Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands Read Online Free Page B

he’s no fan of cold-blooded killing. We could try to contact him . . . but how?” The veins in his temple jump. “We couldn’t possibly call him,” he says. “We’d never get through. Besides . . .”
    “Maybelle . . .” Mother says it quietly.
    “Would likely listen in and blab all over town,” Daddy nods, completing her thought.
    Our family has the unfortunate fate of sharing a party line with our two-doors-up neighbor Miss Maybelle Mason, who’s also the town postmistress and perpetual old biddy. Miss Maybelle listens in on other people’s phone calls as a form of entertainment. At the post office, where everybody has a box, she takes it personal if anyone dares receive a letter without a proper return address. It’s rumored she opens such letters to verify their claim to space in her postal slots.
    “That old bird lets out writing a letter as well. If the F.B.I. wrote us back, we’d never hear the end of it. But . . . Buuut . . .” Daddy says. “We
could
send a registered letter from downtown Orlando and use your address in LaGrange for the return.”
    “Of course.” Doto lights up in support of the plan. “Blanche would forward it here inside my weekly packet.”
    “It could
work
,” I say, seeing it all inside my head.
    “It will work!” Doto declares.
    “Blanche,” Mother adds softly, “is our trump card.”
    “That’s the plan then,” Daddy says. He leaves the kitchen and goes into the small office off the living room. We hear the snap of paper rolling into his typewriter and the clack of the keys punching out the story of Marvin’s murder for Mr. J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
    Doto walks to the refrigerator, patting her hair waves. “Lizbeth,” she says, opening the Frigidaire, “I believe I owe these children some ice cream. Got any fudge sauce?”

Chapter 4
    I did not go to school the Thursday Marvin died, or the day after that. The funeral was on Saturday; and Sunday went by me in a blur.
    “Please,” I begged my parents this morning, “don’t make me go! I don’t want to, not today, not
ever
again.”
    The idea of returning to a place where most people’s lives have flowed right along uninterrupted by blood-wet bodies and bald-faced lying and bad people doing awful things; the thought of playing Red-Rover-Red-Rover-Can-Reesa-Come-Over as if Marvin’s alive and laughing as he should be, and his poor old parents aren’t sitting broken-hearted in their house—“I can’t,” I cried, “I just
can’t
!”
    Doto, ever the diplomat, replied, “I don’t blame you. I couldn’t ride in that smelly old school bus either. How about we drive down in the DeSoto? Maybe you’ll feel differently when we get there.”
    My grandmother is the reason I’m here this morning, trying to pretend like I belong. I sit in the same desk, surrounded by the same children who were here before. Up front, Mrs. Beacham carries on in her same old brown suit and ugly lace-up shoes. But no one, none of it, feels the same.
    Sunlight floods through the wall of windows, brightly white. I sit, deliberately opening my eyes to the whiteness, then closing them to ghostly black; seeing day full of life, then, behind flickering eyelids, trying to imagine death.
    The idea that life is as fragile and full of holes as a lace curtain terrifies me. The other kids in this room have no idea. Well, maybe one of them does.
    I see her two rows over, three seats ahead of me, but we’ve avoided each other’s eyes all morning. May Carol Garnet knows about Marvin. She has to because Armetta works in her house. Beyond housekeeping, Armetta mothers May Carol in ways Miz Lucy Garnet never could. I can tell from here, by her unstarched dress, her plain, unplaited ponytail, that Armetta, May Carol’s other mother, has not yet returned to work at the Garnet house.
    May Carol and I know each other. We’ve spent time at each other’s houses, made cookies with Armetta, laughed with Luther, endured