Free Streets of Fire by Thomas H. Cook Page B

four of us, we can do it the right way,’ he said, ‘one shoulder at each corner, just like they’d do it in church.’
    The four of them took their positions, one at each corner of the coffin, and lifted it up onto their shoulders.
    As he headed out toward the parking lot, Ben could feel the body shift slightly as they juggled the coffin awkwardly, and he could imagine the girl’s face jerking left and right inside, as if looking for a way out of the darkness.
    A dusty, mud-spattered pickup truck sat waiting for them in the parking lot, its battered front fenders sloping wearily toward the ground. The white man took down the tailgate with one hand while continuing to balance his corner of the coffin precariously on his shoulder.
    ‘Okay, just set it down real slow,’ he said, after he’d undone the gate. Then he turned cautiously and eased the coffin down onto the bed of the truck.
    ‘All right, let’s just shove it in now,’ he said. ‘But soft-like. We got a little child here.’
    When the coffin was in place, the two black youths hauled themselves into the back of the truck and sat silently on either side of it, their hands resting motionlessly on the top of the coffin.
    Ben and the other man crawled into the cab of the truck.
    ‘Name’s Thompson,’ the man said as he started the engine. ‘Lamar Thompson.’
    ‘Ben Well man.’
    Thompson eased the truck forward, moving slowly toward the avenue and then out into it.
    ‘You some kind of preacher or something?’ he asked when he brought the truck to a halt at the first traffic signal.
    ‘No,’ Ben said, ‘I’m with the Police Department.’
    Thompson smiled. ‘I figured you might be coming along to say a few words over the body. I thought maybe the state provided something like that.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Want me to do it then?’ Thompson asked immediately.
    ‘If you want to,’ Ben said indifferently.
    ‘You got any idea what this child was?’
    ‘She was a Negro,’ Ben told him.
    ‘I figured that,’ Thompson said. ‘They don’t bury white people in Gracehill. But what about her religion?’
    ‘I don’t know anything about that.’
    ‘Well, I’m a Primitive Baptist, myself,’ Thompson said. ‘You know, an old foot-washing Baptist, what you might say.’ He smiled softly. ‘With us, it don’t matter what this child was, because in the end, she was, what you might say, a child of God.’ He pulled a red handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his neck vigorously. ‘So what I mean is, well, I could say a few simple things over her, if that’s all right with you.’
    ‘It’s all right with me,’ Ben said. He kept his eyes straight ahead, peering out into the deepening night as the truck moved shakily alongside Kelly Ingram Park and then on ahead into the Negro district. To his right, a string of poolhalls stretched out for nearly a block. A soft green light glowed behind their painted windows, and he could imagine the people inside, lined up along the wall in small wooden chairs or bunched over the tables, their bright, gleaming eyes following the flight of the balls.
    ‘How long you been a policeman?’ Thompson asked after a while.
    Ben drew in a deep breath. ‘Long time.’
    ‘I’ve worked with the Highway Department for a long time, too,’ Thompson said cheerfully. ‘It’s rough in the summer. You spread that steaming black tar all over everything. It steams right up in your face. You blow your nose when you get home from work, it looks like you’re blowing coal soot out of your head.’
    Ben nodded slowly, but said nothing. He could hear the jukeboxes humming noisily in the night air, loud, pulsing, rhythmic, as if they were being played to warn off an approaching danger.
    ‘I used to think about doing something else,’ Thompson went on, ‘but by the time I got to thinking real serious about that, I was near to forty, with three kids and a big car payment.’ He hit the brake suddenly to avoid a small dog, and the