* * *
I turned on my radio the second I woke up the following morning, but there was no mention of the nighttime work of the Klan on the local station. There never was. I dressed and went downstairs, hoping I could use either Daddy’s car or Buddy’s truck to go to the police station, but my father and brother were both gone. Mama took one look at me when I limped into the room, then dropped her gaze to my swollen ankle. “What on earth happened to you?”
“I tripped on the back steps last night.”
I could tell she didn’t believe me. “You’re a right royal mess,” she said. “I’ll make some eggs while you go clean yourself up and put on a dress. You can’t work in the pharmacy looking like that. Your hair looks like a raccoon got at it.”
“I don’t have time to work in the pharmacy,” I said. I planned to ride my old bicycle to the police station. Then I’d get one of the policemen to drive me all over Round Hill in the daylight, looking for Win.
“Sit down,” Mama said. It sounded like a command.
“I’m not hungry. I—”
“Sit.” I noticed that her eyes were red, and I sank onto one of the kitchen chairs. “You need to help your father today,” she said. “He had a rough night. And I have some very bad news.” She looked away from me. “I don’t even know how to tell you.”
I was instantly alert. “What?”
“Last night, Garner was trying to repair the ceiling in the room they’re turning into a nursery and he lost his balance. Fell off the ladder and knocked himself out.” She looked back at me. “Brenda called Byron, and Daddy was playing cards with him, so they both went over and drove Garner and Brenda to the hospital, but Garner was gone by the time they got there.”
“Gone?” I said, like I’d never heard the word before. My mind was on fire, my thoughts so scattered. I was thinking of Win and how all the while we were driving around looking for him, Garner was dying. My eyes filled with tears as I thought of what Brenda was going through. Did we both lose the men we loved last night?
“And that’s not all,” Mama said. “Brenda was so beside herself that she lost the baby. She’s still in the hospital.”
Oh no. I stood up, wincing at the pain in my ankle. “I have to go to her,” I said. Brenda and I had had a falling-out, yes, but I would always be her friend. And I would go to her … after I went to see Uncle Byron at the sheriff’s office. If he was playing cards with my father the night before, then I was mistaken about hearing his voice in the clearing, and that was a relief. Maybe he could help me find Win.
* * *
I gritted my teeth against the pain in my ankle as I rode my bike down our driveway. I pedaled up Hockley Street toward the woods, searching the sides of the road near the kudzu, both wanting and not wanting to find Win. My fantasy was finding him alive. Rushing to his side. Saving him before it was too late. But there was no sign of him, and I pedaled onto Round Hill Road toward the sheriff’s office. Tears burned my eyes as I thought of Garner. Of Brenda. Of Win.
* * *
“You heard about Garner?” Uncle Byron looked up from something he was writing as I walked into his small, cluttered office.
“Yes, it’s so horrible,” I said, my voice thick. “But that’s not why I’m here.” I sank into a heavy wooden chair across the desk from him and poured it all out, telling him I’d met Win in the tree house and how Reed—or at least Reed’s truck—backed into the clearing and how the men in white robes beat Win and dragged him away. Uncle Byron tapped his pen against his chin the whole time I spoke.
“I haven’t heard a word about any Klan disturbance last night,” he said.
“It wasn’t a ‘disturbance’!” I shouted. “It was murder!” I’d meant to say attempted murder, and tears stung my eyes at my mistake. “He might still be alive, Uncle Byron.” My voice broke. “Please help me find him.”
Uncle Byron stood up and slammed his office door shut, then turned to me, angry blotches of color on his cheeks. “How do you suggest I do that, Ellie?” he asked. “This is a big county.” He walked over to his desk again, but didn’t sit down. “And to be honest, right now I’m thinkin’ about Garner Cleveland. Your … friend Win is lost because the two of you were stupid enough to try to—”
“It’s your job!” I shouted, getting to my feet myself. “What if he was white? Would you give a shit then?”
Uncle Byron folded his arms. The look on his face told me he didn’t care one iota what happened to Win Madison. “Grow up, Ellie,” he said. “He wasn’t white. You knew you were asking for trouble when you started sneaking around with that boy.”
If there was one thing I hated, it was being told to grow up. “You were at that Klan rally in the cow pasture,” I said. “You know who’s in the Klan in Round Hill. Talk to them! Somebody has to know what happened to Win. And talk to Reed! He lied about when he took his truck to Buddy’s. He was jealous, and—”
“Reed Miller couldn’t hurt a skeeter if it was biting the end of his nose.” Uncle Byron sat down again. “Don’t have it in him.”
Something happened to my heart when he said that. Four years of caring about gentle, steadfast Reed Miller filled my chest and I lowered my face to my hands and cried, sinking into the chair again. I didn’t know what to think. All I knew was that he lied about when he took his truck to Buddy’s. And he hated Win.
“Meanwhile—” Uncle Byron leaned forward as I lifted my head from my hands. He folded his arms on his desk. “—don’t you care that your best friend is grievin’ her husband and child at this very minute? Or are you too busy moonin’ over some colored boy you think got dragged to kingdom come last night?”
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.