by David Stout
“Reddy here spotted ’em in the ditch, Sheriff,” the sergeant said.
“They was underneath that bicycle there,” the private said, somewhat breathlessly. “I shouted for help soon’s I saw the one’s face in the water. Couple my buddies came, and we dragged ’em out.”
“Good work,” Stoker said quietly.
“Guess you don’t need the men anymore,” the Guard sergeant said.
“No,” the sheriff said. “Mind, tell ’em there ain’t no sense blabbing all over, what they saw. Wouldn’t be human if they didn’t talk, but let’s not get things all stirred up with rumors and such. Got that, Reddy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now, if I asked you official-like, for reasons of evidence, if you did anything to the bodies except pull ’em out of the ditch, I assume you’d say no. Correct?”
“Sure, Sheriff.” The private looked puzzled.
“Okay. That’s just what I figured. That’s all.”
The sheriff walked to the bodies, tiptoeing as if he didn’t want to wake the little girls, took off his hat and knelt down at their feet. They were side by side, face up, their clothes wet, strewn with stringy green-water weeds. Mouths open; eyes open, too. That glassy look, staring but not seeing, that chilled his soul whenever he saw it. He saw the head wounds at once; actually, he couldn’t have avoided seeing them. They were grotesquely, horribly large and deep, through the bone and into the brain. The sheriff looked at them for a long time, then he was conscious of being looked at himself. His eyes came up, and he saw that a number of Guardsmen were still standing there, staring in fascination.
“Goddamn it!” the sheriff heard himself bellow. “What the fuck you lookin’ at, you men? Get the fuck outta here. If they’s any evidence in these parts, your fuckin’ boots gonna tramp it outta sight.…” Stoker stopped, his throat sore, his anger spent, his anguish bottomless. He heard the Guard sergeant hustling his men away from the scene.
“Dexter,” the sheriff shouted, but not as loudly, “get your ass on over here with some state law-men types, hear?”
Now, before his deputy and a bunch of state people arrived, the sheriff had a few moments of privacy with Cindy Lou Ellerby and Sue Ellen Clark. He stood up and stared down into their eyes.
Hiram Stoker honestly did not know if he was religious or not. What he did know is that he sometimes wondered just what it was, this spirit, or breath, or whatever, that was in the body when a person was alive and that vanished—forever—when a person was dead. And he knew that, at that moment, he ached terribly inside.
“Now listen, you two honeys,” he whispered. “If God knows any better, you two are someplace better already. I know that …”
Liquid seeped slowly from the girls’ terrible wounds, and their eyes had the stare of the dead. For a moment, Stoker thought of bending over and closing them.
He stood up, blinked and swallowed hard, business now.
“Coroner’s been notified,” Dexter Cody said. “On his way. With a camera.”
“Good,” the sheriff said. “Now, Dex, take some notes for me, okay? And you men”—the sheriff spoke to several state highway patrolmen nearby—“you look on and remember, case we need you in court.”
The sheriff knelt down, close to the bodies. “Deep wounds … Ax or hammer, maybe … Or else a rock … We’ll look around a bit, maybe find some stones with red on ’em … Their panties are in place … Rest of the clothes too …”
The sheriff stood up.
“Somebody strong?” Dexter Cody said.
“Could be. Maybe not. Don’t have to be too strong with a hammer or a hatchet. Come to think of it, them wounds aren’t even enough for a hatchet. Deep, but partly mashed in, like. See what I mean?”
“Hmmm …”
It was getting on toward noon, and the sheriff knew he had best go to the Clarks’ place and break the news before they heard it from someone else.
“This ain’t been the best day of my life,” the sheriff sighed.
5
The mill was quiet. The pond was still, logs lying calm in the water. There was no spinning and splashing from the colored with their incredibly nimble feet and their poles.
“How’d they take it, when you broke the news?” Cody asked quietly as the sheriff stopped the car at the edge of the shacktown.
“Pretty hard.” The sheriff had put an edge on his voice, intentionally, because he did not want to remember how it had been, and if he had to talk about it with his deputy, it would just stir up the memory.
Not that he would be able to forget it completely, ever. It wasn’t so much the way Jason Ellerby had sobbed and bellowed—he had seen grown men cry before, and where was the shame in that?—but the woman’s scream that had stayed with the sheriff. Jason’s wife had shrieked so loud that the sound rang off the pots and pans in the kitchen. The sheriff had felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Then she had screamed again.…
“We gonna get help from the state?” Cody asked.
“I hope not. Pretty sure I convinced ’em we don’t need it. Hell, they’d only interfere and get in our way. Besides, if I know these colored at all, the answer’s right here. Somebody here knows.”
The sheriff prided himself on knowing the colored in his jurisdiction. It made his job easier—hell, made it possible. And it wasn’t all that tough. You just had to treat the colored as human beings.
He had learned as a boy (and he had taught his own sons) that if you wanted to know where the fish were biting, follow the colored. Sometimes they would try to be clever, kind of shuffling along, lazy-like, toward their special fishing places. You had to laugh at that; nobody could hide a long cane pole.
But the sheriff had learned from his father, and had taught his sons, that if you didn’t step all over the colored, moving right in on their fishing spots, sticking your line into the stream right next to their lines, they would not only welcome you but would offer help. They knew so many tricks, the colored: how to bait a hook just right, how to flick the wrist to set the hook. There were so many things that had made the colored such good fishermen.
Hiram Stoker and his deputy stood by the car for a moment. The sheriff took a deep breath to get used to the smell. With no sawing going on today, the aroma of wood cut from the day before and sap still burning on the blades was faint, and easily overpowered by the smell from the shack colony. The latter smell was pronounced, what with so many more people in the shacks. A smell that blended bodies that were too seldom washed and lived very close together. Odors from a hundred stewpots bubbling with possum and collards.
A man shouted, drunkenly, a woman screamed back, a dog barked, a baby cried, a hand struck flesh. Momentary silence, then the same cycle: shout, scream, bark, cry, slap …
“Let’s see what we see,” the sheriff said.
They started down one of the main paths between the rows of shacks. The sheriff could hear (no, more like he could feel) voices in the shacks subsiding to whispers or silence. Stoker felt that he started out with an edge when dealing with the colored (they were instinctively afraid of authority), and he had found he got better results by sweet talk than by threats. He wasn’t above using the latter, however.
“Afternoon,” he said to a young woman. Her skin was purple-black and her breasts already pendulous.
“’Lo …” the woman said, nervously cuddling a half-naked infant only slightly less dark than she was. The woman was standing a few feet from her door. Two other children, the same shade as the infant but a couple of years older, stood in the doorway, curious but unsmiling.
“Handsome youngsters,” the sheriff said, taking off his hat. “Real nice …”
Stoker could feel her fear and suspicion.
“Pretty terrible thing happened down yonder,” the sheriff said, waving his hat in the general direction of the murder scene. “Reckon you heard.”
“I hear, yes, sir, but I don’t know nothin’.…”
“Well, I sure hope you ke
ep your eyes and ears open for me, ’case you do run across anything suspicious. Anything, anybody at all. Hear?”
“Yes, sir …”
“Good. Your man be at home?”
“No, sir …”
“Hmmm.” The sheriff put his hat on, and he and Dexter Cody started down the path. Suddenly, from around the front corner of the cabin came a yellow dog, its teats swinging and its mouth snarling and slobbering.
“Turnips!” the woman shouted—more like screamed, since she was afraid the sheriff would kick, or shoot, the animal.
“Whoa, there,” Stoker said, taking his hat off again and swatting the animal, just hard enough to stun her, across the snout. “Who you be trying to scare, old girl?”
The sheriff let the dog chomp on his hat band for a moment, let the animal tug and growl (a friendly growl, now) and plant its paws. Then he gently took the hat away and rubbed the dog along the throat.
“Right good dog here,” Stoker said to the woman. The baby in her arms and the children who had been in the doorway looked at him wide-eyed. “Yep, a right good dog. You feel safe with her, I bet.”
“Yessir …”
“Good. Good. Mind what I said …”
Stoker and Cody walked away slowly. The sheriff was pleased; he knew his encounter with the dog had gone more than halfway toward dissolving that colored girl’s fear of him. The sheriff sensed that Cody was nervous (Dexter just didn’t cotton to dogs).
The sheriff had fired a deputy once, years ago, for kicking a dog for no good reason. The deputy had at first thought the sheriff was kidding, then had been flabbergasted to realize that he was not.
“Tell you what,” the sheriff had told him. “You just accomplished a lot of things, all bad. Filled that nigger with resentment, so next time he gets drunk he’s apt to hurt someone. Fixed it so I can’t ever get any truth out of that nigger, or any of his friends, if I need it. And you hurt a dog for no good reason.…”
The sheriff and his deputy walked at an even pace now, nodding and waving to whomever they saw. Mostly, they got nods in return. The sheriff usually went out of his way to be gentle with the colored children. There was nothing soft about that, only practical. They would grow up someday, sooner than anyone cared to think, and he would just as soon they grew up tame and gentle. It would make his job a hell of a lot easier, down the road. Assuming he was around that long.
“Hi, you,” the sheriff said as an old man came into view. He had a cane pole in one hand and a string of long, fat catfish, glistening and squirming like snakes, in the other.
“Evenin’ …” the old man said. He stopped, uneasy.
“Reckon you heard about the trouble down yonder.”
“Yes, sir. I hear.”
Clearly, the man was nervous. The sheriff could tell by the way his stomach moved in and out and the shuffling of his feet.
“Well, you hear any gossip, know anything, I’d sure expect you’d tell me. Sure would appreciate it …” The sheriff put a hard edge onto his voice to test the reaction. The man seemed slightly more nervous each moment.
“Sheriff, I surely would. Yes, sir …”
“Well, I figured you would, truth to tell. How come you’re all agitated, like?”
“Sheriff, I truly is sorry, but can I trouble you to let me by so I can get these here fish in my barrel? Otherwise, they gonna die.…”
Instantly, the sheriff felt foolish and apologetic.
“Hell, yes, old man,” Stoker said. “I shoulda known. If I had a catch like that, I’d sure want to keep ’em fresh till I feasted.…”
“Yes, sir …” The old man’s teeth flashed white and nervous. “I glad you understand.…”
“You don’t mind I walk with you?” The sheriff let his voice become more gentle. Without another word, he and Dexter turned and began walking, slowly, with the old man.
“No, sir. Glad to have you, Mr. Sheriff.…”
“Good. Good.”
They walked only a few more yards until the man turned onto a short path that led to the rear of his shack. There, he took the stringer of fish and slid them, one by one, into a barrel.
“Now, how the hell you slide them fish off like that without gettin’ stung by them whiskers?” Stoker asked good-naturedly.
“Practice make perfect. Sure do. I been fishin’ long time.”
“I see that. Worked at the mill a long time, too, I bet.”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Tyler, he be good to me. Lets me off early many days, ’cause I be lame.”
“Well, Mr. Tyler appreciates a hard worker, no doubt about that. I bet you been around these parts so long you know pretty much everything.…”
“Almost. Yes, sir …”
“What you call yourself?”
“Crooks. Elijah Crooks.”
“Well, Elijah, you hear anything, anything at all, you let us know, hear?”
“Yes, sir …”
“Enjoy them fish, now.…”
* * *
There had to be better ways to spend Saturdays. The sheriff and his deputy were tired and edgy as they got into their car to head back to Manning. It was already past six.
“Depressing, ain’t it?” Cody said.
“Sure as hell. You can already see, some of ’em are gonna grow up willing to work, those with the clean cabins and their daddy home. Some of the others … Well, too damn many gonna grow up trouble.…”
Despite the chilly dusk, the sheriff unwound his window. He wanted to rid his clothes of the smells of colored people’s sweat and their shacks and their greasy fried food.
The sheriff and his deputy had spent an exhausting afternoon, talking to dozens of colored men and women and their children, trying to make small talk in their crowded shacks (actually, the sheriff had had to do the talking; Dexter was no good in that department), ignoring the squealing of babies, spending half the time just breaking down the barriers before they could even ask questions.…
Godalmighty, there had to be an easier way to make a living, Stoker thought. His feet hurt from walking, his throat hurt from talking, and he dearly wanted to be home. But first, he had to go back to the office and tell the other law men that he and Dexter had found nothing. It was a safe prediction (Stoker could feel it in his bones) that they would say they’d found nothing either.
Well, one good thing: If nobody had any progress to report, they could all go home early.
Which is almost what happened. The highway patrol had recorded only a routine number of incidents (which was to say very few, considering most people didn’t have easy access to gasoline), and none that seemed promising. Which allowed the sheriff to say, with great relief, “Good night, you all. See you here Monday morning.” The sheriff wasn’t sure what, if anything, he and Dexter would do Sunday; he didn’t plan to think about it till Sunday morning, in fact.
The sheriff said good night to Dexter, opened his car door, and tossed his gun belt onto the seat. He was just about to get into the car when he sensed the man’s approach.
“Mr. Sheriff?”
“Who’s that? Come in outta that dark.…”
“It be Elijah Crooks, Sheriff. From over by the mill …”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. You had all them catfish.”
“I jes’ remembered somethin’. Hitched a ride over here to tell you …”
Liar, the sheriff thought. Just got his nerve up. Never mind.
“I seen somethin’ yesterday, Sheriff. Long about late afternoon, it was.…”
“Yeah, well, go on. Don’t let it get to be daylight before you tell me.”
“Young boy leadin’ a cow. Name’s Linus Bragg. Liked to pull that cow’s nose off …”
“So? That ain’t no crime I know of.” Careful, the sheriff thought. Tired or not, be patient. Else you’ll scare him off.
“No, sir. It sure ain’t. Thing is, and I knows this is so, ’cause I seen him there before, he oftentimes walks that cow down the tracks there. Down where them little girls were …”
> “Well, now. That sure is interesting. Tell me more, old fisherman.”
“He ain’t but fourteen or so, but he be mean. One of the meanest ones I see. I think he the one let the water outta my fish barrel one time, though I can’t prove it.…”
“How did he act? When you saw him yesterday, I mean?”
“Sheriff, he be like in a daze. His eyes, they be all bustin’ right outta his skull.…”
“Hmmm …”
“And his clothes … Mind, I can’t be sure, but I swear they sure looked wet, some spots. Like he been splashed, or wash hisself off …”
The sheriff felt a rush of feeling, felt a chill on his skin, and not from the night air.
“Well, now. I sure appreciate your trouble, Elijah. I really do. If I come out your way tomorrow, you can point me to this Linus’s shack, hear?”
“Yes, sir …”
Now the sheriff pushed his face up to the colored man’s ever so slightly and injected an unmistakable, though quiet, touch of steel into his voice. “And I know I can count on you to keep quiet tonight.”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir. You can.”
“Knew I could. Don’t let the sun go down on you, hear.”
6
Linus Bragg sat with his back against the tree, not caring that a sharp piece of bark was jabbing him. His raised knees cradled the cane pole. He was at his favorite spot, a little pond formed by a curl in the stream. The water was deep and still. The fish were lucky, to be able to hide in the deep, dark water, where nobody could see.…
He tried to remember how his world had been, but he couldn’t. And he couldn’t forget how much he had hurt, how much he had been afraid.
He had let his younger brother, Will, and his sister, Jewel, who was older, eat most of his food the night before. Linus had not been hungry. He had been afraid he would throw up.
His mother had asked what was the matter with him, and he had said nothing, but he could tell from her face that she didn’t believe him. She knew he had a secret. Linus’s father didn’t know. His eyes were squinty, not as shiny as his mother’s eyes. Linus felt bad to think that his father wasn’t as smart as his mother.