“We’d been trapped by the weather, too, and were just leaving. Why are they here, Devil John?”
He sat up straight. “’Bout to find out.”
“What will we say to explain why all of us are here?”
“Little as possible,” he said, his mouth tightening as he looked ahead.
A mature woman stepped out of the first automobile. She had on an expensive wool coat, matching beret, and dark shoes. She reached back in and grabbed her large, shiny pocketbook and hooked the straps over her arm. The sheriff slammed his door and walked over to her.
Junia paid no attention to Devil John’s mount. Instead she bit at the air and pawed at the grass, kicking a leg toward the lawman and his female companion. “Halt, halt.” I jerked on her reins.
The sheriff whispered something to the woman, then called out from a distance. “Miss, you best calm that obstinate beast down, lessen you want me to do it for you,” he warned, placing a hand over his holster.
“Back, back,” I ordered Junia as she heaved under my weight. I climbed off, seized the halter, jerking it aside to force her back. When I had Junia safely behind me, I stepped in front of her.
The mule calmed a bit and rested her heavy head on my shoulder, keeping a wary eye on our visitors.
“It’s okay, ol’ girl, shh,” I soothed, stroking her muzzle.
Devil John said, “Sheriff, I’m John Smith, a friend of the retired Pack Horse librarian, Cussy Carter Lovett. Please state your business, sir.”
The sheriff pointed to the woman who then stepped forward.
“Thank you for meeting me over here, Sheriff,” she said to the lawman. “As I told you on the telephone, I’d hoped to take care of this a few days ago but the snow shut down the courts, leaving everyone homebound.”
The lawman wagged his head. “It sure was a frightful mess. I didn’t get my automobile out of the ditch till late last night.”
“Mr. Smith.” She turned to Devil John. “I’m Mrs. Geraldine Wallace, the Leslie County social worker, and I’m here on official government business.” She rummaged through her pocketbook and withdrew some folded papers.
I moved closer to Junia, cursing the snow under my breath, wishing I’d left sooner.
The older woman looked to Pearl and then over to me. “Which of you girls is Lovett?”
No one answered.
“Honey Mary-Angeline Lovett.” Mrs. Wallace looked at us again and then up at Devil John sitting on his horse. “I have a court order dated and signed this morning, March 6, 1953, from the honorable Judge Roy Taylor after the girl’s parents were found guilty of violating Kentucky’s miscegenation laws a second time. The court ruled that the mother be sentenced to two years in prison. And the father’s parole was revoked. He’ll do another two years.”
Any hope of them coming home was gone. My hands and feet latched onto my rising fright, and I didn’t have to see them to know they were coloring, the heartbeats pounding in both palms, each arch on my foot thumping, my itchy flesh darkening under knit cloth and leather soles. Any second now I feared the color would betray me, bleed out onto my gloves, socks, and shoes, revealing me. Holding tight on Junia’s reins, I clasped my hands behind my back.
The woman snapped the papers and gently cleared her throat. “Upon my recommendation and given the immoral life the juvenile has led living with those…those animals,” she spat out, “those fornicating devils that tried to destroy the moral decency of our Godly, law-abiding good folk, the court hereby declared that the minor, Honey Mary-Angeline Lovett, age sixteen, being orphaned and without any known living relatives, be taken into custody and remanded to the Kentucky House of Reform until it reaches the age of twenty-one—”