Dark River Road by Virginia Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

strips of dry pine doused with gasoline. The cross-piece had been nailed on and come loose, and Chantry kicked the thing down so that it lay flat on the ground. Tufts of dry grass burned, but Dempsey used a garden hose to wet everything down.
    For a moment neither one of them said anything. Then Chantry looked up to see Tansy standing on the front porch in her pajamas. She had her arms crossed over her chest like she was cold, but it was a hot night even without the fire. There was a look on her face like she’d had when her mama died. Desolation, disbelief.
    “Go on back inside, baby,” Dempsey said gently, and after another look at the still smoldering cross making charred marks in the grass, she turned around without a word and went back inside.
    “Chris Quinton did this,” Chantry said quietly, and Dempsey shrugged.
    “It don’t matter who did it.”
    “It matters to me.”
    Dempsey looked at him with a faint smile. “There was a time not so long ago when men would have come with a rope and I’d be hanging from a tree limb. No one would’ve done much about that, either.”
    Chantry looked at him for a minute. Dempsey had a weary look in his eyes, like a man who’s seen things he didn’t want to, and never wanted to see again. It made him think about the whispers he’d heard at times, men disappearing if they’d crossed old man Quinton or any other white man. Chantry had always figured they’d just run away. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe some of those men had disappeared forever.
    Then he remembered something else he’d heard. “Is that what happened to your daddy?” he asked.
    Dempsey turned around and went to cut off the water still spraying from the hose. It was easy to see him in the moonlight, his sleeveless white tee shirt and his boxers sticking out in the soft gloom next to the house. Old boards creaked when he went up onto the porch, and Chantry saw the flare of a match as he lit up the old pipe he kept out there next to his bent willow rocker chair.
    It was true. Even without Dempsey saying anything, he knew it. He went up on the steps and sat down. Familiar night sounds settled around them. Crickets, bullfrogs, hoot owls. A dog barked, sounding pretty far off, and another closer answered it. The rich smell of tobacco smoke drifted on the night breeze, mixing with raw earth and the acrid reminder of ignorance and hate.
    “It was a lot different back then than it is now,” Dempsey said. “Lawmen looked the other way.”
    “They still do.”
    “Not like back then. Not nothing like back when I was a boy.” The willow rocker creaked a little with a shift of his weight. “Things were a lot different then. This ain’t the first cross I’ve seen burned. This was just kids. It’s a lot different when it’s grown men.”
    “We studied the civil rights movement that went on in the fifties and sixties,” Chantry said after a moment. “This is the eighties. I thought all that was done with.”
    Dempsey’s chair creaked a little louder. “Some things don’t never get done with, and that’s a fact. Not as long as there are people willin’ to hate for no good reason. Not as long as there are men with things to hide. Those men are the most dangerous, Chantry, because they’re scared. Don’t ever underestimate a man with something to hide.”
    “You mean old man Quinton, don’t you. What’s he got to hide?”
    Dempsey didn’t answer. And somehow, that was answer enough. Chantry got a sick feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. He thought about rumors of missing men and burning crosses and hanging bodies, and knew Bert Quinton had to be a part of it all.
    “I don’t want him to get away with it,” Chantry said fiercely.
    “Boy, there’s lots of laws, but the only one I’m sure nobody can ever escape is the law of retribution. Things have a way of coming back on people. Sometimes, just like they did it to others. Let God take the vengeance, Chantry. He’s much better at it and He