Jazz Moon by Joe Okonkwo Page A

it?”
    â€œYes’m.”
    â€œIt true?”
    â€œNo’m,” he said, careful to sound decisive, but not overdo it.
    His folks exchanged glances, then went back to their supper.
    Next evening, they went to church for a revival meeting to be presided over by the Reverend Glover, Trina Ledger’s fiancé. As they waited for the service to begin, the couple dozen congregants watched Ben like he was new in town. The allegations revolted and titillated them. The Thurmans were there, wallowing in their status as the originators of the story.
    But Reverend Glover hadn’t arrived for his own revival. Trina and her folks hadn’t either. Folks grew impatient. A few had gone home, resigned to finding the Holy Spirit some other time, when the Reverend Ledger vaulted into the church with a shotgun.
    â€œShe’s dead!” he shouted. “My Trina’s dead! Willful Hutchison—he as good as killed her. She was with child. By Willful. She died trying to get rid of it. It’s Willful’s fault. Him and that mother of his. She knew about them.”
    Nobody moved. Nobody talked. The only sound was the reverend’s wild panting. And with that shotgun in his hands, the people didn’t know whether to console their beloved preacher or take cover.
    â€œI need some good men. I’ma run that whole Hutchison family out this town. Who’ll come with me?”
    An ensemble of men trooped forward, Ben’s pa among them.
    â€œI’ll come.”
    â€œCount me in.”
    â€œWe gone rid ourselves and our womenfolk of that Hutchison boy once and for all!”
    The reverend held the shotgun in quaking hands. “Lord Jesus, keep me from killing that boy, though I know you wouldn’t count it a sin.”
    It hit Ben: These men intended to tear the Hutchisons from their home, banish them to the open road with no money, no food. But that wouldn’t appease the Reverend Ledger. He wanted blood for blood. The injustice sent Ben spiraling at him.
    â€œNo!” he screamed. He tried to wrest the shotgun from the preacher’s hands. “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill Willful!”
    The gun swung here, there, and everywhere as they battled over it. The women screamed and flung themselves into the pews, joined by most of the men. The reverend, powered by hysteria and aided by sheer bodily size, clobbered Ben to the ground where he cried and writhed like someone hit with the Holy Spirit on a threshing floor. The tussle for the shotgun over, people left the pews. They circled Ben as he blubbered on. His screams devolved to sobs.
    â€œPlease don’t hurt Willful. Please.”
    By the time his ma lugged him out of the church, the Reverend Ledger and his posse had gone.
    They didn’t kill Willful. But they did expel the Hutchison family from Dogwood with just the tattered clothes on their backs. Ben never knew what became of them. He never saw Willful again.
    Trina’s death shattered colored Dogwood. Different versions of the events circulated—some plausible, some preposterous—but when all the various and varying stories were distilled down to their essences, the facts added up to this:
    Trina Ledger, a preacher’s daughter and a preacher’s betrothed, had been three months’ pregnant. Facing disgrace at best, exile at worst, Trina settled on a third option: her ma’s knitting needles. On her deathbed, she admitted that Willful was the only man she’d ever been with. Then she implicated his ma and sisters in the hiding of the affair. She did not implicate Ben. Why would remain a mystery. The tragedy was compounded when the Reverend Glover said he would have taken the blame for the pregnancy and married her anyway. He loved her that much.
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    â€œThey touched each other the way a man and woman touch each other.”
    â€œWillful’s older. He must’a been the one instigated it.”
    â€œThey was doin’ it