For NaNoWriMo: The Field of Blood, part 7

This portion was written on Nov. 8.

You can get caught up on part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6... Captain Hamilton continues his investigation into the gruesome hanging death of Mr. Rett by going to check out Mr. Rett's Big Loft apartment, and the first several things he finds bring him sadness ...

Part 8 is up

Working on a graphic for week 2...

..............................................................................................................

Mr. Rett's apartment building immediately put Captain Hamilton in mind of his pick-up line to his wife Agnes, on the corner of Times Square in New York City.

“Excuse me, ma'am. May I introduce myself? I'm that guy from the show Green Acres who has come to take you from your penthouse view.”

Agnes Miller and her girlfriends had laughed until they could laugh no more, while then Cadet Hamilton had just smiled and waited, projecting the confidence that was wilting away with every peal of laughter, praying hard, because he just knew this girl he had just seen was his wife. And, sure enough, her retort confirmed it.

“Your Southern drawl is so thick it smells like bluegrass – but for a Dixie-whistling cadet like you to even step to a Yankee girl like me, you must have a lot going for you that most men around here don't! Why not – let's do it!”

They had been together ever since, and Agnes Miller Hamilton was still saying “let's do it!” to the latest crazy plan her husband had. Still, had she longed for the penthouse again, and they hadn't had so many children by the time they had actually returned to Virginia as home, the Caldwell Plaza Development in Big Loft would have been a nice compromise.

Mr. Rett's apartment was a big condominium – another red flag in terms of his income, because the mortgage payments were immense. However, he was certainly getting his money's worth – spacious front room, kitchen, master bedroom, guest bedroom, and a view facing north that spanned the Blue Ridge on the western side and all up the Roanoke Valley and the Roanoke River for the rest of it.

There had been a party two nights before, and Mr. Rett had not bothered to clean up before going to work on Saturday – plenty of bottles of good wine, dishes stacked up to be put into the dishwasher, but a pristine stove. A look at the huge trash can – a goodly number of deep dish trays, suggesting that Mr. Rett had ordered out, and in fact he had – the receipt to Touch of Arlington catering was there, meal for 20, at about $55 a plate. $1,100 in takeout, on the finest of high-end Southern delicacies with standard indulgences thrown in. An appetizer plate that had both ramps and caviar on it – ramps in the fall, mind you, were even rarer than caviar in a jar – would have been a sight to see.

Other pleasures had been available – the CD deck had albums of music by William Grant Still, Blind Boone, Florence Price and other Black composers of the 20th century that had exploited the classical genre, along with Debussy, Dvorak, Satie, and other European Impressionist composers of the late 19th and early 20th century. However, Captain Hamilton lightly touched the player to hear what had last been played, and it didn't fit with the other music – it was Wynton Marsalis, and specifically his soundtrack to the documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. The last track had been on repeat, and then placed on pause: “The Last Bell,” the powerful, New Orleans-style funeral march that described the death of the powerful, controversial figure the boxer had been. It was the last track of what was a haunting and powerful soundtrack overall … paused, not stopped, as if the listener expected to return and listen to a favorite part again … paused, just at the point when the titanic energy of the piece reaches its last peak before dropping off swiftly into the end, signifying death.

Captain Hamilton was an accomplished folk musician, and had this particular album in his collection. He made a note to listen to it at some point on Sunday, feeling within himself that there was a clue at hand.

Onto the rest of the search – the guest room was pristine, but the master bedroom was a bit unkempt. It looked for all the world like Mr. Rett had gotten up late and rushed to get ready for work – one house shoe in one place, the other right in front of it but several feet closer to the master bedroom, a hasty shower, and then application of men's morning items.

Shaving cream, cologne, bleaching cream – yes, bleaching cream. Captain Hamilton expected to find it, because he had remembered the contrast on the body from the face, the hands, and the exposed portion of the legs. The straightened hair and bleaching cream were of a piece of thought ... like something from the period before Black people had decided that the way God made them was beautiful just as it was. Mr. Rett had only been 47. The idea that people in Captain Hamilton's age class still felt that pressured to be lighter and whiter was deeply disturbing to Captain Hamilton, because, after all, men his age were still raising children, and some were young grandparents. Thus, potentially, right into the 21st century, Black children were still being taught that their natural features were ugly enough to need harsh chemicals to change them so that they might be more acceptable. It was not a burden that Captain Hamilton and his family had ever needed to bear.

“Lord, help me, and mine, to use our position well,” he said as he looked away from the counter. “If we have less impediments to doing and being in this country than others, let us at least do what is good and right with our privilege, including being the first to affirm publicly the beauty that You have given all of Your people, in every shade and hue and texture of hair and skin.”