there to your bosom. Seeing fit to take his eyes, You have burdened him in one way, but giving him another kind of insight have gifted him in another. You spared him this day to carry forth with that gift.”
“Amen.”
She paused to swallow, one, two, three times, as if trying to get down a portion of graveyard dirt, then, eyes narrowed, focusing, Mother Johnson continued, the tone of her voice like a scythe slow-honed against a dry Arkansas grindstone. At the sound of it, children stopped their whining and squirming and bit their lips or sucked their thumbs. Clung closer. There was little doubt they would have regressed to the nipple had breasts been bared.
“—When You taught us through the bitter broth of experience we have sipped from the tarnished cup of injustice at the hands of the law, Mysterious Father—”
Mother Johnson stopped. Her voice had been ebbing lower and lower like a boat on receding floodwaters. It had fallen so low at the end they had to strain to hear her.
Unsure now if it had even been for those around her to hear, they wrinkled their noses as if they smelled smoke and kerosene, or brimstone. They listened to each other breathe.
—
Those who had been interviewed exited the church into the late gray afternoon. They grumbled but were relieved to see the crowd outside. There were husbands who’d come to meet their wives who’d gone to church without them. There were non-churchgoers who’d heard the news and came to see what was what.
Like a fire the word leapt from party line to party line, house to house, front porch to front porch, across back fences, domestic worker to domestic worker, factory worker to factory worker. That it was a Sunday made it easier. The businesses and the bars were closed. The weather even helped by it being gray and rainy, so few were out and about in the parks and such.
It wasn’t long before somebody realized that the center of the action had shifted from the church to the police station. That was where they went.
It was 5:20 when Chap, with Hughes at the wheel, pulled up in front of headquarters. Chap had called ahead, leaving a message for the chief that he would see him at 5:35.
The rain had long ago stopped, the weak sun valiantly trying to dry things off. There were Son and Pearl and Mother Johnson sitting on one of the benches in Veteran’s Square facing police headquarters. Son, with the fifteen-foot-or-so-high flagpole behind him, had dark blood on his shirt the same color as the stripes on the damp, dingy American flag hanging like an empty sleeve from the pole.
A car full of white street toughs, their complexions ruddied by the contents of the occasional flash of tilted flasks, parked on the west side of Veterans Square, across from colored boys from the plant slow-chewing sandwiches in Frank Parker’s old green Hudson on the east side, both motors idling.
Greetings. Expressing their appreciation and relief for Chap’s showing up, and their frustration with still having to be there.
Chap was still mad as a motherfucker.
Mad at the police for holding every goddamned body in the church for that long. Making him have to call up Lars Walton, a Negro lawyer, and have him call up a white lawyer that he trusted to meet him at the police station.
Mad too at the two dead motherfuckers who’d come to Chilton to shoot Richmond in the first goddamned place. Sons of bitches, served them right Branch’d shot their sorry asses to goddamn death. Last time they’d try some shit like that in Chilton.
Mad too at whomever had sent them.
Chap told Mother Johnson he was going to have Hughes take her and Pearl and Son home; he thanked them all.
He took the old woman’s arm and walked her to the car. She nodded to him before he closed the door. Other than that she never said a word. They pulled off.
—
Branch sat on the kitchen stool with the lath-turned legs and spindles in the interrogation room in police headquarters.
The many chips, scars, nicks, and gouges revealed a dingy, money-green beneath the top coat of black enamel paint applied with thick slathering strokes streaked with bristle marks. The green was probably of the same vintage as shrouded the walls of the small windowless room. A sludge-gray beneath that, and where it was gouged, deepest evidence of the original stained pine. The rear left leg was at least an inch and a half shorter than the two it formed an equilateral triangle with, and two inches shorter than its kitty-corner opposite, causing Branch, his back to the door, to make an effort to sit straight so as not to titter. The stool was placed a couple of feet from the oak table with the matching chair behind it.
To calm himself he thought of the Oklahoma flatlands stretched quiet and tranquil, clear to the skyline laid out before him. He waited.
Horse Bradshaw, leaning back against the door, watched Branch Ottley’s back.
“Branch Ottley,” the chief said. He tapped the sheet of paper in front of him. “What the hell kind of name is that?”
Ottley didn’t answer.
“We expect the occasional weekend incident in Low Dunbar,” the chief continued. “It’s expected. But murder?” He shook a cigarette from his Lucky Strike Green Label pack, hung it in the corner of his mouth, and struck a match, holding it as the flame crawled up the stick. “When they come three at a time”—he put the flame to the cigarette tip, inhaled, shook out the match, and dropped it into the jar top ashtray—“that’s too much at once.” He exhaled. “You a member of the church?”
“I was just there to hear the boy sing,” Ottley said.
“What boy?”
Bradshaw told him about Son.
The chief asked, “What was Richmond to you?”
“We both roomed at 560.”
“The boy lives there too,” Bradshaw said.
“Does it seem funny to you, two Negroes with no identification would come in a church and shoot a preacher?”
“Strange. Not funny,” Ottley said.
“Who were they?” the chief asked. The Lucky Strike was angled in the ashtray, burning down.
“Don’t know.”
“Do you know who sent them or why did they shoot the preacher?”
“I don’t.”
“Why’d you shoot them?”
“I had a choice to make. I could have backed off and got them coming out of the church, but I wasn’t sure that Richmond was their only target.”
“Who else you think it might have been?”
“Didn’t think I could wait to find out.”
You wouldn’t tell me if you did know, would you?
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“What are you doing in Chilton?”
“Working for Chap,” Bradshaw said.
“Doing what?”
“Being around,” Ottley said.
“For what?”
“In case.”
“What?”
“I’m needed.”
“Be careful,” the chief said. “You want this to go rough it can go rough. Any more of this snake-hipping do-do bird shit I will let Horse do the questioning.”
“And I know how to get the answers we want,” Bradshaw said.
“Ordinarily,” the chief said, “I’d have him beat the shit out of you, convict you of double homicide, and lock you away as a warning, and the mayor would give me a commendation.”
Branch waited.
“But there’s the slight smell of the hero on you. If only it hadn’t happened in the church.”
Branch waited.
“Why did you have a gun?”
“I always have one.”
“Why?”
“In case.”
The chief paused as he picked up the cigarette, inhaled, and stubbed it out. “Two dead center shots in a crowded church. That’s pretty good shooting.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“Who? Annie Oakley?”
“My uncle.”
“Who was he, Black Bart?”
“Peace officer.”
“He was a marshal. It’s in my statement.”
The chief asked Bradshaw why he hadn’t told him that.
“Sergeant Thomas interviewed him,” Bradshaw said.
The chief asked, “Marshal where?”
“Malone, Oklahoma,” Ottley said.
“You want me or Sergeant Thomas to check?” Bradshaw asked.
“I’ll tell Thomas. You stay with him,” indicating Ottley with a head gesture.
There was an urgent knock on the door.
“It had better be important,” the chief called.
There was another series of knocks. “Chief?”
“What?”
The desk sergeant stuck his head in. “Talk with you a moment, Chief?”
The chief mumbled a curse under his breath, shook a cigarette from the pack; he rose and moved to the door.
The first thing the sergeant told the chief was about that little colored boy in the bloody shirt and two colored women sitting on the bench across in the square.
“What’re they doing?”
“Nothing at first, then somebody brought them sandwiches.”
The chief lighted the cigarette. “They litter, shoot them,” he said, fatigue in his voice.
The sergeant noted the chief’s tone and took a moment before he added about the several others, young bucks, and a bunch of white boys who’d showed up. Collected like crows on a wire, he said, wishing there was more to report, and thinking he hadn’t explained it right.
“And?”
He had a ready answer for the chief on that one: Chap was there to see him.
“You should have told me that first,” the chief said. “Put a man out front to watch them,” he told the sergeant as he headed for his office.
“I’m here to get him,” Chap greeted the chief where he was waiting in his office.
“Ain’t that simple this time, Chap.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“He killed two men.”
“Who had killed a goddamned preacher in a fucking church full of people.”
“That’s a lot of shooting for a stranger.”
“He’s been rooming with me for damn near a year.”
“I’ve had phone calls,” the chief said.
“The mayor and his stooge, Councilman Bradley, and . . . ?”
“Members of the business community . . .”
“Them sons of bitches,” Chap said.
“. . . who don’t like the idea of a sharp-shooting Negro being on the loose. They were questioning me about why we didn’t go in guns blazing, because they’d heard there were snipers firing out of the church windows and from the bell tower. They were afraid of a full-scaled race riot.”
“Did you explain to them that this is bigger shit than their nightmares about boogie-man Negroes? It was self-defense, Maloney. No telling how many lives of Chilton’s finest colored citizens he saved. Tell me I’m fucking lying and I’ll head on home, let you keep him.”
“But his kind of killing is new for us, Chap. And when you get into new territory the safest thing is to be guided by the rules you already know.”
“That sounds like a politician.”
“I might not always want to be chief,” Maloney said.
Well, you sonofabitch, Chap thought. The possibility of Maloney wanting to one day be mayor surprised Chap. He cursed himself for not having counted on that possibility sooner, and for therefore not figuring on it in his long-term dealings with the man.
“First things first,” the chief said. “What we all know is that whoever he is that’s not an ordinary nigger in there.”
“He is from Malone, Oklahoma. His uncle was a famous lawman. I’ve talked with the people out there. They are going to call you to vouch for him, if they haven’t already.”
Maloney thought for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I know about his connection to the marshal there, in Oklahoma.
“He is trouble in dark skin. And we cannot afford him in Chilton.”
Chap didn’t deny it.
“I have to think of my future same as you do yours,” Mahoney said. “Either way it’ll never be on my tombstone Francis J. Maloney was the chief when some outside gunslinger set off some kind of colored uprising.”
Was that the policeman or the politician or both? Chap wondered.
They’d known each other all their lives. Chap had always thought Mahoney as even-tempered as they come. There were only two things upset him; one was his wife’s relatives, and two, people telling him how to be chief of police.
“I don’t write the laws, but I enforce them as they are, fair or not.”
Chap’s ability to read people was momentarily shaken. Mayor hell, Chap thought. Maloney, you son of a bitch, if you can sneak cheese by a fucking rat like me you might be sneaky enough to be the goddamn governor.
“Best way to keep this quiet and peaceful,” Chap said, “is for Branch to disappear. I promised I’d either bring him out or have your guarantee he was all right now, and will be all right when you let him out.”
Maloney, all business again, maybe fearing he’d revealed more than he’d intended, maybe rolling another wooden horse up to the door said, “I told the city fathers that the shooter is in custody, and I’ve got some more looking into it to see just who he is and how much of a threat he is. I’ll hold the suspect and continue our investigation on Monday, until I’m satisfied.”
“You could’ve said that up front,” Chap said.
“I’m the law in Chilton,” Maloney said. “I didn’t have to say anything. I want you and the mayor and Harden and Bradley to know it. Now go out and tell them across the street I’ve got everything under control, and I want them the hell away from in front of my station. And if I’m satisfied after tomorrow, I’ll let him go.”
“By the end of business tomorrow,” Chap said.
“You handle your business I’ll handle mine.”
“I’ll see him before I go,” Chap said.
—
The Oklahoma flatlands stretched quiet and tranquil, clear to the skyline. As his uncle Cochrane had taught him, Branch inventoried the small room again for weapons: the bandy-legged stool, pencils on the desk, the goosenecked lamp with its iron stand, the electric cord on it, in addition to his hands, fists, feet. Surprise would also be on his side.
He said, “I asked the white cop why you weren’t taking my statement.”
Bradshaw made a sound.
Ottley continued, “He said the chief wanted him to do it. I just thought it should’ve been you. You were first on the scene. You arrested me. Where was the other guy when you were controlling the crowd, keeping order, while the sergeant was what? Getting coffee for the chief?”
Bradshaw made the sound again. It was part grunt part snort.
“You’re the one out there being the guardian at the corral gate,” Ottley said, “heel-nipping, circling, barking, keeping the Dunbar Negroes from straying, keeping the captain and the good white folks satisfied so they can go about their daily business, sleep cozy at night.”
“I should’ve done it because we’re both colored? That what you’re tipping around? Well it don’t mean shit to me. And you know something else? Don’t think if I had interrogated you that you wouldn’t’ve told me everything I want to know.”
“I do believe you’d try,” Ottley said.
Bradshaw made the sound again.
“Being a lawman means straddling a shifting line,” Ottley said as if he knew what he was talking about. It was the way he said everything.
Bradshaw looked at the back of Ottley’s head, waiting.
“Casting your lot with the chief as guard dog at the ‘lo’ Dunbar border must’ve seemed the safest bet when you took the job,” Ottley said.
“I know my job.”
Ottley said, “Like always with them it’s use one to control another. You get along out there now because Chap and the ‘lo’ Dunbar Negroes tolerate you.”
Horace, conceding nothing, said, “You got a point?”
Ottley said, “This might be new frontier for you. It’s when a situation gets really desperate is when you find out something about your true self. Anything untoward happens to me in here it’ll be your doing, that’s the way the chief will tell it. How I leave this room will determine how the rest of your life goes in this town.”
“You having a special opinion of yourself don’t change my job.”
“You ever tasted your own blood anywhere but a playing field, Officer Bradshaw?”
“Turn around,” Ottley was told.
He did and said, “Just so you’ll know, I’m not one of your ‘lo’ Dunbar Negroes that will take a lesson from a roughing up.”
“You’ll take what you’re given.”
“No. I won’t,” Ottley said.
Bradshaw tried not to blink but he did.
Ottley asked, “You killed for them yet?”
“It ain’t come up.”
“It has now,” Ottley said.
They looked at each other.
Ottley said, “I took my last beatings when I was a boy. A hand raised to me now with intended harm will end in death. Do you hear me?”
Bradshaw glanced down to make sure the prisoner’s handcuffs were still secure. He said, “I got my job to keep.”
They left it at that.
Branch was facing forward, his back to Bradshaw, seeing cattle watering themselves, prairie dogs, quail, antelope, deer, sagebrush, short grass, and hardpan lakebeds, when the chief’s return interrupted him.
The single knock on the interrogation room door gave Horse just enough time to step aside before the chief opened it and entered, leaving it open. “Turn around,” the chief said to Ottley, who did. Chap was there one step back in the hall. The chief said to Chap, “You’ve seen him.” As he closed the door he stepped back in the hall with Chap and said, “You go tell them you saw him and there’s not a scratch on him.”
Chap said, “I’ll tell them you’ll release his ass when you’re satisfied that all he is is the motherfucker who saved a church full of people from probable bodily harm. I’ll tell them you expect to complete your investigation by fucking end of business tomorrow.”
“I’m going to tell the cop outside that within a half hour he is to clear everybody, colored and white, from the front of my station, or they will be arrested for loitering. The mayor and the good businesspeople of Chilton want everybody fit and ready for work in the morning.”
Chap nodded and turned without a word and moved up the hall.
Chief Maloney knocked twice, opened the door, and said to Bradshaw, “I’m going home, have a shot or two of bourbon, and a piece of lemon pie. Thomas should have some word on him soon. Meanwhile you take him and lock him up. It’s your responsibility to see he doesn’t bump his head or stub his toe.”
“Yes sir,” Bradshaw said.
Before closing the door he said to Ottley, “You are one lucky black son of a bitch.”
Branch sat astraddle the stool, looking at the closed door and thinking of the Oklahoma flatlands stretched quiet and tranquil, clear to the skyline.
—
“When there’s blood spilt,” Chief Maloney said to Branch Ottley the next afternoon, “we want to spill it. If some sharp-shooting, brown-skinned buckaroo is doing my job then they won’t need me.”
Bradshaw could see the chief had thought up the brown-skinned buckaroo last night and was pleased to get it in.
“We heard from the mayor and the head marshal in your home town. So here’s what happens next,” the chief continued. “You get your boots and saddle and ride the hell out of my town, no, make that my state.”
“Wednesday soon enough for you?” Ottley asked.
—
First thing that morning Vienna had sent Peck a telegram. She did not want him to hear the news before she had a chance to reassure him that they were all okay.
CHILTON 845AM MON NOV 30 1941
MR. PECK MORGAN
PALMS HOTEL 193 WALTON STREET GALLERT ILL
WE ARE FINE. DON’T WORRY WILL WRITE TONIGHT STOP
VIENNA
“Or fucking what!” Chap asked Branch, laughing, so angry for so long that everything was funny now.
Branch was sitting in the back seat on the driver’s side behind Hughes, who was driving. Chap was in the front passenger’s seat, on their way to 560 from the police station.
“What the hell he think he’s going to do, meet you in the goddamn street? Him and who? Horse?”
Branch was even smiling.
“Get out of town by Wednesday,” Chap said, the laughter gone.
Son had been awake earlier that morning. He had heard Chap when he began making telephone calls, local and long distance. To the members of the Negro Businessmen’s Association, following up on the calls he had made to them the evening before, to the two colored lawyers, and the ministers. He had talked to some people he knew in Riverton, and then to Reverend Richmond’s people. Chap would make arrangements to claim the reverend’s body. He would let the coroner worry about what happened to the two other bodies.
That evening, seated around the dinner table, they worked it out. Branch said he knew he had to go because he had turned into a lightning rod, and therefore he was a liability to Chap. It was decided that Branch would accompany Richmond’s body to Riverton, and then see if he could pick up a lead on who sent the shooters. They’d had no ID on them; only the labels in their overcoats, suits, and hatbands were from Riverton stores. They had no keys in their pockets, not for an automobile or a residence. How had they gotten to the church? Where had they stayed before? Who? What? Why?
Chap had given Branch a list of names of people who might be of help in Riverton, including Reverend Richmond’s guy—Erskine Churchill—who’d set up the arrangements, first for Richmond’s visit, then relating to the transfer of the body.
The next morning Ada read to Son from the Extra edition of the Chilton Daily.
TRIPLE KILLING IN NEGRO CHURCH
Reverend Gunned Down in Colored Church
Killers Shot by Third Man
Two unidentified negro gunmen gunned down Reverend Cook Richmond during Sunday service at Zion A.M.E church. Minutes into his sermon two gunmen fired multiple shots into the minister, killing him. Richmond was a visiting minister from Riverton.
The police, led by Chief Frank J. Mahoney, detained negro Branch Ottley. Ottley shot and killed the gunmen during a gun battle in the church. None of the others in the church were hurt. Ottley is a resident of 560 Fuller, a boarding house in Lower Dunbar, owned by local businessman Chap Metcalf. The mayhem erupted with approximately 100 present in the church on Spain Street.
Branch Ottley is in custody at the police station pending further investigation.
Local negro Attorney Lars Walton, retained as counsel for Ottley, said he expects his client to be released on an undisclosed bond.
Chief Mahoney reports that the investigation into the identity of the deceased killers continues.
There were pictures of the church with the crowd outside and interviews with a few of those who been inside during the shooting.
Vienna wrote to Peck. She gave him a brief-as-she-could eyewitness report. Then,
. . . Just in this little while I get the feeling that things are going to change because of this. I’m not even sure what it is but I think someday we’re going to look back on this and point to it as a moment of change.
V
Wednesday morning Branch Ottley left for Riverton.