Free No Way Home by Patricia MacDonald Page A

kind of thing that could start trouble. He knew better, but he was tired, and there was no one else around, so he pulled over and called to her, politely.
    What he remembered most was that she smiled and didn’t flinch when she saw that she was smiling at a black man on a lonely road. He was wearing his collar, and he was old. But that wouldn’t matter to some. He explained quickly that he was lost and looking for Route 31. She told him to go up and turn in at the road to Three Arches Bridge and head back the way he came until he passed three lefts and then turn. He remembered that she leaned on the window of the car in a friendly, easy way, and he was struck by her eyes. They were calm and wise in the way of one who has known some suffering. He recalled thinking that about her.
    Ephraim Davis shuddered. Maybe it had been a premonition about her. She had been murdered that very night. Even now it was hard to believe. She had been walking along, alone, in the direction of this very road, down to the bridge. Ephraim had thanked her for her help and he remembered that she said, “Good night, Reverend,” and that had gladdened his heart. He was an optimistic man by nature and he found comfort in the ordinary, courteous exchanges between black and white people.
    He had driven the car up to the entrance to this very road and turned in. As he was backing out, his headlights swept over a figure alongside the bridge, and he caught a glimpse of a startled face. A fellow taking a piss, he thought. He pulled out quickly and drove away, leaving the man to his privacy. Now, in retrospect, that brief moment took on a much more sinister meaning. She was a nice girl, a friendly girl, and someone had killed her that night, by that bridge.
    A sharp rap on his car window made him jump and cry out. He looked up and saw a young deputy peering at him with narrowed eyes, preparing to rap again on the glass with the butt of his service revolver. The Reverend Davis stared wide-eyed at the man, who indicated that he should roll down his window. Reluctantly the reverend complied.
    H^ stared at the deputy as sweat beaded in the folds of his coffee-colored forehead.
    “Get out of the car,” the deputy demanded.
    The reverend licked his lips and opened the car door.
    “Slowly,” the deputy ordered him.
    Ephraim Davis struggled out from behind the wheel and stood on the gravel beside the car.
    “What’s your business here?” asked the deputy, Wallace Reynolds. “You have some reason to be hanging around here?”
    “Nosir,” Ephraim replied automatically. “Just passing by.”
    “It looked like you were parked there to me.”
    Ephraim could feel his heart thudding arrhythmically. “I was just curious. Like these other folks,” he said.
    “If you’ve got no business, you just move along,” said Wallace, ignoring the reference to the other onlookers, who seemed to be coming and going undisturbed.
    The reverend immediately got back into the car and turned the key in the ignition. It did not surprise him. It was what had held him back so long in the first place. The reverend loved the South. He loved the people, and the weather and the beautiful, fruitful land. It was his home and he would never leave it. But he was not a naive man. He knew how things were here. People got along fine as long as everybody followed the unwritten rules. If he spoke up about this girl, he was crossing the line. He knew, with a sickening certainty, what they would think. He was a black man who had accosted a white girl on a lonely, country road. That was all they would need to hear.
    The Reverend Davis pulled away from the side of the road and did not look back, even though he caught the glint of the deputy’s badge in his rearview mirror as he made his escape.
    Jordan Hill pulled his rental car up onto the gravelly patch just being vacated by the two-tone green Ford. He could see that the deputy, Wallace Reynolds, was writing down the number of the station