“Oh, I know,” Serenity says softly. “Did Dee tell people here in Athens Point she was black?”
Mrs. Booker nods sadly. “That’s where the trouble started. Dee lived black here from the start—went to the colored church and doctor—but the fact was, nobody believed her. Not even black folks. She wasn’t even high yellow, to look at. Dee was so fair, people just thought we was lyin’ to cover up the truth. White folks started sayin’ my boy didn’t know his place. Said he’d gone off north and come back with biggity ideas.”
I’m suddenly sure I don’t want to hear the rest of this story. But I can’t see how to avoid it. Nothing would make Serenity leave this house now.
“First, they fired him from the sawmill,” Mrs. Booker goes on, “even though the foreman said Sam was the best man he had. But the klukkers had a lot of power then. So Sam went back to hauling pulpwood, like his uncles. Dee went to work, too, at the dollar store. But she caught a lot of trouble there, from the other women. They were all jealous of her. The men wouldn’t leave Dee alone, either, white and black. Always trying to touch her and stir up trouble. Sam should have taken her back to Detroit right then, but he had too much pride. He didn’t like to back down, and back then that was usually a fatal condition for a black man in Mississippi.”
I can tell from Serenity’s gaze that she feels bonded to this woman in a way I never could.
“It was my fault, much as anybody’s,” she goes on. “If I’d told Sam to go, he probably would have. But I didn’t. I was selfish and wanted him close to me.”
Serenity says, “When did the demons come into the picture, Mrs. Booker?”
“Pretty soon after that. They took Sam and Dee right out their house one July night, just up the road from here. It happened so fast I didn’t even hear a dog bark. Turned out later they’d killed Sam’s dog. Cut its throat. Anyway, I didn’t know anything was wrong till dawn the next day, when poor Dee came stumbling up my steps in a bloody slip and nothing else. No shoes . . . nothing.”
Serenity is staring at the old woman with hypnotic intensity. “What happened to her?”
“The devils came in black masks and knocked Sam out. Then they loaded him and Dee into a panel truck and drove them to the edge of the Lusahatcha Swamp. The men blindfolded them and tied their hands. Then they put them in a boat. There was three, she said. Three boats. They set out through that damned swamp with lanterns on the bows, Sam and Dee in different boats. They trolled slow for a long time, and then they hit land. When they pulled off Dee’s blindfold, she saw a cypress tree bigger than any she’d ever seen before. She said one of the men showed her old rusted chains hanging down from one of the limbs. Said they’d been hanging there since slave times.”
In the pause that follows this statement, Serenity shudders.
“Sam had come to by that time, but his hands were tied, and he couldn’t do nothing. They started beating him. Dee screamed, but the devils just laughed. Said there wasn’t nobody to hear but snakes and alligators.”
“Were they still wearing masks at that time, Mrs. Booker?”
“I believe so. They started beating on Sam, kickin’ him, and callin’ him all kinds of names. Crazy religious names, Dee said. Some of it she didn’t even understand. Lord, they were filled with hate. One was howling scripture during all this.”
“What did they want from Sam?”
“Want? Vengeance, baby. They said he’d married a white woman, and there was only one penalty for that crime. Death. Mis-ce-genation, they called it. I looked it up in the big dictionary at the church. Race-mixing is what it means. They said Sam was guilty of defiling a white woman, and he couldn’t be bringing no mud babies into the world. Mud babies. Which is just pitiful, when you think how many white men fathered babies on black women. Probably some of those very men doing the beating.”
“You know they did,” Serenity whispers. “What happened next?”
“When Dolores realized why they was beating Sam, she started screaming then that she wasn’t white. She told ’em her daddy was as black as Sam, and she hadn’t ever pretended to be white. But it didn’t do no good. They didn’t believe her, see?”
The old woman shakes her head, then raises one hand to wipe her eyes. “Dee realized then that they meant to kill Sam. And she was right. Somebody got a rope out the boat and slung it over a limb. Sam was only half-conscious by then, thank Jesus. Dee begged and pleaded, ‘Why do you have to kill him?’ she kept asking. Finally, one of them turned to her and said, ‘Because he’s a nigger. And he defiled your womanhood, you whore.’”
“Jesus,” I breathe, barely able to believe this happened less than forty miles from my childhood home.
“You know what Dee did then?” Mrs. Booker asks.
“Tell me,” Serenity whispers.
“She broke loose and threw herself down over Sam to protect him. They started beating her, but when they stopped to catch their breath, she said, ‘He hasn’t broken your law! Can’t you see what’s right in front of you? I’m a nigger, too, you damn fools! I’m a nigger, too!’”
Neither I nor Serenity speaks while the old woman takes a Kleenex from the table beside her and dabs her watery eyes. Then at length Serenity says, “Dolores told you all this?”
“When she got to where she could talk straight, she did. It took most of a day to get her in her right mind.”
“How did she get away from them?”
“They dropped her about a mile from my house when they was done with her.”
I close my eyes, wanting not to ask, but I know Serenity won’t let it go any more than Caitlin would have. “What else did they do to her?”
The old woman’s eyes seem to deepen with infinite sadness. “You know what men like that do. They had their way with her. That’s what they wanted all along, I think. Sam was just in the way.”
“Why did they let her live?”
The old woman takes some time with this. “I’ve asked that very question for years and years. Maybe they were so arrogant that they didn’t think anything could happen to them. And they were right, weren’t they? Maybe they figured if they let her live, they could take another turn with her on down the road.”
“Did they hang your son?” Serenity asks.
“Yes, ma’am. Right in front of his wife. Lynched him. Happened no more than ten miles from here.”
“What year was this?”
“Nineteen sixty-six.”
The summer of my first-grade year. “Did you report it to the police?”
The old woman stares at me as if I’m crazy. “Baby, like as not, some of the men behind those masks were po-lice.”
“What about the FBI?”
“The FBI got wind of what happened some way, and they sent two men to talk to me. One was very kind. But I couldn’t tell him anything. What he most wanted to know was where to find that Bone Tree, but I didn’t know, and Dolores had no real idea where those devils had taken her. Of course, I heard they found that tree back around Christmas time. A girl died over there, finding it.”