The Lesser People

by Lee Thompson

  “He’s trying to tell him something.”

  “I don’t understand him,” I said.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Just listen. The only way you can learn to get even part of what he’s communicating is through his body language, facial expressions, and the tone and intensity of his voice.”

  His face looked huge next to mine. He looked like he wanted to kiss me, like Ben looked at Sarah when he’d first saw her at the fair.

  I said, “I think he’s in love with me.”

  Ben laughed. Sarah did too.

  It wasn’t funny. I didn’t want him in love with me. I almost ripped his hands from my shoulders but we heard something out front chink like metal hitting metal.

  Even Leonard stopped and turned his head, his face back to what I assumed its normal blank stupidity.

  Ben lifted a hand and pressed a finger to his lips to tell us to hush even though no one was making a peep or about to.

  We skirted part of a fallen wall that once belonged to the back porch. Leonard huffed close to my ear, his feet bumping mine as we moved and it made me angry but there wasn’t time to focus on being angry since the sound issued from out front again, carried easy and natural on the gentle breeze.

  It sounded like someone scraping something away with a pitchfork.

  My heart sped faster, believing that we’d round to the front of the house and we’d find Beelzebub mounting the blackened carnage, and in one hand he’d hold the three-pronged blade of suffering, and in the other he’d be holding Miss Jessie’s head.

  And I could imagine that he’d reanimate her somehow, and we’d see her eyes moving back and forth, looking for a way to escape the devil’s clutch, and eventually it would dawn on her that she possessed no arms or legs with which to flee even if an opportunity did arise.

  The dust the fire had created tickled my nose. I wiped a shirt sleeve over it, trying to fight a building sneeze. As if Ben sensed it, he glanced back at me.

  The clinking, scraping noise continued out front.

  We stood on the side of the house, the road cutting away at an angle in the distance, sunlight cutting through the trees bordering the road and laying patches of light and shadow across the crushed gravel, the barren and overgrown field.

  I glanced up at the sky, not wanting to meet my brother’s stern stare, wishing we could just rewind time to before I’d found Isaiah by the river.

  The sunlight was so bright it made me squint. I sneezed, hard, it shook my bones and Leonard jumped next to me. Ben looked for a weapon so he could whack me with it but all he came up with was a rock. Sarah grabbed one too and I thought it’d be horrible for them to stone me like they stoned people in the bible just cause I couldn’t stop from sneezing and I didn’t know that anybody could, not even Daddy who could do just about anything.

  Ben and Sarah faced forward and moved quickly to the corner of the house, the rocks tight against their palms.

  I snatched Leonard’s hand and stooped to grab a rock myself, then we caught up with them, the four of us clinging to the corner of the house, the stench of burned wood and wild flowers and our own stink heavy among us.

  The rock felt heavy but Leonard’s hand felt even heavier. I thought he was doing real good on being quiet and I wanted to tell him I was proud of him, to just be quiet a little bit longer, but he sniffed the air and smiled and ran out ahead of all of us, around the corner to the front.

  Ben and Sarah and me stood there dumbfounded, surprised and unsure what had happened until it clicked into place that Leonard wasn’t there with us anymore.

  Sarah broke first, her face full of hope like she thought maybe her brother had smelled their mother, like she might still be alive.

  She sprang around the corner and Ben followed.

  I inched to the corner, afraid somehow that somebody was tricking us.

  My fingers tapped against the stone in my palm, my heart in turmoil. I waited for Ben to cry out in frustration and pain as the men from last night knocked Leonard and Sarah to the ground, already having it made up in my head that they had returned to finish what they’d started. But I shook my head, thinking that the men from last night had no way of knowing they hadn’t killed us when they burned the slave quarters down. I wiped my eyes. Sarah was right, people sometimes sucked. I inhaled another breath and let it out slow before I stepped around the corner, keeping my body pressed tight to the ruined siding, as I scanned the front yard.

  Leonard was hugging a man with a black face who stood on the eaten front steps and the man was hugging him back fiercely.

  A rake lay on the rubble by their feet and off near the driveway a sheet covered a body. Ben and Sarah were half way between Miss Jessie’s body and the black man that was hugging the life out of Leonard who swung back and forth between laughing and crying.

  I stepped closer, holding tight to the rock, glancing at the shovel lying next to the rake at their feet, then to the driveway. I thought it was weird that there wasn’t a car around and figured the black man must be a neighbor, somebody who cared about Miss Jessie and somebody who knew about Leonard the way he was carrying on and clinging.

  Soot plumed up as they shifted their position, me only twenty feet away or so, and the black man released Leonard and he held his arms out to me and called Ben with Uncle Tommy’s voice, crying, “Jesus Christ, I thought…”

  Ben ran to him.

  They hugged hard and long and Uncle Tommy’s ash covered face was slick with sweat and wet with tears as he watched me, Sarah standing over by her mother, kneeling now, ready to draw the sheet back but unable to follow through with it.

  Leonard waved me forward, the metal around his mouth dirty. I thought we should take it off, that it wasn’t right to choke his words off even if we couldn’t understand him.

  I moved in close and Uncle Tommy laughed and jerked me tight to his filthy clothes, me thinking that Momma would be awful angry with all of us for looking like we did, and once she found out why she’d be heartbroken and angry and grateful.

  Uncle Tommy squeezed me so tight I couldn’t breathe and it made my head spin like the tunnel had. I squeezed him back, afraid and uncomfortable.

  Ben hugged me with one arm, our uncle with the other.

  Leonard sang softly, indecipherable, his voice a deep baritone and resonant, humming close to my ear. I let loose with crying and Uncle Tommy stepped back, pulling us with him as he tripped on the pile of rubble.

  We laughed and we cried and Sarah pulled the cover back from her momma’s face and ran her fingers through her mother’s hair, the sunlight bright behind her, birds singing in the distance, and the tree in my heart full of them. I wanted to ask about Daddy and Momma and Preacher but the hugging and the crying and the relief of the reunion overwhelmed us.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  After a while we departed the ruined porch, still clinging to each other, Leonard still unaware that his mother was laying by the driveway, hidden by a clean white sheet. I didn’t know how Sarah was going to tell him or if he’d even understand what death was. I hoped that he didn’t, thought that maybe it would be easier for him that way, unless it turned out he went through the rest of his life feeling abandoned, crying for her to come to him and her not coming, time after time, confusion and sorrow just piling up on him.

  Uncle Tommy parted from us and hugged Leonard again. He whispered, his voice thick, “I’m so glad you’re all right, little man.” Leonard didn’t hug him back. He craned his head at the house, studying the scorched front door, then the scorched earth at the bottom of the steps.

  He whined real loud until Sarah said, “It’s okay, Leonard,” her arm around his waist as they walked off into the yard, walked in circles, and walking in circles seemed to calm him. He stared at their feet, her guiding him, the birds still singing in the trees, the sunshine growing brighter.

  Ben said, “We didn’t know if you were alive or dead
.”

  Uncle Tommy’s face looked like somebody hit an ash bucket with a sledge hammer. “I know,” he said. “And I can’t explain how I felt when I got here and seen all this.”

  He shook his head, wiped a dirty hand around his eyes, flicked his fingers across his forehead and back through his hair. “Hell. It felt like hell.” Tears filled his eyes, made them shine and I could see my and Ben’s reflection in them. He swiped at his hair again, knocking dust free. He glanced at the sheet by the driveway. “What happened?”

  “She got one of them,” Ben said.

  I said, “It was that old Conover and some men.”

  Uncle Tommy said, “They were just the trigger men. I know who’s to blame for all this horseshit.”

  “Who?” Ben said.

  “My father.”

  “How?” I said. “He’s just a mayor.”

  “Hell,” Uncle Tommy said. “He’s a mayor because it serves a purpose.”

  “What purpose?” Ben said.

  “For another role he fills.”

  “What role?” I said.

  Uncle Tommy lowered his head. He stared a long time at his boots. When he raised his head his face was like stone and the dampness in his eyes had disappeared. He said, “You boys recognize any of the men besides the oldest Conover?”

  I shook my head, then I glanced at Sarah and Leonard. I said, “Will Leonard know his mom is gone for good?”

  “I don’t think so,” Uncle Tommy said, looking annoyed with me before he glanced at Sarah and her brother and his face softened, his eyes sad and warm. “But who’s to say? That kid may have trouble communicating but he picks up on things we miss. He’s sensitive. Even more than you.”

  He patted my head. I brushed his hand away.

  My brother crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the charred pillar of the porch. He shook his head, coughed. He said, “I’m sorry about Jessie.”

  “I know,” Uncle Tommy said. “Be more sorry for the kids than you are for me.”

  “I am,” I said.

  Uncle Tommy said that was good. We watched Sarah tending to Leonard for a while. She was gentle with him. I could see why my brother liked her. She’d led us out of the cavern below the old slave’s quarters too, down into the deep darkness and back out into the light, even if that light was fractured by all of this residue, and I thought she was strong to do all of that. Strong like Momma and Daddy.

  I wiped my eyes, said, “Where is your car?”

  Ben said, “What happened while you were in town? Did they let our parents go? They didn’t, did they, or they’d be here with you.”

  “Or are they home packing our stuff to move away?” I said, hopeful in the way small children are hopeful.

  I looked over the house, over the soot that coated Uncle Tommy’s skin and if that was what it meant to be an adult I didn’t want to grow up.

  He placed a hand on my shoulder and a hand on Ben’s. He told us to have a seat as he slipped Preacher’s flask from his back pocket and unscrewed the cap. He took a long swig and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He studied the sky awhile. When he finally spoke, with me and Ben leaning against a stunted tree in the front yard and Sarah and her brother joining us, sitting Indian style in the grass with the charred house beyond them, my chest grew full and my ears felt numb.

  Uncle Tommy said that the rally had set men and boys off. He said things ramped up after some of the Conovers took a mob of men to the jail and other groups of men rousted the coloreds from their homes in south Forksville, roused them with fire, with bullets, laughter, rapes, lynching.

  He said that the coloreds went into a frenzy all night, that old hate and sorrow and bitterness eating them up, and they continued destroying what the Klan hadn’t.

  We told him that we didn’t see the fires, that we were underground.

  “I’m glad,” he said. “Hell, happier than you could imagine.”

  He glanced at Miss Jessie’s covered corpse and shook his head, not so glad all the sudden. I wondered if he thought he should have never left to begin with, if maybe he blamed himself. If he did he didn’t say so.

  He cleared his throat then took another swig from Preacher’s flask. His eyes grew damp. He said, “I got to the jailhouse late, probably around eleven since the mobs were everywhere and I didn’t want to run across the Conover’s and a dozen or more men I figured they’d have with them. Kinda had to sneak along, leave my car at the edge of town, was destroyed when I got back to it. Windows busted, tires slashed, the interior burned up.”

  Ben said, “But what about our parents?”

  “What about Preacher?” I said, pointing at the flask he held in his long dark fingers.

  “Well,” he said.

  “They killed them, didn’t they?” Ben said, on the verge of tears.

  Sarah hung her head and Leonard moaned, burying his head against her shoulder.

  I lowered my head too, afraid to look up and see what expression Uncle Tommy wore, afraid to look him in the eye when he opened his mouth again.

  Uncle Tommy said, “Bordeaux didn’t let them take your parents out.”

  I sighed so hard it shook my chest, shuddered before I heard what he’d said. I looked up. Ben was smiling sadly. He said, “They’re still okay?”

  “For now,” Uncle Tommy said.

  He told us how the mob had stormed the jail, how they demanded the nigger-lovers be given to them because like Preacher had once said: they hated their own kind more than they hated the Negroes, being that they figured the blacks didn’t have a choice into being born into sin and debauchery whereas the whites had a higher intelligence and therefore a firmer grasp of their duty to God, their fellow whites, their towns, and their state, and overall, their heritage.

  Uncle Tommy said, “But Bordeaux had to give them somebody or they would have taken your parents.”

  “No,” I said.

  His fingers rubbed the flask as if he was trying to get a genie to appear and grant him three wishes.

  I wished it could happen like that, that a phantom would appear and set things right, that Uncle Tommy would get his wishes because I knew as much as I’d judged him to be a criminal and all around intimidating man, he loved Miss Jessie, and our parents, and Preacher.

  He shook his head, said, “He threw Art to them and they took him out into the street and shot him.”

  “Why?” Ben said. “He didn’t do anything to them!”

  “He didn’t do anything for them,” Uncle Tommy said, “but rock the boat.”

  “Did the shots kill him?” I said.

  Uncle Tommy nodded.

  “There were a lot of men. A lot of guns. They lined up like a firing squad, like he was a traitor and they fired a volley of steel that cut him to ribbons.”

  His voice shook. “He didn’t stand a chance, couldn’t fight back as tough a man as he’d been, but he looked down the barrels of those rifles and shotguns and pistols with more peace than most people have in the quiet moments of their lives. He wasn’t scared of dying, and I think he pitied them almost as much as he hated them and hated them for hating.”

  He sat heavily in the grass and pulled Leonard close to his chest. “He went out like he lived, just like Jessie went out, with dignity.”

  Sarah said, “What are we going to do?”

  “About what?” Uncle Tommy said.

  “About all of this,” Ben said.

  I said, “Why can’t the cops arrest everybody who killed somebody? That’s what Daddy would do.”

  “You don’t understand, Eli,” Uncle Tommy said.

  I agreed, I didn’t. It all seemed like it should be so simple, so cut and dry. I rubbed my hands together to warm them, to get the circulation moving. I said, “Are we going to get Momma and Daddy out of jail?”

  “Bordeaux said he’d set them free after everybody calmed down. He couldn’t do it last night and though I may not agree with everything that man’s done, I agree with him on that.” He
nodded to himself. “Your dad would have ended up on the street next to Art. Probably your mother too. And Art could have killed a lot of them if he’d wanted to, though they still would have overpowered him in the end, but I think he did it for your parents, went out nice and easy, walking onto the dark street right in front of the jail, that horrible sad light in his eyes like he forgave that crowd of lunatics.”

  Uncle Tommy shook his head. “I could never understand having pity on somebody who meant to hurt you. Art had it though. He knew there were reasons people acted the way they did, even if their actions were extreme. Sometimes I thought he was a damn fool for that and too much like Hank.”

  Uncle Tommy cracked his knuckles, said, “He was a good man, too. A damn good man. Probably the only true friend I’ve ever had.”

  I said, “You guys hung out?”

  “Quite a bit,” Uncle Tommy said. “Both of us always had a lot of time on our hands and a kinship since we were little. I could talk about things with him that I couldn’t even come close to sharing with other people. He had that in him, too. He was able to draw you out of yourself.”

  I thought, That’s a good thing to be, a gift from God to be someone who can draw other people out of themselves.

  I figured he probably did it with Isaiah and James and his other servants too. Thinking about how he treated them made me happy and sad. It hurt to think that they went out so alone, all of them.

  Back then I didn’t understand that we all go out alone, even if we’re surrounded by people we love and who love us.

  In the end, it’s just us and death, and all the things we’ve done, and all the things we wished we hadn’t.

  We stood silent in the sunlight, all of us busy with our own thoughts, mine on death, on Uncle Tommy being gone, trying to save Daddy and Momma and his best friend while his father sent the oldest Conover with that coward Fred and some other men to kill him. I didn’t want to know what it felt like, and wished he didn’t either, to know your own dad could hate you enough to kill you.