“You can think that if you want to, Dee said. But Abbey Montgomery ain’t dead.
“I almost told him I’d seen her ghost, but he didn’t deserve to hear about it. The fool couldn’t even see what was right in front of his eyes. I couldn’t expect him to understand what happened to me when I saw that miserable … that thing. He was rushing on ahead of me anyhow, like I’d suddenly embarrassed him or something. That was fine with me. I felt the exact same way. I said, I guess you know neither one of us can ever talk about this, and he said, I guess you know it, too, and that was the last thing we said to each other that night. All the way down Meridian Road Dee Sparks kept his eyes straight ahead and his mouth shut. When we got to the field, he turned toward me like he had something to say, and I waited for it, but he faced forward again and ran away. just ran. I watched him disappear past the general store, and then I walked home by myself.
“My mom gave me hell for getting my clothes all wet and dirty, and my brothers laughed at me and wanted to know who beat me up and stole my candy. As soon as I could, I went to bed, pulled the covers up over my head, and closed my eyes. A little while later, my mom came in and asked if I was all right. Did I get into a fight with that Dee Sparks? Dee Sparks was born to hang, that was what she thought, and I ought to have a better class of friends. I’m tired of playing those drums, Momma, I said, I want to play the saxophone instead. She looked at me surprised, but said she’d talk about with Daddy, and that it might work out.
“For the next couple days, I waited for the bomb to go off. On the Friday, I went to school, but couldn’t concentrate for beans. Dee Sparks and I didn’t even nod at each other in the hallways—just walked by like the other guy was invisible. On the weekend I said I felt sick and stayed in bed, wondering when that whirlwind of trouble would come down. I wondered if Eddie Grimes would talk about seeing me—once they found the body, they’d get around to Eddie Grimes real quick.
“But nothing happened that weekend, and nothing happened all the next week. I thought Mary Randolph must have hid the white girl in a grave out in The Backs. But how long could a girl from one of those rich families go missing without investigations and search parties? And, on top of that, what was Mary Randolph doing there in the first place? She liked to have a good time, but she wasn’t one of those wild girls with a razor under her skirt—she went to church every Sunday, was good to people, nice to kids. Maybe she went out to comfort that poor girl, but how did she know she’d be there in the first place? Misses Abbey Montgomerys from the hill didn’t share their plans with Mary Randolphs from Darktown. I couldn’t forget the way she looked at me, but I couldn’t understand it, either. The more I thought about that look, the more it was like Mary Randolph was saying something to me, but what? Are you ready for this? Do you understand this? Do you know how careful you must be?
“My father said I could start learning the C-melody sax, and when I was ready to play it in public, my little brother wanted to take over the drums. Seems he always wanted to play drums, and in fact, he’s been a drummer ever since, a good one. So I worked out how to play my little sax, I went to school and came straight home after, and everything went on like normal, except Dee Sparks and I weren’t friends any more. If the police were searching for a missing rich girl, I didn’t hear anything about it.
“Then one Saturday I was walking down our street to go the general store, and Mary Randolph came through her front door just as I got to her house. When she saw me, she stopped moving real sudden, with one hand still on the side of the door. I was so surprised to see her that I was in a kind of slow-motion, and I must have stared at her. She gave me a look like an X-ray, a look that searched around down inside me. I don’t know what she saw, but her face relaxed, and she took her hand off the door and let it close behind her, and she wasn’t looking inside me any more. Miss Randolph, I said, and she told me she was looking forward to hearing our band play at a Beergarden dance in a couple of weeks. I told her I was going to be playing the saxophone at that dance, and she said something about that, and all the time it was like we were having two conversations, the top one about me and the band, and the one underneath about her and the murdered white girl in The Backs. It made me so nervous, my words got all mixed up. Finally she said You make sure you say hello to your daddy from me, now, and I got away.