Presenting the Swaddled Baby

“We’re sorry for your loss, Miss Victoria,” said Mr. White as his color guard presented the flowers. One corner of the arrangement, a casualty of the battle with the threshold, dangled limply.
“Taz was a great man,” he said. “A true pioneer. A patriot.”
Mr. White then motioned for one of the other Klan members to step forward. He ceremoniously unwrapped a medium-sized American flag and presented it to Gammy. She took it in her hands as if it were a swaddled baby.
John Tazwell Latham, Sr. was not known as a “joiner” and had never actually gotten around to officially putting his name on the Klan rolls, although he had attended a meeting or two. This wasn't surprising. T.J.'s grandfather had never been a member of any organization that anyone could remember. He wasn’t even officially a member of his own church. But the Klan (and the church) had assured Mrs. Latham that such formalities wouldn't be necessary. Mr. Latham had been a pioneer citizen, after all.
“Would you say grace for us, Mr. White?” Birdy asked.
This was the invitation Frank White had been hoping for. He assumed the somber, slightly slumped stance one was expected to put on prior to invoking the name of the Lord. But a sudden commotion erupted in the kitchen before he could clear his throat.

Ker-Clomping With the Klan

A team of horses ker-clomped into the driveway as T.J. stepped outside. A dozen men unloaded a tangle of red carnations, twisted into the shape of a cross.
T.J. held the door for the little army. They carried the oversize floral arrangement like Romans, hoisting it like a battering ram. The siege to the front door was all grasp and strain, positioning and re-positioning their massive red phallus, but in the end a little bruising force purchased their entrance.
T.J. could hear his grandmother’s gasp before he rounded the corner. Queen Victoria Brown Latham was a large woman, with dense bones and massive hands, much like her son Abijah. She had a coarse, full-bodied voice like Abijah’s, too; when she spoke, the windows rattled.
T.J. recognized the red-headed captain of the men as Frank White. Mr. White served as a deacon at T.J.’s church, along with T.J.’s father and Mr. John Evans. Mr. White and Mr. Evans also served as the three trustees of the Philadelphia Church School. T.J. knew that Mr. White had never much cared for his father. T.J. knew that it had something to do with his mother. Apparently Mr. White had accompanied her home from church a few times and had even been invited by her parents to have supper with the family, before Tom Latham came along and ruined everything. T.J. noticed that his mother always found an excuse to leave the room whenever Mr. White was present. Today was no exception.
Frank White also led the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, or what was left of it. It was in that capacity that he was here today.

A Row of Ducks

T.J. hoped he was old enough now to just blend in with the other men as they paraded into the back room like a row of ducks.
Usually at family events a few of his uncles would gang up on Victor, who drank too much. Just as often, they would pile on Bije, who provided Victor –- and every other so-inclined man up and down the Big and Little Tallapoosa rivers – with liquor. But today would probably be a little different.
From what T.J. had pieced together, his father was going to be asked to take over the family farm. Now that Pappy was dead, there was no one to oversee the stables and the crops, the negroes and sharecroppers. Tom's brothers either lived out of town or were too slack or disinterested. Tom had run all the way to Milledgeville to break free from those ties, but now that he was back, he would make a too-easy target for them.
After his father and all of his uncles filed in, T.J. tried to hide in the corner, in Hoke's shadow. But Edgar, the eldest, pressed a firm palm to T.J.’s breast.
“I’m sorry, T.J.,” he said, pushing him as he shut the door.
T.J. spun around. The girl with the faded pink flowers was working her tongue around a red lollipop while she waited for Hoke.
T.J. thrust his hands into his pockets and slunk out to the porch without saying a word.

T.J. Latham