And I’m taking my children through this death house. Because it’s the only thing we can do. We have to bear witness.
For the past month I’ve taken bodies of people who died without witnesses, without anyone to acknowledge their murders, the injustice, the horrors. I still can’t prosecute, but I can bring them back to their families.
Fourteen years ago, Emmett Till’s mother opened her son’s funeral to the public. She left the coffin lid up, showing how her beautiful boy’s face had been destroyed, his eye nearly falling out of his head, his features unrecognizable—so badly beaten, so badly tortured, that the undertaker couldn’t repair him.
I’m not even sure he tried.
That act of courage made Rosa Parks remain in her seat on a city bus only a short time later. Made Martin Luther King support the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The death of Emmett Till — and the witness people bore to it, seeing what had been done — was the beginning of the end of the Old South.
I’ve told Jimmy and Jonathan and Keith and Lacey that. I’ve told them that this, the death of a man with so much potential, a man who could’ve led us like Martin did if he’d only found his way, might have the same effect.
If they look at what’s been done to him because he stood up for us.
If they look and understand.
If they remember.
And if they don’t ever let it happen again.
About Kris Nelscott
Kris Nelscott is an open pen name used by award-winning bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which she uses for historical mysteries. The first Smokey Dalton novel, A Dangerous Road, won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery and was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; the second, Smoke-Filled Rooms, was a PNBA Book Award finalist; and the third, Thin Walls, was one of the Chicago Tribune’s best mysteries of the year.
Kirkus chose Days of Rage as one of the top ten mysteries of the year. Entertainment Weekly says her equals are Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler. Booklist calls the Smokey Dalton books “a high-class crime series” and Salon says “Kris Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of detective novels now being written by an American author.”
The Smokey Dalton Series in order:
Novels
Dangerous Road
Smoke-Filled Rooms
Thin Walls
Stone Cribs
War At Home
Days of Rage
The Day After (Upcoming)
Short Stories
Guarding Lacey
Family Affair
Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel Page 36
