“Look at the trees yonder,” Red said, glancing away from the road. “Full turned. Seems like fall’s on us all of a sudden.”
“Shoot, man, it’s near about going to be November,” Hoyt said from the back seat. “Christmas’ll be on us before we know it.”
“Christmas, shit,” Buck French said. “I ain’t finished paying on last Christmas yet.” He rolled down the window and spat out.
“Look a-yonder at the quail rising—over where the sun’s coming up,” Hoyt said. “Man, I wish I had me a gun. If I wouldn’t like to have me some birds and biscuits and gravy.”
“You can get ’em soon enough,” Homer said. “The weather’s getting just cold enough. J. T. Veazey’s already got pigeons in his freezer.”
“That ain’t all he’s got in there either,” Hoyt said. “He’s got enough in there to feed a army the next five years. J. T. don’t spend his time doing nothing but hunting.”
“He’s sluffed all his work off on his boys. He ain’t got nothing else to do, why not?” Homer said, thinking how all morning he’d have his sign hung out: No GAS TILL AFTERNOON; losing money.
They gazed for a while over the quiet vista while the sun came up and melted the little frost there had been; the day would be warm and pretty. A white mist rose and slowly dissolved as the sun came full, round and yellow-red. By the time the last few miles were covered, the men were no longer cold. On the outskirts of town, Negroes were just getting up, the smell of wood smoke filled the air, and the smoke itself drifted gray as fog across the road. Into one grassless yard a woman threw a wash basin of gray soapy water and when it splashed, chickens ran to peck in the puddle. In another yard a boy too sleepy to grin drew water from a well. Opposite him a man washing on his front porch pulled up his overalls straps as they passed.
They reached the highway and stopped for a light. Across the road they could see the town. Built on three sides around a square, it was U-shaped as they faced it. Once it had been farther down the highway but had been moved when the highway was straightened. Some of the stores were still the original old white frame buildings, but there were new stores of a pale gold-colored brick. A wooden roof jutted out over the store fronts and shaded the sidewalks and at its farthest curves the U was broken by roads that led away to the houses of the town. Backless wooden benches set against the store fronts lined the sidewalk. There were no townspeople about yet, but one segment of the sidewalk was covered by people separated into two groups, Negroes and whites. They stood near a large truck parked at the curb, and when Red had driven across the highway and into the town, the men could read a large sign propped against one wheel: COTTON PICKERS FOR ARKANSAS. BACK BY SUNDOWN. $1.00 A 100 LBS.
Nearby a man stood and signed people up by writing their names into a black notebook. Then one by one, men and women, Negroes and whites, they climbed into the truck and sat together.
“Well, ain’t that highjackin’,” Hoyt said.
“Shoot, there ain’t enough cotton left in this part of Mississippi now to pick,” Buck French said. “They got to get together a little chitling money somehow.”
“I guess we’re kind of early,” Homer said. “You reckon the marshal will be at the jail?”
“He will be by eight o’clock,” Red said. “We don’t have long to wait till then.”
They parked in front of the jail at right angles to the sidewalk. The jail was one of the newer yellow-brick buildings, a small two-room affair meant only to hold minor offenders. Other offenders went twenty miles away to Desoto, the county seat, where there was a new and larger red-brick jail and a new brick county courthouse. The men got out of the car and went up and down the sidewalk stretching themselves and looking in at the displays in the store windows. Outside a grocery, Buck French sucked on his teeth and studied a display of Call of the North potatoes from South Dakota; they were in feed sacks from five to fifty pounds. Prices, he noted, were the same as in Marigold. Homer and Hoyt studied guns and saddles in a store a few paces away, but Red went to the end of the block, his eye attracted by a large printed sign on the post office. He called, “Hey, you-all come here.”
The three others came over and stood with their hands in their pockets and read:
WARNING
A mad dog was killed in Whitehill on Tuesday morning, October 15. The Mayor and Board of Aldermen, town of Whitehill, have ordered all dogs confined for a period of thirty days beginning October 15. All dogs must be vaccinated immediately. A representative of the Health Department will be in Whitehill on October 16 and 17 from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M.
To vaccinate dogs $1.00.
It is most important that we have your co-operation.
JOHN JOE WILLIAMS, JR. Mayor REYNOLD T. WALKER County Health Officer
“I be, I can’t remember a mad-dog scare in I don’t know when,” Homer said.
A maroon Chevrolet sedan drove slowly past them and parked before the jail. The driver got out and went around and opened the car’s trunk. He took out a bird hound and carried the dog into the jail. Then he returned for the dog’s puppy and took it inside too.
“I reckon it is open after all,” Hoyt said.
The four of them stepped inside the jail to face a room turned into a veterinary station. The health officer, pale and unshaven, about to inject one of the trembling dogs, looked up and indicated the marshal should close the door. He took his feet from his desk and did so; then the men stood before him in the tiny entranceway. The marshal returned to his desk and leaned back in a swivel chair. There was a loud yelp from the back room, and then Red said, “How do. We come to see you about a commitment.”
“Not about a dog?” the marshal said, in some surprise. He looked tired too. “I ain’t done nothing but dog work for two days. People don’t pay no more attention to hours posted on a sign than a dog does hisself. We was here half the night.”
“Well it ain’t exactly about a dog,” Red said, smiling. “It’s about Jake Darby.”
“Ain’t had a peep out of him since he’s been here,” the marshal said.
Hoyt said, “He can’t——” Buck French jabbed him in the ribs.
“You want to see him?” the marshal said.
“No,” Red said. “We just want to find out about how to go about committing him. He went out-and-out crazy in Marigold last evening. Ran around in the middle of town just like one of these dogs you folks are scared about. Foaming at the mouth and carrying on. Just plain carrying on. Rushing at folks and crying out. We decided he just ain’t safe to have about any more. And he don’t have one soul of kin to look after him.”
“I thought those folks that brought him last night was his kinfolks,” the marshal said.
“Naw,” Red said. “He’s got a brother somewhere. His Ma died some time ago. Some folks look after him a little, but he stays by hisself.”
“Well, it’s none of my nevermind,” the marshal said. He pulled open a drawer and brought out a white paper form. “You got to go to Desoto to the county courthouse and get this filled out. You see the deputy probate clerk there.”
“Much obliged,” Red said. He took the paper, folded it and put it into his back pocket.
“You don’t want to see him?” the marshal said.
“No,” Homer Brown said.
“No,” Red said, backing out. “You just keep him here till we do all this, will you?”
“I will if I see fit,” the marshal said. “If I get some word from Desoto, I will.”
“How long you reckon it’s going to take to do this?” Red said, slapping his back pocket.
“Depends,” the marshal said.
“Well, much obliged again,” Red said. The others mumbled various thanks, and they all went out again gladly into the now bright morning and got into the car. Homer Brown thought, Shoot, it’s going to be a whole day’s worth of business lost.
They drove down the street to the highway again, but this time turned right. The ride would be a straight little run down the highway for twenty mi
les to Desoto. The highway went straight on beyond there for some twenty more miles to Memphis. The landscape at first was not much different from that they had traveled in the early morning; the exceptions were a few brick houses set close to the highway as they left Whitehill, and a white filling station gleaming in the sun, fronted by what looked to be one hundred feet of blacktopped drive-in space, which Homer gazed back at with envy. Shortly they passed the pride of the town, a landing field that had been smoothed out of land once furrowed and planted; it was a base for the little light planes that did crop dusting, and flying lessons were given to anyone who wanted them, but no one ever had. There was no hangar, only a slightly built wooden shed where people could come in out of bad weather and where the few records that had to be kept were stored. Landing strips were defined by old automobile tires laid flat on the ground and painted white with a luminous paint. Boundaries were defined in the same way, except that the tires touched one another and stood on end like hoops ready to be rolled. There were no lights. But the planes had flown in successfully late into the evening by the glow of the tires, and the field was considered complete.
Red stopped the car while the four men stared openmouthed as a dot in the distance in the sky took shape as a wobbly little plane coming down: restlessly, like an insect unable to decide where it was going to settle. It seemed to hover and then bounded up again only to come down again, lifted and lowered by the wind. Coming head on, it seemed to be grinning, the whirling propeller was its nose and the two dark windows its eyes. It flew straight ahead over the car, so close they all agreed afterward on the numbers painted beneath the wings.
“Jesus Christ!” Hoyt called. They all threw up their hands and ducked to the floor until they heard the plane fly back over the car and land with a slight thump nearby; then they sat up shamefacedly, grinning at one another and out the windows at the pilot, who was bouncing along grinning and waving at them from the cockpit. Homer and Hoyt, who were sitting on the side by the field, waved back.
“Whew,” Red said. They drove on, and along where they drove it looked as if winter had come already; the landscape was dry and brown except for the sudden interruptions of velvety green pines, which grew out of the crumbling roadbanks with their needles shining in the bright white sun the color of stars. In a grove of the pines, like on oasis against the winterscape, sat a great white barn, the hillside leading to it thickly dotted with grazing Black Angus cattle.
“Jordan Moody’s,” Red said reverently.
Buck French read the lettering over the door of the barn. “Black Angus Cattle,” he said.
“You ever heard about his auctions?” Hoyt said. “Anybody wants to can come. They come from miles around, interested in buying cattle or no. He passes out free barbecue, potato salad, beer. I don’t know what all he don’t serve and free as you please to anybody who wants it. They say it’s just a big party for the county and more.”
“Folks spend the whole day. Some even come from Memphis. Folks bring kids and prac’ly camp out, I hear,” Homer said.
“Shoot, if he’s feedin’ free, they prob’ly bring their grandmammies and daddies and uncles and aunties and anybody else they got,” Red said.
“Last year he sold one bull for fifty thousand dollars,” Hoyt said.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” Red said. “I’d like to see me any bull worth that much.”
“It’s the truth,” Hoyt said. “Some fellow from out West bought it. These cattle people come here from all over.”
“I got me a mind to come to the next one,” Homer said.
“There was a sign upside the barn that said one in February,” Buck said. “I think I might go myself.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing something walking around on four legs worth fifty thousand dollars,” Hoyt said.
“Me either,” Red said.
“Crick’s dry for this time of year,” Hoyt said, looking out as they went over it.
“Look a-yonder, if that ain’t a picture,” Homer said. Three little Negro girls with blue hula hoops stood by the side of the road, undulating in them. The men waved and the girls waved back, their mouths stretched wide in pleasure and pride.
They saw the water tower in the distance, and Homer put back on his shoes. Buck French threw away the toothpick he had been chewing on and blew his nose. Red figured he still had time for a few good puffs on a cigarette and lit one. Everyone was suddenly thinking of the reason they had come; but if they had ever had any doubts, they had come in the previous short night and had been dispelled at dawn by the relentless, frowzy-haired wives who had been up even before they were, making coffee and starting them on their way. Now they were only thinking of exactly what they would have to do. Red had drawn the paper from his back pocket, and he handed it to Homer. “We ought to look this over,” he said.
“First thing,” Buck French said, looking at Hoyt, “is you best not say he can’t talk, like maybe he’s a deaf-and-dumb. They don’t take idiots.”
“How’d you know that?” Homer said. He had opened the paper and was reading it.
“I don’t know how I knew, I just knew,” Buck said. “Don’t it say that there?”
“That’s exactly what it says,” Homer said. “One of us has got to be ‘the undersigned’—that is, one of us has got to sign this and state that we suspect Jake of being in-sane, but that he ain’t a idiot or feebleminded——”
“Well, ain’t that exactly the whole thing,” Red said. “We always thought he was a idiot and then he went to actin’ up and carryin’ on till now we think he’s crazy instead. And most likely has been, when you come to think of it, all this time. There’s lots of folks that talks that’s idiots. Because he don’t talk don’t necessarily make him a idiot or feeble in his head either.”
“I just as soon not say nothing about his not talkin’,” Homer said.
“I agree to that,” Red said.
The others said they did too.
“Who’s going to sign this here saying you suspect him of being in-sane?” Homer said.
Nobody said anything.
“Well, we’ll just have to let them folks decide that,” Homer said, and read on: “Blank is suspected of being in-sane, is not an idiot or feebleminded; that blank is a poor person—” He looked up. “Well, Jake is shore that,” he said. He looked at the paper again and read, “—and has no estate or property except——What’s he got?”
“Nothing but that old house that’s no more’n a shack now,” Buck French said.
“Well, that ain’t going to count nothin’ in his favor, do you reckon?” Homer said.
“I don’t see how it could,” Hoyt said.
“Nah,” Red said.
Homer said, “Who’s ever going to sign this has got to swear Jake don’t have anybody legally liable for his maintenance. And he don’t have that——”
“Unless somebody knows where Jud’s at,” Buck French said.
“Well, nobody does know,” Homer said. “And I doubt if he could take care of him if they did find him, from whatever I heard about him after he left.”
“I heard he done right well,” Hoyt said.
“Don’t anybody know is the fact,” Homer said. “Well, it says he’s got to be a citizen of the country and a resident of this state for twelve months and wasn’t in-sane when he come into—well, he ain’t never been out of, so we don’t have to worry. And has been a resident of said county for sixty, then it says six-o in parentheses, days or more and was not—oh well, he ain’t ever been out of his own county even. Uh-oh,” he said, turning over the page.
The two on the back seat sat forward and Hoyt said, “What?”
“Two doctors got to sign this,” Homer said. He looked at the men in the back and then turned and looked at Red, who had taken his eyes off the road to turn and look at him. Then Red looked in the rear-view mirror at the other two. They all thought of the possibility of failure and of their wives. Buck French told himself, Kate’ll be up here tomorrow if I do
n’t do it, and somehow she’ll get it done.
“They got to be practicing physicians of the county,” Homer said. “They got to this day personally examine him and declare about how old he is—well, we can tell ’em about how old he is—that he ain’t subject to no contagious diseases—you don’t reckon he is, do you?”
“If he is, I don’t know where he got ’em, ’less it was from that old cow he used to have,” Buck French said, and laughed.
“Or somebody’s bitch,” Red said.
Everybody laughed.
“And declare,” Homer said, “that the in-sanity is of blank duration—what would you say, lifetime, I guess—and that he ain’t a idiot or feebleminded—well, we’ll just have to trust to luck—and that the medical treatment has been blank, blank, blank. Then in parentheses it says, ‘Here set out the medical treatment and all circumstances known to the physician tending to illustrate the same.’ You-all understand all that?”
“Not exactly,” Hoyt said.
“It’s all right,” Buck said.
“Then there’s a place where the deputy probate clerk got to sign and the judge of probate court. Whew, we’re liable to be here till suppertime,” Homer said. “And—” he paused for effect and looked around before he said—“the judge has to appoint a guardian—a suitable and proper person, it says, to act as guardian a-d and another word l-i-t-e-m for the defendant in this cause. What could those words mean?”
“It’s some legal flibbery-gibbery,” Buck French said.
“I know that,” Homer said.
“You reckon it means a guardian for the rest of his life or something like that?” Red said. “You know ain’t none of us going to sign up to do that or anybody else in Marigold.”
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