head popped up. “Yeah?”
“Don’t you care about what the boy done to your wife?”
Roy swirled the whiskey around the glass. “Yeah, I guess so.”
J.W. exploded: “You guess so? This is your wife’s honor we talking about, boy!”
J.W. leapt across the room, caught Roy by the collar, hauled him off the couch, and then shoved him back down again. Roy didn’t even try to defend himself. J.W. outweighed him by twenty pounds, five years, two tours in World War II, and a half a bottle of whiskey.
“Ain’t you got no balls?”
Roy looked down at his hands.
J.W. snatched the whiskey bottle from the table and turned it up to his mouth.
“J.W., let’s just forget about this. That boy ain’t meant no harm,” Carolyn insisted.
J.W. burped and slapped his chest. “I can’t do it.” He thumped his temple with his fingers. “I wish I could forget it, darling, but it’s seared into my brain.”
Carolyn wrung her hands and shot Roy a nervous look.
“Get up, boy!”
Roy shook his head. “I’m tired, J.W. Just go home and sleep it off.”
J.W. eyed him for a long, intense moment, before he reached around and pulled a gun from the waistband of his trousers. He licked his fingers, smeared the saliva over the nozzle, and aimed it at Roy’s heart.
Carolyn screamed and lunged at J.W. He knocked her back with one hefty swing of his arm.
“Either we gonna handle this tonight, or I’ma blow you away,” J.W. sneered drunkenly.
Roy nervously licked his lips. “Okay, J.W. Whatever you say.”
They barreled down the road in silence. Roy looked up at the dark sky and wondered where in the world the moon had gone off to. J.W. drained the bottle of whiskey and tossed it out the open window and then stepped down harder on the accelerator.
As they approached Moe Wright’s house, the dogs in the yard barked and tugged on their chains. Inside a light came on, and soon after that Moe Wright was standing in the doorway dressed in a ragged T-shirt and striped pajama pants. He raised his hands over his eyes, squinting against the bright headlights that J.W. aimed on the house like a cannon.
“Who that?”
J.W. climbed out of the car and started toward the house. Roy followed.
“Moe, you know me, dontcha?”
Moe lowered his hand. “Yes sir, Mr. Milam, I sure do.”
“Good. Look here, I come for the Chicago boy.”
Moe frowned. “May I ask why, Mr. Milam?”
J.W. turned around and looked at his half-brother. “Tell ’em why, Roy.”
Roy smirked, cleared his throat, and whispered, “He, uhm—uhm, whistled at my wife.”
Moe Wright’s wife Mary appeared in the background dressed in a tattered pink robe. She tugged at the scarf on her head as she peered over her husband’s shoulder.
“My boy? You sure ’bout that, suh?”
“Sure ’bout what?” Mary Wright whispered.
“Your nephew whistled at my brother’s wife,” J.W. spat. “And we come to school him on how white women are to be treated in Mississippi!”
“Mr. Milam, Mr. Bryant, you know my grandnephew ain’t from ’round here, he don’t know the ways of the South—”
“Well, that’s why we here, Moe. We gonna teach him and we gonna teach him for free,” J.W. cackled, and pushed past Moe.
Moe caught him by the shoulder. “Now wait a minute, Mr. Milam, I will whip the boy myself. I’ll whip him and put him on the next train back to Chicago.”
J.W. glared down at the man’s black hand. “Take your hand offa me, nigga!” he sneered, and Moe’s hand dropped heavy as lead down to his side.
“I don’t want no trouble, Mr. Milam.”
“Too late for that. Now where is he?”
Mary clutched her robe. “Moe, don’t let them take him,” she sobbed.
What was Moe to do? He was an old man, an old black man who only had his words, and he had used them and they had failed him.
Moe pointed down a narrow hallway.
J.W. kicked in the first door he came upon and two dark bodies sprang up from the bed. J.W. stepped in and peered at them. He couldn’t make out their faces in the dark, but he knew that neither boy was the one he was looking for because they were too thin.
“Where’s the nigger from Chicago?”
One lanky boy pointed at the wall.
The sound of the first door being kicked in startled Emmett and Hank, who shared a bed in the second room. They were sitting up, rubbing sleep from their eyes, when J.W. burst in.
“You!” he yelled, pulling the gun from his waistband and waving it at Emmett. “Get up and get dressed, you’re coming with me.”
After Emmett threw on some clothes, J.W. and Roy each grabbed one of his arms and dragged him into the front room where Moe and his wife were standing shoulder to shoulder, cradling a battered coffee can.
“P-please,” Mary said as she pried the lid off the can and pulled out a roll of money. “This is all we have—one hundred and seven dollars. You can have it, just leave the boy.”
J.W. and Roy stared at the roll of money, and for a moment a flicker of hope whipped in that room. But just as quickly as it came, it was gone.
“Don’t want your money.”
Emmett struggled to escape from their grip. His face was slick with tears. He looked at his aunt and uncle and said, “Please don’t let them take me. Please!”
Mary echoed her grandnephew’s request with her own shrill: “PLEASE!”
J.W. just laughed and he and Roy dragged that boy out of the house, tossed him into the backseat of the Buick, and tore off into the night.
The empty beer and Coke bottles on the car floor rolled and clashed noisily with every wild turn J.W. forced the car into.
“You gonna get yours, nigger, just wait and see. You gonna get yours real good!”
J.W. ranted and raged and pounded angrily on the dashboard, while Roy sat perfectly still with his hands folded neatly in his lap as though he might be praying.
Two
