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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