I swallow the remainder of my Scotch and signal the bartender for a refill. “What I do remember . . . it probably won’t sound like anything. I was in the fourth grade when integration started here. I was in the public school then. The first semester they sent twenty black kids into our school. Twenty. Into an all-white school. The black kid in my grade was named Noble Jackson. Nobody was horrible to those kids. Not overtly. But every day at recess, we’d be out there playing ball or whatever, and Noble Jackson would be standing off at the edge of the playground by himself. Just standing there watching us. Excluded. I guess he tried to play the first couple of days, and nobody picked him for anything. Every day he just stood there by himself. Staring, kicking rocks, not understanding. The next semester my parents moved me to St. Stephens.”

The Scotch has soured in my stomach. “Now that I’m older, I know that kid’s parents made a conscious decision to do something very hard. Something my parents wouldn’t do. They risked their child’s education, maybe even his life, put him into a situation where it would be almost impossible for him to learn because of the pressure. They did that because somebody had to do it. When I think of that kid, I don’t feel very good. Because exclusion is the worst thing for a child. It’s a kind of violence. And the effects last a long time. I think maybe Noble Jackson is part of the reason I’m doing this.”

“What happened to him? Where’d he end up?”

“I have no idea. I’ve often wondered. Wherever he is, I’ll bet he got the hell out of the South as soon as he could.”

We return to our drinks, both lost in our own thoughts. As the bartender returns to refill his glass, Kelly says, “Got a phone book, chief?”

The bartender turns around and takes one from beneath the telephone. The Natchez phone book is only a half-inch thick, including the yellow pages. Kelly flips through it, then runs his finger down a page. “Here’s your man. Noble Jackson.”

A strange tightness constricts my chest. “That’s probably his father.”

“Let me borrow that phone,” Kelly says to the bartender.

“Local call?”