Somebody grabs my wrist just as she and Lamar disappear through a group of old rednecks carrying hunting rifles. I try to yank my arm away, but the grip is surprisingly strong for a hand so small. I follow the skeletal arm it’s attached to up to the face of a woman who’s probably in her early forties but looks about fifteen years older. Everything about her is thin—her body, her skin, the limp blonde hair hanging around her sad, wrinkled face.
“Ms. McCartney?” she asks, a pair of familiar green eyes lighting up in recognition. “Oh my God, it is you!” She wraps her other hand around my forearm. “You saw my boy yesterday!”
Turning her head, she yells to a rough-looking crew of tattooed men and women behind her, “Y’all! It’s the reporter who interviewed my Wesson!”
Her what?
“Ms. McCartney, I’m Wesson Parker’s mama, Rhonda. I saw him on the TV yesterday, and I …”
Her face crumples in on itself, and tears spill down her cheeks as my mind struggles to process the words she just said.
Wes’s mama.
I never really thought of her as a real person before. More like a ghost. A part of Wes’s past that he didn’t like to talk about. All I know is that she was a drug addict who neglected her children to the point that Wes’s baby sister died of starvation, and she’s been in prison ever since.
But here she is, in the flesh. Wes got her eyes, her perfect nose. She must have been so beautiful once.
“You can’t let them kill my baby!” Her voice goes shrill as she clings to me for strength. “Please, Ms. McCartney! Please! You gotta help him! That’s my boy! My baby boy!”
Tears fill my own eyes as I watch the grandmother of my child beg for the life of her own son. Not only because I share her pain, but also because there’s someone else on this planet who loves him. He deserves all the love in the world.
“I’m trying to,” I say, not loud enough for anyone to hear over the crowd noise.
“I’m going to!” I shout, shifting my gaze from her to her terrifying group of friends.
They look like they all just got out of prison, which … I realize … they did.
“I’m going to rally everybody to help me, but I need to get to the middle of the crowd first.”
Rhonda’s eyes—Wes’s eyes—fill with hope. “Really?” She jerks my arm. “Really? Did y’all hear that?” she shouts over her shoulder. “Let’s get her to the clearing!”
Two big, burly men with facial tattoos and necks wider than my thighs step forward and, without so much as a hello, lift me onto their shoulders.
“Ahh!” I cling to their shaved heads as they push their way through the crowd like human bulldozers, the rest of the released prisoners pushing through behind them.
“Hey!”
“Watch out!”
“Ow!”
“Fuck you!”
Fistfights and shouting matches break out in the wake of my ex-con caravan as the clearing in the center of the crowd gets closer and closer.
The tops of Michelle’s and Lamar’s heads come into view, and I exhale. They made it. Lamar’s camera lens turns to face me, and the red light is already blinking as the bodybuilders barrel their way into the circular opening that has formed around Quint’s body.
Michelle is standing on one side of my blood-soaked friend while Lamar stands on the other, trying to keep a brave face.
Poor baby.
Michelle snaps her fingers at Lamar, instructing him to turn the camera toward her.
“This is Michelle Ling, reporting live from Plaza Park minutes before the Green Mile execution event is scheduled to begin. As you can see”—she does a spinning motion with her finger, instructing Lamar to turn the camera in a circle to get footage of the entire crowd—“quite a crowd has gathered here today to express their outrage over what many are calling ‘senseless, government-sanctioned murders’ and ‘public executions for profit.’”
Michelle gestures toward me, and Lamar takes the cue, unsteadily swinging the giant camera in my direction.
“I have our newest reporter, Ms. McCartney, here with the inside scoop on the allegations against Governor Steele and his controversial Green Mile event. Ms. McCartney, can you please tell us why today’s execution was rescheduled for this morning?”
I hear her question, but I don’t look into the camera, and I don’t climb down from my human throne. I don’t care about the people sitting at home. They can’t help me. The people I need to talk to are right here. Right now.
Sticking the microphone between my teeth, I cling to the stubbled heads of my helpers and slowly push myself to stand on their shoulders. They grab my ankles with their viselike hands, holding me perfectly still as I straighten my spine and look out over the park. Thousands of people have filled the space now, the tops of the saplings barely visible above their heads at the edge of the park. Riot cops line the perimeter, but they’re outnumbered a hundred to one. Anger and adrenaline rise off the crowd in waves as thick as steam. It’s a deadly powder keg of chaos.
And I’m holding a microphone shaped like a match.
While the crowd quiets to a hush, I scan the sea of faces for one to focus on. I think it will help me feel less nervous if I have one specific person to talk to. But I don’t find just one person. I find all the people.
Q and the runaways are front and center, horsing around like little kids. Brad has Not Brad on his shoulders, chicken-fighting Q, whose thighs are wrapped around Tiny Tim’s head. Loudmouth and the other runaways I never got a chance to meet are standing in front of them, cheering and trying to help Q win.
A sea of Bonys takes up the left half of the crowd. I pick out The Prez in his fur coat immediately as well as the kids from Pritchard Park who spray-painted our truck—I’d know
