True Fires Read Online Free Page B

child born on this cont’nent!”
    “Franklin, let him go! Now!” Miss Lila commands. She grabs Pap’s arm, glares him into retreat, and steps into the sudden open space between the two men. “Kyle, I’ll thank you to get in your car and get out of my grove!”
    The Sheriff, eyeing Pap over Miss Lila’s shoulder, elbows himself up off the hood of his car and takes his time adjusting his collar, lining up the parallel creases in his shirt and pants legs, centering his belt buckle, his holster on his hip. He shifts his eyes to Miss Lila, then drawls, “Well, he’s got more guts than any Nigger I ever saw. I could shoot him right now for assaultin’ an officer. But, then who’d pose for the publicity shots when I run ’em out of town, restore Law ’n’ Order to the good folks of this county?” The Sheriff rolls baleful bear eyes around the clearing, taking in the Negroes still standing hushed in the shadows of the shed, Daniel and ’Becca shifting uncomfortably beside Pap, back to Miss Lila who’s holding her new tree man at bay. “Good seein’ you again, Lila,” he winks.
    Miss Lila’s shaking mad. “Leave,” she hisses, “before I get a gun and shoot you myself!”
    “I am but the humble servant of my constituency,” he says softly, then opens his door, slides into his seat and, with a big, jabbing crowd wave, drives away.

7
    Goddamn son of a bitch!
Lila Hightower stands in the grove yard, hands on her hips, back to the others, and wills Kyle DeLuth off the property.
How
dare
you, how dare
you,
of all people, try to
pull your shenanigans on
me
! As if I didn’t know what a raggedyass fool you were from the first day you came here, licking at Louis’s
heels like some overgrown stray in search of our table scraps. The old
man spent years trying to teach you some manners
—“Kyle, you’re a goddamn bull in the butler’s pantry!” he’d say. “Gotta learn to apply the oil, boy. Guy like you needs to apply the old oil profusely!”
    But, in the end . . .
She squints as his car stops at the far-off end of the drive, then wheels left onto Old Dixie.
In the end,
Kyle had no manners at all. But he sure had the Judge’s mannerisms—
his arched brow, his ingratiating grin—down pat. It was uncanny.
And Louis’s . . . When Kyle hooked both thumbs into his belt, hoisted
it up to straighten his pants’ creases and shot his cu fs in just the way
that Louis always did . . .
Lila presses her eyes, presses back the memory of Louis shooting his cuffs. Louis, who had more grace in his little finger than Kiss Ass has in his whole hulking body. Louis, who was her life’s touchstone. Whose death changed everything.
    Behind her, shuffling feet, a nervous cough, remind her she’s not alone. She drops her hand, opens her eyes, notes that the autumn moon, a pale disk, hangs weakly between two storm clouds.
The moon,
Lila thinks,
sheds no light, has no heat of
its own. Just like Kyle, it can only reflect a more powerful sun.
    Wearily, she feels the weight, the needy pull of the ragtag assembly rimming the grove yard, and turns to face them.
    The Negroes, like a company of soldiers given the command “at ease,” relax, lift dark expectant eyes in her direction. Franklin Dare, protective arms around each of his children, stands aside. And the children . . . The girl’s eyes are downcast, chin dropped, shoulders wilted. A tear slides silently down one cheek. The boy looks on, his face a mix of anguish and exasperation that feels somehow familiar.
    How many times, as a child herself, had she and Louis suffered humiliation at the Judge’s hand?
But, in our case,
she thinks,
Louis was the one who took it to heart,
dissolving into tears, which only further infuriated their father. She’d been the defiant one, walking the tightrope between her father’s temper and her brother’s heartache, threading the needle between outrage over the aggressor and concern for the aggrieved.
    Lila takes a deep breath.
Hooah.
The