“Just visiting with a friend.” My college girlfriend’s father.
“Get yo’ white ass killed in Harlem.”
“I almost got my white ass killed in Alabama.”
He chuckled. “I guess you did. Ain’t no place safe, is it? I guess that fact is good for me, huh?”
“You work for mobsters?”
“Yeah. Drug dealers, pimps, loan sharks, mafia guys. Bad people. Very bad people.” I made out his grin in the dim light. “I ain’t never had to babysit before, though.”
I swallowed his insult, because I was really interested now. I asked why he was in prison, and he replied that he had shot two boys in a gang fight. But he served only two and a half years in prison because he was under eighteen and had a good lawyer that William Addison had found.
“I’m obligated to William. So when he called and said he needed some help, I was going to come immediately.”
“How do you know William?”
“He and my grandmother were good friends. He helped look after me after she died.”
“Your grandmother and William, were they more than friends?” It was hard to imagine William ever was young and had a life outside Bebe’s house.
“My mama, before she died, she told me that William had been in love with Grandmama and she should have married him. But she didn’t love him in that real womanish way.”
“Wonder why she didn’t have it for William?”
“Damn, how old are you, boy, ’bout ten? She had it for somebody else.”
I felt stupid. “Was the other guy your grandfather?”
The pause seemed especially long in the dark. “Sure was,” he said—and nothing else. The evening temperature didn’t drop, but the porch felt suddenly colder. Marvin kept rocking in the glider, smoke curling around his face. I could make out a scowl in the dim light. I decided I didn’t like him, and I didn’t want to have him around. And so I sat there in the black midnight, the buzz of cicadas filling my ears, and cursed my continuing bad fortune.
6
Daddy was reading the newspaper when I entered the kitchen the next morning. “I told you not to talk to reporters,” he muttered without looking up. “Buncha goddamn agitators.” When I didn’t reply, he said more loudly and sharply, “You heard me. Why did you do it?”
I flinched. Reporters had pelted me with questions when I left the church after Jackie’s funeral. Mama and William had tried to hurry me past them, but I resisted and spoke up.
“I wanted to correct that stuff about me being in SNCC. That’s all I said.”
“No, you said more than that. They’ve got you condemning this man Kyle.”
“Daddy, he killed my friend. Of course I’m going to condemn him.”
Daddy rose from the kitchen table. “Well, now they’re all over this gun and why you had it. If you had kept your mouth shut, like I told you to, none of this would have been spread all over the paper.”
That was wrong. “You think none of this would have been in the paper if I hadn’t answered a few questions?”
Mama entered the kitchen. “Buddy, just stop. It’s done.”
“Goddamnit, I’ll decide when I’ll shut up.”
She shook her head. Her tic was jumping. “I wish you could hear yourself, Buddy. Tommy’s not the problem around here. He’s the one who was wronged.”
At that moment Marvin sauntered in. Mama greeted him warmly and introduced him to Daddy, who looked him over without expression except a nod, didn’t offer to shake hands, and then left.
“Marvin,” Mama said, “I apologize for my husband not being more polite. He’s upset about what all this trouble is doing to us.”
Marvin just nodded. What in the world could this dangerous thug from the Chicago ghetto think of a white Alabama woman defending her contemptuous husband? Probably that she was ridiculous, but he didn’t let on.
Cathy rushed into the kitchen. My sister was a strikingly beautiful girl. Her long neck, framed by heavy, dark hair, made her look taller than she was at five-nine. A thin summer nightgown revealed the outline of her lean figure. Her almond-shaped brown eyes took in the scene. At some point I had seen an old photo of Bebe and realized that Cathy bore a striking resemblance around the eyes to my grandmother in her youth. Cathy’s were still cloudy from sleep as she focused on Marvin—she didn’t realize at first who he was, but when she did, she turned around and left abruptly. Seconds later she came back in her housecoat.
As Mama introduced them, Marvin’s eyes swept up and down my sister and then landed on her face. He half-smiled and extended his hand. “Good morning, Miss McKee.” Again he scanned her from head to toe.
She blushed and reached up to smooth her hair. “Hi, Marvin. Welcome to Alabama.”
They held a gaze for a moment and then she turned to the coffee pot. She spoke over her shoulder. “Y’all talkin’ ’bout Daddy?” She sat down at the table and looked at Marvin, then me. “Tommy, he’s really changed since he became probate judge.” I had the feeling she was saying this for Marvin’s benefit more than mine.
“What you mean, Baby Sister?” Marvin said. His tone was seductive, and a half grin slipped onto his face. Cathy smiled at Marvin’s immediate familiarity, but then she quickly averted her eyes. My hands curled on their own into fists. The black sonuvabitch was flirting with my sister. I couldn’t stand that. Especially since she seemed to like it.
“I mean Daddy’s just not like Granddaddy. He’s just not comfortable being the judge. Do you know what I mean, Tommy?”
My anger distracted me and I didn’t hear the question. When she repeated herself, I focused on her words and knew exactly what she meant. When people called Daddy “Judge McKee,” my first impulse was to look around for my late Granddaddy, the real Judge McKee.
While I was growing up, Daddy was working so hard at farming the family’s six thousand acres that Granddaddy led me on many of the adventures that fathers often have with sons. Granddaddy and I had gone on fishing trips up and down the Warrior River in his old green flat-bottomed boat. We went to Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa to see the Crimson Tide play football. Granddaddy seemed to know everybody in the stands, and he introduced me to Justice Lawson of the state Supreme Court and Dr. Carmichael of the University and Governor Persons and Mr. Martin of the Power Company. I had followed a safe five steps behind him on the dove hunts that the affable Sam Engelhardt, state head of the White Citizens’ Council, put on at his big plantation. And we went to the Dollarhide Hunting Club, where Granddaddy and I would wait all day in a deer stand hoping to get a clear shot or two, and then go back to the lodge and eat T-bone steaks grilled by old colored men who constantly answered “Yessuh!” Not until Duke did I realize I’d grown up the entitled prince of my small town, that people—especially black people—bowed and smiled at me because of who my Grandddady was, who my family was. Now I squirmed at the memories.
But I was grateful for Granddaddy because he was a man of the world and made sure I rubbed shoulders with the world, too, at least as he knew it. Mama and Daddy had showed me how to work, and Bebe had taught me to read good books and “elocute” properly when I spoke, but it was Granddaddy who had educated me about politics and history and sports, about business and the economy and foreign relations. Because I was so often sitting right beside Granddaddy when he had a serious conversation about the state of the world with some other man of high social rank, I heard complex opinions put forth that I later had to ask Granddaddy to explain. I realized from an early