She Stuck to the Story

They buried the boy in Chicago. His mother insisted he be brought back to his people.

This seemed only right to her. She understood this. If it was her son, she’d want the same.

She read about the funeral and she saw the picture of the boy in one of the copies of the Negro magazine her husband ordered each month to sell in their country store. Not that anyone was coming into the store to buy magazines, or anything else these days.

The Negroes that the woman and her husband had sold groceries and supplies to had stopped coming around soon after the police had showed up with their questions.

It wasn’t surprising. She felt certain they’d have to find another way to earn a living before long.

She had waited until her husband was gone to look at the magazine. She had watched his pickup truck round the corner and disappear in a cloud of dust from the dirt road before she pulled the magazine from a box where it sat in a stack with the others. This issue she hadn’t dared to put up on the stand.

His mama had insisted on showing the world what had happened to her boy. The photographer had taken a picture of the child lying in his casket, and this magazine had printed it.

She looked at that picture long and hard. Looked at it until the image burned into her brain. She tried to see something of the boy that had walked in her store that August day in that image on the glossy page, but nothing recognizable was left.

She knew her man had done it. Her husband and his brother had spent the day in fervent whispers. They’d cleaned their guns. They’d walked around the house in righteous, manly indignation, walking tall with shoulders held high.

She’d heard snippets of their talk, and she was scared. But when they’d left that night, she thought they were headed to the bar for a drink. Or at least, that’s the lie she told herself. She had been home with her boys like any other night, cleaning up the kitchen, getting them to bed, wondering how drunk her husband would be when he got home from the bar.

But her husband was sober when he walked through the door. He had a sweaty blood-stained shirt and frightened eyes. He hadn’t spoken a word to her. Just took his clothes off and showered, leaving them crumpled on the bathroom floor for her to clean up.

She took the clothes and burned them the next day.

And then the police came. They had asked so many questions. But she knew just what to say. Her husband had told her exactly what she should say.

“Stick to the story,” he said. “If you stick to the story, this will all go away, and we can put this behind us.”

So that’s what she did. She told the police half-truths and lies, and they believed her. Why wouldn’t they believe her? She was a white woman and a pretty one at that. Respected in the community. Admired by men and women alike. A beauty queen in her youth. No wonder the boy had tried things he shouldn’t have. That’s what people would think.

She kept the truth hidden deep inside of her. She didn’t let herself think of it much. Even on that horrible, hot day when she’d had to testify in front of the lawyers and the judge and the full courtroom. She did as she was told. She stuck to the story.

Although it was early fall, it was the South, and the heat was sweltering. She could feel the sweat beading down her back as she sat in the hard wooden chair and spoke the words she was supposed to speak with all those eyes staring at her. She felt a bead of sweat run between her breasts.

She sat there sweating and scared, and in her quiet voice, she told those men what her husband wanted her to say. She told those men what they wanted to hear.

And it had worked. Of course, it had worked. With all of those white people and their righteous indignation in that tiny, southern town, it couldn't have gone any other way.

Her husband and his brother were acquitted of all the charges in less than an hour. It might have been faster, but the jurymen had wanted to break for a cold Coke on the dime of the government.

The white people outside the courthouse cheered when the news came in. They were there for a party. They had come from neighboring towns all around, and brought their children, and enjoyed picnic lunches in the shade of the sweetgum trees on the green expanse of lawn outside the courthouse.

The Black people had also come to view the trial. They were not picnicking with the white folks. They crowded into the standing-room-only section of the courthouse where the Negroes were allowed, fanning themselves in the heat. They stood solemnly in the back, and they remained silent when the verdict was announced.

*****

Her dreams were troubled that night. And truth be told, every night after that one right on through the rest of her life until age had caught up to her, beauty had faded, and the memories had grown distant. Yet somehow the memory of that picture she had seen in the magazine had never faded. The glossy magazine with the fearlessness to print the photo of that poor boy lying in his coffin, with his disfigured, bloated face.

Years later, when she had to bury her own boy, she cried for him. But she also cried for the Negro child who had walked into her store that fateful day. The boy who walked with a confidence she hadn’t seen among the local Negroes. The boy who had smiled wide at her, as if he had a right to. The boy who hadn’t done a single thing wrong to her besides act a little sassy and maybe flirt a tiny bit and startle her with his confidence she didn’t expect in a Negro.

She buried her son, and she cried for him, and she cried for the boy, and she cried for his mother. That distant, Northern woman whose child had come home to her at the end of the summer, not running to greet her from the train with his big smile, as he was supposed to, but lifeless in a coffin.

What if she’d just held her mouth on that long-ago day when the boy had smiled at her in the store and whistled as she walked across the dusty parking lot. She wondered this countless times over the years. If she hadn’t told, nothing would have happened. But her life had been so routine and boring. She had wanted to tell her sister-in-law an exciting tale. She had wanted to feel pretty and so desirable that she caused the opposite sex to do things they knew they shouldn’t.

But she hadn’t known her boys were listening. And she hadn’t known they would tell her husband.

And once her husband heard, well, it was like a freight train headed in one direction and one direction only with no breaks to stop it.

*****

She lived long enough to see the change happen in the world. The shift in the way people thought. It seemed right to her. This change. Inevitable. She wondered what her husband would have thought. And not for the first time, she felt a great relief to no longer have to hear his opinion.

The day arrived, many years later, when she was given one final chance to tell the truth. To free her soul.

The men came to her door once again. Important looking men in dark suits. They reminded her of the men from so long ago. The men she had lied to.

These men were here to set things right, they had said. She didn’t need to be afraid. She just needed to tell them what had happened on that late summer afternoon, many years ago, when she was minding her store and the boy had walked in to buy gum.

What had happened that day? The lies she had repeated over the years blurred with the truth. No matter. She knew that boy hadn’t deserved what he had got. No human being on this earth deserved what that boy had got. Certainly not a child.

She had this last chance to set things right. But, in the end, she remembered her husband’s words. Even though he was long dead and gone, still, she stuck to the story.

*****

Disclaimer: Although this fictional story was inspired by actual historical events, this is a work of fiction and made up entirely in the imagination of the author. The likeness of historical figures has been used fictitiously. The author does not speak for or represent these people. If you would like to learn more about the real story of the brutal murder of a young Black boy that shocked the nation and served as a catalyst for the American civil rights movement, “The Blood of Emmett Till” by Timothy B. Tyson is a good place to start.