Black-Eyed Susans Read Free

each doubt until I was no longer sure.
    Angie was a saint, a bulldog, a little bit
     of a martyr. She’d spent the last half of her life and most of her parents’
     inheritance freeing prisoners who’d been bullied by the state of Texas into
     wrongful convictions. More than 1,500 convicted rapists and murderers begged for her
     services every year, so Angie had to be choosy. She told me that playing God with those
     calls and letters was the only thing that ever made her consider quitting. I’d
     been to her office once, the first time she contacted me. It was housed in an old church
     basement located on an unpleasant side of Dallas known best for its high fatality rate
     for cops. If her clients couldn’t see the light of day or catch a quick Starbucks,
     she said, then neither could she. Her company in that basement was a coffeepot, three
     more attorneys who also worked other paying jobs, and as many law students as would sign
     on.
    Angie sat in the same spot on my couch nine
     months ago, in jeans and scuffed black cowboy boots, with one of Terrell’s letters
     in her hand. She begged me to read it. She had begged me to do a lot of things, like
     give one of her expert gurus a shot at retrieving my memory. Now she was dead of a heart
     attack, found facedown in a pile of documents about Goodwin’s case. The reporter
     who wrote her obituary found that poetic. My guilt in the week since she died has beenalmost unbearable. Angie, I realized too late, was one of my
     tethers. One of the few who never gave up on me.
    “Is this … what you have for
     us?” Bill stares at the filthy plastic grocery bag from Granddaddy’s
     basement like it is stuffed with gold. It has left a trail of pebbly mortar across the
     glass, right beside a pink hair band twisted with a strand of my daughter
     Charlie’s auburn hair.
    “You said on the phone that you had to
     go … find it,” he says. “That you’d told Angie about this
     … project … but you weren’t sure where it was.”
    It isn’t really a question, and I
     don’t answer.
    His eyes wander the living room, strewn with
     the detritus of an artist and a teen-ager. “I’d like to set up a meeting at
     the office in a few days. After I’ve … examined it. You and I will have to
     go over all of the old ground for the appeal.” For such a large guy, there is a
     gentleness about him. I wonder about his courtroom style, if gentleness is his
     weapon.
    “Ready for the swab?” Dr. Seger
     interrupts abruptly, all business, already stretching on latex gloves. Maybe worried
     that I’ll change my mind.
    “Sure.” We both stand up. She
     tickles the inside of my cheek and seals microscopic bits of me in a tube. I know she
     plans to add my DNA to the collection provided by three other Susans, two of whom still
     go by the more formal name of Jane Doe. I feel heat emanating from her.
     Anticipation.
    I return my attention to the bag on the
     table, and Bill. “This was kind of an experiment suggested by one of my
     psychiatrists. It might be more valuable for what isn’t there than what is.”
     In other words, I didn’t draw a black man who looked like Terrell Darcy
     Goodwin.
    My voice is calm, but my heart is lurching.
     I am giving Tessie to this man. I hope it is not a mistake.
    “Angie … she would be so
     grateful. Is grateful.” Bill crooks a finger up, the Michelangelo kind of gesture
     that travels up to the sky. I find this comforting: a man who is bombarded by people
     blockinghis path every day—half-decent people clinging
     stubbornly to their lies and deadly mistakes—and yet he still believes in God. Or,
     at least, still believes in something.
    Dr. Seger’s phone buzzes in her
     pocket. She glances at the screen. “I’ve got to take this. One of my Ph.D.
     students. I’ll meet you in the car, Bill. Good job, girl. You’re doing the
     right thing.”
Gurrl.
A slight twang. Oklahoma, maybe. I smile
     automatically.
    “Right behind