Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League. Jonathan Odell

ain’t said nothing about what happened.”

      “Shut up!” Billy Dean spat, low and harsh. He studied the child next to her. She wouldn’t have to tell nobody. The baby’s face would tell the deed.

      Billy Dean took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it into the car. The girl sat stock-still, clutching the boy, while the smell of scorched cloth filled the car. In the backseat, her brother made a move for the cigarette. Without turning around the girl said in a panicked voice, “Willie! Leave it be. Don’t do nothing.”

      He slowly eased back in the seat, his eyes not breaking from Billy Dean’s.

      When Furman returned with the hammer, Billy Dean took it and slapped the head into the palm of his hand. The baby started to whimper, yet his mother resisted looking down at him.

      Just then the screen creaked open and the girl’s father stepped onto the gallery carrying his sack of groceries. Seeing the two white men over by his daughter, he moved hurriedly toward the car. “Yes, Lord! Going to be a hot one, ain’t it?”

      The colored man opened the rear door and put the groceries in the backseat. “Too hot to be out of the shade for long,” he went on. “Nosuh. Maybe the good Lord send a little shower thisa way. Look like it’s coming up a cloud down off yonder.” He nodded toward the distant north, but didn’t take his eyes off the ball-peen hammer.

      “Yessuh. Be nice to get a little rain to cool things down. Settle the dust some.” He opened the door on the driver’s side and casually brushed the smoldering cigarette onto the ground. Then he removed his handkerchief from his coat pocket and laid it out over the burn.

      “Well, I best be getting on to home. You sirs have a fine day, now.” Tipping his hat to the men, the preacher pulled out into the road, departing faster than he had come.

      Furman spit. “Crazy preacher.” He grabbed a handful of flyers from off the truck seat and joined his nephew up on the gallery. He held one of the flyers flat against the gray weathered wood, right between a faded war bonds poster and the Garrett Snuff sign. Billy Dean hammered a nail into each of the four corners.

      Furman took a step back and said, “Looks just like you.”

      Billy Dean spun around. “Who looks like me?”

      His uncle nodded at the flyer. “Yore picture there. Good likeness, don’t you think?”

      He studied Furman for a moment and then turned back toward the flyer. “Yeah,” he said. “Reckon they caught me.”

      “Odds say you gone win that primary easy, Billy Dean.”

      “Better,” Billy Dean said darkly. “The Senator done had all my competition paid off or scared off.”

      “Aw, hit’s OK,” Furman reassured him. “The Senator only doing what’s best for his little girl. She gone be the wife of the next high sheriff if it costs him half his plantation.” Furman spit over the railing. “Boy, howdy, are you a lucky shit.”

      “Yeah, well,” Billy Dean said. “Everything’s got its price.”

      Furman put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. She ain’t that ugly. Anyway, you and Hertha’s young’uns probably take after our side of the family. Brister blood always wins out when it comes to looks.”

      “Seems to,” Billy Dean said under his breath, staring down the road.

       Chapter Four

       THE WAY OF THE MULE

      That morning up in Delphi, Hazel eased a plate down in front of Floyd. She took a step back.

      Her husband stared silent and unblinking at his fried eggs, goopy with the uncooked whites shimmering in the morning light, the bacon in ashes, and the toast soggy with butter in the center and burnt black around the edges.

      “You don’t have to eat it,” Hazel offered. “I’ll bury it in the backyard with last night’s supper.”

      “No, honey,” he stammered, “there might be something here I can—”

      “Just let me fix you anothern.” What she didn’t say was this was already her second halfhearted attempt this morning. The first had made her own stomach queasy, which was happening almost every time she cooked now.

      Floyd managed a weak smile and pushed the plate away. “Don’t worry about it, sugar. Slept too late. I’m in a hurry.”

      Her face clouded up. “On a Saturday? I thought you was going to take me driving today.” Hazel lived all week for their drives, just the two of them. She wouldn’t say so, but it took her back to those hope-filled days of catching rides with the route men.

      “Can’t. Big customer out in the Delta.” He looked at her hopefully. “Maybe you can have something fixed for me by suppertime.”

      She squeezed out a smile, yet inside Hazel bridled at the suggestion. Not that she would ever say it, but she couldn’t bear another minute in front of that stove. It was like somebody trying to hitch her up to a mule on plowing day. If she got good at it, she might never break out of her harness. She knew she should be ashamed of herself for thinking such thoughts. Floyd had saved her from all that.

      Her husband casually turned away from her and cast his gaze out the window, staring off into space again. Look at him, she thought. Already he was a million miles away from this kitchen and his bumbling housewife. Maybe he thought her ineptness cute, proud of being able to afford a wife who couldn’t keep a house.

      “Floyd? Sure I can’t fix you something?” she asked him. “Maybe some Cheerios or. . .Floyd!”

      He beamed a surprised smile and rose up from the table to give Hazel a hug. “You sure are pretty. Takes my hunger for food clean away.”

      She sighed in his arms. Exactly what she thought he would say. She remembered that day back in the hills when Hazel had asked her mother about “pretty.” “Forget about pretty,” she had told her daughter flatly. “Pretty can’t keep a husband. ’Cause pretty can’t cook and pretty can’t clean and pretty can’t raise children. And, girl, the biggest thing pretty can’t do is last.”

      “Floyd, what kind of wife am I to send you off to work without a decent breakfast?” she said, waiting for him to ease her guilt a bit more.

      “It don’t matter,” he assured her. “I love you anyway.”

      She knew he would say that, too. There had been a lot of those “anyways” lately. Like when she got up the courage to use the washing machine and then cracked most of his buttons feeding his shirts through the wringer. As he held her, she asked, “Floyd, how many ‘anyways’ reckon you got left in you?”

      “As many as the stars you got left in your eyes.”

      With all her heart she wanted to believe him, that he loved her no matter what and that his love would be enough to get them through a lifetime of bad cooking. But it still left her wondering, what did he want from her?

      Floyd must have been reading her mind. “We living in modern times. It’s nearly 1950 and you ain’t some farm wife who works herself into an ugly, wore-out nubbin of a woman. Anyhow, you don’t see any other white women around here doing for themselves. Just study on how to keep yourself the pretty and pampered wife of Delphi’s next rich man.”

      “We going to be rich?” Hazel asked, again knowing what he would say next, word for word.

      “If you can see it, you can be it,” Floyd said, reciting his favorite verse from the book of success sayings he kept by his side of the bed. “The way things are going, won’t be long before I can get you some regular colored help. It’s about time we took a step up.”

      She smiled sadly. “Floyd, you stepping so high now, I get a nosebleed looking up at you.”

      “Well,