Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands Read Online Free Page A

this, the table’s other occupants guffaw, slapping the tabletop in high humor. The speaker snickers, “I saw ol’ Reed at the Wellwood Cafe, said I hoped he wudn’t too broke up about it. It’s good t’ kill a nigger every once in a while, keeps the rest of ’em in line.”
    More murmurs and loud laughter follow.
    “Way
I
look at it . . . one less nigger makes the world a cleaner place. Mary Sue, honey, it’s my turn to buy these ol’ boys their pie and coffee.”
    We sit in our booth, silent, lips tight, chests rising and falling in long, slow breaths. Tears collect inside my eyelids; I fight them off by pinching the back of my hand so hard the pain takes my mind off crying. The waitress brings the check to the men next door, hidden by the flowered curtain between our booth and theirs. The speaker pays; coins rattle as she makes change from her apron.
    Three men slide and rise out of their booth, backs to us, hitching up their pants. The one closest to us, the storyteller, has on matching green-gray shirt and pants. As he ambles out of the dining room, he lifts his hat—the wide flat brim of a Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy—onto his head. The men disappear out of the dining room, their boots clomping across the hardwood floor like dry thunder rolling off the horizon.
    Doto sucks air deeply, bends forward, cat eyes glinting behind her glasses. She hisses: “Not a word until we’re in the car.”
    “Awful quiet crew today,” the redheaded waitress tells us with a smile. A curly wire pin on her uniform spells out “Mary Sue.” Pink apron pockets bulge with order tickets and change. “Y’all save room for dessert?”
    Ren and I cut our eyes at Mitchell, who’s salivating for his hot fudge sundae.
    “Just the check, please,” Doto says with a frozen smile.

Chapter 3
    Our family huddles around the kitchen table as Doto re-tells the story we heard in the restaurant. Her lips curl in distaste at the words she must use to tell it exactly. Beside her, Daddy’s jaw mirrors hers in its hardening. Mother’s eyes, red-rimmed from the funeral, stay on his; the single dimple in her left cheek missing in a mask of sadness. Beside me, Ren twists a buried fist in the pocket of his baseball glove. Doto is livid.
    “To hear that idiot talk about Marvin like the boy was an animal, a dog to be put out of its misery, I swear I could have killed him with my bare hands.”
    The image of my 110-pound grandmother throttling that 200-pound Deputy flickers through my mind. The eyes behind her cat glasses are shooting sparks.
    “I want you to call that Opalakee Constable and get him over here. This has got to be an important clue in his case.”
    “The Constable has no case, Doto,” Daddy tells her in a flat voice that puzzles me.
    “Well, this ought to give him one,” she retorts.
    “The Constable is a card-carrying Klan member. His standard line with anything involving a colored is ‘We’ll look into it’ and he never does.”
    “But, Daddy,” I say, “Marvin’s
dead!
”
    “Can’t you call the Sheriff, or one of the County Commissioners?” Doto demands.
    “The Sheriff, the Commissioner, the Opalakee Chief of Police, they’re all Klan members. Even goddamn Governor Fuller Warren is one of them!”
    “Governor
Warren
,” Doto snorts. “That’s one Warren that is no
possible
relation of ours!”
    Shoving herself up and out of her chair, she paces the yellow linoleum. “The Klan
owns
this state like Capone owned Chicago,” she rails, turning like a teacher, finger raised to make her point. “He owned the city, the county, the state, but . . .” Her eyes lock onto Daddy’s. “You remember how they got rid of
him
.”
    Daddy studies his mother and I can see the wheels begin to turn. He leans forward, elbows on the table, chin on top of his folded hands, staring at the squiggly pattern in the blue Formica.
    “The F.B.I.,” he says. “I don’t know how Mr. Hoover feels about the Klan, but I know