“After what happened with Morris, what you expect?” countered Stacey as Dora brought a tray of cold lemonade for us.
Little Willie shook his head. “Yeah, guess you right. Lord, that’s a terrible thing! Dora and me, we been crying ’bout it since we heard. They killed that boy because of all that voter registration business!”
“Well, just what happened?” I asked. “All Myrtis could tell us was that Moe came to Detroit, got Dwayne’s car, and said Morris was dead, that they’d killed him. That’s it, nothing else.”
“Well, from what I hear,” said Little Willie, “Morris’s car gone off into the Creek Rosa Lee. That’s where they found him.”
“He just went off the road?” questioned Clayton incredulously, his voice muffled with emotion he was trying to hold back. “How’s that?”
Little Willie shrugged. “That’s what the sheriff said. Seems Morris had been up to the courthouse in Strawberry, had taken folks there to try to register. That was on Friday. When they came back from Strawberry, he dropped them off and that was the last anybody seen him until they pulled his car out of the Rosa Lee. It was over there where the creek runs along one of them back roads. Now, here’s the thing. What’s today? Tuesday? Well, the sheriff down there already done ruled Morris’s death an accident. We don’t know if the boy drowned or what. Talked to Maynard. They seen Morris’s body, they ain’t seen his car. Sheriff got it. Might not be a bullet in that boy or a rope around his neck, but we figure Morris was forced off that road. Wasn’t no accident.”
“Any way to prove that?” I said.
Little Willie looked hard at me. “Late at night. Nobody around. What you think?”
There were no words to speak what we all felt.
Little Willie cleared his throat. “Crying shame. And his wife just had that baby, not even a week ago.”
I bowed my head thinking of Denise and how much in love she and Morris had been. “How is she doing?” I asked softly.
Dora answered. “’Bout as you’d expect. She loved that boy. Morris was her world.”
“What I want to know,” said Willie, “is how did Moe find out?”
“Levis,” Stacey said. “He called him from Jackson. Figured Moe needed to know.”
“Fool!” cried Willie. “Didn’t he know what Moe might do?”
“Guess he wasn’t thinking. Time like this, a body doesn’t always think straight. Soon as Moe heard, he jumped in his car and headed for Detroit, that’s what Myrtis said. Myrtis couldn’t stop him from going. Said if Dwayne didn’t give him his car, he’d drive his own, and he was talking about finishing what he’d started.”
Little Willie looked wild-eyed at Stacey. “What you mean?”
“What you think I mean?”
“Ah, naw! Ah, naw! He ain’t fool enough to think he could go kill them white boys!”
“Well, that’s what started it all,” I declared. “Statler, Leon, and Troy all those years ago.”
“Who said it was them?” retorted Little Willie. “Can’t be sure about that! Plenty of white folks hated Morris because of that voter registration business! Heard some white folks say Morris like driving folks around to register so much, maybe they’d just give him a ride. And remember now, the sheriff already ruled Morris’s death an accident. So far, nobody got proof otherwise.”
Stacey lowered his head and rubbed his forehead in thought. Looking up again, he gazed across at Willie. “If Moe didn’t get stopped, he has to be down here by now. We thought he might contact you for help.”
“Wish he had’ve. I would’ve done told the boy to go on back to Canada. Ain’t nothing he can do down here dead.”
We all stared at Little Willie.
“It’s the truth! He end up dead, just like Morris! If they ain’t picked him up, he probably went straight on down to his daddy’s.” Little Willie took swallows of his lemonade and looked around at us. “So, what y’all planning on doing? Y’all come all the way down here to see ’bout Moe, keep him from getting caught, what you got in mind?”
“Tell the truth, I don’t know what we can do,” said Stacey. “May already be too late.”
“It was too late,” surmised Little Willie, “soon’s Moe got in his car and headed down here.”
We all had to agree.
Man asked about the funeral. “They set a date yet?”
“Heard day after tomorrow. It’ll be a sorrowful thing, young man like that.” Little Willie shook his head. “These white folks ain’t hardly letting up. You heard what they done to our young people up at Woolworth’s the other day when they did that sit-in? Threw pepper spray in their eyes, sprayed them with paint too. Then come that night, somebody gone and thrown a bomb at the Evers house. Shook the whole neighborhood. Heard it myself. Then, right after that, couple days later, some high school students, several hundred of them over at Lanier, got to singing protest songs, and white folks got all upset. Police come in with their dogs and beat those children all upside the head with clubs. My boy Calvin, he’s a freshman over there, he was one of them.”
“How’s Calvin doing?” I asked. “Was he hurt bad?”
“Boy’s got a hard head just like me. That ain’t sayin’ I sit easy though with my son gettin’ clubbed like that.”
Dora sat on the arm of Little Willie’s chair. “Thought I was gonna hafta call some of my folks to keep Willie in this house he was so mad. I didn’t want him going after these white folks and getting hisself killed about this thing.”
“Everybody was mad,” said Little Willie. “Brother Evers down the street called the Justice Department up in Washington, told them how these white police down here done treated our children. ’Fore Washington done anything about it, the young folks gone and done a protest march right downtown. Yeah, right here in Jackson! Can you believe it? Now, y’all know these white folks really was mad now! Police come in again, clubbed the children and they got arrested. Took them to the state fairground to this here what they called an open-air jail. Fenced them in like cattle.”
Dora gently rubbed his shoulder. “They know all that, baby.”
“Calvin one of them?” asked Stacey.
Little Willie sighed wearily, but there was pride in his voice when he spoke. “Yeah, he was. They’re all out now. Just glad it ain’t no worse. Just look what they done to our children in Birmingham! Water-hosing them and setting their dogs on them! Course, we’re all thinking it’s gonna get worse here too, what with that white Citizens’ Council and the mayor saying ain’t no more things ’bout to change down here. Things seem to be going from bad to worse with these people since last fall, when James Meredith got into Ole Miss and the white folks gone crazy, rioting and all. We was all proud of our man James Meredith getting into Ole Miss, and it made our young folks stand up. You know what I’m sayin’? If James Meredith could do this thing, then they could too.