I hated him at that moment as much as I’d ever hated anyone. I left his office, trying unsuccessfully not to limp, not to appear weak in any way, and by the time I got outside to my bike, I wasn’t sure if the tears running down my face were from grief or pain.
* * *
Back on my bike, I didn’t know where to go, but Uncle Byron’s words were working their way into my brain. Don’t you care that your best friend is grieving? I wasn’t far from the hospital, so I pedaled there, parked my bike out front, and went in search of Brenda. She’d hurt me, the way she’d given me the cold shoulder after all our years as friends, but right now I knew she needed my friendship, and I sure as hell needed hers. When she saw me in the doorway of her hospital room, though, she rolled onto her side away from me. “Go away, you goddamn stupid bitch,” she said.
For a moment, I froze in shocked silence. And then I did as she said. I went away. I left her, my once-upon-a-time best friend. She’d turned into someone I no longer recognized.
I knew my father was expecting me at the pharmacy, but I couldn’t possibly work today. Instead, I rode my bike up and down nearly every damn road in Round Hill, all the roads Buddy and I had covered in the dark, and some of the roads outside the town as well. I didn’t find Win, but I found the bumper of Reed’s truck. I was on some nameless back road about half a mile past Round Hill Baptist when I saw the sunlight glinting silver in the weeds at the side of the road. I was a sweaty mess by then—it must have been a hundred degrees—and my ankle was as big as the moon. I got off my bike and walked over and sure enough, there it was, Mildred’s bumper, all dinged up with a few yards of rope attached to it. I could see where they’d hacked the rope off. Where they’d cut Win loose. I stood alone in the middle of the road, not a soul in sight, scared of finding him and scared of not finding him. I called for him and listened hard, but heard nothing. Not even a bird. I rode my bike fast as a lightning bolt back to Buddy’s shop and made him close the shop and go back out there with me to search. I knew he felt the same way Uncle Byron did—that I brought this all on myself, as well as on Win, by getting mixed up with a Black man—but he never said it. He never rubbed my face in it. He just helped me look, walking into the weedy fields out there, getting chigger bites and hoping we weren’t stepping on copperheads. And we found nothing besides the bumper. And finally Buddy put his arms around me.
“You have to let this go, little sis,” he said.
I looked up at him. “He could still be alive,” I said. My voice sounded childlike to my ears. I felt the tremor in my lower lip.
“Ellie, look how far we are from Hockley Street? From the woods where they tied him to the bumper? And it’s pretty clear this is where they finally untied him. Way out here. I don’t see how…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I pressed my forehead against his chest while he wrapped his arms around me and I sobbed. He said nothing, just let me grieve. Please don’t let him have suffered too much, I prayed. Please, God.
I finally looked up at Buddy. “I’ve got to go to Flint,” I said. “I’ve got to tell Greg and everyone what happened. I need to make sure his family knows. And then I’ve got to leave.”
“Leave?” He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t stay here.” I rubbed the tears from my cheeks. “I hate everyone here except you. And everyone here hates me back.”
“You don’t hate Mama and Daddy. You don’t hate Brenda. And she needs you. She don’t know it right now, but she’ll figure it out eventually.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I hate everybody. Except you.”
* * *
I borrowed Buddy’s truck and drove to Flint. Greg and Jocelyn were working at their desks in the school, but everyone else was out canvassing. Jocelyn sobbed, her face in her hands, when I told them, and for the first time, I saw real fury in Greg’s face.
“You foolish kids!” he said, throwing the pen he was using across the room. “We have rules for a reason! You knew the jeopardy you were putting him in, Ellie!”
I broke down again and Jocelyn wrapped her arms around me. I couldn’t speak. I was so wounded by Greg’s words, and so deserving of them. I knew his anger masked his grief. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, having to report what had happened under his watch to Hosea Williams and Dr. King. And he would have to be the one to tell Win’s family.