Lovecraft Country, Page 3

  Major Negro population centers like Chicago’s South Side were represented as shining fortresses. Smaller neighborhoods and enclaves were marked with towers or oases. Isolated hotels and motels were inns with smiling keepers. Tourist homes—private residences that lent rooms to Negro travelers—were peasant huts, or tree houses, or hobbit holes.

  Less friendly parts of the country were populated by ogres and trolls, vampires and werewolves, wild beasts, ghosts, evil sorcerers, and hooded white knights. In Oklahoma, a great white dragon coiled around Tulsa, breathing fire onto the neighborhood where Atticus’s father and Uncle George had been born.

  Atticus turned to Massachusetts. Devon County was marked with an icon he’d seen in numerous other places in the atlas: a sundial. Standing beside it, casting his own shadow over the gnomon, was a grim Templar holding a noose.

  “Victor Franklin,” said George, who’d been rummaging in file drawers while Atticus looked at the atlas. He waved a typewritten sheet he’d extracted from a folder.

  “Who?” Atticus said.

  “Old schoolmate from Howard. I don’t think you ever met him, but the past couple years he’s been running the Grand Boulevard office for me. Last September he went back east to visit his folks, and I asked him if he’d take a side trip through New England to check out some new listings for the Guide.

  “One of the places I sent him was in New Hampshire. Another school friend, Lester Deering, moved up there to open a hotel. Place was supposed to be up and running already, but Lester had some problems with the local contractors and had to delay—the day Victor came by, he was over in the next town, trying to hire a new electrician to finish the wiring. So Victor shows up and the hotel’s not open, nobody’s around, and when he tries to rent a room at a motel down the road—”

  “No vacancies.”

  “Right. Not for him. So he said to hell with it, and decided to head back down into Massachusetts and spend the night at a tourist home.

  “So he started driving south, and by the time he crossed the state line he needed to pee. He could have gone to a gas station and asked to use their restroom, but the way his day had been going he could guess how that would turn out, so instead he decided to pull over and go in the woods.

  “As soon as he got out of the car, he got nervous. The sun was going down, he hadn’t passed another car in miles, and he hadn’t seen another colored man since Boston. But he had to go, so he stepped into the woods, just far enough to be out of sight if anyone did drive by. And he was in the middle of his business when he heard something thrashing around farther out in the trees.”

  “Shoggoth?” Atticus said.

  George smiled. “I don’t think Victor would know what that is, but his thoughts were definitely leaning in that direction. ‘It was big, whatever it was,’ he told me, ‘and I wasn’t interested in finding out how big.’ So he zipped up in a hurry and ran back out to the road, which is where the real monster was waiting for him.

  “County sheriff,” George said. “Victor had been so focused on whatever it was busting branches out in the woods, he never even heard the patrol car drive up. It was just there, parked behind Victor’s Lincoln. And the sheriff was leaning against the Lincoln’s front hood, holding a rifle. Victor said when he saw the expression on the sheriff’s face, he had more than half a mind to turn and run. He said the only thing that stopped him was the certainty he’d be shot in the back if he did that.

  “Instead he put his hands up and said, ‘Hello, officer, how can I help you?’ The sheriff started right in with the usual Twenty Questions: Who are you, where are you coming from, why’d you stop here? Victor answered as respectfully as he could, until the sheriff cut him off and said: ‘So what you’re telling me is, you came all the way from Chicago to piss in my woods like some animal?’ And Victor was trying to come up with an answer to that that wouldn’t get him shot in the face, when the sheriff asked another question: ‘Do you know what a sundown town is?’

  “Victor told the sheriff yes, he was familiar with the concept. ‘Well,’ the sheriff said, ‘you’re in Devon, which is a sundown county. If I’d caught you here after dark, it’d be my sworn duty to hang you from one of these trees.’ And Victor—he said he was so scared he was calm, you know that feeling?—Victor looked up in the sky, and he couldn’t see the sun above the trees, but there was still light, so he said: ‘It’s not sunset yet.’ And then, he said, he very nearly fainted, hearing how those words sounded coming out of his mouth, like he was giving sass . . . But the sheriff just chuckled. ‘No, not yet,’ he said. ‘Sunset today is at 7:09. You’ve got seven minutes.’ ‘Well then,’ said Victor, ‘if you let me go on my way, I’ll be out of the county in six minutes.’ ‘Not going south, you won’t,’ the sheriff told him. ‘Not unless you speed. And if you speed, I’ll have to pull you over . . .’ ‘I’ll go back north, then,’ Victor said. ‘That might work,’ the sheriff said. ‘Why don’t you try that and see what happens?’

  “So Victor went to get in the Lincoln, terrified that the sheriff was just toying with him before putting a bullet in him, and then when he opened the car door he had another thought, and he looked at the road and looked at the sheriff and said, ‘Is it legal for me to make a U-turn here?’ And the sheriff smiled and told him, ‘It’s a good thing you asked that. Ordinarily, I’d consider a U-turn to be a violation, but if you say please, I might let it go just this once.’ So Victor said please, and the sheriff ran out the clock some more thinking it over but finally said OK. So Victor got in the Lincoln and the sheriff got in his patrol car and they both turned around, and Victor went back up the road at just under the speed limit with the sheriff riding his bumper the whole way. He made it into New Hampshire with about thirty seconds to spare.”

  Listening to this story, Atticus felt a number of different emotions, but one of the strongest was embarrassment. He’d been so upset by his own encounter with the Indiana state trooper, when the trooper hadn’t even drawn his pistol. “So the sheriff let him go then?”

  “The sheriff stopped at the state border. But the road ran straight for another half mile, and when Victor looked in the rearview he saw the sheriff get out of the patrol car and train the rifle on him. He got his head down just in time: The sheriff shot out his back window, and one round came straight through and starred the glass above the steering wheel, right at eye level. Victor kept it on the road, though, and kept his foot on the gas. He went a whole other county without slowing down before he was sure the sheriff wasn’t chasing him. Then the shakes hit him so bad he nearly ran the Lincoln into a ditch.”

  “How’d he get home?”

  “Through Canada. Quebec border guards had some questions about the bullet holes, but they let him in, and he was able to get the glass replaced in Montreal. And when he finally got back here, he typed up this report”—George waved the sheet of paper again—“saying he couldn’t recommend Devon County for inclusion in The Safe Negro Travel Guide.”

  “Well, thanks for the warning, George,” Atticus said. “But you know I can’t tell Pop that story. It’d just make him even more determined to go.”

  “Yeah, I know. I wouldn’t tell him about the shoggoth, either.”

  Atticus’s father didn’t answer the buzzer at his apartment building. Atticus rang a second time and the landlady, Mrs. Frazier—who at eighty-two could still hear a pin drop anywhere on her property—came out to see who it was. She reacted as George had done, embracing Atticus and welcoming him back, but when she’d finished fussing over him she told him his father wasn’t home and hadn’t been for nearly a week. “He went off with a white man, last Sunday evening just before dark.”

  “A white man?” Atticus said. “You mean a policeman?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Mrs. Frazier said. “He wasn’t wearing a uniform, and he looked a little young to be a detective. And he drove a very fancy car—silver, with dark windows. Never saw one quite like it before.”

  “Did this man give his nam
e?”

  “No, and your father didn’t introduce him. But your father did tell me you’d be coming home soon, and he said you’d know where to find him.”

  “Mrs. Frazier, did my father seem . . . OK?”

  “Well, you know your father . . . I wouldn’t say he was in a good mood, but it was the least angry I’ve ever seen him in the presence of a white person.”

  Atticus borrowed a spare key from Mrs. Frazier and let himself into the third-floor apartment. He stood just inside the door, adjusting again to the change in scale; the flat, never large, now felt cramped and claustrophobic. The front room was home to the magic couch, which folded out into the bed where Atticus had used to sleep, and the Frankenstein Victrola, which Montrose had built himself, installing a modern turntable, radio receiver, and speakers into an antique phonograph cabinet salvaged from the flames of Tulsa. Atticus looked with new knowledge at his father’s record collection, which crowded the shelves on the walls. The collection contained not just music but spoken-word albums: speeches, lectures, audio plays.

  Atticus was surprised to see a television set. His father had long resisted that, saying he’d save his money for the day Negroes had their own broadcast stations. Maybe Popular Mechanics was offering build-it-yourself TV kits now.

  He turned and went into the narrow hallway that ran past the tiny kitchen and bathroom to his parents’ bedroom in back. A pair of doorless, shallow hall closets had been fitted out with more shelving. A number of these shelves were still stenciled with Atticus’s name, but all of his old possessions were gone—thrown out, in fulfillment of a threat made by Montrose when Atticus announced his intention to join the U.S. Army. Atticus, who’d already removed his few prize belongings to George’s for safekeeping, had taken the threat in stride. When his father turned from words to fists, Atticus had taken that too, promising himself this was the last time Montrose would lay a hand on him.

  But their big fight had come later, in the summer of 1951, when Atticus returned home on leave following his first combat tour. Enough time had passed for both Atticus and his father to regret at least some of what had been said and done. There was no formal reconciliation and certainly no exchange of apologies, but when Atticus appeared unexpectedly at his father’s door one morning, Montrose had let him in, that single act speaking volumes.

  Their unofficial cease-fire lasted less than a day. That evening Atticus got a call from a reporter at The Chicago Defender who wanted to interview him for a series of profiles of Negro soldiers. Atticus was flattered, but Montrose became livid when he heard. “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “Bad enough you nearly throw your own life away for a country that hates you, now you want to inspire other young men to make the same stupid mistake?”

  The progression from words to blows was quicker this time, with Atticus determined for once to give as good as he got. Looking around the back bedroom, Atticus could still see cracks in the plaster where he and his father, grappling, had slammed into the walls. Incredibly, it was Montrose who’d broken off the fight, right at the point where they were about to start doing serious damage to one another. Atticus had walked out, vowing never to return, but in his own gesture of restraint he’d left the reporter’s phone number behind and had not, then or afterwards, allowed himself to be interviewed about his service.

  “Ah, Pop,” Atticus said now, sighing. He ran a hand over his head and looked at the bed, tempted. Instead of lying down, he went to the kitchen to get himself a drink of water. That was when he saw the note on the refrigerator door. It was just one word, scrawled on a piece of scrap paper. Atticus recognized the “d” for what it was now, but in his head he still heard the name of that other town, the one that existed only in Lovecraft Country.

  He phoned George. “You going after him?” George asked.

  “Yeah, I guess I’d better.”

  “All right, I’ll go with you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, of course. We can take Woody.” Woody was George’s station wagon, a Series 22 Packard with inlaid birch trim and side paneling. “Just give me a few hours to find someone to watch Horace and take care of some other things.”

  “OK,” Atticus said. “But listen, George, in the meantime, you know anyone I could ask who might know about this white guy Pop went off with?”

  “You could try over at the Brothers. If he’s really been gone since Sunday, he must have asked for time off, or they’d have called me to find out where he was.”

  The Garvey Brothers Print Shop—actually owned by a Jewish couple, the Garfields—handled all the printing for George’s travel agency, including runs of The Safe Negro Travel Guide. Montrose worked for the Brothers as a machinist, maintaining and operating the presses and doing occasional tune-up work on the shop’s two delivery trucks.

  Atticus drove over to the shop and spoke to the weekend supervisor, who confirmed that Montrose had taken his two weeks’ vacation early, claiming it was a family emergency. The supervisor knew nothing about any white man, though.

  Atticus had better luck at Denmark Vesey’s, the bar where his father sometimes went after work. The bartender on duty, Charlie Boyd, had been working the evening shift a week and a half earlier when a white man had come in—a rare occurrence, Vesey’s being the sort of establishment most Caucasians would only enter in search of trouble or a bribe.

  “Guy was in his early twenties,” Charlie said. “Brown hair, blue eyes, sharp dresser. I don’t think he was a cop, but he had that attitude, like of course he could just walk in here. And he wasn’t afraid of Tree.” Tree was the bouncer, six-foot-six and so dark-skinned that even other Negroes sometimes did the white man’s double take when they saw him.

  “This guy talked to my dad?”

  Charlie nodded. “Came right up to him. And you know your dad, he’s like, ‘Who the hell are you?’ but this guy says, ‘Mr. Turner? We spoke on the phone,’ and hands him a business card.” Charlie shrugged. “Maybe he was a lawyer. Maybe that’s how he could afford that car.”

  “You saw what he was driving?”

  “Tree did. Silver four-door sedan with tinted windows. Tree didn’t recognize the make, but he figured it must be foreign. And real expensive.”

  “What did this guy and Pop talk about?”

  “That I don’t know. After he gave your dad his card, the two of them went over to a booth. They talked for maybe fifteen minutes, then the white guy got up and left. Your dad sat there a while longer, finished his drink, and then he left too. And that’s the last time I saw him in here.”

  “And when was this?”

  “Wednesday night before last.”

  Montrose’s letter to Atticus had been postmarked the following day. But sometime between Thursday and Sunday night, Atticus’s father had decided not to wait for a reply.

  Continuing to puzzle over that, Atticus returned to the apartment. Exhaustion hit him again and this time he surrendered to it, flopping on the bed in his father’s room and napping into the afternoon.

  The phone woke him. It was George, calling to say he still had some errands to run but would be ready to leave by six. After he hung up Atticus checked the fridge—finding nothing among the week-old leftovers he wanted or dared to eat—then wandered, yawning, into the living room. He stepped idly to the window and parted the curtains.

  This was a mostly middle-class block, its resident strivers eager to take part in the American dream of consumerism. Often frustrated in that pursuit, they spent their hard-earned dollars where and how they could: on furniture and appliances for their too-small apartments; on fine clothes for church, and for those theaters and nightclubs that would grant them admittance; and on luxury cars that, if they couldn’t be driven safely through the countryside, at least made a statement parked by the curb.

  But even on this street of Cadillacs, the car parked at the corner stood out, bespeaking a whole other order of wealth and privilege. Sleek, low-slung, and vaguely sinister, it was a car that would su
rely be named after a predator. Its silver skin and trim reflected the afternoon sun coldly, suggesting winter rather than summer. Its windows looked not just tinted but smoked, a seemingly solid black that offered no hint of who or what might be inside.

  Atticus wasn’t the only one to take note of it. A group of boys passing on the sidewalk stopped short beside the car, jaws dropping. One of them reached out to stroke it; as his fingers brushed the metal bodywork, he let out a squawk and yanked his hand back. The other boys laughed. After some double-daring, another boy stepped up to place his palm flat on the car hood . . . and jumped back shrieking. The boys broke and ran, laughing in panic.

  By then Atticus was moving too. He threw on a shirt, trousers, and shoes, and ran downstairs. It couldn’t have been more than two minutes, but by the time he reached the sidewalk, the silver car had vanished. He looked up and down the street, in vain, then stared at the empty space where the car had been, wondering if he’d dreamed it.

  Atticus arrived at George’s to find a short, slender woman in a sundress standing guard over the Packard.

  “Letitia?” he said. “Letitia Dandridge?”

  “Atticus Turner,” Letitia said, feigning disappointment at his uncertainty, for she’d seen him coming a block away and recognized him instantly. But then she laughed and opened her arms.

  Growing up, the Dandridges had lived west of State Street in a poorer section of the neighborhood. Letitia’s older sister, Ruby, had used to babysit Atticus, and her brother, Marvin, had worked part-time at the travel agency. Letitia, a year younger than Atticus, had for a while been the only girl member of the South Side Futurists Science-Fiction Club, which met after school in George’s parlor. Eventually Mrs. Dandridge had put an end to that, insisting that Letitia stop wasting time on foolishness and start earning her keep like her siblings, after which Atticus rarely saw her.