Free Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) by Jesse Rev (FRW) Christopher; Jackson Mamie; Benson Till-Mobley Page B

river is exactly where a fish wants to be. That little thing just wriggled out of Bo’s hands and swam away. Bo fell back on the riverbank and he and Wheeler were left there with so much laughter. That, and a fish tale.
    Sometime during the summer Emmett turned six, I noticed something very odd. He always played hard and he played all the time. At least, he wanted to play all the time. First thing I saw when I got home from work was Emmett, ripping and running. Well, I thought when I got home it was time for him to come in. I figured he had been out most of the day. Naturally, he didn’t agree, and he would pitch a fit. By the time we settled him down inside, he would just completely deflate. That’s what was so odd to me, because Emmett always seemed to have unlimited energy. Mama blamed me for upsetting him by bringing him in. As far as she was concerned, this was just a childish reaction to me making Emmett do something he didn’t want to do. Within a couple of days, we started to realize there was a more serious problem. He would be active all day and then fall into this slump at night when I’d force him inside. But there was more. His temperature was beginning to soar at night.
    Strange. He seemed just fine during the day, then at night, he would fall into a slump; he would be so lethargic. And now, a high temperature. We couldn’t figure it out. I searched high and low to find fault, to find a place to lay blame. I mean, someone had to be blamed. Someone had to be responsible for this, whatever “this” was. My mother was the most responsible person I knew. So I blamed Mama. I thought she wasn’t paying enough attention. Bo would get up in the morning and want to get out right away, every day. She would just let him. He was only a baby, not even six years old. How could he really know what he wanted to do? Mama
told
me what to do. I had no choices. But she was so light on him, so lenient. As far as she was concerned, he could do no wrong. But something
was
wrong with this situation. Something was very wrong.
    We started using home remedies, rubbing him down with goose grease and serving him hoof tea. We set a lot of stock by this stuff. These remedies were supposed to cure a lot of things. I never knew why or how. I didn’t even know what kind of hoof came in that little box of hoof tea. All I knew was that we would wash it, then boil it, strain it, and the poor fellow would have to drink it. No sugar. Horrible taste. The goose grease was rubbed all over his body. I didn’t know what this was supposed to do, either. I just knew that all our folks from Mississippi used it. It might have been uncomfortable, but Emmett put up with the goose grease. At least he didn’t have to drink it.
    He wasn’t showing any improvement with our home remedies. In fact, he seemed to be getting worse. We finally decided we better call the doctor. This was when doctors would still make house calls. After examining Emmett, the doctor gave us the diagnosis that broke my heart: polio. I felt ill. Mama nearly collapsed. Polio was the worst thing that could happen to you back then. It didn’t kill you, but it could take your life away from you just the same. It was sneaky and it was controlling and it scared people nearly to death. But we didn’t have time to think about that right then. The doctor urged us to rush Emmett to the hospital immediately. We didn’t have a car at the time and couldn’t get anyone to drive us. We were desperate. A private ambulance even turned us down. Finally we were able to get Bo to the hospital in a police squad car.
    This was pure agony for me. We had no way of knowing what to expect. All we had was a vision of what might be in store. In those days, you would see the casualties everywhere. Children, mostly, in iron lungs because their own muscles had failed them. Wheelchair-bound children whose legs had shriveled, or with different forms of paralysis. And then there was my son. What was to become