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If he just had time to reach for the bell, things might have turned out differently. James and I might be sitting in my living room right now, drinking a jug full of rum and cokes. I miss those nights and I miss my friend. I miss his candor and his humor. I miss his war stories that he would repeat each time he drank a few too many. I miss pretending that I didn’t know how they were all going to end.
I never see him in my dreams. I only hear the frantic pressing of a doorbell that never had a chance to ring when it mattered the most. In my dreams, the ringing wakes me, I run for the front door and all that is on the other side are two white handprints on the old gray wall next to my front door. In the distance, I hear him scream and there is nothing I can do to help. I’ve had this dream more times than I care to count.
His candor and humor that I so adored were likely what killed him, I believe. He just didn’t understand the hatred that still lurked in these parts, perhaps to this very day. He was out of his element - thinking that, as a decorated veteran, he had the respect of his new neighbors in this backwater town that he had relocated to. After a few drinks at the local watering hole, he probably told a joke that was misinterpreted, or made a remark about a girl that was someone’s sister, or made some other innocuous statement that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in the big city where he was raised. But those medals on his chest didn’t mean a thing to the people around here who were just waiting for an excuse. They likely never took time enough to even notice them, what with all that ebony colored skin that proved to be so distracting. Of course, nobody interviewed that had been at the bar that night had any recollection whatsoever of him being there. Imagine that. I know he was there though. I dropped him off at the front door and watched him walk in and that’s what I told the police. Unfortunately, my information didn’t seem to interest them much.
According to the only witnesses who ever came forth, James was running for his life down Elm Street at approximately 1:40 in the morning, pursued on foot by four to six men whose faces were covered in white hoods. His body was still dripping with the new complexion they had forcibly applied to his skin but he had somehow apparently managed to free himself from their capture – at least for a few terrifying minutes. He made it all the way to my doorstep, almost five blocks away, but they apparently caught up and pulled him away from the door before he could ring the bell. His body, painted a ghostly white, was found a few days later in the local swamp.
If I had known he was out there, I would have fought alongside my friend to the bitter end against those bastards. I never got that chance though, separated from James by a gray wall that wouldn’t allow his screams to penetrate. And today, all I have to remember him by is the last grasp of a dying man, desperate to be saved from those he served to defend only a few years earlier. I stare at those prints every day and try not to imagine what he must have been thinking at that moment – so close to help and yet, yanked away at the last moment.
Those handprints have been on the wall for almost 50 years now and I still refuse to paint over them. Supposedly things have changed since then and something like that could never occur again in this quaint little town. It has even been suggested that we might see our first black President next year, proving how far we have come as a nation.
I cannot, however, share in any of that optimism. The fact is, those men were never caught. And each time I pass another man on the street, of a similar age as myself, I can’t help but wonder if he is one of the still-free men that felt some hideous need to dip my friend in paint before he killed him. I wonder how well he has taught his children. His grandchildren.
All I know is that, while the men that committed this atrocity might actually still walk the streets, I’ll be damned if they aren’t going to have to stare at those white handprints every time they choose to travel past my home. I hope they haunt them every day just like they continue to haunt me every day. This is our shared history in this piece of **** town and I refuse to let them forget, until the moment they begin their slow rot in hell.
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