Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

taking the chair which Papa had pulled close to his own, he opened his book, then looked up at Papa. Papa winked and Little Man smiled. He remained at Papa’s side the rest of the evening.
    *   *   *
    The days before the trial were long and filled with few thoughts other than what would happen to T.J. At school older students talked of little else. At home Mama and Papa tried to make the boys and me see that, most likely, the trial would change nothing. They did not want us to get our hopes up. Still, though I knew they believed what they told us, I couldn’t help but wish that a miracle would happen and T.J. would go free. After all, the Bible was always talking about miracles. I figured that if Daniel could get out of thelion’s den alive and Jonah could come up unharmed from the belly of a whale, then surely ole T.J. could get out of going to prison.
    T.J. consumed my mind. Each night I prayed long and hard asking God to save him, and once I was asleep, my dreams swept me back to the heat of the August night when T.J. had come pounding on our door and Stacey, Christopher-John, Little Man, and I had sneaked out into the thundering night to walk him home, only to deliver him into the hands of a mob ready to lynch him. Sometimes in those dreams I became T.J. and I awoke with a scream, shaking and unable to dispel the memory of the coarse rope binding my neck. Big Ma would hold me to her and Mama and Papa would come in from the next room, but I would not talk about the dreams. They were too real.
    I knew that Mama and Papa were worried about the boys and me. Sometimes I found them, and Big Ma and Mr. Morrison as well, watching us as if trying to read our thoughts. When they talked to us about what we could expect of the trial, about what could happen to T.J., we listened but said very little, for it seemed that everything had already been said. Of all of us, I believed that they worried most about Stacey. He was silent and moody and was always going off alone to the pond or the fields or the pasture. More than once I saw Papa or Mama staring after him when he went, but they said nothing to him. Once Mama had started to follow, but Papa held her back.
    “Ain’t nothin’ more we can say to him, sugar. What he gotta do is work it out in his own head how things are. He need us, he’ll come on back and talk.”
    Mama had conceded somewhat doubtfully to Papa and had not followed; but I had. I was worried about Stacey too. I knew that he was upset not only because of what was happeningto T.J., but because Mama and Papa were not allowing him to go to the trial. When I caught up with him, I tried to talk to him about it.
    “Boy, how come you mopin’ ’round like you are? Don’t it make sense to you how come Papa decided not to go to that trial?”
    Stacey didn’t answer.
    “And how come they ain’t gonna let you go either?”
    Stacey looked at me and turned away. There had been an old man’s sorrow in his eyes, and a deepening frown across his forehead which now seemed always to be there.
    “You know,” I said, “what happened to T.J., it ain’t your fault.”
    “Ah, I know that. It’s just that . . .”
    “What?”
    “I just keep thinking that . . . that maybe I should’ve tried more to talk some sense into him—”
    “Couldn’t nobody talk any sense into T.J. and you know it!” I exclaimed, not liking to see him this way. “T.J. was a fool, and if the truth was known most likely still is.”
    Stacey cast me a disapproving glance as if T.J.’s impending fate made it disrespectful to talk of him this way. But I didn’t care. It was the truth.
    Stacey shook his head at my outspokenness, then, dismissed it, and confided: “Little Willie’s talking ’bout going to the trial.”
    “Is?”
    Stacey nodded. “Clarence too.”
    I grew scared. “You—you ain’t thinkin’ ’bout disobeying Papa and trying to go?”
    He looked at me, his eyes searching mine to see if he could, trust me. I tried