"Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands" by Susan Carol McCarthy, Chapters 12–25

Vaylie’s laughing at my version of Miss Maybelle’s ornery old attitude.

But sometimes he gets to feelin’ melancholy and then he drinks and turns mean as a snake.

He says that after she demolished his hand, he had to ask for hers.

"Your mother have to remind you?” she queries, her metal-rimmed glasses glaring in the sun.

Grief, I think, signs you up in a separate, invisible club, members selected at death’s awful randomness.

“Gone forever” is our password, lingering sorrow our secret handshake.

“I’m sorry, Miss Maybelle,” I say, attempting the appropriate remorse on Vaylie’s behalf.

When you compare the paper’s descriptions of them as the “strident insurgent” and “pugnacious parliamentarian” to the well-mannered gentlemen we’ve come to know, you have to wonder if the reporters ever actually talked to them.

“You’ve no idea how rare access to a clean rest room is to a man of my color in this part of the country,” Mr. Marshall says.

‘Democracy,’ Aristotle said, ‘is best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.’

I don’t know what the questions are, but I do know that every answer must be three times verified by separate, unwavering sources.

My heart’s pummeling my chest with a fear I don’t understand.

Bombs gutted two buildings in the recently refurbished section of what used to be all-white Knights Manor.

“The largest blast ever detonated in the state of Florida,” the papers say, “possibly the entire Eastern Seaboard.”

They remember the swim in the lake followed by polio’s headaches, high fever and paralysis.

After dinner and the stories, Marvin should’ve turned on the radio and coaxed us all out to dance, something lively and fun like Teresa Brewer and the Dixieland All-Stars “Choo’n Gum.”

These days, what Marvin called “baseball’s Heaven on Earth” offers the only hopeful respite from our real lives in central Florida.

One lets out an eerie, high-pitched cry, the unnerving howl of the Rebel Yell.

The fearful faces of those in the front car, the hateful menace of their white-robed pursuers leaves me numb.

"If the Klan’s grown brazen enough to attempt a kidnapping in broad daylight, what’s next?”

Without anyone’s intervention, the Miami Klan continues to terrorize that city’s non-white and non-Protestant neighborhoods.

"He says it’s the hand of Stalin behind these Nigra uprisings.”

As the dejected young men, the disappointed parents and their silent children, the pairs of old people rise and turn to tread sadly home, I want to protest.

“Ackerman, the defense counsel, has filed for a change of venue; Judge Futch is going to rule on it day after tomorrow,” the big man tells us.

While I pour Mr. Marshall some fresh-squeezed juice, I listen to him tell Daddy they’re hoping to get Prosecutor Jess Hunter removed for calling the N.A.A.C.P. “a subversive and Communist organization.”

He wants to transfer the proceedings to Marion County, where Lake County’s notorious Sheriff McCall “has fewer friends.”

At the end of the week, an all-white Lake County Coroner’s Jury hears nine hours of testimony and decides, after just thirty-five minutes of deliberation, that Samuel Shepherd’s death was “justifiable homicide,” and that Sheriff McCall fired “in self-defense and the line of duty.”

Even when we hear that Mr. Harry T. Moore—the F.B.I.’s most vocal critic, the Negroes’ most powerful advocate, the compiler of civil rights case files that local law enforcement conveniently overlooked—has been invited to Miami to brief the federal agents.

Maybe now, the tidal wave of evil will ebb.

In the span of a single week, she’s bullied us out of the backroom to cut down a Christmas tree (a Florida pine from the woods off Wellwood Road); she’s unearthed the decorations, opened her pack (from the trunk of the DeSoto) and infused our lives with much-needed holiday spirit.

Luther and Reverend Stone agreed to rally the residents to purchase as much of the store’s perishable goods as possible in a special sale this very morning under the big oaks behind the church.

The Tomasinis seemed overwhelmed by the willingness of their customers to help them.

The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office states that although the F. B. I. has no jurisdiction in this case, murder being a state crime, the local authorities will give Mr. Hoover’s G-men their full cooperation.

My mind flashes with pictures of him, vibrant and alive: His first visit to our house with Luther and Mr. Marshall; his patient help with my homework (“Democracy is the fairest form of government on earth,” he’d said); the jut of his chin when he told Daddy about the death threats and the .32 caliber under his car seat.

“There’s no accounting for that level of cowardice,” Daddy says, wheeling abruptly into the parking lot, his eyes clouding with contempt.

Under the swaying palm trees, inside the orderly orange groves, Florida leads the nation in cases of race prejudice and violence.

We are, after all, a family of shopkeepers; like Daddy says, “merchants on the South’s most lucrative trade route.”

Daddy calls it a manifesto.

I had to call my daddy’s mamma and tell her they were “too indisposed" for us to make it to Christmas Dinner.

Racing down the hall, I hear Miz Lucy lecturing May Carol loudly, something about “conduct unbecoming a lady” and then the sound of a stinging slap.