by Jeff Fields
One afternoon in a secluded place in the road a black man, strange, yet somehow familiar, waved down the truck. We were alongside him before even Jayell recognized Willie Daniels. The figure slouched in the faded overalls, the thin features under the leather cap had aged far beyond the three years he had been gone.
"Hello, Willie," said Jayell. "Heard you were out, and wondered why you hadn't been around."
Willie tucked his hands behind his bib. He had always been uncomfortable with white people, even Jayell. Jayell let the truck idle.
Two of the original members of Jayell's old shop crew were Willie and Boyce Daniels. They were the kind of twins who were always seen together, each reflecting the other's low-key personality, always smiling shyly somewhere in the background. Both were quiet, polite boys who had never been in any kind of trouble, both honor students at Pelham Grace School. But when the hot-car ring was broken in 1951 and the garage on the river raided, Willie and Boyce were among those named in the indictments. Some said they had incurred Doc Bobo's wrath. Others said they had simply been traded for two who had incurred his favor. Willie had just been paroled on good behavior. Boyce had been killed in prison.
"They say you buildin' ag'in." Willie's gaze was fixed somewhere over the hood of the truck.
"Well, I'm building myself a house, doing a little cabinet work. I can always use another good hand."
Willie nodded. His mouth tightened. He had the same shy manner as before he went to prison, but now there was a dark, disturbed look in his eye. He seemed aware of it, and kept his eyes averted. "You spoze you could help me get a place for Mama? You know, her house is on that lan'."
"I know," Jayell said.
"She got to get off."
Willie's mother was a tall, handsome woman with light brown skin. When her boys were sent to prison, one of the dog boys, "So-So" Clark, moved into the house. So-So was one of Bobo's most trusted lieutenants, whose chief responsibility was control of the gambling on the dog fights, sports, and any other book that was in the Ape Yard. In general, the dog boys had the run of the hollow, taking what they wanted without pay and living where, and with whom, they chose. And to those who pleased them, they were able to extend a certain generosity: clothes, jewelry, a car, or even a little three-room house. Before he died that spring, So-So Clark had arranged cancellation of the mortgage Doc Bobo held on Willie's mother's house.
"Well, damn, that's tough, Willie. But look, those prefabs are not all that bad. Tell you what, when she gets moved in I'll come over and help you finish it out for her, okay?"
Willie looked up, the anger, the bitterness full in his face now.
"They give her nothing for it. Just say she got to get out. She signed it over this morning."
Jayell's hands twisted on the wheel. He lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. "I'm sorry, Willie," he said, "I wish I could help you, but I got all I can handle right now. I've got to get my house built. Let me do some thinking. If I come up with anything I'll let you know." And he put the truck in gear and drove off, leaving Willie standing in the road.
We had gone less than a hundred yards when his foot suddenly stomped the brake so hard Skeeter came over on top of Phaedra and me.
"For Christ's sake!" he yelled. "I've got ten acres of land and enough lumber to build three houses! Willie! Hey, Willie, come on up here!" He slumped back in the seat shaking his head. "What the hell's wrong with me?"
Phaedra smiled. "Not a thing, Jack," she said. "Not a thing in this world."
39
The day work began on the Daniels house, a little farther up the slope to the right of the other two, more onlookers drifted up from the Ape Yard. Neighbors came to watch, to roam through the curious structures and tease Willie Daniels and his mother about the prospects of living in such a bizarre house.
"Where's the door, Sarah?" one asked Willie's mother. "This it here?''
"Mist' Jayell don't build no doors," said another, "you got to climb in and out the winders."
"One thing sho', nobody gon' break in on you, Sarah, less'n they come down the chimbley."
A stocking-capped woman clapped her hands. "Hit ain't got no chimbley neither!"
Children climbed through the bright colors and strange geometric shapes, uncertain at first, as though finding themselves in some fantastic world of adult play-houses, disturbed, as children are when adults do outrageous, childlike things. It was a storybook world that had no relation to the drab, gray existence of the hollow. But in that environment, spurred by the excitement of the boarders and the bustling energy of the shop boys, old crusts of behavior began to fall away, for both the children and the adults. They began to relax and enjoy it too. They wandered about, touching, marveling, laughing at the antics of Jayell as he sprang from house to house, trying to be everywhere at once, absorbed in one of his all-consuming fevers of creation. They drifted down the mountain and brought back other folks to watch, and at sundown men just getting off work came to see. They were still coming in ones and twos when we finally knocked off for the day.
That night Em Jojohn was even more worried. He didn't like the idea of building the Daniels house. "There's a pot boilin' down there," he said, pointing to the hollow, "and now we done stuck our hand in it." Again he talked about leaving. He got out his canvas traveling bag.
"Em, you're talkin' foolishness! Here things are just startin' to look up for us, and you're wantin' to run off and leave it. That house is going to belong to us just as much as it is the boarders, can't you understand that? For the first time we won't be living off somebody else, we'll have our own place!"
"Well, damn, you sound like you're gettin' ready to retire! I don't know what. . . there's the old folks up there jumpin' aroun' like kids, and you're talkin' like an old man. The whole damn place is goin' crazy!"
And he grew increasingly uneasy during the next two days as more and more people climbed the hogback hills, and the carnival atmosphere increased. He worked methodically, saying little to anyone, snapped back at Jayell's orders and cursed the visitors in his way, and he became even surlier at night. On Friday morning he was reluctant to leave the loft. He fidgeted. He stalled. He didn't feel well. The damned mountain rocks had scratched up his boots. He couldn't find his sock. He fooled around until we missed the boarders' bus, and breakfast, and then yelled, "Well, go on, if you're in such a damned hurry, I'll come on later!" I ran down to the shop and caught Jayell as he was finishing up his instructions to Skeeter and Jackie and the boys there, and rode with him and Phaedra to the job.
When we drove up to the jobsite Jayell took one look and said, "Holy Christ!"
The place was jammed with people. More than a hundred of them stood in the trees. When Jayell stopped, Speck Turner came through the crowd. "Mornin', Jayell."
"Speck, what the hell's goin' on here?''
"Sure some purty houses you got here," the plumber said with a grin.
"Yeah, yeah, what's this all about?"
"Well, we come to talk a little bi'ness. See, me and Loomis and Simon there all gettin' put off in them little shell things up the hollow, and—well, we figured maybe we could work a little deal and get you to build us houses up here like you doin' for Willie."
"Yeah?" Jayell turned to look at Carlos, thinking about it.
"Myself, I could take on the plumbin', see, and we all got the money Bobo give us for our places—I don't know how you pricin' now, or what you want for the lots . . ."
"How many?" said Jayell, trying to figure. "What's all these others here for?"
"They just come to help," said Carlos.
"To help?" said Jayell. "I can't afford a damn army!"
"Said you ain't got to pay 'em nothin'," Carlos added, "ain't nothin' much goin' on at the corner these days." Carlos stepped closer. "Most of these folks down from Fletcher Bottom. They gon' get moved out when the dam gets built."
Jayell looked around at the Ape Yard's most wretched, the ragged day laborers standing in their torn and faded shirt
s, beltless trousers and flopping brogans.
"Do they know anything about building?"
"No, but they'll do what you tell 'em." Jayell hesitated, and Carlos continued. "They wants to help, Jayell, and they ain't got nothin' else to do."
"Well . . ."
"Just one more thing," said Carlos, "like I say, a lot of 'em gon' get washed out when the river rises. If you got enough scrap to put up a couple more little houses . . ."
Jayell stood looking at him. He ran his eyes along the rows of black faces that surrounded him, then turned and looked at Phaedra, still sitting in the truck. She merely returned his gaze, a smile playing at her mouth. Jayell wiped his face. He turned and surveyed his acreage, looking from marker to marker, and up the rocky terrain that climbed sharply from the rear of the three houses already begun.
He opened his mouth to speak to Carlos, and stopped. The crowd was murmuring, shifting.
Then we saw it too. The green car nosing through the trees. In the hush it purred softly along the rows of people, who quickly opened a path before it and watched its glistening body glide past, their faces fixed in the fear and reverence of a pagan people observing the passage of an idol god.
The car moved up to the grassy mound where Jayell stood, and Doc Bobo got out and stood smiling.
"Well, it seems that what I've been hearing was not just idle rumor." He saw Phaedra and immediately took off his hat. "Good morning, ma'am, good morning."
"What do you want, Bobo?" snapped Jayell.
"Why, I just heard that you were building again, Mr. Crooms, and, like these people"—he turned and looked at the faces around him, faces averted now, staring at the ground—"I just had to come and see! And they are something, aren't they? Oh, Mr. Crooms, I believe you've outdone yourself this time. Let me see, now, that large one would be for these nice folks from the Cahill place." He turned quickly to the boarders, who stood nearby. "I do hope this regrettable move has not been too disruptive. Mr. Bearden has promised me that he is making every effort to see that you are inconvenienced as little as possible. Now, that one, Mr. Crooms, ah—that house could be for no one but you yourself." He shook his head admiringly. "Indeed, you are a man of unique talents. But that third one, now, who could that one be for?"
There was a pause. Doc Bobo turned around and looked directly at Willie Daniels.
He repeated, pointedly, more in the tone of a command, "Who is that one for?"
Willie Daniels licked his lips nervously. He glanced at Jayell. Finally he said softly, "It's mine."
"What's that, Willie?"
The boy cleared his throat. "It's for Mama—and me."
"But Willie, we're going to build you and your mama a house, a pretty house, right up the hollow. You don't need two houses, do you, Willie?"
The young man stood watching the undertaker, his head tilted back, nostrils flaring softly with his breathing.
"Do you, Willie?"
Willie lowered his head. "Naw, suh."
"Of course not." Doc Bobo smiled. He turned to Speck Turner, Simon Jesup and Loomis Freeman. "Anybody else thinking about moving up here with these white folks?"
Wordlessly, the plumber and his friends dropped down into the road and walked away.
"Speck!" Jayell called.
"Anybody else got business on this mountain?"
The people were turning, drifting down the rocky slopes.
Doc Bobo turned to Carlos and the shop boys. "Anybody else?"
And even they, one by one, were laying down their tools, pulling off their nail aprons, climbing down the ladders.
"Oh, Christ," muttered Jayell, watching them. He walked down to the truck and put a hand on one hip and leaned on the fender. Phaedra got out and stood beside him, trembling in anger, glaring at Carlos as he moved by them, his head lowered.
"Go ahead, run, you gutless sons of bitches!"
I felt my heart stop.
It was Tio, standing on the knoll before the Daniels house. He cupped a hand to his mouth. "You heard the man, crawl back in that hole like a bunch of rats! Desert Jayell like you done Mr. Teague. Go on, git in them shacks till the big man comes for some more of your blood!"
Most everyone, including Doc Bobo, was in a state of shock. People had stopped and stood staring, as though having difficulty believing what they had heard.
Doc Bobo stepped up to the boy, who stood defiantly, his chin jutted out. "Why ain't you at the store where you belong?" he said.
"Because there ain't nothin' to do at the store, thanks to you!" Doc Bobo turned and signaled with his finger. The car door opened and Clyde Fay slid out.
"Why you god—" Jayell's move was cut short by Carlos, who grabbed him and pinned him against the truck. "No, Jayell, please," he said, terrified.
The people fell back as Fay came quickly up the slope, stepping gracefully, almost delicately over the dew-soaked grass, wrapping his wide belt around one hand.
Tio stood where he was, watching him come.
"Stop him!" I screamed. Doc Bobo, who stood only a few yards away, turned around. "Stop him!" And then with the weight in my shaking hand, I remembered I was holding a hammer, and while the undertaker stood looking at me, annoyed at the outburst, I slung the hammer into his face.
He lurched away, grabbing at his nose, and in the next instant I was swatted to the ground like a fly. An iron hand closed on my arm and I was jerked up again so hard my feet cleared the ground. I bumped into somebody who was yelling, and through the soft, cottony throbbings I became aware that Fay was holding both me and Tio.
"Put 'em down!"
The voice was a roll of thunder. Tio stopped struggling, Fay stood watching, alert, heads were turning around to Em Jojohn, who was coming around the corner of the Daniels house. He shuffled heavily down the yard and confronted Doc Bobo and Fay.
"Let 'em go."
"You stay out of this, Jojohn," said Doc Bobo, clutching a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.
"I'll get out of it when you turn loose them boys."
"I have no quarrel with you," said Doc Bobo.
"I got one with you," said Jojohn. "I pulled six months at your sawmill. Your man bought me for fifty cents a day. I've let it go till now, but you move ag'in them boys and I'm gonna start collectin' back wages."
"I got one too!" roared a voice from the rear, and Horace Burroughs was stiffly negotiating the slope. "Count me in there," said Mr. Rampey, hefting a rock, and Jurgen and Woodall were pushing their way through the crowd. Jayell's fist landed beside Carlos' head, staggering him, and he leaped away. Phaedra sprang over the side of the truck.
"Hold on—no!" cried Doc Bobo. He shook Fay's arm to turn us loose and shouldered the giant away. He backed off from the approaching white people. It was obvious this new development had taken him by surprise, and this confrontation was not what he wanted. "Get in the car, Fay, get in the car. Please," he said, holding up his hands, "please, I want no trouble."
The others followed them to the edge of the yard and stopped as he and Fay got in the limousine. "I want no trouble," Doc Bobo repeated anxiously, and slammed the door. Clyde Fay cranked the engine and the people in the trees watched in a trance as the car circled the lumber piles and drove away down the mountain.
Jayell stepped down to Carlos. He was sweating, his eyes wild. "Go get every piece of lumber at the shop, all of it, every scrap you can find! We need salvage crews!" he shouted at the crowd. "Anybody that's got a vehicle, scour the Ape Yard, spread out around town, along the river, anybody that's got a piece of board he'll part with, an outhouse he ain't using, any piece of lumber you can find along the road, bring it up here! Tio, get in my truck and go find Mr. I. V. Tagg and tell him to come up here, we got a lot of figuring to do." He raised his voice again to the crowd. "I don't know how many we'll be able to build, but we'll do what we can. Come on, fall in here!"
40
The next morning Em refused to budge from the loft. "Stay away from there, boy! We're through with that place, you
hear me!"
"Speak for yourself," I said, pulling on my clothes.
"We done crossed Bobo now, can't you get that through your head? We crossed Bobo!"
"And he backed down, didn't he?" I said, still feeling extra good about having busted him one.
"He backed down 'cause he's too smart to tangle with white people! But that jus' means he'll start workin' through white people to get what he wants. You don't know the power that man's got!"
I stomped into my shoes and headed for the door. Em grabbed me and spun me around. "Is the damned place worth gettin' killed for?"
"Em, all I know is there's sump'n fine happenin' on that mountain. Jayell feels it, the boarders feel it—the whole Ape Yard is alive with it now. And I'm part of it. I'm helping to make it happen! I got a place there. For the first time I got a place! And there ain't nobody, Doc Bobo nor anybody else, goin' to take it away from me. Tio had the guts to stand up to him; he sure ain't throwin' a scare into me!"
"You ain't got a place, boy—come back here—you ain't got a place," he shouted after me, but I was already taking the steps, "any more than me!"
When I got down to the shop I saw that part of what Em had predicted was already happening. The sheriff's car was there, and a truck from the city electric company. The man had disconnected power from the shop. Jayell was arguing violently with the sheriff.
"Jayell, you might as well calm down," Sheriff Carter Middleton was saying. "Doc Bobo owns the place, and he wants the power off, and you out of here—today. What can I say?"
"You can say you're the spineless son of a bitch I've always said you were!"
"Jayell . . ."
"I'll build 'em," Jayell shouted, "without power tools! With hand tools—with my goddamned pocketknife—I'm gonna build them houses!"
Sheriff Middleton sighed. He took off his hat and mopped away sweat that came early in the baking slopes of the hollow. "Jayell, I've known you all your life. I knowed your daddy. Hell, how many times have I carried him home when he was drunk to keep from lockin' him up—used to stand there while your mama cried and prayed over him, and helped her put him to bed. You remember that, don't you? Who was it got you off the time you busted in the furniture store, all set to whip Bud Calloway's ass for sayin' sump'n nasty to your mama for bein' behind on her account? I ain't your enemy, Jayell. But you got to understand, we got a touchy situation here. This centennial thing's comin' to a head pretty soon. We're gonna have the big boys here, from Atlanta, from Washington, and everybody's real anxious that everything goes right. I got my orders, loud and clear. We're gonna show 'em a model community. Now, there's folks worried about what's goin' on down here. Old man Teague's bucked up over sellin' that little scrap of land so Bobo can start him a quarry, which the granite people had planned to make a big whoop-de-do over, and right in the middle of uneasiness over the school thing, you're gettin' the niggers stirred up down here and movin' 'em out of the hollow. Now, I'd like to know just what the hell you're doin' up on that mountain."