Taliaferro’s smile twitched. “Well, we going to have to see. Folks here don’t think the Herndon boy was innocent—he was an agitator and Kyle was defending himself.”
This was too wrong to ignore. “But Mr. Taliaferro, I was defending myself. He was trying to kill us all.” Taliaferro started in surprise, and Joe Black shot me a warning look, then moved in. “Cal, just because they some hotheads around who mad at Tommy here, that doesn’t mean you gotta go along with ’em. You bigger than that.”
There was no smile now, not the least remnant of one. Taliaferro gazed at Joe Black but wouldn’t look my way. “We just going to have to see about that.” He busied himself with a bunch of scribbled notes. “Now, Mr. McKee, if we could go over some of the questions I’ll be asking you on the witness stand—what happened at the store, why you were going through Yancey County that day.”
Joe Black raised his hand. “I’ll get the boy ready, Cal. Don’t you worry.”
Taliaferro shrugged and we left. I felt the eyes of the solicitor’s office workers boring into my back as we left and went out into the hall.
Joe Black was uncharacteristically silent on the drive back to Eden Rise. At one point I looked over the back seat at Marvin, who shrugged at me as if to say, “What shut him up?”
“Taliaferro’s going to try to get me,” I said.
Joe Black’s voice lacked all its normal geniality. “Taliaferro best be sure he’s on solid ground, because by God he’ll have some nasty enemies if he keeps after you.”
“Well, it sounded like you promised to help him get re-elected.”
“Shit, boy”—he spat the words at me—“I was just telling him I’m going to be paying attention to his political future. He don’t do right by you, that boy from Selma going to have the best-funded damn circuit solicitor campaign we ever saw in Alabama, and I don’t even know his damn name yet. I raise $25,000 for Mr. X ’fore Cal Taliaferro gets his ass wiped from tomorrow morning’s crap. You understan’?” His face was hard and still but for the flexing jaw muscle as he chewed the stub of a cigar.
His courtly way returned when he reported the unhappy outcome of our meeting to Bebe. Was there any possibility, she asked, that the Alabama attorney general might overrule Taliaferro?
“I don’t think so, darlin’. Richmond Flowers says the dove-shoot of nigras in Alabama is over. We going to stop people from killing ’em just ’cause they feel like it. Richmond said it was ‘morally and politically impossible’ when I made the suggestion they drop it.” He shrugged. “Wouldn’t even listen to some incentives I was about to propose to him.”
Bebe looked a little startled. “Joe Black, do you mean a bribe?”
“Certainly not. I mean a five-figure donation, in cash, to his campaign for governor next year, and much more from other friends of mine. But like I say, he wasn’t listening.”
“Joe, why does Taliaferro want to keep after Tommy?”
“Pressure from the segregationists. They trying to jerk a young nigger lover in line. Taliaferro’s being real political. Because the AG’s office is pressuring him to go after Kyle, he’s trying to cover hisself with the local folks by equating Tommy shooting Kyle with the death of Jackie Herndon. I explained how they weren’t equivalent, but he couldn’t be told.”
She flinched. I couldn’t tell if it was physical pain or a response to what Joe Black had just said. “If Tommy’s tried, a white jury might convict him.”
“It’s quite possible.”
They discussed my fate with such matter-of-factness that my gut twisted in fear and I wanted to run out of the room—run out of Eden Rise forever. But I tried to keep my voice as steady as theirs. “What exactly will happen if I’m convicted?”
“We get you bonded out while I negotiate a reasonable penalty.”
“What you mean, ‘reasonable penalty?’ The law says up to 10 years.” Now my voice was quavering.
“A little incarceration, or better, no jail and some probation.”
“Incarceration” sounded like the second-worst word in the world. “What do you guess about jail time?”
“You’re under twenty-one, no previous convictions for anything. Could be six months or a year.”
“Where would he serve it?” Bebe said, her voice soft.
“Crucial thing is to get somewhere other than ‘hard-case’ prisons like Atmore.”
Images of knife fights and homosexual rapes were flashing through my mind and I was trying to swallow my fear when Joe Black led me out to the front porch so we could start getting ready for the trials. He said the issue in Kyle’s trial would be his motive, what provoked him to shoot. There might only be two witnesses, Kyle and me. When I asked about Alma, he said Taliaferro hadn’t located her. “Which is good. I mean, I would find her if I thought it’d help, even if I had had to hire that Jew who found Eichmann. But she puts a face on the outside agitator defense they going to use. From what you’ve said, she probably be a terrible witness.”
His look was sober. “You, on the other hand, going to be a good witness. You going to tell the truth, but I want you to tell the ‘lean truth.’ I mean not everything you know but what is most relevant to the question. Ya understan’?”
I wasn’t sure but I nodded like I did.
“So, Tommy, now tell me, you and this boy Jackie, how’d y’all get to be friends, or were y’all really friends?”
I then told him about Jackie, beginning with the first week of school when I was shooting baskets on the courts behind the dorm and was surprised when this very tall colored boy suddenly appeared. He had close-cropped hair that accentuated the delicate shape of his head. Jackie had asked politely if he could shoot with me. The first time I bounced him the ball he took three dribbles and then went up for a jump shot higher than anyone I had ever seen. He caught the ball on the first bounce and leaped again, this time twisting around in mid-air and laying the ball high against the backboard with a reverse spin. During the next week Jackie and I fell into the habit of playing pick-up basketball games every afternoon. We chose the teams, deciding after a while it would be more fun to be on opposite sides and guard each other. After two hard hours of running and jumping, we would go sweatily to the cafeteria. Jackie was a favorite of the black women who worked on the cafeteria line. They always asked how he was feeling and didn’t he want a little more mashed potatoes or an extra piece of cornbread. As Jackie’s constant supper companion, I got their favor, too: “Tommy, let me put this other chicken leg on top for you, honey.”
Joe Black was nodding. “Aw right. So y’all big friends from the basketball court. That’s good. Playground friends. Now, Tommy, the circuit solicitor going to ask you why you were driving through Yancey County that evening. What would you say to that?”
The true answer went back to my failed relationship with Beth Kaplan, whom I had dated through the fall and into the winter. My dorm mate Jeffrey, Beth’s childhood friend from Long Island, had introduced us. Short and buxom with a wild mop of kinky black hair, Beth kept up a steady flow of nosy questions, sharp opinions, and witty barbs on our first date to a Duke football game—she had asked me out—and then she bedded me that same night. I was taken aback and delighted. We dated all that fall, but after Christmas she began to withdraw and then she dumped me. She said she was tired of it. I was angry, hurt, and made to feel boring. I told her I loved her. “You’re not in love,” she retorted. “Just in heat.” I was devastated.
Her rejection made me look hard at who I was. I had gone to college thinking everyone would be like me—the best people from their hometown, learning and having fun together. But it wasn’t like that. Instead of a collection