The Last House on the Street(96)

“You have to let this go, little sis,” he said.

I looked up at him. “He could still be alive,” I said. My voice sounded childlike to my ears. I felt the tremor in my lower lip.

“Ellie, look how far we are from Hockley Street? From the woods where they tied him to the bumper? And it’s pretty clear this is where they finally untied him. Way out here. I don’t see how…”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I pressed my forehead against his chest while he wrapped his arms around me and I sobbed. He said nothing, just let me grieve. Please don’t let him have suffered too much, I prayed. Please, God.

I finally looked up at Buddy. “I’ve got to go to Flint,” I said. “I’ve got to tell Greg and everyone what happened. I need to make sure his family knows. And then I’ve got to leave.”

“Leave?” He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“I can’t stay here.” I rubbed the tears from my cheeks. “I hate everyone here except you. And everyone here hates me back.”

“You don’t hate Mama and Daddy. You don’t hate Brenda. And she needs you. She don’t know it right now, but she’ll figure it out eventually.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I hate everybody. Except you.”



* * *



I borrowed Buddy’s truck and drove to Flint. Greg and Jocelyn were working at their desks in the school, but everyone else was out canvassing. Jocelyn sobbed, her face in her hands, when I told them, and for the first time, I saw real fury in Greg’s face.

“You foolish kids!” he said, throwing the pen he was using across the room. “We have rules for a reason! You knew the jeopardy you were putting him in, Ellie!”

I broke down again and Jocelyn wrapped her arms around me. I couldn’t speak. I was so wounded by Greg’s words, and so deserving of them. I knew his anger masked his grief. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, having to report what had happened under his watch to Hosea Williams and Dr. King. And he would have to be the one to tell Win’s family.

“Please don’t tell them exactly what happened,” I begged through my tears. “Don’t put that image in their minds. Please don’t tell them how he died.”

He stared at me, the whites of his eyes already red behind his glasses. “Doesn’t matter what I tell them,” he said. “There’s no good way for your son to die.”





Chapter 47



KAYLA


2010

“Can you imagine what it would be like to be pulled behind a truck like that?” Ellie asks me. “Your skin coming off? The agony?” She’s crying softly.

We’re in my great room, Ellie on the sectional, me in an armchair, and the barely touched tea in our cups cold by now. I’m horrified. I have that feeling at the back of my throat that tells me I’m going to start crying any second. I had that feeling every day for the first couple of months after Jackson’s death.

“I’ve tried my best to put it behind me,” she says. “It’s why I never came home before now. I knew it would just wake up the pain and no matter how many years—how many decades—have passed, I didn’t want that pain back again. Losing someone I loved. Imagining what he went through.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, not for the first time. I’ve said it over and over again as she told me her story. But I’ve also been biting my tongue. I’m certain my father had nothing to do with what happened to Win. I’m waiting for her to get to that part of the story—to the part where she tells me my father is innocent. Yet the way she acts toward Daddy … I have the feeling she still thinks he had something to do with it.

“Did you ever find out the truth about that whole thing with Daddy’s truck?” I ask. “He’d never be in the Klan, Ellie, much less do something like that. You don’t really still believe he had something to do with it, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think,” she says, wiping her eyes with the napkin I’d given her. “I don’t think Byron ever questioned him … or anybody else, for that matter … but he had to know something, Kayla. He lied about when he left the truck at Buddy’s shop. Why would he lie if he wasn’t guilty of something?”

“You’ll never convince me he had anything to do with it,” I say. “Daddy’s no bigot.”

“Maybe he wasn’t a bigot, but he was a jealous man.” She gives me a small smile. “And you’re a good daughter, defending him. And all I can do is hope that his conscience has punished him enough over the years. I wish he’d tell me the truth, though, whatever it is. One way or another, I could finally put that horrible time of my life to rest.”

I will talk to my father about it. Ask him for the truth. For my own peace of mind, I need to know that he had no part in this horrific story.

“I guess you and Brenda became friends again over the years?” I ask, mostly to get the image of that poor guy tied to the truck out of my mind.

She presses her lips together, taking a moment to answer. “Not exactly,” she says finally. “We hadn’t talked since I left. Some forty-five years, not one word or letter. But Buddy and Mama were always close to her—Mama especially. Brenda’s been the daughter to her I was never able to be. So when I knew I was coming back here, I wrote to her. I asked if we could let bygones be bygones. We’ve both lived long lives and I didn’t want to hang on to ugly feelings about her. I was surprised when she wrote right back and said how much she wanted to see me and what it would mean to Mama for us to … reunite. We agreed to forget the past and start fresh. Pretend we were two sixty-five-year-old women meeting for the first time. So that’s what we’ve done. Or at least, what we’ve tried to do. It’s not all that easy, with that history. There’s tension between us, still.”