“Not with me with you they won’t.”

Sunset heard her mouth say the right things, but she felt as if it were all a dream. She scratched a place behind her ear with the barrel of the.38.

“Missy, they ain’t gonna believe me. They ain’t gonna believe you.”

“They’ll believe me.”

“My cousin Jim, he just seen a white woman bending over in her yard, taking hanging clothes from a basket, and though there wasn’t nothing to see cause she had her clothes on and he was up on the road, a white man seen him look at her, and for that, the word got around and them Kluxers took Jim out and castrated him, poured turpentine on the cuts.”

“I tell you, it’ll be okay.”

“What’s your husband, Mr. Pete, gonna say?”

“He ain’t gonna say nothing, Uncle Riley. I blew his brains out.”

“Oh, my goodness.”

“Take me to my mother-in-law’s.”

“Sure you want to go to your mama-in-law’s?” Uncle Riley said.

“My daughter’s there. Ain’t got nowhere else to go.”

“Don’t know Miss Marilyn gonna take kindly to you shooting her boy.”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Oh, God, what is Karen going to think?”

“She surely loves her daddy.”

“She does.”

“They gonna castrate me and my boy.”

“No, they’re not. I’ll see to it. For heaven’s sake, Uncle Riley, I’ve known you all my life. Your wife helped deliver my baby.”

“White folks forget them things when they want to. And with this Depression on, people just meaner anyhow.”