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“Put the gun down,” bellowed the deputy, looking nervously at his colleagues.
“And so does she!”
When the teen aimed his gun at Pearl, who was holding her dead husband, and started to pull the trigger, a hand grabbed a deputy’s gun and shot the teenager. He fell to the pavement, his blood spilling all over him from a gaping wound in his chest.
“Kenny!” screamed a voice.
Deputy Raymond LeRoy raced through the crowd, shoving people out of the way until he reached his dead boy. He stared down, helpless, and then dropped to his knees and clutched his son’s body in his arms. “Kenny,” sobbed the lawman. “No, boy, no.”
Jeff Lee handed the gun back to the deputy, who scowled at him.
“Why in the hell did you shoot him?” asked the man.
“Because he was going to shoot her,” Jeff barked. He pointed at Pearl Washington, who was now sprawled on top of her lifeless husband, crying her heart out. “Why the hell didn’t you shoot him?”
The furious lawman just shook his head.
DuBose looked frantically around as she heard the ambulance coming. That was when she saw Howard Pickett standing on the corner. With a smile, he made a gun with his right hand, pointed it directly at DuBose, and pulled the trigger. Then he turned and walked off, leaving behind the dead and the dying, and those who mourned them.
CHAPTER 92
NEARLY THREE MONTHS TO THE day after being shot, Jack Lee drove his Fiat slowly down the street to his parents’ house and parked out front.
The air was cooler and the sky held not a single cloud. Leaves were changing color and had started falling from trees. Jack liked this time of year. Things seemed to slow down and a person could get their bearings and think clearer.
He had been in the hospital for six weeks. Things had been touch and go for a while, as he had lost a lot of blood and the internal damage had been considerable. And then infections had set in, nearly killing him twice. After multiple operations he was sent for a lengthy stay in another facility, where he slowly regained his strength and relearned how to move his limbs.
His parents had been with him every day in the hospital. And for the first month of his rehabilitation they’d helped him to do his exercises hour after hour, until he had had to literally chase them out of the place.
He eased out of the car and stared back up at Ashby’s house. The man had died a month before, he had learned. Too much alcohol and not enough to live for, Jack reckoned. The house had been put up for sale, and he had heard a young couple with small children had a contract to buy it.
He had been unable to attend Jerome’s funeral, although his parents and brother had been there. It was a beautiful service, his mother had told him, with a large crowd in attendance.
“A lot of white folks were there, too,” she had added. “They didn’t know the family, but came to pay their respects.”
They also had told him that Miss Jessup had left her home on Tuxedo Boulevard and moved in with the widowed Pearl to help with the children.
He walked in the front door, half expecting to be hugged by Lucy and to hear her call out, “Momma, Daddy, it be Jack.” But there was no Lucy. Not anymore.
His brother came around the corner and gazed stoically at him. Jeff would be leaving in a few weeks. On his last visit to see Jack, Jeff had told him he was moving to England. He had gotten a job there with a large security firm to train its field personnel. He wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back.
He glanced at Jack’s surgically repaired shoulder. “How is it?”
Jack slowly moved his arm in a small circle. “I won’t be throwing any more touchdown passes, but I can wield a pen and carry my briefcase.” He added, “And I’m alive.”
“That was always the best test for me.”
“Christine?” asked Jack. He had not been paying attention to anything other than his long recovery and was anxious to know what had happened during that time.
“They didn’t charge her. Gordon, either. But Curtis and Walter Gates are both going to prison.”
“Nothing less than they deserved.”
“And Gordon and Christine bought Pearl a real nice house, and they’re paying her so she doesn’t have to work. And they have a tutor teaching her to read and write so she can get a good job one day. That was nice of them, wasn’t it?”
“Hell, Jeff, it was the absolute least they could do, considering what they did to that family.”
Jeff glanced down. “I guess you’re right.” He paused. “Nobody ever figured out why that boy shot Jerome.”
