Free Brighton by Michael Harvey Page B

front of the main office for L&G Radiator and listened to the cars whistle overhead. He walked past two boarded-up buildings, three cats, and a rat that looked like it could eat the cats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Kevin stopped in front of a skinny three-decker, shoehorned between a factory that made screen doors and an abutment for the highway. A Puerto Rican leaned his head out of a second-floor window and asked if Kevin wanted to buy some rum. Kevin said no. The Puerto Rican told him to come back on Sunday when the packies were closed and he’d give him a deal. Kevin walked up three steps of poured concrete and knocked on the door to the first-floor apartment. She opened it on the chain and stared out at him.
    “Yeah?”
    “Gemele, it’s Kevin. Kevin Pearce.”
    A child yelled for mom from somewhere behind her. Gemele Harper unchained the door and left it open. Kevin followed her in. Gemele was small but sturdy. And she needed to be. She lived with her four kids, aged twelve down to six, in a one-room apartment with a kitchenette and table in one corner and a foldout bed in the middle. Three of the kids were sitting around the table, watching Kevin from under sleepy eyelids. The youngest, a girl named Natalie, sat on the far side of the bed, scribbling with crayons on the wall.
    “I got to be somewhere at five.” Gemele sat down heavily.
    “Who takes care of them?”
    Gemele nodded at the oldest girl. “Tasha handles it.”
    The apartment smelled like burnt grease and smoke. A lengthof electrical cord ran from a space heater at the foot of the bed, up and under the covers.
    “That’s dangerous as hell, Gemele.”
    “It’s unplugged.”
    “But you use it in the winter?”
    She pushed a look toward the radiator, a cold lump of steel squatting in the corner. “No heat coming up most nights. You rather they freeze to death? What do you want, Kevin?” He hadn’t seen her in a while, but her voice was already stretched thin, nearly transparent.
    “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
    “Here’s fine.”
    Kevin hesitated.
    “They know about their daddy. Know what he did. Know what he didn’t do.” Gemele nodded again at the oldest. “Tell him about your daddy.”
    Tasha stood up like she’d been asked to recite in school, feet shuffling and fingers scratching her palms in nervous energy. “My daddy’s name was James Harper. He was sent to prison for killing a woman named Rosie Tallent. He was in prison for . . .” Tasha squinted hard and looked at the ceiling as she counted on one hand. “. . . two or three years, I think. Then they killed him.”
    “Stuck him in the neck with a screwdriver,” Gemele said and waited for Tasha to continue.
    “My daddy was innocent. He was framed because he was a black man. And that’s just how it was.”
    Kevin looked at Gemele and back to Tasha. Then at Gemele again.
    “You got a problem with that?” she said.
    “What do you think?”
    “Not a word that’s not true.”
    “And you think it helps?”
    “You know why?”
    “Because otherwise James never lived at all?”
    “For a white boy, you get it. A little bit, anyway.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You know how I feel, Kevin.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So why did you come here? Not to hear my girl recite her family history.”
    He sat down on the bed.
    “Kevin?”
    “What?”
    “Lift up your goddamn head.”
    He did.
    “You’re one of the finest men I know, and the only reason my James ever got a bit of justice from this state. Didn’t save him, but it might save them.” She glanced again at the circle of eyes staring back at her from around the table. “So whatever you have to say, you can say it here. And it’s all right.”
    “Thanks, Gemele. This isn’t bad.”
    She waited.
    “I won a prize today.”
    “That’s what you want to tell me?”
    “I won the Pulitzer Prize. I won it for James’s story.”
    She smiled—a crooked, broken thing that always caused a tightness in his chest even though he