Chapter 2
I was certainly grown up enough to leave the house without exchanging words with my father, but when I tried to sneak past
Pa’s office in the morning, he called me into the room.
“Nick, take these papers to the office,” he said, without lifting his eyes from his notes.
There was a stack of papers waiting for me on the side table by the door. “Yes, sir.” I read the headline on one of the sheets—“Dick
Rowland: True Criminal or the White Man’s Scapegoat?”
Pa’s little radio crackled with a newscaster’s voice. “This just in: Tensions are still rising between protestors downtown.
We see white people in outrage surrounding the courthouse where they have Rowland.”
“This man’s safety is in danger because of the crimes they accuse him of,” Pa mumbled to himself more than me. But then louder than before, he added, “We need this story on as many doorsteps as possible. You hear me? Go directly there or we risk missing the printer deadline.”
“Yes, sir.” There was nothing to say before I left, my bag packed to the brim with his papers. I was not allowed to write
stories, but Pa always asked me for help distributing.
I was a human mule, visiting the little Tulsa Star office where seven writers in one spacious room typed away. My father as senior editor did not have to be there all the time.
His position gave him all kinds of special benefits, like working from home. These seats were all filled by people who had
impressive backgrounds and could write about sports, or politics, or current events with amazing insight. But me? I knew next
to nothing except how to drop things off, according to him.
I was so fed up that I just dumped Pa’s papers on the first desk I saw.
The writer, a tired woman with round glasses and her hair in a bun, snatched the papers up and read the headline. “These are
from Mr. Carrington?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Her eyes widened as she scanned the words. “A bit inflammatory, isn’t it?”
“Don’t know,” I said, with a shrug. “Haven’t read it!”
And I walked out the shop! I was just a boy working for a shoe-shiner, right? Who cared about my opinion?
I checked my pocket watch every hour during work—what I was waiting for, I did not know. Perhaps for Isaiah to come back again
and take me on some new adventure.
The shop was quiet as dusk rolled around, and I noticed Mr. Wallace didn’t come in to check on me. I found him outside, standing in the road between the shop and the pawn shop across the way.
There was a commotion on the corner. A white man stormed out of the pawn shop with a gun. Usually the white tourists were
respectful, but this guy . . . He was going wild, running down the street, screaming at random people, “Your kind ain’t welcome
in Oklahoma!”
People started shouting. And then he fired a gun at someone, who had just broken into a run.
He missed, but my heart stopped and I froze. Mr. Wallace turned quickly, grabbed at my shoulders, and screamed, “Inside!”
I followed his lead and ran back into the shop, but not before turning around and seeing the gunman get taken down by a sheriff.
Mr. Wallace was thrown off when we got inside. He turned to look through the blinds. “Let them haul him off. And then you
should get home before the sun sets. Take your bike and avoid the scene. No detours, young man. I mean it.”
“Okay, sir,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“More drama between us and them over this elevator situation. Just go, so you’re safe.”
I followed his orders and once the shooter was gone, I took my bike. As I rode home, I saw more sheriffs gathering out front
of several businesses. They were just standing there with their sticks, and there was a tense feeling in the air—a quiet mixed
with chaos.
What was that toxic flavor in the wind? I wanted to graduate from Greenwood, but not because it felt unsafe. When I was home before dark, I usually didn’t fear something scary coming to hurt me. So, the tense feeling in the air took me by surprise.
I pedaled down the dirt roads and across the train tracks, where the commercial district made way for the houses, to my home.
I saw mothers pulling their children inside, and a man standing on his roof, using binoculars to get a closer look downtown.
There were some horses in the stable yard whinnying more than usual. The scenes and sounds from my ride hung over me even
as I crashed through my front door.
Pa was in the living room with an open shirt and a slack jaw. He was pouring himself a glass of something, but he’d stopped
to look at me like a crazy man when I came through the door.
“Where have you been?” his voice boomed, cracking some.
“I was at work,” I said. “Like always. Pa, what’s going on?”
Pa went to the window and looked out, just as a lightning bolt blinked through the sky. “A storm is coming.” Thunder rumbled
as Pa fished a tin of breath mints out of his shirt pocket. “Maybe the only thing that saves us tonight. It’s our word versus
theirs on Mr. Rowland’s innocence.”
“I don’t understand what Mr. Rowland has to do with the rest of Greenwood.”
“Yes, you do, son,” Pa said, impatient at my naivete.
“Dick was doing well. And we are doing very well. Running businesses better than they do, leading by example. And they feel threatened, so they’ve targeted one of our men, falsely accusing him of assaulting a white woman.
And now they have their reason to attack the rest of us.
Just like that.” Pa went to check the window again.
“I want you to know, Nick, that you’re a fantastic writer. ”
The words struck a funny chord in me—one that made me stare at him in confusion. I was sure I heard him wrong. Any time I
showed him a piece of my writing, he said my words were overly sentimental, far too opinionated to make it in the news world.
“But I could not let you follow my path,” Pa went on, looking at me. “Words are dangerous—true words are lethal. You are innocent
to life, and what it means to be a man. And you are far too well-spoken for your own good.”
“Pa, why are you saying this now?” I asked. Nothing else that I had seen today frightened me more than the timing of Pa’s
praise. “You never let me publish so much as a single story in The Tulsa Star.”
“There would be a target on your head the minute the press printed. You want this world to be a place where everybody’s welcome
to all the same fruit, and it’s not that way—not yet. I can see you dream of it. I see the hope in your eyes. Your idealism
is a threat to them, and anything that is a threat to them is a threat to you.” Pa turned to look at the window once more,
and his face dropped. He spoke his next words into the glass, “I’m sorry, Nick. I just wanted to protect you. Don’t ever hold
your tongue. No matter how afraid you might feel.”
BANG! A gunshot snatched the silence.
Pa twisted and fell, clutching the curtain, and he lost his grip. He stopped moving, slouched over like a folded couch cushion. He looked at me, his face like a cadaver come to life. Blood was leaking through his shirt.
I choked out a gasp. What . . . what just happened?
“Pa?” I whispered, running to him.
He held up his hand for me to stop, and so I did, one knee bent forward, the other poised to change direction.
“Run,” he whispered, shaking his head with urgency. “Run!”
Run? Where?
The white man who shot my father appeared on the porch. Through the white curtains, I saw his cowboy hat and a gun forming
a long angle against his arm like a crocodile’s open jaw. He was coming toward the window to look in.
I ran to my bedroom, heart pounding, my brain only processing that one foot moves after the other.
Another gunshot.
The front door went crashing to the floor with a bang, drawing in the noise from outside.
A woman screaming. Gunshots gutting all hope from the afternoon air.
I fell through my bedroom doorway, catching myself on my nightstand. I grabbed my piggy bank, dropped it into a long sock,
and climbed in my wardrobe to hide. I sank through my clothes, the story of my life passing through my mind like a bittersweet
film reel.
Would I die?
Was I okay to die?
Had I done enough? Had I done anything?
I was silent with these thoughts, because any noise I made might bring my death on quicker. Smells of wool, wood, mints, and
shoe polish melded into a toxic aroma around me, and it made me feel sick, like I’d drunk poison.
“I saw you go in there,” the invader said.
And his footsteps, which approached the wardrobe at a pace quicker than I was ready for, made the reality of the moment set
in—I’d either die or fight.
He ripped open the door and pulled me out by my shirt.
In the clumsy collision, I threw my weight into his body and crashed us into the wall. The gun fell from his hand and I kicked
it across the floor. He pushed me off and then swung, but I ducked, landing a punch into his stomach, which caused him to
keel over. More white men charged into the house as he got his bearings, and I ran to the open window. A gunshot popped behind
me, whistling by my knees as I dove into the grass. And I sprinted forward.
Forward toward the bushes of the neighboring house, and then through their back lawn. Over the fence to the next one, my heart
pulsing through my throat, my feet moving on instinct.
I climbed over a wooden fence and ducked low as I pressed forward. I glanced to my left and saw through the small channels
between houses that horses steered by white men were galumphing through my town. The men came with other men, in sheriff’s
hats, who were on foot. I paused as one man kicked down a warning sign on a lawn that read Careful: Children, and barged into the house to start shooting.
And there it set in: We were being massacred. Not because we did anything. Just because we were us.
Run, came Pa’s voice, as if he were still with me.
I climbed over another fence, still moving on impulse, as my mind was not stable. Gruesome images of the past few minutes
flashed through my brain—the face of Pa’s killer.