Black & White Read online

  “Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe there’s not some vital secret he’s keeping from you.”

  “No. Yesterday he let something slip. We were talking about hospitals and I mentioned being born in Watts Hospital, which used to be here in Durham, right? And he looked at me and said, ‘Watts?’ in that tone he has, like I’ve just said something too stupid to be believed. Then he recovered and said, ‘Oh yeah, Watts, right.’ ”

  “C’mon, Michael, with all he’s been through…”

  “So I went to Durham Regional, where they still have the old files from Watts, and there’s no record of my birth.”

  “There’s any number of…”

  “You weren’t there. You didn’t see the look on his face.” Michael felt his throat closing, realized how close he was to tears.

  “Michael. They’ve got social workers there at the hospital. You might want to talk to one of them. Things with your father were screwed up enough before this, and trying to put all that in order under this kind of pressure is more than you can ask of yourself.”

  “This isn’t me, it’s him.”

  “Listen to yourself, mate. You need to back off a bit.”

  “That’s what I just did. I moved out of the Brookwood and got my own place.”

  “What did they say about that?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “Wow. Are you—”

  The connection was suddenly gone, a not infrequent experience with Roger. It was typical of the US in the 21st century, Roger said, that they’d all been willing to trade the quality and dependability of land lines for convenience and free long distance.

  Michael dialed again. Once, after a similar interruption, he’d waited to see if Roger would call back, and he never did. That was Roger: People only truly existed for him when they impinged on one of his senses.

  “Look,” Michael said when Roger picked up again, “I just called to let you know. I’ve got the computer and I’ll be checking email and everything.”

  “And drawing? Will you be drawing any pages? Number 25 is due in—”

  “A week and a half,” Michael said. “I know.”

  *

  To ease his conscience, he spent a couple of hours working at the kitchen table in his suite.

  Most commercial comics involved an assembly line process. One artist did penciled breakdowns based on either a script or a plot outline from the writer. The pencils might be rough or detailed, depending on the artist, the editor, and the deadline. If the writer had only provided a plot, copies of the pencils went back to the writer for dialogue. Then a letterer put in the word balloons, captions, and borders, and an embellisher “finished” the pencil art in black ink. Finally yet another artistic team scanned the black and white art into a computer, added color, and made the separations for printing.

  Michael had made his reputation partly through speed. He’d sketched in ink as far back as high school art class, and he did his own lettering. He blocked out his pages in non-reproducing blue pencil, only going to graphite in a few places where he needed to be sure of detail—the niceties of a facial expression, the exact gesture of a hand. He did the lettering to relax, two or three pages at a time, and then went back to inking.

  The process gave his art a spontaneity and energy that fans responded to. His editors happily paid him for all three jobs and still saved money on FedEx charges and missed deadlines.

  He’d hooked up with Roger in 2000 with a Batman graphic novel called Sand Castles. Roger lagged substantially behind the first wave of British writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, who’d conquered US comics in the late 1980s, and he’d spent a few years proving he could be as weird, surreal, and violent as any of them. Michael had been drawing superheroes at Marvel and waiting for his chance to break out. Sand Castles had been the turning point for both of them. Later, when Roger finished his proposal for Luna—a.k.a. The Adventures of Luna Goodwin—he offered it to Michael first.

  Luna’s title character was a magician who was first coming into her powers, late 20s, smart and cynical. And attractive, of course. The comics audience was overwhelmingly male, and adolescent in taste if not always in age. Luna worked in Hollywood as a script consultant, where her—which was to say, Roger’s—extensive knowledge of the occult was much in demand. She’d changed her name to Louann and was more or less in denial of her abilities and history.

  That history included a Wiccan mother who lived in a tiny Northern California town full of eccentrics just like her. The town was named Lunaville—Looneyville to Louann—and provided comic relief when the main plots got too intense.

  Louann had grown up without a father, and her mother claimed not to know which of several possible candidates was the one. When Michael’s own father got his diagnosis, Roger suddenly decided it was time to address the paternity issue.

  Roger delivered the news in one of his typical phone calls, with Michael along only for the ride. He wouldn’t do it if Michael objected, he said, though his investment was obvious from the way the ideas came tumbling out. He was putting off the follow-up he’d planned to the vodou story. Instead, Louann would go to New Mexico, where the Native American shaman she believed was her father was dying of cancer. Louann would try to learn his secrets before it was too late.

  Michael had gone along, as he always did. Roger had been idolized by so many for so long that he no longer seemed to understand the concept of refusal.

  The first script had arrived via email within a week. For the sake of form it came through Helen Silberman, their editor at DC’s Vertigo line of mature audience comics. The few electronic comments she’d left in the margins were not enough to provoke Roger’s notorious sensitivity to interference.

  As always, Michael was impressed with Roger’s ability to make the story visual. It was set in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, among the Anasazi ruins and the alien landscape of the Four Corners. There were ghosts of Anasazi warriors, Native American gods, and the giant talking moth that Roger used to symbolize Death. There were high tech hospital scenes and a little gunplay. In other words, a typical Roger Fornbee story, something that Michael knew how to draw.

  On the road, Michael used a hardwood laminate drawing board that was only slightly larger than the 13 × 20 inch sheets of Bristol board that Vertigo provided him, preprinted with borders and DC logos in non-repro blue. He spent hours at a time with the board in his lap, turning it from side to side, letting the blacks on the page find their own natural weight and balance, the TV or radio on in the background, his mind wandering as he worked.

  Today, though, was lettering, which meant the board lay flat on the table, T-square against the metal sides, Ames lettering guide sliding across it to pencil the guidelines. He wasn’t aware of the words as he copied them from the script, only the zen of the letterforms: no hitch in the S or the C, the O just outside the lines, the bars of the E, F, and T tilted fractionally upward.

  When he looked at the clock it was 10 a.m. He called a nearby car rental agency and had them deliver the cheapest thing they had, which happened to be a silver Toyota Echo, tiny, light, with its trunk sticking up in the air. He dropped off the driver, got a North Carolina map, and merged onto I-40 East.

  *

  Michael had two names on his list. The first belonged to Greg Vaughan, his only living relative in North Carolina. Vaughan was some kind of distant cousin on his mother’s side, still living on the Bynum family farm in rural Johnston County. Despite the area being prime tobacco country, his grandfather had grown little there but government subsidies.

  At least that was the way Michael’s father told it. Michael himself had only seen his grandfather on two occasions, when the old man came to Dallas for Christmas while Michael was still in high school. Wilmer Bynum had been in his 70s then, unkempt, surly, and recently widowed. The tension between him and Michael’s father had been like an electromagnetic field that left everyone’s hair standing on end.

  Michael’s mother had shown no inclination to go
out to the farm since they’d come back to Durham. “Your father needs me here,” she’d said. Over the years she seemed to have taken on the same attitude that Michael’s father had toward her family, as if she too now found them crude, embarrassing, and best ignored. She hadn’t even gone to her father’s funeral two years before.

  Shortly after he passed through Raleigh’s concrete sprawl, Michael exited the Interstate onto the US 70 bypass and crossed the Johnston County line. The trees grew more sparsely than in Durham, and closer to the ground: live oaks and scrub brush between spindly pines. He passed through a couple of small towns and finally stopped at the first likely looking business he came to in West Smithfield, an antiques store in a freestanding white building.

  A woman in her 60s wandered among the shelves of colored glass bowls, aluminum pots, dolls, cookbooks, and broken lampshades. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for the old Bynum farm. I know it’s somewhere around here, but I don’t know the way. I was hoping you might.”

  She straightened up and gave him a thorough looking over. “What’s your interest, if I may ask?”

  “I’m Wilmer Bynum’s grandson.”

  “Which grandson would that be?” She didn’t sound so much hostile as cautious. “I don’t see a lot of family resemblance.”

  “I’m Michael Cooper, and I’m his only grandson that I know of.” He put out his hand and left it there until she reluctantly took it. “They tell me I take after my father, Robert Cooper. He married Ruth Bynum in 1962.”

  “I was at the wedding. Most of the county was.” She squinted at him. “You hoping to find Wilmer there?”

  “Is that a trick question? He died two years ago. And yes, I guess I am hoping to find something of him there. And if not him, maybe Greg Vaughan.”

  She nodded. “I’m Martha Wingate. I’ve got a son Tom your age. Sorry to be suspicious. Hasn’t been anybody asking after Wilmer in some time, but I guess old habits die hard.”

  “What was it people were asking about?”

  She looked down at the green Depression glass pitcher in her hands. “Wilmer was pretty important around here. People always wanted to consult him on things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “You name it. Crop rotation, politics, domestic disputes.”

  People wanting to discuss crop rotation, Michael thought, would already know where to find Wilmer Bynum. He saw nothing to gain by contradicting her. “So how would I get to the farm?”

  Mrs. Wingate drew him a map, complete with landmarks, on the back of a photocopied flyer for a flea market. Michael admired her strong, clear lines. “This is perfect,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “You see old Wilmer hanging around, you tell him hey for me.”

  “You think that’s likely?”

  “Wilmer never did concede anyone dominion over him. Not the state of North Carolina, not the federal government, not even God Himself. It’s hard to imagine Death fared much better.”

  *

  As the map promised, the mailbox still said “Bynum.” Michael could see the house from the road. Once it had been a standard Victorian style farmhouse, complete with wraparound porch and gabled second story, until someone with more ambition than skill had begun building on.

  As Michael inched the car up the long, rutted dirt driveway, he made out at least three separate additions, two angling out from the ground floor and a third sprawling across the other two. The lower walls had been finished with wooden siding at least vaguely similar to that on the rest of the house, while the upper was done in decorative exterior plywood. In places the once-white paint had blistered away, exposing gray wood underneath; in others the paint looked fresh. All the windows were intact, and the roof didn’t show any obvious sag or damage.

  The fields were in a similar holding pattern, mowed and free of trash, yet not growing anything useful. The place seemed habitable at the same time that it looked like no one had lived there in years.

  It was a bright, cool October day. Michael rolled his window down and inhaled the vivid odors of dust, weeds, and distant water.

  The driveway intersected another dirt road at the house. Michael turned left and finally saw his first sign of life, a vegetable garden behind a tractor shed, surrounded by chicken wire to keep out the deer and rabbits. A few late tomatoes made splotches of yellow and orange against the green.

  When he looked back at the road in front of him, a huge German Shepherd was charging straight at the car.

  Michael hit the brakes, afraid the dog would go under his wheels. It began to dance around the car, barking furiously, and lunging at Michael even as he quickly rolled his window up again. Michael hadn’t paid for the damage waiver on the car, so he hit the horn. The dog jumped backward, barking with a deeper and more threatening tone, the black hair standing up along its spine.

  He took the window down an inch and said, with as much authority as he could manage, “Hey! Chill out!” The dog quieted for a second and looked at him almost wistfully before going ballistic again. “Okay,” Michael said, “fine. I can take a hint.” He put the car in reverse, and as he looked over his shoulder he saw a man walking toward the rear of the car.

  He wore jeans, a T-shirt, a red plaid flannel shirt, and a John Deere cap pulled low over his eyes. He had a short beard and dark blond hair hanging to his shoulders. “Henry!” the man shouted, and the dog turned to look at him as if to say, I’m doing my job here, what’s your problem?

  “Heel,” the man said, and snapped his fingers twice. The dog looked at Michael to let him know this wasn’t his idea, then trotted over to the man’s side and stood with his right shoulder by the man’s knee. The man snapped his fingers once, pointed downward, and said, “Sit,” and the dog obeyed.

  Michael rolled his window the rest of the way down again. “You Greg Vaughan?”

  “Last time I checked.” The man hunkered down to stroke the golden fur of the dog’s chest.

  “I’m Michael Cooper. I’m Wilmer Bynum’s grandson.”

  Vaughan, to Michael’s surprise, stood up without making a move toward the car. “I know who you are.”

  “You do?”

  “You and your father and Ruth came back to Durham a month ago.”

  Vaughan’s accent was a more pronounced version of the one Michael’s mother had, like a cross between Deep South and Boston. “That’s right,” Michael said.

  “You didn’t call, didn’t write, didn’t let me know. I had to find out about it from my neighbors.”

  “That was my father’s doing. If I get out of the car, is Henry going to take my arm off?”

  “Not unless I tell him to.”

  Michael hadn’t been much at sports, and he’d gotten roughed up in junior high. By high school he’d grown up and filled out and he found he didn’t have to do a lot to get smaller kids to back down. It was more like stubbornness than courage, and the habit had stayed with him.

  He got out of the car, squatted by the dog, and offered the back of his left hand. Henry looked at it, seemed to shrug, and gave it a non-committal lick. Michael stood up and offered the other one to Vaughan, who took it with reasonable grace.

  “I don’t know what went on between my father and the Bynum side of the family,” Michael said. “That was him and not me. Can we talk?”

  Vaughan took a moment to consider. He was older than Michael had first thought, in his early to mid-fifties. The sun had creased his face like a note that had been folded and refolded and kept in a dirty pocket. “All right,” Vaughan said at last, and as he turned away Michael noticed for the first time a trailer in a field beyond the tractor shed, a small green single-wide on a cinder-block foundation, with a built-on screen porch. A battered half-ton pickup was parked next to it.

  They walked together toward the trailer. Vaughan’s silence was amiable enough and Michael relaxed enough to note the warmth of the sun on his skin, the uncomplicated joy of the dog orbiting around them, the crunch of their
shoes in the dry soil.

  Vaughan opened the screen door and gestured for Michael to go in first. The interior surprised him; it was as spotless and tightly organized as the galley of a submarine. The living room held a foldout sofa, recliner, TV, VCR, and two painted metal TV trays. The white walls were devoid of pictures, mirrors, or knickknack shelves. Michael looked through into a small kitchen with gleaming counters.

  “Coffee?” Vaughan offered. He gestured to the couch and Michael sat. “There’s still half a pot from this morning if you don’t mind reheated.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I expect there’s a beer in the fridge if you wanted something stronger.”

  “Coffee would be great. I’m not much of a drinker.”

  Vaughan nodded his approval. He stood at the stove with the air of a Japanese sumi-e painter in front of a sheet of rice paper. He took a box of wooden matches out of an overhead cabinet and struck one. As it flared, his face responded with something between fascination and hunger. Michael found the rawness of it uncomfortable. Slowly Vaughan reached for the knob that turned on the right front burner, and slowly brought the match to the gas. He didn’t react at all to the whoosh as the gas caught, just watched the flames for another second or two and then shook out the match an instant before it would have burned his fingers.

  He set an old-fashioned aluminum coffee pot on the burner and put the matches away. Reaching into the same cabinet with both hands, he took out two oversized ceramic cups, turned them right side up, and set them on the counter with perfect economy of motion. “Cream or sugar?”

  “Black is good for me.”

  Vaughan took out a plastic canister of sugar, opened the top with the same crisp precision, and put three spoons of sugar into one of the cups.

  “Did you ever tend bar?” Michael asked.

  “No, why?”

  “The way you move, I don’t know.”

  “I went into the Army out of high school. Did two hitches in Vietnam, right through to the end, and got out in ’74. After that some carpentry, handyman for an apartment complex, security guard for a while. Been farming the last 20 years.”