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Back The Outside Man Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover Page
  2. EARLY BIRD BOOKS
  3. Praise for the Writing of Richard North Patterson
  4. Title Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-one
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-four
  41. Thirty-five
  42. About the Author

“You tracked down Lydia Hargrave and got a job at her house. You had only one reason to do that.”

“You know about Grangeville,” he said flatly.

I nodded. “They killed your father and uncle. You were about eight then. So was Mrs. Cantwell.”

“Always something to keep it fresh.” His voice had an awesome literal quality, as if the forty years since had happened overnight. “Daddy’s in his shop, sayin’, ‘Yes, sir,’ to white folks so he can come home evenings to hunt for me out back, laughing, ‘Otis, gonna find you, Otis,’ in his deep voice because he’s pretending not to know where I hide—and then he’s gone. My stupid uncle buys the same piece of white ass been peddled all over town and just like that they’ve locked them both up and Hargrave’s walking past us staring straight ahead like the judgment of God. Every week he’d parade that girl by our shop, noddin’ and smilin’ at us, and now he’s killing Daddy by inches. And he knows.”

“Hargrave’s dead,” I answered. “The ones who killed your father are dead or so old and bitter, strangling them would be a mercy. Instead you murdered an innocent woman.”

“I didn’t kill no one,” he repeated.

“Then go to the police.”

“You don’t know nothing.” He spoke with granite authority. “The first thing a black man learns is that he’s got no control, that you can’t decide things for yourself and make it stick because someone or something can come from nowhere and just wipe you out. A black man can’t go asking the police to fix things for him. They taught me that by killing Daddy.”

“That was forty years ago.”

Lee stared through me until I felt the weight of his obsession. “It was yesterday,” he said tonelessly, “and so hot Mama brung a jug of water and a rag to cool my face. We’re waiting on that goddamned lawn. All around us there’s white folks staring but the only one talks to us is Daddy’s red-faced lawyer, whining, ‘It’s a hard case,’ like it’s something that’s happened to him. He breathes liquor; every time he talks, Mama’s eyes go dead. I don’t understand nothing except that Daddy’s in trouble and time’s passing so slow I can feel it in my stomach.