The boy felt his whole body suddenly tighten and pull. The muscles of his forearms rippled.

“Niggers like you are hung to trees,” the old man went on.

“I’m not a nigger,” Bert said. “Ain’t you my father? And a hell of a father you are, too, holding a gun on me.”

“I’ll break your black neck for you,” the Colonel shouted. “Don’t talk to me like that!” He jumped up.

“You’ll break my neck?” The boy stood his ground as the father came toward him.

“Get out of here!” The Colonel shook with rage. “Get out! Or I’ll do more than that if I ever lay eyes on you again.” The old man picked up the pistol from the table, yet the boy did not move. “I’ll fill you full of bullets if you come back here. Get off this place! Get to hell out of this county! Now, tonight. Go on!” The Colonel motioned with his pistol toward the door that led to the kitchen and the back of the house.

“Not that way,” Bert said. “I’m not your servant. You must think I’m scared. Well, you can’t drive me out the back way like a dog. You’re not going to run me off, like a field hand you can’t use any more. I’ll go,” the boy said, starting toward the front door, “but not out the back—from my own father’s house.”

“You nigger bastard!” Norwood screamed, springing between his son and the door, but the boy kept calmly on. The steel of the gun was between them, but that didn’t matter. Rather, it seemed to pull them together like a magnet.

“Don’t you…,” Norwood began, for suddenly Bert’s hand grasped the Colonel’s arm, “dare put your…,” and his old bones began to crack, “black hands on…”

“Why don’t you shoot?” Bert interrupted him, slowly turning his wrist.

“…me!”

“Why don’t you shoot, then?”

The old man twisted and bent in fury and pain, but the gun fell to the floor.

“Why don’t you shoot?” Bert said again as his hands sought his father’s throat. With furious sureness they took the old white neck in their strong young fingers. “Why don’t you shoot then, papa?”

Colonel Norwood clawed the air, breathing hoarsely and loud, his tongue growing stiff and dry, his eyes beginning to burn.

“Shoot—why don’t you, then? Huh? Why?”

The chemicals of their two lives exploded. Everything was very black around them. The white man’s hands stopped clawing the air. His heart stood still. His blood no longer flowed. He wasn’t breathing.

“Why don’t you shoot?” Bert said, but there was no answer.

When the boy’s eyes cleared, he saw his mother standing at the foot of the stairs, so he let the body drop. It fell with a thud, old and white in a path of red from the setting sun.

“Why didn’t he shoot, mama? He didn’t want me to live. He was white. Why didn’t he shoot then?”