Chapter Twenty-One

When Riley left work that night it was well after midnight. There were only two vehicles parked in the lot. One was his and the other belonged to Sully. He went to his cousin’s truck and climbed into the passenger side.

Sully was drinking from a mason jar containing some clear fluid. Moonshine, no doubt.

“You taking a big chance drinking that right in the middle of the street.”

“Cops ain’t patrolling here.” Sully replied.

He offered some to his cousin but Riley declined. He never liked the hard stuff and moonshine was about as rot gut as you could get—especially the moonshine made in these parts.

“That kid with the grey eyes is your boy?” Sully asked without looking at him.

“Yep. Adam is his name. And he’s my son.”

Sully adjusted his position in his seat as if he was suddenly uncomfortable. “You had a black girlfriend while you were in college?”

“I did.”

Sully just shook his head in confusion. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Riley! You were a star! You could have had any girl you wanted. Why choose a nigger-”

Riley held up an angry finger. “Watch your mouth! Jasmine is black. She ain’t a nigger and neither is my son.”

“Oh my God…” Sully chuckled mirthlessly. He turned to glare at Riley. “You fuck ‘em if you want. But you don’t claim them! What’s wrong with white women?”

“Sully, stop acting like you never knew that I wasn’t like you. You know I’m not into all that white supremacy bullshit!”

“Bullshit? Buddy that is the knowledge that our family has grown from. We are superior as a race.”

“Fuck that!” Riley yelled. “Prangers ain’t nothing but a bunch of thieving illiterates!”

Sully’s face flashed fire. But when he spoke his words were even. “We down on our luck. Lot of people got it better. Lot of people have done better. Lot of people been given better opportunities. But even being, what you would call, poor and illiterate, I am still better than the highest nigger and the richest Jew. They are mongrels and mongrels might get a hand up—but it don’t make them a man!”

Riley looked at his cousin and he felt sick. He literally felt sick to his stomach. He’d heard this same shit spewing from people’s mouths from the time he was born--from his Daddy and from his Daddy’s Daddy. They had all grown up listening to the rhetoric. But everything they described turned out to be lies when he could clearly see that the only bad people he saw were his own kin. But Sully…he believed the rhetoric. He bought it hook line and sinker.

Sully took another drink of his moonshine but he was clear headed and far from drunk. He looked at his cousin with pity.

“You young. A millennial they call you. Those titles catch you into the same liberal trap that so many young whites fall into. They listen to jungle music, and believe in a monkey president and they think it’s all right to lay with lesser beings. Niggers and Jews and Spics are a trap because they look almost like us. That’s why they needed to be kept away from decent men and women like you and the rest of the whites—so y’all don’t fall up and get trapped by the liberal nonsense!

“If the minorities stayed on their own side of the tracks then everything would be fine and I wouldn’t have any problems with them. But them uppity ones feel like they should challenge the whites, the president, the police, this country with their ‘Black Lives Matters’ and their kneeling during the anthem! It’s bullshit! Quiet as it’s kept, the president’s got an agenda. He then told us all when he said Make America great again. Before him the United States was heading down the shitter. But President Donald J. Trump knew what needed to be done to make America Great again. They can make fun of him all they want—just like they look down on me and mine, but in the end they gonna fear me. They gonna fear us!” Sully pounded his chest.

Riley watched is cousin. He was beyond saving. There was nothing that he could say or do that could change the deep hatred that Sully and people like him felt. He shook his head and opened his door.

“You tell anybody about that son of yours and a shit storm is going to get brewing.”

Riley swung back around with fire in his eyes. “You threatening me?”

“I’m warning you, cousin. I’m warning you. I can’t protect you from this.”

Riley was trembling with rage when he pointed his finger at Sully. “If you or any of your asshole, shit-for-brains, idiot friends come anywhere near me or my kid I’ll shoot first and ask questions later! YOU GOT THAT?!”

“I ain’t here to do you no harm!” Sully shouted. “I could have took you out all ready if I wanted that. I’m here to warn you, is all.”

Riley climbed out the truck and slammed the door shut. He began stalking back to his own truck. He stopped and pointed at Sully. “I’m telling everybody about my son—everyone that I meet! I’m not ashamed of him. And if anyone comes for me, I will take that bitch out!”

 

 

By the time Riley arrived home, he was so angry that he was trembling. Twice he’d nearly ran off the side of the road. Before heading for his house he went to the cottage and checked that the front door was locked. It wasn’t.

Goddamnit! He slipped inside. The house was quiet and there was only one light on in the upstairs loft that Adam must have been using as a nightlight. Riley locked the door and then checked the back door, which was also unlocked. Once he got everything locked up he kicked off his boots and settled himself down on the sofa.

It was much too short for him to stretch out on, so he propped up the pillows along the armrest and then allowed his feet to hang off the end. He covered his eyes with his arms and tried to relax.

He doubted that he would be able to sleep. When he did he kept seeing images of horrible things, his son wearing a hoodie and being shot while coming home from the grocery store. Stella being pulled over by a ‘good ol’ boy’ and being carted off to jail only to be found hung in her cell. So many images that had one time been anonymous were now pasted on the faces of two people that he knew and loved and nothing could now wipe those images away.

 

 

“Dad?” Riley’s eyes popped open. He looked around momentarily unsure of his whereabouts. But then he met the eyes of his son and he relaxed.

“Good morning.” Riley sat up and stretched.

“What are you doing here?” Adam asked.

Riley scratched his head. “Thought I’d take you guys out to breakfast. There’s a place called The Last Stop diner that serves some mighty fine pancakes.”

“Mom’s still asleep.”

“We’ll wait for her to wake up.” Riley said. “We can play some video games until then.”

They were up in the loft when Stella came out of her bedroom yawning and scratching her armpits. She wondered what Riley was doing. He was probably up already. He got up each day at the crack of dawn.

“Adam?” She called from the foot of the stairs. “Call your dad and see what he wants to do today.”

“Take you guys out for breakfast.” Riley replied while peeking over the loft’s bannister.

Stella jumped and hollered in surprise. She ran her hands through her messy hair.

“Sorry,” Riley grinned. “Your front door was unlocked. If you don’t want unwanted visitors you better start locking it.”

“Uh…I’ll keep that in mind.” She headed for the bathroom to freshen up. An hour later they were walking into the diner.

Riley had been trying to decide how much he wanted to tell Stella about his conversation with Sully and he finally decided that he didn’t want to tell her anything about it. He didn’t even want her to consider that side of his life. He intended to keep them both safely away from the redneck side of Cobb Hill.

Which is why he had chosen to take them to breakfast at the little diner in Ravenna.

Trulane Henry greeted the newcomers. She recognized Riley Pranger and her mental safeguards snapped into place. It was something she did anytime she recognized a Pranger, remembering the first few weeks of her employment and the way Sully and his friends had come in calling her out of her name. When Clay found out about it he had gone off, breaking one of the offender’s nose. Tiffany, the manager of the restaurant had banned the lot of them.

Riley hadn’t been among them and he was a quiet one. He ate his meal, left a decent tip and then went on about his business. Still, he was a Pranger.

She was surprised to see that a tall black woman and a little boy accompanied him. She was pretty and the boy was clearly multiracial.

“Hi True,” Riley said as he led them to the counter to sit.

True was surprised that he’d used her name. It was a first. “Hi Riley.” She passed out menus. “Anyone want to start out with coffee?”

“None for me.” Riley stated and Stella shook her head.

“True,” Riley said before she could turn away to give them time to look at the menu. “I wanted to introduce you to my son, Adam.” He said proudly.

Her brow rose before she quickly masked her surprise. “What a handsome young man you are.” True stated. She held out her hand to shake and Adam shook her hand with a broad smile. Adam liked it when Riley called him son.

Riley turned to the tall woman. “This is Adam’s mom, Stella.”

The two women shook hands. “Nice to meet you Stella.”

“Same here, True. That’s a pretty name.”

“Thank you. It’s short for Trulane.”

True returned to the kitchen with her eyes wide as saucers. “Jeb,” she said breathlessly.

Jeb paused in tending to his skillet of scrambled eggs. He took one look at her face and then glared through the past-through. He saw Riley Pranger.

“What happened? That asshole up to no-good?”

Jeb was old enough to be her grandfather but he sure wouldn’t allow anyone to harass her. He’d once taken a rolling pin to a man’s head. In that way he had symbolically become her grandpa--her Caucasian grandpa.

“No. You won’t believe this. That little boy is Riley Pranger’s son!” She whispered.

Jeb frowned. “What you say, girl?”

“He just told me. He said ‘this is my son Adam and his mother Stella’. I shit you not!”

“There’s a black Pranger in the world?” Jeb asked incredulously.

“Seems so.”

“Lloyd and the rest of them probably jumped up out of their graves up on that hill,” he chuckled.

True just shook her head and returned to the front to take their orders.

Word of the first ‘known’ black Pranger in Estill County spread rapidly. It wasn’t that True was able to spread the information so fast on her own, it was because Riley did. He took Stella and Adam around town, each time introducing them to the people they met.

They went to The Wal-Mart and got a bathing suit for Adam (Stella could not be convinced to purchase one or to be included in the barbaric practice of swimming in a creek). By the time they left the store he’d introduced them to over twelve people. Those twelve people told at least ten and. And on and on it went. And that is how everyone in Estill County knew about the first black Pranger before even the end of the day.