Chapter 35

"Darvin!" Cecelia said, in that whiplash of a voice that never fails to get my attention. I stopped – and only then realized that I'd been moving to get out of my chair.

She made sure I was going to stay put, and then turned her attention back to Clinch. "I see that you have decided to tell the honest truth. You think of me as – well, I shall not say the word, since I am a civilized woman. It must have fretted you to have me show up and sing."

"You people got your own singings. Stick to them."

"I am a human being."

"You're a nigger – a darkie, a coon, a..." He tapered off, almost sputtering in his outrage.

"I am a woman – a human being, just as you are. Oh, I know you dislike that fact," Cecelia said as he began to protest, "but you cannot possibly prove otherwise." She paused for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice again carried that sharp note of command which had stopped me cold. "Did you begin this whole affair?"

"Yeah. And so what? If you people can't keep to your own kind we's got to keep you there. And that nigger lover over there," he said, meaning me though he didn't point or look at me, "bringing you and that mulatto kid into our singing – what did you expect me to do?"

"I did not know you then, and I expected nothing more from you than ordinary respect and courtesy. I perceive now that you are incapable of giving them."

We were all quiet then. For Cecelia and me, it was the end of it all – we knew where it had started, and we had enough to go to the cops. But for Coop, it turned out, there was more.

He said after the long pause, "Silas, I can't make you do anything. I'm just the guy who pretty much organizes things. But if you come to another singing, ever again, I'm going to stand up in the square and tell everyone all about you. And I think that you'll find that afterward no one will want to sing with you anymore."

From the look on Clinch's face I could see that he knew it. There might still be people who'll burn crosses if they get the chance, but things aren't the way they used to be. Most of the white people around Leanna, sacred harp singers or not, even if they didn't associate much with blacks and were happy that way, wouldn't stand for outright persecution or unequal treatment.

"One more thing," I said, the first thing I'd said in a while. "Either you pick up that phone and call the cops and tell 'em, or I'll call. You can turn yourself in, or the cops can come looking for you. It's your choice – and you know, I really hope you decide to do it the hard way. I'd just love for 'em to take you outta here in cuffs, with everyone lookin' on."

Clinch went pale. "I can't do that."

"All right. I can." And I reached for my phone.

"No! Please, don't!"

"You ain't got an infinite number of choices here, boy," I said. "You got exactly two. Make up your mind now, or you'll lose all choice in the matter."

As though he were forcing his hand to move against a strong man trying to hold him back, Clinch reached for the phone. He probably wouldn't have thought of it in those terms, but it was his destruction – and he was choosing to do it himself rather than letting me do it to him.

Actually that wasn't quite right. He'd made the fatal decision when he'd chosen to let his hatred of blacks move him to stir up trouble. Rather than keep his mouth shut and let a black woman and a half black girl sing at Hope, he'd made a phone call, and set in motion a series of events that led to a burning cross. It was Clinch's choice that had me sitting in his living room watching him dial the number. He had made his choice, and I was just the man who'd shoved his face in the consequences.

After he'd spoken to the police, and agreed to turn himself in the next morning – where, I was sure, they'd get all the names out of him – he looked at me bitterly. "You've ruint my life," he said.

"When you make decisions, when you do things," I told him, "there are consequences. If you put your hand on a hot stove you're gonna get burned. They ain't no other way it can be. You put your hand on a stove this time, Clinch, and blamin' me for the stove bein' hot, or for you layin' your hand on it, is just stupid." And I got up and walked out. I didn't know whether Cecelia or Coop were behind me – I just knew that I'd said all I had to say, and wanted out of there.

After we dropped Coop back at his house, I just drove around aimlessly for a while. Cecelia stared out the window, and I wasn't sure she saw anything or even realized what I was doing – which says a lot about how much she had on her mind. She observes the way Watson didn't and Holmes did. It's one of the things that's made her such a good detective – about as good as I am, I think, though I've been at it a lot longer.

Finally she stirred and said, "Darvin, I am not at all sure I like having my sleeves rolled up."

"Why not?"

"For all his insults, that Clinch person's eyes roamed all over me the entire time we were there."