After a meal of beans and franks with sliced cucumbers and tomatoes on the side, I got everyone washed up and in bed early that night. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t go nowhere near that barn to check on Pa until then, sensing it was going to be a similar situation to when Mama died and he holed up in their room. I had no desire to face anything like that again, yet there was no way around it.

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Working side by side with Foxy was like second nature —in the garden, in the kitchen, in her little room mixing herbal remedies. But I never imagined we would work side by side in the packhouse, patching Pa back together.

He was sprawled out, facedown, on an old quilt we managed to get him on before he passed out, snoring heavily from the elixir Foxy had whipped up. About 90 percent of it was made from 100-proof moonshine. With him no longer writhing in pain, we knelt on the edge of the quilt and went to work on dressing the angry slashes crisscrossing his back.

“I don’t understand today,” I whispered, holding the small pot of salve for Foxy.

She dipped her fingers in and then applied it to a welt on Pa’s hip. “What part?”

“All of it . . .” I wanted to voice my concerns about Pa losing it, but as always, the subject of Dave Foster remained trapped inside me. That feeling of needing to vomit and knowing I’d feel better after the purge hit me. Swallowing it down, I broached the other part of the day that bothered me. “Why do people act like Clive Thomas? The civil rights laws done and declared that we are all equal.”

Foxy let out a humorless snort and shook her head but offered no other response to my question.

I pulled the salve out of reach so she had no choice but to focus on me. “Why are people not understanding the law? It’s clear as day.”

Sighing, Foxy took the pot from my hand but kept her eyes on me. “Honey child, you can change the law all day long, but you can’t change people’s opinions. That fool today was probably raised to believe I ain’t nowhere near his equal.”

“That’s just pure stupid.”

Foxy sat on her butt with arms crossed, looking lost in her thoughts for a spell.

I sat back too and listened to the symphony of crickets and such just outside until she cleared her throat.

“What if a new law came out tomorrow that said you could no longer worship God? Would you suddenly stop believing in him just because the law told you to?”

Huffing, I swiped my thumb against the leg of my shorts to remove a smudge of salve. “It’s not the same. Believing in God is a great thing. Racism and hate is a bad thing.”