Phantom of Riverside Park Read online

  “Let us pray.” Papa bowed his head and lifted his praises, strong and sure, toward the Maker he’d believed in all his life. “Master, thank you for the bountiful blessings you heap upon us. Thank you steering my little family through the rough and murky waters of the past, and if it’s not too much trouble, keep our course clear for the future. I’m not as young as I used to be, You know, or I wouldn’t ask so much of You all the time. I hope You understand. Amen.”

  Without another word, Papa cut his patty in two and put half of it on the edge of the saucer where Elizabeth’s teacup rested.

  “What’s murphy waters?” Nicky asked.

  “It’s like your bathtub water after you’ve been playing all day in the dirt.” Elizabeth tousled his hair, then glanced from her saucer to Papa.

  “Eat it,” he said, and Elizabeth went to get a fork. “Did I ever tell you about the time I met Lola Mae?” he asked when she sat back down.

  He had. About a million times, but she and Nicky never tired of hearing stories of their beloved Mae Mae. “Tell it, Papa,” she said, and Nicky added, “Yay! Tell it.”

  “Well, there was this big county fair,” Papa said, “biggest thing the Delta had going for it except cotton.” And as he began to talk, the bloodlines of Elizabeth’s ancestors flowed through her like a river, leaving behind a history as rich as the alluvial plains of the Mississippi Delta.

  “When the carnival people started setting up their Ferris wheel we’d leave our cotton sacks in the field to go and watch.”

  “Can I ride a Ferris wheel?”

  “Someday, Nicky... Yessir, it was the hottest fall you’d ever seen that year, so hot the June bugs had stuck around thinking it was still summer. My cousin Hiram...named after the old major, you know ...decided to put the portable outhouse on top of the building where the Home Demonstration ladies were selling lemon pies and pickled peaches, and being full of oats I decided to help him.”

  “What’s full’a oats, Papa?” Nicky asked.

  “Young.”

  “Like me?”

  “Not quite. I was old enough to shave.”

  “Can I shave?”

  “Not yet. But someday you will. Anyhow...we waited till Miss Sudie Cummings pulled up her drawers and came out, then Hiram grabbed one side and I grabbed the other and off we went down the hill with the outhouse between us. Things were looking pretty good till a bumblebee got up Hiram’s britches. He let go his end, and the toilet went tumbling down the hill with me hanging on for dear life trying to steer the thing.”

  Nicky was already laughing and clapping, but the part Elizabeth loved best was yet to come.

  “I was yelling at the toilet like it had ears. ‘Hold on just a minute, wait up there.’ But that old outhouse just kept on going like it knew something I didn’t know. And sure enough, waiting at the bottom of the hill was Lola Mae Johnson. We crashed headlong into her booth and banners went flying every which way. When the toilet finally came to rest, I looked up into the bluest eyes this side of heaven and a face like an angel.”

  “Tell about the red banner, Papa.” Nicky was clapping so hard his little palms looked blistered.

  “Well, sir, one of the banners that had come loose was draped around Lola Mae’s neck, and when I read what was printed on it I said, ‘Is this the kissing booth?’ and she said, ‘By golly, it is,’ and she kissed me smack dab on the mouth.”

  Papa got tears in his eyes. “She was the first woman I ever kissed and I never kissed another. Never even wanted to. Not once.”

  “Except Mommy. You kiss mommy.”

  “On the cheek, and that’s different.”

  “How different?”

  Papa gave Elizabeth a look that said, he’s all yours now, and she said, “Let’s go make some murphy water, Nicky.”

  “I’ll race you down the hall.” Nicky streaked off with Elizabeth not far behind, and the water he made was indeed murphy.

  “There’s so much of the park in the tub I wonder if you left any for tomorrow,” she said when she dried him off.

  He climbed into bed giggling. Tonight he didn’t demand another story of Mae Mae, as he often did, but instead settled down after hearing of the adventures of Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, an innocent child who still owned the world.

  “Sweet dreams, Nicky.” As she leaned down to kiss him, leaned close to the disfigured lip, her heart squeezed. In another year he would be old enough for kindergarten and the often cruel honesty of other children. That little incident in the park would be nothing compared to the reign of bullies in a school yard.

  “Sing me a song, Mommy. Sing about look for the silber lining.”

  Instead, she chose one based on her own needs. Proving she hadn’t escaped Judith’s influence entirely, she sang a song that was pure Elvis, not one of the rockabilly ballads but one of the hymns he’d first heard in a small country church and then later had made his own, “Precious Lord.”

  And while she sang she silently prayed that Somebody was leaning down to listen, and that He would take Nicky’s hand and hold on tight. She would ask Him to take hers, too, but she figured God had enough to do without watching out for a woman perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

  When she went back to the den, Papa looked up from the Psalm he was reading.

  “I should have let Judith name you Elvisina,” he said, deadpan.

  They broke up laughing, laughing to keep from crying.

  It’s the way of the wounded everywhere.

  Chapter Two

  Thomas resettled himself on the park bench, trying to stay awake. Mornings were fine. Fresh from a good night’s sleep, he’d watch Elizabeth kiss Nicky before she headed off to work, and then he’d settle in to watch his great grandson dig a hole to China. But getting through the afternoons without falling asleep took some concentration. He’d tried everything, counting the number of people who walked by, trying to guess how many squirrels he’d see. Today, he was hanging onto wakefulness by counting his blessings. He was grateful for the sausage and biscuit he and Nicky had shared for lunch; he was grateful for sunny Southern days that made it possible to bring the boy here to play instead of staying cooped up in that little house; he was grateful he’d known the love of his life with Lola Mae; but most of all, he was grateful to still be alive.

  He was wondering how long an old codger like him would be around when this man he didn’t know from Adam’s house cat walked right up to him and called him by name.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Jennings.”

  As if that weren’t shock enough, the young man sat right down on the bench beside him without even being invited.

  “This is my bench you’re sittin’ on, young man.”

  Thomas didn’t tolerate bad manners. Besides that, the man seemed kind of sleazy to him - hair slicked back under a gangster hat, reeking of Old Spice and a shave so close you couldn’t make out a single hair on his face. Not that Thomas could anyhow, his eyesight not being what it used to be, but he simply didn’t trust a man who looked that smooth.

  “I won’t be here long, Mr. Jennings. Just long enough to give you this.” Thomas’ mouth dropped open when he saw the check. “This is not a joke, it’s not a prank. It’s real.”

  Thomas was in a trance staring at the check, disbelieving.

  “I’m leaving now and you’ll never see me again. Don’t try to follow me, don’t try to find out who I am, and don’t tell anybody about your good fortune. Except your granddaughter, of course.”

  The man swore him to secrecy, especially with the press, then tipped his hat in a latent display of Southern breeding. “Good day, Mr. Jennings,” he said, then vanished as quickly as he’d come.

  Hot tears squeezed out of the corners of Thomas’s eyes blurring everything except his great grandson playing under the oak tree where Jefferson Davis once tied his horse. All he could think of was that suddenly there was God, right in the middle of Memphis, Tennessee, smiling down on him and saying, “You can rest n
ow, Thomas.”

  Miracles happen when you least expect them.

  Thomas had always known that, even five years ago after he’d sold the land he’d poured his sweat as well as his heart into and headed up here with Elizabeth pregnant with the baby nobody wanted.

  Elizabeth had cried all the way from the Mississippi Delta to South Haven, big fat tears that flattened his heart like a steamroller, and he’d wondered what sort of fool notion would make a dried up old prune like him think he could start over. It didn’t take him long to come up with the answer: the fool notion was love. Elizabeth was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bones, blood of his blood, the granddaughter he loved more than he’d ever loved his own son who’d sired her.

  Thomas Jennings would die for her. It was that simple. Kill for her, too. Or at least try.

  When they’d pulled over at the 7-Eleven for gas, a trucker had yelled, “Hey, old man, ain’t you too old to be knocking up a pretty little thing like that,” and Thomas flew into him like a duck on a June bug. Would have whipped him, too, if Elizabeth hadn’t begged him to stop.

  Thomas had bought them cherry ice cream floats. “As a consolation prize,” he’d told Elizabeth, which didn’t make a lick of sense to her. But it did make her smile which was the purpose all along.

  “Eat your ice cream, Elizabeth. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  She dried her tears on the sleeve of her shirt. “You shouldn’t have, Papa.”

  He knew what she meant. Thanks to Major Hiram Jennings he was not one of those rich Delta land barons, but merely a hard-working farmer who knew how to scratch a living out of his hundred acres of dirt.

  Knew the back end of a mule when he saw one, too, which was more than most folks could say.

  The money from the sale of the farm wouldn’t last forever, especially since neither one of them had a job and neither one of them had a prayer of getting one, her with a belly so big she couldn’t see her toes and him twenty years past the age when most folks draw retirement.

  Even a cherry ice cream float was a luxury for them, but by cracky, nobody had better tell Thomas Jennings he couldn’t afford it.

  He’d rammed his hat down over his eyes and coaxed the old truck back to life.

  “It’ll be a cold day in the bad place when a man can’t buy ice cream for his own granddaughter.”

  Now he won’t ever have to worry about the price of ice cream. He can buy twenty-five cones at the same time, one in every flavor. He can buy the whole store if he wants to.

  Thomas sat on the park bench with his head bent staring down at the check. Folks passing by probably thought he was napping. Or praying.

  Maybe he was doing a little bit of both. He napped every now and then, even when he hadn’t planned on it, and he’d prayed so much he had calluses on his knees.

  “God, just don’t let this be a joke,” he prayed.

  He smelled Elizabeth coming before he saw her. His daddy used to tell him the sense of smell was one of the last to go, and Thomas reckoned that might be true. When

  Elizabeth picked him and the boy up at Riverside Park, she always smelled like sugar.

  “It flies like fairy dust at the bakery,” she always told them.

  Won’t she be surprised at who got sprinkled with fairy dust today?

  She scooped up Nicky who was earnestly digging a hole underneath the oak, received his sandy hug, then sat beside Thomas and kissed him on the cheek. “Hi, Papa. Was my little boy good today?”

  “He tripped an old lady trying to get to the other side of the street, then robbed Union Planters Bank.”

  This was a game they played, their who’s on first routine Elizabeth called it. Thomas knew what it was: it was the same thing he’d felt every night when he’d crawled under the patchwork quilt with Lola Mae, comfort in the familiar.

  “Where did he stash the money?”

  When Elizabeth laughed she outdid them all for beauty, all the cover girls and glamour girls and movie stars, even his favorite Betty Grable. He figured that nearly everybody who ever heard of her was long dead and gone, except him, of course, and he’s not fixing to die, not if he has any say so in the matter.

  Lately, though, he’d been lying awake nights worrying what would happen to Elizabeth and the boy if he up and died.

  Now he won’t have to worry about that anymore.

  “The money’s right here.” He pulled the check out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  Her smile disappeared as fast as Houdini in one of his magic acts, which Thomas didn’t believe for a New York minute. No sir, you couldn’t fool him about Houdini.

  But you could have knocked him over with a feather at how anxious his granddaughter looked as she counted all the zeroes on the check.

  “This is a joke. Right, Papa?”

  “It’s not a joke, Elizabeth.”

  “But it can’t be real. Where did it come from?”

  Thomas Jennings didn’t mind being wrong. Heck, he guessed he’d been wrong more than any man who ever lived, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. But he hated being foolish. And her questions made him feel foolish. They made him feel old. Senile. Like he ought to be locked up in one of those fancy jails they called retirement homes.

  He puffed out his chest like a turkey cock.

  “A man brought it to me. I was just sittin’ here mindin’ my own business, and this complete stranger walked up to me and handed me the check.”

  “People don’t do that, Papa. They don’t go around giving away fortunes, especially not to strangers. And certainly not without a reason.”

  Every speck of color drained out of her face, and she looked like ghosts were chasing her.

  Thomas wished he’d never seen the check. He wished he’d never laid eyes on the man who delivered it. Anyhow, what kind of man would wear a suit and a tie to the park in ninety degree weather? What kind of man handed out fortunes to perfect strangers, then wouldn’t even tell his own name? Hoodlums maybe. Powerful hoodlums with motives so bad Thomas broke out in a sweat just thinking about what they could do.

  He was nothing but an old fool. Too old to take care of Elizabeth and Nicky anymore. Too old to sit in the park in the hot sun. So old he couldn’t even tell the difference between charity and blackmail.

  “Tear it up,” he said.

  He tried to snatch it out of her hands but she was too quick.

  “Just tear the thing up. I never should have taken it, that’s all.”

  He felt the dampness behind his eyes, and he knew his granddaughter was too smart to mistake it for the rheumy look of age.

  “I’m too old to know what to do anymore.”

  He used to use the bandana he dragged out of his pocket to mop up sweat. He’d come in from plowing the cotton fields mopping his face with the red bandana, and Lola Mae would be waiting with a big glass of iced tea with a sprig of fresh mint floating on top.

  If his wife had lived through a bout of pneumonia, she’d have known better than to take the check. She’d have sent that slick dude packing with a few well chosen words. Lady-like ones, too. Lola Mae was always a lady.

  “You’re not too old, Papa, and I won’t hear such talk. I’m not going to sit here and let you act like some old codger who can’t find his nose on his face. Do you hear me?”

  “See. The money’s already set us to quarrelin’.”

  A breeze that shouldn’t have been there on such a still day snatched the end of the check, and it suddenly became a living breathing thing rising up between them in the summer heat, enormous in its power. Angel or beast? Thomas’s head ached with all the possibilities, and he wished Elizabeth would take him home and let him lie down on the couch under the ceiling fan.

  Instead she chased the check, catching up when it landed in a gardenia bush. The cloying scent reminded Thomas of Lola Mae’s funeral. Though it had been dead of winter, he’d made sure she had plenty of the flowers she loved.

  Now, the breeze set the willow trees alongside t
he Mississippi River to swaying, and Thomas had to pull up his collar to keep his teeth from chattering.

  Intuition is God whispering in your ear, his daddy used to say. Always listen.

  “Tear it up and throw it away, Elizabeth.”

  “I can’t, Papa. I can’t bring myself to destroy a million dollars.”

  o0o

  His telescope was the finest money could buy with a lens so powerful he could bring the stars as close as his own fingertips. But it wasn’t the heavens David wanted to see: it was the earth, specifically the small patch of earth underneath his window, the little park where Elizabeth Jennings came day after day with her family.

  He had sensed her coming even before he saw her. A force like the pull of gravity propelled him from his desk and sent him to the telescope where a few minor adjustments brought her so close he could see the blue of her eyes. He adjusted the focus once more, bringing her face into clear relief so close that when she tipped her head back and smiled David suddenly felt as if she’d smiled directly at him.

  He jerked back, gut-punched, his heart pounding as if he’d run up twenty-one flights of stairs. He was being foolish, of course. Elizabeth Jennings hadn’t smiled at him. She hadn’t seen him. Couldn’t possibly see him. Thank God.

  Unconsciously he ran his hand over the left side of his face. The tingling started in his jaw and spread upward and outward toward his cheekbone, then his ear till it became a roar that drowned out everything but the screams. David could never forget the screams.

  He shoved the telescope aside. He had no business witnessing the intimate family scene being played out in the park underneath his window. Prowling his office like something caged, something too long shut up in prison, David hefted the celadon Foo dog he’d picked up in China, ran his hands over its smooth surface, marveled at the craftsmanship.

  Samurai swords were crossed over the mahogany credenza. He’d paid a small fortune for them two years ago in Japan. In India he’d found the priceless jeweled tiger, its topaz eyes so realistic that sometimes when David left his desk late at night he started at the yellow stare as if he’d been found out in the dark.