Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands by Susan Carol McCarthy

begins to sob. Daddy’s eyes are watery as he puts his arm around Luther’s bent-over back. I feel hot tears rising, their wetness racing down my cheeks.
    “I heard that, too,” Daddy tells Luther softly.
    Luther tugs a large plaid handkerchief out of his pants pocket and wipes his eyes and his nose.
    “Mist’Warren, the Klan done kilt-dead our boy for nothin’.”
    Daddy takes a shuddery breath. “I know, Luther, and I can’t even begin to tell you how bad I feel about it.”
    “Thank you,” Luther says, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes again. “Ah couldn’t tell Armetta ’bout that, and Ah warned Jerry Tee he better be muffle-jawed in her direction; her heart’s done broke enough already. Ah ’pologize for spoiling your evening. It’s just been a rope . . .”
    God! How did You let this happen?
    “No apologies, Luther. Armetta’s isn’t the only heart that’s hurting around here,” Daddy says sadly, catching my eye across the room.
    “Folks in The Quarters are scared outta they wits; most of ’em grabbin’ they chil’ren off the street at the least li’l noise or the motor-by of a white man’s truck. The chil’ren are having night terrors, too. Hardly a night goes by that Ah don’t hear a couple of ’em, up and down the way, waking up screaming in they beds.”
    “Luther, these people must be stopped. There
has
to be a way.”
    “Ah wish they was, Mist’Warren. Ah sincerely wish they was.”
    But who?
my heart cries.
How?

Chapter 8
    I’m running through the dark grove to keep up with the others. Just ahead of me, a woman hoists a boy roughly to her hip. I watch him bury wide, frightened eyes into her bony shoulder. Just behind me, the voice of one man urges on another, in words I don’t understand. On both sides, trees like fountains tunnel the row; their leaves too long and too thin to be citrus, with round red fruit I think may be pomegranates.
    The way is steeply uphill. I’d like to stop and catch my breath, but I’m afraid of getting trampled by the heavy feet hammering the hard ground behind me. Chest heaving, back wet with sweat,
finally
I reach the tree break.
    A crowd surrounds the hill’s rocky crest. Without stopping, I squirm my way into them, past rough elbows and dark, cutting eyes, desperate to reach the center. I know this scene by heart. I’ve flipped past it a million times, green section, middle of the book, above small block letters that spell GOLGOTHA.
Except
—and the shock of this hits me like a fist—on the towering, rough-hewn cross, red neon lights flash JESUS SAVES. At the base of the cross, a circle of angry men are kicking and hitting the man on the ground; horrible movements made spastic by the pulsing red lights. “
Some
body!
Help
him!” I scream, outraged at the strangers craning their necks to see. “Marvin!” I cry, pushing, kicking, clawing through the crowd, “Marvin, it’s
me
, Reesa!”
    “Reesa, wake up! You’re all right, honey, wake up!”
    In the small constellation of our family, Daddy may be the sun, but Mother is our moon. Hers is the face that lights the night’s shadows.
    “You were dreaming. What happened?” Mother asks, the sound of her voice and scent of her hair proof that the nightmare is over.
    “I was trying . . .” I sob into the softness of her shoulder. “Trying so hard to save Marvin. But they wouldn’t . . . I couldn’t get to him.”
    “Nobody could, honey. I’m sorry.”
    “Jesus couldn’t save him. And neither could I,” I tell her darkly.
    “It was a dream, Reesa. Nothing but a bad dream,” she says, smoothing my hair. “Poor thing, you’re all right now. Lay down. I’ll stay here for a while and rub your back. Go to sleep now, honey. Good night, sweet girl.” Under Mother’s soothing lunar light, I drift back into shallow sleep.
    The mid-morning light paints the white walls of my bedroom silvery. Outside, a breeze threads the needles of the pine tree by the car barn. A lone bird calls