by Trey Holt
As moments devoid of obvious visceral content tend to do, sitting there with him put me to mind of when I was a child and he would take me to the river with him. Young and healthy, he was in his early thirties at the time. He stood by the river with me, our having finished the first round of fishing, I remember. His day off from the mill, he liked to go to he river and find a good spot and rest on the bank with a six pack and his Lucky’s. His hand on my shoulder, we stood together, looking into the river, at a spot almost level with the flow of the water. Sporadically as we stood there, he picked up rocks he pulled from the soft ground and hummed them across the water. They almost looked as if they were flying, coming only close enough to the water to contemplate their own landing but then rising again upon their decision not to descend until their journey was further toward complete. As the rocks took on their energy, sailed and then came to their watery graves, he’d comment on fishing or working at the mill or me and Jean or something else just as unmemorable. For the most part if I said that I really remembered one word that was actually spoken, I’d be speaking something other than the truth myself. I recall only that he seemed happy then, or at least to have some kind of levity that would later be lost, stolen or at least come up missing along the way. And what he said after he had unsuccessfully attempted to teach me to skip the rocks as he was doing, saving the smallest and flattest ones for last.
When he’d accepted it would take more time practicing the art before it would take hold, he sat on the bank and began to tell me about his family: Granddaddy and Grandmama Hall, as we called them. And Wanda Jean and Nellie. And Percy, whom I’d only seen a handful of times by then. And he began to tell me how they farmed…and that the land he came from was much like the land behind us, the land that actually lay between us and the Confederate cemetery, that Lewisburg Pike pierced down its middle.
“That farm that your grandparents still live on,”he told me,“that land was always good for farming. You don’t realize how rich the river makes the soil, or at least how good things’ll grow in it, when it’s that close to the river. That’s the best farmland.” Feeling the beer, he put his arm around me and pulled me over next to him. Squeezed my shoulder like he was seeing how close he could pull me into his own ribcage.
“It’s called Bottomland,”he told me.“I’ve never even known if that’s just what it’s called around this part of the country or if that’s a word a lot of people use for it.Funny thing about it is that it ain’t no good for anything in the world but plantin’. And there’s a chance that what you plant might just get wiped away in the blink of an eye if the river does something out of season, like floods in the summer or early fall. That’s the reason that all this property down here is empty. Probably never be anything here…but empty land. I’m guessin’that’s the way God intended it, that is, if God intended anything.”
+ + +
“What d’you think?” he asked me as I walked up behind him.
I turned my eyes on the margin of the river, now lapping at flat ground twenty or so feet over the bank.“I dunno,”I told him.
“It has quit rainin’,”he said, holding his hand up to check for moisture in the air.
“Yessir,”I agreed.
“Won’t be long till it comes out over the road,”he said.“You know, we’ll have to shut Lewsiburg Pike down, right up there just past the railroad tracks and the Gilco. I remember the last time I didn’t get it shut down quick enough. Old man Tywater drove off in it and then blamed me because he wasn’t watchin’where he was goin’.”
I was beside him now, my shoulders perhaps an inch above his. If he’d not had on his hat, I’d have been looking down into his eyes, rather than at its brim. He tilted his head back and glanced at me, then shook his head. He took his hat off and rubbed his head, the marks from Tuesday morning still visible.
“You remember a few years ago…maybe four or so…when an old man knocked his wife in the head with a cane and threw her in the river? Or at least that’s the way it came out in his trial. Old Man Golding, was his name.”
Right off hand, I didn’t recall it. I shook my head.
He spit on the ground, reached for his cigarettes and knocked one out of the pack. Offered me one, which I took.“About a mile down river here…or really maybe not even a mile…between here and the jail, a woman went into the river and drowned, or at least that’s what they thought at the time. When we found her, she had marks all over like she’d been beat. Especially one mark on her head. Right in the temple, where it was almost caved in.”
As he spoke of it, the details began to sound vaguely familiar, like a book read long ago and mostly forgotten.
“When they did the autopsy on her, they figured that she’d been killed from the blow to her head rather than the water…and that somebody had thrown her body into the river. I guess the mistake the old man made was let people see him with her before it happened. We had maybe four or five people that either saw‘em in the car together goin’that way or people who even saw‘em together after they got out of the car. Funny thing was that after we found the body and Dr.Guppy said what he did, me and Oscar Garrett went out lookin’for the place she was likely to have gone in. He said he had a’idea that it couldn’t been that far from where we found the body. The river was down at the time and he didn’t think that she could’a gone that far before gettin’caught in somethin’. When we found her she was caught in a bunch brush and bushes.”
He paused and lit the cigarette that had been pinched between his lips as he talked. He cupped his free hand around mine and lit it. Gave his customary cough and hack then spat on the ground.
“It wasn’t fifty feet up the river that you could tell that somebody had gone through the bushes on the bank and it wasn’t fifty feet away from that that you could tell that there’d been a struggle. When Chief Garrett and I questioned Old Man Golding about the way she died, he said that he didn’t know what happened. He said that she just set out one day walkin’and didn’t never come back. I remember that Chief Garrett went through that scene with a fine-tooth comb. And when he was goin’through it, he found three sets‘a footprints there, still in the mud. He had some boys from the state come in and make some casts a’them things.”
I stared into the river and drew on my cigarette like he was doing.
“One set a’footprints was Old Man Golding’s, one was Sallie Goldings, his dead wife’s, and do you know who the third was?”
I shook my head, blew out a mouthful of smoke.
“Bette Burgess’s. That woman that we saw while ago. That’s whose. I remember that Oscar Garrett even tried to prove she was involved at the time. It was a well-known fact that she and Old Man Golding had been seein’each other for years…ever since Bette’s husband died. But he took the fall…wouldn’t have nothin’to do with the fact that she helped him. In the end, he even confessed that he had hit his wife with a cane and drug her to the river. I remember that Mr. Oscar even offered to work with the prosecutor to get him a lesser sentence if he’d tell us the truth…but he never would. He just went on to prison when they convicted him. He’ll be there whatever time he has left.”
Without provocation, Lucky dropped his cigarette in the wet brush and stepped on it and then turned toward the car and began walking. In the car he sat still, seeming to attempt to gather himself or the energy to go onto to what came next. He took in a long breath and rattled out a sigh then turned the key that set the engine to rumbling.
“I think we’ve got time to go see Sherman Burgess before we go home to eat lunch with your Mama. If I pull up in the driveway, will you run in and tell her we’ll be back in an hour or so? We need to eat a good lunch… ‘cause it’s prob’ly gonna be a long day.”
I nodded, and did like he said once he braked the car to a stop in our drive. As I made my way back out of the house, I saw that Christine Smithson had come home for her monthly visit. She waved at me, and I waved back.
“Thank ya for goin’with me,”he told m
e.
I nodded, told him he was welcome. Passing the Academy as we turned on the end of Cleburne Street, it went unspoken that I was glad I wasn’t there. And they wanted me gone, too, I believed, so that the memories of their hopes of a state championship would disappear when I did. The only part, I was certain, that they regretted was that the conflict in Korea had ended earlier in the year and they couldn’t orchestrate my journey there. In one of the last conversations I had had with Bugg, he’d told me that they’d be sure to let the draftboard know if I did not go to college, knowing good and well I had little no other way other than what I watched disappear on that Friday in September.
“It was human blood,”he said after we’d moved another few blocks down Columbia Pike.
“Sir?” I said.
“At that house this mornin’, the samples them boys took from the state, it was human blood on the floor. We’re waitin’on‘em to tell us what kind’a blood it was, what type. This man that we’re goin’to see, they found blood on his overalls and under his fingernails, too. Human blood. I guess we’ll know more once we get the type…to see if it matches.”
+ + +
The slaughter house that Sherman Burgess worked in was on Carter’s Creek Pike, around three miles out of town. Lucky asked a redheaded lady at the desk if she could get him to the front. As we waited in the only two chairs in the room, I wondered at why Lucky had really had me go with him. Although I guessed that the reason he’d stated—to verify and witness what he did—might technically fit the bill, I knew Lucky had never before been one to go by the book and did not believe he would start on this day. As we sat there, and I cast my eyes on his as they were set on the floor, I believed in some way, for some reason, he needed me. Although I could not identify the reason and we, never in his lifetime, discussed it, it seemed as though he was tired and could no longer carry alone the load asked of him. His eyes broke from the floor when Sherman Burgess, six foot two if an inch and two hundred and twenty-five pounds, made his way into the crude lobby area with us.
“Police Chief Hall,”he acknowledged, extended a blood-stained hand in Lucky’s direction.
“Sherman,”my father said.
Sherman Burgess wiped his hand back and forth on his pants leg before he took Lucky’s hand.“Hi ya doin’?”
“I’m all right, Sherman. How‘bout you?”
“Been better…been worse,”he said.“Mr. Crosby’s been closin’us down some. Business just hadn’t been that good lately. He’s even took to runnin’ads in the Review Appeal, tryin’to talk housewives out’a the dirty job of killin’their hogs…tellin’ ‘em we’ll do it for‘em.”
Lucky scuffed at the floor with his boot, reached for his cigarettes and offered Sherman one, which he took.“Sherman, I did want to ask ya somethin’ …and I want you to think real good before you answer me, okay?”
Sherman looked into Lucky’s eyes for only a short moment as Lucky extended his hand and lit his cigarette.
“Now…I’m goin’on what you told me on Tuesday. You said that you hadn’t ever seen that woman, right? The one that we found up at the high school. That’s what you told me, right?”
“Yessir, it is,”said Sherman, who seemed to notice for the first time I was in the room with them.“Hadn’t never seen her. I didn’t even go to the fun’ral home to see her. I see‘nough blood and guts‘round her every day.”
“Yeah, I always thought this’d be a hard job,”said Lucky.“It was a job I hated when I was a boy on our farm.”
Sherman walked to the only window in the room, three by three and situated so close to the floor he had to stoop to look out, and stared at the half dozen trees and two trucks he could see before the flat ground turned up a Tennessee hill.
“Sometimes,”he said,“I think it might just be the wors’job in the world. And then sometimes I think it might be alright…maybe like a preacher or somethin’. I’m there at the end…the last one that they see. But then I think that maybe I’m the one that caused it and the last one that they see is the one that caused it and they know it. And then sometimes I think that I ain’t the one that caused it…but that if I wasn’t doin’it, then somebody else would be. A man’s got to make a livin’, Sheriff Hall.”
“I know they do, Sherman,”said Lucky.“I know they do.” Again, he scuffed at the floor with his boot, removing some invisible something, some filth I couldn’t see at the time.
Sherman ran his free hand down the sparse hair at the center of his head and smiled at my father without looking at him. He paced back to the window and had another look.
“Sherman,”said Lucky,“that sample that we got the other day…or that the boys from the state got, it was human blood. It was human blood on your overalls and it was human blood under your fingernails. And I know what you told me the other day…and I know I believe ya. So there’s got to be some explanation. That’s what I’m figurin’.”
Sherman continued to stare out the window.
“When did them boys come an’take the sample? It was the same day you was there, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, Sherman, if my memory serves me correct. I gotta admit that it is one a’the worst parts a’me now. What day was that? Henry, do you remember?”
I answered.“Tuesday, I believe.‘Cause I remember you tellin’me that you hadn’t had time to check on Miss Ivey on Monday evenin’.”
“Yeah…he’s right. It was Tuesday. The day we put the body out. That’s when I come.”
Sherman watched a car make its way slowly down Carter’s Creek Pike, tap its brakes a few times in the curve in front of the slaughter house then disappear around the bend. He drew long and slow on the cigarette Lucky had given him before he dropped it on the concrete floor and smothered it.
“You know, I bet I can tell ya how I got that blood on there. I can’t rightly remember the day…but Ward Wells, a ole boy down here at the slaughter house…the one I ride back and forth with sometimes…he got him a bad cut on his arm one mornin’last week, right after we got here. I he’ped him with it. Got it on my overalls…I remember I even got it on my hands.”
“Is that right?” said Lucky. You think Ward’d remember that?”
“I bet he would,”said Sherman.“You know why?‘Cause we couldn’t get it to stop and Ward was gonna leave…and Mr. Crosby said to go on an’go wif him‘cause he was my ride an’we was slow that day anyway, like I been tellin’ya.”
“That’s interestin’, said Lucky.“Is he here today?”
Sherman stared intensely at Lucky for a few moments, then broke his gaze to peer out the window again.“Yessir, I lef’him jus’awhile ago to come up here and talk wif you.”
“Alright,”said Lucky, nodding his head.“Alright.”
Sherman paced quickly halfway across the room toward the door then stopped, as if he had realized that Lucky hadn’t said they were through. He cast his eyes on Lucky again, his face twitching just below his left eye.
“Sherman, any idea how blood got in your livin’room area back at you and your mama’s house?”
“Yessir,”he said. He watched the redheaded woman make her way briefly to her desk and then leave again.“I reckon it was a hog head that Mama was cleanin’. They give me a runt pig from here and I took it home wif me. Mama was mad at me that we got all that blood all over the house. An’she had her a bloody nose real recent, too. I can’t remember the day a’that neither.”
For a long moment, Lucky and Sherman Burgess locked in eye contact, the kind that normally would have brought something to bear after it. But it did not, only silence and the other sounds that came from behind the closed doors. The redheaded woman returned and Sherman asked Lucky if they were through, if he could go.
“Yeah, Sherman, we’re done. Thank ya for your time. I tell ya what you can do if you would. You can have Mr. Wells come out here and talk to me if you want to.”
Sherman wiped his hand on his britches leg again and offered it to Lucky and then disappeared through the flappin
g double doors, from which Ward Wells appeared momentarily.
“I don’t rightly remember,”had been Mr. Wells’answer when Lucky asked him when he had cut his arm.“Some time las’week or this week.”
“What about on Monday mornin’? Was Sherman ready for work when you got there to pick him up?”
“Yessir,”answered Mr. Wells, a short man with a clean uniform and a bandage on his arm.“He was out there where he always is. Right out there in front of the house on Evans Alley…waitin’on me. I remember…daylight was just fixin’to break and he was there like he always is…with his lunch in one hand an’a thermos a’coffee in the other. The first thing he done when he got in was offer me a pour a’coffee out’a his thermos bottle,‘cause I’ve normally drunk mine all up by the time I get to his house.”
“An’you’re sure that was Monday, right? When he was ready. I wish you could remember what day it was that you cut your arm. He said that Mr. Crosby told him to go, too, since you were goin’home.”
“You know,”Mr. Wells said, picking at his fingers on one hand,“I believe that was Monday,‘cause when I got home, my wife tol’me about that young girl they’d foun’. Wasn’t that Monday, Chief Hall?”
Lucky stared out the same window through which Sherman Burgess had been peering a few minutes before.“It was, Mr. Wells. It surely was.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I think I have an idea how all my ideas work together,”Percy had told me in one of his last few days there. As had grown to be normal over the years, except for the time he was in the asylum, he was sitting on the edge of his single bed across the upstairs from mine, smoking a cigarette. He pushed the hair out of his eyes, which again had grown long with his last institutionalization.