Lynching - Annick Press

Copyright Annick Press 2012
you’ve been telling him about folks.”
“It’s a shame about your mill,” Tom says. “I hope
nothing else bad happens to you.” He turns to Pete.
“C’mon,” he says. “There’s a bad smell around here,
like dirty Indians.”
“Or dirty Indian lovers.”
“Same thing.”
Tom and Pete step out of the bush and amble away
toward the trail, like they’re out for an evening stroll.
“Pete!” I call. Tom keeps walking, but Pete turns
back to me. “What did you do to Gypsy?”
In the light from his lantern, I can see him lose his
cocky look. For a second I see the old Pete, my friend.
He knew Gyp from when she was a pup. When we
were boys, we used to take our dogs with us when we
went hunting for rabbits and the like.
“It weren’t me,” he says. For a second he seems
broken up, then in a flash he gets angry. “You were
there that night, George,” he tells me. “It was your
idea to follow them. You were part of it. Don’t make
like you wasn’t.”
I stare at him wishing with all my might that I
could find some reason why he’s wrong, why he had
more to do with the lynching than I did, why he’s
guilty of taking a boy’s life and I’m innocent. But he
speaks the truth. I’ve got blood on my hands, same as
him. The only difference between us is that I’m sorry
for what happened. What use is that to Louie Sam?
Pete looks like he wants to say something more, but
instead he just shrugs and follows Tom off down the
track. I watch them go. There’s no point in pretending
there’s something I can do about them. There’s no
point at all.
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