Fatherhood Read online

  Frank lowered his eyes, and for a moment J.R. tried to read the gesture. Embarrassment? Fear? Something else? The notes returned to him. He tried to imagine Conley writing them in the shadowy corner of the basement, hunched, apelike, over Mary Phagan’s dead body, dabbing the tip of the pencil on his thick red tongue, eyes rolling toward the ceiling as he tried to figure out exactly what he should “wright.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you, Mr. Frank?”

  It was Starnes going at him again.

  “I was born in Texas,” Frank said.

  “Texas?” Black asked. “You don’t sound like you’re from Texas.”

  “My family moved to Brooklyn when I was a baby,” Frank said. He offered a quick, nervous smile.

  “My wife was born here in Atlanta, though. A native. Her father is head of the B’nai B’rith.”

  “What’s that?” Starnes asked.

  Frank’s smile vanished. “An association.”

  “Of what?”

  Frank grabbed his knees, squeezed. “Of Jews,” he said, glancing about. “Of Jewish people.”

  Langford nodded softly. “How long did you live in Brooklyn, Mr. Frank?”

  “Until I graduated from college.”

  “What did you study, may I ask?”

  “Mechanical engineering.”

  J.R. felt something shift in his mind. Could the notes have been planted by someone else? Someone a lot smarter than Conley? Able to figure out a double insinuation, put the murder on an inferior being. Conley, by making it seem that he, Conley, had tried to implicate a second inferior being. Newt. Knowing all the time that Newt would never fit the bill, but that Conley would. J.R. smiled at the idea of such a scheme. Clever, he thought.

  “Normally, you wouldn’t have been at the factory on a Saturday, is that right, Mr. Frank?”

  It was Mr. Langford asking, softly, politely, always adding, “Mr. Frank” at the end of it.

  “No,” Frank said. “I wouldn’t have been there at all if it hadn’t been raining.”

  “What’s that?” Rogers asked.

  “I’d planned to go to a baseball game with my brother-in-law.”

  Starnes smiled. “Baseball? You like baseball?”

  Frank looked at him. “Why does that surprise you?”

  Starnes’ face turned grim. “Who was playing?”

  Frank shifted slightly. “Well, the Atlanta team, I believe.”

  “The Crackers,” Black said.

  “Yes.”

  “Who were they playing?” Starnes asked. “Who were the Crackers playing yesterday?”

  Frank was silent for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t.…”

  Starnes smiled thinly. “Birmingham,” he said. “The Birmingham Barons.”

  Frank shrugged. “I …”

  Langford leaned forward, his eyes boring into Frank now. “Mr. Frank, one thing bothers me. Why did you call Newt Lee down at the factory on Saturday afternoon?”

  Before he could answer, Starnes leaned forward. “After you’d left. Two hours after you’d left.”

  “I wanted to make sure everything was all right at the factory.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Rogers asked.

  “Well, Newt is new at the factory, and so …”

  “He was even newer last Saturday,” Starnes said. “But you didn’t call him then.”

  Frank shrugged. “I just wanted to check on things.”

  “On Mary Phagan?” Black asked.

  Frank stared at him quizzically, one hand drifting toward the left cuff, tugging at the cuff link. “Mary Phagan? Why would I …”

  “Maybe you wanted to find out if anybody had found her yet,” Rogers asked starkly. “Is that why you called Newt?”

  Frank shook his head. “Of course not,” he said, then went on, sputtering. “I had no idea that anything had … that-that Miss Phagan was … no idea.”

  J.R. eased his weight from the wall, watching Frank’s hands, something he’d noticed, the way Frank’s slender, delicate fingers toyed with the gold cuff links each time he heard Mary Phagan’s name. J.R. thought of the notes again, how cleverly they’d been constructed, pointing at guilt by pointing away from guilt, which pointed back to guilt again. He wondered if Conley could ever have hatched such a scheme. He was smart, but was he that smart? He considered both the nature and scope of Conley’s intelligence, both his shrewdness and its limits. His shrewdness would inform him of his limits. Which meant, J.R. reasoned, that since Conley was smart, he’d know better than to get himself mixed up in a contest of wits with a mechanical engineer. He would know that he could never outsmart so superior a person. This, J.R. reasoned, was an argument that worked both ways. For just as surely, Leo Frank would know that he could outsmart Conley. This logic applied with telling force, J.R. mused, on the notes Britt had found beside the body. For although Conley would know that he could never hope to write like Leo Frank, Frank would no less clearly perceive that he, Frank, could quite easily imitate the crude sublanguage of such a brute as Jim Conley.

  “You must admit, Mr. Frank, that that call is somewhat of a problem,” Langford said.

  Frank stared at him silently.

  “It seems out of character, you see,” Langford explained politely.

  Frank’s eyes took on a strange, animal agitation. “Out of character? In what way?”

  “In that a man like you, Mr. Frank,” Langford said, “if you’ll permit me saying so”—he tapped the side of his head—“a man like you has a reason for everything he does.”

  Frank started to answer, but the door to Langford’s office swung open suddenly, and Luther Rosser strode in.

  “I’m Mr. Frank’s lawyer,” he declared. “There will be no more questioning of my client without my being present.”

  Langford stood up slowly, shook hands with Rosser, then let his gaze drift down to where Frank sat, completely still, in his chair. “You may go, Mr. Frank,” he said. He smiled at Rosser. “I’ll walk you to your car, Luther,” he added brightly.

  The detectives shifted about, muttering, then drifted away from Frank, giving him room to straighten himself, watching silently as he buttoned his coat, adjusted his tie. Then Frank turned and headed for the door, J.R. standing massively in his path, so that he slowed suddenly, as if a great stone had suddenly rolled into his path.

  J.R. stood in place for only the briefest moment, then shifted to the right, cleared the way. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Frank,” he said.

  Frank read something in his gaze. “I didn’t kill Mary Phagan.”

  J.R. smiled. “Better straighten your cuff links,” he said.

  For an instant their eyes locked. Then Rosser took Frank’s arm, urged him forward. “Let’s go, Leo,” he told him.

  J.R. watched as the three men, Langford somewhat in the lead, made their way across the empty bull pen to the stairs. Once they’d gone through the double doors, become mere blurs behind its frosted glass, he stepped over to the window and looked out. A black car rested at the curb, its chrome fenders shimmering even in the gray light. Briefly, the three men stood in a tight circle, talking amicably. Then the conversation ended, and Rosser opened the car’s back door to let Frank in.

  The other detectives had joined J.R. at the window by then. “What do you think, J.R.?” Rogers asked.

  J.R. turned from the window just as McCorkindale walked into the bull pen, Jim Conley at his side. He watched as McCorkindale led Conley to a chair, cuffed him to it, then walked away, leaving Conley alone, staring about. J.R. peered at him closely, noted the thick neck, the small, curled ears and popped brown eyes, the way, when he caught J.R. watching him, he offered up a wide, gap-toothed grin.

  Very low, J.R. thought, as he turned back to the window, his gaze now on Leo Frank once again.

  “Langford will ask you first,” Starnes said. “It’s probably up to you, J.R. If you say he’s clear, he’s clear.”

  Below, Frank stood for a moment in the clear,
clean air, gazing about, as if in melancholy appreciation, like someone saying goodbye to something he’d never noticed before, but held precious now.

  “Well?” Black asked. “Did Frank do it?”

  Gold cuff links winked in the sunlight.

  “What do you think, J.R.?”

  Truth dawned as it always did in J.R.’s mind, clean and bracing, fresh as a bright new day.

  “Dead sure,” he said.

  FATHERHOOD

  Watching them from a distance, the way she rocked backward and forward in her grief, her arms gathered around his lifeless body, I could feel nothing but a sense of icy satisfaction, relishing the fact that both of them had finally gotten what they deserved. Death for him. For her, perpetual mourning.

  She’d worn a somber gown for the occasion, her face sunk deep inside a cavernous black hood. She stared down at him and ran her fingers through his blood-soaked hair, her features so hideously distorted by her misery it seemed impossible that she’d ever been young and beautiful, or even felt delight in anything.

  By then the years had so divided us and embittered me that I could no longer think of her as someone I’d once loved. But I had loved her, and there were times when, despite everything, I could still recall the single moment of intense happiness I’d had with her.

  She’d been only a girl when we first met, the town beauty. Practically the only beautiful thing in the town at all, for it was a small, drab place set down in the middle of a desert waste. To find something beautiful in such a place was nearly miracle enough.

  She was already being pursued by the local boys, of course. They were dazzled by her black hair and dark oval eyes, skin that gave off a striking olive glow. I yearned for her no less ardently than they, but I kept my distance.

  Looking out my shop window, I would often see her as she swept down the street, heading toward the market, a large basket on her arm. Coming back, the basket now filled with fruit and vegetables, she’d sometimes stop to wipe a line of sweat from her forehead, her eyes glancing briefly toward the very window where I stood watching her, and from which I always quickly retreated.

  The fact is, she frightened me. I was afraid of the look that might come into her eyes if she saw me staring at her, the pity, perhaps even contempt, for a portly, middle-aged bachelor who worked in a dusty shop, lived alone in a single musty room, had no prospects for the future, and who had nothing to offer a vibrant young woman like herself.

  And so I never expected to speak to her or approach her in any way. To the extent that she would ever know me, it seemed certain it would be as the anonymous figure she sometimes noticed as she made her way to the market, a person of no consequence or distinction, as flat and featureless in her mind as the old stones she trod upon. My fate would be to watch her silently forever, see her life unfold from behind my shop window, first as a young woman hastening to the market, then as a bride strolling arm-in-arm with her new husband, finally as a mother with children following behind her, her beauty deepening with the years, becoming fuller and richer while I kept my post at the window, growing old and sickly, a ghostly, gray-haired figure whose life had finally added up to nothing more than a long and fruitless longing.

  Then it happened. One of those accidents that make a perpetual mystery of life, that bless the unworthy and doom the deserving, and which give to all of nature the aspect of a flighty, cruel, and unloving queen.

  One of my customers had tethered a horse to the post outside my shop. It was sleek and beautiful, and coming back from the market, the girl of my dreams stopped to admire it. First she patted its haunches. Then she moved up the twitching flanks to stroke its moist black muzzle. Finally, she fed it an ear of corn from the overflowing basket she’d placed at my feet.

  “Is it yours?” she asked me as I came out the door, my arms filled with wood I used in my trade.

  I stopped, astonished to see her staring at me, unable to believe that she’d actually addressed her question to me.

  “No,” I said. “It belongs to one of my customers.”

  She returned her attention to the horse, drawing her fingers down the side of its neck, twining her fingers in its long brown mane. “He must be very rich to have a horse like this.” She looked at the wood still gathered in my arms. “What do you do for him?”

  “Build things. Tables. Chairs. Whatever he wants.”

  She offered a quick smile, patted the horse a final time, then retrieved her basket from the street and sauntered slowly away, her brown eyes swinging girlishly in the afternoon light, her whole manner so casual and lighthearted that only a sudden burst of air from my mouth made me realize that during the time I’d watched her stroll away from me, I had not released a breath.

  I didn’t talk to her again for almost three months, though I saw her in the street no less often than before. A young man sometimes joined her now, as beautifully tanned as she was, with curly black hair. He was tall and slender, and his step was firm, assured, the walk of a boy who had never wanted for anything, who’d inherited good looks and would inherit lots of money, the sort whose bright future is entirely assured. He would marry her, I knew, for he seemed to have the beauty and advantage that would inevitably attract her. For days I watched as they came and went from the market together, holding hands as young lovers do, while I stood alone, shrunken and insubstantial, a husk the smallest breeze could send skittering down the dusty street.

  Then, just as suddenly, the boy disappeared, and she was alone again. There were other changes too. Her walk struck me as less lively than it had been before, her head lowered slightly, as I had never seen it, her eyes cast toward the paving stones.

  That anyone, even a spoiled, wealthy youth, might cast off such a girl as she seemed inconceivable to me. Instead, I imagined that he’d died or been sent away for some reason, that she had fallen under the veil of his loss and might well be doomed to dwell within its shadows forever, a fate in one so young and beautiful that struck me as inestimably forlorn.

  And so I acted, stationing myself on the little wooden bench outside my shop, waiting for her hour after hour, day after day, until she finally appeared again, her hair draped over her shoulders like shimmering black wings.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She stopped and turned toward me. “Hello.”

  “I have something for you.”

  She looked at me quizzically, but did not draw back as I approached her.

  “I made this for you,” I said as I handed it to her.

  It was a horse I’d carved from an olive branch.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, smiling quietly. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said and, like one who truly loves, asked nothing in return.

  We met often after that. She sometimes came into my shop, and over time I taught her to build and mend, feel the textures and qualities of wood. She worked well with her hands, and I enjoyed my new role of craftsman and teacher. The real payment was in her presence, however—the tenderness in her voice, the light in her eyes, the smell of her hair—how it lingered long after she’d returned to her home on the other side of town.

  Soon, we began to walk the streets together, then along the outskirts of the village. For a time she seemed happy, and it struck me that I had succeeded in lifting her out of the melancholy I had found her in.

  Then, rather suddenly, it fell upon her once again. Her mood darkened and she grew more silent and inward. I could see that some old trouble had descended upon her, or some new one that I had not anticipated and which she felt necessary to conceal. Finally, late one afternoon when we found ourselves on a hill outside the village, I put it to her bluntly.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  She shook her head, and gave no answer.

  “You seem very worried,” I added. “You’re too young to have so much care.”

  She glanced away from me, let her eyes settle upon the far fields. The evening shade was falling. Soon it would be night. />
  “Some people are singled out to bear a certain burden,” she said.

  “All people feel singled out for the burdens they bear.”

  “But people who feel chosen. For some special suffering, I mean. Do you think they ever wonder why it was them, why it wasn’t someone else?”

  “They all do, I’m sure.”

  “What do you think your burden is?”

  Never to be loved by you, I thought, then said, “I don’t think I have one burden in particular.” I shrugged. “Just to live. That’s all.”

  She said nothing more on the subject. For a time, she was silent, but her eyes moved about restlessly. It was clear that much was going on in her mind.

  At last she seemed to come to a conclusion, turned to me, and said, “Do you want to marry me?”

  I felt the whole vast world close around my throat, so that I only stared at her silently until, at last, the word broke from me. “Yes.” I should have stopped, but instead I began to stammer. “But I know that you could not possibly … that I’m not the one who can … that you must be …”

  She pressed a single finger against my lips.

  “Stop,” she said. Then she let her body drift backward, pressing herself against the earth, her arms lifting toward me, open and outstretched and welcoming.

  Any other man would have leapt at such an opportunity, but fear seized me and I couldn’t move.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “That I wouldn’t be able to …”

  I could see that she understood me, recognized the source of my disabling panic. There seemed no point in not stating it directly. “I’m a virgin,” I told her.

  She reached out and drew me down to her. “So am I,” she said.

  I didn’t know how it was supposed to feel, but after a time she grew so warm and moist, my pleasure in her rising and deepening with each offer and acceptance, that I finally felt my whole body release itself to her, quaking and shivering as she gathered me more tightly in her arms. I had never known such happiness, nor ever would again, since to make love to the one you love is the greatest joy there is.