The Gold Cadillac Read Free

and we got separated from the rest of the family. We tried to find them but it was no use. We had to go on alone. We reached the Mississippi state line and soon after we heard a police siren. A police car came up behind us. My father slowed the Cadillac, then stopped. Two white policemen got out of their car. They eyeballed the Cadillac and told my father to get out.
    “Whose car is this, boy?” they asked.
    I saw anger in my father’s eyes. “It’s mine,” he said.
    “You’re a liar,” said one of the policemen. “You stole this car.”
    “Turn around, put your hands on top of that car and spread eagle,” said the other policeman.
    My father did as he was told. They searched him and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand either why they had called my father a liar and didn’t believe that the Cadillac was his. I wanted to ask but I remembered my father’s warning not to say a word and I obeyed that warning.

    The policemen told my father to get in the back of the police car. My father did. One policeman got back into the police car. The other policeman slid behind the wheel of our Cadillac. The police car started off. The Cadillac followed. Wilma and I looked at each other and at our mother. We didn’t know what to think. We were scared.
    The Cadillac followed the police car into a small town and stopped in front of the police station. The policeman stepped out of our Cadillac and took the keys. The other policeman took my father into the police station.
    “Mother-Dear!” Wilma and I cried. “What’re they going to do to our daddy? They going to hurt him?”
    “He’ll be all right,” said my mother. “He’ll be all right.” But she didn’t sound so sure of that. She seemed worried.
    We waited. More than three hours we waited. Finally my father came out of the police station. We had lots of questions to ask him. He said the police had given him a ticket for speeding and locked him up. But then the judge had come. My father had paid the ticket and they had let him go.
    He started the Cadillac and drove slowly out of the town, below the speed limit. The police car followed us. People standing on steps and sitting on porches and in front of stores stared at us as we passed. Finally we were out of the town. The police car still followed. Dusk was falling. The night grew black and finally the police car turned around and left us.
    We drove and drove. But my father was tired now and my grandparents’ farm was still far away. My father said he had to get some sleep and since my mother didn’t drive, he pulled into a grove of trees at the side of the road and stopped.
    “I’ll keep watch,” said my mother.
    “Wake me if you see anybody,” said my father.
    “Just rest,” said my mother.
    So my father slept. But that bothered me. I needed him awake. I was afraid of the dark and of the woods and of whatever lurked there. My father was the one who kept us safe, he and my uncles. But already the police had taken my father away from us once today and my uncles were lost.

    “Go to sleep, baby,” said my mother. “Go to sleep.”
    But I was afraid to sleep until my father woke. I had to help my mother keep watch. I figured I had to help protect us too, in case the police came back and tried to take my father away again. There was a long, sharp knife in the picnic basket and I took hold of it, clutching it tightly in my hand. Ready to strike, I sat there in the back of the car, eyes wide, searching the blackness outside the Cadillac. Wilma, for a while, searched the night too, then she fell asleep. I didn’t want to sleep, but soon I found I couldn’t help myself as an unwelcome drowsiness came over me. I had an uneasy sleep and when I woke it was dawn and my father was gently shaking me. I woke with a start and my hand went up, but the knife wasn’t there. My mother had it.
    My father took my hand. “Why were you holding the knife, ’lois?” he asked.
    I looked at him and at my mother.