Free Hardball by Sara Paretsky Page B

baptized him. We took him into Christ’s body together, all of us. So how could you say he was hell bound? And why should he talk to you when that was all you would say to him?”
    “Drugs. Never listen me, daughter, but drugs. Saw. Know. You, woman, no pants.”
    With an effort, he moved his hand to the television control and turned the sound back on. The preacher in the glass box was revealing the true meaning of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
    “No pants?” I asked Rose, pushing myself to my feet. My thighs were sore from squatting.
    “He doesn’t approve—our church doesn’t approve—of women wearing men’s clothes,” she said listlessly.
    In Bible pictures, men are always wearing robes. I wondered if that meant women at Saving Word couldn’t wear bathrobes, but I decided it wouldn’t help my inquiry if I asked. Instead, I followed Rose back along the narrow hall to the front door.
    I stopped next to the paper-covered table. “Do you think your father knows something about Lamont that he’d have told me if I’d worn a dress?”
    She looked down the hall, as if the old man could hear us over the televised preacher. “He’s convinced Lamont sold drugs for the Anacondas, but I never thought so.”
    “You said Lamont was angry over the injustices in your lives. What did he do about them or how did he show he was angry?”
    “He was part of the group that helped look after Dr. King. You know, during the marches that summer.” She eyed me doubtfully, wondering if I came from one of the white South Side families who created the need for a protective force.
    I squinted, trying to remember what I knew about the history of the summer. “Didn’t the gangs declare a truce, a moratorium against fighting among themselves?”
    She was still eyeing me warily, but she nodded. “Johnny Merton from the Anacondas and Fred Hampton from the Panthers and them, they all met with Dr. King and Al Raby to discuss strategy. My father, he felt our church didn’t belong in the streets. He didn’t like it when Lamont and some of his friends took part.”
    “Curtis Rivers.” I said his name involuntarily, thinking about his hostility when I was in his shop this afternoon.
    “Curtis was there. Some of the other boys from the neighborhood. And Lamont. They all belonged to Saving Word, and my father denounced them from the pulpit because they wouldn’t listen to his authority.”
    “But it was six months later that Lamont disappeared. It’s hard to think that was connected with the marches.” Something in her face made me add, “When did you last see him yourself?”
    She looked down the hall again. A choir on TV was singing with great gusto. “Daddy forbade it. Once he denounced Lamont, he said if I went out with him I’d be endangering my own soul.”
    “But you saw him, anyway.”
    Her mouth twisted in a painful smile. “I didn’t have the nerve. Lamont, he stopped me when I was leaving school. I was over at Kennedy-King—we still called it Woodrow Wilson then—studying nursing, and Lamont, he waited for me after school. He talked to me about the Panthers and Black Pride. I made the mistake of thinking I could explain it to Daddy.”
    She looked down at her hands. “Maybe my life would have been different—could have been different. I got my nursing degree, and I could only get LPN jobs. It was years before I could get hired as a registered nurse. I used to think about that when I saw white women hired over me, and me with just as much schooling and good job reviews and everything and still emptying bedpans. I used to think about Lamont, I mean, and wish I’d paid him more mind. But—”
    A bell rang, clear even above the sound of the televised choir.
    “That’s Daddy. He needs me. I have to go.”
    “Are you still working as a nurse?”
    “Oh yes. I used to be an oncology nurse, but I had to give that up when Daddy turned so poorly. Now I do the night shift in the ER. I put him to bed before I go on duty,