LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 21

      It didn’t take long for Harlan to settle into his new life.

      His easy disposition and Southern civility made him popular with the neighborhood children and parents alike. Despite being far from an astute student, those same attributes endeared him to his teachers, and they happily promoted him from one grade to the next.

      Needless to say, Emma felt guilty for having missed out on Harlan’s formative years and so indulged him to the point of ruin. When Harlan misbehaved, she refused to take a switch to his behind and threatened Sam with divorce if he did.

      “The Bible is specific,” Sam reminded her. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

      Emma just sucked her teeth.

      This is not to say that Emma never hit Harlan. She did. Just once—in 1928 when he was eleven years old. They were at Lucille and Bill’s on a hot, muggy Saturday evening. The air inside the house was as still as a painting. Harlan, bored with watching the adults play spades, wandered outside.

      The streets were alive with playing children, the stoops crammed with adults fanning themselves with newspapers, rolling cold bottles of beer over their foreheads before emptying them in one long swallow.

      Harlan walked a few houses away, stopped to watch a pair of old men hunched over a chessboard before continuing on to the corner. He dawdled there for a while—counting passing cars and debating whether he should defy his parents and cross the street to discover what mysteries might be lurking on the next block. Deciding against that, Harlan turned around and started back to the house.

      Parked in front of the Hegamin home was Bill’s 1926 black and cream Ford coupe. Harlan peered through the driver’s-side window. There were some playbills on the front seat and a few candy wrappers on the floor. His eyes popped with surprise when he saw the key dangling from the ignition. He glanced nervously over his shoulder, jiggled the handle, and found that the door was unlocked. Another quick look to make sure he wasn’t being watched and then, as swift as a cat, he creaked the door open and slipped inside.

      Harlan sat in the driver’s seat, hands tightly gripping the wheel, imitating the roar of an engine. “Brrrrrrr . . . b-b-b-b-b . . . Brrrrrrrr!”

      He reached for the key. His intention was to bring the car to life, quickly turn it back off, slip out, and leave it unmoved. But Harlan hadn’t even completed that thought before he found himself slamming two feet down on the brake to keep from hitting a kid who had dashed out into the street to retrieve his ball.

      Having no idea how to put the vehicle in reverse, with three cars now behind him honking their horns, the panicked Harlan pressed hard on the accelerator, sending the car down the street, through the intersection, and directly into a police car.

      The cops hauled him to the local precinct. Harlan had never been so frightened in his life. When the officer asked his name, he said: “Jack Black.” When they asked for his parents’ names, Harlan said he didn’t have any.

      Three hours passed before the adults realized Harlan was missing.

      Sam’s eyes swept the street. “Where in the world is that boy?”

      Bill took a swig of Scotch from the glass he held, blinked, and roared, “Where’s my goddamn car!”

      All eyes fell on the empty parking space.

      Emma ran down the steps screeching Harlan’s name. Sam followed.

      “Where the fuck is my goddamn car?” Bill said again, glaring at Lucille as if she had something to do with its disappearance.

      “How am I supposed to know, Bill?”

      * * *

      Emma and Sam scoured Louisa and Bill’s neighborhood and then their own. They looked into the faces of every black boy they encountered. They checked with friends and acquaintances.

       Harlan here?

       You seen my boy?

      They ended up at Harlem Hospital. Sam asked the admitting nurse if any eleven-year-old black boys had been brought into the emergency unit in the past four hours or so. The woman let out a tired sigh, as if it was the hundredth time that night she’d been asked that particular question. After lazily flipping through a binder filled with pages, she looked up and spoke without a hint of compassion: “I think you might need to check the morgue.”

      Emma, who was standing beside Sam, nervously chewing on her bottom lip, stumbled back into the wall, whimpering. After she had taken a few sips from the water fountain and three deep breaths, she and Sam followed a lanky male attendant down a wide corridor to a bank of elevators.

      The morgue was located in the basement of the hospital, where the air was sharp with the scent of formaldehyde and bleach, aggravating Emma’s already churning stomach. She closed her hand over her nose and mouth to keep from throwing up.

      The morgue was a large, square room filled with a desk and dozens of metal gurneys, bearing corpses veiled in white sheets. The walls were lined with doors that looked very much like the door of any kitchen icebox. And it was cold in that room. Cold enough to turn breath into clouds.

      When they walked in, a doctor was shining a penlight down a dead woman’s throat. Emma’s eyes jumped frantically from the woman’s massive, flaccid breasts to the doctor’s blood-splattered scrubs before she was finally able to look away.

      The doctor looked up from the corpse and frowned.

      “They’re looking for their son,” the attendant announced casually, as if Emma and Sam were searching for something as insignificant as a scarf or glove.

      Whistling to himself, the attendant walked over to the desk and retrieved a green sheet of paper. He studied the page, every now and again glancing at the drawers.

      Emma was shivering so hard, Sam thought she was going to shake right out of her skin. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into him.

      “Okay,” the attendant said, walking across the room, “this is the first one.”

      When he reached for the door handle, Emma’s eyelids instinctively snapped shut. She heard the click of the lock, the squeal of the slab wheels, and Sam’s deep inhale. It was just a few seconds, but it felt like hours before she heard Sam’s grateful voice exclaim, “No, that’s not Harlan! That’s not our son.”

      The second and third dead boys also proved not to be Harlan.

      When the attendant’s hand fell on the silver handle of the fourth and final door, Emma pushed her open palms at him. “Wait, wait a minute, please.”

      Each and every time she’d heard Sam utter those magical words—“That’s not our son”—Emma felt like she’d hit a jackpot. She wasn’t a gambling woman, but she figured the odds were in favor of Harlan being in that fourth drawer because they’d rolled the dice three times, and each time—lucky seven. Four in a row? No way that was going to happen. God wasn’t so kind to colored folks; snake eyes had to be on the horizon, because winning streaks always came to an end.

      “Go ahead,” she whispered.

      When the attendant slid the body into view, Sam broke into sobs. Emma peered down into the dark, still face and promptly fainted.