Andre
We were not abandoning him. We were not telling him that he was unwelcome. I was to go to Eloe, and we were going to sit down, alone, and talk. I would explain that Celestial and I had been seeing each other for the last two years, that we were engaged. But this didn’t mean he didn’t have a home to go to. If he wanted to settle in Atlanta, we would set him up with an apartment, whatever he needed to get on his feet. I was to stress how glad we were that he was out and how grateful we are to finally see justice done. Celestial suggested the word forgive, but I couldn’t give her that. I could ask for understanding. I could ask for temperance, but I wouldn’t ask him to forgive me. Celestial and I were not wrong. It was a complex situation, but we were not on our knees before him.
Right before we drifted off to sleep, Celestial murmured, “Maybe I need to go, be the one to tell him.”
“You got to let me do this,” I said.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all I had, that and a Styrofoam cup leaching chemicals into my truck-stop coffee.
Once I exited the interstate, I handled my vehicle like I was taking my driver’s exam. The last thing I needed was to attract police attention, especially on the back roads of Louisiana. If it could happen to Roy, it could happen to me. Besides my conspicuous skin, my car was a stunner. I’m a humble man about most things; I care nothing for kicks, and Celestial sometimes throws away my favorite old shirts when I’m not looking. But I do like myself a fine vehicle. The truck—Mercedes M-Class—had gotten me pulled over a half-dozen times in the last three years, and once I was even slammed against the hood. Apparently, make plus model plus race equaled drug dealer, even in Atlanta. But this was mostly when I drove through neighborhoods that were all-out hood, or hood-ish, although tony suburbs like Buckhead weren’t safe either. You know what they say: if you go five miles outside of Atlanta proper, you end up in Georgia. You know what else they say? What do you call a black man with a PhD? The same thing you call one driving a high-end SUV.
I almost didn’t recognize Roy’s house without the Chrysler parked in the yard. I circled the block twice, confused. The Huey Newton chairs on the porch convinced me that I was in the right place. As I pulled in close to the house, my bumper kissing the porch, a bank of floodlights hit me, and I shielded my eyes like I was staring into the sun.
“Hello,” I called. “It’s me. Andre Tucker. I’m here for Roy Junior.” The neighbors played music, zydeco, loud and jaunty. I walked slowly, like I was worried that someone might want to shoot me if I made any sudden moves.
Roy Senior stood behind a screen door, wearing a striped butcher’s apron. “Come on in, Andre,” he said. “You eat yet? I’m fixing to make some salmon croquettes.”
I shook his hand and he led me to the built-on living room I remembered from the last time I was here. The hospital bed was gone, and the green recliner looked new.
“I’m here to pick up Roy, you know.”
Big Roy walked toward the center of the house with me close behind. In the kitchen he readjusted his apron strings, knotting them around his barrel torso. “Little Roy is gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Atlanta.”
I sat down at the kitchen table. “What?”
“You hungry?” Big Roy asked. “I could fix you some salmon croquettes.”
“He’s gone to Atlanta? When did he leave?”
“A while ago. Let me get you something to eat. Then we can talk about the details.” He handed me a glass of purple Kool-Aid, which tasted like summertime.
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your hospitality, but can you give me the broad outline? Roy is gone to Atlanta? How? Plane? Train? Automobile?”
He pondered this like a multiple-choice test as he cranked the lid off of a can. Finally he said, “Automobile.”
“Whose car?”
“Mine.”
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
I took my phone out of my pocket. We were probably a hundred miles from the nearest cell tower, but I had to try.
“Cell phones don’t work so well out here. All the kids want them for Christmas, but it’s a waste of money.”
I checked the screen. My battery was good to go, but there were no signal bars. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being set up. On the wall was mounted a green phone, rotary model; I nodded toward it. “May I?”
Crumbling Ritz crackers, he slumped his shoulders and said, “They cut it off yesterday. With Olive gone, it has been hard making ends meet.”
I was quiet as he worked over the little bowl, cracking an egg and then stirring the mixture with slow, careful strokes, like he was afraid to hurt it.
“I’m sorry to hear this,” I said, embarrassed for even asking about the phone. “I’m sorry to hear it has been so hard.”
He sighed again. “I get by, mostly.”
I sat down at the kitchen table and watched Big Roy cook. The years had clearly grabbed him by the throat. He was the same age as my own father, give or take, but his back was stooped and wrinkles pulled at the corners of his mouth. This is the face of a man who has loved too hard.
I compared him with my own father, vain and handsome, complexion as smooth as glass. Carlos’s signature gold chain was sort of Saturday Night Fever, at least that’s how I always thought of it. But maybe he treasured it as his mother’s gift of protection. I wasn’t sure yet what it meant to me.
Plunking the fish patties into a skillet of hot grease, Big Roy said, “You’re going to have to stay the night. Gets dark so early in the winter. It’s too late to get back on the road. Besides, you don’t look like you got another seven hours in you.”
I crossed my arms on the table to make a nest for my heavy head. “What is going on?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.
Finally, the simple meal was served. Salmon croquettes and a side of sliced carrots. The croquettes were edible, if not good, but I didn’t have much appetite. Big Roy ate his entire meal with a short fork, even the carrots. He smiled at me from time to time, but I didn’t quite feel welcome. After dinner, I washed the dishes while he carefully poured the used cooking grease into a tin jar. We dried the dishes and put them away tag-team style, with me pausing every few minutes to see if a signal had somehow made it to my phone.
“What time did Roy leave?” I asked.
“Last night.”
“So . . .” I said, doing the math.
“He made it to Atlanta right about the time you were leaving.”
Once everything was clean, dried, put away, and wiped down, Big Roy asked me if I drank Johnnie Walker.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Might as well.”
At last we settled ourselves in the den, glasses in hand. I sat on the firm sofa, and he chose the big leather recliner.
“When Olive first died, I couldn’t bring myself to lay in my own bed. For a month, I slept in this chair, leaned it back and put the footrest up. Pillow, blanket. That’s how I spent the whole night.”
I nodded, picturing it, remembering him at the funeral, destroyed but determined. “Next to him,” Celestial had said, “I felt like a fraud.” I didn’t tell her, but Big Roy provoked the opposite reaction in me. I felt his emotions, deeper than the grave, and I understood his hopelessness, too, his longing for a woman you could never hold.
“It took me a year to learn how to sleep without Olive, if you call what I do at night sleeping.”
I nodded again and drank. Photos of Roy at various ages watched me from the dark-paneled walls. “How is he?” I asked. “How is Roy making out?”
Big Roy shrugged. “As good as you could expect having spent five years locked away for something he didn’t do. He lost so much, and not only Olive. Before this, Roy was on the track, you know. He did everything he was supposed to do, got way farther than me. And then . . .”
I flopped back in the seat. “Roy knew I was coming. Why did he take off on his own?”
Big Roy took a judicious sip and bent his expression into something similar to a smile but not quite. “Let me start by saying that I appreciate you playing a role in my wife’s home-going. When you grabbed that other shovel, I know you were sincere. I appreciate you for that, too. I am honest right now in thanking you.”
“You don’t have to say thank you,” I said. “I was just—”
But then he cut me off. “But, son, I know what you’re doing. I know what you came to tell Little Roy. You got a thing going on with Celestial.”
“Sir, I—”
“Don’t try to deny it.”
“I wasn’t going to deny it. I was going to say that I didn’t want to discuss it with you. It’s between me and Roy.”
“It’s between her and Roy. They are the ones married.”
“He has been gone five years,” I said. “And we thought he had about seven more to go.”
“But he’s out now,” Big Roy said. “Those two are legally married. Young people don’t respect the institution. But I’ll tell you, back when I married Olive, marriage was so sacred that everyone aimed for a wife that was fresh, just out of her father’s house. They tried to warn me away from her because she had a child, but I didn’t listen to nothing but my heart.”
“Sir,” I said. “I can’t say what I think about the institution in general, but I know where things stand with me and Celestial.”
“But you don’t know where things stand with Roy and her. That’s the only thing I care about. I don’t give a damn about you and your feelings. Only thing that matters to me is my boy.” Big Roy shifted forward; I thought he was going to hit me, but he reached for the remote and activated the television. On the screen, a chef was demonstrating some kind of miracle blender.
I didn’t say anything for maybe a minute until the phone rang, long and loud like a fire alarm.
“I thought you said it was disconnected.”
“I lied,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“I wouldn’t have figured you for this,” I said, betrayed. I was tired of being subjected to the whims of fathers—Roy’s, Celestial’s, and my own. “I thought you were about honor. Your word is your bond, all of that.”
“You know”—this time he was smiling—“I felt bad about telling you that lie, until you believed it.” Now the smile bent into a smirk. “Tell me, do I look like someone who can’t pay my bills?”
He chuckled, low and slow, but built up momentum with every breath. I swiveled my head, looking around for hidden cameras. This day was unspooling like a romantic comedy, one in which I don’t get the girl.
“Come on,” Big Roy said. “Sometimes all you can do is laugh.” And I did. At first, I was driven by an urge to be polite, to humor an old man, but something in my chest lubricated and I cackled like a crazy person, the way you let loose when you suspect that God isn’t laughing with you but laughing at you.
“But let me tell you one thing more,” he said, cutting off his chuckle like water at a tap. “I’m happy to let you stay the night, but I’m asking you not to use my phone. You have been alone with Celestial for what, five years? You had all that time to make a case for yourself. Give Roy this one night. I see that you feel the need to fight for her, but let it be a fair fight.”
“I want to check and make sure she’s all right.”
“She’s all right. You know Roy Junior isn’t going to harm her. Besides, she knows the number. If she had something to say, she would have called you.”
“But that could have been her calling a little while ago.”
The elder Roy picked up the remote again like a gavel. When he shut off the television, the room was so quiet that I could hear the crickets outside. “Listen, I’m doing for Roy what your own father would do for you.”