The Last Road Home Read Free Page B

being with a river of fire shooting from his hand. He pointed back at Jesus. “ YOU ARE THE GOD OF PROMISES, I AM THE GOD OF TRUTH. ” I jerked awake shaking, and lay there until daybreak with the light on.
    * * *
    The following summer, after a morning of helping Mr. Wilson harvest tobacco, I sat at the dinner table with them. Grandma always told me never to take the last of anything when I was eating at somebody else’s house, so, as much as I wanted that chicken leg, I laid my fork and knife in my plate. “That was mighty good, Mrs. Wilson.”
    â€œGlad you liked it, Junebug.” Mrs. Wilson was a frail, fidgety woman with a sharp nose, and hair too white to be natural. She could never be still, constantly getting up to check to see if the coloreds eating at the outside bench needed something, or refilling Mr. Wilson’s tea glass.
    I pushed away from the table. “Think I’ll go sit on the porch swing until it’s time to go back to work.”
    â€œGood idea, Junebug, everybody needs to rest an hour.” Mr. Wilson reached for the chicken leg. His jaws were already full, puffed out like an ugly squirrel’s, but that didn’t stop him from packing in more. He’d always acted with kindness to Grandma and me, but over time, I’d come to have an inkling of distrust for him, nothing I could put my finger on, but it was there just the same. He’d stopped by the house yesterday to ask if I would help. Since I was broke as usual, the five dollars for a day of priming tobacco would come in good. Mr. Wilson was a short, thick-legged, red-faced man with a floppy face and a full head of straight black hair. He looked like he toted a five-pound sack of flour in his belly, made me wonder how he could see so as not to piss on his shoes.
    I put on my hat and went out the side door to the yard. Fancy was eating at the plank table with her momma, daddy, and the other half-dozen coloreds. I was curious why I hadn’t seen Lightning this morning at the tobacco field. I gave her the eye before walking around to the rear of the house.
    I settled into the wooden swing, shut my eyes, and laid my head against the top rail, pushing back and forth with my toes. A soft breeze stirred through the trees that shaded the yard. Jaybirds squawked at squirrels that chased each other up and down a giant oak, and noisy carpenter bees hunted for dead wood along the eave of the house. It was a good country band.
    Footsteps shuffled through the leaves. I pushed up my hat. “Hey, Fancy.”
    â€œHey.” She watched the ground as she walked.
    â€œIs Lightning sick?”
    â€œHe’s sick all right—sick in the head.” She had on a red cotton dress frayed at the hem, and wore pigtails tied with yellow strips of cloth. “He’s gone.”
    I stopped the swing. “Gone where?”
    Fancy sat down on the bottom step of the gray-painted plank porch, smoothing the dress under her legs. She let out a big sigh and shrugged her shoulders. “Took up with some migrant workers at Old Man Jackson’s place last week. They moved on and he went with ’em, said he needed to see something other than Chatham County before he died.” She used her big toe to mash piss ants that crawled along the ground.
    â€œWhat’d your momma and daddy say?” Maybe he’d got one of his mad spells and just decided he’d had enough of white folks.
    â€œWhat could they say?” Fancy scratched her foot where one of the ants bit her. “Lightning had made his mind up to go, so Daddy gave him a good pocketknife and told him to watch his self. Said he was nigh on a grown man and didn’t reckon it would do him harm to learn his way. I could tell it hurt Daddy, but he wouldn’t let on. Momma and me cried.”
    Lightning had always talked about seeing the world, so maybe this was his chance. “Did he say where they were headed?” The three of us had