I hung up the phone.
“Turn the television on quick. Brady killed himself. Mapes’s about to talk.”
Sam Hebert snapped on the little black-and-white TV on a shelf above the water fountain. Lights from parked automobiles showed a crowd in front of the courthouse. Mapes and one of his deputies came out and stood before the opened door.
“Watch them lights,” Mapes said. “Don’t put them lights in my face.”
Camera lights were lowered.
“And quiet,” Mapes said. The crowd calmed down. “No way that I could have prevented this from happening—no way. I sat on one of the steps to the porch, he leaned against a post not far from me. We talked for about an hour. We talked mainly about hunting together. Then I told him it was about time we started back. He asked me for two minutes to look things over. He wanted to take a last look at everything. Then he went inside and lay down on the bed. When I heard the shot—I got up fast as I could, but I got no farther than the door. No way can I describe what the side of his face and his head looked like. It was the same gun he had used to kill his son earlier today.” His voice broke. The crowd remained quiet. “He was a man some people would say was too hard. He lived in hard times—and the burden we put on him wasn’t easy. Yes, we. That includes myself. If we had done more, his burden wouldn’t have been so heavy.
“I’m going to miss him. You’re going to miss him. When he couldn’t hunt anymore, he raised a garden. Just as he gave all the meat away that he killed, he gave everything away from his garden….A hell of a man—Brady Sims. Brady Sims—a hell of a man….He was my friend, and one of the best hunters I’ve ever known.
“Well, that’s it. No questions. I’m tired. Talk to you tomorrow. Good night.”
In the barbershop we were quiet for a while, lost in our own thoughts; then Jamison said, “I wasn’t surprised. Can you see Brady in the pen? Not Brady. Not Brady Sims. That’s why he killed that boy; nobody was going to tie a child of his down in no white-man electric chair. And he wasn’t going to no pen, either. No, I wasn’t surprised a bit.”
The old men began to leave the barbershop slowly, quietly. The feller from Natchitoches and I were the last ones to leave, except for Lucas Felix and Sam Hebert.
“Well, partner—by the way, what is your name?”
“Jack Burnet. And you?”
“Louis Guerin,” I said. “Which way you’re headed?”
“N’Awlens. I’m go’n find that big fine woman no matter where she at, no matter who she with. I’m go’n get down on my knees and say, ‘Take me back, baby; take me back, please. I’ll be good from now on.’ ”
“She will.”
“You think so?”
“Once you tell her what happened here today, she’ll take you back. I’ll bet on it.”
“If she do, I’m go’n find you one just like her. You can’t beat them Creole women for cooking, dancing, and—well, you know the rest. I don’t have to mention that.” He winked his eye twice.
We shook hands.
“Well, I better hurry and get uptown if I want to keep my job. Take it easy.”
“Be seeing you,” he said.
Behind us, Lucas Felix was turning out the lights in the barbershop.
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The Tragedy of Brady Sims Page 8