Between Black and White by Robert Bailey Page A

wanted and she’d be proud of it.” He paused, looking past Tom to nowhere in particular. “Then she told me she loved me for the first time.” Bo sighed. “Honestly, Professor, I think it was the first time since I was five years old that anyone had said those words to me. I mean . . . I knew that Uncle Booker and Aunt Mabel loved me, but they didn’t say it. And Booker T. and LaShell were kids. That’s just not something kids say to each other. I thought I must have misheard Jazz, so I leaned close to her and asked her to repeat what she had said. Then she took my face in both her hands and said, ‘I love you, Bocephus Haynes. I love you .’”
    A hush fell over the room as Tom gave the memory its proper respect. Finally, in a voice just above a whisper, Bo said, “I wish I could say that I hugged her and told her that I loved her too, but . . . I didn’t. I was scared, and I just stood there, my face blank. Like I’d just gotten off a roller coaster and was going to be sick. But Jazz . . . she didn’t act disappointed. She just smiled and whispered in my ear that her roommate was gone for the afternoon. Then she led me by the hand into her bedroom . . .”
    Bo leaned back in his chair, and his eyes met Tom’s. “I applied to law school the next week and . . . you pretty much know the rest.”
    “You were the best student I ever taught,” Tom said. Then, knowing it was time to move the conversation from memory lane to present day, Tom leaned his elbows on the table and squinted at his friend. “Bo, what specifically is the business you came back to Pulaski to finish?”
    Bo’s bloodred eyes blazed with fury. “To put Andy Walton and every one of the bastards that lynched my daddy in a prison cell.” He paused. “And to find out the real reason my father was killed.”

    For several seconds Tom said nothing, processing everything he’d just been told.
    Then, taking a deep breath, he asked the question he’d waited thirty minutes to ask. “What happened the night Andy Walton was killed, Bo?”
    “Honestly . . .” Bo began, shaking his head. “I’m not exactly sure. I . . .” He paused and looked at Tom. “It’s going to sound bad, Professor.”
    “I don’t care,” Tom said. “To be able to defend you, I have to know everything you remember.”
    Bo sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I went to Kathy’s Tavern on First Street, intending to get drunk and then go to the clearing.”
    “The clearing—”
    “Where my father was lynched,” Bo interrupted. “I go every year on the anniversary of his death.”
    “So what happened at Kathy’s?”
    Bo grimaced. Then he relayed his confrontation with Andy Walton and the conversation with Ms. Maggie afterward.
    When he was through, Tom let out a low whistle. “Jesus, why didn’t you just handwrite a confession?”
    Neither of them laughed.
    “You really quoted line and verse the ‘eye for an eye’ line from the Bible?”
    Bo nodded.
    “And then he’s found hanging from a noose on his farm from the exact tree where your father was lynched.”
    Again, Bo nodded. “The same limb, according to Ennis. I . . . had pointed it out to him on a number of prior occasions when I tried to get the sheriff’s department to reopen the investigation.”
    Tom pulled at his hair, trying not to despair but hearing the words of Helen Lewis play in his mind. Bo came back to Pulaski for revenge.
    “Bad, huh?” Bo asked, but Tom ignored him.
    “You said the four eyewitnesses to the confrontation were the bartender Cassie . . .”
    “Dugan,” Bo said, completing the sentence as Tom wrote the name down on a yellow legal pad. “The others were Clete Sartain—who was probably in the Klan with Andy, though I can’t confirm that—Andy’s wife, Ms. Maggie, and his brother-in-law, George Curtis.”
    Tom wrote each name on the pad, one under the other. “OK, that gives me a place to start. What happened after Kathy’s?”
    Bo shrugged.