Free Between Black and White by Robert Bailey Page A

here?”
    “The deal, Professor . . . is complicated.”
    “Tell me.”
    Bo kept his eyes fixed on the table and smiled. “You remember what I told you last year in Hazel Green about why I came back to Pulaski to practice?”
    “Unfinished business,” Tom said. “Your father was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, and you . . . saw it happen.” Tom paused. “You never told me the whole story.”
    “I will now,” Bo said, raising his head and looking at Tom with bloodshot eyes.

    “I was only five years old when they hung my daddy. We lived on Walton Farm. My momma worked at the Big House as a housemaid for Ms. Maggie, and my daddy worked the fields. Anyway, on the night of August 18, 1966 there was a big party to celebrate Ms. Maggie’s birthday. Momma was working late at the Big House, and I was home with Daddy. One second I was listening to the radio and throwing a baseball up in the air. Next thing I see these men—I’ve always said there were twenty of them, but it could’ve been ten or twelve. Things look bigger to a five-year-old. Anyway, you get the drift. They had the robes. The hoods. They burned a cross in the front yard and told my daddy to get out there or they would set the house on fire. Before he walked out the door, Daddy told me not to watch, but I didn’t listen. I followed them . . . and I saw it all.
    “They drug him about a half mile from the house to this clearing that had a pond that me and some of the other farmhands’ kids would swim in during the summer, encased in a large thicket of trees. They tied my daddy’s hands behind his back and put him on top of a horse and walked the horse over to one of the trees on the edge of the clearing. I swear, Professor, when I saw my daddy tied up, I wanted to run. I wanted to but . . . my feet wouldn’t move. You know that nightmare you have where you can’t move? I lived it. I watched those bastards wrap that rope around a tree branch and tie a noose around my daddy’s neck, and . . . I couldn’t move.
    “The leader of the men wore a red hood, and I recognized his voice. I had been around Andy Walton all my life, and I knew that the man under the red hood was Andy. Well, Andy says to my daddy—I’ll never forget it—he says, ‘Roosevelt, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan understand that you have laid your filthy nigger hands on a white woman.’” Bo mimicked the voice. “My daddy then spits in Andy’s face and says, ‘That ain’t what this is about. You and meboth know what this is really about,’but Andy punches him in the nose before he can say anything else. Then Andy whispered something in my daddy’s ear and kicked the horse.
    “I . . . I really can’t remember exactly what happened next. My feet started working when I saw Daddy hanging. All I remember is grasping at his legs, crying, and hearing those bastards laugh. Then I saw a boot coming at my face . . .” He paused, shaking his head. “Next thing I know I’m waking up by that clearing, and my daddy is gone. I see his clothes are down by the bank of the pond, so I dive in. I . . .” Bo’s voice had started to shake. “I . . . found his body . . . at the bottom of the pond.”
    Bo sighed, looking at Tom. “I told my momma everything that happened, but she was scared. She didn’t want to go to the police. Said they wouldn’t do nothing.” He paused. “She was right. When she wouldn’t go, I got my Uncle Booker, my momma’s brother, to drive me down to the sheriff’s office. The sheriff back then was a man named Hugh Packard. A friendly sort but bought and paid for by Andy Walton. He said he couldn’t prosecute anyone if I couldn’t say that I saw who it was. He laughed and said he’d be run out of town on a rail if he prosecuted Andy Walton ’cause a five-year-old boy recognized his voice. And besides, it looked like a clear case of drowning.” Bo shook his head. “And that’s what they ruled it. Drowning.”
    “What about your