fast in the small spring heatwave, I felt cold, like my bones were made of ice, and chills had moved over my skin, goosebumps on my arms, making me looked like a plucked chicken.
“I…” Could I tell him? How many times did Dempsey offer to hear me speak whatever fretted me? A dozen? A hundred more that he’d done without needing to ask. He was my friend, always had been, even when his mama and daddy told him to keep away from me and my family. Even when his face was bloody and his lip busted, Dempsey still wanted to listen to whatever held my attention.
“Sook,” he started, reaching for me again. This time I didn’t flinch away. This time I wanted him to touch me, just a little to see if that touch would warm me up. But then Dempsey dropped his hand, nodding at my torn shirt. “Someone do this to you?” When I didn’t answer, Dempsey’s jaw went tight and his mouth went stiff, as though someone had whispered something dark and dirty in his ear and just the sound of it had his feathers ruffled. “Who the hell did this to you?” He leaned back, coming to his knees to stare down at me with his hands balled up tight at his side. “Was it… God, Sook, was it my brother?”
“What?” My voice was low, awed likely because I didn’t believe his question. Malcolm Simoneaux was nearly eighteen and hated the sight of anyone, man or woman, who didn’t look just like him and his people. He hated black folk worse than his daddy. Dempsey should have known better to ask, but right then, to me, he didn’t seem like he was having thoughts that made much sense at all.
“It was. That son of a bitch. I knew he was home. I knew he was drinking, if that son of a bit…” He went on mumbling to himself, pacing around in a circle before he said something rude and filthy under his breath and then Dempsey headed toward the opening that led to the ladder below.
“No!” He didn’t slow until I scrambled to grab him, pulling on his arm. “Dempsey, don’t be a fool. It wasn’t your brother. I swear.” He came around to face me, mouth still set hard and somber when he stared down at me. “It wasn’t Malcolm, cher, I promise.”
He took to looking me over, hard, but that small word, cher, worked like a balm on him, keeping the rise of fury from his head. He liked when I called him that, which is why I never did it much. But the more Dempsey looked, the more frozen and raw I felt. Were there marks or bruises starting up where that old man had grabbed me, scratches? I was too scared to look, too caught up in the hard look on Dempsey's face. In my stillness, he looked me up and down, over my face, to the top of my head, back down to my face, over my cheekbones, until he stopped to stare at my mouth. I swear there was something peculiar about the look in his eyes then, how he took on the air of someone who hadn’t had anything at all to fill his belly. Dempsey stepped closer, resting his hands on my shoulders and I let him, liked how big his fingers felt on my skin, how one palm covered my collarbone completely. But then it was like the moment between us passed when he realized just how torn my shirt was and went all still.
His skin went pale white just as mine pinked up and heated over my cheeks as his gaze traveled down my neck, to my resting on the beige strap of my frayed undershirt.
“Who…” He cleared his throat, like something thicker than hay had taken root in the back of his mouth. “Who?”
It was the breath I let out that brought his attention back to my face and again his expression straddled somewhere between irate anger and fretting like none I’d ever seen from him before.
There was no sense in lying. Dempsey would believe me even if no one else would. No one who mattered to me anyway. “That Joe Andres was drunk and snuck up on me on the north side of your daddy’s sugarcane field.” He nodded once, and his jaw worked hard again so I hurried to keep him calm. “Likely he’s too drunk to know what he done…”