Search for the True Love Indicator

By Lindell Singleton

What is the mystery of love? In the year of our LORD, 1913, a wealthy Industrialist hires a railroad detective to find the two remaining ‘smooth stones’ David used to fight Goliath. Legend says the stones have a unique and defining power. Possessing the stones unlocks the mysteries of love. SEARCH FOR THE TRUE LOVE INDICATOR presents the story of the quest for these stones.
Nehemiah Freedman, the detective who reluctantly takes the case, has secrets of his own: he is a black man passing for white…the kind of secret that will get you killed. As Freedman draws ever closer the secret of the stones and source of true love, his personal secret become dangerously close to being revealed. It's a dangerous game.
Man and woman climb aboard the train of history and memory at their peril. We spend our lives battling the tyranny of loneliness that tries our soul. Is there a point where we accept the search for ‘true love’ is a search for the 'only love. 'Could it be our search for love is a search for God?'

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781943612253

Book preview

me.

PREFACE

My great uncle was smart. As family patriarch, Uncle James was known as the one who loved everyone—the one who could be counted on. Protection resided under his roof.

He worked on the railroad for 42 years and seven months. This enabled him to see many things. Perhaps he wished to one day tell me of these things, but he died when I was too young to grasp the meaning of such matters.

Leafing through a trunk of old papers, documents and photos, I happened upon notes and fragments that presented the partial story of a man—perhaps a mentor or friend of my Uncle James—a man by the name of Nehemiah Freedman who lived in the early 20th century. Many of the documents, yellowed and crisp with age, contained markings and scribbled notes. My goal was to shape these notes into a convincing and coherent series of writings on Freedman. To make sense of them, I have sought to present Nehemiah’s sense of character, his regard for human life and search for the truth. Life’s mysteries, I am sure, are as elusive as they are remote. Obediently, we search and seek.

Freedman’s skin—his race and ethnic background—is not as important as what he saw and experienced, living in two worlds, but belonging to neither.

The sharp, pronounced images of his experiences made it clear to me that for Nehemiah, race would not be the instrument of his ruin. Uncle James either helped capture or preserve his writings—or perhaps worked with him on the quest to retrieve some objects which were a part of his Freedmans cases.

As Nehemiah reveals what he’s searching for in the first novel, a dual transformation begins. I came to know my Uncle James—his earthly humanity and caring heart—through the invisible symmetry and shape of this work.

Freedman believed in the hundred year cycle of generations—a procession of the aeons, so to speak. Perhaps that is how the world is eradicated of its decay. We’re all on a quest for something. Are we not all ‘victims of need, driven for love, acceptance, or permutation of the two? Sometimes, these needs coalesce as we travel along our chosen path—other times, well, they do not find us. Or we do not find them.

I hope the truths will help others make sense of their lives. In a world where truth is often in shadows, and meanings obscured in quiescent contours of long-held memories, Nehemiah Freedman’s journey stands out.

Uncle James—father, teacher and railroad man—was haunted by Nehemiah Freedman’s journey. No matter what path he took in life, this memory was never far from him. If things had been different, he would have joined Nehemiah Freedman on his Search for the True Love Indicator.

Part One

CHAPTER ONE

Nehemiah Freedman

I’m going to be honest with you. There were some days when I felt like I no longer had strength to get out of bed. I wasn’t sick, or injured, or anything quite so obvious.

Everything was either stalking me or about to stalk me. I needed help. I needed to get back to Los Angeles.

That was my seventh year on the railroad and they always say that change runs in seven, 12, 20, and 40 year cycles. I felt I was in the middle of something unusual, but I just couldn’t put my finger down on it. I just finished nine straight days of work. New Orleans to Los Angeles, back to New Orleans, and then north to St. Louis. I never liked St. Louis much. In fact, nothing good has ever happened for me there. Once I learned they used to take the slaves right off the barges and drag them in chains to the courthouse steps for the auction, I no longer had any use for the town.

But these two twins—Rachel and Robert—had been left at the Station in New Orleans. For some reason, we’d arrived at the Louisville and Nashville Station which was on the corner of the Mississippi River and Canal Street. This was not our usual station.

The French Quarter in New Orleans was no place for 11 year olds to be wandering about, hoping for someone to save them. I don’t even like roaming around the Quarter. And to make matters worse, there was a Naval station across the river in Algiers.

Adults of all ages and colors patrolled the wharfs looking for what they could find. I sensed these kids were in danger.

In this line of work, you get a feel for when danger is real, or when people are frightened for no reason.

The children had an aunt in Lovejoy, Illinois, which is across the river from St. Louis. They both had light hair and skin the color of Belgian chocolate. Each had a dusting of freckles on their left cheek in exactly the same spot.

I volunteered to take them North. They would have been forced to sit in the Jim Crow car on the Illinois Central, but because they were in my custody, they rode with me. It didn’t stop some of the customers from staring, but I placed my badge in the top pocket of my jacket and let that speak. Who wants a run-in with a detective.

Although no one knows, I’ve been doing what’s known as passing for white since I was 17, I am a Negro.

A white man named Norval Wells was my father. He owned a print shop in our Texas town. In his will, he made arrangements for me to attend Central State College in Ohio—a college for Negroes.

I never knew he was my natural father until his wife told me after he died. I had a keen interest in newspapers and writing, so I did odd jobs around the print shop. There are days I still have no inkling why she would tell me.

But as we grew closer, and I began to understand her, Millicent Marie Cherbourg Wells became the most important person in my life and, by far, the most extraordinary.

She was older than Norval by 15 years. She told me that it was her money that he used to start the printing business and although he never equitably shared the profits with her when he was alive, now, since he was dead, she sold the business and could do whatever she wanted.

Millicent was born in Southern France, very close to Nimes. She came to Mississippi at 11 years of age. A botched surgery after being run over with a wagon wheel kept her from being able to carry any pregnancy to term. After five or six miscarriages, she made the decision to stop making herself available to her husband for sex. Knowing he was still interested, she arranged for him to have certain Negro women made available to him. She paid the women well and turned a blind eye to the hows and wherefores of such things.

The arrangement achieved the goal of meeting his physical needs. Millicent said she much preferred a life without sex because on the ship coming from France she had been the object of the Captain and the First Officer’s alternating nightly affections—and her husband was rough and embarrassed. Outside of the bedroom, Norval had an even temperament, even given toward being an amicable, good-natured fellow. But in the bedroom he fumbled and stumbled.

For Millicent, such represented the perfect scenario.

When she learned my mother was pregnant, she assumed the child was her husband’s because part of the monthly payment arrangement included a promise of exclusivity. Millicent paid four different women, each in a nearby town, the sum of $30 a month.

Millicent, with dark shining eyes and a voice that hinted, ever so gently with the remaining wisps of her French accent, was the first white woman with whom I sat across from and had conversations. And, it was from her lips that the idea of passing for white first came to the discussion.

She explained proper place settings at a dinner table and how to eat and drink in a way that made it easy to get along in the world of white people. Not just Southern white people, but even educated white people in the North.

Nehemiah, son, listen to me. America isn’t going to make things any better for Negroes for at least another 50 years. Until that day comes, Negroes need to use any and all advantages to balance the scales. They will be lynched in a heartbeat without cause and if the government is going to look the other way, anything the Negro does to protect himself is fair.

One afternoon, about a month before I was scheduled to leave for Dayton, Ohio, I came to her house to fulfill my chores, which, officially, were to keep the chimney clean and help with work around the yard.

Millicent handed me an envelope.

I opened it and found a birth certificate. It was my name and my birthday.

Under race it stated white. It was an official document, or it looked like one. The look of my face pushed her into a smile and explanation.

It’s an insurance policy. Your skin is light enough to not draw questions, but you do have your nose, and your hair might draw some enterprising lawman to bring you to task if you found yourself in the wrong place.

The signature of the county clerk made everything nice and tidy.

She then looked at me and said: My sojourn in America has taught me that everyone and everything has a price. It’s not a country based on values, but on value. Negotiate for what you require. Give in and get back. Gamble, but know when fate has bolted the door.

-=-=-=-=- =-=-=--=-=-=-

Robert and Rachel, and the look they gave me when they turned to say good-bye, crossed my mind. They seemed in a fog, more befuddled than they were the entire journey on the train.

The Aunt (I think her name was Zenobia) was raw-boned, with dark skin and deep-set, hollow eyes. There was no resemblance between her and the twins, although such isn’t uncommon among Negro families. She was dressed exquisitely and thanked me—even offered to pay. She told me that after her sister died, her brother-in-law was so overcome with grief that he stopped working and began drinking liquor without ceasing.

Rachel and Robert were being sent to Houston, or so she had been told—but the tickets were only good to New Orleans. Zenobia didn’t have the address of her sister in Houston and they didn’t have a telephone. She said she would look after them and get things situated. I don’t know why I didn’t question her further but my inner voice did not sense dread. Rachel and Robert greeted her cordially.

I drifted back to sleep thinking about these twins, now set adrift in the world. There was something not quite right about this. I wondered if they would make it to Houston. I wondered if I should have gone with them to East St. Louis and made certain of their safety. I’d given both of them my card imploring them to call me and leave a message at my office should they ever need me. Rachel hugged me and Robert gave me a big boy handshake.

Look after your sister! I said.

I needed to stop thinking about them, at least for now. The shadows and sadness of my own life’s situation was already just about more than I could abide. Getting back to Los Angeles would help.

CHAPTER TWO

My Beloved Priggy

Love should not destroy a man. Love should lift a man up toward higher purposes and more laudable pursuits. When I first began in this work, I was dumbfounded when I’d hear the stories of love destroying men, making them weak and forlorn. But no longer is love, in its purest, a source of strength, creating a galvanizing agent between people. When it is not real, it is a tool that separates and breaks apart. It is not love, but something else.

During my time at the university, I had an old professor with a Russian or Polish-sounding name, double-consonants at the front. Those kinds of names are difficult for the American ear and tongue. This man was a scholar. We heard he’d actually visited the tomb of the Holy Sepulcher and held real versions of the Masoretic texts. His class was the only one where I paid sound attention.

He spoke about the meanings of words. One day he lectured on love.

The word you read in the Old Testament scriptures as ‘love’ translates as this: to be of benefit to another person, to help shoulder the load.

I most distinctly remember how he stressed, to help shoulder the load.

He would talk about two teams of oxen being stronger than one. He said that was the most accurate way to understand love. His words remained with me. His love of words taught me to do the same. So when I’m listening to men of stature and age talk about how a woman has wronged them or alienated their affections from them, I struggle to keep my face straight.

P.G. Livengood had a big flesh-pink bulbous head that resembled an overturned, but perfectly shaped pumpkin. To say that he was a lover of gin and other spirits would be too minimal. He should’ve been let go from the railroad a year ago, having been involved in three accidents. On each of the previous occasions, the blame was shifted to the switchmen or the brakeman and he was able to work another day. Even his union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, questioned his competency.

We took delivery of two or three of the cab forward locomotives and by some quirk of fate, scheduling maladjustment, and influenza, Livengood ended up on the Los Angeles to Salt Lake City passenger run. His unluckiness kept him on the freight side, but the increase in passenger schedules and the influenza meant the Company was short on engineers.

Livengood made it to the station successfully got the train out of Salt Lake City with a full complement of Brigham Youngers who were on the way to Los Angeles to set sail for Polynesia and a missionary experience with so-called heathens—who were probably more civilized than they.

How did a train departing from Salt Lake City, Utah, heading directly to San Pedro, California, end up on a siding in Tuba City, New Mexico? That was the question of the day.

The last stop before entering Nevada was St. George, Utah, where the train was filled with fuel oil. This was at approximately 23:40. At daybreak, the entire consist of a baggage car and six passenger cars rested at a city that was known as the capitol of the Navajo Nation. I got there around 4 p.m. The thermometer read 101 degrees in the shade.

The passengers were generally in good spirits, given that they were nowhere near Los Angeles. The Brigham Youngers had another three full days before they set sail from San Pedro to the South Pacific and we assured them they’d get there in time. The Conductor, Floyd Caruthers, thought I was there to fire him for losing control of the train.

It was dark night you see, and after we left St. George, our next scheduled stop wasn’t for almost two hours. I called for the station stop in Delamar. You know, there are still a lot of people who believe there is gold there even though most of the mining companies shut down after about ‘07 or ‘08. They say all the mother lodes were dried up by then and it was only just pickings for city-type folk. Well, we never stopped at Delamar or any other place. I started trying to flag the fireman, said Caruthers.

Mr. Freedman, there is one more item. Livengood was standing on the platform the entire time the train was in the station.

"You mean he wasn’t in