For two days the whispers turned into talk, and the talk turned into something sharper. At the mill, men stopped swinging hammers when Caleb Raya passed by, their voices dropping low until he was out of earshot then rising again like hornets stirred with a stick.
On the white side of town, front porches turned into pulpits. Women fanned themselves while repeating what they'd heard: He confessed already. He did it for the thrill. His folks must've known. It didn't matter if none of it was true it sounded true enough when said in daylight with a breeze stirring the curtains.
At the general store, Martha Long stood by the pickle barrel with two other women, her voice sharp enough to cut.
"Anna Raya always let those children run wild," Martha said, sniffing as she pressed coins into the grocer's hand. "Takes just one bad seed, you ask me."
One woman nodded, shifting her baby from one hip to the other. "Well, Sheriff says they got him locked up tight. Gonna be a quick trial. Folks can sleep easy once it's done."
Behind the counter, the grocer said nothing — just wrapped a sack of flour in brown paper and handed it over. He didn't look Martha in the eye. He didn't have to. He knew which side he needed to stand on to keep his windows from getting smashed when the sun went down.
Back at the Raya house, Amie sat on the porch steps, humming a tune she half-remembered from her mother's soft bedtime songs. She dragged a stick through the dust, drawing circles, erasing them with her heel, then drawing them again.
Inside, Anna sat at the table, letters spread before her — one to the preacher, another to the town's only colored lawyer who lived two towns over. Her hand trembled as she lifted the pencil. She'd written the words My son is innocent so many times the letters no longer looked real.
Caleb came in, wiping sweat from his brow, shoulders heavy. He'd been to the mill foreman, the town preacher, even a man he knew in the next county who once talked about knowing a good lawyer upstate. But all he got was the same look — a door closing behind polite words.
"They won't help us," Caleb said, voice flat.
Anna pressed her lips tight, fighting tears she didn't have time to waste. "We'll find someone. There has to be somebody who'll speak for him."
Caleb's eyes flicked to Amie through the screen door. His voice dropped low. "If we can't find a real lawyer, they'll just pick someone for him — some white man don't care whether Krist lives or dies."
Anna's hands dropped to her lap. Her shoulders curled in. "He's a boy, Caleb. He's just a boy."
Caleb bent down, pressed his forehead to hers like he'd done days ago. His whisper cracked in the stillness: "They don't see that. Not here."
---
In town, a new sound had joined the gossip — the dull tap of a hammer on wood. Outside the courthouse, workmen nailed up fresh notices: Trial to commence April 24th. A date stamped like a death sentence before the trial even began.
Children peeked at the sign, their mothers dragging them away before they could ask too many questions. Across the street, a white man spat on the dirt and muttered, "Won't take but a day. Maybe two. Rope'll do the rest."
At the jailhouse, Sheriff Hammond leaned back in his chair, boots up on the desk, reading the local paper. The headline danced bold across the top: Local Boy Held in Slaying of Two White Girls. The rest of the column was a tangle of guesswork, half-truths, and words like brutal and unthinkable. Hammond liked how they sounded — big words that told folks what to think without saying much at all.
In the cell down the hall, Ikrist Raya didn't know what the papers said. He didn't know how many times his name had been spoken that morning alone — over kitchen stoves, at church steps, under breath in dark corners where men liked to brag they'd bring the rope themselves if the law didn't move fast enough.
He sat cross-legged on the cot, tracing his finger along the wall where he'd scratched another flower, another chicken. The drawings were spreading now, covering the bricks like weeds no one could root out.
Deputy Croft passed by, tray in hand. He paused, looking through the bars. Ikrist looked up.
"Can I see my mama today?" Ikrist asked. His voice was thin, but hope clung to the edge like a barn swallow hanging to a wire in a storm.
Croft didn't answer right away. He set the tray down, slid it through the slot. Cold beans, a crust of bread. No biscuit this time.
"Eat," Croft said, his voice stiff. "Try to sleep some."
Ikrist's eyes dropped to the tray. He wanted to ask again but the deputy was already moving away, boots echoing off stone.
---
Outside the jail, the April sun burned hotter than it should for spring. Caleb Raya still stood across the street, hat in hand, staring at the jailhouse door like a man willing steel to melt. But behind him, whispers coiled like smoke — drifting through the pines, curling under porch steps, slipping into every house on both sides of the tracks.
And inside the cell, Ikrist pressed his palm to the wall again, the cold bricks rough beneath his small hand. He didn't know about the date nailed to the courthouse door. He didn't know about the rope some men talked about at night.
He just knew his mama hadn't come yet, and his drawings on the wall were the only truth that felt real.