Her dry lips quivered slightly, perhaps in preparation to offering me words of comfort, but she was interrupted.
I turned to Alma. “You made this happen.” I hadn’t been thinking that—it just came out. I had stopped breathing. My heart thumped loudly in my ears. The fringes of my vision turned red, and little white stars floated in and around my line of sight. I doubled both fists. She needed to pay for this. “We didn’t have to stop there. We didn’t have to stay there, except you made us.”
I rose. I wanted to hit her again, but harder.
But then I felt Bebe wrap her bony hand, its livid veins barely obscured by her translucent skin, around my wrist and stroke the forearm above with her other hand. I breathed.
Alma gasped and then sobbed. “I want to go home!” She told Sister Carol she came from California, and the nun said she would try to arrange to get her there.
“We have to tell Jackie’s mother,” I said. Sister Carol nodded. “We’ll take care of that. You need not worry.” Bebe took my hand. “Come on, precious, let’s go home.”
But standing outside were two tall men in gray uniforms, black jackboots, and wide-brimmed gray felt hats bearing the Confederate battle flag on their crowns. In my experience, no men of martial authority were more impressively turned out than Alabama State Troopers. “Are you a family member?” one said to Bebe. He nodded at her reply and turned back to me. “Mr. McKee, you’re under arrest. We’re going to detain you until the Yancey County sheriff gets here to take you to his jail.”
I lost whatever breath I had left. “Oh, please, no,” Bebe said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but that’s what they’re going to do.”
“What is the charge against my grandson?”
“Assault with intent to kill, ma’am.”
“And whom do you say he assaulted?”
“He shot a man named Buford Kyle at a store in Yancey County.”
She stared at the trooper. I had no words. The silence had extended at least a half minute when William Addison stepped forward. William was short and light brown, heavy around the middle, though his girth was disguised somewhat by charcoal wool pants worn high. His countenance, as usual, was sober.
“Miss Brigid, we’ve got to get Tommy cleaned up before he can go anywhere. And, Miss Brigid, we’ve got to find him some clothes.”
Being addressed as “Miss Brigid” apparently had William’s desired effect of shaking Bebe out of her shock. He usually did not show her such deference.
Her shoulders rose. “Officer, give us a while to get my grandson cleaned up and dressed.”
The trooper frowned. He studied her, looked at me, and said he would wait a few minutes. They withdrew to the entrance at the end of the hall where they could watch us.
William led us into the examining room. “Missy, we need Joe Black down here—now.” He walked her to the pay phone in the hall and gave her a dime. Hearing her words made the nightmare more real to me. She stepped back into the room and leaned close to me. “Tommy, you must say absolutely nothing to these police.”
Exactly twelve minutes later, after I had donned a green surgical shirt and again lay on the examining table, a man I had never seen before suddenly appeared in the room. He wore khaki pants, a golf shirt, deck shoes, and a crimson-colored cap with an insignia “A” on it. He was not quite five feet, six inches tall, weighed less than 140 pounds, with a horseshoe-shaped fringe of white hair wrapped around his otherwise bald head. He smelled of Old Spice and cigars. He only raised his bushy white eyebrows at me, but when he looked at my grandmother, a smile of sweet love spread across his wrinkled old face. “There’s my beautiful Brigid McCarthy.” His voice was rich and gravelly.
“Oh, Joe.” She stood unsteadily, and they hugged. “Will you help Tommy?”
“Absolutely. Son, I’m Joe Black Pell.” His eyes flicked to the open door to the hallway and then returned to me. “I need to know what happened, and I’m going to ask you a few questions. You answer ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘I don’t know.’ Once I’ve finished, some police”—he pronounced it PO-leese—“are going to ask lotta questions. Don’t say anything, not one word, ’cept for yo’ name and home address, unless I say you can answer. You follow me, son?”
I tensed and nodded.
“Did you shoot first at this man?”
I shook my head.
“So, he shot at you and you fired back in self-defense, ain’t that right? Answer out loud.”
“Yes, sir.” But Jackie was still dead even though I tried to defend him.
“Is it yo’ gun, son?”
“Well, it was Granddaddy’s gun.” He had died suddenly last August, and Bebe had given me his car to drive back to school after Christmas. After Beth and I had a passionate reunion in the backseat, she whispered to me she hadn’t found her panties. Looking for them later, I groped granddaddy’s holstered pistol strapped to the underwire of the driver’s seat. The race troubles in 1963 and 1964 must have made him think he needed a gun in his car.
“Son, that’s more than yes or no. It was in your possession, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then it was yo’ gun. Did you take that gun in that store to try to start some trouble?”
“No!”
“Did you git that gun after this fella starting shootin’ at you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Son, did you drive into Yancey County trying to stir up some trouble over civil rights?”
“No, we were just—”
Joe Black Pell was holding up both hands, palms facing me. “Yes or no, son.”
“No.”
“Brigid, I’m going to go out here and talk to these troopers. Y’all stay put till I get back, and do not answer any questions if they sneak their way past me.”
Joe Black had been gone only a minute when Mama and Daddy rushed into the examining room. She took one look at me and hugged me, pressing my face into the graying blonde of her hair. I could smell her perfume and taste her tears. “Oh, thank God. Thank God.” Then she pushed me to arms’ length and inspected my shoulder and chest. “How bad are you hurt?”
“Not much. But Jackie, my friend—he died.”
Mama pulled me tight for at least a minute. I could feel her crying.
Daddy then moved close to me. I smelled the cigarettes that Mama had been trying to get him to quit. He had aged since Christmas—his hair was grayer and there were pouches under his eyes. He was six-three, almost as tall as I was, but his shoulders looked weighted toward the ground. He was massaging the knuckles of his right hand as he studied me, his brow knotted. “You all right, Tommy?” I nodded. He gave a relieved half-smile.
He looked at Bebe. “Why is Joe Black Pell out in the waiting room?”
“Tommy needed a lawyer, and Joe Black was johnny-on-the-spot. Did you see the state troopers?”
“Mama, you know Daddy hated Pell. I’m going to call Harv Foster and get him over here.”
She shook her head and gave him a hard look. “Buddy, your daddy is dead. It doesn’t matter now what he thinks, or thought. Joe is a smart and tough lawyer, and he’s here.”
My father grimaced. “Oh, Mama, Pell is just an ambulance chaser. You know that.”
She shook her head. “I know no such thing. He’s always been a great friend to me. Tommy needs help now. It would take hours to get Harv Foster over here—that is, if