The Lynching Tree Read online

  Before I went out, I heard him say, “You killed my little brother, you stupid, fucking nigger. That’s my brother on the ground.”

  102

  The moment before I fired, the moment the boy’s face emerged from the shadow and he lifted his arm, I knew it was Butras’ brother. I have a hard time making these events obey anything but the logic of nightmare, but now I know that before I shot, I saw it was Larry Butras, and he was turning, or reaching and there was a flash, and that I hit him below the right shoulder blade.

  This is how I spend my days, having second thoughts about the irrecoverable. Trying to explain it all to myself before I speak, before words. It will be impossible to say anything that matters.

  Did I believe he’d done the lynching, and that’s why I fired? Because I believed he’d gotten away with it, protected as a member of Butras’ family by men in the station who were simply doing justice for their city, who didn’t want Clarence Wilbourne around either? Did I fire because of the likeness, brother to brother? Like so much else, this is only a theory, a version of myself as avenger.

  If Butras had wanted to kill me, he could have as I lay on the frozen ground after his first shot. Does my living presence in this bed mean his firing was an accident?

  Perhaps I returned to Pompan searching for death. Why else had I come back? Why else was I a policeman?

  In the station in December, there was always a level of meaning I was hopeless to interpret. I listened to know what topics not to bring up. When I saw that no one in that station wanted to talk about the lynching, why didn’t I quit asking?

  The anger in me is gone; I am only afraid.

  I saw Captain Cuvin at the news conference on New Year’s Day: “Donald Gambell did what he was trained to do. He reacted to a situation in the way he was taught to react. If it had been me I would have done the same thing.”

  But would he have?

  I know nothing about Frank Butras’ whereabouts tonight although we spent the last month of nights together.

  In the dull heat of this mechanical bed, in this white room, I wait for the nurse to return. Where does pain go when it goes away?

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to Dr. C. Bright, Deborah Norman, and Jill Schlesinger for their advice on early drafts of this manuscript. Hester patiently read every version of this story and had me change a few thousand things. My work gets done because of her.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2000 by Michael Stein

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2847-9

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