“Come on,” Richard said.
I grabbed Nub and we went into the old sawmill room, the moonlight cutting through rotted spots and slashing beams across the floor.
“That there in the middle is rotten,” Richard said. “Stay close to the wall over here.”
We eased along the wall and the whole structure wobbled. Richard said, “Worse comes to worst, we can slide down into that sawdust. But that’s the worst. I don’t know we’d come up out of it.”
“We’re trapped, Richard.”
“Stay away from the middle. Stay right here.”
We had reached the far side of the building, near the mouth of the sawdust chute. Chapman’s shadow filled the doorway, then he was moving forward.
“You have just given yourselves to God’s mercy.”
“God can kiss my ass,” Richard said.
Chapman roared, came across the floor. The entire building shook and the floor screamed and rose up and buckled and there was a crack, and Chapman’s right leg went through. It went through so fast his left leg, which stayed on the flooring, bent under him and went backwards and twisted in a way that it hurt to see. A piece of bone had torn through his flesh, ripped through his overalls, and it stuck out like a muddy stick. I could see too where the floor had broken up and made a barbed piece of wood and it had gone into Chapman’s lower abdomen. He had dropped the scythe.
Chapman screamed so loud I thought the building would collapse from the noise. “You beast,” Chapman said. “You devil. God curse you for the bastard of Satan you are. O, merciful God, deliver me from this pain and this boy.”
I glanced at Richard. A spear of moonlight lay across his eyes and nose. I could see tears in his eyes. He eased forward. The floor creaked.
“Careful, Richard,” I said. “Be careful.”
Richard picked up the scythe. He said, “Stand to the side and give me room, Stanley.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t do it.”
“Move aside.”
“Don’t do it, Richard.”
“Then you better watch the blade as she comes, Stanley. Daddy, God is gonna grant you one last wish. You ain’t gonna have pain no more, and you ain’t gonna have to worry on me none.”
I leaped back against the wall and there was a whisper and a glint of silver and the sound of Nub barking insanely.
The blade appeared to have passed in front of Chapman, and for an instant, I thought Richard had missed. Then Chapman’s head rolled to the side and fell through the hole his fall had made. There was a burst of darkness from his neck and it splashed warm across me and Nub and Richard. Chapman’s body bent forward, the boards creaked, cracked, and he fell on through, leaving a great gap in the center of the room.
Richard dropped the scythe and it went through the hole. He turned, looked at me, sat down on the floor next to the wall. Sat down so hard I thought the whole rotten building would fall. It shook and sagged and squeaked and creaked, finally went still and silent.
Nub stopped barking. He lay passive in my arms, his ears raised. Outside, gradually, I began to hear what had been going on all along.
Crickets.
An owl in the distance.
Somewhere, the howling of dogs.
24
THERE’S NO WAY I can tell you the type of commotion all of this created. You have some idea, of course. But in 1958 a crime like this was a sensation. Or should have been. It got little play outside of Dewmont, however. It didn’t get picked up all over like you would expect. That was due to the town fathers, and Mr. Stilwind, who owned the newspaper.
Me and Richard missed a week of school. The police quizzed us for a few days and we were under a kind of mild house arrest without the arrest, if that makes sense. But it was made clear we weren’t supposed to go anywhere until they said so.
The police tried to play the idea that we had gone in together to murder Richard’s old man because of some sort of grudge Richard held for being thrown out.
But we kept to our story, which was the truth. About how we dug up the dog because Richard wanted to put it on the back porch to make his old man aware of how he felt.
It was such a dumb story they couldn’t help but believe it. Besides, it was true.
Then there were the reporters. Each one trying to make the first big scoop of their lives. Pieces of it ended up in the paper outside of Dewmont, but it was downplayed and it didn’t hit the big news much. A piece in the back of the Houston paper, a stamp-size square in the Dallas paper, and a few sentences in the Tyler rag. I think some money might have changed hands.
I told the police about the graveyard, of course, and Richard told them about the bodies and how they were people who had worked for his father. I told them about Margret. I told them that he may have killed Jewel Ellen. Mr. Stilwind later got wind of that and made a public display of the story about Jewel Ellen being murdered by Mr. Chapman.
That part did make the papers, and most of what you heard later was how this man had been killed trying to kill two children, and how he was responsible for the death of the daughter of the town’s premier citizen.
Margret got lost in all of it. So did the workers, black and brown, that Chapman killed. It was all about Jewel Ellen Stilwind. Everything else was a footnote.
Mrs. Chapman said she loved her husband and had no idea he did such things. No one wanted to listen, and certainly didn’t believe it, when Richard said she had to know. They didn’t want to believe about the beatings she took and liked either. She was asked to move, however, and she obliged, and to the best of my knowledge, no one ever saw or heard from her again.
As an adult, I’ve often wondered about her. How much had she really done to accommodate her husband? What did she do after she left Dewmont? Sometimes, thinking about that, I get the creeps.
Out in the Chapman barn, a number of items were found that belonged to the people he had killed. Like a magpie, he had collected things they had owned, gathered them up and made a nest. Wallets and rings and scarfs and even a pair of shoes. No one knew what he did with those things, or why he kept them in a greasy box beneath straw at the far end of the barn, and some of us didn’t really want to know.
Richard was given a lot of sympathy for a while. He stayed with us and started school. He and I didn’t get closer, like you’d think. We sort of drifted apart. We went to school together, we talked some, watched a little TV, and he helped out at the drive-in and slept on his pallet near my bed, but there was something missing. It was as if God had come down from heaven and driven an invisible wedge between our spirits.
Then, one afternoon, when I was to meet him after school, he didn’t show. I learned he left at lunchtime. Just walked off. He hadn’t gone home, and no one knew where he was.
My dad tore the town apart looking for him. We went out to the Chapman place, found it burned to the ground, house and barn and all the sheds. The animals had long ago been sold and Richard had been given the money.
I guess Richard did the burning, but he was nowhere to be had. The police sifted through the fire, the wreckage, to see if he had gotten burned up himself, but no bones were found.
After a few weeks, we decided he had done what he told me he was thinking about doing. Caught a train out of Dewmont, rode on somewhere where he could get a job and start a life. Being near us, even if we did care, was just too much for him.
———
BUSTER STILL RAN the projector, but into the school year he decided he had to cut back. The walking was really getting to him. I took over on Fridays and Saturdays. The rest of the week the job was his.
One night, a Thursday, I went out to see him in the projection booth. He had a big RC and was sipping it. When he saw me, he smiled, said, “It’s just RC, Stan.”
The cardboard box full of paper clippings and police files was on the floor beside him.
I said, “Guess we need to turn those back.”
“Know what,” he said, “only if you want to. Figure it don’t matte
r none. This stuff is forgotten. You want to keep it, you can. Or you can toss it. I ain’t gonna try to return it. Jukes done quit them jobs. He got him work over at the railroad making twice what he was makin’.”
I sat down in the spare chair, said, “Richard’s not coming back, I guess.”
“Hard to say. But I doubt it.”
“He took my Roy Rogers boots with him.”
“That’s not good.”
“He left a note that said thanks. I guess that was for everything.”
“You think he owes you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I figure a boy like that, he’s startin’ out with enough debts. Ain’t no need to give him one more.”
“Yeah. But it was my Roy Rogers boots.”
“That’s too bad. But, you know, in a year, you won’t care. And in twenty years, them boots will be somethin’ you think about all the time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. It’s about thinkin’ you grown up, then knowin’ you ain’t.”
“You said bad people don’t always look bad. But Chapman and Bubba Joe. They sure looked like monsters.”
“Sometimes I’m wrong. A lot of the time.”
“I still don’t know why Chapman killed Margret or Jewel Ellen.”
“Sure you do. They was different, and he wanted them. Or he wanted that Margret anyway. That’s the one he killed. I can bet you that. He laid for Margret, jumped her, had his way, and killed her.”
“And Jewel?”
“Now, if you done told me all Chapman told you correct-like, he didn’t say he killed her, now did he? Took credit for them others and was proud of it, but he didn’t say he killed her.”
“He seemed confused when I mentioned it.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’. Now, Chapman could have done it. Won’t never know. And that’s the way it is in life. There’s gonna be all manner of stuff you never can find out the truth on and can only guess.”
“So you still think one of the Stilwinds killed Jewel?”
“I do. I think it was a coincidence. Not all planned and clicked together like I said things will do, and they do sometimes. But not this time, Stan. And let me point out, Stilwind don’t look like no monster. Chapman was crazy, Bubba Joe was pissed-on stupid. Stilwind. He’s the real monster.”
“One of the Stilwinds could have killed her on the same night to make it look like the killer did it? It could be like that.”
Buster grinned at me. “I don’t think so. I don’t think one could have known about the other quick enough for both crimes to come down in an hour or so. I think Chapman’s hate, Stilwind’s need for Jewel Ellen to keep her mouth shut, just come together in the same night.”
“Coincidence?”
“That’s right.”
“Mystery books I’ve been reading say there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“They’re wrong. You live long enough, you’ll find life is so full of coincidence it’ll make you crazy.”
“Well, it’s not very satisfactory.”
Buster grinned. “Now you’re learnin’. That’s life. Ain’t always satisfactory, but sometimes the part that is, is pretty damn good. Thing to remember is, enjoy life, ’cause in the end, dirt and flesh is pretty much the same thing. You understand that?”
“I think so.”
“Good.”
———
AS SCHOOL WENT ON, and I got involved with making new friends and trying not to get beat up by bullies, I saw less of Buster. At nights I took to doing homework or watching television, and it got so most of the time we just nodded at one another.
Then one cool night in October, he didn’t show. I had to run the projector. Though it was late, when I finished, I talked Daddy into allowing Drew and Callie to drive me over to Buster’s.
Driving down into the Section, Drew said, “They need some lights down here.”
“I think they’d be glad to have them,” Callie said, “but I don’t believe the city gives them out down here.”
Drew pulled up in front of Buster’s house. It was dark. I got out and went on the porch and knocked. He didn’t answer. I hesitated about going in. He hadn’t been drinking of late, but it occurred to me he might have fallen off the wagon.
I finally bit the bullet and tried the knob. It was locked.
I went to the window on the porch, pushed at it, and it came up with a squeak. I got down close to the crack I had made and called his name, but he didn’t answer.
I pushed the window up all the way and climbed in. Buster was lying on the bed, the covers up to his chin, his hands holding them as if he had just pulled them up.
I knew as soon as I saw him, he was dead.
25
DADDY HAD THE BODY put in the colored funeral home, and he paid for it to be embalmed. We tried to find the relatives Buster told me about, but no luck.
They buried him in the colored graveyard near where Bubba Joe had tried to kill me. They put him down without a stone between two other heaps of dirt without stones—recent burials.
I took the books the way he wanted. While I was gathering them, Callie, who was helping me, came across a note.
It read:
“Stan, you are my true friend. I give you my books, and my records. You’re gonna like them. Enjoy your life. Buster.”
“He knew he was dying,” I said to Callie.
“I suppose he did,” she said.
———
I DIDN’T GO BACK to the grave until some years later, and by then I couldn’t find it. Grass had grown over most everything and there were no longer mounds and what stones that had been there were gone or broken.
After Buster’s death, lots of things changed. There was a rumble in the air about civil rights, and there was much confusion and gnashing of teeth, but as the years went on, there were changes.
Colored didn’t have to sit in the balcony at the downtown theater anymore. James Stilwind sold out and moved off.
Mrs. Stilwind was found one morning in the pool out back of the old Stilwind house. She had fallen in and had been there for a few days before she was missed, or rather cared about. What I remember most about the story was a boy at school saying “Crows picked her eyes.”
Mr. Stilwind sued the old folks home, won, put them out of business, owned the place. He tore it down and built a subdivision there. He made lots of money and no one ever accused him of anything, nor his son, James.
Not long after the subdivision went up, Old Man Stilwind was found shot in his hotel room. No one knew who did it. Rumors were a young lady went up to his room to see him. More rumor said lots of young ladies did that. This one had a gun and a grudge. She shot him through the heart, then through the head four times, just to make sure he didn’t rise from the dead.
She got out of there without so much as anyone realizing Stilwind was dead or even hearing the shots. All she left were some gloves, and all that could be determined from those was that the label inside said they were made in London, England.
I smiled over that one.
Until now, I’ve never told anyone but my wife who killed Bubba Joe. All these years after, now and then I have a bad dream about him. See him chasing me and Callie and Richard. Richard is lost behind me, and Callie’s ponytail is flying in my face, Bubba Joe is closing, and the train is charging up the tracks.
Sometimes, in my dreams, he catches me.
Daddy bought the theater James sold. I thought that was ironic. He liked to joke he was Dewmont’s picture show magnate, indoors and out.
Mama began selling World Book Encyclopedias door-to-door, and she liked it. Rosy ran the drive-in, and I ran the projection booth. Rosy got her room upstairs. Along with an air conditioner. Air conditioners were put in all over the house. One for each bedroom, one for the living room that cooled it and the kitchen.
Drew and Callie dated seriously all through high school, but when Callie went off to a teachers college, they couldn�
�t hold it together. Callie became an English teacher. Got married, got divorced, met up with Drew some years later. He was divorced too. They got married, moved back to Dewmont where she teaches school and Drew runs his father’s hardware store, as if he really needs to. Drew inherited money. Lots of it. Callie dresses nice and no longer wears a ponytail. Men still look and sigh when she walks by.
Mom and Daddy went on fine for several years, then Daddy decided to close the drive-in down. It was just a home then. He kept saying he was going to take up the speakers and plant grass, but he didn’t. The projection booth filled up with lawn mowers and garden tools that he used to keep the front yard nice.
The indoor theater did all right for a few more years, and Rosy Mae worked there behind the concession and Mama took tickets, then Daddy gave it up too, retired.
He couldn’t stay that way, though. He and Mom decided to get back in the movie business. They owned the first video store in Dewmont. She quit selling encyclopedias and they ran it together until Daddy got too old and weak to be there.
Daddy retired for real, and a year later he had the big one; his great heart played out. Mom and Rosy lived in the drive-in home for another three years, then Mama died, left me some money, left Callie some goods, and left the drive-in to Rosy.
Rosy rented it out to a fella that wanted to keep scrap metal and old cars there. He cut down all the speakers. Rosy paid on a little house with the money she got from the rental, and moved out. Now and then, coming back from Austin, where I live and teach criminal justice, I’d stop by her house for dinner.
Rosy learned to “read real good,” as she was fond of saying, but she never read as well as she cooked. Now and then, for some reason or another, I’ll get the taste of her fried chicken and light biscuits on the back of my tongue, and it’ll be as if I just had them.
Last year, sensing time was playing out its string, Rosy quit leasing the drive-in and sold it to me for a song. I buried her on the far side of town in the graveyard where my parents are buried, the graveyard that just thirty years before only whites could be buried in. I bought her a headstone big as the one my parents had.
A Fine Dark Line Page 25