“Auggie was a typical kid,” Reginald begins, his voice hushed against the microphone, “rebellious at times as a teen but never to the point where we truly worried. Loved his momma. Fought with his sisters. Oh, did he ever.” He chuckles a bit. “Graduated high school but not with the kind of grades would get a black boy a scholarship to any colleges, so he went to work for that department store, was on the management track, hoped to run the whole New England district of the chain someday.” He looks out with a gaze that rides above the congregation by several feet. “Loved his clothes, Auggie.”
A soft chuckle hums through the crowd.
“Right?” Reginald says. “‘Threads,’ he called them. Even as a little boy, he was so fussy about his clothes. Liked his hats, his shiny shoes — had to shine like a brand-new dime — them big-collared shirts of his. He snagged a pair of pants on a doorjamb coupla weeks back? Was stitching up the tear himself. I said, ‘Boy, why don’t you buy a pair of dungarees so that don’t happen?’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in dungarees, old man, you know that.’”
Reginald says nothing for a bit. Mary Pat can feel the whole church waiting, wondering where this is going.
He leans into the microphone. “He wouldn’t be caught dead in dungarees.” He breathes heavily through an open mouth. “Instead, he got caught dead in South Boston. Well, he got caught alive. But then they killed him. And the Lord says forgive the sinner, if not the sin, but, ya know, fuck the sinner.”
Lots of murmuring in the pews, people looking around. Up on the altar, Reverend Thibodaux Josiah Hartstone III sports a tight smile but leans forward like soon he might just make a dash for the mic.
Reginald Williamson says softly, “What’s gonna change? When’s it gonna change? Where’s it gonna change? How’s it gonna change? Human beings don’t kill fellow human beings. Not easily. They just don’t.” He steps back from the lectern and runs a hand over his mouth. He freezes that way for a moment, the hand covering the mouth, as if to keep the words in forever. Then he steps back to the lectern and says, “They only kill other human beings easily. So, so, so, it can’t change if they don’t see us as fellow humans. Can’t change if they only see us as others.” He hangs his head. “It just can’t.”
But you are others, Mary Pat thinks before she can kill the thought. And even as she’s trying to stanch the words barreling into her brain, the follow-up plows through. You just are.
The bile she’s pushed back down to her stomach surges once more, a series of hot pebbles climbing up her esophagus. She lowers her head again, takes slow breaths.
When they escort the coffin back down through the church, the pews empty out in order behind it, front to back, so by the time Mary Pat exits the church, the coffin is already in the hearse and Dreamy and Reginald are in one of the limousines behind it and Mary Pat realizes that her plan to express a brief condolence to Dreamy and move on quickly was a fantasy. She sees Bobby Coyne talking to his partner, who’s parked an unmarked haphazardly by the curb and is speaking urgently to him. Bobby is nodding and at one point looks around, possibly for her, but she uses the milling crowd to her advantage, and he soon speed-walks away with his partner and they drive off in the unmarked.
At the cemetery, Reginald, Dreamy, their family and closest friends, and the political activists stand up front by the coffin. Mary Pat and most of the other white people stand all the way back by the road.
The Williamsons own their own home in Mattapan. A small Dutch Colonial on Itasca Street. It’s set up the way white homes Mary Pat aspires to live in are set up. Tidy. Well-kept lawn, recent touch-up on the trim. The floors are shiny blond oak. The entire house smells of wood soap. Front hall arrayed with photographs of Auggie and his sisters and some white-haired people Mary Pat assumes are grandparents. Living room off to the right past an arched entryway. Off to the left, a small dining room with stained-glass windows which leads into the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen, a brown wooden deck overlooking a small yard. The deck and the yard are where most of the mourners congregate.
Mary Pat, reaching the kitchen, looks around for Dreamy. She just wants to express her condolences and get gone. But the first person she runs into is not Dreamy, it’s Reginald.
“I just want to say—” she begins.
“Fuck you want to say to me?” he says.
She looks closely at him to be sure he’s the same Reginald she’s met several times before. She’s honestly not sure. Until his eulogy, she never heard him use profanity of any kind. Assumed he might be the type who didn’t believe in it.
“Bitch, I said what do you want to say to me?”
She locks on his tie — she noticed it when he passed her pew on his way out of the church with his son’s coffin. It’s dark blue with light blue crosses on it. Definitely him.
Did he just call me a bitch?
“I, um, I wanted to express my condolences.”
“Oh,” he says kindly. “Oh. Thank goodness. That means a lot.” He touches her arm with his big black hand. Gives it a light squeeze.
“What did you think I wanted?” she asks.
He squeezes her arm a little harder. “Thought you wanted to explain why your moron, nigger-hating daughter killed my intelligent, purehearted son.”
“Can you let go of my arm?”
He squeezes even harder. “Am I holding your arm?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Sure it ain’t just a circumstance? Like, say, you went and put your arm in my hand and I ain’t got no choice but to squeeze what you put in my hand? Ain’t that a possibility?”
“No.”
“No?” He cocks his head at her. “Well, I say it is. I say that whatever thought crosses my mind, Mrs. Fennessy, is the rule of fucking law in this house. You want to complain? Take it up with me right here, right now. You don’t think I look in your eyes and know a tough bitch when I see one? I know you’re a tough bitch. I know you could fuck many a man up, but I ain’t that man, and you ain’t in a place where you can afford to find out. Because if I were to — right fucking now — crush the windpipe of the mother of one of the demons who killed my child? A woman who trespassed into my home on the day of the funeral of my only son? If I were to do that, Mrs. Mary Pat Fennessy, I wouldn’t go free, but I would have enough credit in prison for killing your ass to ensure I would live like a goddamn king for the rest of my days.”
Far worse than the pain of his fingers gripping her arm like the teeth of five socket wrenches is the hate in his eyes. She’s a bit of an expert on hate — she’s been around it her whole life — and his hate for her is truly depthless.
“Reginald!”
They turn to see Dreamy entering the kitchen.
“You let her go right now.”
Mary Pat will always remember these as a few of the most dangerous seconds of her life. She knows Reginald will choose one of only two roads — listening to his wife or doing something extremely violent extremely fast. Mary Pat is certain in that moment that if this man decides to kill her, he will succeed.