Jacquelyn Malone Holes in the River

Holes in the River

jacquelyn malone

He was my age and I met him once. He seemed afraid of me, which made me shy. He sat in a corner chair— his feet not touching the floor— while his daddy pumped gas at my daddy’s filling station. My dad felt his unease and offered him a Coke. But he refused—though I could tell he wanted one. Maybe it was because he felt a Black child should hold back. We swam in one hole in the river; they swam in another. Near the Black hole was a white’s man’s fishing spot. I never knew the men who watched him struggle. I heard they laughed. I heard that, laughing, they walked away. They didn’t have to drag the river. He caught on a branch. But we caught there, too, in the wide arc above the water. And the radio did and the newspaper, and then TV zeroed in on those cackling throats. Under the camera’s watch, everyone could see what bubbled up. A Southern Legacy. The farm had a history of ghosts lynched from a fence-row tree. When we passed the white man’s farm, my dad couldn’t remember which tree it was his father

had pointed to, the history slowly fading as the tree has faded in the bleach of time. My dad’s been dead for decades, and as we drive past where the Clark Brothers General Store once stood, I try to remember which road leads to that farm—as if I would still remember which farm. But ghosts are a stickier lot. Even time cannot erase their heft.