a red light in front of it, I could see nothing coming from the other directions so I pinned the accelerator to the floor and ran it. At the next intersection, I got a green light and made a tire-squealing right turn onto Fairview Avenue. I ran another light and flew past the signs for dry cleaners and funeral parlors and package beer stores, all just smears of red and green and white. Jackie was making no sound that I could hear.
Finally ahead on the left was St. Jude’s Hospital. I cut in front of a truck that braked hard not to hit me. When I shouted “emergency,” a guard pointed me around to the side. I fell out of the car and scrambled inside, then stopped a short woman in a white uniform, and begged for help. She shouted over her shoulder toward the back of the emergency room as I rushed her to Jackie. Two orderlies appeared and lifted his limp body onto a gurney. She hurried them back through the door shouting.
“Type this blood now!”
The smells of Ajax and ether hit my face as I entered the hospital. Before I cold see where they were taking Jackie, I was hustled to little room lighted by a bright bulb hanging from a wire in the high ceiling. A nurse began to inspect my heaving chest and shoulders. Beatrice, she said her name was; she looked about my age. I studied the way her thick, black hair fell in long, shiny, clumpy strands and wondered what they felt like to touch.
For the first time my body started to hurt. “I’m cold.”
“I’m going to get you a gown and a blanket in just a minute, honey, just soon as I get these little wounds dressed.”
“He mostly missed me,” I said. She nodded, smiling, but kept her focus on my injuries. She asked my name and how the accident had happened, if my family knew I was there. “Why did you come to St. Jude’s?” she said.
“Because this is a colored hospital and my friend is colored. I’ve been here before. Sister Carol is a friend of my grandmother.” Sister Carol was the nun who headed the hospital.
I lay back on the examining table and closed my eyes, wondering where Jackie was, what the doctors were doing to him. Maybe he would need surgery to get the shot out. Beatrice covered me with a blanket and I soon fell into an edgy sleep. I awakened to the soft voices of two people, one of them Sister Carol, the other a black male doctor in a long white coat. The doctor began to pick out pieces of glass. I asked about Jackie.
The doctor glanced at Sister Carol. “Tom, Jackie’s lost a lot of blood,” she said.
“We tried to stop the bleeding, but it wouldn’t stop. We really tried.”
She took my trembling right hand. “We know that, dear.” She smiled. “Your grandmother is on her way here.”
“Bebe shouldn’t come. She’s sick.”
When they left, I drifted back into the strange sleep. I awakened when I felt someone stroking my arm. As I sat up on the examining table, I saw my grandmother’s pale, shocked face. She cast her eyes from my bloody face to the smears across my chest. “Look at you, Tommy,” she said. She turned away and found a cloth, which she wet and used to wash my face.
“Does anything hurt you, dear?”
“You’re so thin, Bebe. How you feeling?”
The worry on her face deepened the hollows of her cheeks, framed by the thin strands of white hair that had fallen out of the bun at the back of her neck. “Do you hurt badly?” she said again.
“No. I’m just so tired. What time is it?”
“Almost midnight.”
“Where’s Jackie?”
William Addison, Bebe’s house man and driver, slipped into the room, his broad face creased with concern. “Here, son.” He handed me a Coca-Cola. “Your mama and daddy are on their way.”
Sister Carol appeared at the door and asked me to go with her to another room, and she nodded at Bebe to come along. I followed warily, and saw Alma sitting on a straight-backed chair. Her arms were covered with small bandages, and her bloodshot eyes were locked on the black doctor beside her. Sister Carol told us to sit down. Her eyes swept from Alma to me.
“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. Jackie has died.”
There was a long moment of silence. “Are you sure?” Alma said the very words on my tongue. They were sure. The wounds were so bad, and he lost so much blood.
I looked at Bebe, who held my shaking hand and gazed at me. Her eyes had become sunken into her head by disease. Her dry lips quivered slightly, perhaps in preparation to offering me words of comfort, but she was interrupted.
I turned to Alma. “You made this happen.” I hadn’t been thinking that—it just came out. I had stopped breathing. My heart thumped loudly in my ears. The fringes of my vision turned red, and little white stars floated in and around my line of sight. I doubled both fists. She needed to pay for this. “We didn’t have to stop there. We didn’t have to stay there, except you made us.”
I rose. I wanted to hit her again, but harder.
But then I felt Bebe wrap her bony hand, its livid veins barely obscured by her translucent skin, around my wrist and stroke the forearm above with her other hand. I breathed.
Alma gasped and then sobbed. “I want to go home!” She told Sister Carol she came from California, and the nun said she would try to arrange to get her there.
“We have to tell Jackie’s mother,” I said. Sister Carol nodded. “We’ll take care of that. You need not worry.” Bebe took my hand. “Come on, precious, let’s go home.”
But standing outside were two tall men in gray uniforms, black jackboots, and wide-brimmed gray felt hats bearing the Confederate battle flag on their crowns. In my experience, no men of martial authority were more impressively turned out than Alabama State Troopers. “Are you a family member?” one said to Bebe. He nodded at her reply and turned back to me. “Mr. McKee, you’re under arrest. We’re going to detain you until the Yancey County sheriff gets here to take you to his jail.”
I lost whatever breath I had left. “Oh, please, no,” Bebe said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but that’s what they’re going to do.”
“What is the charge against my grandson?”
“Assault with intent to kill, ma’am.”
“And whom do you say he assaulted?”
“He shot a man named Buford Kyle at a store in Yancey County.”
She stared at the trooper. I had no words. The silence had extended at least a half minute when William Addison stepped forward. William was short and light brown, heavy around the middle, though his girth was disguised somewhat by charcoal wool pants worn high. His countenance, as usual, was sober.
“Miss Brigid, we’ve got to get Tommy cleaned up before he can go anywhere. And, Miss Brigid, we’ve got to find him some clothes.”
Being addressed as “Miss Brigid” apparently had William’s desired effect of shaking Bebe out of her shock. He usually did not show her such deference.
Her shoulders rose. “Officer, give us
