luck , Tole thought. Mariah’s son very obviously had no idea what to do.
As Tole searched through the chaos, the man with the missing fingers raised a bottle in his good hand and threw it toward the stage. This one shattered over the head of the young black man who’d been trying, desperately, to speak before the chaos erupted.
After the bottle hit him, Theopolis seemed to sway a moment, and then crumpled. Several other men—white men, all—leaned in over him. They’ll help him , Tole thought, they’ll pick him up and carry him out to safety . That Negro was an innocent, they would know that.
And then one big man with a reddish-auburn beard pulled back his arm and his shoulder and let loose a powerful roundhouse punch at Theopolis’s face.
The mob swarmed in, kicking.
They had the boy surrounded. Tole could see one man choking him from behind while another leaned in with a club, aiming for his face. Tole could imagine the brittle crack of jaw and bone. They were beating the boy to death, Tole had seen it before. It wasn’t just the violence, it was the looks on their faces. They couldn’t stop themselves if they tried; they’d crossed a terrible line Tole knew very well.
Why kill him? Was it because of his politics or simply because he was a nigger in the wrong place and they had come to kill as many as they could? He wondered if even they knew. The crowd was so dense that Theopolis disappeared beneath flying fists and boots; for a moment all Tole could see was the pale blur of all those white faces closing in. He focused in on one of the faces, gaunt with a cleft lip, and the lip was smiling. Tole imagined the kicks to the ribs, the kidneys, hands reaching for the eyes, clawing.
There was a moment that George Tole would relive till the end of his days, a moment that he recognized even as it happened as a moment dividing all others, creating a world contained entirely in the words before and after. A redtail hawk wheeled overhead, and although George Tole was fixed upon the scene in the courthouse square, he also remembered the bird’s flight, its slow, lazy circles, imprinted on him forever.
For the briefest moment the mob parted and Tole had a clear line of sight to Theopolis, bloody and screaming and mangled. A man raised an axe.
* * *
If anyone had been listening, they would have heard a single shot ring out. In the clamor and the dust Theopolis quit moving. His arms lay twisted at his sides and blood flooded the stage. The white men slowly backed away.
* * *
Afterward—his whole life would now be, it seemed, an afterward —he fled to the river and thought of leaving ol’ GT right there on the bank and wading in to die, to finally be bathed in the blood for good. Instead he headed home through the shaded grove and by back alleys, drinking in deep gulps until his flask was empty, trying to stop the trembling of his hands. He took GT with him, as if it were attached.
Chapter 9
Mariah
July 6, 1867
Running didn’t seem fast enough. Mariah wondered about the people passing her going the other direction. Had they not heard the screams? What other important business did they have, their faces painted with worry or dreaminess, hands in their pockets or held before them, black hats and feathered hats on heads cocked down in thought, all of them seeming to want out when she wanted in ? Their world seemed wide and forbidding, entirely mysterious.
She felt pulled along by a cord attached to the center of her chest. Every few steps she imagined the worst; the cord drew tighter and her feet moved faster. She had been the worst sort of mother, she thought. She had even resented being a mother at all sometimes, and now she dreaded that there was some kind of divine settling of accounts at work and she still had that debt to reckon with. Had she been a mother? Had she been enough?
She was so angry he had chosen this path of his through politics where he would always live at the whim of whichever
As Tole searched through the chaos, the man with the missing fingers raised a bottle in his good hand and threw it toward the stage. This one shattered over the head of the young black man who’d been trying, desperately, to speak before the chaos erupted.
After the bottle hit him, Theopolis seemed to sway a moment, and then crumpled. Several other men—white men, all—leaned in over him. They’ll help him , Tole thought, they’ll pick him up and carry him out to safety . That Negro was an innocent, they would know that.
And then one big man with a reddish-auburn beard pulled back his arm and his shoulder and let loose a powerful roundhouse punch at Theopolis’s face.
The mob swarmed in, kicking.
They had the boy surrounded. Tole could see one man choking him from behind while another leaned in with a club, aiming for his face. Tole could imagine the brittle crack of jaw and bone. They were beating the boy to death, Tole had seen it before. It wasn’t just the violence, it was the looks on their faces. They couldn’t stop themselves if they tried; they’d crossed a terrible line Tole knew very well.
Why kill him? Was it because of his politics or simply because he was a nigger in the wrong place and they had come to kill as many as they could? He wondered if even they knew. The crowd was so dense that Theopolis disappeared beneath flying fists and boots; for a moment all Tole could see was the pale blur of all those white faces closing in. He focused in on one of the faces, gaunt with a cleft lip, and the lip was smiling. Tole imagined the kicks to the ribs, the kidneys, hands reaching for the eyes, clawing.
There was a moment that George Tole would relive till the end of his days, a moment that he recognized even as it happened as a moment dividing all others, creating a world contained entirely in the words before and after. A redtail hawk wheeled overhead, and although George Tole was fixed upon the scene in the courthouse square, he also remembered the bird’s flight, its slow, lazy circles, imprinted on him forever.
For the briefest moment the mob parted and Tole had a clear line of sight to Theopolis, bloody and screaming and mangled. A man raised an axe.
* * *
If anyone had been listening, they would have heard a single shot ring out. In the clamor and the dust Theopolis quit moving. His arms lay twisted at his sides and blood flooded the stage. The white men slowly backed away.
* * *
Afterward—his whole life would now be, it seemed, an afterward —he fled to the river and thought of leaving ol’ GT right there on the bank and wading in to die, to finally be bathed in the blood for good. Instead he headed home through the shaded grove and by back alleys, drinking in deep gulps until his flask was empty, trying to stop the trembling of his hands. He took GT with him, as if it were attached.
Chapter 9
Mariah
July 6, 1867
Running didn’t seem fast enough. Mariah wondered about the people passing her going the other direction. Had they not heard the screams? What other important business did they have, their faces painted with worry or dreaminess, hands in their pockets or held before them, black hats and feathered hats on heads cocked down in thought, all of them seeming to want out when she wanted in ? Their world seemed wide and forbidding, entirely mysterious.
She felt pulled along by a cord attached to the center of her chest. Every few steps she imagined the worst; the cord drew tighter and her feet moved faster. She had been the worst sort of mother, she thought. She had even resented being a mother at all sometimes, and now she dreaded that there was some kind of divine settling of accounts at work and she still had that debt to reckon with. Had she been a mother? Had she been enough?
She was so angry he had chosen this path of his through politics where he would always live at the whim of whichever
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