by Jeff Fields
When there was absolutely no breath left, not a kink in an internal organ, we dragged ourselves to our feet, not daring to even look at each other, and stumbled off toward the poultry house.
Tio and I watched through the slatted walls while Em lifted the latch and eased inside with the chicken catcher. He stood a moment to get his bearings, then carefully made his way along the rows of ghostly white chickens. A hen clucked and stood up and Em froze. After a while she settled back down.
Selecting a plump pullet on the bottom row, Em eased out the wire loop. Tio and I stopped breathing. The wire was invisible in the dark, all I could see was the hoe handle inching toward her head. Suddenly the noose snapped shut. Em jerked her to the ground and put a foot on her to stop the fluttering. That was all. It was so quick and quiet there was hardly a stir among her sleeping sisters. "Ssssew!" Tio shook his head in inebriated admiration.
Em loosened the snare and the chicken lay dead, her wings spreading slowly away from her body. He quickly caught two more the same way, and handed them through the door. I put them into the sack. "Better get one more," he said. He was starting back for it when Tio gave a "Pssst!" through the crack. He kept going "pssst" until Em came over.
"Let me get the last 'un," he said.
"You ain't in no shape," Em whispered.
"Aw man, ain't I been watchin' you do it? Come on, lemme get one. Ain't no use to you havin' all the fun."
Em sighed. "Come quiet, then."
Tio groped through the door and got a grip on the catcher, and Em steadied him up and pointed him toward the chickens. "Em, are you crazy?" I whispered. Em put his finger to his lips and grinned.
Tio weaved away toward the roosts. Two old hens on the bottom pole stood up, heads cocking, and watched his approach with interest. Tio drew up before them, readied himself, and, after considerable fumbling, the wire loop lifted out, wavered uncertainly over their heads, and slowly settled on the one on the right. The hen watched it descend toward her, then at the last moment flicked her head and the loop slid down her wing. Em covered his mouth and turned away.
Tio grinned sheepishly. He tugged at his hat and tried again. Out of patience, the hen hopped to the ground and trotted away under the roost. Tio stared after her. The action seemed completely to confuse him. He turned to Em for guidance. But Em was unable to offer it; he was clinging helplessly to a roof pole, his hat cocked in the air and shaking violently.
Tio propped himself drunkenly on the catcher and considered the situation. He bent down and looked under the roost, then back at Jojohn. Finally, he took the course of action that must have seemed most obvious to him at the time. He got down on his knees and crawled under the roost poles after her.
When I finally got Em's attention and frantically pointed out what was happening, Em quickly tiptoed to the end of the roost and bent down. "Tio!" he cried in a hoarse whisper. "You damn idiot, come outa there!"
At that moment I heard the noose squeak shut—on the infuriated chicken's leg, it turned out.
With the first screech from under the roost, the entire leghorn population lifted into the air in one thundering, fluttering, ear-splitting cloud, exposing Tio standing between the roost poles, gamely hanging onto his plunging prey. The air was full of chickens; they banged against the walls, the ceiling, the doors, perching momentarily on rafters, only to get bumped off by incoming flights; they surged between the roosts in foaming currents and leap-frogged each other high into the air, shooting off showers of feathers. Em had given up trying to reach Tio and was wildly flailing his way toward the door.
The back porch light came on. A bulb lit up by the pumphouse.
I ran to the door and jerked it open, unable to hear my own voice yelling, but the open door gave the boiling poultry a square of moonlight to aim for and out they came, spilling over me and pouring off down the hillside in a squawking, raging white flood.
The first shotgun blast clanged across the poultry house roof and sprayed against the milking barn.
At that point Em gave up trying for the door and came through the wall in a shower of splintering lath.
He found Tio and pulled him out, still clutching the catcher and the flouncing chicken. I had a good head start on them, but at the silo Jojohn passed me, hat in hand and a firm grip on Tio's collar, knees pumping high and grunting with pounding breaths as he ran.
"Uh-huh! Uh-huh! Uh-huh! Uh-huh!"
The second shot rang out and I felt the sack jump in my hand, and realized for the first time I was still carrying the other chickens.
I jumped the ditch and dived into the cart with Tio as Em was turning out on the creek road. We followed the back roads for several miles before swinging back onto the highway, but even then we were sure every pair of headlights we saw was either Hutchinson or the sheriff, and stopped and pulled the bike into the bushes.
But eventually we grew confident and relaxed. Em peppered along toward home and I sat watching the pavement glide from under my feet. Tio was already asleep with his head on the sack.
As we crossed the river bridge at the lower end of the Ape Yard, Em cut his speed and yelled back over his shoulder, "You feel like dressin' these things?"
"What do you mean?''
Up the slope to the right glowed the lights of the Rainbow Supper Club. "Man, I'm just about whupped," he said.
"Me too," I said. It was well after midnight.
"I sure don't feel like dressin' these things."
"Well, somebody's got to, if you want your chicken dinner tomorrow." I might have known you'd put it off on me, I thought. But then as we drew nearer to the supper club, a smoky aroma cut the air, and I got the drift of his meaning.
"I can't wait for no tomorra, I'm 'bout to perish. What say we swap 'em off for some of old Bubba's barbecue!"
"After all that trouble for a chicken dinner?"
"Aw, them old birds are prob'bly tough anyhow." He was already turning off on the supper-club road. "How we gonna bake no chicken in the first place—ain't even got no oven! Talkin' 'bout fixin' chicken, and ain't even got no oven."
"You've got a point there."
"We don't even know nothing 'bout cookin' chicken."
"Right again, Em."
"But old Bubba sure knows how to cook barbecue."
That was true. Bubba White's Rainbow Supper Club, a barnlike structure converted from an old flour mill on the river, was almost as famous for its barbecue as for the murders that took place there. Bubba White was a stump of a man with the benevolent face of a black Santa Claus, and a violent temper. He had been brought up on a number of charges, and once in a while, when the public outcry became loud enough, his place was raided and padlocked. But within a few months the Rainbow was back in business, the cellar restocked with bootleg whiskey, and convicts from the county stockade waiting Bubba's tables.
Bubba White was Doc Bobo's brother-in-law.
Em coasted around the parked cars to the kitchen. He knocked, but the noise from the jukebox drowned him out. He knocked again, and this time the door bucked on its hinges. Bubba himself peered out of the smoking kitchen, his maroon tie tucked in his belt, sweat glistening on his bald head and curling his collar. He recognized Em and grinned. "Hey, what say, what say."
Em held up the chickens. The ragged wings flopped open. "Bubba, we got some nice pullets here. How 'bout a trade for some of that good barbecue?"
Bubba White sucked his teeth and leaned out and looked around the yard. He saw me trying to rouse Tio and glanced back suspiciously at Em. "It's all right," said Em, "just a couple boys I brought along to help me catch 'em."
Bubba looked at the chickens, hanging lifeless in Em's big fists.
"How long them chickens been dead, man?"
"Not more'n a hour. They're still warm, feel 'em."
Bubba felt the corpses carefully. "This 'un looks like it's been run over."
"That one got caught in a shotgun blast"—an explanation that lifted Bubba's eyebrows—"but these others ain't
got a bruise on 'em."
When Bubba had finished his examination, he turned and held out the birds to a broad-hipped woman who was working a barbecue fork between the black iron doors. "Take these chickens, Etta, and fix these boys sump'n to eat." He picked up a bottle from the cabinet. "Want a little sump'n, Em?"
"Better not," said Em, "I had some wine awhile ago and it don't do me to mix it."
Bubba chuckled. "Still got that tejus stomach, huh?"
"Raw as a whore at camp meetin'," said Em, rubbing his middle. "Sometimes I think the linin' gone."
Bubba's head jerked in silent laughter. He opened the door to the main dining room and pointed up to the balcony. "You all go up and get a seat. Send your food right up." He beckoned to a waiter.
Em leaned over and tapped the cook on the shoulder. "Put lots'a hot sauce on mine, Etta."
The waiter led us through the dancers moving slowly among the wood supports that ran up to the heavy-beamed mill roof. At the tables around the main floor couples ate and laughed and held one another in the shadowy flicker of candles, soft in the mood of sex and food in the room where their ancestors had labored in slavery, lulled by the electric robot sitting in the corner, neon bubbles coursing its veins, singing in the voice of muddy waters.
We followed the young waiter up the stairs to the balcony, where he placed us at a table overlooking the river. The place was so warm the windows were left open, and a cold breeze mixed with the hot, rich odors that drifted up from the kitchen. We sat watching the dancers until the waiter returned with smoking plates of minced pork and french fries and passed around frozen mugs of root beer.
It was as though I had never tasted food before. We sat eating in perfect contentment.
Outside, the river trees shivered as a black wind brought a mist of sleet, the pellets shooting by the millions through the tavern-lit leaves to do a silvery dance among the darkened roots.
Pungent barbecue steamed into the air to mingle with our frozen breaths, washed down with burning swallows from the dark mugs numb in our hands. I looked up from the red candle flickering on the table.
"Merry Christmas," I said.
Em nodded and winked. "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," I said.
Tio, glassy-eyed, his mouth crammed full, lifted his battered hat. "Mnm-ynnuh," he said.
And it was. The best I could ever remember.
BOOK THREE
31
It was the first Saturday in the new year, Poncini Day, the official opening of the six-month-long centennial observance, and a thundering, hell-springing day in Quarrytown. Mayor Crawler had made a proclamation speech from the courthouse steps. Poncini Park, a network of sidewalks and benches crisscrossing two acres of azaleas behind Galaxy Plaza, had been dedicated.
The streets were jammed with people vying for bargains at the Poncini Day sales, people in newly sprouting beards, in derby hats and string ties and homemade grandma dresses; not altogether authentic maybe, but Old Timey.
A square dance was in progress in Allie Shafer's car lot, under a big banner proclaiming Centennial-Sell-Out-Time. Somehow a couple of the Cohen boys had just beat out the favored Amborsini twins in a Poncini Brothers look-alike contest on the square, and some perfectly authentic native tongue was flying among the older Italians.
The Jaycees sold hot dogs. The high-school band serenaded from the courthouse lawn. Buggies and wagons snarled downtown traffic.
A frightened horse bolted and ran in the front door of the Marble City Hotel, trapping the woman driver under the canopy. They finally had to unhitch the horse and lead him through the lobby and out the back and lifted the hysterical driver through a slit in the canvas.
On our way home, Em and I fell in with a crowd in back of the county library setting out to find the grave of Easter Robinson. Tad Breisner, the doctor's son, was there, along with a half-dozen other historians and archeologists from the university in Athens with their charts and documents, arguing and comparing records with members of the Pollard Historical Society and its visibly upset president, Odetta Woolsen, while the Presbyterian minister tried to placate them. Auxiliary ladies in heavy skirts passed out hot coffee and Tad Breisner's pamphlets.
Mrs. Woolsen had been upset ever since those pamphlets first appeared.
Easter Robinson, a "brass-ankle," half-Indian, half-Negro, was a tall, dashing figure and the center character in much of the foothills folklore. With a band of outlaws and army deserters he had pursued a lucrative career of plunder and murder back and forth across Georgia and South Carolina from 1854 until 1862, until he happened along up the Little Iron River and came to a mysterious end at Colonel David Johns's estate.
The official version of the cutthroat's demise, as set forth in the journal of the Reverend Josiah Whittier, the historical society's founder, held that Robinson had been shot by the valiant Mrs. Johns as he and his gang battered the door of the mansion in the colonel's absence. The historical society had enshrined Mrs. Johns's birthplace on the Atlanta highway and turned the mansion into the Martha Pickner Johns Memorial Library.
Now Tad Breisner had come along with his pamphlets, replete with laboriously detailed research, and even photostated copies of letters in Mrs. Johns's hand, giving horrifying credence for the first time to that other, darker version of the story.
That account, previously dismissed as salacious slave gossip, held that Robinson was, in fact, no stranger to the Johns residence during periods of the colonel's absence, and met his death climbing out of the upstairs bedroom window one night when one of the female servants, a new girl and unfamiliar with the custom of the place, brained him with a stick of stovewood. Mrs. Johns, the account went on, had Robinson buried in a Johns family vault below the slave quarters, and later had the errant girl flogged and sent to Savannah.
At any rate, notorious as he was, Easter Robinson had brought a glimmer of fame to Pollard County, and all sides were determined to resurrect and claim him during the centennial year. Tad Breisner, with his team of experts from the university and the services of surveyors and earth-moving equipment donated by the granite association, had sworn to bring him to light before the week was out. The assemblage set off from the rear of the mansion, following a dry creek bed through the fields toward the east end of the Johns property, drawing ever closer to the lip of the Ape Yard. Here the discussion grew heated indeed.
"This simply cannot be," said Mrs. Woolsen. "The easternmost boundary of the Johns estate followed the southerly turn of the creek. It's right here in Reverend Whittier's Journal." Mrs. Woolsen, having authored two books on Pollard County history herself, was not accustomed to having her sources questioned.
Tad Breisner tapped a roll of Xeroxed maps. "These plates are from the capital archives, and they coincide perfectly with the courthouse records. It must be remembered that Reverend Whittier chronicled more from popular belief than fact, and his tracts were appended to a historical account drawn a good deal from memory late in life." He opened a leather-bound tome on his knee. "Now, the one point on which all sources agree is that Robinson was buried below the slave quarters, by the creek that, in its southeasterly turn, formed the northeast corner of the Johns property. But since we're fairly sure of the boundary markers at the front of the estate, it's back here that the total acreage is being short-changed. And it's this creek bed that's causing the problem. Now, what everybody's failed to take into account is that on a plateau like this, a shallow creek tends to meander to a considerable extent. And in the past hundred years, this creek did in fact cut over and join Twig Creek, cutting short the Johns property. But before the construction in the hollow, it flowed along this depression a couple of hundred yards farther northeast before it turned. Let's proceed on that assumption for the time being at least." And off they trekked again, the men shedding their frock coats in the bright afternoon sunshine, the ladies snatching their dresses through the briars. Em shared his hip pint with a perspiring bulldozer operator and made a friend who g
ave us a ride.
No little curiosity was aroused in the Ape Yard by the procession marching down the slopes, and soon its number was enlarged by several dozen black faces as it filed along the hillside shacks. "It cannot be," protested Mrs. Woolsen, "it simply cannot be here!" When we reached the last surveyor's pole, Tad Breisner called a halt. We were on the weedy apron of eroded land directly between the garage and Mr. Teague's grocery.
Tio came skipping across the rocks. "What's happenin', man?"
"Easter Robinson's grave, it's right around here somewhere!"
"Shoooeeeee!" Tio said. We had played Easter Robinson all up and down those hills.
There was a conference among the Athenians; a consultation of maps, comparison of figures and notation of topography, and a final stretching of tapes. At last Tad Breisner stepped forth and pointed to a rectangle cornered by stakes. "It is the opinion of my colleagues and myself that the grave is within that perimeter. Dr. Spetchen here estimates a ten- to twelve-foot overburden accumulation due to erosion since that time, which would have covered many topographical features and altered bench marks, of course, but we are all agreed that this was the former bed of the creek. That being true, and all other calculations being correct, this should be the true northeast corner shown on the original deed."
This announcement was met with great excitement by the crowd, which by this time had grown to at least a hundred. Mayor Crowler wanted to know whose property it was that held this singular honor. Somebody called out that it was Mr. Teague's.
"No it ain't," said Mr. Teague from the other side of the creek, "my property stops right here. That used to belong to the Cahills. I don't know . . ."
"It's mine," said a voice, and Doc Harley Bobo stepped through the crowd. "I purchased it when Mrs. Cahill left town."
Em smiled down at me. "Meet your new landlord . . . Mr. No Face."
Mayor Crowler explained the mission of the expedition and asked permission to dig for remains, laying on heavily for civic pride and historical significance.