Free The Year the Lights Came On by Terry Kay Page A

teaching on that Sunday afternoon. We had accepted The Lesson, and we did not realize it.
    *
    For several days, we were gentlemen beyond our training and inclination. Whenever we became tense, we instinctively moved into the physical presence of Wade Simmons, as though Wade Simmons were an incantation to deafen the hissing slurs we were receiving from the Highway 17 Gang.
    But on Friday afternoon of the following week, the unsteady peace ended.
    Delano Ford, prissy Delano Ford, called Betty Tully a “heifer.”
    Betty was not lean, but she did not waddle when she walked.
    Betty was Paul’s sister.
    Paul proceeded to inflict minor damage across prissy Delano Ford’s skull, and the rest of the Highway 17 Gang rushed to the scene like sharks after blood.
    Freeman and Wesley and Otis and Jack and I formed a circle around the two combatants.
    Dupree was astonished. He said to Freeman, “You mean you ain’t doin’ the fightin’ for Paul?”
    Freeman shook his head. His face was contorted in anguish. He looked like someone struggling with a terrible temptation.
    “I don’t believe it,” exclaimed Dupree.
    “Aw, shuttup, Dupree,” whined Freeman. “It—it just don’t seem right to pick on Delano.”
    “Why?” asked Sonny.
    “Well, you know. He’s got FDR’s name,” Freeman declared defensively. “Besides, he’s not big as a gnat.”
    “I don’t believe it,” Dupree repeated. “I just don’t believe it.”
    Freeman wrestled with the fury rising in him. “Shut up, Dupree. You don’t like Delano yourself. So what’s it to you?”
    “I just don’t believe it,” Dupree mumbled.

7
    “WELL, YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY: You can lead a mule to water, but you can’t make him drink none.”
    “Mules ain’t hims or hers, R. J. Mules are its.”
    “Well, that’s what they say.”
    “Yeah…”
    “Yeah. The tiger don’t change spots.”
    “Leopard, Otis. Tigers has got stripes.”
    “Yeah…”
    “You can’t teach a old dog new tricks.”
    “Yeah…”
    “You’d think somethin’ would’ve changed.”
    “Not, though.”
    “It’s easier to drive a camel through the eye of a needle than—than, uh, somethin’.”
    “That don’t make sense, Freeman.”
    “I forget how it goes. Old Preacher Bytheway’s always sayin’ it.”
    “Who?”
    “Preacher Bartholomew Bytheway.”
    “That’s the craziest name I ever heard.”
    “Preaches a tent meeting. Speaking-In-Tongues Traveling Tent Tabernacle. He’s crazy as his name. You oughta hear that fool.”
    “It’s easier to drive a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
    “Yeah, Wesley, that’s it. You got it. What’s the matter with that Highway 17 bunch, anyways?”
    “Nobody takes easy to change, Freeman.”
    *
    It was Sunday. Freeman and R. J. and Jack and Otis and Paul had appeared out of Black Pool Swamp after lunch and asked Wesley and me if we wanted to hit softball. We had played, but without enthusiasm, and finally we quit and stretched out on a quilt of pine needles and rested. The Highway 17 Gang was on everyone’s mind. They had become vicious in their determination to put us in our place after our bold assertion of equality. It was a response none of us had expected, and it was annoying.
    “I’ll tell you one thing,” Paul boasted, “I’m ready to do it all over again. Maybe it’ll take another lickin’.”
    “Aw, Paul, that’s crazy,” Wesley replied. “We had our say, and it got to ’em. They’re the ones who’re aggravated.”
    “Well, I tell you somethin’ else—it’s them that’s got to change, not us,” argued Paul.
    “That’s right,” I added.
    “Another thing, we catch anybody from us makin’ up to them, we got to beat somebody’s tail.” Paul was ranting.
    “That’s the truth,” Freeman said. “And, Wesley, you may be thinkin’ we ought to be forgiving and all that, but that’s not gonna happen. What goes for us, goes for you, too.”
    Wesley