The Resurrectionist (16 page)

W
HEN
J
ACOB GETS
back to Johnston Hall, Elizabeth is waiting for him at the top of the stairs. She begins to speak, breathlessly, before he is halfway up the staircase.

“Oh, Jacob, where have you been? I was hoping Doctor McMichaels was with you.”

“Haven't seen him yet. What's up?”

“These men are in your office, Jacob. I told them to wait, but they barged on in. This man's secretary has been calling all week. This morning she's called every half hour. He said he couldn't wait any longer.”

Now that he is level with her, Jacob can see that several long strands of Elizabeth's hair have come loose from her hair band. She tucks them behind her ear like a schoolgirl.

“Who is it?”

Elizabeth looks at a scrap of paper in her hand. “Reverend Marcus Greer, from the Ebenezer Methodist Baptist Episcopal Church.” She sounds out the unfamiliar cluster of words carefully.

Jacob knows the church. It is the best building on its block, a half mile from Mary's house, immaculately kept and with a neon cross out front that glows twenty-four hours a day, as if in proud defiance of its impoverished surroundings.

“In my office, you said?”

Elizabeth nods.

Jacob is already moving down the hall. “All right. I'll handle it. Let me know if Jim comes in, will you?”

The inside of his office is, for once, cramped when he opens the door: four black men are crowded against the walls, standing with their backs to the window and the bookcases, all of them big men and clad in dark suits that make them look even larger. They are ranged around the room shoulder-to-shoulder, in the stance of the Secret Service, with their hands crossed at their waists. One of them, to Jacob's surprise, is Lorenzo Shanks, whose massive chest seems to strain against the fabric of his brown suit coat. However impressive his pectorals, however, Lorenzo's face looks humble, even a bit cowed.

Jacob reaches out a hand to him. “Lorenzo, what a surprise.” He looks down at the suit and smiles. “You clean up mighty well.”

Lorenzo shakes his hand absently, his eyes over Jacob's shoulder, looking at the man seated in the chair opposite Jacob's desk. The man rises slowly and turns around. He is shorter than the others but wider, built like a football lineman past his prime. Unlike those of the others, his suit is silk, blue and double-breasted, with a faint pinstripe. When he reaches out a hand for Jacob to take, an onyx cufflink emerges from his sleeve. His handshake is cool and fleshy.

“I would say I'm glad to meet you, but we have no time for hollow pleasantries,” he says in a baritone. “My name is Marcus Greer, and I'm here to talk with you about the remains of our brothers and sisters in your basement.”

Jacob sets his portfolio down on the desk carefully and settles into his chair. It requires some effort not to cut his eyes toward Lorenzo.

“All right. Let's talk, then. As Lorenzo has probably told you, a renovation crew found a number of bones in the cellar earlier this week. The exact number will take some time to determine, but we're confident at this time that the remains are human.”

“And African American.”

“That is yet to be determined.”

“Yet?”

“We have a forensic anthropologist from Clemson University working on the site right now. He has assured me he will prepare a full report on what he finds.”

Greer shifts in his chair to look at the other men. “On the site now, you say? I wonder why the basement is so quiet. We checked the cellar door. It's locked.”

Jacob only shrugs. “I don't keep his schedule for him.”

Greer pulls a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabs at his forehead with it. “And you-all will be content with this report? When it is published, will that conclude the matter for you?”

“I can't give you a definite answer on that right now. This is a highly unusual situation. At this point, the school is measuring its options as carefully as possible before we proceed. We want to be sure to take the appropriate course of action.”

The reverend replaces his handkerchief carefully before he looks up at Jacob. “I think your preferred course of action is
in
action, Mister Thacker, just as it has always been. Or should I say, inaction where the citizens of Rosedale are concerned. Just this week I have had my secretary calling the dean's office since Monday afternoon, when Brother Shanks came to talk with me. Not a single call has been returned.”

“I was not aware of that. Had I known of it, I would have contacted you myself.”

Greer arches an eyebrow. “Is that a fact?”

“It's my job.”

Jacob begins to say more, but Greer cuts him off with a wave of his hand. “I know the party line. I know you could go on all morning about the old Negro hospital, the Charity Hospital, the free clinics. But all of that is just covering, just a salve on the wounds of racial injustice that are as much a part of your school's history as the buildings themselves. A salve over an old wound—a wound that your basement tells me has been festering for a hundred years.”

One of the men by the bookcases makes a noise of agreement. Things are getting out of hand. Jacob reaches for his portfolio on top of the desk gratefully and takes out the envelope from the archives. He opens it and passes the photocopy of Nemo Johnston's picture across the desktop.

“Take a look at this, if you will, reverend, and tell me what you see.”

Greer takes the paper and glances down at it for a moment. “I see a brother from another time, an ancestor, a grandfather. A man with dignity in spite of the trials and tribulations that show on his face.”

“I agree with you. But what you also see there is the man we think is responsible for every bone in that basement. Nemo Johnston was his name. He was the school's resurrectionist, a body snatcher. What they used to call the men who procured the specimens for gross anatomy. So this matter isn't as simply black-and-white as you seem to think it is.”

The reverend's face darkens a hue. He hands back the photocopy as if it has contaminated his hand.

“He stayed on with the school after the war, after emancipation,” Jacob says, letting the silence in the room gather weight. He looks down again at the photocopied image of Nemo Johnston before he puts it back in the envelope with the others, carefully, willing his hand to stop trembling.

The reverend is speaking with an effort at composure. “I am not here today to debate what a brother may have done, or been forced to do,” he says. “I am here today to demand a hearing—a public hearing—about the remains of our brethren downstairs. Since your dean has been so reticent in meeting with me, he will meet with the public.” Greer shoots his cuffs and places his hands on his knees, leaning forward in his chair.

“Saturday morning my congregation will assemble at Ebenezer at dawn. We will march down Gervais, past the statehouse, to the very door of this building. Our banners will proclaim the event as a reparations march. I will tell the press that since dialogue has failed us, we have no recourse but to pursue civil litigation. I believe the news coverage will be extensive.”

Jacob can feel the sweat, which had begun under his arms the minute he entered the office, begin flowing in earnest.

“If you think coming in here and hot-boxing me with these guys is going to change how the school conducts its business, you're mistaken. Your march won't do much better.”

Greer leans back in his chair and smiles. “And there we have it.
Your
business. Your business has been conducted on the backs of my people for generations. But the times have changed, Mister Thacker. Your business is now
our
business.”

“Doctor,” Jacob says, hating himself for it but unable to keep his tongue. “It's Doctor Thacker.”

“Doubtless it is. But from where I stand, a white coat and a white hood don't look all that different.” The men—all but Lorenzo—chuckle as Greer rises from his seat.

“I implore you to talk with your dean about this. If we can get no justice from official channels, we must agitate in the streets. Thirty-six hours from now, we will march. And the march will have a historic impact. Your school will feel it for years.”

He turns on his heel and steps to the door, already being opened by one of his men. They follow him in silence, single file. Lorenzo is the last out the door, lingering on the threshold.

“Didn't know you were a religious man, Lorenzo,” Jacob says.

“I meant to come by yesterday,” he says, almost apologetically. “But Bowman's got us working over on the East Campus.”

“You do what you have to, I guess,” Jacob says, trying to smile. “I've seen you down at the gym. Hell, I'd want you in my corner too.”

“Brother Shanks!” the reverend calls from the hallway. With one last glance at Jacob, Lorenzo is gone.

T
HE
BMW
CLINGS
to the curving driveway of the Dean's Mansion like a lover, its humming engine echoing off the low stone walls that border the neatly sealed blacktop beneath a canopy of dogwoods and magnolias. Except for its narrowness, this route could be confused with a road, stretching as it does over a winding quarter mile from the estate's iron gates on Beltline Avenue to the circular turnaround in front of the antebellum manse, where the asphalt gives way to pea gravel that is neatly raked each morning by the grounds crew. As often as he has been out to the mansion, Jacob can still hardly believe the grandeur of the place.

Yet this evening, with the day ebbing into plum-colored twilight, he has anything but beauty on his mind. All afternoon he tried to reach the dean, who has steadfastly refused to carry a cell phone or beeper since the day he left private practice. On his way home from the office, Jacob tried the mansion once more from his own cell phone, breathing an audible sigh of relief when the familiar voice of Bitsy McMichaels answered and told him that Jim was just back from the golf course and would see him if the matter was urgent. He assured her that it was.

He pulls into the turnaround a little too fast, pea gravel clattering in the convertible's wheel wells. Hurrying up the steps, he has a hand out to ring the bell when the great door swings open from the inside to reveal Bitsy standing in the great foyer. She is, as ever, immaculate, a former debutante who has never quite lost the easy grace of her youth, though her sandy blond hair is now streaked with gray and her suntanned face is beginning to show wrinkles at the corners of her mouth. When she smiles, the wrinkles first deepen, then disappear.

“Jacob, please come in,” she says, extending a hand. “I have to say, you've got me worried, though. I'm afraid something terrible has happened.”

“No, no, nothing terrible,” he says, straining to smile. “You know how the first week of school goes. Lots of little fires to be put out.”

She leads him through the ballroom, where the catering services staff is setting up tables and chairs for tomorrow night's year-opening banquet. Their voices reverberate off the high ceilings of the room.

“Jim is in his study, having a drink,” she says, and gestures toward a high oak door that has been closed against the noise of the caterers. “Go on in, and I'll bring you boys something to eat in a minute.”

He begins to tell her not to bother, but she cuts him off and places a hand on his arm, light as a bird. “You know it's no trouble, sugar. Make yourself at home.”

Jacob finds Jim in the study, which is paneled in oak from floor to ceiling, with built-in bookshelves of the same wood flanking a brick fireplace. The dean is hunched in an old leather armchair that looks like it has been sandblasted, pulled up close to a small television set on one of the bookshelves. On the screen David Hasselhoff is being held at gunpoint in a locker room. Hasselhoff wears his trademark red swimming trunks and nothing else; his hair looks like a living thing.

“Jake, have a seat,” Jim says, eyes never leaving the screen. “Mitch is in trouble.”