He had been such a sweet child, but after he died and came back again, he was different. J.W. was suddenly fond of torturing living things: cats, puppies, and fledglings. His own baby sister couldn’t escape his cruelty—one afternoon he bound her ankles and wrists with rope, propped her up against a tree, arranged wood and dried corn husks at her feet, and set it ablaze. Thank goodness a passerby saw the smoke and heard the boy whooping like an Indian, or else the girl would have burned to cinders.
His mother, Eula, made up all types of excuses for his devious behavior: He don’t mean no harm. Boys are mischievous by nature.
She coddled him, dubbed him extraordinary because he had died and come back to life. She called him “my little Jesus boy.”
The people around town called him the devil.
When the senior Milam died, Eula married a man named Charles Bryant. He wasn’t a sharecropper like her previous husband, but a businessman who owned two trucks and had purchased the grocery store from Cole Payne.
J.W. gave Charles Bryant the chills. One day he told Eula, “Something ain’t right with that boy.”
Eula rubbed her pregnant belly and retorted nas-tily, “Well, let’s see what your seed produces.”
Charles was hoping and praying for a girl, but Eula gave birth to a son, who they named Roy.
In 1942, J.W. was twenty-three years old and went down and enlisted himself in the army. He was deployed overseas where he could actively and openly pursue his burgeoning passion—murder.
He did it so well that he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Silver Star.
J.W. had departed Mississippi a scraggly specimen of a man, and returned a six-foot-two, 235-pound war hero.
“My Jesus boy!” Eula cried, and burst into tears, when he stepped out of the checkered cab.
His stepfather gave him a job as a truck driver and J.W. bedded every willing female who lived along his delivery route, which snaked through three states.
He eventually married a thick-legged girl named Juanita and the two settled into a small house on the outskirts of this place that I am.
When they made love, J.W. set the .45 he’d brought back from Europe on the nightstand. He enjoyed having it in his sights as he rammed himself mercilessly into his wife.
Juanita knew about the gun, but not the round metal tin which once held snuff, but was now filled with teeth. Teeth from the dead Germans he’d shot and killed in the war. He’d dislodged the teeth by holding the corpse by the hair and slamming the butt of the gun into its dead mouth.
In Mississippi, J.W. tried to feed his passion by hunting deer, possum, and wild Russian boar—but killing animals didn’t offer the same thrill as slaying a living, breathing human being.
When the Korean War began, J.W. went to the recruiting office and tried to enlist. By then, though, his affection for whiskey and cigars had taken its toll. The army declared him ineligible to serve and the morose J.W. went back home and drank whiskey until his eyes blurred.
Juanita had given birth to two sons at that point, and she made the sad mistake of saying, “I’m glad they ain’t take you, ’cause our boys need their daddy.”
J.W. flew at her, wrapped his hands around her throat, and choked her until the capillaries in her eyes exploded.
In 1955, that boy came from Chicago down here to spend the summer with his mama’s people. They called him Bobo, but his given name was Emmett.
He arrived with a few casual clothes, one suit, one tie, and a white shirt that was one size too small and frayed around the collar. His black Sunday shoes were scuffed at the toe and veined with cracks. His pride and joy was a pair of brand-new navy blue Converse sneakers that his mother had saved three months to buy.
He was brown and stout with full cheeks and a generous belly that jiggled when he laughed. His ears were long and the lobes were curved upward. He wasn’t anything Padagonia would look at, but Tass was head over heels.
“That boy don’t even know you exist.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“He does too, I saw him looking at me just the other day.”
“What day was that? Where was I?”
“You were wherever you were and we were someplace else.” Tass giggled at her wit.
Padagonia crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth. The two laughed until Padagonia’s mother stepped out onto the slanted porch and tapped the broom handle against the wooden door jamb.
“You out here playing the fool while I’m in the house working like a slave?”
Their eyes swept across Willie Tucker’s gnarled toes.
“Well, what you waiting for?” Willie admonished. “Get the hominy grits out your ass!”
Padagonia sulked into the house.
“And you, Miss Ting-a-ling, I’m sure you got some chore you need to be tending to, don’t you?”
Tass didn’t, but she nodded her head and said, “Yes, ma’am.” And scurried across the road to the house that her mother owned, free and clear.
By the time Padagonia finished her chores, the sun had taken on a tangerine color. Tass was sitting on the bottom step of her porch biting her fingernails. When she saw Padagonia emerge, she jumped to her feet and bounded across the road.
Hemmingway’s face appeared behind the gray mesh screen of the door. “Girl, where you going?”
“To the store!” Tass hollered back as she and Padagonia double-timed it down the road.
The front yard of Moe Wright’s home was a cemetery of rusted cars, bicycle frames, and the metal guts of farm machines. Emmett was seated on the edge of the porch, the blue jeans he wore were rolled up to his knees, and his bare feet were covered in Mississippi mud dust. He was chomping on a slice of sweet pink watermelon.
The girls stepped into the yard and Padagonia called, “Hey, Bobo,” in that singsong fashion girls are partial to using.
Emmett looked up and they could see that his chin was glistening with watermelon juice. He nodded at them and winked.
Padagonia strolled into the yard and was a full five strides from Emmett before she realized that Tass wasn’t at her side. “Come on, Tass,” she urged with a flip of her hand.
Tass could not move. The nod was expected, but the wink he’d added unraveled her.
“Come on,” Padagonia said again.
But Tass did not take a step. Instead, she bashfully dropped her chin to her chest and focused her attention on the bright red polka dots that covered her shirt.
Padagonia sighed and skipped ahead. When she reached the porch, she scaled the steps and proceeded to knock noisily on the door. “Mr. Wright! Mr. Wright!”
“He gone to town.”
Emmett’s voice dripped Midwestern nectar. Padagonia kept knocking, just so she could hear him say it again.
“Hey, girl, I said he ain’t