I check my watch. Five past eight. Feels much later, but that’s good. I haven’t lost too much time.
I stand to go and try to think of how to handle these two. I bind their hands behind their backs with restraints that can’t be seen, and I’m not gentle about it. Teddy moans.
“I’m leaving,” I say. “When I close this door, count back from one hundred. I’ll do it too. When I get to one, I will release you both. If I ever see you again, I will not be so kind.” I turn to go.
“Evalene?” he calls, and all the hair on the back of my neck and the bottom of my scalp stand at attention. His slimy confidence is back, and I can’t imagine why or how. He should be scared out of his wits.
“There’s a question you should be asking me, and you haven’t asked it yet,” he taunts.
How dare he speak to me!
“Haven’t you wondered where lover boy is?”
My body goes cold. Since fallin’ into the nothing darkness, I’d only been worryin’ about my safety. Not Clay’s.
“I might know,” he says.
“What have you done?”
“Me? I haven’t done anything. I’ve been here with you. My friends on the other hand… I told ’em he’s just some dumb kid, but they’re not like me. They don’t much appreciate him having a big house and a nice car. They also don’t like him playin’ little tricks on his father’s customers just cuz they happen to be white. They think he’s gotten too big for his britches.”
I remove a shard from my purple-silver band, and instead of stabbin’ Virgil with it, I use it to slow everything down. To stay calm and focused and absorb every detail.
“Where is he, Virgil?”
Virgil shrugs. “Now I said I might know. But who knows anything for certain?”
To hell with stayin’ calm and cool. With a breath, I hurl Virgil up into the air, and his hard head bangs into the ceiling. I hold him. He ain’t goin’ nowhere.
“Jesus Christ,” Teddy hollers.
“Tell me, or I’ll show you what your intestines look like,” I say in a voice three octaves lower than I knew I could go.
The bastard tries to laugh, but he’s almost there. He’s almost attained absolute fear.
“Try the General’s Woods,” he finally says. I release him, and he falls to the floor with a thud. I bolt out into the street.
The General’s Woods. Not too too far, but I can’t possibly run there. I see a car comin’ and I try to flag it down, but it just zips past me. Seconds later, more headlights. This time, using all the strength I can muster, I force this one to pull over to me, and I hop in the front seat.
“What are you doin’? Get outta ma car!” an old lady yells at me.
“Sorry, ma’am, but this is an emergency. Don’t resist.” We speed away from the curb, her fussin’, not understandin’ why the car she’s driving no longer seems to be under her control.
Aches of all kinds, not just my head, are startin’ to talk to me from the far reaches of my body. I can’t listen to what they say. I can’t think. I can’t think about what just happened to me and how I am lucky to be alive. Can’t think.
I can feel, though, and I’m in pain and feel terror like I’ve never known, so I go back to my old neutralizin’ game to give my mind a task. Dashboard. Vinyl blend. Maroon. Glove compartment. I’m neutralizin’, which keeps me steady and blocks out the old lady bitchin’ next to me, and in this state, I have an unusual thought.
The General’s Woods. I’m pretty sure that the general to which that name refers is Wade Hampton III.
Virgil Hampton. Why didn’t I put it together before? They’re related. His ancestor was a wealthy slaveholder, Confederate general, and early KKK financial backer. As well as famous South Carolinian (these are our celebrities). We—all of us—just keep fightin’ the same battles in new eras with new faces each time. It’s never ending. Until the world changes in an unfathomable way, our kinda Jubilation ain’t never gonna die out.
When we’re close enough, I make her stop the car in the middle of the road, and I jump out and race off, down into the thick forest. I run, managin’ to keep myself from stumblin’ or rammin’ into a giant trunk. I run until I hear voices ahead.
I slow down so they don’t hear my steps, but I keep pushing toward them, and I see a flickering light through the trees. I follow the light and sounds down a steep incline and practically come tumbling down the hill to a clearing. Where there is a large bonfire. And next to it are five crackers, jokin’, drinkin’, and takin’ turns beatin’ Clay.
“NO!” I shout. They briefly go silent, and I need to focus on these fiends, but my eyes and heart go right to Clay and his swollen features, one eye shut, the other starin’ at me as his bleedin’ mouth forms the word “Evvie.”
Once their shock wears off, they laugh.
“And what you gonna do about it, li’l girl?” one of ’em asks me. “Flap them big lips?”
“I got somethin’ she can flap ’em on,” another one says. Him I throw straight up into a tree. The first one I just knock over with a thought, and the others go down like squirmin’ dominoes as I run to Clay.
I cradle him in my arms. “It’s gonna be okay,” I say, rockin’ him as the men holler and curse and try to resist my hold on ’em.
“Nigger witch!” one of ’em spits.
I’m dippin’ down low into my red-orange space, but I can’t hold ’em all. Not all at the same time. I don’t have enough strength, and my anger is compromised by my heartache for Clay.
I can’t do this. And more
