Midnight Without a Moon(54)

After leaving the toilet, I met Hallelujah at Reverend Jenkins’s car, where he sat on the hood. I climbed up on the hood of the Buick and stretched out my legs. The shouting inside the church had quieted, and Reverend Jenkins stood in the pulpit. Outside, several other teenagers loitered around the church, sitting on cars, chatting, smoking, or doing whatever else they felt like doing while the old people inside praised the Lord.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Hallelujah said.

“So you have a bad feeling?”

I leaned back and rested on the windshield, my arms folded behind my head. The night was clear, and stars blanketed the sky. The air was muggy and smelled of cotton, and I actually felt like taking a nap right there on the hood of Reverend Jenkins’s car. Unfortunately, my friend wanted to talk.

Hallelujah leaned back and rested against the windshield as well. He sighed. “At first I was all excited about what’s been happening this week. Preacher Mose being brave enough to point out the killers in court. Mrs. Till coming down here and all. And man, Willie Reed having the nerve to actually sit in a Mississippi courtroom and say he saw white men take a Negro into a barn and then heard a beating . . . that was something.”

I raised up and rested on my right elbow. I stared at him. “So what’s your problem?”

Hallelujah sighed again. “What’s gonna happen if these two white men are found guilty?”

“They’ll rot in jail,” I said as I again rested my head against the windshield. A smile stretched across my face. Two white men could go to prison for killing a Negro. In Mississippi. If that could happen, anything was possible.

“And what if they don’t?” Hallelujah asked. “What if the jury says they’re not guilty?”

I shot up on my elbow again. “How can a jury find them not guilty? Two people testified they heard the beating. Willie Reed saw J. W. Milam with the boy. Ain’t that what everybody’s been saying? That he witnessed it?”

Hallelujah stared at the sky, but he didn’t answer me.

After what seemed like forever, he finally said, “Imagine this, Rosa.” He turned to me and said, “Lean back, close your eyes, and imagine this.”

I did as I was told.

“Now, I know you can’t stand Queen,” he said. “But imagine if Queen did something really horrible, and you knew she needed to be punished. But imagine the punishment coming from Miss Sweet, someone you can’t stand even more.”

“Hey,” I said, my eyes popping open. “Stop judging my feelings about my kinfolk.”

Hallelujah shrugged. “Not judging. Just telling the truth. I know you don’t like Queen, but I know Miss Sweet plagues you even more. Am I right?” he asked, his brows raised.

I laughed. “I don’t know where you’re going with all this, but if Ma Pearl beat Queen for any reason, folks would hear me laughing all the way to Chicago.”

“Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best example. Let’s see,” he said, tapping his finger to his lips.

I exhaled loudly to let him know I was annoyed.

He sprang up on his elbows and asked, “You know what Preacher said Sheriff Strider told the press?”

“I have no idea,” I answered, a bit exasperated with him speaking in riddles.

“He said we don’t have any trouble down here until some Southern niggers go up north and the NAACP talks to ’em and they come back home. He said if they’d keep their noses and mouths outta our business, folks in Mississippi would be able to do more in enforcing the laws.”

I narrowed my eyes at him and said, “Stop speaking in parables and just tell me what you’re trying to say.”

“What I’m saying is white folks aren’t gonna convict their own because of outsiders interfering. You do know that every lawyer in Sumner is defending those two murderers, don’t you?”

“Nope. Didn’t know that.”

“They’re teaming up against us, Rosa.”

“Of course they are. Haven’t they always?”


“My aunt Bertha went to Sumner the week before the trial. You know what she saw when she went inside a few stores?”

I didn’t answer.

“Money jars on the counters. She said from what she heard, every store in town was collecting money to help defend those killers.”

My heart took a dive. “Our people are teaming up too,” I said, trying to remain hopeful. “Look at all the folks down here watching the trial. Aunt Belle closed her shop to come down here. She’s losing money. Everybody’s doing what they can to help push them to a guilty verdict.”

“It won’t be enough,” Hallelujah said dryly.

“Since when did you become Mr. Gloom and Doom?”

“When I realized we’re up against a powerful system.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” he said, holding a finger up for each point he made, “we have five lawyers defending those murderers. We have every white person in Leflore and Tallahatchie Counties with their threatening eyes glued to the jury, daring them to side with those rabble-rousers called the NAACP and convict two of their own. And we have an all-white male jury. Of course we both know that neither women nor coloreds could be on the jury anyway. But that’s beside the point.”