“I’m as sick as I can be about Yvonne and Milton. The whiskey numbs the pain.” I spent the rest of the evening with a long face and making comments about how bad I felt for our neighbors. Joyce didn’t mention nothing else on that subject after we went to bed because I climbed on top of her and pried her legs open. Sex worked on Joyce like a tonic. After I finished taking care of her, she slept like a baby.

When we woke up this morning, the first thing she said was, “Odell, I know you care about Yvonne and Milton. If whiskey helps numb the pain you’re feeling, I think I’ll have a few shots when I get home today.”

“And I’ll have a few more myself,” I said.

* * *

Almost a dozen customers was already waiting in front of the door when I opened the store this morning. With so many folks planning to cook Thanksgiving feasts in a couple of weeks, they was picking up canned goods and other nonperishable items left and right. A lot of my customers wanted to start cooking early, so I had arranged for my suppliers to deliver the turkeys and other popular holiday meats such as hams, chitlins, and rump roasts, two days before the holiday. I planned to take a huge turkey and a ham to Betty Jean. I felt bad because she couldn’t cook it until the day after the holiday, when I could be there. To make up for her having to delay the celebration every year, I took her a few extra boxes of other goodies and doubled her weekly allowance for that week. She had already started hinting about all the things she wanted Santa Claus to bring her and the boys next month. That was another holiday I wouldn’t be able to spend with her this year. Since it was going to be on a Monday, we’d celebrate it the Sunday before.

Things was moving right along. I greeted and chitchatted with some of my regular customers, and every single one commented on how sorry they felt for Yvonne and Milton. By now everybody in town had heard about them letting a bunch of colored men rape a white girl in their house. It seemed like this mess was never going to die down. So that I wouldn’t look uncaring, I played sorry right along with them.