Free Whiter Than Snow by Sandra Dallas

past doing anything.”
    Tears streaming down his face, Joe knelt down on the floor and raised his hands to heaven. “Please, Lord,” he begged.
    “Even the good God can’t do anything,” the doctor said, putting his coat back on. He started for the door, then turned to Joe. “I don’t suppose you got anything to pay me for my trouble.”
    Still on his knees, Joe looked up at the white man and asked, “How much?”
    “A dollar.”
    “I’ll bring it to you.” He laid his head on the bed beside Orange’s body and cried. Later that day, they buried Orange and the baby, a girl.
    Joe thrashed over in his mind about that doctor, let his feelings fester. He thought not to pay, but then the doctor would tell it about that Joe was shiftless, just like all the other Negroes. So after a few days, Joe took the money out of a can that was buried under the front steps of the house, a dollar in nickels and dimes and pennies, and that evening he walked into town and went to the back door of the doctor’s house. The woman was away, and the doctor himself answered, pushing open the screen. “What you want?” The man frowned at Joe.
    “I brung your money. You said a dollar.”
    Then a look of recognition crossed the white man’s face. “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t think you’d pay.”
    “I said I would.”
    He held out his hand. “What have you got for me? I charge white folks two dollars but Negroes only one.”
    Joe looked at the greedy hand and the smug look on the doctor’s face, and suddenly he could not control himself. The hurt from Orange’s death and the hatred that he had saved up since he was a boy welled up inside of him, and he could not stop it. He threw the money at the doctor, and before the white man could react, Joe said, “I got something else for you.” He made a fist with his hand and smashed the doctor in the face, knocking him to the stoop. “You killed my wife, who wasn’t any harm to you. You did it as sure as if you’d stuck a knife in her. You had your supper, and you let Orange die. I’ll kill you and go to hell and pay for it.” Joe stood over the man, ready to hit him again, to stomp on him. But for the first time in his life, he saw that a white man was afraid of him, and that was victory enough.
    He took a step backward, and then the awful realization of what he’d done hit him as surely as if the doctor had stood up and punched Joe in the stomach. He’d struck a white man, and he’d threatened to kill him. A lynch mob would come for him, just as it had for the teacher. Joe turned and ran home as fast as he could, dug up the money can again and emptied its contents into his hand. He filled a sack with corn bread and fatback and wrapped it in his second pair of overalls. He shoved his knife and his mouth harp into his pocket. Then after he went to the door to listen for the dogs and horses but heard nothing, he snatched up Jane’s extra dress and Orange’s old primer and added them to his pack. Not even stopping then to look around for anything he might have missed, he made for his parents’ house, where Jane was staying, and snatched up the girl. “We got to run,” he told his mother. “I’m a wicked fellow. I hit the doctor. He’ll be killing mad.”
    “I dread to see that, though he deserved it,” Ada replied. “Oh yes, that white man deserved a whipping.” Then she became aware that Joe had picked up Jane, and she said, “Leave the girl be. You can’t do for her. Besides, they catch her with you, they’ll string her up, too.”
    “They’ll do that if they find her here.”
    “We’ll hide her.”
    “I got nothing else. I’d as soon take a beating as leave her behind.”
    The old woman understood, and instead of protesting further, she asked, “Where are you going?”
    Joe shook his head. “As far away as ever I can get.”
    Ada looked around frantically for something to give her son, but all she saw was the stack of flapjacks she’d fried up for dinner.