take on responsibilities like he has.”
“Mrs. McGilly’s history of homosexuality doesn’t concern you?”
“She and Benny Jack seem to have a happy marriage. And even if Lily is a lesbian, I don’t see how it’s any of my bizness.”
“Well,” Hamilton said, sounding worried, “Mimi is a female child. Aren’t you concerned with the dangers of sexual molestation?”
“Why, Mr. Hamilton, I’ve got half a mind to wash your mouth out with soap! I raised three boys.
Do you think I messed with them just ’cause I like men?”
“Well, no, of course not —”
Jeanie stood up. “Mr. Hamilton, do you have any more questions for me? ’Cause I don’t want to waste another minute of my life talking to somebody as nasty-minded as you.”
For the first time today, Hamilton looked flustered. “Oh, no further questions.”
Big Ben McGilly also held his own on the stand. When Hamilton asked him his personal feelings about homosexuality, he paused a moment, then said, “It takes all kindsa people to make a world, Mr.
Hamilton. When I was in the army, I worked with black men, white men, Jewish men, straight men, and gay men ... and I never had a bit of trouble with a one of ’em. Seemed to me that’s how it oughta be, all different kindsa people working together for one cause.”
“But what about homosexuals who choose to raise children?”
Big Ben shrugged. “Hell, at least they choose it ... not like most people who lets their baser instincts get the best of them, and then just start spitting out young’uns by accident. I know your kind always wants to see kids brought up in a home where the mother and daddy’s married to each other ... and where they believe in God and the Bible.” Big Ben looked off in the distance for a moment. “Well, I grew up in a home like that ... for a while, anyway. My mother and daddy was married and went to church every Sunday. Trouble was, every Friday night Daddy went out and got drunk as a skunk, then come home and beat the hell outta Mama and me. She finally got a bellyful of his meanness and run him off with a shotgun.”
Lily thought of the shotgun in the back window of Granny McGilly’s pickup. She had had a feeling the old woman wouldn’t hesitate to use it, with cause.
“After Mama run Daddy off,” Big Ben continued, “we was even poorer than we’d been before.
But every day of my life was happier than when Daddy had been in the house. So what I’m saying, Mr.
Hamilton, is I started out in a family that looked the way you think families is supposed to look. But I was a whole lot happier when I ended up in one of them single-mother families your kind is always railing about.”
“I don’t see how that relates to my question, Mr. McGilly.”
“All I’m saying is that your way ain’t always the best way, Mr. Hamilton. Just ’cause somethin’
looks good from the outside, that don’t mean there ain’t somethin’ bad wrong on the inside. And you might not like the way homosexuals are on the outside, but that don’t mean some of them ain’t good people on the inside.”
“This is, of course, just your opinion, Mr. McGilly?”
