A/N: This chapter is a little longer than usual, but I didn't want to divide it into two chapters. I hope you don't mind. Thank you for reading and especially to those of you who share your comments with me. I appreciate you more than you could ever know.
Chapter 16
"Iris… You're the woman Johnny calls his aunt, aren't you?"
The red-haired florist felt the heat of the stares. Roy's question sounded more like a knowing confirmation than a question. Now he, along with all the other guests except Lieutenant Crockett, were waiting for the answer. Iris closed her eyes in a futile attempt to dam her tears. She lowered her face to her lap, allowing the pent up emotions of the last decade, specifically the last few years, to overwhelm her. Her tears ran down from the inside corners of her eyes, leaving a salty taste behind as they traveled past the corners of her mouth. She feared that her relationship with Johnny was about to be damaged beyond repair. Her silence answered the question louder than her whispered reply.
"Y-yes."
Chet's eyes widened like blue-centered saucers. "Huh? But I thought you said you weren't related?"
Before Iris could respond to Chet, Joanne jumped into the conversation.
"Why didn't you tell me when I was working for you, Iris?" Joanne asked with more than a hint of displeasure in her voice. "For God's sake, I introduced the two of you, and you acted like you'd never even seen each other. Why?" Joanne spat out. She was exhausted from spending her nights on a lumpy cot at the hospital. Her fatigue seemed to have removed her internal filter, allowing her thoughts to escape from her mouth without concern for who might be offended.
"Take it easy, Jo," Roy cautioned, trying to settle her down even though he completely understood her anger. "There's got to be a good reason for the deception," he said in a low voice, then looked over at Iris with a soft gaze. "I think we'd all like to hear it."
"Joanne," Iris began with a shaky voice. "I owe you an apology, but… John didn't want any of you knowing the truth about our relationship, and that day-"
"There's no reason to lie about such a thing, Iris. None!" Joanne said, waving her hand towards Iris to emphasize her point.
"Yes… Yes, there is a good reason," Iris remarked, pinning the angry woman and the rest of her guests with her red-rimmed eyes. "I hope you'll understand after I explain-"
"Oh, I can't wait to hear this one," Joanne muttered, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest. She shrank back into the sofa beside Roy, immediately regretting her sarcasm.
"Please… Please let me start from the beginning. It's… It's a long story," Iris began, accepting the package of tissues Beverly removed from her purse and handed to the weeping woman. "Thank you."
Iris looked around the room, trying to discern what Johnny's friends were thinking, wondering how they would react. "What I have to tell you may be difficult for you to understand, but try to put yourself in Johnny's shoes. Just… Please listen to the whole story before you pass any judgments, okay?" She asked the group in a weak voice.
"It isn't our place to judge you or Johnny, Iris," Beverly spoke up. "We'll be quiet and allow you to tell us everything you want us to know. It's obvious that Johnny means a lot to you, and he means a lot to all of us, too. We have that in common, so we're not adversaries," the counselor said with an understanding smile; she felt grateful when the others agreed to do the same.
Marco felt his heart swell with admiration at the way Beverly had quickly doused the emotional flames with her remark. Her words and calming tone had settled everyone down, and she had managed to find something that they all could agree on. It was a strategic move, finding their common ground on which to build trust, in a situation that seemed to have been on the verge of spiraling out of control.
Iris inhaled deeply, exhaling a cleansing breath before she began. "In order to explain this, I've got to start at the beginning, long before I ever met John Gage. It all started when I was a teenager back in Alabama during my senior year in high school. I met a sweet young man, a handsome soldier, strong and polite, who had bravely served our country in the war… But my family disapproved of the relationship. My parents threatened to send me away, all the way to my cousin's home in Connecticut, if I didn't break up with him."
She looked around the room, ensuring that she had everyone's attention before she continued. "We didn't break up; we kept our courtship a secret from our families until I had graduated. I figured that once I was eighteen years old, I could do whatever I wanted, including marry Jon," she said, her eyes losing focus as her mind took her back to the early summer of 1948. "But I was wrong. We eloped, but we were refused a marriage license."
Iris saw the perplexed faces of those gathered around her. She knew they didn't understand.
"There were laws that prohibited our marriage in most states, especially in the deep South," she explained.
"Why?" Rebecca questioned, blushing when she realized she had agreed to remain quiet. "I'm sorry," she offered, sinking back into the sofa beside her husband.
"It's okay, Mrs. Stanley. That's a good question," Iris began, her breath hitching. "It's because… Jon was black."
"And it was illegal for a white person and a black person to marry back then, right?" Roy asked, thinking that he now knew the identity of the young mystery woman in the pictures in Johnny's photo album.
Iris swallowed hard, nodding her head. "One of Jon's Army buddies told him that we might be able to get married in Kansas, or in California. So we headed west. As we drove through Kansas, we decided to see if we could get a marriage license. We did, and in just a few minutes we were officially husband and wife. A few days later, we arrived in Los Angeles. We found an apartment, and Jon found a construction job.
We were happy, but we missed our families. One day, while Jon was at work, I walked down to the supermarket to use the pay phone. I made a collect call to my parents' number…," she hung her head before she continued. "My father answered the phone and accepted the charges. But… When I told him that Jon and I were in California and that we'd gotten married, he hung up on me."
Joanne intertwined her fingers with Roy's. Even though her mother had never really approved of her marriage to Roy, at least she hadn't turned her back on Joanne.
Iris sniffled, still staring at the coffee table in front of her, but not seeing it. Her eyes were still seeing her past, both good and bad.
"Anyway, I spent the rest of the day crying, but before Jon came home from work, I decided that if my parents were going to make me choose between them and my husband, then my husband was going to win. I loved him… so… much," she cried.
Drying her tears with the tissue Beverly had given her, she sniffled, then continued with her story. "Jon's family didn't have a phone, so he wrote them a letter. A couple of weeks later, we received a letter from them. They let him know that they disapproved of our union; asking him why the local colored girls weren't good enough for him. But they didn't turn their backs on him. They just didn't seem to understand… We were in love, and neither of us saw our skin color as a barrier, or a reason not to allow our love to grow."
Marco offered his elbow to Beverly, grateful when she curved her hand into the crook of his arm. He gently patted her soft hand with his own. He was of Mexican heritage and Beverly was of Irish ancestry. Would their relationship have been frowned upon twenty years ago?
Iris' face began to light up, her eyes glistening as she moved along with her story. "And our love did grow. Within a few months, I discovered that I was pregnant. We were so happy, but I was young, scared, and really wanted my mother to be with me. So I wrote my parents a letter, telling them that they were going to be grandparents, and that… That I wanted them to get to know their first grandchild."
Iris closed her eyes, her cheeks turning red as she cried even harder. Silence cloaked the room; no one uttered a word as they waited for her to continue. "A short time later I received a letter in the mail. It was short and to the point. They refused to acknowledge Jon as my husband, and they… They refused to ac-accept an innocent baby as a member of the family, because her father had darker skin than mine," she wept.
Lexi slipped her hand into the larger, warmer hand of Mike Stoker. Her own son was of mixed parentage. What if her family had rejected Antonio because his father was white? Her only option then would have been to place her newborn son for adoption. There was no way that she could have cared for him when she was in an abusive situation, selling her body on the streets. Instead of rejecting Antonio, Lexi's family had accepted him, raising him during her absence. What kind of parent turns their back on their own child and grandchild?
"Over the months, Jon's family grew to accept our marriage and they were more accepting of our unborn baby. His mother wanted to come out and help me after the birth, but they simply didn't have the money to make the trip. So when our daughter was born, it was just Jon and me – we were all she had, but she was loved," Iris whispered, struggling to breathe. After a few moments to collect herself, she continued.
"We named her Lily, keeping with the flower theme of my name. Lily was a beautiful happy baby. It was like she had gotten the best of both of us. She had dark hair, but it was straighter than Jon's. She had pretty light hazel eyes that were darker than mine, but lighter than Jon's brown ones. Her skin was the perfect mixture of my pale complexion and Jon's darker one. She even had a light sprinkling of freckles across her nose as she grew older," Iris chuckled. "Somehow, we managed to raise her without help from our families."
Hank wrapped his arm around Rebecca's shoulders, pulling her close. He remembered how difficult the birth of their daughters had been on his wife, and how much help her mother had been during those first few weeks after the delivery. He felt Rebecca's shoulders tremble and saw her swipe at her tears, knowing that she was thinking the same thing.
Iris took a deep breath and resumed her story. "I sent my parents a letter with a picture of Lily, and told them about her birth. I just knew that if they saw her, they'd fall in love with her. I never heard back from them." She used the tissues to dry her tears as her face morphed into a cold, stone-like appearance. It was obvious she had had to build a strong wall around her heart where her parents were concerned.
"Three years later, Jon was killed in an industrial accident." She heard a couple of gasps and knew that the wives of firemen lived with the fear of the same thing happening to them – being widowed at a young age, left to raise children alone.
"He's buried here, in California, because I didn't have the money to send his body back home to Alabama. His family couldn't afford to come here for the funeral. Kizzy, my mother-in-law, wrote me, telling me that my parents were aware of Jon's death… They could've afforded the airfare, but they didn't come to the funeral, didn't even contact me. At that moment, as far as I was concerned, they were dead, too," she said, her jaw firmly set.
"I never dated again, never wanted to," Iris said dryly. "Jon was the love of my life, and I was afraid that no one else could match up. I also didn't know if another man would accept Lily, be a father to her. So it was just Lily and me against the world," she chuckled, nervously.
Chet pulled Caroline close, knowing that she knew what it was like to be widowed at a young age, to raise a young daughter alone. Caroline leaned her head against Chet's shoulder briefly, a silent thank you to the man she loved, the man who loved her daughter as if Corrie was his own child, a man who would be there to help her raise her daughter because the little girl's own father was deceased.
Iris shifted in her seat, staring into the space in the middle of the room as she continued to relay her story. "I took odd jobs, things I could do with Lily tagging along with me, housekeeping and things like that. I didn't work full time until she went to school. That's when I found a job as a florist's assistant. The older lady, Liliana, taught me everything I know about flowers. She was a sweet Italian lady; what some people might call an old maid," she smiled wistfully.
"She never married?" Ron asked, hearing this story for the first time.
"No, she never did. She sort of accepted me and Lily as her daughter and granddaughter." Her eyes seemed to sparkle as she reminisced about her mentor. "She really connected with Lily. I guess it was because of their names. Liliana is Italian for Lily," she explained. "Since she didn't have family, and because she thought so much of us, she… Ahem…"
"Do you need some water?" Ron asked, standing before Iris could even respond.
"Yes… Ahem, please."
Beverly, her counseling skills taking over, leaned forward. "Iris, you're doing great. I know this must be difficult for you, but remember… You won't find any rejection here, not among us."
Marco held Beverly's hand, adding his own support to Iris. "I know it isn't the same as being accepted by your biological family, but… You ARE Johnny's aunt. That makes you a part of the 51 family."
"That's right, Iris. And I'm sorry for how I behaved earlier," Joanne stated, her voice filled with remorse.
Iris waved a forgiving hand in Joanne's direction as she gratefully accepted the proffered glass of water handed to her by the attentive detective. "It's okay, Joanne. I… I understand; no apology necessary. Thank you… all," she said, lifting the glass to her mouth, gulping the cooling liquid.
"Take your time, Iris. There's no rush," Beverly assured her, pleased when she saw the older woman visibly relax.
Iris set the empty glass on the coaster on the end table nearest her. "Lily began having problems in school. A few of the kids made fun of her because she didn't look like them. She also had problems learning. Later on, we discovered that it was called dyslexia, but by then, I had already pulled her out of school. I figured I could teach her what she needed to know in a place where she was happy, not miserable. Liliana allowed me to keep Lily with me at the shop, and teach her the basics of math, reading, and…" Iris lowered her gaze slowly. "Her history lesson would come a few years later."
"Where's Lily now?" Roy asked, seeing Iris' struggle to continue.
Iris looked over at Ron, seeing the slight nod of encouragement he gave her. "The '60's were turbulent times, Roy. When Lily was thirteen, in 1963, four little black girls were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Lily saw the story on the news, saw their pictures in the newspaper, and she began asking questions. She wanted to know about my family," Iris said, placing her open hand on her chest. "She knew of her paternal family, but knew nothing of my family. Obviously, she knew they were white, but she'd never once asked me about meeting them. I… I made a huge mistake then, one I will always regret. I lied to my own daughter; I told her that her maternal grandparents were deceased. As far as I was concerned, they were. And I didn't want her to know that her own grandparents had rejected her… But she found out later."
Chet cringed, remembering what it felt like to think he had been lied to by his parents. The incident had left him depressed, lonely, and making mistakes at work. He ran his hand through his curly hair, knowing exactly how Lily must have felt when she learned the truth.*
"In 1964, Liliana became ill. She died of breast cancer just a few months after being diagnosed. I was devastated by the loss, and so was Lily. After her funeral Mass, an attorney came to visit me. He told me that…." Her voice quivered, becoming airy as she struggled to tell of her surrogate mother's final wishes.
"Liliana had left everything to me and Lily. The lawyer had a copy of her will and… She left EVERYTHING to the two of us," she wept, remembering the generosity of the woman she loved dearly. "Bloomers… It was actually her shop."
"I'm sure that was a difficult time for you and Lily," Roy said softly.
"Yes, but… It was hardest on Lily."
"Iris… Where is Lily now?" Roy asked again.
Iris held up her finger, a gesture to the senior medic to let him know that she would get to that part of the story shortly.
"We had been hearing news about freedom riders, and how things in the south were going to be changing. By this time, my father-in-law had passed away, but Kizzy had been able to pay for telephone service. I called her, and she told me about plans to peacefully stand up for the civil rights of black people. When I shared this with Lily – she was fifteen by then – she asked to go back to the place where Jon and I had been born and raised. So… We packed up our car, and we headed to Alabama."
Beverly listened intently, finding the story both fascinating and astonishing.
"That took a lot of courage, Iris. You're to be commended," Beverly remarked.
Iris gave her a half-hearted smile, not feeling very courageous at the moment. "Along the way, I decided to show Lily the place where Jon and I had been married. Being there, outside that old courthouse, brought back some really good memories of my husband. When we left, we were traveling through a rural part of Kansas, when we passed by a skinny young man walking along the road. He had a small backpack and what looked like a camera case on his shoulder. He was hitch-hiking. Picking up a hitch-hiker was something I NEVER did, but he seemed different, more like a child than a young man. I was concerned about him so I picked him up."
"It was Johnny, wasn't it?" Marco interjected.
Iris nodded affirmatively. "Yes, he was energetic, eager, and… And he and Lily really seemed to connect with each other. He, too, had heard about the things happening down south, about how people of color were standing up to the racism that had oppressed them for so long, and people of all races were uniting to overcome the evils of prejudice."
Marco smiled knowingly.
"When John told us his name, I just knew that I couldn't do it. I couldn't call him by the same given name as my deceased husband. So I just never addressed him by his first name."
"I can understand that," Beverly said, encouragingly.
"John shared with us about growing up on an impoverished reservation, and that he had talked to his parents, telling them that he needed to take his camera, which was his most treasured possession, and go south to document the events. He was only sixteen years old, but he knew without a doubt that he wanted to be a photo journalist. The way he explained it, this journey he was making was a sort of rite of passage into manhood for him. He needed to prove that he could find a way to survive on his own in a strange land far from home. It was something that his male ancestors did, and John wanted to follow the old ways of his people with a modern day twist. He wasn't going into the wilderness; he was going to another part of the country."
"That's a long way from home for a kid," Hank stated.
"True, but they allowed him to leave the reservation, very reluctantly. Before he left, he had done something that had been extremely difficult for him. He had cut his long dark braid that had hung down between his shoulder blades, leaving it with his mother. It was symbolic of him separating himself from his parents, leaving boyhood behind. He explained to us that because he was half white and half Indian, he thought he could pass himself off as being white, to better fit in while he took his photographs of the protests. He was hoping to sell his pictures to magazines and newspapers, to jumpstart his journalism career. That's when I decided to give him a nickname."
"Nickname?" Chet grunted when Caroline's elbow connected with his side. "No, I wasn't gonna do anything. I just like nicknames. You know, like Gage the Galloping Greyhound," he said to his fiancée. Then turning back to Iris, he asked his question. "What was his nickname, Iris?"
The florist smiled, remembering the conversation she had had with her young passenger. "Well, I explained that Thornapple, which is also known as Jimson Weed, means 'disguise' in the language of flowers."
Chet jumped, his bushy eyebrows lifting upwards as he remembered the conversation he and Johnny had shared in the locker room shortly after Caroline had started working at Bloomers. "So that's how he knew what Jimson Weed meant," the Irishman exclaimed. "When I asked him how he knew, he just said that he was a man of mystery."
"He is a man of mystery, Chet," Iris retorted with a chuckle. "Anyway, I told him that I wanted to give him a nickname to go along with flowers, like Iris and Lily. He agreed to be called Thorn, short for Thornapple."
"And he's sometimes a thorn in the side of those around him," Hank added with a grin. "But he's our brother, our friend… Go on, Iris. I apologize for interrupting."
"No worries, Captain Stanley," Iris commented, feeling more relaxed around Johnny's friends, but growing more anxious about the rest of the story.
"Lily had never had many friends, so seeing her happy with someone her age was… It was wonderful. For a month, Lily, John, and I stayed with my mother-in-law. Fortunately, Kizzy lived outside of town, east of the river. It made life easier for us; John and I looked out of place with our lighter skin color. I really stood out with my bright red hair," she giggled.
"We all ate together, worshipped together at Brown's Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. I…," she hung her head. "I would go into the white part of town to buy groceries, because the produce was fresher there than in the black stores. John enjoyed squirrel hunting and fishing with a few of Kizzy's neighbor's. It was a wonderful time, seeing the two cultures bonding together, teaching each other," she said, thinking about the teenaged boys sharing with each other without regard for skin color. "There was a genuine hunger to learn the Indian culture from John, and for him to learn about the African heritage and southern culture of Kizzy and her nieces and nephews."
Iris tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, staring once more into space as her mind returned to the month the three of them had spent at the Campbell home. "Kizzy only had one small spare room which Lily and I used. Johnny shared my brother-in-law's room. He really admired Phillip; being ten years younger, he sort of looked up to him. Phillip often took John down to the river to fish and…," she chuckled softly, "And he showed John where to find alligators. John got a pretty good picture of a big one that was sunning on the river bank. Sometimes at night, I'd hear them talking. Of course, with Phillip being twenty-six, and gainfully employed, he often worked odd hours. He also had a girlfriend, so some nights he didn't even come home at all."
"Lily got to spend a lot of time with her paternal relatives." She chuckled softly. "And Kizzy taught her granddaughter how to make cornbread, lard biscuits, and cook grits."
"I bet Johnny enjoyed all the good cooking," Hank spoke up, seeing the smiles that crossed the faces of the others. Johnny's reputation of being a bottomless pit was well known.
"Some good soul food is just what that skinny boy needs," Ron grinned.
"I'm surprised Kizzy could afford to feed him," Joanne laughed, imagining the appetite of a teenaged John Gage.
"Well, he did bring in a lot of meat for us with his hunting and fishing, but no matter how much he ate, he didn't gain weight. He just got taller." She covered her mouth with her fingers, unable to hide her smile. "But you should've seen the look on his face when Kizzy told him it was 'hog killin' time."
"Hog killing time?" Lexi asked, not sure she had heard correctly.
"One of the sows was becoming rather temperamental, so Kizzy decided it was time to, um, give her an attitude adjustment. That meant fresh ham, bacon and souse."
"Is that pork?" Caroline asked, innocently.
"Well… Let's just say that another word for it is… Hog's head cheese."
"Holy sh… um… shucks!" Chet grunted, glad he had managed to halt the curse. "You eat the HEAD?"
"There's more to it than that, but yes, Chet. The meat from the head is used to make a kind of meat loaf that has the consistency of cheese. It's really tasty fried. But I wish you could've seen the look on John's face when he found out that he was going to have to pick the meat out of the boiled head of a pig."
"Ah, man..." Chet ran his hand through his curly hair. "Did he do it?"
"Oh, yea… and he really enjoyed the souse, too." Iris was enjoying her trip down memory lane, but a quick glance at the clock told her she needed to move forward with her story.
"Things were getting more and more serious all over the south. My brother-in-law, Phillip, had gotten involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had also been involved for several years in opposition to the Jim Crow laws, and even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made plans to come to town to help black people register to vote, or at least to put pressure on the officials to stop preventing them from exercising their rights. Of course, the Klan was active, even though they performed most of their evil deeds under the cover of darkness… And ghostly white sheets."
"Wait a minute," Mike said, suddenly understanding. "You mean, the three of you were in Selma, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement?"
"They were there on Bloody Sunday," Roy said softly, remembering the pictures he had seen in the photo album back at Johnny's apartment. Some of them looked so familiar that he wondered if, perhaps, the pictures he and others had seen might actually have been taken by Johnny.
"Because John had cut his hair in a crew cut, he-" Iris' explanation was quickly interrupted by Hank.
"Wait a minute," the captain interrupted with a huge grin. "John Gage had a… Our Johnny had a buzz cut?"
"Ahh-haha!" Chet howled, shirking back when he realized that his outburst was inappropriate. "I'm sorry, but, ahh-ha, I just can't imagine Gage with a flat top."
"Can you imagine latrine duty next shift?" Hank asked, glaring at his junior linemen.
"Sorry, Cap."
Iris continued with her story, as much to save the young Irishmen as to finish her tale. "Yes, and it was early Spring so he hadn't been in the sun enough to produce a rich tan, so he was easily seen as white, able to get into places that Lily couldn't." Iris snickered a little. "Didn't you ever wonder where Johnny picked up that accent he has sometimes?"
"Accent?" Marco asked, being more self-conscious of the heavy Spanish influence on his own pronunciation.
"Yes," Iris giggled harder. "Haven't you ever heard him drop his G's? Like when he says the word something, it sounds more like somethin'. At times, he even uses the N sound in the place of a TH. You know, like instead of saying 'in there,' it sounds more like 'in nair.' It's because he spent over a month in South Alabama when he was a teenager," she explained, seeing several smiles appearing on the faces of the men present.
"You said you grew up there; why don't you drop your G's?" Mike asked, feeling a bit skeptical.
Iris gave him a knowing look. "Because I spent years trying to rid myself of everything that reminded me of that part of the country. It just seemed natural for John," she explained.
"I assumed that he had family from Oklahoma," Hank said with a grin.
"He does, but he definitely picked up on the Alabama dialect during his time there. Anyway," Iris' face suddenly turned dark. "On the morning of March 7, 1965, Johnny left Kizzy's house just before dawn. It was a foggy morning and he wanted to take pictures of the Edmund Pettis Bridge with the fog drifting upwards from the surface of the river."
Ron felt his skin crawl, knowing what he was about to hear.
"He didn't know it at the time, but down along the river bank, a man named William Waite and a police chief from a nearby town were…" Iris used the tissues to dab at the corners of her eyes. "They had beaten a young black man. Voices carry farther on the water, and John was able to hear what they were saying. He was just a kid, but he became a witness to a horrible act. The fog was thinning out, and he… He saw these two men… Ha-hang the black man, leaving his lifeless body dangling from a tree on the southern bank of the Alabama River," she cried, grateful that the room remained silent, and that Ron was there.
Ron waited for Iris to finish telling her story, but realized quickly that the task was impossible. He knew the rest of the details, so he stepped in.
"Ahem, folks, Johnny was too far away to identify the three individuals, but he had the forethought to use his zoom lens to take pictures. We don't know for sure that the pictures are any good. He never developed them," he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and withdrawing the bag of film to show the group. "But I'm sending this to the FBI to see if the Feds can develop it. He kept the film safe all these years."
"The victim," Iris spoke up having recovered her voice, and needing to let them know who the young victim was. "Was my brother-in-law, Phillip, and he was only twenty-six years old when he was murdered," she croaked out, struggling to speak past the protest of her emotions.
"Ohmygod," Joanne exclaimed, covering her mouth with her hands. What Roy had told her had been true, including witnessing a murder. She had been hoping that Johnny had just somehow managed to obtain pictures of the marchers as they tried to cross the bridge that Sunday morning. Now she realized that the photos had been taken by Johnny himself, and that the young man who had always seemed like a little brother to her, had witnessed man's inhumanity to his fellow man at a very young age.
Beverly was stunned, knowing that what she had been told would leave deep emotional scars on anyone, but especially a young person. She wondered how Johnny had managed to remain as strong and seemingly normal as he had through the years. Somehow, the remarkable young man had been able to compartmentalize the trauma, minimizing the effect on his personal and professional life. Or had he?
"Iris, I'm so sorry about your brother-in-law. It's a senseless act and I hope those two men who did that got what they deserved," Roy stated, wanting to comfort Iris, but not being sure what to say.
"That's the irony, Roy. The Klan was made up of members of law enforcement, fire department, and even the legislature," Iris explained.
"Whoa," the senior medic commented. "Are you saying that those men who killed Phillip were public servants?"
"Yes, one man was the chief of police and the other was a man with a lot of political power. They saw Johnny walking along the road afterwards. He was rushing to try to get back to Kizzy's house before they saw him. He was harassed and even threatened by them. They thought they were keeping him from going down to the river bank and finding Phillip's body; they didn't know that he had been a witness to their crime."
"Jeezus," Mike mumbled.
"He was deathly pale when he walked into Kizzy's house that morning. He couldn't even eat breakfast. He… He stayed on the front porch retching. He didn't tell anyone what he had seen, not at that point. I think… I think maybe he was in shock, not really believing it himself."
Joanne silently swiped her tears, crying for what her friend had endured as a teenager. "Poor Johnny," she whispered, feeling Roy's comforting arm pulling her closer.
"He quietly dressed for church. None of us felt like talking, wondering how the march would go. This was what John's journey had been about – documenting the protests with photographs. Kizzy fully expected to see Phillip at the worship service, so she wasn't worried when he didn't arrive before we all left. I don't need to tell you what happened later that day. It was all over the news, and in the papers, and… And Kizzy and I kept looking for Phillip. We searched the crowds at Brown's Chapel, but there were over six hundred people there. There was some confusion about when the march would begin. Dr. King was late arriving from Atlanta. Not wanting to hold up the march, he asked that the group go ahead without him. Together, Kizzy, Lily, and I walked with the others south on Sylvan Street, then west on Alabama Avenue until we got to Broad Street." Her eyes were glazed over as the sounds of voices singing while they walked towards the looming steel structure rose louder and louder in her memory. "We turned south on Broad Street and headed straight for the Edmund Pettis Bridge. Johnny stood among the white people, looking paler than ever, snapping a few pictures as we walked along. He stopped at the bottom of the bridge like there was some sort of wall there, or something. He didn't set a foot on that bridge; he just began taking pictures as the group walked past him. Later on, we found out why."
Iris felt her arms tremble with fear, her brow dampen from the anxiety. In her memory, she heard the shouts, the whinny of the horses of the mounted posse, the smell of smoke and noxious gas… And the screams. She shivered as she remembered clutching the arms of Lily and Kizzy as they retreated north on Broad Street, away from the melee.
"I couldn't find Johnny at first, and I hoped that he had not gotten in the way of the dogs and the billy clubs. Somehow, we managed to get back to the church and into my car. I remember shoving Lily and Kizzy into the back of the car, yelling at them to get in the floorboard so they wouldn't be seen. I drove around, searching for John for a while, finally finding him standing wide-eyed beside the Saint James Hotel. When he saw me, he ran to the car and jumped in. The only words he spoke were 'Lily? Kizzy?' I told him that they were in the back, hiding. Kizzy called out from the floorboard, asking John if he had seen Phillip. He merely shook his head, as he picked up his camera and continued taking pictures. Later on, he told me that seeing it from behind the lens of a camera made him think he was watching a movie. It kept it from seeming so real to him. I… I guess I never thought of it that way."
"It seemed like it was hours later before we could get back to Kizzy's house. We were hoping that Phillip would be there, but he wasn't. It was after dark when a sheriff's car turned onto Kizzy's driveway. The Sheriff… He told us… about Phillip." Iris bit her bottom lip, trying to stop the trembling. She had to get the rest of the story out. Johnny's friends had to know the truth.
"All I remember was the anguished cries of Kizzy as she collapsed on the floor. Her worst fears had been realized. She was wailing and crying long into the night; she was inconsolable, but who could blame her? It was the following day when John finally pulled me and Lily aside. He looked so young, but his eyes had grown old in just a few short hours, we all had. The dark circles beneath them made his features look even gaunter than before. He told us what he had seen. Of course, he had no way of knowing that it was Phillip at the time, but now he knew, and he felt responsible. I remember how he seemed crushed by the guilt of not intervening. We sat Kizzy down and told her about what John had seen, and photographed. She was the one who talked him into not reporting it."
"Why?" Mike asked. "They needed to pay for what they did."
"Because Phillip was dead; he wasn't coming back. Kizzy said that man's judgment might not convict them, but that it was God's judgment that really mattered. Even if charges had been filed against Waite, they wouldn't have stuck. He would've gotten away with it, so why even try?" Iris shook her head, lowering her gaze. "John was scared, terrified. I still don't understand why they let him go that day."
"God's protection was on him," Marco stated, feeling his faith growing stronger by listening to the story.
"Yes… I suppose it was. Anyway," Iris went on. "John knew he couldn't go back to Montana. He was too afraid of Waite, afraid that the man would make good on his threats… He had threatened to not only harm John, but to hurt his family. So I offered for him to come back to Los Angeles with Lily and me. He wrote his parents, and they agreed, thinking that it was so he could go to college out here. So, I pretended to be his aunt when I registered him for high school the following autumn, and that's all it took. He never told his parents the truth; that he was running to protect them. And he never admitted that he was running because he was ashamed of not doing something to prevent Phillip's death."
"He was just a kid," Roy said in a faint whisper, not directed at anyone in particular. "Just a scared kid."
Hank closed his eyes briefly, knowing what it was like for a man to blame himself for the death of another person.** He opened his eyes inhaling deeply before jumping back into the conversation with a question that everyone else was thinking.
"Is that why he never goes home to visit them?" Roy questioned.
"Yes," Iris said, her eyes looking sad. "I think he usually tells them he has to work, but… But I know that isn't the real reason."
"But why did he go to the Fire Academy instead of getting a degree in journalism?" Hank asked, knowing that the young medic was well suited for the fire service, but curious about his change in career path.
"He witnessed something back in Alabama that made him respect firemen," Iris said, but was interrupted before she could finish.
"Humph, yea… We all saw what they did. They hosed down those innocent people," Roy muttered sarcastically.
"Yes, Roy. They followed orders, but they didn't like it. The next time that order was given, they stood up and flatly refused to carry out the order of their chief. Knowing that such actions would cost them their jobs, they said that they 'put out fires, not people,' and they laid down the hoses and basically walked off the job. That left an impression on John. After all he had witnessed, and being unable to do anything other than take pictures, he decided to do something with his life to actually help people who need assistance, not just photograph them," Iris said, looking at Roy intensely. "He respected those firemen."
"But Iris," Roy began, pulling them back from 1965 to the present. "That was a decade ago. I mean, I'm not making light of the situation. It's horrible, and I'm really sorry that it happened, but… Why is this all coming up now? And where's Johnny and Lily?"
Iris and Ron glanced at each other before she spoke up. "When Lily was nineteen years old, she found out that I had lied to her about her grandparents being dead. A relative of mine had decided to come to LA to attend college at USC. She had been told about me and Lily by her mother, my cousin, and decided to find us." Iris looked down at her lap, twisting the tissues in her hands. "She didn't know that I had lied to Lily, so I don't blame her for what happened. I mean, at least she cared enough to try to contact us, you know? But Lily was furious. She felt betrayed, and… And… Not long afterwards, she joined this… This cult, called Holistic Unity Gardens-"
A strangled sound came from Mike Stoker. "Ugh… Wait… Those are the folks who found me after my accident."
"Yes, Lily joined them a few years ago. I had been searching for the group for a long time, but they tend to be elusive. When my former supplier went out of business, she sold her accounts to HUG. One day, they delivered some green plants to me, and… I nearly fainted when I saw the invoice. I knew I had found them."
Joanne sat stunned, staring at Iris.
Iris did a double take when she saw Joanne staring at her so intently. She felt the need to address her former employee and answer her unspoken question. "Joanne, the day you came into the shop, and John was there, it was because I had called him to let him know that I had found the group that Lily had run away with."
Joanne felt the corners of her mouth lift slightly. "Now I get it. You told me that he had been in there to order flowers for his aunt," she said with a slight chuckle. "I didn't know he was talking about you."
"I know, and I've always hated lying to people," she grimaced realizing how that must sound. She had just confessed to lying to her own daughter, so why would they think she was anything other than a liar?
"I still don't get it, Iris," Marco spoke up. "Why did Johnny keep this a secret from all of us?"
"In his own way, he thought he was protecting you from William Waite, and…" Iris dabbed the tissue to her nose. "And he's ashamed of himself."
"For what?" Roy asked, forcing his voice to remain calm. "What's he done to be embarrassed about?"
"Roy," Iris began, knowing she had already betrayed Johnny's trust, so she might as well tell these men everything. "John loves you, all of you, like brothers. He's very proud of what he does for a living, but… He isn't proud that he failed to stop Phillip's murder. He was also afraid that he was endangering you and your families. He's always known that if Waite found him… Then he'd find you all, too."
Roy felt himself gulp as that though sank in, yet he knew that it was highly unlikely that William Waite would cross the country looking for Johnny, let alone cause harm to any of Johnny's friends and their families.
"Iris, I'm really sorry about your daughter and the cult. I do hope she comes back home soon. I don't mean to be insensitive, but where is Johnny now? Do you have any idea?" Roy asked, fearing the answer he might hear.
Stoically, Iris looked directly at Johnny's partner and best friend. "I know exactly where he is. See, a few weeks ago, Kizzy wrote to me. She told me that the chief of police, who was partly responsible for Phillip's murder, made a death bed confession about what happened that day, and he implicated Waite as the one who actually killed Phillip. William Waite was arrested. When Kizzy was contacted by the District Attorney about the break in the case, she told him about Johnny being a witness and about the pictures. When I told Johnny, he got really upset. He was trying to decide whether or not to testify. He knew that if he testified, then… Then he'd have to explain all of this to all of you, and possibly put you and your families in danger," she said waving her arm at the group. "Then we got the news that Waite had a serious stroke and is basically incapacitated. His old Klan cronies don't have the power, or the numbers they used to, but Johnny's still afraid. He isn't afraid for himself, though; he's afraid for all of you. He's terrified of William Waite harming you. So he decided to go to Tehachapi and spend some time with the cult to sort through all of this."
She looked over at Mike, then began to talk again. "Mike, he told me about your accident. When Roy and Chet went with him up to the mountains to look for you, he caught a glimpse of Lily at the scene of the accident. He's gone back up there to spend time with her and talk to her about the possibility of him testifying."
"Is he still up there?" Hank asked, realizing now why his junior medic had requested time off.
"Yes, but… there's more. He's decided to… To join the cult," she cried.
"No way!" Mike spoke up.
"He wouldn't do that," Marco added.
"They got to him. They brainwashed him and he…," Iris hesitated, looking at Hank. "Captain Stanley, he's written a resignation letter for you, and Roy… He wants you to have his Rover."
Hank felt his heart sinking and his stomach churning. "No, I won't accept a resignation letter from a third party. If John wants to resign, then he needs to come see me."
Lexi had been quietly listening to the story, and watching Beverly's reactions. She trusted the older woman's knowledge of human behavior, and she could tell that Beverly wasn't believing what she was hearing.
"No… No that's not how it works," Beverly spoke up.
"What do you mean?" Ron asked, passing his handkerchief to Iris to replace the dissolving mass of tissue in her hand.
"Brainwashing takes longer than, what, a week or two?" She looked around the room, seeing the affirmative nods.
"He told me… himself!" Iris said in a raised voice.
"Oh, I believe you, Iris. I'm just saying that there's something else going on here. I can see why he would be especially susceptible to their tactics, after hearing all this, but… It just doesn't make sense that he's JOINED them. He wouldn't be brainwashed this quickly. It takes time to do that."
"We worked a medical call yesterday morning. The victim was Gretchen, a waitress from The Pourhouse," Roy began, relaying the information. "She… She was unconscious from an apparent overdose… And she joined that group a couple of months ago. If they're a religious group, then why would they be involved with drugs?"
"Because it's a CULT, Roy," Iris emphasized.
"Hey, you don't think that Johnny's been drugged, do you?" Chet asked.
"Anything's possible," Iris said. "My Lily never touched drugs, but… I… I don't know now. She… She's probably one of them after this long," she cried, covering her face with her hands. "Ohmygod!"
"Okay, I think it's my turn to tell you all what I've learned about all this," Ron said. "Iris doesn't even know what I'm about to tell you."
"You mean you aren't just here to collect that film?" Roy questioned, pointing at the pocket where Ron had placed the evidence bag earlier.
"This, too," the detective said, patting his chest. "But I'm also here because an old buddy of mine, Slim Summerlin, is the chief of police in Selma now. Times have changed back there. Oh, there's still problems just like everywhere, and the Klan is still around, but it's nowhere near as strong as it was back in '65. Slim told me about Waite's stroke, and how he needed to take a deposition from Johnny, preferably have him testify at the trial. But, if Johnny won't testify, Slim wants to at least get this film. Here's the thing, Johnny doesn't even know about the stroke, so maybe-"
"Yes, he does," Iris interrupted. "I told him about it yesterday when I told him about Chris' surgery. And he still went back to that damn cult. They've got some kind of hold on him."
Ron cleared his throat, knowing he had more news to tell them. "Ahem, well, I have a few friends who are with the FBI. They've been investigating HUG for a long time now, trying to get something on the leader, Hiram Gardner."
"And?" Hank questioned, knowing there was more to the story.
"And they've gotten closer in the past few days than they've ever been. I have to tell you this, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… This group is up to no good. It's bad… And Johnny and Lily are in danger."
"Aack!" Iris wailed, fearing the worst as she cried into her palms.
"Wait… They've agreed to try to help us get Johnny and Lily out, alright? We ARE gonna get them back, Iris. That's the good news… But it's gonna be rather, um, unorthodox."
Roy looked around the room, seeing a mixture of curiosity, eagerness, and dogged determination on the faces of his crewmates. "We're listening."
E!
*Chet's Cataclysm
** Hank's Haunting
A/N: This story is in honor of the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery. Please remember that the setting was only ten years from these events and do not reflect the current attitudes of the majority of people who live there now. The events depicted, while historically accurate as far as the march is concerned, are entirely fictional regarding the death of Phillip Campbell. Any similarity to real people or events is completely coincidental.