Imagine, Greg said, you come from hardworking people who literally built a town on hope, hope for what freedom in America might mean for them, who supported themselves and lived in prosperous peace for well over a hundred years. And then along come some white folks who ain’t got shit and don’t know shit, and they start tearing at what you built, creeping in on it. Worse, they hate you for what you were able to do with nothing. They leave shit at your doorstep. Literally. They threaten the people you hold dear. They make your life hell, your paradise a living hell. And then one night, you see this little one all alone. It’s just the two of you. Nobody watching. And maybe he mouths off or something, calls you, a grown-ass man, a nigger. And you lose it, can no longer hold back the rage, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a nine-year-old kid or a ninety-year-old woman, you are simply through. Done.

To Greg, this made emotional sense, but it also required vigorous prosecution. But Darren—chafing at a depiction of a violent impulse he didn’t recognize within himself or in the men who’d raised him—wasn’t buying any of it. He took pleasure in laying down a cultural trump card, speaking with an authority his friend couldn’t touch. “Black folks ain’t like that,” he said. Or all of y’all woulda been dead by now, he wanted to say but didn’t. Instead, he offered a different sentiment from Leroy Page: “Black folks are the most forgiving people on earth.” But even as he said it, the memory of the man stating that he didn’t like Levi tapped Darren on the shoulder, demanding his attention. He thought of the old man growing wary when Darren asked to search his place—squirrelly, actually—treating Darren as a traitor for asking questions about the death of a white boy, and he heard his uncle Clayton’s words again: Forgiveness has a limit.

11.

11.

THE BUREAU had Greg staying at a motel off Highway 59, so he drove Darren the block and a half back to the Cardinal Hotel in his Ford Taurus, then reached across the front seat when Darren opened the passenger-side door. In the shaft of light from the dome bulb inside the car, he went in for hug, which ended in an awkward mash of forearms, Darren going for a bro shake and Greg wanting more, some reassurance that their friendship remained intact despite the heavy conversation tonight and the tack Greg was clearly planning to take with his investigation. He said, “We’re good, right?”