Not Flesh Nor Feathers

“First Congregationalist Church.”



“Right. Burned down. Fire. That’s what we’re going to have to start with. We’ve got burned bodies and a burned church. What follows logically?”



“The bodies were burned in the church,” he prompted. “And don’t forget the Klan. I might be a Midwestern lad at heart, but if there’s one thing I know about the Klan, it’s that they liked to burn things—and the First Congregationalist Church would’ve been a tempting target.”



“Why’s that?” I asked.



“It was a racially diverse congregation—one of the first in the country. Black people, white people, coming together to worship. But mostly the church is just a footnote in an occasional history buff’s article. I couldn’t even find out for sure where it used to be, only that it burned down in 1919 and no one could agree on why.”



“And it was Caroline’s church?”



“Apparently.”



“Weird,” I said.



“Why?”



“The Reads have been a rich, prestigious family around here for generations. I have a hard time believing they’d send their kids to a church where there was any mixing. I guess they could have been enlightened before their time, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”



He shrugged and tiptoed his way out of the corridor, into the stairwell. “Oh ye of little faith,” he said.



“I have plenty of faith.”



“Just not in other people, huh?”



I wanted to argue with him, because I didn’t like the way it sounded when he said it—like an accusation, or an observation that he found distasteful. I could’ve argued, but he’d said it himself: he was a Midwestern lad. He wouldn’t understand. There were boundaries here, south of the Mason-Dixon; and there still are. Time moves slower here. History drags this place along, kicking and screaming, until a city like Chattanooga takes on polish enough to resemble its northern or western brethren. So when people come to it cold from somewhere else, they take a look around and they think, “This is just like some other place I’ve seen.”



But it isn’t.



Back downstairs there was nowhere to sit and almost nowhere to stand in the Starbucks. But coffee was still brewing, and it was being passed out for free with help from the Red Cross people.



Nick and I each took a cup, and neither of us diluted it with anything sweet before we drank it.



16



The Archives



My phone rang, and even though I was crouched in a corner without room to flex my elbows, I wrangled my arms around enough to answer it. “What’s going on? Are you still down there?” Dave asked, seeming to assume that I was awake and alive despite the hour.



I checked the back of the phone, and it told me we were creeping up on 3:00 A.M. “I’m still down here,” I confirmed. “Down at the Read House, now.”



“What? Why?”



“Because . . . it’s a long story. Nick’s here,” I told him, as if it explained everything—even though it didn’t.



“Lu’s asleep finally, but barely. I couldn’t join her though, so I thought I’d call. What about—I mean, have you reached or seen Harry? Or you know, Malachi?” It cost him to say that second name. I could hear him trying to keep the syllables from sounding too angry.



“I found them. They’re over at the Choo-Choo. They stayed> there, I told them to. They’re going to go on home, whenever they can. So you can tell Lu she can rest a little easier, not having to sit down at the same table with them.”



“That’s not going to help her. Not going to help me, either. We want you to come home.”



“You and me both, man. But right now? I can’t imagine how it could happen. I’ll just hole up for the night, and one of these days they’ll have to open the bridges again. Won’t they?”



“I thought you were going to hole up with Harry and your brother?”



“It didn’t work out. But I didn’t go far and I made it somewhere safe, so you can stop worrying. Go get some sleep for yourself.”



Nick wrangled his way back to me, having briefly left my side to see if he could beg a refill from the Red Cross people.



“Who is it?”



I pulled the phone down against my neck to quickly answer, “My uncle,” then returned my attention to Dave. “I’m safe. Everything’s fine. Go to bed.”



He begged to differ. “Everything’s pretty far from fine, princess. Chattanooga’s on CNN and all the major networks. And there are rumors coming out—there’s footage, baby.” Oh, I could really hear it then—the worry. The fear. The wish that we could reverse time a day or two and have nothing more to fear than an awkward dinner with strange relatives.



“Footage,” I echoed weakly.



“Footage, yeah. Things in the river, down there. And there are riots, and gangs, and there’s looting, and—”



“And right here at the Read House,” I cut him off, “there’s Red Cross coffee that actually tastes better than the Starbucks stuff they were handing out earlier. There are people sleeping on the floor wrapped in jackets and blankets, and there isn’t enough space to go around. But it’s pretty quiet. There are cops, and there are a few firefighters, and we passed some paramedics in the hall a few minutes ago. Dave, I swear to God, it’s not that bad here. Not like what you’re seeing on the news.”



Nick heard that much and his interest was piqued, but he knew better than to interrupt. Instead, he shimmied himself closer to me and listened.



“Stay there, then,” Dave begged. “Promise me you’ll stay put. They’ll be evacuating people for days—but if you’ve got to stay someplace, better the hotel than anywhere down by the river. No one knows what to call it, but I’ve seen the footage, from people with little digital cameras and from some of the more ballsy news guys. It looks like hell down there. Please promise you’ll stay at the hotel.”



“I . . . I can’t promise you that. I don’t know what’s going to happen an hour from now, or come morning. They might make us move—like you said, they’re evacuating people all over the place.”



“Then promise me you won’t leave unless they make you. Promise you’ll stay unless it’s safe to leave.” He was begging. He didn’t ever beg, not like that.



“I promise I’ll do my best to stay safe,” was all I managed. It was a watered-down promise and we both knew it. But it was the best I could do.



“That’s not enough to let us sleep.”



“But this is—this is a fluid situation,” I told him, borrowing some sound bite I’d overheard on television. “I’ll do my best. It’s what I always do. And—I’d like to point out—I’ve survived this long with nothing but my best. You’re going to have to trust me to take care of myself.”



“I do trust you that far. I do, I swear. But please—don’t take any unnecessary chances. Just stay away from those chances. Think of your poor old Lu and Dave up here, and then, if you get a chance to do something crazy—think twice. Will you do that for us?”



“Of course I will. You don’t even have to drag the promise out of me. You ought to know better.”



“Then why don’t I feel any better?”



“I don’t know,” I said, and I almost felt like crying, except that it wouldn’t have done either of us any good. “But I’ll be careful. And I’ll call. Or you can call me, just as long as this phone lasts.”



“Hey,” Nick squeezed my arm and pointed out through the glass doors. “Friends of yours.”



Outside I saw Jamie half-carrying Christ, dragging him up to the nearest person in uniform—a woman with a jacket that said “EMT” in yellow letters on the back. Jamie’s bushy black mane was slicked and soaked down his back, nearly down to the top of his pants. His shirt was torn and he was either muddy or bloody, I couldn’t tell which.



“Dave, I’ve got to go. Jamie just got here with a friend of ours. I think he’s hurt.”



“The friend, or Jamie?”



“Yeah,” I said, even though it didn’t answer him very well. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll be careful, though. I’ll take care of myself. You go get some rest. Love you both,” I added, and closed the phone.



“Thanks,” I said to Nick as I pushed past him and out to the front, through the glass door and into the night—which had gone cold. Or maybe I was only tired, and drained, and hungry, and the world felt cold even though it wasn’t.



“Jamie? Christ?”



“What are you doing here?” Jamie lowered Christ into a crumpled sitting position against the building, where the EMT shined a light into his eyes and tried to talk to him.



“Same as everybody else, I guess.”



He grabbed me by one arm and gave me a hug that I was preposterously happy to receive. He felt slim and tight under my arms, but comfortingly, comfortably strong.



“Glad to see you made it in one piece,” he said into my hair, then pulled back to look at me. “But I thought you were headed for the Choo-Choo?”



“I was, yeah. I made it, too. But then I ended up doubling back. Long story.”



Nick emerged behind me, squeezing into the space beneath the overhang.



“Ah,” Jamie said, as if it answered everything. He pointed a thumb down at Christ. “Lookit what I found. He was floundering around on Fourth Street; Becca and me nearly tripped over him on the way back up to her place.”



“Hey darling,” I said, crouching down beside Christ. His orange semi-Mohawk was flattened and brown, and his cheeks looked even more gaunt than usual. Around his eyes a blue-gray cloud smudged itself deep, giving him the look of a corpse, though his chest rose and fell, fast and hard.



“Hey,” he mumbled back, the single sound stretching over a wheezing pair of breaths.