WHEN EDMUND CAME HOME FROM VISITING HIS PASTOR IN the hospital, he said to his mother, “Mama, tomorrow I’m going to be arrested.” (He didn’t tell her that he’d seen his big brother lying on the pavement. Just about lifted off the pavement by the fire hose shooting him. Charles was grown, had quit school, and moved out long ago.)
“You make me shamed I do so little,” his mother answered. She set down her cracked coffee cup.
“Mama, you’ll come get me, won’t you?”