Free Jump into the Sky by Shelley Pearsall Page B

bottle. I couldn’t even swallow my own spit right then. My arms felt as heavy as hundred-pound rocks. I couldn’t lift them.
    The man stepped closer and rammed the glass bottle at my chest. Grape soda splattered all over my good shirt and pants. “I said, drink it.”
    My hands shook so bad, the glass clattered against my teeth and soda spilled outta the corners of my mouth and ran down my neck, until there were rivers of purple spreading across the front of my shirt. It was all I could do not to gag as the bottle emptied with sickening slowness. I don’t know how old that soda was. The liquid at the bottom was thick and bitter-tasting.
    After every last drop was gone, the man told me to put the bottle on the counter. Slowly. And then step away from it.
    My right hand trembled as I set the bottle down and moved backward, willing it not to fall over.
    The man stepped closer. “You come walking through the front door of my store and ask me for anything again—next time, I’ll put a bullet in your head. You understand me?”
    I whispered that I did.
    “Didn’t hear you.”
    “Yes sir.”
    “You got three seconds to get your tail out that door, boy.” The gun waved sharply toward a propped-open back door. As I stumbled down the dark aisle, the man let loosea volley of words behind me. Words you use for dogs and inhuman things and anything worthless in the world—
    Even years later, I could still remember every single word he said as clearly as if they’d been burned into who I was that day. Long after the storekeeper was probably dead and gone, those terrible words never left me, and that’s the honest truth.
    When I finally reached the back door, I slammed it open and half fell into the desperate heat and sunshine. Beyond the store stretched an empty lot full of weeds and bricks, and I crossed it at a flat-out run. Somewhere behind me, the empty bottle cut through the air and shattered against a pile of bricks nearby, sending up a sharp rain of glass shards. I kept going, my feet pounding through sand and dust and glass, as I ran faster than I’d ever run in my life. Faster than Jesse Owens in the Olympics. Faster than the wind in Chicago. Faster than the train that had brought me south.
    I ran until the town disappeared, until the roads disappeared, until the people disappeared, and then I leaned over in somebody’s overgrown field, holding my aching stomach, and got sick all over the ground.

12. Captain Midnight and His Secret Squadron
    W hat I didn’t understand was what I’d done wrong. Like I said, I’m not one who gets bothered over much of anything. Sock me in the stomach and I don’t crack even a little. I was a good kid, most people said. Never tried to cause Aunt Odella or Granny or my daddy any trouble, although there were a few times I did. Stole a pickle from Hixson’s Grocery once—but it was on a dare from Archie and he ate it, not me. Busted the school fence during a game of pie tag. But nothing big.
    The storekeeper woulda killed me, given half the chance
.
    As I crouched in the field on my hands and knees, sick as a dog, ants crawling up my legs, flies buzzing around my face, hot sun beating down, that’s the thought that kept pounding inside my head.
He woulda killed me for nothing
. That’s the honest truth. Just for coming into his store and being the color I was.
    There was death in the newspaper all the time, butI’d never thought about one of those deaths being mine. I wasn’t a German or a Jap. All I’d asked for was a soda pop. Never imagined I could lose my life as quick and heartless as one of our soldiers in battle. But the look in that man’s eyes had been pure straight evil. Don’t think Hitler himself coulda looked any worse.
    With my head down and my elbows in the dirt, I felt like I’d been dropped straight into the middle of the war itself. It made me start thinking about Archie’s poor brother and how helpless it must feel to be lost behind enemy