Free Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr

stories of crimes committed by black people were an indictment of the entire race. But I’d taken these remarks in the same vein as his grunting disapproval of bell-bottoms, or hippies, or war protestors—as general displeasure with difference, a resistance to the world shifting around him. I hadn’t really thought he was serious. And it was one thing to hear his opinions about people out there , on TV. It was another to see him directing those feelings toward a real person, someone I knew.
    “Listen,” Earl said, and his eyes were piercing. Although it had been over a year since he’d met me, I don’t think he’d ever really looked at me before. “If you see him at school, don’t talk to him. Don’t talk to him, don’t smile at him, don’t treat him like he belongs. He needs to understand that he ain’t welcome here, and everybody in town has to let him know it. That means everybody —even you, little girl.”
    I looked down and moved some peas around my plate. I wondered if he’d given a speech like this about me when I first came to town. One way or another, the message had been conveyed—Earl’s wife and sons never talked to me.
    “I heard the wife’s got people seeing her,” Jim said now, and I was relieved that the men’s attention had been drawn away. “She’s been helping a lot of patients at the clinic.”
    “Must be people from out of town,” my grandfather remarked, and he was probably right. It was hard to imagine anyone from Deerhorn going to see her, but people from larger towns like Wausau and Steven’s Point might have felt less uneasy. And those towns had a few black residents too, maybe some who were willing to come all the way to Deerhorn to be treated by a black nurse. She might even have been seeing some black soldiers who were home from the war, since there was no veterans’ hospital in the area. I knew, though, that the other men weren’t happy to hear this.
    “Well, the buck’s losing customers, that’s for sure,” Charlie said. “Mike told me there was only ten kids in Janie’s class today.”
    “He sounds like a nice enough fellow,” Jim said, seeming almost defiant. “I heard he offered to give some extra help to kids who were having trouble with their schoolwork.”
    “Help?” Earl said. “From a nigger?”
    With this reproach, Jim settled into silence. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, eyes cast down at the table. I’d always wondered if my grandfather and the other men tolerated some of his unconventional views—like his belief that women should be hired as police officers and that draft dodgers shouldn’t have to serve jail time—because they didn’t take him seriously. But now he was even less aligned with them than usual. After the other men left and we moved into the living room, Jim barely said a word, working slowly on a single beer and staring blankly at the television. He was joined in silence by my grandmother, who didn’t speak to Charlie, but whose sudden, unusual attention to me—a hot chocolate, an extra piece of pie after dinner—let me know she wasn’t pleased about what had happened that evening. I wasn’t feeling very sociable either, and as soon as the Friday Western was over at nine, I escaped into my room.
    The room I slept in was actually a guest room, and that’s exactly what it looked like. Because we’d all assumed my stay was going to be temporary, my grandparents hadn’t changed it when I arrived. The furnishings were heavy and wooden, pieces they’d inherited from their families, and the wardrobe was full of my grandmother’s winter clothes. Although the old furniture was big and mismatched, I liked it; it felt substantial and permanent. And I especially loved the old bed. It was huge and enveloping, and that night I dove straight into it, rolling around on the handmade quilt.
    I wanted to forget the last few hours; I wanted not to feel how I felt. And because it wasn’t comfortable, all of a