SUNDOWN IN ZION
CHAPTER SIX
Our hero runs into a new friend.
An hour after the sun rose over Little Rock on Saturday morning, a bearded man emerged from the makeshift quarters he had fashioned beneath a row of trees and vegetation along the Arkansas River. He eased himself into a seated position and watched the waters flow beyond his feet. Turning, he fumbled in a ragged backpack he had used for a pillow and found a cigarette package and a plastic lighter. There were two cigarettes left in the pack. He fished one out and carefully laid the other aside. He lit the cigarette and took a long drag. Leaning back on one elbow, he relaxed as the day grew lighter. From time to time he would withdraw then extend his legs, first one and then the other, as if pumping life into his body. His face was calm, not yet peaceful, but he was applying the effort.
He smoked the cigarette halfway, extinguished it and placed the unused half into the package. At that point he heard the sound of movement on the bank above his camp. It was the sound of feet scurrying about and was punctuated be grunts and an occasional soft yell. Intrigued, he eased to all fours and moved slowly upward until he could see through an opening in the underbrush.
He was east and to the north of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library building, and he was adjacent to a park that spread out east of the building. In an open area near the riverbank, a lone figure spun, kicked, and pirouetted. As it did hands would shoot from his body, damaging an imaginary foe. It was a man, not young, not old, but agile and graceful. He wore a blue exercise outfit and lightweight running shoes. He had dark brown hair, clipped short, that glistened in the morning light.
“Jesus,” his watcher said in a low voice, to himself rather than a listener. “That’s one mean son of a bitch.” Entranced, he continued to watch as the figure went into a new series of kicks and spins.
“One kickass motherfucker,” the man said, but as he said it, the figure froze in mid-spin. It bent over slightly and a hand shot toward the right hip. The figure remained motionless for a full minute before moving again. It regained movement, but slowed to studied, fluid motions that lacked the intensity and violence of before. “Guess he overdid it,” the observer said aloud. Then, still on his hand and knees, he eased backward like giant crab toward his home.
Nelson rested a moment from the exercises before jogging away to the west. He climbed a bank and entered a bridge that had once served trains but was now retrofitted for pedestrians and bicycles. It extended from near the library building, across the river, and into North Little Rock. He crossed the bridge, stopping once to observe the river making its slow but deliberate way to the sea. Continuing, the path descended to ground level and Nelson jogged north for several blocks before he made a circle, returned, and re-entered the bridge. He jogged back into Little Rock, turned to the west and continued running along a riverfront park for another mile.
The return run eventually brought him to an entertainment district extending parallel to the river. When he came to a building that sold books along with meals and coffee, he stopped and entered.
The building was a converted warehouse that was an adjunct of the main library building standing at the opposite end of a connecting parking lot. The interior was clean, well-lighted, and filled with used books and other merchandise. In one corner of the ground floor was a small enclave, from which a young woman dispensed food and drink. Nelson fished a five-dollar bill from his trousers and purchased a large coffee that he then took into a seating area. It was also lined with books. He chose one at random that happened to be a book on Cajun cooking. Easing into a chair at a square table, he studied the cookbook and sipped his coffee. He became so interested that he failed to notice footsteps approaching from his front.
“I swear to God I’m not stalking you,” a feminine voice said. “Looks like we have similar habits.”
Nelson looked up to see Tina Barrow standing before him. She was hardly recognizable from the night before. Her hair had been pulled into a ponytail that extended from a UALR baseball cap. She wore tight jeans and a gray sweatshirt that, though its purpose may have been to de-feminize, only accentuated her ample breasts. Even without makeup, her skin looked fresh and pleasant. He studied her for a few seconds as if her appearance took time to register. “Mrs. Barrow,” he said.
“Tina,” she said. “Thanks for the beer last night.”
“Thanks for the history lesson.” When she didn’t move, he said, “What brings you down this morning?”
“Saturday morning is ‘Library Day,’” she said as if he should have known. “I always come to the library on Saturday and have lunch in the River Market.” She waited for him to speak. When he didn’t, she said, “Come here often?”
“It’s a stop on my exercise route.” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Coffee?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” she said as he started to rise. “I’ll get it.” With that she spun around and went walked to the food area. In a few moments she returned with a large coffee and sat across from him.
“Nice place,” he said.
“If I had known I would run into you again, I would have prepared myself a little better.”
He said, “You look very nice, in my opinion.”
“So what else would you like to know about sundown towns, other than they don’t allow black folks to be there after dark. Sorry it got too loud in there to talk last night.”
“Did they really have signs? I mean signs warning African-Americans not to be caught there after dark?”
“They didn’t call them African-Americans.”
“No, I don’t imagine they did,” he said.
She said, “As for the signs, I never saw one myself but I have seen photographs.”
“So you say this place, Connorville was a sundown town.”
“Not originally,” she said. “It was just a little stop on the railroad and there weren’t any blacks who lived there because there had never been any jobs for them. It’s really what I call a “Swann City.”
“A swann city?”
“Named after the famous court case that that initiated forced busing to achieve racial integration.”
“I’m confused,” he said.
“A judge in the case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education held that busing was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance in schools. So, municipalities with segregated populations began to integrate their schools by busing children long distances from their own neighborhoods.” She paused. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear the great sucking sound.”
“The what?”
“The sound of families fleeing major cities to all-white communities within easy commuting distance.” She stopped to drink her coffee.
“I must have missed that,” he said, “but I have led a sheltered life.”
“You must have,” she said. “It proved to be one of the major determinants of urban development in modern times. I did my doctoral dissertation on one aspect of its effect on population distribution. It made and destroyed cities with equal ambivalence. Cities demonstrate the effects of natural selection the same as nature. Despite the current beliefs, there is no such thing as a ‘balanced eco-system.’ It is always in flux as are communities. Some survive. Others don’t.”
“So Connorville was affected?”
“The ‘poster child’ of the so-called ‘white-flight’ syndrome,” she said. “It has grown from a hamlet of a few hundred people to a population of over 20,000 in the last 30 years.” She twisted her coffee cup. “And guess how many of those are white.”
“Most of them?”
“All of them.”
“How do they keep out black folks now?” he said. “Since they don’t have signs anymore.”
“They have ways,” she said. “Methods ranging from the reprehensible to the horrific.”
“They must really fear black people,” he said.
“They call it ‘maintaining a pleasant way of life’ and would be highly offended by your premise,” she said.
“I suppose they would,” he said. The two of them drank their coffee in silence. Then Nelson closed his eyes in thought before resuming the conversation. “May I ask you another question?” he said.
“It’s ‘tbarrow04192004 at ualr dot edu’ and I’ll write it down for you if you can’t remember it.”
“I’m sorry?” he said, confused.
“My email address, but don’t pass it around to your friends.”
“I don’t have many friends and I don’t do email,” he said. “I wanted to ask you about a recent news event.”
She sighed. “The cause of despair used to be unfulfilled dreams,” she said, “but now it is rejected email offerings.”
He laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “Could I ask if you are familiar with an incident at Connorville in which a young girl was murdered?”
She slumped in her chair. “Oh hell,” she said, “you’re talking about that student that was shot and dumped there.”
“Abbey Stubblefield.”
“Whatever,” Tina said. “Police said she was a gang member.”
“A gang member?”
“That’s what the cops decided. They say she was probably murdered in Little Rock and dumped in Connorville as some sort of gang joke.”
“The press reported this?”
“No,” she said. “That’s what one of my students who hails from ‘The Forbidden City’ told me. Her dad knows the police chief.”
Nelson stared at her. “I’m talking about a young woman who attended that special school in Hot Springs for gifted students.”
“So,” Tina said. “You don’t believe that a gifted student could join a gang?”
He thought. “I wouldn’t consider it likely,” he said.
She laughed. “There may be as many as a million and a half gang members in the country,” she said. “Want to know what one of current problems with them is?”
“Please.”
“According to an academic paper I reviewed recently, they are infiltrating major universities. Seems that they have decided white-collar crime is a lot less dicey than drug dealing.” She stopped and drank her coffee before resuming. “I wonder where they ever got that idea.”
Nelson was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was soft and questioning. “So you think this honors student and world-class athlete might have been a gang member?”
“I’m saying that it is not be impossible,” she said. “I’m an academician. We don’t deal in the ‘for certains,’ and, by the way … there is a question I keep forgetting to ask you.”
He seemed not to hear at first, but then snapped his head toward her. “What?”
“Wife?”
“Me?”
“You.”
“No.”
“Divorced? I have this morbid distaste for divorced men. Me and Jesus.”
“Never married.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she said. She smiled and placed a hand on his forearm. “You have this sort of movie star quality about you.” Then she looked serious. “You do like women?”
“Very much so,” he said. “I just never married one … yet.”
“Unbelievable,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“Guess I was married to the military until recently,” he said. “That’s a hard career on a spouse ...,” he stopped himself and his face reddened. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” she said, “don’t be. I found that out for myself on April 19, 2004.”
Nelson cocked his head in thought. Before he could speak, she said “Tell you what. Screw ‘Library Saturday.’ What say I buy you a late breakfast and then give you a ride home?”
He thought. “Sounds inviting,” he said. “But one more question.”
“You and your damn questions,” she said. “You have, what some folks call, a foxy chick offering to feed you and you want to ask her questions? You do know that I get paid for answering questions, don’t you?”
“Just one,” he said, laughing. “You seem to tend toward thinking Abbey Stubblefield may have had a past. Is it because of what the police said?”
“No,” she said, rising. “It’s because of what one of my students who knew her said.”
“And that was?”
“She said Abbey had started acting a little strange over the last several months. She had become, according to my student, secretive and mysterious, like she knew something she wasn’t going to tell anyone, and …”
“And?”
“And that is all I’m going to say about the mysterious Abbey Stubblefield until my appetite is satisfied.”
Stay tuned
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