The Dying Ground by Nichelle D. Tramble Read Free Book Online Page B

sweet-potato fields nearly strangled me into tears.
    I stood up and shook my body the way I did on the field after a missed play or a nagging injury. “Have you seen her, Mrs. Johnson?”
    “Why you asking all these questions, Maceo?”
    “’cause I need to know she’s okay.”
    Her face clouded in anger. “She ain’t okay. She saw that boy’s brains get blown out.”
    “So you’ve spoken to her?”
    “Lord Jesus. Get on out of here, boy, before I have to hurt you. I promised that girl I wouldn’t talk about nothing with nobody, hear me? Nobody.”
    “Felicia is my friend.”
    “Then respect her wishes. She’ll be alright after a while, and that’s all I’m going to say.”
    “I understand. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
    “You ain’t bothered me. I’d tell you if you did.”
    I stood up. “Do you need me to do anything before I go?”
    “Can you move those bags of soil over there? Back them up against the fence until I can get to ’em.”
    I moved the bags and waited for the inevitable. “Oh,” she said, “and take Caesar around the corner for me.”
    I smiled to myself, knowing that Caesar wouldn’t make it past two houses before I’d have to carry him. Outside I moved at his pace, which meant one step every twenty breaths. Finally, the two of us just stood and watched the cars exit and enter the BART station.
    “Come on, Caesar.” I picked him up and walked back to the house. Mrs. Johnson met us on the porch.
    “He suckers you every time.”
    I placed Caesar near the front door and moved away. In an uncharacteristic move Mrs. Johnson came forward and squeezed my hand.
    I squeezed back. “Just tell her if she needs me—”
    She closed the door before I could finish the sentence.

S earching for Felicia, looking for clues that would lead to Billy’s murderer, served to keep my grief at bay. I felt heartache and despair at the inside of my eyelids and nipping at the heels of my feet. The search was also an extension of the neighborhood back-and-forth I’d done as a little boy for mothers and fathers looking for their kids.
    “Maceo? You seen Gary? He was suppose to be back here over an hour ago.” The words were always posed as a question, but they really meant “Find my kid.” And off I’d go after whoever was missing. In Gary’s case I knew, from whispers on the street, that he was spending most of his free time in the company of Mr. Donovan, a shellacked and reclusive man who lived three blocks away. The kids knew, long before the adults, that Mr. Donovan was the first in a long line of older men who’d succeed in turning Gary out.
    “Maceo?” Another voice, this time female, this time with more worry than the last call. “Maceo, Karen said she wasspending the night with your Aunt Cissy and she ain’t made it home yet. She there?”
    Karen was nowhere near Dover Street, and her mother knew it just as I did, but she’d rather have my eyes see the results of her worry, so I would go find her daughter and spare her what we both already knew. Anybody who’d seen Patrick Selig, a two-time tenth grader, hanging around the junior high five lunch periods in a row knew Karen was hot on his heels.
    And so it went until I became a crossroads of information for the lost and found, the secret-keeper of the well hidden and the ones on their way to being lost.
    Information on Felicia’s whereabouts and the how and whys of her disappearance would come to me in due time, but I felt a need to keep moving toward my own conclusion. I wanted to learn for myself the answers to Billy’s death.
    Once I left Mrs. Johnson’s I turned onto Market Street, then into an alley in search of Holly. He lived close to Mrs. Johnson in a ramshackle lean-to in the back of a warehouse. The warehouse itself was occupied by a group of hippie artists who maintained a love/hate relationship with Holly. The result was that he didn’t ask about their activities and they didn’t ask about his.
    I circled the