She drove as if the highway behind her were on fire. Broke the speed limit on I-40 and ran a red on Warford, but she still felt it took the duration of a Civil War battle to reach home.
Miriam finally reached the large yellow front door of her ancestral home and threw it open. “August!” she shouted. “Girls!”
There was no answer.
Miriam had always loved this time of day best—dusk. Aged golden light reflected in all directions from the stained-glass windows in the parlor. But now the evening light made the house seem ghostly, haunted.
Miriam walked into the empty kitchen, still calling for her sister. She hesitated at the door that led to August’s shop. She breathed in deep, steadied herself. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” then exhaled, placed a hand on the knob, and turned it.
The shop was dim. Slowly materializing, Miss Dawn came into view like an apparition. She was sitting on the settee with both Joan and Mya in her lap. Miriam saw Miss Dawn smoothing Mya’s hair and whispering and wiping away her free-flowing tears. Joan sat motionless and unblinking.
Miriam’s eyes continued to scan the room. There in the dark, sitting in one of her wash-and-set chairs with her head in her hands, was her sister. The family Remington sat next to her. Two of Memphis’s finest stood over August with pads in their hands, poised to jot down notes.
Miriam heard her sister say, over and over, more statement than question, “What has he done.”
CHAPTER 19
Hazel
1955
The officer behind the counter did not glance up from the Memphis Gazette. Red wisps of hair swirled atop his head in a small tornado that receded toward his crown. His face, pale and peppered with freckles as red as his head, remained hidden behind a black-and-white print page announcing the Cubs’ two-pointer opening day win over the Cincinnati Redlegs with a full-page photograph of Ernie Banks under the headline savior? The officer leaned into the paper fully, let out a long whistle.
“Shit. This just may be their goddamned year,” he said.
Hazel cleared her throat.
The officer lowered the paper and glanced briefly at her with a flash of green eyes. “Twenty-five dollars,” he said. He shook the paper, lifted it back to his face.
“Pardon?”
“Twenty-five dollars,” he repeated without looking up from his paper. “Cash. If you ain’t got the cash, don’t go wailing on me now; a check will do. Made out to the City of Memphis. But it’s got to clear, understand, and that’ll take a day ’fore we release him. So, he stays another night. Otherwise, cash.”
“No,” Hazel said. “I’m here to see my husband.”
“Girl, what did I just get done telling you?” Annoyed, the officer placed the newspaper down on the counter the color of salmon innards and stared hard at Hazel.
The badge on the officer’s uniform read “C. Barnes” in bold block letters. Hazel vaguely recalled Myron cracking a joke about a certain white officer who was as red as a barn and dumber and lazier than the beasts inside one. This must be him, Hazel reckoned.
For a moment, Hazel forgot herself. When she heard that word, girl, she instinctively searched around her for something heavy and sharp that would draw the most amount of blood, cause the most damage. Then she remembered that she was nonwhite and a woman and carrying a child and in Myron’s place of work. She took a deep breath. Placed a hand on her extended belly. Began again.
“My name is—”
Barnes cut her off. “Twenty-five dollars, and you can take him home tonight. You ain’t going to cry on me, are you? Lord, join those gals over there if you are. I ain’t dealing with this today. You people just come up in here and cry and think that’s going to do a damned thing about your situation without the bond note—”