Let It Shine Read Online Free Page A

grits are still better than anything you’ll ever eat in your sorry life,” Jack said. He kept punching. “Look at that paper over there.”
    Jack flicked his head in the direction of a table where a newspaper lay folded and a cup of coffee stood cold. Ivan picked up the crinkled mess, already knowing what type of image would greet him. A group of whites, hundreds of them at least, surrounding a Greyhound bus. A smaller image below showed a beaten man with blood streaming down his face being given water by what appeared to be a bystander. Ivan shuddered. The hatred in the eyes of the men surrounding the bus was chilling. Was this what had driven his parents from Budapest years before he was born? This undiluted disgust that could drive you to harm your fellow man simply for existing?
    “These kids out there, your age or younger even, riding them buses and trying to make a change.” Jack punched the bag hard, a blow that would have knocked a grown man out cold. “All that hope and idealism and those people said, ‘We’re gonna beat that hope right out of you.’”
    Ivan taped his hands as his mentor punched and punched, letting the man work out his frustration. He flexed his hands, testing the give at his knuckles, and then walked over and held the bag still, absorbing the impact of Jack’s last couple of punches. Jack breathed heavily, sweat coursing through the few wrinkles that showed his age, then rested his head against the bag.
    “You know I’m not from these parts originally,” he said. “My family is from Texas. Every year we had this Juneteenth celebration, and my grandpa would tell the story from when he was a boy. He saw the Union soldiers ride up with his own eyes and heard with his own ears when they let his people know they were free, that they had been for months, even though the slave masters had denied them that truth. That’s kinda what this feels like. Like we still toiling, waiting for the real freedom to set in.”
    Jack looked up at him, despair in his eyes, and it dawned on Ivan that his friend was old. An old man in a state where slavery wasn’t that distant a memory. Jack would tell anyone he’d lived a good life, doing what he loved, but Ivan knew there were stories that only came out after a drink or two. Stories about men with white hoods. Brightly burning crosses. Cars driving slowly through black neighborhoods while husbands and sons stood tensed on the porch with guns locked and loaded.
    Jack sighed. “My grandkids are just getting old enough to understand the world. I hoped…I hoped life would be different for them.”
    Ivan hated seeing the way Jack’s shoulders hunched in defeat. The man was a heavyweight champion, but he was buckling under the weight of the world.
    “I went to a nonviolent resistance meeting last night,” Ivan said. He didn’t want a pat on the back, only to let Jack know where he stood.
    Jack stared at Ivan for a long time and then laughed, a hacking laugh that might have sounded like respiratory distress to anyone who didn’t know him. “Boy, you love throwing a punch more than any other boxer in here. What you doing with them Gandhi wannabes?”
    “I do love it. I’m good at it, too,” Ivan said as he took control of the heavy bag, warming up with quick, light blows. “But you know what I’m even better at? Taking a punch.” He stopped his warm up and let the bag swing back and hit him. “If someone needs to take a beating for the cause, you can’t do better than this ugly mug.”
    He thought of Sofie stepping in front of the group of boys all those years ago. There had been no fear in her despite being outnumbered and knowing society was on the boys’ side no matter what—even children knew that fact. She’d been damned brave, and she’d done it for him.
    Jack raised his brows, the question rippling in furrows that went right up his bald head. “Any not-ugly mug in particular you hoping to keep safe?”
    Ivan sometimes forgot how well