Wolf Whistle

by Lewis Nordan

  Uncle whispered some reply, who knows what.

  Alice imagined that he whispered, “Much obliged for reminding me.”

  The sergeant-at-arms was a boy in his early twenties named Peter Skeeter. He was half Choctaw Indian and didn’t want to lose this job. He was wearing the uniform of the former sergeant-at-arms, who had been much larger, and so his uniform was baggy and his cap came down over his ears. He kept pushing the cap’s bill up out of his eyes. He had made his way to the balcony now.

  He said, “Miss Alice, scuse me.”

  Alice knew the boy because he had a little brother in fourth grade, Jeeter Skeeter.

  Alice said, “Hey, Peter Skeeter.”

  He said, “Judge Swinger, you know—”

  She said, “I got a little carried away.”

  He said, “I ain’t trying to be uppity.”

  She said, “I know, Peter Skeeter.” Alice sat down in her seat and promised to behave herself.

  Jeeter Skeeter, the little boy, Peter Skeeter’s brother, who was sitting down the row, said, “Hey, Peter Skeeter.”

  He said, “Hey, Jeeter Skeeter.” He said, “How come you was saying just now that you’s a colored person?”

  Jeeter Skeeter said, “I am a colored person.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “Well, not in the usual sense of the word.”

  He was deferential and sweet, and he understood that this was not an issue to be settled easily, or right this minute.

  At the front of the courtroom, Uncle helped Auntee get seated in her chair at the table, and then he went around and dragged out a chair for himself and sat down like he didn’t sleep too good last night and he was tired.

  Sheriff Trippett came in. Alice recognized him, he was a huge man, with a big pearl-handled pistol on his hip and a white Stetson hat on his head. He was one of the witnesses who would testify later, the High Sheriff.

  The sheriff was smiling and glad-handing whoever was in reach. He spoke in a noisy, friendly way to everyone. You could hear him all the way up in the balcony.

  “Dexter,” he said to one defendant, hitching up his gunbelt. His big voice drew everybody’s attention like a bass drum.

  Alice said to her class, “That’s the High Sheriff.”

  Alice’s class said, “Oooo!”

  “Solon,” the sheriff said to the other defendant. Big voice, all over the courtroom, all over town, seemed like, whenever he spoke.

  Little Jeeter Skeeter said, “Don’t make us ride in no motorboat, Miss Alice.” Jeeter Skeeter never had gotten over the boat ride across the sewage reservoir, and he was having a hard time keeping his mind on his business.

  Alice said, “Hush up, Jeeter Skeeter, I love you and won’t let any harm come to you.”

  To the New Orleans lawyer, the sheriff said, “Hey, now, Nawlins lawyer! Pleased to meet you!”

  A little girl who never stopped twisting her hair said to Alice, “Is they gone be any more dead bodies to look at?”

  Well, Alice just had to admit, not every field trip was a complete and unqualified success. The Prince of Darkness Funeral Parlor might just fall into that category.

  To the prosecutor, the sheriff said, “Hey there, Hopalong!”

  To the white press table, he waved a big wide-fingered hand. He said, “Hello, New Yawk reporters!”

  To the reporters at the black press table, he said, “Mawnin’, niggers!”

  Sheriff Trippett was in a fine, fine mood this morning, that he was, yessir, a high mood. He found himself a good place to sit. Whoa! Whew! Take a load off, Annie!

  To Hot McGee he said, “Hey, Lardass!”

  He stretched out his long legs and got comfortable, yes he did. Oh yes, Sheriff Trippett was ready, sho was, ready for the show to begin, let’s see us some jugglers, let’s see us some high wire, let’s see some clowns and dancing bears.

  So far Sheriff Trippett was the star of the show. Men waved at him, tried to catch his eye, laughed a little too loud at his antics, elbowed their demure wives and said, “Look, lookee, there, what a man!” and though the High Sheriff was as big as a walrus and smelled like a fried-chicken shack, many of those true wives harbored secret thoughts of themselves in a private place with this armed gentleman, and dangerous dreams.

  Things moved along. Alice couldn’t keep from enjoying herself. She had a wonderful seat, just behind the balcony rail, she could see everything. She saw Uncle Runt, directly below her, enter the courtroom with his parrot on his shoulder. Peter Skeeter had to tell Runt he couldn’t bring no parrot into a court of law.

  Alice saw them talking together, and she could hear some of what they said, and could imagine the rest. In fact, some of it she had said herself, the day before, when Runt told her he was taking the bird to the trial.

  Peter Skeeter said, “Birds ain’t allowed.”

  Runt said, “Peter Skeeter, this parrot ain’t never hurt nobody, and got better sense than most of the people you see sitting in this courtroom.”

  Peter Skeeter pushed his hat up off his ears. He said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Runt, I truly am, but it ain’t allowed.”

  Runt said, “Fortunata’s got allergies, my wife. I try to take the parrot out of the house whenever I can.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “If it was a seeing-eye dog, now that’d be a different story.”

  Runt said, “It can’t speak a word, so it ain’t like it’s going to be interrupting testimony.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “Your parrot cain’t talk?”

  Runt said, “Not a word.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “I don’t know, Mr. Runt. It ain’t allowed, is all I know to tell you. It seems like a real well-behaved parrot to me, so it ain’t nothing personal against this particular parrot.”

  Judge Swinger came into the room, wearing shirtsleeves. Everybody stood up. He sat down and fooled with some papers in front of him, and so then everybody else sat down, too.

  In a minute the judge looked up. He said, “Peter Skeeter, git that durn parrot out of this-here courtroom.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “He cain’t talk.”

  The judge was occupied with his papers, so he looked back down at the desk in front of him and didn’t answer.

  Runt slid into an empty seat and put the parrot down in his lap, pretty much out of sight.

  Peter Skeeter said, “If you was blind and needed the parrot to walk across the street with you, well, like I say, that’d be different.”

  Runt said, “Just today, Peter Skeeter. Tomorrow I’ll leave him at home. Fortunata’s got allergies.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “It’d be kind of funny, though, wouldn’t it, a blind man walking behind a parrot.”

  Peter Skeeter was a little bit of a mess, tell you the truth.

  Runt said, “You’d have to walk kind of slow.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “You’d have to have a long leash.”

  Runt said, “You would, wouldn’t you.”

  Runt and Peter Skeeter had them a pretty good laugh, but they tried to keep it quiet so Judge Swinger wouldn’t get mad at them.

  Peter Skeeter said, “The parrot would all-time be hollering at you, ‘Watch your step!’”

  Runt said, “You are a sight in this world, Peter Skeeter.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “Blind children could go out for the arrow-catching team, if they had a seeing-eye parrot. ‘Arrow! Look out!’”

  Runt said, “You bout crazy, Peter Skeeter, that’s what you are. You bout as crazy as your old Choctaw name, you know that? Whoever heard of somebody name of Peter Skeeter?”

  Peter Skeeter said, “That parrot’d be hollering, ‘Goddamn, somebody done shot an arrow at us!’”

  Runt said, “Calm down, Peter Skeeter, you gone get me thrown out of here.”

  Peter Skeeter said, “Parrot’d be hollering, ‘Duck!’ “

  Peter Skeeter forgot all about it being against the rules to hold a parrot in your lap in a court of law. In a minute he wandered off and found somebody else to talk to, and
left Runt alone by himself.

  Bailiffs carried pitchers of ice water to the various tables, even the colored press table. Alice told the children to be thinking about pictures they might want to draw to illustrate their field trip to the murder trial. She wanted to keep this day on the educational level, unlike the shit pond, which was more just for fun.

  People brought church fans with them and were fanning their brains out. On one side the fans showed Jesus with a lamb sitting up in his lap, might as well have been a housecat, and this made Alice think about Uncle Runt with a parrot on his lap and then this brought a tear up in her throat because she loved her uncle so much and believed he was a little bit like Jesus, if he’d had more opportunities in life. On other fans Jesus was suffering the little children to come onto him, which made Alice think of herself, with all these innocent children around her and all, even if she didn’t feel very much like Jesus, since she had excellent reason to believe that Jesus never would in one million years have slept with a married man. And there were even pictures of Jesus on the Cross with some thorns and the water and the Blood, which made Alice think of the little boy who’d got murdered, and this broke poor Alice’s heart and made her believe that forevermore she would love the weak and draw them into her heart.

  On the other side of the fans were messages about Kamp’s Low Price Store, where Mr. Kamp was all time telling somebody’s mama, “She’ll grow into it!” and the Western Auto, where Mr. Marlin sold roller skates that wouldn’t stay on your feet, and the Prince of Darkness Mortuary, which Alice would just as soon forget about.

  Before Alice knew it, Uncle had got sworn in.

  She said to the children, “Look, look, it’s starting, hush up!”

  The man with the Bible said, “Do you swear—”

  Uncle said, “Yassuh, sho do.”

  Hopalong Cassidy moved up to the witness box with as little skipping as he could manage.

  Hopalong said, “How-do, Uncle.”

  Uncle said, “Tolerable.”

  The prosecutor said, “Let’s get right down to business, Uncle. We know who you are, you already done told us that, and we know where you live, in a cabin on section four of Runnymede, and we know you live alone with your wife and we know what her name is, and that you’re sixty-four years old, all that sound about right to you, Uncle?”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  Alice looked down upon her Uncle Runt. The parrot seemed to have gone to sleep.

  She looked also at Lady Montberclair, in a chair on the other side of the courtroom—Sally Anne—her golden hair, like a princess. Alice ached to know her, to speak to her, to ask her what it was like to fall in love with a man who betrayed himself and everyone else, what it was like to have had sexual congress with a murderer.

  In another chair below her, she saw Mrs. Gregg, Glenn’s mama, the little stick-figure, pipe-cleaner woman, tiny as a witch. She whispered to the children. “Look who I see.”

  The children leaned out over the rail and saw the woman who had changed their lives. In the sweltering heat they hummed quiet verses of the songs of Christmas, just at the sight of her. Right down Santa Claus Lane.

  The wives of two murderers.

  And then the mother of the murdered boy. Alice saw her as well. She sat in a chair that looked like it had been placed there as an afterthought, behind the prosecution’s table. Alice had never seen a colored woman wearing such nice clothes, a dark straight skirt and silk blouse and a light seersucker jacket. Maybe it was true that life was better outside the South. Maybe, somehow, the world really was a place of hope and light, if only the geography were different from what Alice knew about. Well, it couldn’t be any worse.

  The prosecutor said, “All right, then. Now, please describe, as well as you can, what transpired on the night in question, the night of August 28.”

  Uncle said, “We’s already sleeping, me and Miss Auntee. Bobo, he’s sleeping, too.”

  The prosecutor said, “Bobo was your grand-nephew, am I right?”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  The prosecutor said, “And Bobo resided with his mother in Chicago, Illinois, is that right?”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  The prosecutor said, “Go on, please.”

  Uncle said, “I heerd this car, sound like. Just rolling. Didn’t have no lights on, motor neither one. Funny-looking little car, look like a pickup truck.

  “Two white mens come to the house, one stay out in the car, other one up on the porch. One on the porch, he had him a big pistol. He banged on the door frame with the butt, you know.

  “Me and Miss Auntee, we’s already awake now, already done got dressed.

  “Man with the pistol, he axe for the boy from Chicago, that’s how he called him. He say, ‘Whereabouts is the boy from Chicago? Where the one what did the talking at Arrow Catcher?’”

  The prosecutor said, “What happened next?”

  Uncle said, “Bobo, he come out the back bedroom. Man say, ‘Git yo-self dressed,’ so he put on some pants, Bobo did. Man say, ‘Go git in the car.’”

  The prosecutor said, “Only one white man came in the house, the other stayed out in the car, is that correct?”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  The prosecutor said, “What happened next?”

  Uncle said, “Man hit Bobo upside the head. Hit him with the butt end of his pistol, laid open a gash in his face, too.”

  Up in the balcony, Alice looked along the row to see whether the children were all right. There was a lot of pants-wetting and crying at the funeral parlor, and probably permanent emotional damage, too, if Alice was willing to admit it. It didn’t take much to send a field trip straight out of control.

  The prosecutor said, “All right.”

  Uncle said, “Man pushed Bobo out the door, out to the little car.”

  The prosecutor said, “The little car that looked like a pickup truck.”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  The prosecutor said, “Was there someone sitting in the truck?”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  Alice whispered in a loud, educational voice: “Can anyone tell me who was in the truck?”

  A thumbsucker took his hand out of his mouth and said, “I own know.”

  Alice whispered, “Keep watching.”

  The prosecutor said, “What happened next?”

  Uncle said, “The man in the car hit Bobo in the face with his fist. They was talking, I couldn’t hear what they was talking about.”

  The prosecutor said, “But you could see, couldn’t you? You could clearly see what was happening?”

  Alice whispered, “Anybody else want to guess?”

  A little girl with John the Conqueroo, a voodoo charm made of spices in a felt bag around her neck, said, “Mr. Dexter?”

  Alice said, “Excellent! Yes, very good!”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  The prosecutor said, “How well could you see this happening? Wasn’t it dark?”

  Uncle said, “I could see. Light come on in the ceiling of the little car.”

  The prosecutor said, “So you could see clearly the faces of both men who came to your house in that car that night?”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  The prosecutor said, “All right, then, Uncle, I want you to do something for me. I want you to tell me something.” He said, “Will you please tell this court whether your own life has been threatened since the day of these events?”

  Uncle said, “Sho has.”

  Alice leaned first one way and then the other, down the line of children. She said, “Is everybody understanding this?”

  One child said, “The misuse of power is the root of all evil?”

  Alice said, “Well—”

  Another child said, “There is no justice on the earth?”

  Alice said, “Well—”

  Another child said, “We are all alone in the world?”


  Alice said, “Well—”

  Another child said, “The greatest depth of our loss is the beginning of true freedom?”

  Alice said, “Well—”

  Another child said, “The disposal of human waste is the responsibility of the brokenhearted?”

  These were all phrases Alice had put on the chalkboard after other field trips. It occurred to Alice, hearing these phrases now, that she might have attempted to do too much with a class of fourth graders. She was willing to admit to some excesses.

  Alice said, “Just listen.”

  The prosecutor said, “How often would you say your life has been threatened since then?”

  Uncle said, “Most every day, I spect.”

  The prosecutor said, “Are you afraid to testify here today, Uncle?”

  Uncle said, “Sho is.”

  He said, “Are you afraid for your life?”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  He said, “And can you identify those white men who abducted your nephew that dark night?”

  Uncle said, “That’s right.”

  Alice’s eye fell once more upon her Uncle Runt, with the parrot in his lap.

  The prosecutor said, “All right, one more thing before you do. Would you please tell the court whether you have ever pointed your finger in the face of a white man. Have you ever done such a thing before?”

  The parrot seemed to have waked up. It shook its head in a delicate little way, and opened its eyes, and looked first one way and then the other.

  Uncle looked like a little boy in the witness chair, he was so scared.

  He said, “Naw-suh, never pointed my finger in a white man’s face.”

  Runt stroked the parrot’s head with his finger.

  The prosecutor said, “Well, then, right here in this courtroom full of white people who hate you just for being here—and some of them are carrying guns on them, right this minute—”

  The New Orleans lawyer said, “Your honor, honestly!”

  Judge Swinger said, “Just ask your question, Mr. Prosecutor.”

  The prosecutor said, “Can you, for the court, please point out the man who entered your house and then pistol-whipped your nephew and pushed him out the door to the car?”