LAYLA
This is a happy place. I can tell just from walking up the steps. The Georgian home stands proud but looks stunted next to the higher apartment building on its left. Matching burgundy shutters on the two top windows lie against sand-colored bricks. Sunlight creeps above wispy clouds, soft raspberry and sherbet hues kiss the rapidly dwindling stagnant puddles on the walkway.
I don’t expect a smile when Holden Walters opens the door. I expect grumpiness, maybe a little cursing. He stands beyond the threshold grinning at Tim and me like old friends, like he was expecting us and greets us, “Morning! What can I do for you?”
I try to ease into the conversation so I don’t sound as crazy as I feel. I go into my professional voice, the one I use on the phone in the office, the one that makes white people not so afraid of a black person. I’m a representative of myself.
“Sir, I’m Layla Potter and this is Timothy Simmons. I got your name from Samuel Sikorska. I just want to ask you about an event in January 1979. The Syrus Myllstone case. Do you happen to remember it?”
His smile fades as he replies, “I do.”
“I have some questions about a newspaper article.”
“What questions? You wasn’t even born then.”
I can’t say I’ve ever had someone stare into my eyes the way he does, sizing up my character, my motivation as easy as someone breathes in and out.
“Mr. Walters...”
“Call me Holden.”
“Holden, I think maybe you knew my father, Jackson Potter.”
My stomach clenches from calling my father by his first name. Or it could have been the cheap coffee from the gas station we stopped at a few minutes ago.
“You both might wanna come in out this cold,” he replies.
The compact living room seems bigger with only a small couch, red patterned chair and a small coffee table. I recognize a print of an old Jackson Pollack painting hanging above the couch. The pony wall to the small eat-in kitchen reveals an older woman standing with a short-cut salt-and-pepper afro, bright eyes and a cup of coffee in her hand.
“This is Tabitha, my wife,” Holden introduces.
A few pictures of Holden, Tabitha, family and friends hang on the wall nearest the side door. One picture, the frame bigger than some, smaller than others captures Holden next to a guy with bushy blond-gray hair, Senator Sikorska. He and Holden are fishing and, by the looks of the large swordfish and the smiles, it was a good trip.
“We’re sorry to disturb you,” I begin. “Tim and I have a flight this morning. I swear we won’t take much of your time.”
“No bother,” he says.
From my pocket I retrieve the yellowed article.
“I’ll put some more coffee on,” Tabitha says.
“We won’t be here long,” I reply, but Tabitha only smiles and walks back into the kitchen. She’s the same height as Grandma Violet. Possesses the same kind of firm, but gentle gaze like Momma. She has spoken only a few words since I walked through her door, but I already trust her.
Holden’s face sags further. The imprints of caramel skin etch an accepted grief, a sorrow he learned to live with long ago.
“I knew this time would come. That this story wasn’t over. You just weren’t who I was expecting,” says Holden.
“Who were you expecting?” Tim interjects.
He points to the sole picture from the article, a picture of Lebanon. “I was expecting him.”
He began the story. The night he arrested Lebanon hiding in a backyard two blocks from the scene, clothes covered in blood. The violence overshadowing an abominably cold night.
Hotness in my belly courses north, sledgehammer-strong pulses knock against my temples. I wait for destruction. I wait for him to mention Dad. I wait to hate my father. Tim squeezes my sweaty hand. There is a cost to the knowledge Holden carries, a burden heavier than two thousand pounds on his shoulders. Hunched over, deflated he relays the last of the tale.
I still have questions. Important ones. “The clip said you believed someone else was there that night.”
Holden fidgets with his perfectly starched collar and replies, “Yes.”
“Was it my father? Did he kill Syrus?”
“No, sweetheart. I knew someone else was there, but Lebanon didn’t let on. The only thing he told me was someone, I’m guessing that might have been your dad, hit Syrus with the pipe and was so scared, he ran off. Syrus was alive. Lebanon confessed he kept hitting Syrus. Killed him.”
“But why?”
“All I can do is speculate. Maybe he thought he was helping your dad. Maybe he was tired of feeling powerless and thought killing a man was a way to take power back. Maybe both those things together.” Holden stood up and walked to his wall of pictures, staring at none of them in particular. “Lebanon never said why he did it and I didn’t spend a lot of time with him. When I saw him, he was already beaten to hell. There wasn’t a thing I could do for him either. We both had to keep our mouths shut. He didn’t talk about your dad and I didn’t talk about his bruises. I was a cop first, black second. But, Lebanon, the thing that struck me is he didn’t shake or mumble or cry. He took whatever was done to him in those rooms and acted like it was normal. It was disturbing. It was sad and disturbing. I’ll never forget that or him. I hoped maybe he got out, did something with his life. I hoped he wasn’t dead or in another prison somewhere. I quit being a cop a couple years later, wasn’t making the difference I set out to. First time I realized that was looking at Lebanon. I didn’t help him. Didn’t feel like I could. And I regretted it. All these years.”
A tightness spreads across my chest. “So how does my dad play into this? When did you meet my father?”
“Never have. Not face-to-face.”
“So how did you recognize his name?”
“Your daddy was the local golden boy! Everyone knew him or about him. Football star. Good student too from what I heard. College bound. Preacher’s kid. He had a lot going for him. More so than a lot of other kids then. Which means he had a lot to lose I suppose. Someone like Lebanon can latch on to that. Not hard for someone like him I’d think.”
So, Dad didn’t murder anyone. He just believes he did.
Lebanon presented himself a martyr, someone who took the blame, and used my father’s guilt. He made sure Dad served some type of sentence with a special cage of his very own making.
“Are you okay?” asks Tim.
“I think so. I mean Dad isn’t a killer and that’s, God I can’t tell you how much of a relief that is, but the rest of it. It’s crazy, Tim. Crazy and sad.”
The blessed aroma of coffee wafts from the kitchen. Excusing myself, I go pour a cup, think about the violent loop we’re in. I realize it isn’t just merciless. It’s ravenous, consuming everything and everybody.
Light footsteps invade my heavy thoughts. Swirling around ready to ask Tim to give me some space to absorb everything, I instead see Tabitha.
“Sweetie, there are many things we learn in this world,” she says. “Those things can make you hard, but you have a choice to not let it. You don’t be the rock. You be the river. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Now go do what you need to do. Stay strong. It’ll be alright.”
She’s a great hugger. Just the right amount of squeezing and warmth.
It will be okay. It must be.
Go!