Pop. 1280

by Jim Thompson

  I tripped over a chair in the kitchen, almost taking a header against the wall. I righted myself, and dashed out to the porch. Then, I saw how things were—and they sure weren’t good, all right, but they were a lot better than I’d expected ’em to be.

  It was Tom’s body that was there, not Tom. It had been left on the porch, face up, with the shotgun placed at the side. The beard had grown out some, because hair does go on growing for a while on dead people. He was all covered over with mud, and the middle of his body was just a big gutsy hole. His eyes were wide open and staring. The meanness was gone from them, but the fear that had taken its place was worse. Whatever death looked like, it sure didn’t look good to him.

  All in all, you might say he wasn’t a very pretty sight. Nothing that would take first prize in a best-lookin’-fella contest. Old man Death had painted Tom Hauck in his true colors, and it wasn’t an even halfway flattering portrait.

  I couldn’t really blame Rose for carrying on like she was. Almost any woman would have done the same, if her husband had come home in the middle of the night looking like Tom did. Rose had a right to raise a ruckus, but it wasn’t helping things, particularly helping me to think. Which I was obviously in need of doing and fast. So I got an arm around her and tried to calm her down.

  “Easy, now, honey, easy. This don’t look so good, but—”

  “Goddam you, why didn’t you kill him?” She tore away from me. “You told me you killed the son-of-a-bitch!”

  “I did, baby. He sure don’t look like no live man, now does he? He couldn’t be no more dead if—”

  “Then who brought him back here? What goddam dirty bastard did it? If I get my hands on the son-of-a-bitch—”

  She broke off and whirled around wild-eyed seeming to listen for something. I started to say I wanted to get my hands on the fella, too, because just why the heck had he done this anyway? Rose told me to shut my goddam mouth.

  “Now, honey,” I said. “That ain’t no way to talk. We got to be calm and—”

  “There!” she yelled, pointing. “There he is! That’s the son-of-a-bitch that did it!”

  She leaped off the porch and started running. Racing up the lane that led from the house to the road. Her naked white body faded into the darkness. I hesitated, wondering if I shouldn’t at least put my pants on, and then I thought what the heck, and I ran after her.

  I couldn’t see whatever Rose had seen. I couldn’t hardly see nothing, it being so dark. But I did hear something—the squeak of wagon wheels and the soft plod-plod of horses’ hooves on the muddy lane.

  I kept running. Finally, the squeaking and the plodding stopped and I saw the white of Rose’s body. Then, she was cussing and screaming again, ordering whoever it was to climb down off the wagon.

  “Get down, you black bastard! Get down, goddam you! What the hell’s the idea of bringing back that son-of-a-bitch of a husband of mine?”

  “Miz Rose. Please, ma’am, Miz Rose. I—” It was the soft, frightened voice of a man.

  “I’ll show you, you son-of-a-bitch! I’ll teach you! I’ll peel your black ass right down to the bones!”

  She was trying to tear loose a piece of harness strap when I ran up. I jerked her around, and she faced me wild-eyed, pointing shakily to the fella who stood at the side of the wagon.

  It was Uncle John, the colored fella I mentioned earlier. He was standing with his hands half-raised, and in the darkness his frightened eyes seemed all whites. He kept them turned away, naturally, because a colored fella could get himself killed for looking at a naked white woman.

  “H-He—he did it!” Rose began to bawl. “He brought the son-of-a-bitch back, Nick!”

  “Well, now, I’m sure he didn’t mean no harm by it,” I said. “Howdy do, Uncle John. Nice evenin’.”

  “Thank you, Mistah Nick. I’s feelin’ tol’able thank you.” His voice shook with fear. “Yes, suh, sho’ is a fine evenin’.”

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” Rose yelled. “What’d you bring him back for? Why do you think we got rid of the dirty bastard, anyway?”

  “Rose!” I said, “Rose!”, and Uncle John’s eyes rolled in his head and he said, “Please, ma’am, Miz Rose,” and it sounded like a prayer.

  He’d already seen a lot, a heck of a lot more than it was healthy to see. He sure didn’t want to hear anything to go with it. Rose slipped away from me again, opening her mouth for another yell, and Uncle John tried to stopper his ears with his fingers. But he knew it was no good. He heard, and he knew that I knew it.

  “It’s not fair, Nick, goddam it! You go to all the trouble of killing the son-of-a-bitch, and this bastard brings him back!”

  I slapped her across the mouth. She whirled and came at me, hands clawed. I grabbed her by the hair, lifted her off the ground, and gave her a criss-cross slap, backwards and forwards.

  “You get the idea?” I said, letting her back down on her feet. “Now, you shut up and get back to the house or I’ll give you the worst beating you ever had in your life.”

  Her hand went slowly to her face. She looked down at herself, seeming to realize for the first time that she was naked. Shivering, she tried to cover up with her hands, shooting a scared look at Uncle John.

  “N-Nick. What—what’ll we—”

  “Go on, do what I told you to.” I gave her a push toward the house. “Me an’ Uncle John will handle this.”

  “B-But—but why did he do it?”

  “I got an idea about that, too,” I said. “You run along, now, and everything will be fine.”

  She hesitated, then scampered back up the lane. I waited until I was sure she was really gone, and then I turned around to Uncle John.

  I smiled at him, and he tried to smile back. But his teeth were chattering so bad that he couldn’t.

  “Now, don’t be scared, Uncle John,” I told him. “You got nothin’ to fear from me. Ain’t I always treated you right, now, ain’t I? Ain’t I always done the very best I could by you?”

  “Yes, yes, suh Mistah Nick,” he said eagerly, “an’ I done right by you, suh, ain’t I, Mistah Nick? Now, ain’t that the truth, suh? Ain’t I been a plumb good nigger for you?”

  “Well, sir,” I said, “I reckon I could call you that, all right.”

  “Yes, suh, Mistah Nick. Any of them bad niggers startin’ trouble, I always comes an’ tells you, suh. Any of ’em steal a chicken or shoot crap or get drunk or all ’em other things bad niggers do, I always comes right an’ reports it to you, now don’t I, suh?”

  “Well, sir,” I said. “I reckon you’re right about that, too, and I ain’t forgettin’ it, Uncle John. But just what are you getting at anyways?”

  He gulped and choked, swallowing a sob. “Mistah Nick, I won’t say nothin’ about—’bout what happen tonight. Hones’, Mistah Nick, I won’t say nothin’ to no one. You just let me go an’—an’—”

  “Why, sure I will,” I said. “Ain’t keeping you from leaving now, am I?”

  “Y-You really means it, Mistah Nick? You really ain’t mad at me none? I c’n go home right now, an’ just keep my big ol’ mouth shut forevah an’ evah?”

  I told him that of course he could leave. But I’d feel a lot better if he first told me how he happened to be here with Tom Hauck’s body.

  “You don’t do that, I might be kind of suspicious of you. I might figure you’d done something bad and was trying to hide it.”

  “No, suh, Mistah Nick! Doin’ something bad was jus’ what I didn’t! I try to do good, an’ then I get all mixed up, ol’ foolish me an’—an’—oh, Mistah Nick!” He covered his face with his hands. “D-Don’t be mad at me, suh. Uncle John, he don’t know nothin’ at all. He don’t h-hear nothin’ an’ he don’t see nothin’, an’—an’—please don’t kill me, Mistah Nick! Please don’t kill ol’ John.”

  I patted him on the back, letting him cry for a minute. Then I said I knew he hadn’t done nothing wrong, so why would I want to do anything bad to him. But I’d sure be obliged if he
told me just what had happened.

  “Y-You—” He uncovered his face to look at me. “You really ain’t gonna kill me, Mistah Nick? Honest?”

  “God-dang it, you callin’ me a liar?” I said. “Now, you just start talkin’, and don’t you tell me nothing but the truth.”

  He told me what had happened, why he had brought Tom Hauck’s body back to his farm house.

  It stacked up just about the way I thought it would.

  He had come across the body early that evening while he was out hunting ’possum, and he’d started to come into town to tell me about it. Then, with so many varmints around, he figured it might be best to bring the body in with him. So he’d loaded it on his old spring wagon, along with the shotgun, and headed for town again.

  He was about halfway there when it struck him that it might be a pretty bad idea to show up in town with the remains; in fact, it was a god-danged bad idea to be caught even in the same neighborhood with them. Because a lot of people might figure he had a first-class motive for killing Tom. After all, Tom had given him a hard beating and intended to beat him again if he got within grabbing range. He just couldn’t lead a very happy life as long as Tom was around, so it wouldn’t be any surprise at all if he killed him. Anyways, Uncle John being a colored fella, he wouldn’t get the benefit of any doubts.

  Tom Hauck was completely no good, and the community was well shet of him. But they’d still lynch Uncle John. It would sort of be their civic duty, the way they’d see it; part of the process of keeping the colored folks in hand.

  Well, so poor old Uncle John had got himself in a pickle. He couldn’t take Tom’s body into town, or even be seen with it. And Tom being a white man, he couldn’t bring himself to just dump the body off in a ditch somewhere. There was only one thing he could do, as he saw it; only one thing that would be acceptable to Tom’s white ghost and the All-Knowing God that he had been taught to believe in. He’d just take the dead man back to his own home and leave him there.

  “Now, don’t that seem fittin’, Mistah Nick? You see how I figgered, suh? I reckon now, it sho’ wasn’t the right thing to do, seein’ as how Miz Rose carry on so bad, an’—”

  “Well, now, don’t you worry none about that at all,” I said. “Miss Rose was just upset seeing her husband dead, and pretty ugly-dead, at that. It’s probably goin’ to take her quite a while to get over it, so maybe we’d better move the body somewheres else until then.”

  “But—b-but you say I could leave, Mistah Nick. You say I jus’ tell you the truth, an’—”

  “Yes, sir, that’s what we’d better do,” I said. “So just you hurry up, and turn your wagon back around.”

  He stood there, head bowed; his mouth working like he was trying to say something. There was a long roll of thunder, and then a jagged flash of lightning, lighting his face for a moment. And somehow I had to look the other way.

  “You hear me, Uncle John?” I said. “You hear what I tell you to do?”

  He hesitated, then sighed and climbed up on the wagon. “Yes, suh, I hear you, Mistah Nick.”

  We drove back to the house. It began to rain while we were loading Tom’s body, and I told Uncle John to stand on the porch until I was dressed so that he wouldn’t get no wetter than he had to.

  “You’re probably kind of hungry,” I said. “You want I should bring you a cup of hot chicory? Maybe a little pone or somethin’?”

  “I reckon not, thank you, suh.” He shook his head. “Miz Rose probably got no fire this time o’ night.”

  “Well, we’ll just build one up,” I said. “No trouble at all.”

  “Thank you, suh, I guess not, Mistah Nick. I—I ain’t real hongry.”

  I went on in the house and dried off with a towel Rose gave me, and it sure felt good getting back into my clothes. She was pestering me with questions while I dressed: what were we going to do and what was I going to do, and so on. I asked her what she thought; did she reckon she’d ever feel safe with someone knowing what Uncle John knew.

  “Well—” She wet her lips, her eyes turned away from mine. “We can give him some money, can’t we? Both of us will. That should, uh, well, he wouldn’t want to say anything then, would he?”

  “He takes a drink now and then,” I said. “No tellin’ what a fella will do when he gets enough booze in him.”

  “But he—”

  “And he’s a very religious fella. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if he figured he ought to pray for us.”

  “You can send him away somewhere,” Rose said. “Put him on a train and send him up north.”

  “He can’t talk up there? He wouldn’t feel more free to do it away from us than he would here?”

  I laughed and chucked her under the chin, asking her what she was so squeamish about. “Here I thought you was a real tough woman. It didn’t bother you at all about what happened to Tom.”

  “Because I hated the son-of-a-bitch! It’s not the same with Uncle John, a poor nigger man who was just trying to do the best he could!”

  “Maybe Tom was doing the best he could, too. I wonder if we did any better.”

  “But—but, Nick! You, why you know what the bastard was like.”

  I said, yeah, I knew, but I’d never heard of anyone killing Tom’s wife, and Tom sleeping before and after with the party that did it. Then, I laughed, cutting her off before she could butt in. “But this is different all right, honey,” I said. “This you know about before it happens. It ain’t something you learn about afterwards, so you can say, well, what can I do about it, and it ain’t really my doin’.”

  “Nick—” She touched my arm, sort of frightened. “I’m sorry I lost my head tonight, honey. I guess I can’t blame you for trying to hurt me.”

  “It ain’t really that,” I said. “I reckon I’m just kind of tired of doing things that everybody knows I’m doing, things they really want and expect me to do, and having to take all the blame for it.”

  She understood; she said she did, anyway. She put her arms around me and held me for a little while, and we talked a couple of minutes about what would have to be done. Then I left because I had a pretty full night’s work ahead of me.

  I had Uncle John drive up in the back country, about three miles behind the farm. We unloaded Tom’s body there, in the edge of some trees, and Uncle John and I took such shelter as we could a few feet away.

  He sat down at the base of a tree, his legs being too wobbly to hold him up any longer. I hunkered down a few feet away from him, and broke open the barrel of the shotgun. It looked fairly clean, clean enough to be safe, anyways. I blew through it a couple of times to make sure, and then I loaded it with the shells I’d taken from Tom’s pockets.

  Uncle John watched me, all the begging and praying in the world in his eyes. I relatched the barrel, and sighted along it, and he began to cry again. I frowned at him, feeling pretty fretted.

  “Now, what you want to carry on like that for?” I said. “You knew what I was goin’ to have to do right along.”

  “No, s-suh, I believe you, Mistah Nick. You different f’m other white folks. I believe every word you say.”

  “Well, now, I think you’re lyin’, Uncle John,” I said, “an’ I’m sorry to hear you. Because it’s right in the Bible that lyin’s a sin.”

  “It’s a sin to kill folks, too, Mistah Nick. Worse sin than lyin’. Y-You—you—”

  “I’ll tell you somethin’ Uncle John,” I said. “I’ll tell you something, and I hope it’ll be a comfort to you. Each man kills the thing he loves.”

  “Y-You don’t love me, Mistah Nick…”

  I told him he was god-danged right about that, a thousand per cent right. What I loved was myself, and I was willing to do anything I god-dang had to to go on lying and cheating and drinking whiskey and screwing women and going to church on Sunday with all the other respectable people.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” I said, “and it makes a shit-pot-ful more sense than most of the goddam scripture
I’ve read. Better the blind man, Uncle John; better the blind man who pisses through a window than the prankster who leads him thereto. You know who the prankster is, Uncle John? Why, it’s goddam near everybody, every son-of-a-bitch who turns his head when the crap flies, every bastard who sits on his dong with one thumb in his ass and the other in his mouth and hopes that nothing will happen to him, every whoremonger who thinks that piss will turn into lemonade, every mother-lover supposedly made in God’s image, which makes me think I’d hate like hell to meet him on a dark night. Even you, particularly you, Uncle John; people who go around sniffing crap with their mouth open, and acting surprised as hell when someone kicks a turd in it. Yeah, you can’t help bein’ what you are, jus’ a pore ol’ black man. That’s what you say, Uncle John, and do you know what I say? I say screw you. I say you can’t help being what you are, and I can’t help being what I am, and you goddam well know what I am and have to be. You goddam well know you’ve got no friends among the whites. You goddam well ought to know that you’re not going to have any because you stink, Uncle John, and you go around begging to get screwed and how the hell can anyone have a friend like that?”

  I gave him both barrels of the shotgun.

  It danged near cut him in two.

  15

  What I wanted things to look like was that Uncle John had shot Tom with his own gun and then Tom had got the gun away from him and shot Uncle John. Or vice versa. Anyways, when I got to thinking about it afterward, it seemed to me that people weren’t going to see it that way at all. Which meant that they were apt to start looking for the real killer. And for a spell there, I was pretty worried. But I didn’t need to be. As plumb crazy as it was, with Uncle John getting killed almost two days after Tom and with both of ’em obviously dying almost the instant they was shot, it turned out no one thought anything of it. They didn’t wonder at all about how one dead man could’ve killed another.

  Of course, both bodies were wet and muddied up, so you couldn’t say offhand just when they’d died; and we just ain’t equipped to do a lot of scientific examination and investigation here in Potts County. If things look a certain way, folks usually figure that’s the way they are. And if they’d had a mind to kick up a fuss about anyone, it wouldn’t be Tom Hauck or Uncle John.