“Mr. Wallace,” I muttered. My attempts at thanks came to a halt when he tucked a pistol into the back of his pants and started ripping up the floorboards to pull out hidden safes.
“Mail train runs through town at six p.m.,” Mr. Wallace said as he twisted a safe open and packed a bag full of money. Then he went and pulled back the curtain on the door to gaze out the window. Beams of fire reflected in his eyes. “God is outnumbered here,” he said somberly. “Greenwood will go down.”
“Go down? What? What do you mean?” All I had were questions, but seeing him go back to put more money into bags made me join in to help without a second thought.
After another few minutes, we were racing toward the back room with five strung up bags. Just as we were leaving, Mr. Wallace reached up on the shelf, grabbed the tin of grease and threw it into one of the money bags. Then he went to climb out the back window.
Each of our hands weighed down by the heft of the money, we darted away from town, across open land to where the woods began in a slope about a football field away. If we were fast, we could escape into the forest and disappear into the hills, but nothing would stop a bullet from hitting us on our way there.
The day was still here, the sun just tipping beneath the horizon, as we drifted out further.
I noticed in my periphery a white man chasing us from town, raising his rifle. Looking past the barrel, I saw a familiar face. He fired suddenly and the bullet cracked just above us.
“That’s him!” I screamed. “That’s the man who killed Pa!”
Mr. Wallace spun in front of me, and I crashed into his body. He wrapped me into his coat and fired his gun over my shoulder. Then he released me, and I turned, shaking and stunned by the sound. My father’s killer was lying still, face up to heaven, dirt twisting around his dead body like a desert wind trail.
“Come on,” Mr. Wallace said as I stared at the body.
He pulled me by the wrist and toward the woods.
We forged through the underbrush and fell under a canopy, where the ground became steeper. The forest air dewed my mouth like chilly water as we left behind the fire, the screaming, the gunshots.
Where the ground leveled out, I dropped to my hands and knees, dizzied by the smell of wet soil. “Th-th-they killed—” I said, breath hitching, my eyes squeezed shut. The world was this dreary carousel around me. “Everyone,” I panted. “They’re killing everyone.”
“Come on now. Get up,” Mr. Wallace ordered, his voice steady.
But what motivation did I have for that? Why not just melt into the mud?
“GET UP!” Mr. Wallace screamed, giving me a great scooping, which lifted me one hundred feet into the air.
For a moment the world shrank in perspective beneath me, and I was floating above the trees, as a universe unfolded behind my eyelids. I saw my grandparents seated in the sky, wearing necklaces of stars. Mama was there too, watching to see what I’d do—if I’d press on.
“Get up!”
Mr. Wallace’s voice pumped another rush of adrenaline through me. And I stood, and got to moving, like a puppet, as if someone else was controlling me.
It was strange to forge through the woods. I’d had nightmares of dying in a quiet forest for many years—Pa had always warned me about it, having my throat strung up by a Klansman where no one could hear my screams.
But now the forest was peaceful. The forest was safe.
As the trees thinned out again, a train whistled toward us. An engine groaned and a light came out, slowly at first. Then it burst through our bones with its speed, size, and strength. Big bucket cars rattled like giants were trapped inside them.
Mr. Wallace watched the train pass. He dizzily shook his head, as blood trickled down one side of his face. He’d been grazed by a bullet. He tucked his pistol away and handed me the two money bags he was carrying.
Gesturing to the train, which had come close to passing us, he said, “Go.” And when I didn’t move, he screamed, “I can’t jump a moving train! Go!”
I couldn’t go on without him though. What would I do without his wisdom to lead me?
I grabbed his forearm just before jumping up on a railing. We flew forward with the speed of the train, Mr. Wallace hanging off my arm, his body a loose limb. I stepped inside a train car and hoisted him in behind me. He clawed at the door handle until finally he found a grip to get inside.
We fell on a bed of newspaper and caught our breath. Mr. Wallace moaned like a whining hinge, rubbing his shoulder, which looked dislocated. The bone jutted forward like an awkward wing.
“I told you not to do that,” he rebuked.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said.
But I couldn’t leave him. I was not brave enough for the world yet. Not independent enough for adulthood. Barely sure of who I even was.
