The Lesser People

by Lee Thompson

  Uncle Tommy laughed at me then. He said, “You got more of your momma and daddy in you than I thought.” He tapped my arm, said, “Come on. Let’s get you a hot dog and me a beer.”

  He held his girlfriend’s hand and she tried to hold mine like we were some kind of happy family but I jerked away from her, scanning the crowd, hoping I could spot my brother. My uncle said, “Boy, you need to give up the idea that you’re going to run off with him. Come on.”

  Him and his woman friend left me standing there at the edge of the lot where the grass was worn away from foot traffic. There was a clear path that led through the heart of the fairgrounds, between all the rides and the people crowding the trail. I thought if I ran off that would teach all of them a lesson and maybe it’d pay them to worry for a bit but I was awful hungry and my uncle and the woman stopped at the closest vendor and they sat with their backs to the wooden planks on the side of his hut, laughing still, him with a beer and a hotdog, her tight to his side, her arms snaked around his. They looked happy as I ever seen anybody look.

  My stomach got to growling at me and I scuffed the toe of my shoe in the dirt. I fought myself for a while, what felt like hours there in the hot air, the endless sunshine and the beep of distant rides and close conversation. Stomping my way over to my uncle I thought about Ben leaving me behind for some girl and didn’t think it was very nice of him. Uncle Tommy might have said I’d understand come a few more years but I knew I wouldn’t because I was nothing like them and didn’t want to be.

  Uncle Tommy handed me a buck, the woman still hanging on his arm like some kind of monkey, and I took the dollar and ordered a hotdog and cola from the man behind the counter. He had thick sideburns and tiny pig eyes. He smiled at me funny as he handed my order over and gave me a little wink. I turned away from him and sat down on the far side of Uncle Tommy. I ate like I was starved while the woman chattered constantly about how great it was that they were getting to spend some time together. I listened a while as they talked, and once some time went by and my belly was full she didn’t seem so bad.

  She had a small circular scar around her ring finger. Looked like she’d almost cut it off a long time ago. Other than that blemish she seemed well-together, untarnished by the world the way a lot of people were. She seemed to like my uncle a lot and he seemed to act different around her than he acted without her. I didn’t know why that was and when I tried to ask him he just told me to pull my foot out of my mouth and asked me what ride I wanted to go on. I jumped up and saw the vendor behind the counter. He licked his lips and wiped a hand on his white apron. His pig eyes were like looking into a dull mirror. I told Uncle Tommy, “That guy keeps staring at me.”

  Uncle Tommy stood and his lady friend let go of his arm. The vendor disappeared behind the wall of his little hut. My uncle said to me, “You know which ride it’s going to be?”

  I hadn’t really thought about it much since I had so many other thoughts going on. I stared at the high blue sky. A few clouds inched their puffy bodies across its surface. For a moment it disoriented me. I sipped my cola. I said, “I always liked the tilt-a-whirl but Momma said I shouldn’t ride any rides, or go swimming, after I just ate.”

  Uncle Tommy looked around and then back to me and said, “You see your momma here?”

  His lady slapped his arm and said, “Don’t be a bad influence on this poor child.” But she was laughing again. I thought she was one of those people who must laugh so much because if they didn’t laugh they’d explode. My old teacher was like that. She liked to make jokes constantly but there was always a tightness around the edges of her mouth and a cold, unloving, reptilian look to her eyes. Uncle Tommy’s lady didn’t have eyes like that. Hers were warm, friendly even, open, I guess. I said, “Why do you laugh so much?”

  She stooped over with her hands on her knees. “Why not?” she said. “Don’t you see the humor in anything?”

  “Right now?” I said. “Not really.”

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “My parents are in jail. Preacher too.”

  Uncle Tommy said, “We’re here to have fun.”

  It’s hard to have fun right now, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. I just looked down the fairway at all the people laughing and crying, gray shapes through the mist in my eyes, my brother somewhere among them. Isaiah too, I thought, if ghosts existed.

  Isaiah would have loved the sound of the fair. He’d have made his own images in his head for things he’d never seen and they’d probably have been beautiful.

  Uncle Tommy said, “I wish I could tell you it’s all going to be all right, Eli. But I can tell you worrying about it won’t change anything. And I have an idea that I think will help if your dad will listen to me.”

  “What idea?” I asked, squinting up at him with the sun in my eyes and his girl’s hair caught by a gentle breeze. My skin felt too hot and too close, like it was made of fire and it was determined to suffocate my bones. I said, “What idea? Why don’t you tell Daddy now?”

  “Because,” Uncle Tommy said, “now’s not the time. Right now we’re having fun. Was your hotdog good?”

  “It was okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

  His girlfriend laughed again, her face all squinched up. She batted his arm and said, “Your family.”

  Uncle Tommy laughed too but his heart didn’t seem into it. He glanced down the fairway and kept staring at it then he pulled away from her and started walking quickly toward the Ferris wheel. His girlfriend was still laughing and it took a moment for her to realize that he wasn’t standing right there next to us anymore.

  I got my feet moving and followed him, almost running to catch up. A crowd had circled ahead. My heart was climbing up in my throat as Uncle Tommy pushed through it and the men and women and children got out of his way because he had energy like that, like people could feel him moving close and somehow they sensed danger echoing off his passing and they could feel violence in that echo, so they moved aside, in an unconscious act of self-preservation. And they did it now and he stopped at the heart of the crowd, right in the middle, but I couldn’t see what he saw because his body blocked it.

  I ran through the sea of bodies until I stopped at his side, blinking sweat out of my eyes and my gaze settling on my brother some ten or twenty yards away. Ben’s bottom lip bled. It looked like he’d bit someone. An older boy was picking himself off the ground, a half dozen men urging him on. Ben’s girl was trying to get past him but he kept pushing her back and he swore at her.

  Uncle Tommy stepped forward. He pulled a pistol from beneath his shirt, one he’d hidden in the waistband of his pants. He held the gun loosely in his hand. The grounds grew quiet but for the motion of the rides, Ben’s heavy breathing, his girl’s squeal, the older boy who glared at Uncle Tommy cursing under his breath and the men behind him putting their hands up. I stared at them, unable to move. I thought, It’s the clan of Conover’s.

  Six of them plus the boy that Ben was fighting. My insides went cold. I thought they could have grabbed him and stole him away and left him on the river bank like someone had left my friend, the boy with the beautiful voice, the guileless smile, because he’d never seen pain in others.

  Uncle Tommy’s thumb played with the hammer of the pistol.

  The Conover’s looked at each other.

  Some of them looked tough.

  Some looked weak.

  All of them looked ready to bolt though and they’d noticed that the crowd behind them had vanished.

  Uncle Tommy said, “This about Hank?”

  He pointed the gun at the man in the middle, the oldest one, a man with bright blue eyes, wearing bibs, a straw hat that was so a part of him it was indistinguishable from his hair. The man hooked his thumbs on the straps of his bibs. He spat in the dirt between them. “What business is it of yours, Tommy? Since when do you stick up for you nigger loving brother?”

  Some of the other men moved closer to the group as if sides had been drawn. Some
muttered. Some of their faces grew angry. Uncle Tommy said, “Ben, get over here. Behind me.”

  “I’m not scared of them,” Ben said. He pointed at the boy a little older than him and said, “He called Sarah a slut.”

  The oldest Conover laughed. He said, “You Irons. Loving niggers and always gotta defend your helpless little bitches. Noble men and yet good for nothing.” He nodded at Ben. “Girl’s a slut, son, just like your momma.”

  Ben ran at him but the other boy intercepted him, ran in from the side and punched him in the ear. My brother hit the dirt, shaking, a few feet in front of the Conover’s.

  The old man spat again.

  It hit my brother on the back as he got his hands and knees under him.

  The old man looked up at Tommy. He said, “Well?”

  Uncle Tommy scanned the numbers. There were more men behind the Conover’s. The old man seemed unshaken by the sight of the gun. I figured he’d probably handled one from time to time as most men did, and he probably knew that Uncle Tommy wasn’t going to shoot him because then they’d lynch him for it. They wanted to lynch him anyway, I think. They didn’t really need a reason.

  The older boy stood over Ben, smiling down at him with his fists tapping his thighs, waiting for him to rise a little more so he could hit him again. But Ben came up quick and threw a handful of dirt in his eyes. The older boy reeled back and tripped over his feet. Ben’s girlfriend screamed something. Ben jumped on the boy and grabbed his ears and drove the crown of his head down into the boy’s nose. Blood splattered over his eyebrows and older boy went limp and moaned. One of the Conover’s, a lean man that reminded me a scarecrow, parted from their crowd and he flicked a knife open.

  I yelled Ben’s name, but instead of looking behind him to see the man, the boy’s father, I guessed, my brother looked my way, smiling, and I imagined that the boy’s father would jam the knife in my brother’s ribs and Ben’s face would go cold, blank, the color washed from it as blood bubbled up from his lips.

  And the man moved closer and Ben was still smiling at me, then at his girl, proud of himself, as the man’s shadow fell over him and Uncle Tommy raised the pistol and fired a shot in the air right over their heads.

  All of them ducked. The man with the knife froze. The gunshot rang across the countryside. My ears were ringing but I could see clearly and I saw Uncle Tommy point the pistol at the Conover holding the knife and I heard my uncle’s voice, softly, say, “Drop that goddamn knife and step back.”

  The father of the beaten boy growled. His hand drew hard on the knife and he looked down at where my brother had been a moment ago but Ben was standing and had moved back a good ten feet, out of the way.

  Uncle Tommy said, “You going to stab a boy because he bested yours. That’s how you Conover’s work. And you men,” he nodded at those who had joined their ranks, “You men, you’re all willing to take their side and let it happen because you’re scared. What you all scared of? The Negroes? You scared that they have nothing and they been able to do something with nothing, more than you could have? You scared that Hank will welcome them to town to sit in your seats and to use your restrooms or drink from your fountains?”

  The men all glared. The father helped the son up and dusted him off, then smacked him in the back of the head and herded him over with the others. He stuck the knife back in his pants pocket. He looked to the old man to be their voice. They all seemed to.

  Uncle Tommy said, “Well?”

  “Well,” the old man said. “Seems your brother is a criminal and we done know you’re a criminal and we been talking about your family, you understand, and that led us to the niggers your brother and that washed up minister befriend. Don’t seem right of them, does it? Lessen of course there be some spade blood running deep in their veins, am I right? Deep down where it can hide, where we can’t see.”

  He nodded at Uncle Tommy, said, “You think you got some nigger blood in you, boy? Do you deny that?”

  Uncle Tommy said, “You boys better stay away from my family.”

  “Nigger blood,” the old Conover said. “Hiding deep in this one, boys. I would bet the farm on that. Why you think their daddy hates them so much, huh? He knew. He’s known all along, got monkeys in his family tree, got—”

  Ben said, “Maybe you all got stupid blood in you. It don’t even have to have a color.”

  The old man laughed. His son’s and his grandson, bleeding and dirty, looked grim.

  Uncle Tommy waved Ben over. His girlfriend came with him. Uncle Tommy’s girlfriend stayed back away from it all and she wasn’t smiling anymore.

  The old man said, “You Irons always been fighters, I’ll give you that. But there aren’t many of you left in this country and before the week is through there won’t be a one.”

  “If we’re going anywhere you’ll be going with us.”

  “We’re here to stay,” the old man said. “Our roots are deep and pure.”

  “Pure as horse shit,” Ben said.

  I giggled and Uncle Tommy glanced back. He smiled at Ben. I thought he probably saw Daddy in him, nigger blood or not, and he seemed proud of him for fighting which made me want to fight too.

  I said, “They got stupid blood in them, right Uncle Tommy? Stupid as horse shit.”

  The Conover’s and the men who joined them, Klansmen, I figured, gave me a hard look that whittled away at my insides. I did my best not to show it, did my best not to imagine them burning us down in Uncle Tommy’s trailer while we were sleeping, but my best wasn’t very good.

  I imagined it. Imagined Ben screaming in the bright flames with the black roof above us and the smoke and the smell of our flesh consumed by fire. I trembled in the hot air, colorless, weak, just a little fat boy who didn’t know nothing about fighting and only wanted to be brave so the men I cared about accepted me. Even then I thought it was a foolish reason, knew it in my heart that Daddy and Ben and Uncle Tommy would accept me just the way I was, or mostly accept me like they mostly accepted each other, which was well enough.

  The boy Ben had beaten slunk off behind the men. I feared that he was leaving to get a gun from one of their pickups then realized that the parking lot was behind us, not them, so he was just running away, probably ashamed and angry with himself.

  A few of the other men slipped away too. They broke off into tight little knots and mumbled among themselves. Uncle Tommy told his lady friend to take us back to his car. She said she didn’t want to and so did her daughter and so did Ben. I saw the old man coming over and said, “Uncle Tommy.”

  He looked behind him, saw the old man, and stood straight as people on both sides stilled and the air grew heavy again, dusty, bright.

  Uncle Tommy walked out to meet the father of the opposing clan. They stopped an arm’s length apart and faced each other. They talked too low to hear. Ben’s girlfriend wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek and ran her hand back through his hair, then traced her fingers over the other boy’s blood on his forehead. He blushed and hung his head, then looked back out to our uncle and he seemed to beam, as if something wonderful had transpired.

  Uncle Tommy turned and walked back to us. He said, “The fair is over, boys.” He patted Ben’s head and mine. Then he hugged his lady friend and Ben hugged his but nobody was hugging me, so I looked at the old Conover standing by himself, rooted in the hard packed dirt, his hands on his hips and the straw hat on his head shielding his bright blue eyes from the sun.

  It appeared he was trying to tell me something with his eyes, with the warm smile playing on his lips, but I had no idea what the hell he wanted so I just made my hand like a gun and dropped my thumb like a hammer and he nodded at me. Then he did the same thing with his hand, that ugly smile of his growing wider.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Uncle Tommy was quiet as we stood next to his car. His lady and her daughter hovered around us. Ben talked quietly to Sarah. She held his hand and kept looking at the blood on his face. For some reason it made her sm
ile and I guess she was just proud of him that he didn’t let himself get pushed around, or maybe she was just proud that he didn’t let those Conover’s get away with calling her a bad name.

  I kept seeing the old Conover dropping his thumb on me like a pistol hammer and I figured that him and my Grandpa Irons were probably friends since both of them were jerks and both of them held sway over other men’s thoughts and actions.

  The fair carried on without us. We stood lost in a sea of automobiles as different as people in color and make and model and in condition.

  I had a lot of questions burning up inside me. But one took precedence over all others.

  I tried to catch my uncle’s attention but he had his arms crossed over his chest and the butt of his pistol made a tent of his shirt and his girlfriend leaned against the car next to him, both of them watching the fairgrounds as if they expected a crowd of men to part from the sea of flesh and descend upon us like a crushing wave.

  Ben and his girlfriend didn’t seem so scared or nervous and that was good. I wasn’t sure what I felt, just had that question burning up my insides until I couldn’t contain it any longer and the fire lit on my tongue and I asked our uncle, “Do we have Negro blood in us?”

  He turned his head slowly. He stared at me for a minute straight before he placed his hands on the fender of his car, which reminded me of the men in town pressing Preacher to the fender of his and trapping him there. Uncle Tommy shook his head. He said, “No.”

  “You sure?” I said.

  “He only said that to get some of the locals on their side.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It is what it is,” Uncle Tommy said.

  I looked at Ben and he shrugged, holding Sarah’s hand still, smiling like a goon. I didn’t think Ben cared if we had Negro blood in us or not. He only wanted to disappear now like he had from our house so that he could spend time making smooch-face with that girl.

  I said to my brother, “That man almost stabbed you,” in hopes that he’d realize how close he’d come to bleeding badly, and maybe to rattle him a little because he had the same look in his eyes, this crazy, calm fanatic light that was unwavering, the same light that Uncle Tommy and Preacher and Daddy carried inside them. I envied him that and yet was scared of it growing brighter inside him because I knew it would lead, someday, to his being ostracized and perhaps killed.