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THE NEGROES had arrived shortly after Mister Harper returned to the wagon and had clustered down the road. The white men had watched them carefully, looking for something that might help them to understand what they were seeing. But they had found only a reflection of their own dismay, tempered perhaps with tolerance. They don’t know nothing neither. You can see that. It’s like he’s an Egyptian, and they don’t know no more about this than they know, than we all know, about riding a camel.
Out across the partially whitened field, Tucker had continued to fling the hail-like crystals, had made trip after trip, filling the satchel and emptying its contents, handful after abundant handful on the field. The sun had curved down toward the trees; when Tucker was finished it was no more than three fingers above the horizon. He came back across the field and tossed the satchel on the still unexhausted mound, and in the silence of the late afternoon, wiping sweat from his face with his sleeve, surveyed his day’s work and then went into the house.
“Would you look at that?” Stewart turned from the fence. “What a waste of good salt. I bet you could make a lot of ice cream with that much salt.” He was joking.
“Keep quiet, Stewart.” Mister Harper leaned forward. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”
The door opened and Tucker came into the yard carrying, in one hand, an ax, in the other, a rifle. He leaned both against the corral fence and disappeared around the house. When he came back he was leading his horse, an old gray animal with a slight limp, and a cow the color of freshly cut lumber. He opened the gate of the corral and for an instant stared at the animals, petting first one and then the other. Harry saw him stand straighter and heave, then pull them into the corral, close the gate, climb and sit on the fence with the rifle across his knees.
He shot the horse in the head just behind the ear and sticky blood ran down its neck and left foreleg. It stood for a full ten seconds, its lids stretched over bulging eyes, took a blind step and collapsed. The cow, smelling death and blood, steamed across the corral at top speed, her udders swinging violently. After she was hit, she kept moving until she banged into the fence, bounced back, turned to Tucker with the quizzical expression of a woman who has just been slapped for no apparent reason, screamed and crumpled. Tucker climbed down and looked them over.
Tears had begun to roll down Harold’s cheeks when Tucker first shot the horse, but he had cried so softly, so much within himself that Harry would not have known if he had not glanced down at him. Putting his arm around his small shoulder, he squeezed it, feeling the tiny bones, but otherwise let him alone, did not hurry to clean his face or clear his nose until later when he was certain the boy had stopped crying.
Mister Harper sat smoking his pipe. Loomis looked at the carcasses lying in the corral corners and shook his head. “That’s a shame. A real shame. Them were two fine animals. I might-a bought them if I’d known.”
Thomason laughed. “Oh, shut up. You got to borrow from me any time you want a drink. Where you expect to get the money to buy a cow and horse?” The other men took the opportunity to laugh, watching Mister Harper from the corners of confused eyes. He did not laugh and they turned back to the yard.
Tucker had come out of the corral and picked up the ax, which, in the late afternoon sun, glinted like a single match flare in darkness. Then he advanced on the twisted tree. It had once been the southwest boundary of the Willson Plantation, on which his great-grandfather and grandfather had been slaves and then workers. And it was told how the General had ridden out to this spot each day to watch the sun go down. Now it belonged to Tucker, as did this land. He put his hand on the trunk, running it over the ridges and smooth places, closed his eyes and moved his lips. Then stepping back one good pace, he cut it down. It was old, dry, tired inside and when it fell, it creaked like the wheels on Mister Harper’s chair. With no trace of anger or madness, only intensity, he splintered the tree, laid the ax in the dull gray chips and gathered some of the remaining salt into the satchel, and tenderly, as he might have planted seedlings, banked the salt high around the dead roots. When he was done he went toward the house.
“Say, Tucker!” Wallace Bedlow was calling to him from down the fence. “You planning on growing a salt tree?” The Negroes laughed uproariously, slapping their thighs. Tucker said nothing, and the men from the store porch were more bewildered than ever. They had climbed out of the wagons and cars and now lined the fence like birds. Stewart’s skin was greasy and he reached for his yellow handkerchief and tried to clean his face. “This is crazy. If one nigger can’t make out another nigger, no one can. Maybe we should call someone to come and take him away. He’s gone crazy.”
Harry called down from the wagon. “It’s his land. He can do anything he wants to it.” He glanced at the boy, who sat wide-eyed.
The streaks of dirty tears lining Harold’s face made him look as old as Mister Harper. “Is Mister Stewart telling the truth, Papa? Tucker gone crazy? Is that what happened?”
Harry could not answer. If I’d-a met someone tomorrow and they’d told me about what I just seen I would say that Tucker Caliban’s crazy for sure. But I can’t say that sitting here watching it happen because I know this, if I don’t know nothing else. Craziness ain’t driving him. I don’t know what is pushing at him, but it ain’t craziness.
The afternoon had crept away and now above the corral, where the dead animals were beginning to collect flies from half the county, and away from the three-part farm house, and beyond the field, white and vacant, and the trees, tall strips of black velvet trimmed with green, the sun went down like a burning new penny.
Tucker had gone into the house, and now the door opened and Harry could see his thin back, a broad sweat stain showing his dark brown skin gray through his white shirt. He was pulling something heavy. A shove made him stumble back a step. Bethrah, his wife, must be behind, in the doorway.
Wallace Bedlow climbed over the fence and went toward the house, removing his white coat, beneath which he wore nothing but a torn undershirt. “You tell Bethrah to stop shoving that thing in her condition. I’ll help you, whatever the hell you doing.”
“I don’t need any help, Mister Bedlow.” Bethrah’s voice came from darkness. “You go on now. Thank you anyway.”
Tucker just stared up at the man who was at least ten hands taller.
“Missus Caliban?” Bedlow spoke over Tucker’s head. “You don’t want to be working hard like that, not now.” He had his coat draped over his shoulder; its green plaid lining was ripped.
“We realize you’re trying to be helpful, but we have to do this ourselves. Thank you anyway, but go on now.” Her voice was very sweet, and firm.
Tucker just stared.
Bedlow came back to the fence. Tucker turned to his work and soon Harry could see by the leftover light of day he was struggling with Dewitt Willson’s grandfather clock, the same clock which had come on the African’s ship, boxed and packed in cotton, and had traveled, after the African’s betrayal and death, with the African’s baby and the auctioneer’s Negro to the Willson Plantation. It had been given to that baby, First Caliban, when he reached his seventy-fifth year, or what they thought anyway was his seventy-fifth year, a present from the General for First’s years of good and faithful service, first as a slave and later as an employee; and passed down to Tucker.
The clock was outside now, standing in the yard, and beside it, in the final bloated stages of pregnancy, stood Bethrah, almost as tall, looking down at her tiny husband who had gone across the yard and returned with the ax. He raised it and arched it down on the glass protecting the clock’s fragile hands, popping the glass, shattering it at his feet. He swung until the finely worked steel and imported wood were nothing but scrap metal and kindling.
Bethrah had gone into the house and was coming out with a baby. She carried only the sleeping child and a large red carpetbag. “Tuc
ker, we’re ready.”
He nodded. He was staring at the pieces of wood strewn in the dust of his yard. Then he looked toward the corral and beyond to the field, gray now in the late dusk light. The baby began to cry and Bethrah rocked it, swaying back and forth as if to a silent lullaby, until it was asleep again.
Tucker looked at the house. For the first time he seemed hesitant and perhaps a little frightened.
“I know.” Bethrah nodded. “Go ahead now.”
He went inside, leaving the door open. When he came out, he wore a black chauffeur’s coat and a black tie. He closed the door gently behind him.
Orange flame climbed the white curtains in the center section of the house, moved on slowly to the other windows like someone inspecting the house to buy it, burst through the roof with the sound of paper tearing, and lit the faces of the men, the sides of the wagons, and the faces of the Negroes.
Harry watched the blaze and the orange coating it gave the trees across the field. Sparks curled up and then died, dissolving against dark blue sky. Harry lifted the boy from the wagon and led him to the fence, where they stood watching. After an hour the flames faded, showing here and there tenacious fits and starts on still unconsumed scraps of wood, cloth, and shingle. Finally only glowing coals remained, and the rubble of the destroyed house looked like a huge city seen at night from a great distance.
Tucker and Bethrah came toward the fence, and Harry thought, but only for an instant, they would say something, a final word of explanation; instead they walked around the wagon and went up the road in the direction of Willson City.
The men turned from the fence, each realizing how warm and wet the fire had made the front of his body, each mumbling to the man next to him something like “Well, ain’t that a bitch!” or “That tears all, don’t it?” or “Never in all my born days have I…” They climbed into the wagons, unhitched horses, started the popping, bubbling motors.
Harry lingered at the fence and when he had seen everything he thought there was to see, reached down his hand for the boy to grab it. The boy was not there. He looked around him, then up the road and saw Harold, his neck craned backwards, talking quietly with Tucker in the silent shadows. Bethrah waited beyond them. He saw Tucker turn, join Bethrah, and disappear, enveloped in the thick night. Harold started toward him, walking backwards as if the blackness would not swallow the two figures as long as he watched. When he reached him, Harry said nothing, just put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
By now the men were settled in Stewart’s wagon, ready to return to town. Harry handed the boy up to one of them, climbed up himself, and the crippled horse pulled them toward Sutton, leading, as before, two separated groups. Harold sat close to him. It was cold and he was shivering. Harry looked down at him and, holding the reins in first one hand and then the other, took off his jacket.
“Here.” He pushed the coat into the boy’s arms. “Put that on.”
Mister Leland
TUCKER CALIBAN had never said very much to him, but Mister Leland considered him his friend. As far as he was concerned, Tucker had proved that friendship, its depth and permanence, forever, one morning the summer before.
Early that morning, even before Mister Harper had appeared at the porch, he and his father had come to town, his father to talk with a doctor about a cough he could not throw off, and Mister Leland had been sitting alone on the curb in front of Mister Thomason’s store carving in a crack at the edge of the Highway. After he gouged down about an inch into the hard mud, and there was no more dirt in that crack, he had stood and peered into the store window, not concerned with the cans of food, or the guns, or fishing equipment, or even toys, concerned only with the vial of hairy brown peanuts, wishing someone would come along like them fairy godfathers you hear about who knows what I’m thinking and just up and buy me some.
He had heard footsteps behind him—had seen, as he pulled back from the glass, the large black head on the short thin body reflected darkly before him, the figure not so tall as his father’s, hardly taller than himself.
Tucker Caliban entered the store and purchased a bag of feed, started out, then stopped and pointed to the window, speaking to Mister Thomason, who weighed out a full pound of peanuts and poured them into a brown paper sack. Then he came out onto the porch and stood in front of Mister Leland. “You Harry Leland’s boy?” He looked down at him as if he might hit him, not raising his hand, simply looking fierce.
Mister Leland ducked. “Yes, sir.” He’s a nigger—a Negro, but Papa says to say sir to anyone what’s older than me, even nig—Negroes.
“You wants peanuts, Mister Leland?” Tucker shoved the bag into his arms. “Here’s peanuts. Tell your pa I knows what he trying to do with you.” He turned and climbed into his wagon. He never looked at Mister Leland after that, never smiled or said good-by, just hit his horse with a piece of knotted rope tied to a short brown stick and drove away up the street, leaving Mister Leland to wonder what his father was trying to do with him. Tucker said it like there was something wrong with it, mad-like, but then if it was bad and he didn’t like it, why’d he buy me the peanuts? I reckon that’s just his way, like Papa and Mister Thomason is always arguing, with their faces all mad, but Papa says Mister Thomason is his best friend ever, except for Mama, but Mama and Papa is always fighting too, so it must not really matter at all how folks look or what they says, just what they does. He decided, however, he would ask his father what was being done to him, and when he did ask, his father had looked at him, very deeply, very seriously. “Your mama and me is trying to make you a passable human being.”
That did not really explain it to him, but he felt sure that if his father wanted him to be that, even if he did not quite understand what and why, it was all right with him. And if it earned him peanuts, that made it even more all right. He did not ponder it further.
This, then, had been all that passed between him and Tucker Caliban, all he had to bolster the belief in their friendship, except those times when they might meet in town and Tucker would nod or even say, “How do, Mister Leland.”
But it was enough so that as he watched Tucker’s farm house burn and crumble, as he heard around him his father’s friends speak of Tucker in mocking tones, calling him evil and crazy, he had begun to cry again, and pushed through the forest of legs, running up the road after the Negro, feeling betrayed because Tucker had done such things and seemed to deserve being called evil and crazy, wanting also to be given some explanation so he might defend his friend to the others, to be able to say, when they said he was evil and crazy: “He is not. He did it because…”
He caught up to the two Negroes and called to them, but they did not turn, stop, or give any sign of hearing him. He grabbed at Tucker’s coattail, using it as a rein to halt him.
“Go on back, Mister Leland. Do like I say.”
“Why you going?” He cleared his nose and tilted his head. “You ain’t really evil—is you, Tucker?”
Tucker stopped and put his hand on the boy’s head. The boy stiffened. “That what they saying, Mister Leland?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Does you think I is?”
Mister Leland stared into Tucker’s eyes. They were large and too bright. “I…But why’d you do all them evil, crazy things?”
“You young, ain’t you, Mister Leland.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you ain’t lost nothing, has you.”
The boy did not understand and said nothing.
“Go on back.”
He found himself backing up, not really wanting to, not having decided to, rather as if the finality and quiet command of Tucker’s voice was pushing him as would a heavy autumn wind. Then his father’s hand was on his shoulder, light, not guiding him, but being guided by him, as if his father was a blind man and he was leading him. Then he had been lifted into the wagon and began to shiver and his father ha
d given him the jacket and he was warmed, not so much by the oily denim as by the smells of his father’s body, of tobacco and sweat and soil. He had fallen asleep on the way to Mister Thomason’s, his head resting against his father’s muscle. They had let the men out and his father handed the reins to Mister Stewart, who asked if they needed a ride home. “No, thanks, Stewart, we come in on Deac this morning.” They went around to the back of Mister Thomason’s store, through the cold shadows, and found the horse where his father had left him, tied to a twisted, tiny bush and his father lifted him up, then swung up himself and next he knew they were turning off the Highway into their road, out three quarters of the way to Tucker’s, but not so far and he was waking up. “Papa?”
“Yes, Harold.” He could feel his father’s breath past his ear.
“Tucker said he’d-a lost something.” He remembered that Tucker had really asked him whether he had lost anything yet. “He said I was young and ain’t lost nothing yet.” His father said nothing. “What’d he mean by that?”
He could feel his father thinking.
“Papa, I lost things, ain’t I? Like marbles and the time I lost that quarter you give me. Ain’t that losing something?”
Still he could feel his father behind him, his arms reaching around him, almost a hug except that if his father did not have to guide Deac, he might not have hugged him either; he could feel the man thinking. Finally: “I don’t think he meant it that way, son. I think he’s talking about something else. Maybe like…”
He waited but his father did not go on. He could not tell what he had been about to say, or what Tucker meant, but he had the feeling (he did not put it into thoughts; the absence of worries, of thoughts, somehow gave him the feeling) that it was not important.
They came to their house, turned off the road, went into the barn, and his father took off Deac’s bridle and led the horse into his battered stall. Then they went into the house.
A Different Drummer Page 5