Freedom Summer

By Kathleen S. Womack

Terrence Butler, Mississippi born and raised, is not really the nonviolent type, especially when it comes to this whole civil rights foolishness. Why talk when fighting's faster? In the summer of 1964, nineteen-year-old Terrence faces a crossroads: continue the expense of college or stay home to work for pennies sharecropping his folks' farm. When he ends up on the bad side of Earl Flynn, a one-time childhood friend turned deputy sheriff, his activist cousin offers him a third choice: working for a summer voting drive. Terrence reluctantly agrees.
During training, Terrence meets Daniel Fogel, a white boy from California, and immediately dismisses him as an idealistic fool. Over a week of classes and secret trysts, the two of them somehow manage to fall in love. The long, hot summer's progress is marred by brutality and murder, but more dangerous to Terrence is Deputy Flynn. He never stopped gunning for Terrence, and now he's added Daniel to his sights. On a dark country road in the dead of night, Terrence may find it impossible to stick to nonviolence. Some sacrifices are just too big.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350950847

Kathleen S. Womack

Kathleen S. Womack lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children. She studied journalism and currently works in the Superior Court system. Kathleen combined her training with a love of history and storytelling to produce a work of fiction that transports readers, directly and unflinchingly, into the events that transpired in those heady and hopeful days of 1964.

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Freedom Summer

©2024, Kathleen S. Womack

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 979-8-35095-083-0

ISBN eBook: 979-8-35095-084-7

To my family;

and to the veterans—living, dead, and yet to be born—

of civil rights movements everywhere.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part 1: Home

CHAPTER 01

CHAPTER 02

CHAPTER 03

CHAPTER 04

Part 2: Training

CHAPTER 05

CHAPTER 06

CHAPTER 07

CHAPTER 08

CHAPTER 09

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

Part 3: Summer

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

Part 4: Interlude

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

Part 5: Selma

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

Part 6: After

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

Part 7: Florida

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

Part 8: The Pond

CHAPTER 47

Epilogue

Prologue

Kemper County, Mississippi

Froggy went a’courtin’, he did ride!

Ter sings out as he runs, his bare feet slapping on the dirt lane. A hornytoad warming itself in the morning sunshine skitters a crooked zigzag to get out of his way.

Said, oh Miss Mousey, will you be my bride?

His feet sting from the cold but he knows he’ll warm up soon enough. ’Sides, he got no shoes to waste on playtime. Shoes is for serious business, Pa always says.

Then Ol’ Gray Cat et’ Miss Mousey up and Lily-White Duck had Mr. Frog for sup!

Yeah, those ain’t the exact words, but it don’t matter. Earl will sing it right, he always does. Ter’s best friend is a year older and knows lots more stuff.

Ter turns off the lane and dives through an alder hedge, startled katydids hopping high like leaves set free. He bursts into a chilly clearing roofed by the branches of a big old water oak. The tree grows along the creek at one end of a wide pool and stands taller than a church steeple.

This is the Flynn’s pond, Earl’s folks, and it’s Ter’s favorite place in the world, outside of his ma’s arms leastways. He jumps up to snag a waxy oak leaf as he runs and lands with a splat in the pondside mud. The musty smell of last year’s cow lilies fills the air. Earl and Ter know every inch of the pond’s sandy bottom and every nook and cranny of the oak-root maze that stretches into the water.

It’s early enough this morning that crawdads might still be awake and Ter peers past the pennywort, eager to report to Earl.

He’s not sure what Earl will want to do today, but their favorite game is Froggy Went a’Courting. Earl always plays Mr. Frog, and somehow he always talks Ter into playing the bride, Miss Mousey.

Ter puts up with it ’cause of all the fun blood and guts at the story’s end. And since Miss Mousey’s the first to go, eaten by Ol’ Gray Cat, Ter gets to play Lily-White Duck and chase Earl round and round the big oak. He always wins. He pounces on his friend, pins him down and makes him cry uncle. Earl laughs that Ter should play the Lily-White Duck and Ter laughs too. He don’t really know why it’s so funny, but if Earl thinks so, then Ter does too.

Ter can’t wait for summer, it’ll be just like last year, and the year before, and the year before: Earl and him, together all the day long. They’ll tramp down the dirt lanes, pick berries from the brambles, climb trees in the hickory woods, skinny-dip in the pond, and hunt crawdads round the roots of the water oak.

The joys of the Mississippi countryside go on forever, and so will Earl and Ter. They’re the best of friends.

Ter ducks back out from under the water oak and takes off again for Earl’s shack, running under the apple trees that line the lane.

When he gets to the Flynn’s, he finds Earl on the porch with a few of his brothers and cousins. But instead of jumping down to join him, Earl just stays where he is, just sits there and stares down at Ter from behind the rail. It’s mighty puzzling.

C’mon, Earl, whatcha waiting for? calls Ter.

My brothers say I don’t gotta play with you no more, says Earl.

That stumps Ter for a long second and he blinks at the odd look on his friend’s face. He gets himself squared away soon enough though, and says, "You never haff to play with me. We play ’cause it’s fun."

Now that seems like it stumps Earl, and he blinks. Then one of his brothers nudges him and Earl says, I’m ’leven now. It’s time for me to grow up and ’sociate with decent folk, folk who ain’t dirty and ignorant like y’all.

Ter don’t understand why Earl’s saying this, why he sounds like that—stiff, like the bad job some of the big kids done at the last school play. He can’t think what to say, what’s the perfect thing to say that’ll change Earl’s mind. All he can say is, I ain’t dirty and ignorant.

The brother sneers and nudges again, and Earl says, You a nigger.

That’s something Ter can’t deny, and he just stands there, mouth

hung open.

You are, declares Earl. And ain’t nothing more dirty and ignorant than that. Now, git!

What else can Ter do? He gets.

He turns, head low, stomach twisting like it done that time he ate too many hard peaches, and walks back down the lane under the apple trees. When a dirt clod hits the back of his head, he starts to run.

I don’t need you no more! is the last he hears from Earl, a shout that rises above the taunts of the rest of the Flynn clan.

Dead buds from an overnight frost litter the hard-packed earth, and they bruise and cut his bare feet as Ter runs away as fast as he can.

Part 1:

Home

Piney Creek, Mississippi—Meridian, Mississippi

Friday June 5, 1964

01

Terrence Butler woke and squinted as early morning sunlight slanted through the window screen. Just after dawn. Damn. No matter what time he went to sleep, he always woke early. Goddamn farmer’s boy.

He stretched and yawned, then rolled over to sit on the bedside, curling his toes on the worn wooden slats of the floor as he scrubbed at his hair. Ma had put him in his old room last night and he saw the other bed was empty, his brother John up on time for a change. The house was quiet now, but Terrence had a vague memory of the familiar clatter of breakfast in the Butler household merging into a dream of the Oakwood College dining hall.

He shivered a bit, then shook his head. He must’ve been spoiled by the college’s brick dormitory if the dawn air of early June in Mississippi could feel cold to him. In fairness though, the shack’s thin plank walls let the weather straight in, the house a furnace in the summer, an icebox in the winter.

Terrence pulled on a long-sleeved shirt, not sure what might need doing on the farm today, but stopped dead when he caught sight of his jeans on the floor and the muddy rip to one knee.

He swore through gritted teeth as he picked the pants up and poked a finger through the hole. Three dollars for a new pair of jeans.

The Greyhound bus he’d ridden home yesterday had dropped him off in the town of Piney Creek close to midnight. Terrence had bided his time in the back, waited for all the whites to exit before him, then slipped away through the bus station’s Colored section and melted into the night.

The ten or so miles to the farm didn’t really trouble him, he was used to walking, but it was dangerous, out in the open in the dark of night. He’d been in a hurry and had taken the risk of sticking to the main highway, a faster route than the checkerboard of dirt lanes that divided the county’s farms and fields. That was plain careless, and he’d paid for it sure enough.

A pickup had roared up over a rise so fast he hadn’t had time to hide before they saw him. He was lucky they only aimed the truck at him not a shotgun, lucky there were plenty of trees to dodge behind. Lucky only raucous laughter had chased him as he slipped and slid down an embankment.

He took a deep breath. When he reckoned he could move without giving in to the urge to punch his fist through a wall, he fished through the chifferobe for a pair of jeans that hadn’t been passed down to Sylvester yet. He found an old pair a couple inches too short maybe, but good enough for farmwork.

Terrence stuffed the torn pants in the bottom of his bag for now. He didn’t think Ma had noticed last night when she’d let him in the house. They’d barely done more than hug before she slapped him down to bed. Terrence bet he could sweet talk Mary into mending the tear. Not that he was any good at sweet talk, but it had been four months since he’d been home. That had to count for something.

Terrence paid a quick visit to the outhouse, cleaned up at the bucket at the back door, then came back to the home’s main room, half living area, half kitchen, with a wood burning stove on scrolled brass feet in one corner and a trestle table along the length.

No one was around but Ma left him a plate on the warm stove top covered by a crisp blue-check dishcloth, biscuits and eggs drowned in blackstrap molasses. His stomach growled. Ma knew just how he liked it and he wolfed it down. This was his first home-cooked meal in four months, and the yeasty smell of bread rising in Ma’s dough bucket didn’t help his will power any.

He’d just sopped up the last smear of syrup onto his biscuit when a little whirlwind flew through the front door, the screen banging behind her.

Ter! Louise cried. She launched herself into his arms. John just told me you home! Why didn’t you say nothing? Why didn’t Ma say nothing?

Terrence popped the biscuit into his mouth over the top of his sister’s head. Well, I didn’t say nothing ’cause I was asleep and I bet Ma didn’t say nothing ’cause she wanted you to eat, not fly around the house like a dingaling.

I’m not a dingaling!

Yeah, Lulu, ’cause Ma stopped you acting like one.

The eight-year-old punched him on the arm, an action he barely felt. Stop it, she commanded. C’mon outside, we in the cucumber field.

I gotta clean up. Don’t want a whupping from Ma for leaving dirty dishes on the table.

Right, I’d like to see Ma try and whup you. You about ten feet taller than her.

Like that would stop her, Terrence muttered.

After putting the kitchen to rights, Terrence and Louise went out to the porch. A passionflower vine coated the railing and eaves there, and the honey-warm scent of the bright red flowers was as welcome and familiar as the sight of the farm laid out before them. They went down the steps and passed into the sun’s full blast, the chill Terrence had felt upon waking very much in the past.

Mary, Sly! Ter’s here! Louise called.

The other two Young ’Uns looked up from where they crouched in the yard trying to stop up a hole in the bottom of a battered old pail with a thick wad of newspaper. They dropped the bucket with a bang and Sylvester tore over, slamming into Terrence. Mary was more sedate with her hugs, as befitted the serious young lady who considered herself her family’s second mother.

These three were the younger siblings of the family, Louise the youngest, Sylvester ten, and Mary thirteen. Terrence’s older brother John was first born and almost twenty-one now.

The Young ’Uns bombarded Terrence with questions as other farmhands came over, some of them as close as family, some of them actual family, cousins mostly.

Ter! What you learn? Sylvester asked. Can you teach us now?

Terrence shrugged. He straightened to his full six-foot-four height and lifted his arms, Louise hanging on one side and Sylvester on the other. When I ever been able to teach you anything?

You should’a been home yesterday, Mary said, arms akimbo in a fair imitation of their mother. We was expecting you. How far away is it to that college anyhow?

Terrence dropped his other two siblings to the ground with a loud huff and they sprawled, laughing. Pretty far.

Sylvester popped back up. Is the land the same there?

It’s still in Mississippi, fool, Terrence said.

I knew that.

Questions flew hard and fast from the little crowd that had gathered, and Terrence hid an uncomfortable fidget.

He was one of only a few local boys to go to college and everyone wanted to hear his stories, but he had little to say. At least little he wanted to say. He had mostly kept his head down in Oakwood. He’d stayed out of campus politics and concentrated on his agricultural studies. He’d sent letters home with the bare-bones facts of his days and nights, and he saw no need to repeat everything now.

C’mon, we can talk in the field, he said. Y’all fixin’ to pick cucumbers, right?

He grabbed the holey bucket Mary and Sylvester had been trying to fix and waded into the field of verdant green, the others on his heels. Cucumber vines were prickly and he was glad for his long sleeves. The vines were also fragile, and everyone stepped cautiously into the staked rows.

Terrence knew the perfect question to steer the conversation away from himself, and innocently asked, So, I miss anything while I was gone?

That set tongues to wagging and within minutes Terrence had caught up with more gossip than he ever cared to hear—had it shoved down his craw more like. Not really mean-spirited, it was just that folks loved to talk: who was going steady and who only thought they was going steady, who brought the same rock-hard cake to church service two weeks running, who sunk his pickup truck hood-high in the creek after indulging all day at Piney Creek’s juke joint.

Terrence let it wash over him. He never joined in. He was no good at talking. He just stuck to his work as he went down the row and picked the biggest cucumbers, the ones only good for hogslop. He let the Young ’Uns coming along behind him get credit for the prized small ones, the ones good for pickling.

Terrence straightened up with a frown at the far end of the row, bucket dangling from his fingers, his back to the yammering fieldhands. He wiped sweat from his eyes and looked over a fallow stretch of land that led down to the wooded banks of Byhalia Creek which ran along the western edge of the farm. The cucumber field was small this year, smaller even than last year when he’d told Pa to increase the acreage. Cucumbers could make almost as much money as cotton if you knew what you were doing.

He hunkered down and sunk a hand into soil moist with rain he could tell must have fallen sometime the day before. The soil was like the skin of the people who tilled it: dark, warm, alive. He let it crumble through his fingers.

He now knew the science behind this earth. After only one semester at Oakwood he understood that this soil, Black Belt soil, was fertile because of billions of tiny ancient sea critters. But did that science really matter? He grew up here, he knew this land, instinctively.

School had always come easy to him, understanding the facts and figures his classmates struggled with, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to swing the money to go back to Oakwood in the autumn. It had taken him all last year to scrape the funds together to start even mid-way through the school year. He’d worked his own little garden patch and hired himself out to other farms for extra cash.

We missed you in April. A voice came from behind as a shadow fell over him.

Terrence squinted up at his brother John, then stood and brushed dirt off his hand. He guessed John didn’t mean the sentiment personally, but simply that Pa could’ve used Terrence’s help with the planting. I’ll be here for harvest, he said.

Sure. Y’all can put your fancy know-how to work.

Terrence showed his teeth in a stiff imitation of John’s smile. Sure, he said, echoing John with an agreeable nod. He doubted John was jealous of Terrence’s schooling. His brother could’ve gone to college himself, if he’d wanted to, if he’d worked for it.

Terrence grabbed his bucket and they started on the next row. They picked their way down it, one on each side, falling effortlessly into work together. The two brothers were never what could be called friends, but they’d worked side by side for, well, all of Terrence’s nineteen years. People used to assume they were twins, until Terrence outstripped John in both height and build at the age of fifteen.

Terrence picked the good cucumbers this time. He ignored the chatter around him and gave all his attention to the task at hand, letting the sweat flow free in rivulets down his face. John meanwhile continued to jaw with the others as he went, taking his time, as if there was virtue in going slow.

The sun was high and the dew long gone when Terrence reached the end of the row minutes ahead of John. He waited as John finally finished and joined him. The two brothers took their buckets to the big tub of water used to keep the cucumbers fresh. Terrence slid the prized small pickling cukes in, then dumped the big ones in the hog trough. He had picked at least a dozen more than John.

John eyed his brother mildly as they walked back to the house. You have fun?

Ain’t here for fun. Here to work.

No law say you can’t do both.

They passed the kitchen garden and Ma came out the gate, nudging it closed with her hip, her apron full of tomatoes. She was headed to the kitchen. Breakfast was over, now it was time to start dinner, with supper following in due course. It was never ending, the labor required to run a farm.

Seeing her in the full morning sunlight Terrence thought she looked worn, more worn than the four months he’d been at Oakwood could account for. Was her old gingham dress a bit looser than before? He narrowed his eyes and asked abruptly, You been working for white folks?

He wished he could’ve snatched the words back when her eyes widened in surprise. Lord, Terrence James! What you be asking of your mother? But her face fell into familiar lines of good humor as she laughed.

Terrence leaned down to give her a hug, careful not to crush the tomatoes. Sorry, Ma, he said.

He wasn’t really sorry, though. Terrence had a good guess why he hadn’t been woken up earlier that morning. His mother didn’t want him going with Pa to Favreville, the town where the local farmers dropped off their cucumbers for pickling in the vats. Terrence had been forbidden to join those deliveries by his mother ever since the day he refused to yield the sidewalk to three white men when he was fifteen. It might not have been so bad except those were the men who owned the pickling warehouse. Pa had set things right, told them he’d whip Terrence once they got home. But Ma had sat up the next three nights running, convinced they would come for Terrence like they had for Emmett Till back in ’55, a fourteen-year-old boy lynched for giving a wolf whistle to a white woman.

Ma had occasionally worked as a maid in white households but not for years now, what with John and Terrence hiring themselves out as they’d gotten older. But Terrence’s college tuition was a stretch, and he vowed he wouldn’t go back if it meant Ma needed to pick up extra work.

A cloud of dust billowed toward them and Pa pulled up in his old Ranchero pickup, empty baskets and buckets from the morning’s first load of cucumbers bouncing around the flatbed. He parked and the engine rattled and coughed for a good long time after he turned it off. Obviously, no one had bothered to maintain the farm’s vehicles in Terrence’s absence. He aimed a glare at the oblivious John.

Pa got out of the truck cab and snugged his old fedora down over his gray hair. Welcome home, son, he said, coming over to give Terrence’s hand a warm shake.

Terrence had barely released his grip before demanding, Pa, why the cucumber field so small this year?

Pa’s smile was wiped clean off. He turned away, went to the rear of the truck, and began to unload the empty buckets and baskets. Why bother planting more? he said. Ain’t my land.

Terrence felt familiar sourness churning his stomach. This rich land they toiled over day in and day out didn’t belong to them, no matter how hard they worked. They were sharecroppers and would never see any real profit from their hard work, not unless they owned the land themselves.

Yeah, but we could try and earn enough extra money to make it your land, Terrence said, lending a hand to stack the containers.

Mr. Abbot’ll never sell to Coloreds.

Pa couldn’t truly know that, but Terrence changed his tack nonetheless. Okay, what about Mr. Drummond, up by the highway? He sold 200 acres to Jeb Dobson.

Don’t mean he’d sell to me.

Don’t mean he won’t.

Ma, no doubt alert to that tone in their voices, passed her load of tomatoes to Mary, shooed everyone else away, and drifted closer.

Pa planted himself in front of Terrence and crossed his arms. And that land was bad, never a profit from it.

It was bad, Terrence said, meeting his father’s eyes, until Jeb put it to work the way real farmers do. He’s getting a good yield now. Y’all could too if you even half tried.

Terrence knew he could make this land here work harder for them, but he wanted a farm to truly call his own. Oh, it could be his family’s farm, his father’s farm, that was all the same to him, but he wanted his own folks to prosper from it, not some fat white man.

Boy, I been farming my whole life, Pa said. I don’t need y’all telling me how to do it.

Terrence returned his father’s scowl. This was a replay of every argument he’d had with his pa since Terrence was old enough to know a planter from a reaper. Pa would just never listen. There were blacks who owned land, who made a decent profit. This wasn’t the Delta, it was possible to beat the whites at their own game.

There’s other things we can grow and make profit on, Terrence said. Corn, soybean. It’s not good to only grow a single crop every year.

I know cotton, Pa said. It’s what I grown, what I always grown, what my own pa grown before me.

Now, George, Ma said, sidling up to her husband and laying a conciliatory hand on his arm. We sent Ter to school to get educated, to learn about new ways of doing things.

I didn’t send him, Pa muttered, then spoke up: And why should we move anyhow? Our folk lived and worked here for generations.

Uprooting ain’t easy, Ma said, playing peacemaker like always. I been working my garden since I was eighteen and we come home from church.

Since her wedding day, she meant. Look, Terrence said, uprooting is exactly it. I can move anything you want and replant it.

Crops is one thing but them passion flowers is picky, Pa said. You know how hard it is to grow them from cuttings.

Now he was just being stubborn. I can do it, Terrence insisted. With the right soil, cuttings is easy.

Moving’s lots of trouble. Pa’s tone made it clear the discussion was over. It ain’t worth it.

Right, Terrence said. It’s too much trouble so we’ll just stay here and work like good little niggers for Mr. Abbot the rest of our lives.

Pa froze, gaze hard on his son.

Terrence James, you watch your mouth, Ma said, a warning finger raised high. Don’t you be disrespecting your father.

Terrence slammed down the last basket, and the frayed sun-bleached old straw split apart. He turned and stalked away, ignoring his mother as she called after him.

02

Terrence found himself in the back drive, away from his parents, away from the chatter and laughter in the cucumber field. But what he saw there only made him all the madder. His little field, the plot of land that he had drained, cleared, and sown for two years running, the crops he sold and the money he saved to buy his tuition: the field lay weed-choked and forgotten, gone to waste.

Terrence clenched his fists. Goddamn John. He hadn’t especially asked John to handle the field upkeep. He hadn’t known he needed to.

He stomped out to find the tangled remains of his last harvest, sweet potatoes and green beans, overwhelmed by Johnsongrass, the bane of many a Mississippi farm. He tugged at a big clump and found it as deep-rooted as he feared. It would be almost as much work to bring the field back into production again as it had been to clear it in the first place.

He swore and kicked a dirt clod so hard it exploded, flying up to rain down around him. He paced in a circle, breathed in the warm air, trying to calm himself.

Then movement out in the yard caught his eye. It was Ernie Porter, a young man who often worked the fields at the Butler farm.

Now that was exactly what Terrence needed.

When it came to sex, Terrence had always found boys easier than girls, safer. A look between a couple of sweaty fieldhands at dusk, a wrestling match gone on just a touch too long, the last two skinny-dipping boys lingering in a pond.

Why risk making a baby with a girl if you could have just as much fun with a boy? More fun, really, as far as Terrence was concerned, but neither he nor any of the boys he played around with admitted that. Or maybe it wasn’t the same with them. Terrence didn’t know. It’s not like they ever talked.

For a long time Terrence couldn’t understand why more boys didn’t go the same way. Until Bob Dobson gave him a black eye out back the schoolhouse after a baseball game one day. For reasons never entirely clear to him, Terrence figured out most other folks thought the things he and his occasional partners did was wrong. He was much more careful now. He hadn’t dared do anything at Oakwood.

It was damn inconvenient that as he got older the opportunities came less, just when he needed the release more.

Ernie now, he was a safe bet, about the same age, a good-looking boy who’d fooled around with Terrence in the past, though it’d been a couple years. He was smaller than Terrence, but then who wasn’t? He was the son of a sharecropper from down past the church, down where the land was a little too soggy for a proper yield.

Ernie struggled to roll a heavy metal tub into one of the old sheds that dotted the back drive. Terrence checked around as he strode up, pleased to find they were alone. Hey, Ernie, he called when he got closer. Help me sort the empty tanks? They out back here.

Ernie squinted up at Terrence, then looked around like Terrence just had, a bit more thoroughly than Terrence thought strictly necessary.

If Ernie’s response of Yeah, okay, sounded reluctant and his steps were slow, Terrence didn’t let himself see it. He chivvied the other boy behind the equipment shed, both of them sweat-caked with dust.

The second they rounded the corner, Terrence pulled Ernie up close and tugged at his overalls, grabbing the smaller boy’s wrist and putting his hand where it would do the most good. But Ernie pulled back with a jerk, and a haphazard stack of empty fertilizer canisters rattled and clanged beside him.

Ter, I don’t want to, he said.

Terrence barely paused. C’mon.

Nah, man, got too much to do right now.

Terrence pushed Ernie up against the plank wall. Sullen gray paint flakes drifted down at the impact like washed-out peach blossoms. What’s wrong with you? he said.

"What’s wrong with you?" Ernie said, and Terrence heard a quaver of fear in his voice.

Terrence backed off like he’d been burned. He hadn’t meant to crowd the shorter boy, not like that. He wouldn’t do that.

Ernie stepped away from the wall and straightened his overalls with shaking hands. I don’t want to do this no more.

Why not?

Just don’t. People talk, you know that.

So? Oh, Terrence knew what Ernie meant, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

Ter, we can’t no more, Ernie said. His eyes skittered across the ground, looked anywhere but at Terrence. We grown up now. There’s expectations.

The anger Terrence had hoped to douse flared up now twice as hot. Oh, that a three-syllable word there, Ernie? I be wasting my money going to college. I could learn me a lot right here.

Ernie scowled at the dirt but kept quiet. He gave his work shirt a last tug, sidled carefully around the taller boy who made no effort to clear the way, and all but ran out of sight around the corner of the shed.

He acted like Terrence had forced him. Forced him to have a good time? What a load of bullcrap.

Have it your way, Terrence said to the empty air. Then he started off after Ernie and raised his voice to call out, Your loss!

He swung around the shed fast and almost slammed into the girl he found