Guy shook his head and was momentarily silent. “You’d be brave enough if you loved me enough.”
Now it was I who was silent. Maybe that was so.
“What do I need to do, Cassie?” We were in his office. He walked over to the window and looked out. He sighed heavily. “I don’t know how else to show you I’m up to whatever we would have to face. I’ve gone into the heartland of Mississippi, seen your life and felt its brutality. What else can I do?”
I stared at his back. Guy turned from the window to look at me. “What?”
And I answered, “Nothing.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
It was over, and we both knew it. I had never loved Guy the way I had loved Flynn. If I had, maybe despite the racial divide, I would have stayed with him. If Guy had been colored, most likely I would have stayed with him. But neither was the case. Guy had been in my life for so long and had become so ingrained in it through some of the toughest and loneliest times. The thought of losing him broke my heart, but there was no path for us. Guy wanted me to commit to him, but in the world in which I lived, my commitment had to be to my family. It had to be to my race. Before the summer came, I quit the firm, left Boston, and moved to Toledo.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
I planned to stay in Toledo only for a short time until I could figure out the next steps in my life. Lawyer Tate gave space to me in his office, but it was up to me to get my own cases. I had some money saved from my years of working in Boston and I figured that would last me through the year. By that time, I hoped I could move on, although I didn’t know to where. In the meanwhile, I stayed with Dee and Stacey. They had three bedrooms, one of which was used as a guest room, but I chose instead to live in the attic.
The attic was a great space.
The two fully finished rooms were quite spacious and there was plenty of natural light throughout the day. I furnished the rooms with used furniture. The space was warm and comfortable and gave me privacy. I paid Stacey and Dee a small rent, chipped in for living expenses, helped with the housework, and we were back to living as a family.
Shortly after my return to Toledo, I went to visit Moe. I went alone. Moe looked fine, but there was something in his voice that told me he was worn out by all the uncertainty in his life. “I’m tired, Cassie,” he said. “I’m just tired, sick of worrying about being found. Sick of worrying about Mississippi getting me back down there. They do, I’m as good as dead.”
I studied my old friend for a few moments before I responded. “What can I tell you, Moe? I can’t say I know how you feel, because this arrest warrant and extradition aren’t hanging over my head. But I can tell you that I know something close to how you feel. You, Stacey, and me—Little Willie too—we’ve been in this thing from the beginning, from that day back in Strawberry.”
Moe heaved a sigh and looked away from me. “You know it wears on me, Cassie. Every day I think about Troy and the fact that what I did caused his death. I feel real bad about that, sorry for it, Lord knows.” He paused, then turned back to me. “What was I thinking, Cassie? I keep wondering, what was I thinking? If I’d just let those Aames boys rub my head like they done Clarence, we all could’ve gotten out of there and all this wouldn’t be happening. I could be walking free.”
“Walking free? Really? You think you could’ve?” I shook my head. “You know as well as I do, Moe, you couldn’t live with yourself if you hadn’t stood up. I admire you for standing up. If Stacey had been out there with you instead of over to Mr. Jamison’s office, he would’ve done the same thing.”
“Good thing he wasn’t,” said Moe. “I wouldn’t want anybody else to be in my shoes.”
“Well, plenty are, and you know it. Maybe not fighting arrest and extradition, but going through the same hell every day, getting all bloodied up and going to jail just for wanting to be treated like a human being. Just for trying to have the same rights as these white people.”
“You think I’m feeling sorry for myself?”
“Aren’t you? Course now, everybody’s allowed a ‘poor, poor pitiful me’ day every now and again. I know I take mine about once a month.”
Moe laughed. “Cassie, you always could cheer me up.”
“Good,” I said. “But I wasn’t trying to cheer you up. It’s just the truth.”
“You ever think, Cassie, how our lives would’ve been if you’d taken a chance on me, maybe married me even without having the same feelings for me as I had for you? We would have been good together. We come from the same place, have a lot of the same memories. We know each other.”
“Yes, we do know each other, Moe. Maybe too well. No sense in looking back at what-ifs. It’s done now.”
“You’re right,” Moe said with resignation. “It is done.” Then he looked at me hard, a long, dwelling look. “I’ve thrown my life away, Cassie.”
“You haven’t thrown your life away, Moe—”
“And I’m alone.”
“You’re not alone. You’ve got your family and you’ve got us. You’ve got Myrtis.”
Moe scoffed. “She won’t even move here to be with me. Says she needs to stay in Detroit, be with her family there. I don’t fault her for that. She feels about her family like I do about mine.” Moe looked away, then again to me. “Myrtis is putting in for divorce. She said she can’t live her life like this.”
“Ah, Moe . . .”
“There were times I felt alone in Detroit, but I always had all of you nearby, then I had Morris and later on Myrtis. Now I don’t have any of you.”
“That’s not so, Moe. We’re still here for you.”
Moe looked at me for a long moment. “Sometimes, Cassie, I think I ought to just take my chances and go see my family. Hertesene’s dead, who knows who’s next?” Moe sighed and looked away. “You know there were seven of us children when Mama died. Course Morris had just been born and my daddy was beside himself in grief and worrying about all of us and how he was going to make it. I was thinking along with Levis and Maynard and Hertesene, maybe he’d take himself another wife, but he never did. Instead he just kept on going, trying to make the crops each year on Montier’s place, and when Aunt Josephine and Uncle Homer up and died within a couple months of each other, Daddy took their four little boys in too. They became brothers to us and we called them that, but I saw Daddy wear down, making himself sick working so hard trying to take care of everybody. Me being the eldest, I figured I needed to do whatever I could to help him keep that place going and take care of all the younguns.”