casually tossed his arm out of the window, his fingers drummed the car door in time with the music. They sailed along as if they were going to a baseball game or down to the river for a swim.
Roy chanced a glance at his brother’s face and saw that he was smiling.
In the backseat, Emmett was shaking so bad, he thought he would shake himself right out of his skin. Try as he might, he couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening to him. He kept closing his eyes and counting back from three, hoping that when he opened them again he would be not at his uncle’s house but far and away from here—back home in Chicago, in his own bed, his mother in the room next door.
He wasn’t even clear as to what he had done. The words the crazy white man had shouted in his face didn’t make any sense at all. A white woman? He didn’t know any white women. Did he? Emmett wracked his mind but the only thing that continued to float to the surface was that he might not ever see his mother again.
J.W. pulled the car up alongside a barn and turned off the engine. “Stop your blubbering,” he yelled as he reached in and yanked Emmett from the backseat. “Get the flashlight out the trunk,” he ordered Roy.
The barn was empty save for a few tools hanging on the wall. J.W. brought in the stench of whiskey, and Emmett, of course, the fear.
Roy handed J.W. the flashlight and went back to keep watch at the door.
“Take off your clothes, nigger!”
J.W. trained the beam of light on Emmett as he quickly peeled himself out of his T-shirt and jeans.
“Your draws too!”
Roy gave his head a pitiful shake and wished that someone would come along and stop this thing.
When Emmett was naked, J.W. ridiculed his penis.
“Roy, you see this? They say niggers got big dicks.
Well, his ain’t but the size of my pinky finger.” He laughed. “Come here, come look at it!”
Roy shook his head. “Nah, that’s okay, J.W.”
Emmett brought his hands over his genitals and screamed through his sobs. “Shut up already and go on ahead and get it over with!”
Roy was thinking about running. In high school, he had been Roy Bryant, Junior Varsity Track Star. He peered down at his feet and wondered if he still had the speed to outrun a bullet.
“Roy!”
“Yeah?”
“Come and do what we came here for.”
Roy wasn’t exactly certain what was expected. His eyes swung to Emmett and back to J.W.
“You gotta teach him a lesson!” J.W.’s eyes rolled crazily in their sockets.
Roy sighed and walked slump-shouldered over to the black boy. He balled his hand into a loose fist and socked Emmett in the mouth. The boy groaned and clasped his hand over his bruised lips.
“Again!” J.W. yelled.
Roy struck Emmett hard across the side of his head, and Emmett fell to the ground weeping. Roy turned on his brother. “Okay? You happy now? Let’s go home.” He dragged his hands through his hair and walked back toward the door.
“You faggot!”
That was a word Roy hated more than anything. He spun around angrily. “What did you call—” he began, and then realized that his half-brother’s taunt was meant for Emmett.
J.W. stood menacingly over Emmett. Not a lick of sympathy shone in his eyes as he watched the boy cry and rock in pain. “You niggers—you niggers make me sick!” he bellowed, and kicked Emmett in the ribs.
Emmett screamed, tried and failed to block the next kick and the one after that. The third one broke two ribs and he slipped into unconsciousness. That’s when J.W. went for the hatchet hanging on the wall.
When Roy got home, he went out behind the store and burned every piece of clothing he had on, including his shoes. In the shower he stood beneath a steady stream of scalding-hot water until his skin turned pink. When he opened the bathroom door, a cloud of steam followed him out.
In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator and commenced to eat every piece of food it contained.
Carolyn had been standing at the bedroom window when the Buick pulled into the yard and Roy climbed out. She had run outside pelting questions: “What happened? Where you been? What y’all do to that boy?”
If she had not seen Roy climb out that car, she would have thought she was looking at a dead man, because his face was so still and pale.
Roy didn’t answer any of her questions, nor did he mumble a word for most of the morning. He had left his voice near the river, and when it finally found him again, it spewed out of his mouth in great, sorrowful wails of regret.
The last time J.W. could remember sleeping as soundly as he did that day was when he was in the war.
He woke in the late hours of the afternoon with the previous night’s events scattered through his mind like the remnants of a dream.
He stumbled to the bathroom, and as he stood at the toilet relieving himself, his eyes floated over to the heap of blood-splattered clothes. He began to reel with laughter.
Moe Wright, his wife, Hank, and the other boys sat up all night long waiting for J.W. and Roy to return Emmett. When the sun came up, and Emmett still wasn’t home, Moe climbed into his pickup truck and drove down to Bryant’s grocery store.
Roy was behind the counter.
“Morning,” Moe Wright managed steadily.
“What can I get you, Moe?” Roy said without looking at the old man.
“My boy. My grandnephew.”
Roy wished he could go to one of the shelves and pull Emmett from amidst the canned goods, bags of flour, and tins of sardines—if he could do that, he would hand the boy right over to Moe and say, No charge, Moe.
Instead, Roy moved to the register and hit the cash sale button. The drawer slid open and he peered down at the money. It was eighteen dollars and seventy-two cents—he knew this because in an effort to wash Emmett’s face from his mind he had counted and recounted the money. And now he withdrew it from the drawer and began counting it again.
“Ain’t he home?” Roy mumbled as he thumbed through the bills.
“No suh, he ain’t.”
“Well, I don’t know where he could be. We slapped him around some and then put him out just down the road from your house.”
Moe knew a lie when he heard one. “Have a good day Mr. Bryant,” he said, and walked calmly out of the
