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and their voice tones. From the steep descents surrounding me, the woman obviously claimed
the worst
.
    All the white men in Groveland got riled up about that and Sheriff Willis McCall deputized the whole bunch into a posse. The posse searched the county for the men who the papers called “the Groveland Four.” One man was shot “trying to escape,” but three others were caught and stood trial together.
    An all-white jury declared them guilty, sentencing two to The Chair and the other one, who was only fifteen, to Life in prison. When the N-double A-C-P got wind of it, their New York attorney, Mr. Thurgood Marshall, said the trial was unfair and filed an appeal. The Florida Supreme Court said the trial was fine, but Mr. Thurgood Marshall took the story all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court said it wasn’t fair
at all
, on account of the jury being all white men and the local newspaper getting everybody all riled up about it. Miz Lillian read us the part in
Time
magazine where Justice Robert Jackson said, “This is one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice I’ve ever seen.” So, now there’s to be a new trial for the two men on Death Row.
    “And don’t you bet Sheriff Willis McCall is fit to be tied about that!” Miz Lillian’s long, red-tipped fingers expertly flip the elastic cords off the pink and green curlers on my head.
    “Isn’t he some muckety-muck with the Klan in Lake County?” Miss Iris asked, wrist-deep in Miz Sooky Turnbull’s henna rinse.
    “Nuthin’ I heard about him’d surprise me a bit,” Miz Lillian replied.
    “I know some folks don’t think much of the Klan,” Miz Sooky, our across-the-street neighbor, called from the sink, “but as a
woman
, I have to say I sleep better knowin’ the Klan’s around to keep the Nigras from goin’
wild
.”
    In the mirror, my face flushed furious at Miz Sooky’s ignorance. Miz Sooky’s not a bad person. She really isn’t. She’s always doing nice neighborly things like bringing over fresh-baked banana bread or sharing home-grown tomatoes. But, like a lot of people around here, she’s got a gigantic, gaping
hole
in her head when it comes to Negroes. Fact is, never
once
in my life have I seen Miz Sooky that she hasn’t worked in some reference to what she calls their “dark danger to Southern womanhood.”
    Miz Lillian, who’s as smart as a whip, pursed her red lips at me in the mirror and together we shook our heads. Miss Iris made a face at Miz Sooky’s lumpy old sack-dressed body, reclined headless at the sink, her square-cut hands like turnips, spotted and gnarled from gardening without her gloves on.
As
if any man, besides old Mr. Fred, would want to bother your frumpy
old bones,
I thought.
    “Sooky?” Miz Lillian said, changing the subject firmly, “You bringin’ your sweet corn salad to dinner-on-the-grounds this Sunday?”
    Deacon Brass leans against the big oak tree like a scrawny stork, jacked up one-legged, perched on his heel. After a long, slow drag on his Pall Mall, he lifts his chin, blows smoke and drawls, to no one in particular, “Re-trial or not, those two boys are gonna
fry.
”
    And what about that murdering J. D. Bowman? Will he fry,
too? Or
, I want to scream at him, at all of them,
does Justice
wear a hood on top of a mask?
    Daddy, seeing my face, intercedes. Smooth as molasses, he asks, “Your mother ready, Roo?”
    I nod, mute, feeling the familiar catch in my throat, the pinch in my chest that comes from not being able to speak my mind.
    “Gentlemen,” Daddy says, throwing an arm around me that’s half warning, half comfort, and nods our goodbye to the men in the shade.

Chapter 6
    At four-thirty, Ren and I race to the brick-front post office at the end of our street. This is it, we’ve decided, one week to the day since Doto’s friend Blanche forwarded the notice that Mr. J. Edgar Hoover had received Daddy’s letter. This is the day we’ll receive