“Uncanny,” I whispered. “That’s the word Miss Johnson would use.”
When I glanced at Hallelujah, I noticed that goose bumps were creeping up his neck. I wondered whether he was thinking about our visit to Miss Addie’s and her strange reaction when she saw him. I sure was. I rubbed away goose bumps from my own arms as I pondered on how she “sensed” that something bad might happen by just looking at Hallelujah.
I started reading the article out loud: “??‘A fourteen-year-old Chicago junior high school student, Emmett (Bobo) Till, who was kidnapped by a trio of gun-toting whites early Sunday morning while visiting relatives in Money, Miss., was feared a lynch victim because he “whistled at a white girl.”?’”
I looked up at Hallelujah. “I thought folks have been saying that the third man might be colored.”
Hallelujah shrugged. “What difference does it make? If he was colored, he’s still as guilty as the whites.”
I read on silently.
“What you think of Preacher Mose sticking around for the trial?” Hallelujah asked.
“What trial?”
“The trial for Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam next week.”
“A trial?” I asked, glancing up from the magazine. “Next week?”
Hallelujah nodded.
“In Mississippi? For a white man killing a Negro?”
Hallelujah grinned. “Two white men. And they could go to prison for life if found guilty.”
“Praise the Lord,” I said.
“Sinners can’t praise the Lord.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “They do every Sunday at Greater Mount Zion.”
Exasperated by my remark, Hallelujah ripped the magazine from my hands and turned to the article on Emmett Till. He read, “‘. . . the sheriff ordered the family of sixty-four-year-old Rev. Moses Wright, a retired Church of God in Christ minister and the boy’s uncle, to “take his family from the town for their own safety.” The minister, however, refused to leave his home after making arrangements to hide his wife, three sons, and two visiting Chicago grandsons, Curtis Jones and Wheeler Parker.’” He peered at me and asked, “You think you could be that brave?”
“He’s braver than most Negroes,” I said. “I don’t know if I’d be bold enough to hang around. Not after what they did to his nephew.”
“I would,” said Hallelujah. “I wouldn’t let those crackers run me from my home either. I’d stay and testify too.”
“You wouldn’t,” I challenged him.
He nodded. “Would so. My daddy would too. He said Preacher Wright is one of the bravest men he knows.”
“If he’s so is brave, how come he let them take his nephew in the first place?”
Hallelujah stared at me as though I had turned as orange as the sun. After a moment his forehead wrinkled. “He didn’t know they’d kill him, Rosa. They said they wanted to talk to him. He trusted them. Wouldn’t any colored man do the same if two white men came to his house in the middle of the night asking to speak to one of his kin?”
“Scoot over,” I said, plopping down on the step next to him. “I guess if there was a colored man with him, like Reverend Mose believed, then he wouldn’t think they’d do something so violent.” I took off my hat and fanned myself. “I bet even Papa would’ve let Fred Lee go if two white men came saying he’d done something wrong and they wanted to talk to him.”
As I fanned myself with my straw hat, I realized how badly I needed that bath. “Sorry if I stink,” I said.
Hallelujah pinched his nose. “Pee-eww. Yes, you do.”
Playfully, I slapped the fedora off his head. “So how was school today?” I asked.
Hallelujah narrowed his eyes at me as he retrieved his hat from the yard.
He sat back down on the step and fanned himself with the hat. “Folks keep whispering about the Chicago boy and the NAACP, and Miss Wilson’s about to have a fit worrying about white folks getting word of it.”
Miss Wilson was a new teacher at the colored school. She had been out of college for only a year, with plans to move up north. But her mama, although she was only in her fifties, got sick with what Ma Pearl called “old-timer’s disease.” And since her mama refused to leave her home, Miss Wilson remained in Stillwater to care for her.
“Miss Wilson can’t afford to lose her job,” I said.
With a roll of his eyes, Hallelujah said, “She ain’t nothing like Miss Johnson.”
“I bet she ain’t,” I said, rolling my eyes back at him.
Hallelujah scowled and placed his hat on his head. “I ain’t talking about the way she looks.”
After silence sat between us for a minute, Hallelujah finally spoke. “You know how Miss Johnson is. She’s brave like Preacher Mose. She’d encourage us to talk about what happened.”
“What’s Miss Wilson like?”
“As scared as a chicken in a fox den.”
I chuckled, but Hallelujah didn’t even bother with a smile. “She wants us to put on a patriotic play for the fall and sing that stupid song about ‘This land is your land. This land is my land.’”