Winding Stair (9781101559239)

by Jones, Douglas C.

  “If he brought it up from the compound, somebody could have slipped it into a pocket.”

  “He ain’t got no pockets,” she said. “He wears them slick homemade britches and a flannel shirt, no pockets in nothin’. He come back up to eat supper and he hadn’t touched that popcorn yet. The sack was full, and he spilled some on the bunk and I told him he’d have to clean that up after he ate his supper. Then after supper, I could hear that sack rattlin’ when he started eatin’ it. The popcorn. He never left the room after supper.”

  “Were you up there all night?”

  “Every night. I sleep there, in the anteroom to the women’s jail. This mornin’ I took him his breakfast and the curtain was drawed across the door. Them women’s cells got curtains so they can have some privacy for certain business. After that, I went down to talk with them church people, and when I come back up he was gone and I found that note on his bunk and the popcorn half et from last night. It was on the floor by his bunk.”

  A sack of popcorn! Someone had come into that compound, somebody who knew Emmitt was often there and that people were in the habit of giving him things to eat.

  “And, Mr. Pay,” she said, seeming to anticipate my next question. “Ain’t nobody saw who give him the popcorn. I ast all them deputies and anybody else who might have been around. It could have been anybody. With court in session, there’s always a mob there.”

  At the river, they had begun to baptize the prisoners. Each of them waded into the water awkwardly, dragging his leg-irons through the mud, holding his manacled wrists before him. Each in turn was ducked beneath the surface and came up sputtering and spitting. The two young assistants with Moses beards led Jennie Thrasher out. By the time she reached the minister, the water was up to her breasts. He placed one hand at the small of her back and the other he cupped over her mouth and nose, and with a few shouted words he pushed her backward into the water. He seemed to hold her under for a long time. She came up gasping, the water streaming from her hair and face. As she waded back to the bank, the two young men still at her arms, the wet vestment clung tightly to her body.

  “I’ve got to talk to her,” I said.

  “Mr. Pay, she’s told me she don’t want to talk to you or even see you,” she said. There was no longer any indignation in her voice. She seemed close to pleading. “We don’t want to go scarin’ her with this note business, Mr. Pay. That girl’s had enough to go through. And besides, if you done that, she might get a seizure of forgetfulness and Evans would raise Cain about that.”

  It was true, of course. And it infuriated me. As I turned away abruptly and started up the bank, I knew the anger was not because of the note or of losing a witness nor even because of possible danger to Jennie. It was because this girl had said she didn’t want to see me. And I wanted very much to see her, to tell her stories again of the city, to go back to National Cemetery and tease about cutting initials into elm trees, to sit together above the Poteau and eat meat loaf sandwiches from the Rogers Avenue shops. She had come to me once and I had put her off. With all other girls I had known, there would have been a second and a third and perhaps even a fourth chance. But it began to dawn on me now that Jennie Thrasher offered only once and my opportunity had passed.

  “Zelda, you watch over that girl,” I called back.

  “You can bet on that, Mr. Pay,” she said.

  I struggled to the top of the sand-and-limestone river embankment, passing through the lines of people watching. Behind me at the water’s edge I could hear the singing once more.

  It was a dismal afternoon. The picture of Jennie Thrasher coming out of the river with the vestment plastered tight against her breasts would not leave my mind. Intruding on that was the thought of the boy, lying all night in his hot cell, awake and thinking about that death’s-head note. I found Joe Mountain, still grinning in his absurd yellow-and-brown-plaid suit, and we joined the search for Emmitt. “They cut my guts out,” he’d said. I knew if we did find him, we’d likely never get another word out of him. I could understand that, and certainly the boy knew the kinds of people we were dealing with better than I did.

  In midafternoon, we heard the Smoker Chubee jury had found him guilty of murder, and Judge Parker had sentenced him to hang. Date of execution had been suspended until completion of proceedings on the Winding Stair case. It left a bitter, hollow feeling in my chest. For the first time, a man I had helped bring in was going to die on the gallows.

  Clouds gathered over the western horizon late in the day, but the promise of rain and some relief from the heat was never fulfilled. By the time I reached my hotel room just before dark, my clothes were wet. We had looked everywhere. We had gone through the shantytown in the Choctaw Strip, alarming everyone there who was sober enough to know who we were. We had asked questions up and down Garrison Avenue and in the livery barns and saloons, and among the swarms of black children playing and fishing along the rivers. The city police had been alerted, but by darkness they had failed to find any trace either.

  After the trial and the baptizing, Zelda Mores had told her story over and over again to Evans, and it had done nothing to soften his disposition. I stayed away from him, and from the courthouse. As Zelda suspected, nobody had seen anyone give Emmitt the red-and-white-striped sack of popcorn. But someone had given it to him, and then faded into the city. Although the death’s-head note might appear redundant had someone actually taken him away, there was the dread in all our minds that the next time we saw the boy, he would be a sodden lump washed up on one of the river sandbars.

  My ceiling fan did nothing more than stir the hot air in my room. I was lying in the darkness in my damp underwear, trying to put it all from my mind, when I heard heavy footsteps along the hall to my door. There was a long pause before the knock came.

  Seeing the large hulking form, I thought at first it was Joe Mountain. But then in the hallway’s dim light, I could see the battered features, still showing the marks of the prizefight across the river. Big Rachael stood there like a trained bear, his head bowed forward and his hands held together before his massive chest, the fingers twitching nervously.

  “Mr. Pay, Miss Henryetta says you ought to come down to her place.”

  “What the hell for?” I asked. “Have you got some railroad men who need to give somebody a whipping?”

  “Mr. Pay, Miss Henryetta says we’re awful sorry about that.”

  “You didn’t do much to stop it, if I recall.”

  “I just do what she tells me,” he said helplessly. “And she says you ought to come. It’s about one of these court cases. She says it’s important and she don’t want nobody but you to come.”

  It took me less than a minute to dress. I recalled that our start on the case had been at the railyard whorehouse, and all kinds of possibilities flashed through my mind. I slipped on my shoulder holster and checked the little Smith & Wesson for loads. I had no intention of getting battered again. In my mirror each morning as I shaved, the face peering back at me looked like one of Dirty Jake’s prizefighting opponents rather than my own, and I was determined it would get no worse.

  Garrison Avenue was crowded with people looking for a breath of fresh air. We passed an ice wagon where children had gathered. From the tailgate, a man was chipping ice from a three-hundred-pound block, passing chunks of it to grasping hands. The children ran along the sidewalks, holding the ice in their fingers, sucking it as the cold water ran down their arms. It occurred to me that I’d like to lie naked on that chunk of ice.

  It was the wrong time of month for good business at Henryetta’s. There were two men lounging against the bar as Big Rachael led me to the rear, through a large kitchen, and onto a screened porch. The only light was shining through two windows, and in the shadows a number of Henryetta’s girls sat sprawled in rocking chairs in their chemises. One bent over an ice-cream freezer, slowly turning the crank. As we came onto the porch, their chattering stopped and they watched me, the crank of the freezer making the on
ly sound, a dry, brittle crunching like walking in snow.

  “Where at’s Miss Henryetta?” Big Rachael asked.

  “Upstairs,” one of the girls said. “Is that the new marshal you got with you?”

  Big Rachael ignored the question and pulled an empty rocker over to one end of the porch in the darkness.

  “Sit down, Mr. Pay. I’ll fetch Miss Henryetta.”

  The girls watched for a moment, then went on about their casual conversation as though I had suddenly disappeared.

  “Damned ice cream is gettin’ stiff,” the one at the freezer said. “Somebody else come crank this son of a bitch for a while. It’s about ready.”

  “God, it’s hot.”

  “Yeah, this is a good business in wintertime,” one said. “But this kind of weather, it’s a bull bitch.”

  “You ain’t had any business for a week any way,” said another, and they all laughed.

  “Well, I’m glad them two out front just came for the drinks.”

  Henryetta appeared at the kitchen door, her face glistening with sweat, her gold teeth flashing in the lamplight. She held one hand to her hip and with the other switched a rattan fan back and forth before her large bosom, where the buttons were loosened.

  “Mr. Pay,” she said, walking over and placing a small hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad you come. Listen, I sure didn’t know you was such an important person until Marshal Schiller and that nigger officer come in here the night you had that little row, and explained to me. And we sure was sorry to hear that nigger man got killed at Okmulgee.”

  “It wasn’t exactly in Okmulgee,” I said.

  “It was too bad. Too bad. But I hear Parker passed the one done it to the hangman today.”

  “He’ll likely appeal.”

  “You was the one arrested him, I hear.”

  “No, it was a Creek policeman. What was it you wanted?”

  She bent and peered closely at my face.

  “I’m sorry about that nose, Mr. Pay.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What was it you wanted with me?”

  “Let me sit down. This goddamned heat’s about to melt me down.”

  Big Rachael pushed a chair up behind her and she sat down with a loud grunt, the fan going again in little whipping movements. She sat close to me and bent forward when she spoke.

  “Mr. Pay, I don’t want no trouble,” she said.

  “Why would you have any trouble?”

  Once more, the girls around the ice-cream freezer had stopped talking and were watching us. Henryetta turned to them and bellowed, “Go on about your business over there.”

  On cue, the girls immediately began to talk again, and the freezer’s grinding sound began once more.

  “I just want you to remember that I’m helping you on this thing,” Henryetta said.

  “Helping on what?”

  “Mr. Pay, when we first come to Fort Smith, Big Rachael would go out along the tracks and gather coal, where it had fell off the tenders,” she said. “We was poor as hell then. Well, he still does that, only now he does it in daylight because the coal is easier to find and them railroaders don’t give a damn.”

  She rocked back and forth, wheezing as she fanned herself furiously.

  “If the railroaders don’t care, the law doesn’t either.”

  “No, that’s not it,” she said, and I could smell the talcum powder and sweat. “Today, about noon, Big Rachael was out there with his basket. He got way off down at the far end of the yards, where there’s this line of empty boxcars. And, Mr. Pay, he found something.”

  “He found that boy!” I said, and grabbed her arm. It was sticky with sweat but I held her tight as she caught her breath.

  “Mr. Pay, that hurts,” she gasped, pulling back. “Yes, he found that boy. Everybody in town knew about him from the newspapers, being a witness and all. Some of the Fort Smith police was in here and they told me he’d run off from Parker’s jail.”

  “Where is he, Henryetta? Where is he?”

  “He’s all right,” she said. “Don’t get mean with me, Mr. Pay. I know you’re an important man now—”

  “Where is he?” I cut in, and I was still holding her fat arm.

  “I don’t want no trouble.”

  “There won’t be any if that boy is all right.”

  “He’s upstairs. I’ve been keeping one of the girls with him. I didn’t know what to do. I could have sent him over to the jail with Big Rachael. But I wanted you to have him, Mr. Pay, to show there’s no hard feelings about that night them railroaders—”

  “Get him down here,” I said, and I jerked her arm viciously. “Right now.”

  Big Rachael moved over close to us, threateningly, and I slipped a hand under my coat. But Henryetta waved him off and sent him for the boy. It took only a few minutes, and during that time, we didn’t speak again. Henryetta’s girls showed a studied indifference, but I knew they had been listening to every word.

  When Big Rachael reappeared, he had Emmitt, holding the boy by the back of the shirt to keep him from running, I supposed. The boy’s eyes were wide and shining in the light from the kitchen windows. I reached out a hand to take his but he drew back quickly with a sharp breath.

  “This man ain’t gonna hurt you, honey,” Henryetta said. “He’s from Judge Parker’s court.”

  “I know who he is,” Emmitt said defiantly. “I ain’t gonna tell you nothin’, mister.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything. I just want to take you back to the jail, where we can watch out for you.”

  “I ain’t gonna tell nothin’ to you.”

  Another of Henryetta’s girls was on the porch then, moving closer to us, and I assumed she had been watching the boy until Big Rachael came for him. As the lights fell across her face, I could see the full-lipped smile and the bad teeth.

  “They told me you’d had that pretty face busted,” she said. “But it don’t look so bad. Makes you look like you’re older, is all.”

  “Mr. Pay, you remember Lila, don’t you?” Henryetta said. “She come back from Memphis a few days ago.”

  “I remember.” It seemed ages ago that this girl had first put us onto Johnny Bains. “I’m glad to see you, Lila. You plan to stay around awhile?”

  “As long as you’ve got my old boyfriend in that jail.”

  “The United States attorney may want to talk to you soon.”

  “I’ll be here, I suspect. So long as you’ve got my boyfriend in jail.” And she laughed.

  “Good. We’ll know just where we can find you, then.” I reached for Emmitt again and once more he pulled back against Big Rachael. “Come on, boy, let’s go now. There are a lot of people over at the jail worried about you.”

  “Well, now, we’re about ready for some peach ice cream, Mr. Pay. This boy ought to have some peach ice cream before he leaves. You like some peach ice cream, boy?” Henryetta asked.

  Emmitt said nothing, pressing back against Big Rachael’s belly and glaring at me, part resistant, part fearful.

  “He thought I was gonna hurt him when I pulled him out of that boxcar,” Big Rachael said.

  My first impulse was to leave as quickly as I could, but then the ice cream was finished and one of Henryetta’s girls was bringing heaping bowls of it. Emmitt hesitated at first, then took one of the bowls and stood there shoveling it into his mouth, his eyes still on me. It was a little slushy from a dash of brandy they’d put in it, but it was good.

  “Honey, you could sit down,” Henryetta said.

  “He acts like he’s sure hungry, don’t he?” Big Rachael said.

  “You ought to come down here sometimes,” Lila was saying, standing near my shoulder. “You ought to visit us more. We make ice cream all the time.”

  I refused a second bowl and this time moved suddenly to grab a fistful of the boy’s sleeve so he couldn’t get away. Henryetta and Big Rachael escorted us back through the house.

  “Now, you remember, Mr. Pay,” Henryet
ta said as we went down the front steps into the light of the switch engines working the yards. “You remember we helped.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “And you come back and see us again,” she called after us as we started along the tracks toward Garrison Avenue, me still holding tight to the boy.

  I looked down at him then and asked him where he had found the death’s-head paper.

  “In my room,” he said. “I found it in my room.”

  “When, Emmitt?”

  “I ain’t gonna tell you no more. I’m done tellin’ you anything anymore.”

  “All right. You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  “They cut my guts out,” he said, almost to himself.

  Whatever sanctions Judge Parker might threaten against him, I knew then that Emmitt would never be a witness in the Eagle John murder and rape case. And without him, I knew equally well that we had no case. But there was still the Thrasher murders, and there was still Oscar Schiller in the Choctaw Nation. And just finding the boy alive made a good ending to a bad day.

  FIFTEEN

  Emmitt had been safely back in his cell for two days when Oscar Schiller came. He came like a general leading his troops, marching at their head from the Frisco station up Garrison Avenue and then along Third Street to the federal compound. Observers said the Cap’n had brought in half the Choctaw Nation. It was understandable. For each witness he produced there were travel expenses to be collected plus a fee of fifty cents a head.

  They had come from Hatchet Hill, boarding a northbound passenger train and filling one car almost to capacity, riding with the compliments of the railroad on Oscar Schiller’s passes. The telegrapher at Fort Smith knew about their coming a few moments after the train had been flagged on Kiamichi River, and with that the word had spread up the avenue like a flash flood. By the time the big road engine snaked its cars into the depot, a mob of curiosity seekers was on hand. It was as if some infamous outlaw was being brought in, like one of the Daltons or Belle Starr. The crowd stayed well back from the line of marchers, none of them willing to risk a bruised head if the Cap’n felt himself crowded. But a few waved their hats and cheered. They, like all Fort Smith crowds, were wise to the ways of the federal court and its officers. From street gossip and the newspaper columns, they knew this little cavalcade had to do with Winding Stair.