LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THE FUNERAL WAS just as awful as Trey had imagined it would be, although in ways he didn’t have the creativity to have foreseen. First, there was the knowledge that he’d had a near temper tantrum at the viewing and the bland look Max gave him wasn’t enough to pretend it hadn’t happened. Second, the church was packed, and not just with family members. The mayors of Oxford and Roxboro were both there, along with one Durham County commissioner, proving that you could be a drunk and an asshole and still have dignitaries at your funeral so long as you were from an established family. The mayor of Roxboro was perfectly polite, but the mayor of Oxford was determined to talk with Trey about upcoming legislation and its effects on small towns. Trey had been prepared to talk with family members he had no interest in and express sorrow he didn’t feel to people whose names he couldn’t remember, but feigning interest in a rider on a farm bill had not been on his agenda.

      The preacher droned on and on about our reward in heaven—though Trey wondered how many people were picturing his father someplace more tropical—until finally a cell phone ringing in one of his great-aunt’s enormous purses and the subsequent digging through said purse derailed the preacher’s lack of train of thought. “God bless both the phone and the purse that ate Atlanta,” Aunt Lois muttered to Uncle Garner, then gave Kelly a dirty look when he snickered.

      A slight black man with glasses and a trim beard was waiting by his car with what appeared to be a pie in his hands when Trey made it past the crowds of mourners. “Jerome, buddy, I didn’t expect to see you here. Thank you for coming.” He meant the words and the welcoming handshake more sincerely than he had for any other guest at the funeral. “I haven’t seen you in ages, and you didn’t have the beard then. How does Alea feel about it?”

      “She likes it fine. And the last time I saw you was at your mother’s funeral.” Jerome Harris gave a shrug and a slight smile. “I try to attend all my kin’s funerals. It’s the only time I get to see certain people.”

      Trey smiled at the small joke—and the truth behind it. “You’re one of the many people here not here for my father, but for some other reason. Gossip seems to be the main reason. Respect for my mother is another.”

      “Oh, I’m hoping my presence has your father rolling around and knocking in his grave, but my parents said he’d gotten less overtly racist in his old age.”

      Jerome wasn’t the first person at the funeral to mention that the prejudices that had strangled Trey’s father most of his life had loosened their grip in his old age, though he was the first person to put it so baldly.

      “Alea’s home watching the kids and I can’t stay, but she baked a pie for you. I felt certain your father would like a bean pie in his honor.”

      Trey laughed. Most Southern food was Southern food with little racial distinction, but not only was bean pie black food, it was Nation of Islam food. It was also delicious, so Trey had no trouble taking it out of Jerome’s hands. “I’m sure everyone will appreciate the pie. And Kelly will appreciate the gesture.”

      “You’re in the big house now.” Jerome had always had a wry sense of humor. “I hope you won’t be a stranger to Durham.”

      “I used education to get out. I’m not sure why I would voluntarily come back.”

      Jerome harrumphed. “I have basketball tickets. Maybe I’ll invite you to the Duke game.”

      “Of course I’d come down for the game.” Agreeing was easy since it wasn’t likely he’d actually receive an invitation. Jerome had better friends to share those tickets with, plus a wife who might want to go. “I’ve got my priorities straight.”

      “I mean it, now.”

      “Get home to your wife. Thank her for the pie.”

      After they said their goodbyes and Jerome was walking to his car, Trey wondered if his friend knew the pivotal role he’d played in Trey’s escape from the farm. They’d met in seventh grade, when they’d been assigned to work together on a science project. Trey had been certain he would end up a lazy, good-for-nothing drunk like his father. He’d been angry at his future and pissed at his father for the inheritance. Another option was to turn into his uncle Garner, but Trey hadn’t wanted to be a tobacco farmer. Option three was join the military, but he was pretty sure Vietnam had turned his father in the direction of alcohol. But those were his only choices as he saw it back then.

      When Jerome had insisted Trey actually do some work for the project, Trey had scornfully asked Jerome why he studied so hard. The look Jerome had given Trey through his thick glasses hadn’t been the look of a cross teenager; it had been the look of a thoughtful, mature man. A look Trey only recognized because of his uncle Garner. “My grandparents used education to climb out of poverty,” Jerome had said. “I’m not going to be the first person in my family to leap back in.”

      By asking around, Trey had learned that Jerome’s grandfather was a preacher and his father was a vice president at Mechanics and Farmers Bank. Jerome’s great-grandfather had been a sharecropper and his family before that had been slaves on some Harris’s farm. Jerome Harris, a professor of history specializing in the history of the South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, probably knew which, but Trey didn’t.

      Jerome had opened Trey’s eyes to new possibilities. He’d started looking around at the family he met at weddings, funerals and reunions. Most were working class—farmers, mechanics, retired mill workers and the like. But there were also a number of teachers, and every once in a while a doctor or a lawyer popped up. There was even an army colonel. And the one thing all these escapees from the farm had in common was that they had studied hard enough in high school to get into a good college.

      Since that moment, Trey and Jerome had leveled into a relationship somewhere between acquaintances and friends. They had nodded to each other in the hall all through middle and high school and kept in touch through college. No matter where their lives had drifted, occasional emails were exchanged and major life changes kept track of through Facebook, if nothing else. Like distant but friendly cousins, Trey supposed.

      Jerome had always regarded Trey’s desire to escape Durham with a bit of amusement, saying, “If I can get along as a black man in the South, you can survive as a white one.” But Trey had watched his father drink and grow nothing but anger, dirt and kudzu while his mother worked long hours at a job she hated. If he didn’t pull up his roots and flee, he wouldn’t do any better. His destiny had been sown in the clay.

      Even now, as he climbed into his car to parade to the graveyard for the burial, the familiar rolling hills of the Piedmont were more oppressive than

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