There was a long silence. A bumblebee buzzed behind me, and I turned to see him at the screen, bouncing up against it.
Mama broke the silence. “Could you tell me what it is you want, and I can tell Jacob?”
“I really should talk to him myself.”
“Is it about this murder business? The colored women?”
“Yeah.”
“Jacob says you don’t want him bothering with it.”
“First of all, the body wasn’t in his county.”
“It was found in the bottoms here.”
“Yes, but he had the body brought to Pearl Creek. To have a bunch of niggers tell him what had happened to her. You don’t have to be one of the city boys to know what happened to her.”
“But he wanted to know who she was, as well as what happened to her.”
“Doc Stephenson could have told him.”
“Doc Stephenson is a drunk, and a fool. And a lot less likely to know who she is.”
“He knows every nigger in these parts. He ain’t got nothing against niggers. And neither do I.”
“Stephenson is still a drunk and a fool.”
“I don’t want to argue with you, May Lynn. There was a time—”
“If the body was found here, under Jacob’s jurisdiction, what’s it matter, Red? What business is it of yours? You say it isn’t Jacob’s business, but it seems it’s more his business than yours. He drove her to your county to identify her, but she was murdered here.”
“We don’t want the niggers stirred up, May Lynn. That’s all. They got to know their place, and when Jacob starts treating them with the same concern, the same respect as white folks, then you could have problems.”
“You really believe that?”
“I do … There’s a rumor Jacob’s arrested a nigger for the murders.”
“That’s not true.”
“Story goes he’s hidin’ this nigger out. What I want to say to Jacob is this. Give the nigger up. ’Cause he don’t, it’ll go bad for him.”
“Jacob hasn’t arrested anyone for the murder. And if he has, what would be the problem with that?”
“None. We just want him to give the murderer up.”
“Just a few minutes ago you didn’t care about a colored being killed. Now it’s a concern.”
“I’m concerned a white woman—like yourself—could be next. A nigger gone on a streak like that, he won’t be satisfied with just black women. He’s gonna want a white one before long. One he killed had white blood in her.”
“Now it matters because she had white blood. I always thought folks like you thought a drop of colored blood made a person colored, no matter how much white was in them.”
“Well, I don’t think that. There are degrees. White blood can dominate. It’s the way you look makes you a nigger. How you live.”
“A life is a life, Red. Dark skin. Light skin. Anything in between. That’s what concerns Jacob.”
“Way it looks, May Lynn, is Jacob’s got the man did these murders and he’s protectin’ him ’cause he’s a nigger.”
“You know that’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t know that. Doc Stephenson claims Jacob’s pretty tight with the niggers.”
“Doc Stephenson’s an idiot.”
Red laughed. “He may be at that. I’m here to help, May Lynn. I owe Jacob. I’m here to warn Jacob.”
“I don’t think you are. I think this has to do with somethin’ else besides him pullin’ you out of a suck hole.”
“It does. I owe him for another reason. And there’s you. I don’t want nothing to happen that could come down on you too.”
“That’s considerate of you … now. Considering.”
“I was a damn fool …”
“Sssshhhhh,” Mama said. “Don’t speak of it.”
Red was silent for a while. After what seemed like a change of seasons, he said, “I want Jacob to know it could get so folks come to see him.”
“Are you talking about the Klan?” Mama asked.
“I’m just sayin’ …”
“Red. I heard you’d turned bitter. That you was sympathetic to that bunch of sheet-wearing cowards—”
“Careful with your words, May Lynn.”
“I don’t need to be careful. I would have never thought it of you. I knew you when we were young, Red. I knew you to carry food down in the bottoms to that poor old colored lady, Miss Maggie.”
“We was just kids.”
“That woman practically raised you, Red.”
“She was just a nigger worked for my Daddy. I fed Daddy’s dogs too.”
“You know she more than worked for your Daddy. You suckled at her breast. Played with her kids like they was your own kin. Then your Daddy got old and so did she. She was almost your mother. She was more of a mother than your mother. And she was more of a wife to your Daddy than your mother.”
“That’s enough!”
I heard a slam, as if a hand had been slapped on the table, a chair slid back. I pushed open the door and rushed in.
“You okay, Mama?”
“Yes, hon. I’m okay.”
Red was standing at the table, his hat in his hand. His face red as his hair, his knee cocked forward slightly, turning the toe of his boot against the floors he’d not too long ago bragged on. He glared at Mama. “You done come to be just like Jacob,” Red said.
“And you’d be lucky if you were anything like him,” Mama said. “You got somethin’ in you always been there, Red. It wasn’t just me turned you like they say.”
“You didn’t help.”
Red looked at me. His hand shook as he put on his hat.
“There was a time when I thought I might should have done different than I did, Red,” Mama said. “For just a moment. But I come to a understanding with myself long ago that I was wrong about that. Still, I considered you a good man, Red. Today, I don’t know. I do know this. Jacob is ten times the man you are or ever will be.”
Red opened his mouth as if to speak. He looked at me and the steam went out of him. He trembled slightly.
“I could say somethin’,” he said.
“You could. And if you must, say it. But I’ve said my somethin’, and I’ve got one more thing to say. I see you’re still wearin’ your shirts with the sleeves rolled down.”
There was a movement in Red’s face that frightened me. But it was just a twitch, then it was gone.
“You tell Jacob what I said, hear? He’s been warned. I’ve paid my debt.”
“You think that’s paying a debt, you’re wrong, Red. Let me tell you somethin’. Now you’ve been warned. Don’t you ever step foot on this property again. You hear?”
“I hear.”
Red went to the door, turned, looked at me and Mama. “That’s a fine-looking boy you got there, May Lynn. And you got that little girl out there too. So innocent. I believe she’s gonna look a lot like you. Already starting to get your face. I hate to think of you bringing them up to think niggers are the same as us. It’ll just bring them grief, put them on the same level as the niggers. You too, May Lynn.”
“Good day, Constable,” Mama said.
Red unconsciously rubbed his left hand along his right sleeve, went out without shutting the door, got in his dented black Ford and drove away.
A thin plume of dust followed after the car and drifted in the air long after he was gone.
11
Mama made me swear not to tell Daddy about Red’s visit. She said she wanted to do it. Word it right so he didn’t get angry and go off half-cocked. I didn’t worry much about that. Daddy could be a little impatient at times, and I had seen him angry, but I hadn’t never seen him go off half-cocked.
That night I listened with my ear close to the wall to find out what Mama told Daddy about Red, but they were whispering so light I couldn’t make anything out but their bedsprings making noise. I drifted off to sleep finally, and when I awoke the next morning I remembered faintly dreaming of the Goat Man.
It was a Monday, and Daddy was off from the barbershop. He had already gotten up and fed the livestock, and as daybreak was running like a broken egg yolk through the trees and the birds were calling out that they were in search of breakfast, he got me up to help tote water from the well to the house. Mama was in the kitchen tending the wood stove, cooking grits, biscuits, and fatback for breakfast.
When we came in she smiled and he kissed her on the cheek and ran his hand down her back. She gave him a quick peck on the mouth and a wink.
We left out then for another bucket of water, and about halfway to the well, I said, “Daddy. You ever figure out what you’re gonna do with ole Mose?”
He paused a moment. “How’d you know about that?”
“I heard you and Mama talkin’.”
He nodded, and we started walking again. We got water and started back to the house. He said, “You ain’t mentioned you know anything about that, have you?”
“No sir.”
“Good boy.”
“So what have you decided to do with Mose?”
“I haven’t decided. I can’t leave him where he is for good. Someone will get on to it. I’m gonna have to take him to the courthouse, or let him go. There’s no real evidence against him, just some circumstantial stuff. But a colored man, a white woman, he’ll never get a fair trial. I guess I’d done let him go, but I got to be sure myself he didn’t do it.”
“I thought you said the woman was colored. Or part white.”
“You was listenin’ from somewhere at Mrs. Canerton’s house, wasn’t you?”
I admitted it.
“Well, let me tell you somethin’. That woman was white. She didn’t have a drop of colored blood that anyone knowed of. She was dark-lookin’ ’cause she was bloated and dead and up there in that tree for the wind and rain to hammer on. Folks that found her just thought she was colored, way her skin had turned. Around here, someone gets a good burn in the sun and it turns brown, there’s someone whisperin’ there’s colored blood in ’em. Hell. I thought she was colored too. Body gets like that, you can’t tell much about skin or race or nothin’. Death puts us all even, boy.”
“Mr. Chandler said she was colored.”
“She’s dark-skinned, son. Just like I said.”
“But you said—”
“I threw that in to keep from stirrin’ people up. You put white and colored in the same sentence, folks start to stir.”
“You did put white and colored in the same sentence. You said she was part white.”
“You’re right.” Daddy paused to take his pipe out of his pocket, stuff it with tobacco, and light it. “I’m not sure that was smart, son, but I was playing the odds. I said she was colored, no one cares. Had I said she was white, there’d have been lynchin’s all over this county. But she’s got white blood, it gives most folks pause, makes some folks see her as a human being. On the other hand, she’s not so white they’d get worked up over it. It’s a sad state of affairs, but that’s how it is.”
“How’d you find out she was a white lady?”
“Thinking she was colored, I drove her body over to Pearl Creek to see if Doc Tinn or Reverend Bail knew who she was. They did, but not because she was colored. She was white and had a bad reputation and mostly worked the colored section over Pearl Creek. That gave her a worse reputation. A white woman that’ll lie down with coloreds don’t get the respect of one will lie down with her own kind. And a woman like that don’t get much to begin with. She hoboed to get to Pearl Creek from Tyler, rode the train back when she could catch it. Did most of her work at the dance joints and about. But, word gets out—and it will eventually—that she was white, well, it won’t matter she was a woman none of the so-called self-respectin’ men over here would have given the time of day, even if they might have given her a dollar. Them same men are gonna be up in arms, ravin’ about how a colored killed her and how all white womanhood is in danger.”
“Ain’t it in danger?”
“Womanhood in general is in danger, son. Anyone could be in danger with a killer like this. But I think it’s mostly women he’s after. I’m just sayin’ she’d gotten killed by a train or drowned by accident, wouldn’t have been no mournin’. But folks like Nation think maybe a colored had his way with her, well, Mose and every colored boy over twelve might end up bein’ lynched.”
We carried the buckets toward the house.
“You said you got to be sure Mose didn’t do it, but you don’t think he did, do you, Daddy?”
We were on the back porch now. Daddy set his bucket down. I set mine down too. “It’s like I’ve opened this box and I don’t know how to close it. Mistake I made was mentioning it. That was pride talking.”
“You were proud of arresting Mose?”
“I was proud of the fact I was doin’ somethin’. So far in this whole business all I’ve done is look at a couple dead bodies, talk to a few folks, and that’s it. I don’t know no more than I did when I started. ’Cept these women got names, and I figure they got loved ones. Worse thing about it, I don’t even know for sure. I didn’t try to find any of the families or go see ’em. I was gonna do any real investigatin’, that’s what I should have done. It’s what I ought to do. Mistake I made was arrestin’ Mose in the first place, then tellin’ I’d arrested someone. And I did that on account of Doc Stephenson.”
“How’s that?”
“He was in the shop. He came in to get Cecil to cut his hair. He used to come in now and then for me to do it, but after that little event over in Pearl Creek, he only has Cecil do it. I guess my pride got to me, him thinkin’ I didn’t know what I was doin’, and Cecil gettin’ the bulk of the customers, so I shot my mouth off like I was talkin’ to Cecil.”
“But you was talkin’ to Doc Stephenson?”
“Afraid so. And it come back to haunt me at Mrs. Canerton’s.”
We took the water inside, poured it up in the pitchers and one of the washtubs where Mama kept extra water throughout the day, then started back.
We came to the well and Daddy rested his bucket on the curbing for a moment. He turned to me and said, “You know why I haven’t seen any of the folks of these women got murdered?”
I shook my head.
“ ’Cause one’s colored, Harry, and the other is a prostitute. I don’t really know no colored people, ’cept Mose. I talk to a bunch of ’em, and like ’em okay, and I think a bunch like me okay, but I don’t know ’em, and they don’t really know me. Hell, I don’t really know Mose. All me and him ever talked about was fishing and the river and now and then tobacco. I guess I don’t want to know no prostitute’s mother or Daddy. Down deep, I think I may be just like everyone else. And you know what, Harry?”
“No sir.”
“That bothers me.”
Daddy dropped the bucket into the well. When it splashed, he began cranking it up.
“You ain’t like everybody else, Daddy. You don’t hate colored.”
“Down deep, like I said, I ain’t so sure. I have my feelings.”
“But you and Mama, you’re different than the others.”
“There’s lots of folks feel like we do. It’s just the ones feel the other way got bigger mouths and they’re meaner. Let me tell you somethin’, son. When I was a boy every word out of my mouth about the coloreds was nigger this and nigger that. I fished on the river as a boy a lot, and there was this colored boy down there, and he was catching big ole catfish. I was jealous of him. The idea of a colored catchin’ those big ole fish, and me not able to catch anything. I’m ashamed to tell it, but I was gonna beat him up one day. I was down there, and there he was near my spot, pullin’ them fish out like they was trained to jump on his line.
“He looked over at me, and said, ‘Sir, I got some good bait I done made myself, you want some?’
“I took some, and I still didn’t have any luck. But we sat there on the bank and we talked, and by the end of the day I knew somethin’ I’d never known before.”
“What was that?”
“He was just like me. He had a mean old Daddy too. Old man had killed half a dozen folks, all colored, so not a damn thing had been done to him, and the boy was afraid of him. I was afraid of my old man. He taught me how to make the bait, how to take blood and cornmeal and a little flour dough, and knead it all together in little balls and let them harden, then fasten them to the hook just right.
“Me and him didn’t become best friends, but I quit thinking about what color he was. It got so I looked forward to goin’ down there and fishin’, just so me and him could talk.
“Well now, a white girl come up dead and naked in the river, and somehow, and I don’t remember how, it was decided this boy, name was Donald, was the one did it. I didn’t hear nothin’ about it happenin’ at the time, but one afternoon I was comin’ home from squirrel huntin’, and I hit over there on what some folks are callin’ Preacher’s Road, and there was this big crowd, and when I worked my way in there, they had Donald in a wagon bed, and they had nailed his hands and feet to that bed and they had castrated him.
“He saw me, son. Looking out of that crowd at him. I still remember his eyes. They looked to me as big as saucers. He looked at me, and he said, ‘Mister Jacob. Can’t you help me?’ I stepped back into the crowd, son. I was thirteen years old and I didn’t know what to do, and here was a boy my age dying and calling me Mister and beggin’ me to help.
“They set the wagon on fire and finished him. And it wasn’t two days later they found a trail of that little girl’s clothes, and they was followed to a little camp where they found some more of the girl’s belongin’s, and a dead colored man. But there was the girl’s goods, her little purse and such. Now, I don’t know that fella did it, but I can be pretty sure Donald didn’t. I figured the crowd was mad, and the cry went up a nigger did it, and they found them one. Poor Donald. I ’spect it was that man they found that actually done it.”
“How’d he die, Daddy?”
“Just died, I suppose. Another thing. They took that man’s body and dragged it through the woods, dragged it down Preacher’s Road and all over and finally cut it loose and set fire to it. The damn corpse, mostly bones, laid beside the road for a month before animals or someone dragged it off.
The Bottoms Page 13