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

there but me, he pushed them out and toward the side entrance. He didn’t say a word to me. I followed them, as he no doubt knew I would. Once outside I lit into him again.
    “Jeremy, how come ya done that, huh? How come ya went and pulled me like ya done?”
    Jeremy stopped and looked at me. “You—you jus’ shouldn’t’ve been drinking in there, Cassie.”
    “Whaddaya mean I shouldn’t’ve been drinking there? I was thirsty!”
    “I—I know, but—”
    “Other folks was drinking there—”
    “Yeah, but—”
    “Aw, you jus’ make me sick. I wasn’t even finished.”
    “I’m jus’ real sorry, Cassie, but—”
    “—You ole peckerwood!”
    Jeremy’s face paled as he stared at me through eyes that were a faded blue. Before he looked away, I saw the pain there.
    “Jeremy—”
    “Stacey,” he said, pointing up ahead and not letting me finish. “Here he come.”
    I looked around. Stacey was coming with Moe beside him. That he was furious was obvious.
    “Lord-a-mercy, Cassie, where’d y’all go off to?” he demanded, anger and relief both mixed in his face. “We been looking all over the place for y’all. Little Willie and Clarence even gone back up to the main road and here the trial is gettin’ started. Now where y’all been?”
    Jeremy answered for us. “They was in the courthouse, Stacey. Cassie, she . . . she was drinking the water and Christopher-John and Little Man, they was using the toilet.”
    Stacey’s face changed. He glanced anxiously from Jeremy to Christopher-John, Little Man, and me, then back to Jeremy. “Anybody see ’em?”
    Jeremy shook his head. “Don’t think so. I—I better be gettin’ back.” He turned to go, but as he did so, he looked at me. That awful pain was still there. Then he hurried up the courthouse steps, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walked. I had hurt him and I knew it. No matter how angry I was at him, I should never have called him what I had.Still, he had wronged me badly, pulling on me like he had, and I wasn’t about to forget it.
    “Stacey, you know what that doggone Jeremy done? He grabbed my arm like this here,” I said, replaying the scene by taking hold of Stacey’s upper arm, “and jus’ come jerking me ’way from that water and I wasn’t even finished—”
    Stacey pulled his arm from my grasp. “Jus’ hush up, Cassie. Hush up!” he snapped. “That water in there and them toilets, they belong to the white folks, and the white folks don’t want no colored folks using neither one. Somebody’d caught y’all, we’d be in a real mess of trouble. Papa say folks done got killed for less. Doggonit, I was afraid of this! Papa gonna wear us all out as it is. You think I want him worrying ’bout somethin’ a whole lot worse?”
    “But—”
    “Don’t wanna hear no buts! Y’all just stay next to me from now on, ya hear?” Little Man and Christopher-John stared up at Stacey in bewilderment. Moe looked on, his face sympathetic, his manner backing Stacey. “Ya hear?” Stacey repeated, demanding an answer.
    Little Man and Christopher-John gave him one, but I was too puzzled to answer. There was so much to learn, too much of it bad. Water was water, a toilet a toilet. Were the people crazy?
    Stacey seemed to read the question in my eyes for he nodded, the scowl of anger etching deeper into his face. “Let’s get on back,” he said and directed us toward the tree where the old man still sat. “T.J.’s in the courtroom.”

  3  
    From our perches in the trees which overlooked the courtroom, we could see T.J. sitting beside Mr. Jamison. He looked even skinnier than he had been when I had last seen him four months ago, and he seemed nervous, biting at his lower lip and jumping visibly at the sounds around him. As the proceedings began, he glanced back at his parents, then turned stiffly to face the prosecutor, Mr. Hadley Macabee.
    The first witness called was Mrs. Jim Lee Barnett. Her story was that she and her