Free Candlemoth by R. J. Ellory Page A

upper arm. His body seemed to tighten
and then slacken, and not a sound issued from him, and it was all I could do to
stand and walk towards him, a long walk, a walk of kings and queens and
princes, and I realized only then that I was an inch or more taller than he. He
seemed tiny, fragile, mere skin and bones, and as I neared him he turned
towards me.
        He
held me then. I couldn't remember the last time my father had held me, and I
started to cry. I felt closer to him then than I ever had, or ever would again.
        My
mother was there then. She paused at the top of the stairwell as if she wished
not to interrupt this moment.
        Tears
streaked her face, her eyes were round and swollen and dark beneath. She looked
like a ghost.
        She
came towards us, seemed to envelop us both. I could smell her, the hair
lacquer, and beneath that the haunt of washing soda and detergent.
        We
stayed there for an eternity.
        No-one
said a word.
        There
was nothing to say.
        I
think for a day, perhaps two, I didn't think of Caroline once.
        Some time
later I left the house. People walked the streets aimlessly, broken like straw
dolls. I don't think I had ever appreciated the division that existed there in
Greenleaf. The path that I had so often taken with Nathan Verney down to the
Lake was actually a demarcation between the whites and the coloreds. They had
taken one side of Greenleaf, we had taken the other. But on that day it was
different.
         Kennedy
had once said There are no white or colored signs on the graveyards of
battle.
        So it
seemed on November 22nd. No white or colored division in our grief.
        I saw
Mrs. Chantry there. She stood beside Reverend Verney. And when a small boy came
running towards them they both held him, comforted him, watched and waited for
his mother who came running after him down the sidewalk.
        And
even now I recall an image from that day; a single, clear image that stands
above all else.
        Amidst
the confusion and grief, the crowds gathered outside the radio store on Hyland,
Benny Amundsen kneeling on the sidewalk outside his soda store as if in prayer,
there was a moment so bold it stands like a color snapshot amidst a wash of
monochrome: my Kodak moment.
        A
small colored girl, no more than five or six, her hair tied up in wiry pigtails
with bright bows at the ends, as if she wore some strange exotic flowers with
sunshine yellow petals and black stems. Along Nine Mile Road she went, tears
running down her face, her eyes wide and hopeless. In her arms she clutched a
pile of newspapers too heavy for her frame, and as I watched she lost her
balance and tripped. She skidded sideways, newspapers spilling out ahead of
her, and then she just sat there, her knee grazed and bloody, and she looked up
at the sky, as if to God, and those tears came like a river in spring. Too
young even to understand the import of what had happened, she was caught in the
flood of anguish that tore America apart.
        It
was Nathan Verney who rescued that child.
        I saw
him appear from behind the Reverend. He went down there and he lifted her as if
she weighed nothing. He gathered the papers that had fallen and handed them to
a white man who stood expressionless and dazed at the side of the road. The man
took those papers without question.
        And
then Nathan saw me.
        He
nodded, walked towards me, and when he was a foot or two from me I held out my
arms for the child.
        The
child reached back, I took her, and her slim arms enwrapped my neck.
        She
pulled tight, I started walking, and I went to Mrs. Chantry.
        I
think back now, all of us standing there, the Reverend, the witch who ate her
husband, the black kid who floored Marty Hooper in Benny's, and the white
misfit, the gangly pale-skinned youth holding this tiny colored girl. I see it
now as if it were a photograph, and it makes me think of how