ONE
Ike tried to remember a time when men with badges coming to his door early in the morning brought anything other than heartache and misery, but try as he might, nothing came to mind.
The two men stood side by side on the small concrete landing of his front step with their hands on their belts near their badges and their guns. The morning sun made the badges glimmer like gold nuggets. The two cops were a study in contrast. One was a tall but wiry Asian man. He was all sharp angles and hard edges. The other, a florid-faced white man, was built like a powerlifter with a massive head sitting atop a wide neck. They both wore white dress shirts with clip-on ties. The powerlifter had sweat stains spreading down from his armpits that vaguely resembled maps of England and Ireland respectively.
Ike’s queasy stomach began to do somersaults. He was fifteen years removed from Coldwater State Penitentiary. He had bucked the recidivism statistics ever since he’d walked out of that festering wound. Not so much as a speeding ticket in all those years. Yet here he was with his tongue dry and the back of his throat burning as the two cops stared down at him. It was bad enough being a Black man in the good ol’ US of A and talking to the cops. You always felt like you were on the edge of some imaginary precipice during any interaction with an officer of the law. If you were an ex-con, it felt like the precipice was covered in bacon grease.
“Yes?” Ike said.
“Sir, I’m Detective LaPlata. This is my partner, Detective Robbins. May we come in?”
“What for?” Ike asked. LaPlata sighed. It came out low and long like the bottom note in a blues song. Ike tensed. LaPlata glanced at Robbins. Robbins shrugged. LaPlata’s head dipped down, then he raised it again. Ike had learned to pick up on body language when he was inside. There was no aggression in their stances. At least not any more than what most cops exuded on a normal twelve-hour shift. The way LaPlata’s head had dropped was almost … sad.
“Do you have a son named Isiah Randolph?” he said finally.
That was when he knew. He knew it like he knew when a fight was about to break out in the yard. Like he knew when a crackhead was going to try to stab him for a bag back in the day. Like he knew, just knew in his gut, that his homeboy Luther had seen his last sunset that night he’d gone home with that girl from the Satellite Bar.
It was like a sixth sense. A preternatural ability to sense a tragedy seconds before it became a reality.
“What’s happened to my son, Detective LaPlata?” Ike asked, already knowing the answer. Knowing it in his bones. Knowing his life would never be the same.
TWO
It was a beautiful day for a funeral.
Snow white clouds rolled across an azure sky. Despite it being the first week of April the air was still crisp and cool. Of course, since this was Virginia, it could be raining buckets in the next ten minutes, then hot as the devil’s backside an hour later.
A sage-green tent covered the remaining mourners and two caskets. The minister grabbed a handful of dirt from the pile that sat just outside the tent. The pile was covered by a weathered artificial grass rug. He moved to the head of the caskets.
“Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.” The minister’s voice echoed through the cemetery as he sprinkled dirt on both caskets. He skipped the part about the general resurrection and the last days. The funeral director stepped forward. He was a short chubby man with a charcoal complexion that matched his suit. Despite the mild conditions, his face was slick with sweat. It was as if his body were responding to the calendar and not the thermometer.
“This concludes the services for Derek Jenkins and Isiah Randolph. The family thanks you for your attendance. You may go in peace,” he said. His voice didn’t have the same theatricality as the minister’s. It barely carried beyond the tent.
Ike Randolph let go of his wife’s hand. She slumped against him. Ike stared down at his hands. His empty hands. Hands that had held his boy when he was barely ten minutes old. The hands that had shown him how to tie his shoes. The hands that had rubbed salve on his chest when he’d had the flu. That had waved goodbye to him in court with shackles tight around his wrists. Rough callused hands that he hid in his pockets when Isiah’s husband had offered to shake them.
Ike dropped his chin to his chest.
The little girl sitting in her lap played with Mya’s braids. Ike looked at the girl. Skin the color of honey with hair to match. Arianna had just turned three the week before her parents died. Did she have any inkling of what was happening? When Mya had told her that her daddies were asleep, she seemed to accept it without too much trouble. He envied the elasticity of her mind. She could wrap her head around this in a way that he couldn’t.
“Ike, that’s our boy in there. That’s our baby,” Mya wailed. He flinched when she spoke. It was like hearing a rabbit scream in a trap. Ike heard the folding chairs squeak and whine as people rose and headed to the parking lot. He felt hands flutter against his back and shoulders. Words of encouragement were mumbled with half-hearted sincerity. It wasn’t that folks didn’t care. It was that they knew those words did little to soothe the wound in his soul. Speaking those platitudes and clichéd homilies seemed disingenuous, but what else could they do? It was what you did when someone died. It was as axiomatic as bringing a casserole to the repast.
The crowd was thin, and it didn’t take long for the chairs to empty. In less than five minutes the only people in the cemetery were Ike, Mya, Arianna, the gravediggers, and a man Ike vaguely recognized as Derek’s father. A lot of Ike’s family hadn’t shown up for the service. As far as he could tell, only a few of Derek’s people had bothered to attend. Most of the mourners were Isiah and Derek’s friends. Ike noticed Derek’s family members. They stood out among the bearded hipsters and androgynous ladies that made up Derek and Isiah’s social circle. Lean wiry men and women with hard flinty eyes and sun-worn faces. They wore blue collars around their red necks. As the sermon neared the thirty-minute mark, he’d watched their faces begin to bloom with crimson. That was when the minister mentioned how no sin was unforgivable. Even abominable sins could be forgiven by a benevolent God.
Arianna pulled one of Mya’s braids.
“Stop it, girl!” Mya said. It came out sharp. Arianna was silent for a moment. Ike knew what was coming next. That pregnant pause was the prelude to the waterworks. Isiah used to do the same thing.
Arianna began to howl. Her screams pierced the quiet contemplativeness of the funeral and rang in Ike’s ears. Mya tried to soothe her. She apologized and brushed her forehead. Arianna took a deep breath, then began to scream louder.
“Take her to the car. I’ll be there in a minute,” Ike said.
“Ike, I ain’t going nowhere. Not yet,” Mya snapped. Ike stood.
“Please Mya. Take her to the car. Just give me a few minutes, then I’ll come and watch her and you can come back,” Ike said. His voice almost cracked. Mya stood. She pulled Arianna close to her chest.
“You say what you gotta say.” She turned and headed for the car. Arianna’s cries withered to whimpers as they walked away. Ike put his hand on the black casket with the gold trim. His boy was in there. His son was in this rectangular container. Packed and preserved like some cured meat. The breeze picked up, making the tassels hanging from the edge of the tent flap like the wings of a dying bird. Derek was in the silver casket with the black trim. Isiah was being buried next to his husband. They’d died together and now they’d rest together.
Derek’s father rose from his seat. He was a lean and weathered piece of work with a shock of shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair. He walked up to the foot of the caskets and stood next to Ike. The gravediggers busied themselves with shovel inspections as they waited for these two men, the last of the mourners, to leave. The lean man scratched at his chin. A gray shadow of a beard covered the bottom half of his face. He coughed, cleared his throat, then coughed again. When he got that under control, he turned toward Ike.
“Buddy Lee Jenkins. Derek’s father. I don’t think we ever officially met,” Buddy Lee said. He held out his hand.
Copyright © 2021 by Shawn A. Cosby