the ribs. He cried out, hunched over. If he fought back, he was a dead man.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Officer Miller striding toward him, baton in hand. Levi knew the lights were about to go out, and he only hoped they’d come on again someday.
He heard a struggle and voices and thought Andre had done something foolish. When his vision cleared, he saw white lace before his eyes and thought they might be angel wings. If heaven was real, he was going to feel like a real ass when he got there.
“You touch him again and I’ll have your badges,” Tamara was saying before Levi could shut her up.
“Tamara, get back in the house.” Levi coughed hard between words.
“I’m not going anywhere.” She stood in front of him, between him and the officers, her hands on her hips with her chin high and her eyes on fire.
“Miss,” Officer Miller said. “You need to get—”
“That’s Mrs. Levi Shelby to you. That’s my husband. We are legally married. I know my mother sent y’all out here. Well, my mother has nothing more to do with me, and I have nothing to do with her. I’m a wife now, not a daughter. And when did the police ever have enough free time they can run errands for ladies with nothing better to do than cause trouble? Are y’all the marriage police?”
“Tamara, get back in the house right this minute,” Levi said, coming slowly to his feet.
“I’ll get in the house when they leave.” She took a step forward and Spears and Miller looked at each other. “I know you think Virginia Maddox is important. I know you think she’s rich. But she’s neither of those things. But I’m both. Red Thread belongs to me now that I’m married. I inherited everything. It’s mine. Not hers. She’s got nothing. No money. No power. You two are the lapdogs for a dead queen. Do I need to call Mayor Bond? My granddaddy was drinking buddies with Governor Hutchings. I’m sure they won’t be happy to hear that two police officers beat up the husband of the richest woman in Kentucky. What do you think the newspapers are going to say about it when word gets out? And you better believe it’s going to get out.”
Levi finally made it to his feet. He grabbed Tamara’s hand and pulled her back behind him where she belonged. He could tell she didn’t like it, but she stayed.
“You heard the lady,” Levi said. “She’s not lying. Everything is hers now that she’s married. You really want to lose your badges over some family drama?”
The officers didn’t look scared, but they didn’t look so smug or certain, either.
Officer Miller spoke first. “There’s been a misunderstanding. We were told Miss Maddox had been kidnapped and was being held against her will. Considering the circumstances, we believed her mother.”
“What circumstances?” Tamara demanded, spitting out the words.
“He means because you’re white and I’m not,” Levi said.
“You look pretty white to me,” Officer Miller said with a smile Levi wanted to slice off his face with a kitchen knife. “Guess looks can be deceiving.”
“My mother is out of her mind,” Tamara said.
“You oughta give her a call, young lady,” Officer Spears said. “Straighten this out before she misinforms anyone else.”
“I’ll call her the second you two drive away.” Tamara was at Levi’s side again. No keeping her behind him.
“Then we’ll be on our way.” Officer Miller tucked his baton back in his belt.
Without another word they ambled to their police cruiser, got inside and drove off. Levi dropped his head down onto the porch ledge and breathed through the last tremors of pain. He would be hurting for a couple days at least, but it could have been so much worse and that’s what scared him. Not the injuries he had, but the ones he could have had.
“Levi?” Andre’s voice penetrated through the haze of pain. “Why don’t you two come in the house, and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
“Coming,” he said, slowly straightening up.
When he reached for Tamara’s hand, he found it shaking. Every part of her was shaking.
“It’s fine, Rotten,” he said, pulling her against him, holding her head against his chest. “They’re gone.”
“They beat you up,” she whispered. “They can’t do that.”
“You married into a black family,” Levi said. “What did you think would happen?”
“Well, you married into the Maddox family. Stuff like that doesn’t happen to us.” Tamara tentatively touched the bleeding wound on his forehead. “They could have killed you,” she whispered.
“Yes, they could have killed me. Don’t ever forget that.”
Tamara stepped back, looked at him and up at Andre.
“If they’d killed you, I’d kill them,” she said, and the way she said it, Levi almost believed her.
“You would have had to stand in line, Miss Tamara,” Andre said and brought his hands around from his back. In his right hand he held a pistol pointed at the ground, a pistol he’d been concealing.
“Jesus Christ,” Levi said, almost collapsing under the weight of his relief that it hadn’t come to that.
“Behave yourself.” Andre glared down at him. “Your aunt will skin you alive if she hears you talking like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Tamara said, still staring up at Andre. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. My mother—”
“I told him to hear you out,” Andre said. “I didn’t tell him to marry you.”
“What was I thinking?” Levi asked.
“The better question is what was you thinking with?”
“We’re gonna have this conversation now? Are we?”
Andre’s eyebrow rose a little higher. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “No, we aren’t. You need a doctor, son?” Andre asked.
“I’ll make it,” Levi said. He took a heavy breath, rubbed the side of his chest.
“Come on,” Andre said. “Gloria will get supper for us.”
Andre left them alone in the backyard. Tamara brought her hands to his face again, searching out his wounds.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Nothing broken, only bruised.”
“You sure you don’t need a doctor?”
“I’m sure.”
“You can eat?”
“I can eat. But we’re not staying here. We need to get to a hotel or something where your mother can’t find us. This could have gone very bad. I can’t get Gloria and Andre in trouble.”
They should probably leave the state tonight. They could make it to Indiana or Ohio easy. Ohio cops would laugh it right off if Virginia Maddox told them to go fetch and carry for her.
“Can you handle a long drive?” Tamara asked. “A few hours tonight and then all day tomorrow?”
“Why?” he asked as he pulled himself together enough to walk up the porch steps and into the house.
“Because I told you I know a place where we can go. Somewhere nobody will find us. Somewhere no one will look,” Tamara said.
“Where is it?” he asked. Her eyes glinted like sunlight on water, ever changing. She didn’t smile.
“Do you trust me at all?”
“More than I did ten minutes ago.”
“Then trust me, we should go there.”
“Where is there?”
“A place my mother doesn’t even know exists.”
Levi nodded.
“Sounds like the best place on earth.”
15
Paris
“What aren’t you telling me?” Cooper McQueen asked.
“Why, whatever do you mean?” Paris looked wounded, innocent. He didn’t buy it for a second.
“There’s something you aren’t telling me that you should tell me, and you should tell me right now.”
“Mr. McQueen, what I’m not telling you could fill up a bourbon barrel.”
“I want to know who you are. I want to know why you’re really here.”
“Why do you think I’m telling you this story?”
“To torture me.”
&nb
sp; “Ah, well...” she said with a smile. “I suppose a girl can have more than one reason for keeping you up all night.” She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee. “Are you scared?”
“Scared? Of you?”
“Of what I’m telling you? Are you scared of this story?”
“Should I be?”
“What’s your biggest fear?” she asked.
“Wasting my life,” he said, surprised the answer had come to him so readily. “What if everything I’ve done has been for nothing? What if all this—” he waved his hand to indicate the room, the house, the fortune he’d inherited and earned “—is worthless?”
“Well, then, yes,” she said, and he hated the smile she gave him. It was the smile of a woman winning a contest where he didn’t even know the rules and winner took all and loser lost everything. “You should be scared of this story.”
“Keep talking,” he said. “I’m not scared.”
“I’ll keep talking. Then you will be.”
16
Veritas
All Tamara told him was to drive south on I-95. And it wasn’t until three hours into the trip that she revealed they were heading to South Carolina.
“Of course we are,” he said.
“Is that bad?” she asked, pointing to the interstate sign. He knew they’d been heading south, but he hadn’t known they were going that south.
“You have any idea how much Klan is in the Carolinas?”
“The Klan? Like the KKK?”
“You know any other Klan?”
“I didn’t...” She looked at him, panic-stricken. He laughed again, not quite with her, but not at her, either.
“It’s all right. I mean, it’s not right, but there’s Klan in Kentucky, too. But do me a favor and don’t tell anybody your husband’s passing, and I should make it out with my head still attached to my spine.”
“It’s 1980, not 1880.”
“It’s not 1980 down here. Trust me. Time passes a lot slower down here.” The sad thing was black people were the only people he trusted and yet they were the people he’d have to avoid lest someone pick up on the truth of him and Tamara. But what was the truth? The one-drop rule had never made any sense to him. If one drop of black blood made you black, why didn’t one drop of white blood make you white? And hadn’t anyone noticed yet that everybody’s blood was red? But such questions of logic didn’t occur to the sort of men who thought putting on white sheets, calling themselves wizards, of all the stupid ignorant things, and hanging black men from trees were appropriate Christian activities akin to church potlucks and baptizing sinners in the river.
“If it helps, there aren’t any people where we’re going,” Tamara said.
“What is this place? A desert island?”
“It’s not a desert,” she said.
“But it is an island?” Levi asked.
“It is. A pretty one where we can be alone and hide out. Nobody will bother us.”
“Sounds like Fantasy Island. Is some little guy going to greet us and offer to make our dreams come true?”
“I thought I already did that for you,” Tamara said. “Your own stables. Your own horses. You remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said, trying not to sigh.
Good dream if it did come true. He only hoped he’d live long enough to enjoy it.
Levi didn’t tell Tamara he was too hurt to sleep, so he drove on through the night, using the pain in his ribs to keep himself awake. At about four in the morning he was worn-out enough to sleep. He pulled over at a rest stop, locked the doors, rolled up the windows and lay back to rest a couple hours.
Dawn and his bladder woke him up too soon, and he found Tamara lying on her side in the fetal position, her naked feet pressed against his thigh. She looked too young in this light, like a half-grown kid using his suit jacket for a makeshift pillow with her skinny knees pulled up against her chest.
Levi rubbed her bare leg gently and whispered Tamara’s name.
“Levi?” she said, her eyes still closed.
“I’m about to start driving again. You better run to the bathroom if you need it.”
“I don’t need it.” She closed her eyes again and seemed to drift back to sleep. But then she spoke again.
“Levi?”
“What is it?”
“Thanks for marrying me.”
Levi only looked at her a moment, at his little girl half-asleep and all out of her mind.
“You’re welcome, Rotten.”
“Were you scared?” she asked, still sounding like she hadn’t woken up yet.
“When?”
“When those cops beat you up.”
“Nah. I kind of liked it. Getting the shit kicked out of me for messing around with a white girl? Most black I ever felt. I should get some kind of merit badge or certificate of authenticity now.”
“You’re joking. I know you didn’t like it.”
“Yeah, I know, too.” Levi tried to swallow the fear. It stuck in his throat. “I make jokes when I’m scared.”
“You make jokes all the time.”
“I’m scared all the time.”
“I’ll protect you,” Tamara said. He would have teased her, except the way she said it...he almost believed her.
“I bet you will,” he said, and Tamara didn’t answer. She’d fallen back to sleep.
Levi drove for a couple hours until they took a long stop in Asheville, North Carolina, for lunch and clothes shopping for Tamara. She hadn’t packed a suitcase, had nothing on her but the clothes on her back and her purse full of money—two thousand dollars in cash. That made him nervous, but he’d be more nervous if she hadn’t had it. Levi didn’t buy anything. He always kept a few changes of clothes and a spare pair of boots at Andre and Gloria’s and he’d brought all that with him in Andre’s old army duffel. It wasn’t much of a honeymoon they were on, but it wasn’t much of a marriage, either.
“Look at that,” Tamara said.
Levi glanced out the window. A Confederate flag, the old stars and bars, hung proudly from the porch of a bleached wood shack with a tin roof.
“Told ya so,” Levi said.
Tamara shook her head and sighed. “Ignorant,” she said.
“That’s what Mom always said. She’d see something like that and pray, ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.’”
“A good prayer.”
“Yeah, but...they know what they do. They know.”
Levi hit the gas and drove on, getting as far away from the house and the flag as fast as he could. Not even a jet engine would be fast enough for him. Not even a rocket engine.
Tamara played navigator with the road atlas and directions on her lap. She did a good job because it wasn’t too long before they