Featuring Smoke Moore x Stack Moore
Summary: Elijah and Elias visit their Grandma June in Mississippi. June shares stories from 1926, when she learned strength and healing from her mother. She recounts how black families like theirs built America through resilience and labor. Her memories reveal how the country often forgot the people who shaped it.
The sun dipped low behind Mississippi pines, leaking amber through the branches. Elijah’s old motor rattled down the county road like it was held together by stubbornness and prayer. The air was thick with humidity, the kind that made your shirt cling to you even when you weren’t doing much.
Elijah drove one-handed, elbow resting on the open window. Sweat rolled down the side of his face, and he wiped it with the back of his hand. Elias had his feet on the dashboard, chewing on sunflower seeds and spitting shells into a cup.
“You nasty as hell,” Elijah muttered.
Elias chuckled. “Man, please. You act like you ain’t done worse. I done drove with you after practice — your whole truck smelt like gym socks baptized in sorrow.”
Elijah cracked a small smile but kept his eyes on the road. The trees grew taller, older, thicker. Mississippi didn’t change much, it just kept growing where nobody cut it back.
After a moment, Elias shifted in his seat.
“You really think Grandma June sick-sick? Or she just want us to visit?”
Elijah’s jaw worked. “Doc said she had a spell with her heart. But she tough. Ain’t never met nobody stronger.”
“That don’t mean nothin’, though,” Elias said softly.
“It mean enough,” Elijah replied, but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
Elias sucked his teeth. “Man… every time we come out here, feel like the air get racist.”
“I’m just sayin’. Woods too quiet. Always feel like somethin’ watchin’ you.”
“That’s your imagination.”
“No, that’s trauma passed down from our ancestors.”
Elijah snorted despite himself.
The dirt road to their grandma’s house appeared like a crack in the earth. Elijah turned in, and the truck jostled over roots and dips.
“You remember this road?” Elijah asked.
“Yeah. I also remember the snake we almost ran over last summer, and the wasp nest in her mailbox, so I’m already stressed.”
Feet hit gravel as the house came into view, a leaning blue shotgun house wrapped in kudzu and memories. The porch light flickered like it was winking at them.
Before they even climbed the steps, the screen door squeaked open.
Grandma June stood there with a dish towel thrown over her shoulder, her hair wrapped, her face lit with joy and exhaustion.
“Well, look at God,” she said. “My babies done made it.”
Elijah hugged her carefully, like she was glass.
“You look good, Grandma.”
“Boy, don’t lie to me. I look tired and hot.”
Then she turned to Elias.
“You still talkin’ slick, huh?”
She pulled him into an embrace, patting his back twice. “Hush all that and bring them bags inside.”
The table was set with hot cornbread, chicken gumbo, rice, and sweet tea so sugary it could stop a heart.
“Sit down and eat,” Grandma commanded.
They did, after they finished praying.
Elias reached for a second biscuit too quick, and Grandma slapped his hand with a spoon.
“You gon’ eat everything ’fore it even cool down.”
Elijah choked on his gumbo trying not to laugh.
Grandma pointed her spoon at him. “And you. You look tired. You workin’ too many hours at that station.”
Elijah shrugged. “Just doin’ what I gotta do.”
“You always ‘doin’ what you gotta do.’ When you gon’ do something for yourself, hm?”
He didn’t have an answer.
She eyed Elias next. “And what job you got now?”
Elias pointed at himself. “Me?”
“No, the other fool named Elias sittin’ at my table.”
“I’m between opportunities.”
“That mean unemployed,” Elijah said, sipping his tea.
“That mean blessin’s comin’ my way,” Elias corrected.
Grandma waved him off like a fly. “You got all that mouth, but your pockets sound like two nickels arguin’.”
Elijah burst out laughing, gumbo almost spilling from his spoon.
“Keep talkin’, Elijah,” Elias muttered. “Keep talkin’, see where it get you.”
The three of them sat out on the porch. Grandma rocked slowly in her chair. The boys leaned on the rail, fireflies drifting lazily around them.
Lightning flickered far off.
“Storm comin’,” Grandma murmured.
“Yes ma’am,” Elijah agreed.
Elias stretched. “I’m fixin’ to go grab a soda from the corner store.”
Elijah frowned. “Right now?”
“It’s literally one minute away.”
“Storm comin’,” Grandma repeated.
“I ain’t made of sugar,” Elias said.
Grandma gave him a long, knowing look. “You watch yourself out there. Folks round here still funny at night.”
“Grandma, it’s not the 1920’s no mo’.”
“And? Racism don’t expire.”
Elijah stood. “I’ll go with you.”
“Nah,” Elias said quickly. “I’ll be quick. Chill. I ain’t twelve.”
Elijah hesitated. “Just keep yo phone on.”
Grandma whispered a short prayer under her breath.
Elijah heard it, and his stomach tightened.
Elias walked down the dirt road, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning the trees. The cicadas were loud. Too loud. Like the forest was hiding something.
“Man… this place weird as hell at night.”
Far off, a dog barked. Thunder grumbled.
A pickup truck drove slowly down the opposite end of the road. Older model. Black paint. No lights.
Then rolled to a near stop.
Elias felt the hair rise on his arms.
“Aight,” he murmured. “Not tryna be on Dateline. Let me move—”
He crossed the street casually.
Until it stopped again, right behind him.
Elias turned slightly, not enough to look scared, but enough to see two men inside. Older, white, faces unreadable through the dim.
“You lost?” the driver called.
The truck inched closer. Too close.
Elias took a small step back.
“I’m good, sir. Have a good night.”
That was the last thing he saw clearly.
A sudden movement in his periphery.
Elias felt something punch him in the side.
He stumbled into the ditch, hand going to his ribs, warm liquid coating his fingers.
Rain started like the sky was falling apart.
Elias tried to yell but only managed a hoarse whisper:
Elijah sprinted down the road in the pouring rain, calling his brother’s name.
“Elijah…” Elias breathed.
Elijah fell to his knees, scooping him up, pressing his hand to the wound.
“Who did it?! Who did this to you?!”
“Truck… black pickup… they— they asked me if I was lost…”
Rain mixed with blood, streaking down Elias’s body.
Elijah grabbed his phone, hands shaking.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My brother’s been shot! He’s bleedin’ bad—please send somebody!”
“Old Mill Road—near Johnson’s field—hurry!”
“Sir… we don’t have active units available in that area.”
“What? What you mean you don’t—this is an emergency!”
“It’s been marked a high-risk region after dark. Protocol states—”
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT NO DAMN PROTOCOL!”
“I’m sorry, sir. We advise you to transport the victim to a safer—”
The fury in him was hot and bright and animal.
“They ain’t comin’, huh?” Elias whispered.
“No,” Elijah said through clenched teeth. “They ain’t.”
Elijah burst through the front door carrying Elias in both arms, slipping on the wet boards of the porch before catching himself. Rain poured off him in sheets. Elias’s blood ran warm down his wrist.
“Grandma! Grandm—!” Elijah’s voice cracked.
But Grandma June was already halfway down the hall.
She didn’t ask questions.
Her face didn’t even change.
She simply said, in a voice steady as a church bell:
“Bring him to the kitchen. Not the couch. Floor in there easier to clean.”
Elijah stared at her, stunned but followed.
The kitchen light was bright and harsh, revealing exactly how bad Elias looked. Grandma motioned toward the long wooden table and Elijah laid his brother on it, mud dripping off both of them.
Grandma snapped on a pair of thin, yellowing gloves from a drawer.
“Get them wet clothes off him,” she ordered.
Elijah hesitated. “Grandma, he’s bleedin’—”
“I said get ‘em off. Don’t argue me.”
Her tone cut through the panic like a knife. Elijah stripped Elias’s shirt away, revealing the gunshot wound—dark, slick, messy.
She moved like someone who had already accepted the situation ten steps ahead.
She reached under the sink and pulled out a metal box Elijah had never seen before, dented and old, paint flaking off the top. She popped it open with her thumb.
Two bottles of antiseptic.
A folded cloth stained from years ago.
Elijah blinked. “Grandma… where’d you—”
“Been in this family longer than you been breathin’,” she said.
She opened a drawer and pulled out a folded towel, placing it beneath Elias’s head.
Elijah stepped closer, still trembling. “He—he got shot on the road. They drove up on him in this truck—”
“I figured,” she said calmly, pouring disinfectant over a wad of cotton.
“No—Grams—they targeted him. They—”
Her eyes cut up to him, sharp and unwavering.
Grandma pressed the soaked cotton to the wound.
Elias screamed and arched off the table, but Elijah held him steady.
“I know, baby,” she murmured, “I know it burn. But we don’t got the luxury of a doctor.”
Elijah felt his throat tighten.
“We called 911. They said— they said they couldn’t come out here.”
“That’s it? ‘Sure enough’?”
“You wanted surprise?” she said, threading the needle. “You black, you bleedin’, and you in the woods after dark. Ain’t nobody comin’.”
Her tone wasn’t bitter, just factual.
Elias gritted his teeth, voice thin. “Grams… you sure you know what you doin’?”
A soft chuckle slipped from her lips.
“Lord, child. I been stitchin’ men back together since before your mama got her first period.”
She leaned down and started sewing with practiced, precise motions.
Elijah clenched his shoulder to keep him still.
Grandma hummed a tune under her breath; low, old, something that sounded like a field song passed through five generations. The kind of melody you didn’t learn, you inherited.
The storm outside thrashed against the windows, but inside the only sounds were:
The needle pulling through skin.
When she finished stitching, she cleaned the wound again and wrapped it tight with clean gauze.
Then she peeled off her gloves and pointed to Elijah.
Elijah slid an arm behind Elias’s back and raised him slowly until he was propped against the wall. Elias groaned but stayed conscious.
Grandma mixed something in a tin cup, herbal, dark, smelling sharp.
Elias sniffed it. “This look like poison.”
“It ain’t poison if it keep you alive.”
Elias shot Elijah a weak look. “If I die, tell the world she killed me.”
Grandma tapped him upside the head.
When she finished tending to Elias, Grandma washed her hands, cleaned the blood with bleach water, and put every tool back in the metal box.
Then she sat at the table beside Elias… and finally exhaled.
“Grams… how you know how to do all that?”
She lifted her eyes to him, slow and tired.
“Because this house done seen this before.”
“You talkin’ about Uncle Henry?”
She only stood, walked to the front door, and locked it with a solid click.
“Storm gon’ pass soon,” she said. “But sit tight. Both of you.”
Elijah nodded, still shaken, still processing.
Elias drifted into a groggy sleep against Elijah’s shoulder.
Grandma leaned on the counter with both hands, staring out the window. Lightning flashed across her face.
And in that moment she looked like someone who had lived three lives already.
“Elijah,” she said without turning around.
“I’ll tell y’all the rest in the morning.”
She looked over her shoulder, eyes deep and distant.
“The last time this house had to patch up a boy shot on that same road.”
Elijah woke up to the smell of frying butter and something sweet — maybe biscuits, maybe peach preserves. The storm had passed. Sunlight shot through the blinds in clean golden bars.
Elias was still asleep, breathing slow but steady, his bandage clean.
“Morning,” Grandma June said without looking up, stirring something on the stove in her old cast-iron skillet.
Elijah stretched and winced. “Mornin’, Grams.”
“That little enough to keep y’all from actin’ stupid today?” she said, cutting her eyes at him with the smallest hint of threat.
Elijah huffed. “I ain’t plannin’ on goin’ nowhere.”
“Good,” she said, sliding biscuits onto a plate. “I ain’t plannin’ on buryin’ nobody.”
Elias stirred at the table, groaning.
“Damn… feel like somebody hit me with a truck.”
Grandma thumped the back of his head lightly.
“You got shot, fool. Don’t try to make it poetic.”
Elias chuckled weakly. “Grams… your bedside manner is terrible.”
“It kept you alive, didn’t it? Now sit up straight. You gon’ eat like you got some home trainin’.”
She set plates in front of them: biscuits, eggs, thick slices of ham, and peach preserves that looked older than both brothers but tasted like heaven. Elijah and Elias tore into the food instantly.
After a few minutes of quiet chewing, Elijah cleared his throat.
“Grams… last night you said this ain’t the first time you had to do what you did.”
“Yeah… you said you’d tell us today.”
Grandma froze with her fork in midair.
Then she put it down gently and wiped her hands on a cloth.
“Eat,” she said softly. “Let me talk.”
She leaned back, eyes drifting toward the window as if the past were standing right outside.
“What happened to Henry?” Elijah asked carefully.
Grandma inhaled — slow, deep, like she had been avoiding that breath for years.
June remembered it clear as the day sunlight touched these fields.
Henry was nineteen. Tall, handsome, reckless in the way boys get when they’re too brave for their own good. Worked the cotton fields with their daddy, came home with dust in his hair, muscles tight from the day, and a grin that could talk trouble into talking back.
He had dreams bigger than the county lines.
Anywhere with electricity in the streets and not just in the sky.
That evening, they ate black-eyed peas and cornbread around the oil lamp. Henry made jokes, teasing June, elbowing her, telling their mama;
“Mama, you know June gon’ run off after me. She ain’t built for no cotton life neither.”
“That girl ain’t runnin’ nowhere. She stayin’ right here with me.”
But Henry winked at June anyway.
Later that night, against Mama’s warnings, he said he was headin’ to Mr. Wilkes’ store for a bottle of soda pop.
“It’s dark,” Mama said. “You wait till mornin’.”
“Mama,” Henry laughed, “ain’t nobody out there lookin’ for me.”
He stepped into the night, easy like he owned it.
June always remembered the sound of the screen door slapping shut behind him.
She didn’t know it’d be the last time she saw him walk unbroken.
June was sweeping the kitchen when she heard the truck first. Back in ’26, trucks were a luxury — only certain men owned them, and those men weren’t the type Henry should’ve been seen by after dark.
The rumble came slow down the dirt road.
Then slick laughter—mean, low, white laughter carried across the fields.
Sharp enough to split the night.
June dropped the broom and ran outside barefoot.
The air smelled like dust and gunpowder.
Henry was staggering toward the house, hands pressed to his side, a dark red patch spreading fast across his shirt.
“JUNE—!” he gasped, voice breaking.
She sprinted. Her feet slapped the dirt hard enough to sting, rocks cutting her soles, but she didn’t feel any of it.
Henry collapsed before she reached him.
She caught his head, dragging him up with strength she didn’t know she had.
“MAMA!” she screamed. “Mama, HELP!”
Mama Thompson burst out the front door in her nightgown, lantern in hand.
“Lord have mercy—Henry, baby!”
Together they dragged him inside. His boots left long red streaks across the porch boards, stains June swears are still there under the paint.
Mama Thompson shoved everything off the kitchen table with one sweep of the arm; flour tin, bowls, sewing scraps, all of it crashing to the ground.
“And the liquor from the top shelf.”
June’s hands were shaking so bad she almost dropped the bottle, but her mama snatched it from her and poured it straight on Henry’s wound.
Henry screamed so loud the lamp flickered.
June nearly backed away, but her mama’s voice snapped through the panic:
“June. Hold him. Don’t you let go.”
June pressed Henry’s shoulders down while her mama threaded a thick needle using the lantern light.
“Mama—can’t we get the doctor?” June sobbed.
“Doctors don’t ride out here for boys like Henry.”
Then she leaned in close, eyes sharp, breath steady.
“You watch me now. You watch how to keep a man’s insides from fallin’ out his body.”
Watched her mother slide the needle through skin and flesh like cloth.
Watched Henry choke on his own blood.
Watched tears fall from her mother’s face onto Henry’s chest but her hands never once shook.
June held Henry down for what felt like hours.
When the last stitch tightened, Mama Thompson slumped back, sweating, chest heaving.
“He gon’ live,” she whispered. “For now.”
June pressed her forehead to Henry’s, crying into his hair.
By will, by skill, by love, by desperation.
And June learned every part of it.
She tapped the table lightly.
“That night’s when I learned,” she said softly. “Learned how to stitch a wound. How to clean it. How to keep a bullet from takin’ somebody you love.”
Elias listened with wide eyes, one hand resting gently near his bandage.
“And when I saw you bleedin’ yesterday,” June went on, “I swear it felt like 1926 all over again. Same table. Same smell of blood. Same fear in my chest.”
She touched Elias’s cheek.
“Only difference was… this time I knew exactly what to do. ‘Cause my mama taught me. And her mama taught her. And now…”
she looked at Elijah and Elias with eyes too full of generations,
“…I pray y’all won’t ever need to know it.”
Sunlight filtered through like dust from memory.
The storm had passed by morning, but the air still felt swollen, heavy like the clouds had left their grief behind.
Grandma June sat on the porch with Elijah and Elias, the old swing creaking beneath them. Elias was pale but awake, wrapped in a quilt stitched from scraps of old church dresses and flour sacks. Elijah sat on his other side, jaw tight, eyes shadowed from a night without rest.
For a long time, they listened to the birds humming in the trees. The house behind them smelled faintly of coffee and salt pork frying.
Then Grandma June spoke, voice low and smooth as worn river stone.
“Boys… y’all been askin’ what I meant when I said this land remembers. What I meant when I told y’all Henry wasn’t the first, and y’all won’t be the last.”
She stared out toward the fields; endless, green, indifferent.
“Well, let me tell y’all somethin’. Somethin’ my mama told me, and her mama told her. Somethin’ black folks been whisperin’ to each other since the first foot touched the soil of this place.”
“You see these fields?” she said softly. “These cotton rows? These roads? These houses? This whole stretch of Mississippi soil?”
“Well… they was built on black backs. On sweat that never stopped fallin’. On hands blistered from sunup to sundown.”
She traced the porch rail with her finger.
“Your great-great-granddaddy, Samuel Thompson, he was born in chains on land not too far from here. Made to pick cotton until his skin cracked like dry earth. They sold his mama when he was nine. Sold his brother at eleven. He ain’t never saw neither of ‘em again.”
Elijah’s throat tightened.
Elias looked down at his hands.
“That man,” June went on, “still found it in himself to grow food, repair houses, build barns, and help strangers. He carved out a little freedom with his bare hands after emancipation. Built a home from wood so soft termites chewed it before he finished the roof.”
“Samuel made a life. But America didn’t ever say thank you.”
June clasped her hands together in her lap.
“You know them old spirituals? The ones the elders still hum in church?”
“Well, those were prayers black folks sang when all they had was breath and belief. Prayers that kept ‘em alive. Prayers that pushed this country closer to its own promise even when it didn’t want to keep it.”
She hummed a few lines of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, her voice trembling like an echo through time.
“Black folks prayed America forward even when America told ‘em they didn’t belong in it.”
“Your great-uncle Marcus, your granddaddy’s brother, fought in World War I. Came back with medals. Medals they told him to wear only inside the house so the white men in town wouldn’t get upset.”
“‘Cause the same country he fought for didn’t want him walkin’ ‘round lookin’ like a hero.”
“Marcus survived the French trenches but died in Mississippi, beaten by a sheriff with a badge he earned fightin’ beside white soldiers.”
“That’s America for black folks. A place you build, a place you pour into… but a place that don’t always claim you back.”
“Mississippi birthed the blues,” June said, pointing toward the red clay road. “And the blues was born from men and women who ain’t had no justice, no rest, no mercy.”
“Y’all ever hear them old records? Son House, Charley Patton, young B.B. King?”
Elijah nodded. “Daddy used to play ‘em.”
“Well, every note is a testimony. A record of what this land did to us, and what we did with the pain. We turned suffering into sound. Into survival. Into art. Into somethin’ so powerful the whole world ended up wantin’ a piece of it.”
“But the world rarely wanted us.”
June rested her hand over Elias’s.
“What happened to you last night, baby… ain’t new. Ain’t fair. Ain’t right. But it ain’t new.”
“And the rage inside you? I know it. I carried it for years after Henry got shot.”
Elijah looked down, jaw clenched.
“But listen to me careful,” she said. “America been makin’ black boys bury their hurt for centuries. That’s the requiem we livin’ in — a mourning song sung over and over, hopin’ one day we won’t have to sing it no more.”
“This country don’t stop bein’ yours just because somebody tried to tell you it ain’t.”
Like the land itself was listening.
June placed Elias’s hand on Elijah’s, then placed hers over both.
“Your ancestors tilled this soil. Built these houses. Fought in these wars. Birthed these stories. Raised these fields. Carved freedom outta stone.”
“This is your America too. Don’t you let nobody - not a bullet, not a badge, not a lie, take that from you.”
A soft wind moved through the trees.
June’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“Sometimes you gotta mourn the country you belong to… so you can make it into the one we deserved.”
Happy New Year y’all. I hope 2026 is filled with health & happiness. To kick things off, here is the first chapter of my Cowboy Carter series. We are now officially in the year of Act III which I’m so excited about 🎸. I hope yall enjoy this fic & be sure to lemme know what you think. I love y’all. ♥️
