Small Mercies

“And who were these four white children of South Boston if not another militia?” the Reverend Thibodaux Josiah Hartstone III asks his flock. “How is that militia of old any different than these four misguided thugs who murdered our cherished son, Augustus, for the crime of trying to get home? For the crime of driving a car that broke down? For the crime of trying to better himself in the management program of Zayre? For the crime of crossing their streets, treading their sidewalks, using their subway platform? Is this the milk of human kindness of which our good Lord Jesus spoke?”

Mary Pat feels light-headed again. And sick to her stomach. The eulogy for Auggie Williamson is turning, in some ways, into a eulogy for Jules. Into a eulogy for Mary Pat’s legacy as a parent.

“No!”

“No!” he roars, one hand raised to the rafters. “No! Because, brothers and sisters, it’s not their world. It’s our world. It’s God’s world. And they had no right to take one of God’s children out of God’s world because they didn’t like the color of the skin God gave him!”

Mary Pat lowers her head and swallows repeatedly against hot bile. Beads of sweat slide down behind her ears and into the collar of her shirt. One continues on down her spine. She keeps her head lowered. She takes deep breaths.

“But God is good,” he says.

“Amen!”

“God is just!”

“Mmm-hmm!”

“God says Augustus is with Me now!”

“Praise Jesus!”

“And I, the Lord and Savior, will pass judgment on those who have hurt our brother Augustus! Because I am the Lord!”

“Praise the Lord!”

When Reverend Thibodaux Josiah Hartstone III wraps up his fire and his brimstone, he launches into a rendition of “The Day Is Past and Gone,” and the congregation joins in with a kind of fever — a mix of joy and rage and God-love, heartbreak, and passion — that is unlike anything Mary Pat has ever witnessed. The floor shakes, the pews shake, the walls shake.

After “The Day Is Past and Gone,” Auggie’s father, Reginald, rises from the front pew and takes a place behind the lectern. He’s a tall, elegant man. Mary Pat has met him several times over the years and has always been struck by his mix of deference and gravity. Now what strikes her, even from the back of the church, is the unreachable despair in his eyes. It’s not the despair of the hopeless, it’s the despair of the forsaken. The first is weakness, the second is a knife blade. Those who quit are victims, but those who are abandoned grow vengeful.

“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.