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The thing about telling a story: keeping it straight for 60 years was a difficult feat.

It was the sort of thing that a cold case investigator looked to find, because only the truth, told by a truthful witness with physical and mental longevity and character to match, could be kept straight over that long a period of time.

Not that anyone in any authority in all of that 60 years had wanted to listen to Amos Pointer, who by the time Captain H.F. Lee heard his story was a hulking old man – a chocolate giant, beginning to bend from within because of the heat of the story he had to tell.

It had nearly cost him his life, 60 years earlier, to tell his tale … but it had been recorded on a literal vinyl record then, and the record had been kept as he and his family were forced into hiding.

Captain Lee had listened to the record until he had memorized it, line for line … and then marveled as the only significant different in how Mr. Pointer told the tale was the age and weariness of his voice. There were some minor lapses in detail, but Mr. Pointer was now 84 years old; that was to be expected. Those lapses took nothing away from the vivid horror he painted, a crime left unsolved for 60 years, 60 years in which he had known … and someone else had slipped that record into an envelope and sent it over to Captain Lee's division in the Big Loft police department.

At the end, Mr. Pointer put out his hands for the handcuffs.

“I'm too old to run now. Y'all found me after all these years, and I still ain't got nothing to tell you but the truth, even if I die for it.”

This broke Captain Lee's heart.

“You have been made to feel as if you were the criminal for telling the truth while Black,” he said. “Let me correct that: you ought to feel like a hero. I'm going to go put the handcuffs on the right person. Thank you for keeping it all straight, all these years.”

“Dey gon' be plenty mad that somebody believed me – please don't tell 'em where I is now.”

“Sir, they are going have bigger problems to worry about than you – besides, I've made a modern record, so, they can't stop the truth.”

Captain Lee had recorded his interview with Mr. Pointer on his digital recorder, and played it back.

“It be strange to hear yourself, tellin' it all again,” he said. “But I done see'd it, every night, and maybe now, I get to sleep in peace.”

To be continued ... here!

Photo by Adrian Korte on Unsplash