Read Online Southern Gothic by Stuart Jaffe - Free Book Online Page A

outlived most, or if she had died from something unusual, we would know. Stories like that often made the papers, and they last a long time in a family. Especially a black family.”
    Leon pulled back. “What the heck’s that supposed to mean?”
    Max cocked his head to the side. “Really, Leon? You think I’m suddenly a racist?” Leon didn’t back down. “Fine. The majority of black people in America descend from slaves. The majority of slaves were not permitted to learn reading and writing. Couple that with the oral African traditions most of those slaves originally came with and the American black family became one of oral traditions. Entire family histories were shared through stories, not by writing it all down. Thus, if Miss Lilla had died or lived an unusual life, somebody would have made it part of the family history, and Sebastian would have known more on the subject than he told me.”
    Though still ruffled, Leon gave a single nod. “Okay, then. We’ve got a window of time to look into. It’s probably safe to assume she lived in or near Winston-Salem; otherwise, what was the point of hiring you?”
    “Maybe I’m really that good.”
    “You are good. But I don’t know about that good.”
    Max grinned. “Guess I’ll comb through the local papers from that time and see what turns up.”
    “We got most of it here on microfilm. Some’s been digitized, too. So you can run a few computer searches first. I want to go through some more of what we’ve got here.”
    “Thanks,” Max said and offered his hand. Leon accepted and as they shook, he chuckled. Max laughed. “I know. I’m nuts, but I appreciate you helping me out despite all that.”
    After an hour had passed sitting in front of the microfilm viewer, Max’s eyes burned and his neck had a crick in it. When he finally stumbled onto a reference to Miss Lilla, he had to read the article three times before he believed that he had not misread it. Each time through produced the same result — he had found her. He printed the article and rushed to find Leon.
    The KKK’s nightly activities had reached a fever pitch. Several papers had taken to writing regular articles about the hangings and burnings, and no matter how bad the state of twenty-four hour news often felt, the papers of the 19th century held little in check. Graphic photos of black bodies hanging from the trees accompanied most articles as well as lists of those who had gone unaccounted for. While reviewing those lists, Max had spotted the name Lilla one column over. He pointed it out to Leon.
    With a careful eye, Leon read over the article. Max observed his friend’s eye hover over the photograph. It depicted three bodies dangling from a tree while several white cloaked men stood and watched. One of the bodies looked particularly small.
    When Max had seen the photo the first time, he processed it as a bit of research, a moment in history — despicable, grotesque, but no different than any harsh image on a television show. Leon’s hesitation, however, drove the reality deep into Max’s chest. These were real people that had been hung.
    They might have been sleeping that night — parents and their child — when the glass windows shattered and the door broke down. Voices shouted at them as men rampaged into their home. Dressed like ghosts, they swarmed the sleeping family, dragged them outside, ignored their cries and pleas, assaulted them with kicks and punches, until the coarse ropes scraped their skin and lifted them into the air.
    “Why do you stay here?” Max asked.
    “What do you mean?” Leon asked, but they both knew what he had meant. “Where am I to go?”
    “North? West? Any place without such a history for hating black people.”
    Leon looked up at Max as if catching a man running down the street naked while singing the British national anthem. “White people hate black people all over this country. It’s better than it was back then, but the problem hasn’t gone