by Robert Hicks
His anger clouded his better judgment. He should have run then, but he couldn’t. He sighted in.
The first man who came back through the door and onto the porch took a bullet in his shoulder. He fell awkwardly, like he’d tripped in his hurry to get out of the way of the fire, and so the other two behind him didn’t think much of it. They came barreling out into the night.
The second man took a round in his leg, which opened up like a flower. He went down, too. By this time the last one out the door noticed something awry and tried to leap over the other two. This carried him through the porch and over the steps. He rolled around on the ground for a moment before standing up.
Meanwhile Tole had been able to load again. The one who had been confused about what to do with the floorboards began shouting that something was awfully wrong, but before he could complete his sentence a bullet shattered his right arm and he went down for good. Tole was impressed with himself. He thought surely he’d kill one of them accidentally and violate his promise to Mariah, but when it counted he was as good as he remembered.
The four remaining men reached up and pulled the two men from the porch and the third from the ground. At about the same time they realized they were being fired on, the house wooshed up and was engulfed by fire. They fell back even farther, dropping the wounded men, who crawled and pulled themselves behind the cedar tree in the front of Tole’s yard. The others took cover across the street. Tole knew they were looking for him, and would soon enough have figured out his position, so he moved around the side of the house, feeling the heat curl and burn the hair on his forearms and his cheeks, until he guessed he was behind them again.
He considered whether he ought to finish off the wounded, put them out of their misery. Out of their misery. No. Spare their lives. Leave them in their misery. Plus he’d promised Mariah: no more killing.
The house groaned. The sound of a fully engulfed wood structure is the sound of a river at flood, currents of flame leaping the banks. There would be nothing left, it would all be carried up into the sky as ash and smoke, and in coming days it would color the shirts and dungarees of his neighbors for a quarter mile around. That edge of Blood Bucket would smell of Tole’s disintegrating world, but eventually even that would dissipate, and there would be nothing left.
He knew this much: now that they knew he was alive somewhere, firing his bullets at them, they would never leave him alone. Not now. There would always be more to come after him.
And these men, especially, would be after him with a vengeance.
It had been an enormous mistake to let them live. But if he didn’t, where would the killing end?
With me, George Tole realized. The killing will end when they kill me.
* * *
The night dissolved into the quiet pale of dawn as Tole hurried his way out of Franklin and southeast to Carnton, using the Nashville-Decatur railroad track until he reached the McGavock property. He smelled of smoke and fear and sweat. He wasn’t sure who had made it out alive. He wondered if Mariah could smell the smoke and see the flames from where she was. He hated the thought of having to tell her the news of the Bucket burning. He reached the driveway to Carnton a long hour after he left Blood Bucket.
Past the cemetery, and to Mariah’s door. He tapped lightly. It didn’t take her long to answer, wrapping her shoulders in a light linen shawl to cover herself.
“Mr. Tole, what is it?”
“The Bucket, ma’am. They done burned it down.”
“What? Who did?”
Mariah pushed past Tole and ran barefoot into the yard. She couldn’t see the flames, but the gray-and-black smoke had billowed into the sky, looking like thunder clouds. “No! Who dead?”
“Don’t know. Left to come here. I was worried they was after you, too.”
“No one came here.”
“That’s good.”
“Let me get my kit, I have some medicines to help. Give me a moment.”
He waited on the porch for her. Birds, inexorable as darkness, twittered in the bushes.
In a few minutes she was back, wrapping a heavier shawl around her. “We’ll take the cart. I should wake Miss Carrie and tell her.”
Twenty minutes later they were on their way in the dogcart, Mariah’s medicines and herbals heaped behind them. “I’m sure April and May made it out,” Tole said.
“What makes you so sure?” Mariah sounded desperate.
Tole couldn’t answer her.
“What about Hooper?” she asked.
“He’s probably home sleeping off his moonshine.”
“Who done it, George? Who done it?” She was crying.
“I know who.”
“Dixon?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything.
“Because of me,” she said. “Because of my testimony.”
They drove into the smoke and ash and heat, and as they got closer, Tole said, “I need you to let me off right up here.”
Mariah stopped. She looked at him. And before he could say anything she kissed him and said, “I be waiting.”
Chapter 44
Tole
August 10, 1867
Elijah Dixon’s office glowed in the early morning sunlight.
It was around six in the morning when Dixon carefully let himself in, closed the door, and locked it behind him. He smelled powerfully of smoke. Then he kicked his chair. And his desk. And his file cabinets. He was very obviously angry just then. When he lit the lamp on his desk he burned a finger.
He spat on the floor. The light seemed to expand into the room slowly, and everything glowed. His desk, the floors, the picture frames, his chairs.
The Negro in the corner.
“Hello again, Mr. Dixon.”
Dixon jumped at the sound of Tole’s voice. This was what Tole had missed since leaving New York: the fear he could paint across the faces of men. Why had he ever given up this power? A Negro gave a white man plenty to fear and worry about, but Tole was one who could also make them fear for their lives. He was ashamed he had given this up when he slunk off to Tennessee. Look at what he had become, bending and scraping and living in his paper-thin house. He had nearly gone mad with his figurines and his carvings. George Tole was a man to be feared, and he would not forget that again.
“How’d you get in here?” Dixon asked.
“The door. It just needed a little help to open.”
“So you wrote the note?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Tole said.
Just then Dixon noticed the safe box at Tole’s feet. He leapt at it as if unable to resist its pull, letting out a little shout that was more like a lady’s scream. Tole brought the pistol up and aimed at his face.
“Give it.” Dixon was so enraged he could barely squeeze the words out, and forgot his fear. He pointed at the box.
“I don’t reckon I will. This here is a gift for a friend who done me a favor—saved my life, you might say. The only reason I ain’t already gone with it is I wanted you to know who took it.”
Dixon stepped back and slumped into his desk chair. He ran his hand over his head, and then he dug the heels of both hands into his temples and squeezed, as if he were trying to push everything out and to start over again. “Is that my whiskey, too?” he asked, pointing at the cup on the mantel.
“Mine now.”
Dixon stared at the pistol in Tole’s hand. Tole took a sip of the whiskey and kept the pistol trained on him. “You want to meet my friend?” Tole said at last. “He sure want to meet you.”
The back door to Dixon’s office, the one that went down the back stair and that Dixon used when he didn’t want to be seen, opened.
“Hello, Elijah,” Jesse Bliss said, primping the orange feather in his hat. “George here has a hankering to kill you. And I can understand him. After all, you wanted me dead.”
Dixon sat totally still, not even breathing. Then his eyes flickered to life, dancing from the box to Bliss to the door with the file cabinets, to
Tole and to the desk, and then back, inexorably, to the safe box, which Tole casually used as a footrest.
“We can chat first, if you like, or just get down to business,” Bliss said. He took a chair facing Dixon and Tole. Tole thought he had one of those faces that looked built to face the wind—narrow, pointed, his eyes in a permanent squint, chin sharp but receding, his black-and-gray mustache and beard neatly trimmed. He cracked his five knuckles periodically, one at a time, with his thumb. His field coat draped off his wide body.
“You want me dead, Mr. Bliss?” Dixon said. “I’m surprised.”
“I do not. Unlike my adversaries, I don’t indulge such crude calculus. I appreciate a more elegant solution to my problems.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“Though it is a useful calculus when all other options fail.”
Bliss stared into Dixon’s eyes as if looking for something. Tole thought, He wants to know which it is going to be: the elegant solution or the crude one? It was a question Tole had silently put to many men in his time.
“I don’t think you will be glad to hear it when I explain my proposal. I’m still irritated that you would have even tried to have me killed. You made a damned mess of it, yes, and I take personal offense.”
“You would’ve been better off taking that bullet, Bliss,” Dixon said. “I was a much more pragmatic man back then. More merciful. You don’t know what kind of hell you’ve gone and stirred up now.”
“I’d go easy on the threats, Mr. Dixon. We both know what you’re capable of. But you and I both know, without your power and your titles, you’re nothing but a man.”
Bliss reached into Tole’s red-and-blue carpetbag, which he’d been carrying, and removed a few of the ledger books that Tole had found affixed to the tops of the file cabinets. Dixon’s face drained. He made as if to rise, and Tole leaned forward to follow him, keeping his pistol raised at Dixon’s head. Dixon stopped, stiff and unmoving.
“I went through these books, but I only have a rough guess as to how much money you’ve been stealing. If you’d like, we can all three of us head down to the county clerk’s office, get the city’s official books, and compare them. Would you like that, Mr. Dixon? Because what we hold in our hands is proof of federal crimes. You understand me? See, I always wondered where a man like you was getting all that money. I should have known you’d be the type to take it from the rest of us.”
“You going to trust some lying nigger?” Dixon muttered. His forehead flushed. “He’s conning you, Jesse. That’s what he does!”
Tole leaned toward Dixon and brought his face within inches. His eyes widened, his mouth bared teeth. “You yourself may be beginning to understand how many ways you’ve crossed me. You should shut your mouth from here on in.”
Dixon leaned away. Tole again enjoyed the look of fear on the man’s face.
“Thing I still haven’t figured out,” Bliss said, pleasant again. “Where have you been hiding the rest of the money? You own some businesses I’m not aware of, Elijah? Maybe down south? Somewhere you can scatter the money around so nobody notices?”
Dixon didn’t say a word.
“Well, wherever it went, we’ll find it. It might take some time, but we’re going to find it all.”
Bliss turned his attention to Tole. “Open the box.”
Tole leaned over, picked it up, and sprang the latch. Inside lay the stock certificates for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company. “Take them with my compliments, Mr. Tole. You’re a rich Negro now.”
Dixon leapt to his feet. “Now that ain’t happening.”
Tole laughed and riffled through the papers.
“Indeed, this is happening,” Bliss said. “Sit down.”
Dixon sat down.
“To save us time,” Bliss said, “the answer to every one of your objections henceforward is the following. If you refuse any of our conditions, I will leave, you’ll be shot in the head by this here Negro, and the death of Elijah Dixon, whose friends didn’t like him much, will be officially credited to assailants unknown.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t we? You really want to test us, Elijah? Think of your children!”
“Are you threatening my family?”
“Mr. Tole is squeamish about killing infants,” Bliss said, “but not their daddies.”
Dixon sagged in his chair, rubbing his forehead. Tole leaned his chair against the wall, reading the stock papers that had just made him rich, and Bliss, who’d risen, sat back down on the other side of the desk. He composed himself, and Tole had the impression of a man who had grown to twice his normal size settling back into his usual shape.
“You’re too dangerous to be allowed to roam free in the wilds of Franklin,” Bliss said. “As head of the Republican Party in the capital, I need to have control of Franklin. To that end, Mr. Dixon, you’ll be appointed to the legislature as the acting Republican representative from Franklin.”
Dixon stared at him, amazed.
“Your first act will be to introduce a bill granting the Freedmen’s Bureau more enforcement and investigative power throughout the state. They really have been helpful to us. It’s nice to have them to send off hunting down old Confederates who seem to believe the war never ended. Those sorts of people, your friends from Pulaski with the masks and the hoods, they won’t like this new politics of yours, Dixon. They won’t like you as a progressive. So you’ll require protection, and therefore you’ll depend on me. That seems about right, I think.”
“No one will ever believe…” Dixon began.
“I am putting my mark on you, and don’t ever make the mistake of forgetting that I own you, every greasy bit of you. You backed the wrong horse, and now you’ve got to pay up. You are mine. I keep my enemies that close.”
Dixon sank even farther into his chair. Bliss turned and spoke to Tole. “Anything else in that box?”
“Just these certificates,” Tole said.
“Put them in your pocket.”
Tole set the box on the floor, folded the certificates, jammed them into a pocket. He noticed that Dixon’s eyes remained fixed on the box.
Tole picked the box up again. Flipped it over. Tapped the bottom with his knuckle, then the inside. He pulled out a pocketknife and inserted it into the empty box. Up came a false bottom.
“Hell,” Dixon said.
Tole pulled some more papers from the box and Dixon gave out a squeak. Tole looked over at him and thought the man might cry; the humiliation must be terrible. He showed the papers to Bliss and Dixon.
“Ah, the deeds!” Bliss said. “All the land another railroad in these parts might ever need, all here in one place.” He held them up to Dixon. “These you’ll sign over to us, now. As a board member of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, which is one of the perks of being on the correct side of history, I shall receive them on behalf of the railroad and keep them safe. My fellow directors will be very pleased.”
He walked the deeds over and spread them out on Dixon’s desk. “Sign,” he said, holding out Dixon’s own pen. “This pile’s for me. And this pile’s for my good friend George Tole. He may even want to use them to help rebuild half this town, which I did notice you burned down. That’s another crime. And the murders…”
As Dixon bent to the task, Bliss brightened and patted Dixon on the back. “Looks like Franklin might get another railroad after all, now that land is so cheap! I have to tell you, it was looking pretty unlikely before, when it became apparent that someone had locked up all the good land. Franklin was important, but not that important. Thank God we straightened that out.”
When Dixon was done signing, Bliss gave one sheaf to Tole and folded the others away in his own pocket.
“I reckon Mr. Tole might want a final word with you. Don’t worry, he won’t kill you now. So I bid you good morning. I will be in touch to let you know when we’ll have the swearing-in ceremony. You’re going to make a fine Republican. M
r. Tole, I’m sure we’ll be in touch shortly.” And then Bliss went out the door, closing it tightly behind him.
When he had gone, Tole and Dixon stared at each other. Tole wasn’t sure how they’d got to this place, which he would never have predicted a month before when he’d been afraid of Dixon and what the man knew about him. Dixon had been the big man. Now Tole didn’t care who knew about him. Things had changed in seconds, in a moment. He felt what it was like to be free and in charge.
“I don’t expect to hear you doing anything to Miss Mariah or Missus McGavock or anyone else I care about in this town. Not ever.”
“I make no promises.” Dixon still had some fight in him, some ancient bone memory of how he ought to talk to a presumptuous Negro.
He needed correcting.
“You count on me watching you, from now to eternity. Watching is what I do. I’ll be watching and you’ll never see me.”
Dixon did not speak. But Tole could read acceptance on his face.
“And when you cross that line, you’ll never see me then, either. Everything will just go black, forever. Snap. Won’t hurt a bit, you just be gone.”
Dixon nodded, put his hands on his knees, and stared at the floor.
“But Mr. Dixon, there’s something else, too. Don’t make me threaten those five beautiful babies of yours. Mr. Bliss did that. I don’t want to. And I know that you want to see them grow up. And you want them to grow up.”
Tole cleared his throat, the next words coming hard. “Don’t make me threaten them. Don’t make me do anything—anything—ever to hurt another innocent person. But I will, you know that? If you do anything to Mariah Reddick or anyone she loves, I will.”
He put his pistol in his pocket, lifted his rifle from the corner, snuffed the lamp, and went out the door and down the steps to the street.
Bliss was a cigarette smoker, and Tole smelled him before he even got down the stairs. Out on the street, in the dark of the building’s shadow, he spied the burning ember glowing orange. He walked over and joined Bliss walking down the street.
“You know,” Bliss said, “you can’t stay here.”