Unfazed, Ma Pearl answered curtly, “And you jest plain stupid. And disrespectful. And you can git the devil on outta my house.” She glowered at Monty and swung her thick arm toward the direction of the door.
I heard the settee creak as Monty stood.
“Sit down, son,” Papa said. “I wear the pants in this house.” To Ma Pearl he said, “Pearl, I’ve had enough of yo’ nonsense. Mr. Bryant and his brother had no right to come in Mose’s house like that in the middle of the night and take what didn’t belong to them. No right at all,” he said, shaking his head. “Mose is tore to pieces over this, and his wife done up and left too. Said she wasn’t coming back. Never setting a foot in that house again.”
How I secretly wished Ma Pearl would do the same!
“This ain’t the time to blame nobody ’bout how they raised they chi’ren,” said Papa. “This is the time to pull together. To help. To pray that the boy is returned safe.”
Ma Pearl grunted but otherwise remained silent. Papa might not have been a man with an imposing stature, but when he spoke sternly, even Ma Pearl listened.
“Maybe he’s lost somewhere,” said Aunt Belle. “Maybe they just scared him and let him go, so maybe he wandered off in the woods somewhere and can’t find his way back to Preacher Wright’s house.”
I thought about nine-year-old Obadiah Malone running through the woods to get away from Ricky Turner. When his daddy found him, he had passed out. What if this boy was lying somewhere in the woods, passed out from the loss of blood or dehydrated from the heat? Being from Chicago, surely he wouldn’t know how to find his way through the woods.
“You believe that lie, baby?” asked Monty. “You believe two white men would force a Negro from his bed at gunpoint in the middle of the night, have a little chat with him, and then let him go?”
The room grew quiet.
“We can hope,” Papa finally said.
Ma Pearl shifted in her chair. “You say Mr. Bryant was one of the mens that took the boy?”
“That’s what Mose say,” Papa answered. “Said he wanted to talk to the boy from Chicago. The one that did all that talk up at his sto’.”
“And a big bald-head one was the other man?” asked Ma Pearl.
“Um-hmm,” said Papa. “Mose say he was the one with the pistol. Said he walked through the house like he owned it. Yelled at anybody that woke up to go back to sleep. Threatened Mose. Told him if he wanted to live to see sixty-five, he best forget his face.” With a sigh, Papa dropped his head. “Mose say he’ll never forget that face.”
“I heard of Bryant. And the bald-head one sound like his brother. Milam,” Ma Pearl said brusquely. “Lawd, I hope it ain’t J. W. I believe he the man Doll say her nephew work for in Glendora. She say he one o’ the meanest white mens in Mississippi. Meaner than a bear caught in a beehive. Fought in the war. Learnt how to beat mens to death with his pistol.”
The room was quiet again. My legs grew weak from standing on my toes to peer into the parlor through the cracked mirror. I needed to go get water so I could wash up. But I couldn’t move. My curiosity kept my ears glued to the parlor and my eyes on that mirror.
Finally Ma Pearl spoke. “Y’all know that boy dead.”
“Mama!” Aunt Belle snapped.
“They might as well be looking for a body ’stead o’ waiting for the boy to show up at the front do’,” Ma Pearl said. “If Big Milam is the one that got a holt of him, he dead.”
What if Ma Pearl was right? What if the boy was dead while everybody was waiting for him to show up at the house? What if Miss Addie was right about something bad about to happen in Mississippi? What if colored folks were about to start getting killed for any old reason and regardless of their age?
Reverend George Lee in May.
Levi Jackson in July.
That old man Lamar Smith in the middle of August.
And now a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago might be dead too? And August hadn’t even ended.
My head spun, and I no longer felt like going to the kitchen to warm up water for washing. I no longer felt like doing anything but crawling back into bed and hiding my head under the pillow. I had to do something to block out the horrible thoughts swirling through my head.
September
Chapter Nineteen
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1