Read Let the Circle Be Unbroken for Free Online

come home now?”
    Mama poured the water, untouched, back into the pail. Suddenly, she looked weary. “No, that’s not what it means.”
    “Well, what it mean?”
    “Means they can do it legally now.”
    “What’s that, Mama?”
    There had been a bitter edge to Mama’s voice as she spoke. Now she turned from the wagon to look directly at Christopher-John, his round face showing bewilderment at this latest news about T.J., and her words were softer. “A trial means that T.J. can tell his story and there’ll be people there who’ll decide whether he’s telling the truth or not.”
    “Then that means he’ll be comin’ on home then.” Christopher-John smiled happily at this conclusion.
    “No. . . .” Her eyes went slowly over each of us. “No.The people who’ll hear T.J. and make the decision will be white. There’ll be somebody else who’ll be saying that what T.J. says is not the truth. He’ll be white too. There’ll be a judge there and he’ll be white. All white, do you understand?” She paused. “T.J. won’t be coming home.” She looked down at Christopher-John, who was still very much disturbed. “What is it?”
    It took him a moment to speak. When he did, the fear had welled in his voice. “Mama . . . Mama, you think they’ll ever come get us like they done T.J.?”
    “Us?” She looked surprised at his asking. “They’ve got no reason to come after us.”
    “But they come after T.J.!”
    “I know.”
    “Well, it ain’t fair!” he objected. “T.J., he ain’t done nothin’, and now folks say they gonna hang him.”
    “Now wait just a minute. You call breaking into that store nothing? That was wrong and there’s no way around it. It was wrong too for T.J. to be running around with those white boys in the first place. He knew that, but he was too hardheaded to listen to anybody, and this trouble he’s in is what came of it.” Her voice had risen angrily as she spoke, for it deeply bothered her that she had seen T.J.’s downfall coming and had been unable to prevent it. She calmed herself and went on. “You know, there’s nothing I’d like better in this world than to make what happened this summer not to have happened. But it did, and not your papa or Big Ma or Mr. Morrison or me or anybody can make it go away. We teach you what we do to keep you safe. The way things are down here, what happened to T.J. was bound to come. I don’t like it and your papa doesn’t like it, and most decent folks don’t like it, but right now all we can do is try to keep it from happening again.”
    “But what ’bout T.J., Mama?” Christopher-John persisted. “He gonna die?”
    Mama put a slender arm around him. “On that, baby, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
    For a moment we stood in silence, only the forest sounds cracking the stillness. Then Stacey muttered something about finding Papa and, rounding the pond, headed northward. As he left, Mr. Morrison drove up in the wagon and we began to load the firewood. When Stacey returned with Papa a short time later, Mama looked at Papa and said: “Stacey tell you?”
    Papa nodded and, swooping Little Man up, set him onto the back of the wagon and gave him a stick of wood to stack. Little Man quickly placed the stick at the wagon’s head, then ran back for more.
    “Y’all got quite a bit of chopping done down in here,” Mr. Morrison said as he brought an armload of wood to the wagon.
    Papa looked around the clearing. “It’ll be a while yet ’fore it’s all cleared out. Them lumbermen did a lotta damage . . . a lotta damage. . . . Got another load stacked farther down. We finish this, then in the morning I figure we’ll go get that other.”
    “Papa—”
    Papa turned to Stacey. For a moment, Stacey faltered; then he said: “Papa, I wanna go to that trial.”
    Mama, walking toward the wagon with an armload of wood, stopped so suddenly, several sticks fell off. “Now that’s the last thing you’re going to do,”