Accidental Desperados by Lee Lynch

Author:Lee Lynch [Lynch, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781635554830
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2021-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-one

July 1981

“They informed on you, MJ.”

“Hold your horses, Vonnie. Who informed on who?”

Jaudon and Berry had invited them over, and they were on their way. MJ had been looking forward to showing off the car she bought, but Vonnie barely commented as she dropped into her seat, her eyes on MJ.

“The Batsons. It’s no surprise, but I finally confirmed that’s who ratted her out to the cops.”

“They told the police Jaudon did more than rent out the store?”

“Oh, the whole county knows that,” said Vonnie. “Once the backwoods blabbermouths officially complained, the new county commissioner set the police on you all.”

“They’re shooting themselves in the feet.”

“Roy Jack is livid that Blacks are earning the money he thinks should be his.”

“That’s his problem, not yours.”

Vonnie tightened her lips.

“What?”

“I can’t believe you said that. It is my problem. It’s everyone’s problem. I thought you understood.”

“You’re going to have to spell this one out for me.” The car wasn’t air-conditioned, and Vonnie was fanning herself with her pretty but ineffectual hand. MJ worried that her ego chose this classic car, not her common sense.

“Racial hatred is a universal thing. Not that it’s a shocker to see it blatant in my relatives. Because Roy Jack isn’t the only one. Oh no, they sling hateful words in front of Vaughn and me without a second thought.”

“That I get. People put you down constantly because you’re you. And nobody tells you why.”

“I try to explain what their prejudice does to us, but I might as well be rapping them on the knuckles with dandelions. They go right on thinking what they think, never mind facts.”

“I run into plenty of Roy Jack types. I walk away. Not the most enlightening response.”

“Silence is no antidote for institutionalized racism. We can’t walk away from what’s in ourselves.”

“I am dead serious now. You mean to tell me I bought the same lies about Black people as that boy at the roller rink?”

“Beyond a doubt you have. And so have I. So have I.”

The monstrous thought that she was prejudiced shook her up. She parked in the Vickers’ rutted front yard, immobile, appalled. “What? How…There must be a way to undo how I think.”

“When you figure that out, let me know. It’ll save lives.”

All too soon Jaudon paraded over to the car, smiling and wagging a finger at them. “Take it inside, you two. You don’t want me accused of running a house of ill repute, do you? Gran and Berry are in there being mushy over reruns of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding.”

They followed, their moods restrained. Vonnie repeated her news.

“Which one talked?” asked Jaudon. Kajen leaped to drape herself around Jaudon’s neck.

Vonnie said, “Who else would they get to do it? Snitching spoils a man’s reputation. They told lies to Aunt Floxie until she was raring to spill the beans. Aunt Floxie’s the one who wears dangling cross earrings.”

“Pantywaists,” said Berry. “You and Vonnie inherited the last bits of gumption left on both sides of the Batson family.

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