The Lynching Tree Read online

  “Cage is nothing. He thinks he’s a goddamn pistol. He walks around like someone is admiring him. Thinks he’ll solve the lynching.”

  “Good luck on that.”

  “He’s a college boy,” someone else said. “What do you expect?”

  “He doesn’t have any balls. Afraid of some alligators.”

  “I would have shut that door too and run.”

  “We all know why he was hired.”

  “Well he did grow up here.”

  “No. The worst is he looks straight at you when he talks. As if you cared what he was saying.”

  I knew that high voice. It was Tommy Price, from Pompan High, a year ahead of me, a red-faced smart-ass. I hadn’t seen him much since the beginning of the month when we’d nodded at each other in passing.

  I heard Butras say, “You know there’s nothing as pathetic as a bunch of guys standing around razzing someone who isn’t even present.”

  “You’re awfully sentimental about your new friend,” one said.

  “The guy’s trying to be a cop, and what have you. I’m his teacher. You guys are just assholes. Everyone knows there’s a problem between us and them. But do any of you know what to do about it? No. I didn’t think so. So shut up.”

  “Now there’s a scary thought, you teaching anyone,” Tommy Price said before I strolled in.

  The room quieted down fast.

  I looked at Tommy. “Your true colors were showing Tommy.”

  “You son-of-a-bitch, chicken shit, listening outside the door,” Tommy said.

  “Go ahead,” I said. From high school, it came back to me, bad feelings. I felt murder in my fingers.

  “There are a lot of names I’d call you if we weren’t here,” he said.

  “Why don’t you go on and say them,” I said. “Everyone here knows what you’re going to say.”

  Tommy didn’t say anything.

  Butras tapped my shoulder and said, “Let’s go.”

  I never had the naive idea that anyone on the force would care for me. But I wanted to know what they were thinking so I could know if somebody was planning to bring me down. No class at the Academy prepared me for that part of police work.

  I was surprised that Butras defended me. But maybe I shouldn’t have been; the man talked about loyalty almost as often as he named the stars for me, leaning out the window when we pulled over at night, talking skyward but loud enough for me to hear, telling me the seasons all the constellations disappeared.

  71

  Most nights, if things were quiet, I would drop Butras off at his father’s house for an hour and he would have dinner there while I’d get a burger at The Floss. Then I drove back and picked him up. He never invited me in to meet his father. I wondered if the FBI had interviewed him after the lynching.

  New Year’s Eve at around six Butras asked, “You hungry?”

  For the last hour he’d seemed lost in himself and he didn’t hear me the few times I tried to talk. The wind blowing through the partition of the cruiser, the open window, and the normal rattles had been the only noises.

  Pizza at D’Angelos. He had peppers and I had mushrooms on top; we each had small pies with red sauce. He was in his short sleeves and I kept my coat on. Eating, Butras was always making plans. Meals were for looking ahead. Even if it meant just making a route for the evening tour. Two men, covering 100 square blocks, protecting the lives of maybe four thousand people. For five years he had been working out how to get it done efficiently, appearing to be everywhere at once. I remember that when he was talking I was looking down at my badge, #6391.

  “Here’s the way to go about it,” Butras was saying to me. He had some system of half left turns and half right turns that allowed us to take into account all the one-way streets and dead-ends.

  “There’s no other reasonable way,” he said to me.

  And if I disagreed with him, on any subject, he held a grudge. He had a perfect memory for even minor disagreements.

  Thinking back, with all our meals together and plans, we never really discussed the risks of our job, or how, if there was danger, we would react as a team. He told me how he had handled threats or fights in the past, but I guess we both assumed that a month wasn’t very long and the chance of us having to face something together was pretty small.

  Butras and I never really sat at a meal and talked about ourselves. Could I imagine telling him about all the things I hate, about happiness? Is it possible that we could have discussed complex feelings? Could I have talked to him about Clarise? Could I have said to him she had a boom-pow ass—she took a step and her ass took three steps? About Cedric? Could I have told him that America is filled with black men like me who are tired of other people psychologizing us, looking for who we are in our handshakes, our postures, our tones of voice? Would telling him this have made any difference in how we got along?

  Who was he? A man in a spotless shirt, with blue eyes, thin lips and sharp teeth.

  72

  When we got into the car after pizza at D’Angelo’s at around 7 PM on the 31st, the dispatcher called to say I had a phone call from Buzz.

  “I don’t know any Buzz,” I told the dispatcher.

  “What can I tell you,” Jerry said, and gave me the phone number. Jerry chain-smoked and I could hear him puffing as he disconnected me.

  I went back into D’Angelo’s to call.

  “This is Larry,” Butras’ brother said on the phone. “I used the name Buzz ’cause I knew he’d be there. I’m calling to tell you my brother is drinking again and you should have a talk with him. My big-fucking-shot brother.”

  “Drinking again?”

  “My brother’s a fucking drunk, if you didn’t know, pea-brain. An alcoholic. You want me to say it some other way?”

  Then the kid hung up.

  I had no idea about my partner’s drinking history before the call. It didn’t sound right; but then it did. Butras’ bad stomach. The Rolaids. Prescott’s crack in the station about getting drunk. All the cologne he wore, the vanilla air freshener.

  Sure, I was one swift fucking cop. No one had told me and I hadn’t seen it.

  But then I thought: the kid is fucking with me, making things up to take down his brother. Butras never acted drunk around me, not for a second.

  73

  We hit the raccoon around 7:30 PM, the pizza taste still sour in our mouths. We were riding up Governor Street and I was thinking about the call from Larry. Governor was unlit except for the porch lights on houses that were 80 or so yards apart, separated by maple trees and set back from the curb. We were going about 30 miles per hour when the thing streaked across the street from right to left, a scrambling shadow. There was a small thump against the wheel on the passenger side and Butras immediately knew he’d hit something.

  “Ah, shit,” he let out.

  We stopped and backed up about five feet and got out of the car, leaving it running. The raccoon was split, and lying on its side along the curb like it had popped off the front wheel and fallen back. It was alive and shimmering with its sharp-looking claws; it was fighting pathetically to escape.

  “Shit. This thing’s probably got rabies,” Butras said.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Only one thing to do. Let’s get back in the car.”

  We walked back to our seats, shut the door, and Butras shifted into drive. He angled the tires about twenty degrees toward the curb and slowly went forward crushing the raccoon’s head under the same tire that had knocked him back. The sound was a puffiness, then a silence.

  “Put the poor guy out of his misery,” he said, backing up again.

  He parked, got out and went into the back seat for a pair of heavy gloves and then opened the trunk for a black garbage bag and a shovel. He handed the bag to me and scooped up the dead raccoon, sliding it into the bag. Then he tied the bag away and dumped it into the trunk. I watched him work. He didn’t seem drunk; he was acting normal.

  I admired how Butras
had handled the accident, but he didn’t like being complimented. We didn’t speak about what happened until an hour later when we got a call from the dispatcher who put the sargeant on.

  “I hear you guys killed a dog tonight.”

  “Word travels fast,” Butras said. “But that’s wrong. It was a raccoon.”

  “Well, someone on Governor Street reported that your police car maliciously drove over the head of an animal and killed it. They said it was a dog. An animal lover, I guess. Just wanted you to know.”

  “Hey thanks,” Butras said.

  When he signed off, he said to me, “You can’t win in this job. Someone’s always got a complaint on you. Even being humane to damn raccoons with rabies. You can’t win. But you have to keep smiling.”

  74

  In the eighth grade I took an aptitude test at Bryant School. It was a sunny Saturday morning. Inside, there were long, dark corridors I followed to the test room. There were maybe one hundred kids in the cafeteria with me. We sat on those plastic picnic benches, six of us to a table. They didn’t look much different from the kids in my class; I had seen a few around. I knew some of the others who went to the middle school across town. There were framed paintings of old white-haired men high up on the walls all around the yellow room.

  I sat in the front, nearest to where they set up a blackboard to keep track of how much time we had left for our answers, and near a bronze bust of a man with a wig that I couldn’t take my eyes off. The blackboard was as green as a pool table. I remember the test started at 9 AM. I had brought along two sharp pencils. One of the boys on my bench wrote very hard and the whole table shook.

  The proctor came in with a white shirt and a tie. He had a limp and he carried a stack of exams under his arms like a football. The man kept blowing his nose into a red handkerchief all morning during the test. Every half-hour he called out the time in a high voice.

  I don’t remember how I did on the test, but I remember coming out into the blinding sun and running all the way home with energy I didn’t think I had left.

  75

  The black attorney prosecuting me will say, “A crime was committed New Year’s Eve. Would you agree?”

  And I will agree.

  “Therefore there must be a criminal. Would you agree?” And I will nod.

  “And you, the man with the loaded weapon, the one who fired the gun, are the criminal, the assassin. Not only because of your gun, but because you were wearing blue, because of that color and the responsibility it implied. You were wearing blue, were you not?”

  He will hate me. He will try to humiliate me.

  But I am not an assassin. That term does not cover what I’ve done.

  76

  My sister had worked herself up about my father’s dating, but I didn’t know how she would proceed against him. For all her concerns, I thought she wouldn’t have much influence on him.

  She called me three nights in a row after Christmas, to discuss his “adventures.”

  “I hope he’s not planning to spend New Year’s Eve with her. I certainly do not want to see her at any of my holiday dinners,” Brenda said more than once.

  After this third call, I realized that Brenda had no plan other than to watch our father as closely as possible and to complain to me about him. I called her back on the afternoon of the 29th, right after I hung up. I was dressing as we spoke, preparing to meet her at my father’s house in an hour. She talked so much, and so fast, I hadn’t had a chance to tell her what I’d been thinking.

  “Why don’t you tell him what you think instead of telling me?” I asked.

  “You know he’ll say, ‘Stay out of this business. It’s my business.’”

  She liked to imagine that she had some authority over him though she knew that no one did now that our mother was dead.

  “Tell him you don’t want to meet this woman at our next dinner,” I said.

  “You know he’ll say, ‘I’ll have who I want to my house for dinner.’ And anyway, he doesn’t even know that I know about her,” Brenda said.

  “You ought to stop calling me about all this,” I told her. “It’s your thing.”

  “If anyone should try to ruin his affair, it’s you,” she said. “You never liked him anyway. Why don’t you call up his lady friend and tell her a thing or two. Tell her a couple of stories about him, about how he used to whack you until you were raw, how he used to lean out from his chair and catch your hand and squeeze it until you screamed. Have her paged on one of their dates. That’s the way to end this foolishness.”

  “You’re evil,” I said. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “I’m looking after his interest here,” Brenda said.

  “And I’m happy to not look after our father at all,” I said.

  77

  In my uniform, at night, early in the month, I was sometimes afraid walking the streets. I never said this to Frank Butras. I saw things at night: who came home from work late, who slept with their light on. But I also saw myself, my reflection in store windows, my face with its silvery-green outline, and I heard things, and was jumpy and alert. Walking alone at night, I felt that I had lots of time on my hands. I thought of the odd people I met during the day. The heavy lady with chopped-up hair who came toward me on Oak Lane shouting, “Have you confessed to God our Savior?” “Yes I have,” I told her, hoping she’d move along. “Prayer, that’s the thing,” she said before walking past me. The man who fell asleep at the wheel at five in the afternoon and drove his car right through a parked car on Ogden Street. Who got out of his car with his stooped shoulders and bad teeth, bleeding from his hawk nose, asking, “What happened?”

  At night the town was closed down. Across the street from Butras somewhere out there in the dark, I felt like a target. And I’d feel sick for a second, then positive again. I had energy and just as suddenly a heaviness. Every window caught the light. I thought of Clarise and felt lightheaded with the pleasure and mess of our getting together. Sometimes I walked fast, as if I had somewhere to go.

  Late in the month was different from the beginning of December—walking through Oak Lane at night, Butras visible across the street—because I felt no fear. Now I only hoped that no one who knew me would come up to me, that I could stay away from people. And I worried, at these times, that if someone gave me trouble, I’d come on too strong, be too rough. I’d be stubborn and forget that I was a policeman. I’d feel myself pumped up like I was in the gym, a little out of control from all the weights, my skin throbbing. As I walked, I tried to convince myself that not everyone was a criminal. I tried to remind myself that we got called only when people were at their worst. I’d become a typical policeman unknowingly; it had filled me up.

  78

  I met Brenda and Cedric at my father’s house for dinner on the 29th, a night off. I still hadn’t been able to reach Clarise since Christmas. Cedric arrived twenty minutes late and when he took off his bulky red coat, his left bicep looked to be about twice the size of his right through his shirtsleeve.

  “What happened to your arm?” I asked him.

  “I’m out running last night, about five o’clock along the park, the way I always go, and this dog takes off after me. He doesn’t even bark, he just starts running. So I figure he’s going to chase me out of his territory or something, then back off, but he’s after me longer than he should be. I’m picking up speed and this fucking Doberman is making up ground on me and I see he’s serious or crazy, and I know I’m not going to outrun him for very long, but I keep pushing because I’m trying to get out of his zone. I’m running scared. I’m breathing heavy as a mackerel on a dock. But I hear his little clicking feet behind me coming fast, so I stop—I’m beat, I can’t go much further—and he jumps at my chest and I put up my arm to block him and his teeth grab onto my arm. I have this dog hanging from my arm and I can see the blood coming out next to his tooth, running down my arm and the pain is burning me up.”

  “Oh my God,” my sister said.
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br />   “I start swatting this dog with my other arm, punching him, trying to get him to let go. And finally he falls off and I go up on top of this parked car. I just run up onto the roof of this Toyota which I’m bending in, but I don’t care, and the dog doesn’t follow me. He stands there looking at me. Then when he sees that I’m not coming down, he turns around and trots off. Somebody must have seen me and called an ambulance because not a minute later, as I’m stepping down off the roof, an ambulance rolls up and takes me to St. Luke’s.”

  “You’re lucky that dog didn’t kill you,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that animal. Dog went berserk.”

  “Then he just walked away.”

  “I called Clarise from St. Luke’s and she came over.”

  “You did?” I said.

  “She got there in ten minutes from wherever she was. Talking all her medical stuff with the doctors taking care of me, cleaning these holes in my arm out.”

  “She hasn’t returned my calls in a few days.”

  “Get yourself bitten, she’ll call you,” my sister said. She knew Clarise, but I’d never really told her about the disappearances I lived with.

  “How’d she seem?” I asked Cedric.

  “She seemed fine. Better mood than I was in. She got a cab and took me home when they were done with me.”

  Cedric rolled up his sleeve and showed us the gauze wrapping the bandages that ran from his elbow nearly to his shoulder.

  Every light in the house was on. We were ready to eat early, around 5:30, hungry from sitting around doing nothing all day but watching college football, the cold dark outside making the house feel huge. Ellington was playing duets with Coltrane in the living room. Brenda was cooking a turkey.