I stopped listening to Tom, who was chattering on about something or another, and slowly turned my head toward the woods, and there, between two trees, in the shadows, but clearly framed by the light, was a homed figure, watching us.
Tom, noticing I wasn’t listening to her, said, “Hey.”
“Tom,” I said, “be quiet a moment and look where I’m lookin’.”
“I don’t see any—” Then she went quiet, and after a moment, whispered: “It’s him … It’s the Goat Man.”
The shape abruptly turned, crunched a stick, rustled some leaves, and was gone. We didn’t tell Daddy or Mama what we saw. I don’t exactly know why, but we didn’t. It was between me and Tom, and the next day we hardly mentioned it.
A week later, Janice Jane Willman was dead.
We heard about it Halloween night. There was a little party in town for the kids and whoever wanted to come. There were no invitations. Each year it was understood the party would take place and you could show up. The women brought covered dishes and the men brought a little bit of hooch to slip into their drinks.
The party was at Mrs. Canerton’s. She was a widow, and kept books at her house as a kind of library. She let us borrow them from her, or we could come and sit in her house and read or even be read to, and she always had some cookies or lemonade, and she wasn’t adverse to listening to our stories or problems. She was a sweet-faced lady with large breasts and a lot of men in town liked her and thought she was pretty.
Every year she had a little Halloween party for the kids. Apples. Pumpkin pie and such. Everyone who could afford a spare pillowcase made a ghost costume. A few of the older boys would slip off to West Street to soap some windows, and that was about it for Halloween. But back then, it seemed pretty wonderful.
Daddy had taken us to the party. It was another fine cool night with lots of lightning bugs and crickets chirping, and me and Tom got to playing hide and go seek with the rest of the kids, and while the person who was it was counting, we went to hide. I crawled up under Mrs. Canerton’s house, under the front porch. I hadn’t no more than got up under there good, than Tom crawled up beside me.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Go find your own place.”
“I didn’t know you was under here. It’s too late for me to go anywhere.”
“Then be quiet,” I said.
While we were sitting there, we saw shoes and pants legs moving toward the porch steps. It was the men who had been standing out in the yard smoking. They were gathering on the porch to talk. I recognized a pair of boots as Daddy’s, and after a bit of moving about on the porch above us, we heard the porch swing creak and some of the porch chain scraping around, and then I heard Cecil speak.
“How long she been dead?”
“About a week I reckon,” Daddy said.
“She anyone we know?”
“A prostitute,” Daddy said. “Janice Jane Willman. She lives near all them juke joints outside of Mission Creek. She picked up the wrong man. Ended up in the river.”
“She drown?” someone else asked.
“Reckon so. But she suffered some before that.”
“You know who did it?” Cecil asked. “Any leads?”
“No. Not really.”
“Niggers.” I knew that voice. Old Man Nation. He showed up wherever there was food and possibly liquor, and he never brought a covered dish or liquor. “Niggers find a white woman down there in the bottoms, they’ll get her.”
“Yeah,” I heard a voice say. “And what would a white woman be doin’ wanderin’ around down there?”
“Maybe he brought her there,” Mr. Nation said. “A nigger’ll take a white woman he gets a chance,” Mr. Nation said. “Hell, wouldn’t you if you was a nigger? Think about what you’d be gettin’ at home. Some nigger. A white woman, that’s prime business to ‘em. Then, if you’re a nigger and you’ve done it to her, you got to kill her so no one knows. Not that any self-respectin’ white woman would want to live after somethin’ like that.”
“That’s enough of that,” Daddy said.
“You threatenin’ me?” Mr. Nation said.
“I’m sayin’ we don’t need that kind of talk,” Daddy said. “The murderer could have been white or black.”
“It’ll turn out to be a nigger,” Mr. Nation said. “Mark my words.”
“I heard you had a suspect,” Cecil said.
“Not really,” Daddy said.
“Some colored fella, I heard,” Cecil said.
“I knew it,” Nation said. “Some goddamn nigger.”
“I picked a man up for questioning, that’s all.”
“Where is he?” Nation asked.
“You know,” Daddy said, “I think I’m gonna have me a piece of that pie.”
The porch creaked, the screen door opened, and we heard boot steps entering into the house.
“Nigger lover,” Nation said.
“That’s enough of that,” Cecil said.
“You talkin’ to me, fella?” Mr. Nation said.
“I am, and I said that’s enough.”
There was some scuttling, movement on the porch, and suddenly there was a smacking sound and Mr. Nation hit the ground in front of us. We could see him through the steps. His face turned in our direction, but I don’t think he saw us. It was dark under the house, and he had his mind on other things. He got up quick like, leaving his hat on the ground, then we heard movement on the porch and Daddy’s voice. “Ethan, don’t come back on the porch. Go on home.”
“Who do you think you are to tell me anything?” Mr. Nation said.
“Right now, I’m the constable, and you come up on this porch, you do one little thing that annoys me, I will arrest you.”
“You and who else?”
“Just me.”
“What about him? He hit me. You’re on his side because he took up for you.”
“I’m on his side because you’re a loudmouth spoiling everyone else’s good time. You been drinkin’ too much. Go on home and sleep it off, Ethan. Let’s don’t let this get out of hand.”
Mr. Nation’s hand dropped down and picked up his hat. He said, “You’re awfully high and mighty, aren’t you?”
“There’s just no use fighting over something silly,” Daddy said.
“You watch yourself, nigger lover,” Mr. Nation said.
“Don’t come by the barbershop no more,” Daddy said.
“Wouldn’t think of it, nigger lover.”
Then Mr. Nation turned and we saw him walking away.
Daddy said, “Cecil. You talk too much.”
“Yeah, I know,” Cecil said.
“Now, I was gonna get some pie,” Daddy said. “I’m gonna go back inside and try it again. When I come back out, how’s about we talk about somethin’ altogether different?”
“Suits me,” someone said, and I heard the screen door open again. For a moment I thought they were all inside, then I realized Daddy and Cecil were still on the porch, and Daddy was talking to Cecil.
“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” Daddy said.
“It’s all right. You’re right. I talk too much.”
“Let’s forget it.”
“Sure … Jacob, this suspect. You think he did it?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Is he safe?”
“For now. I may just let him go and never let it be known who he is. Bill Smoote is helping me out with him right now.”
“Again, I’m sorry, Jacob.”
“No problem. Let’s get some of that pie.”
On the way home in the car our bellies were full of apples, pie and lemonade. The windows were rolled down and the October wind was fresh and ripe with the smell of the woods. As we wound through those woods along the dirt road that led to our house, I began to feel sleepy.
Tom had already nodded off. I leaned against the side of the car and began to halfway doze. In time, I realized Mama and Daddy were talking.
“He had her purse?” Mama said.
“Yeah,” Daddy said. “He had it, and he’d taken money from it.”
“Could it be him?”
“He says he was fishing, saw the purse and her dress floating, snagged the purse with his fishing line. He saw there was money inside, and he took it. He said he figured a purse in the river wasn’t something anyone was going to find, and there wasn’t any name in it, and it was just five dollars going to waste. He said he didn’t even consider that someone had been murdered. It could have happened that way. Personally, I believe him. I’ve known old Mose all my life. He taught me how to fish. He practically lives on that river in that boat of his. He wouldn’t harm a fly. Besides, the man’s seventy years old and not in the best of health. He’s had a hell of a life. His wife ran off forty years ago and he’s never gotten over it. His son disappeared when he was a youngster. Whoever raped this woman had to be pretty strong. She was young enough, and from the way her body looked, she put up a pretty good fight. Man did this had to be strong enough to … Well, she was cut up pretty bad. Same as the other women. Slashes along the breasts. Her hand hacked off at the wrist. We didn’t find it.”
“Oh dear.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“How did you come by the purse?”
“I went by to see Mose. Like I always do when I’m down on the river. It was layin’ on the table in his shack. I had to arrest him. I don’t know I should have now. Maybe I should have just taken the purse and said I found it. I mean, I believe him. But I don’t have evidence one way or the other.”
“Hon, didn’t Mose have some trouble before?”
“When his wife ran off some thought he’d killed her. She was fairly loose. That was the rumor. Nothing ever came of it.”
“But he could have done it?”
I suppose.
“And wasn’t there something about his boy?”
“Telly was the boy’s name. He was addleheaded. Mose claimed that’s why his wife run off*. She was embarrassed by that addleheaded boy. Kid disappeared four or five years later and Mose never talked about it. Some thought he killed him too. But that’s just rumor. White folks talkin’ about colored folks like they do. I believe his wife ran off. The boy wasn’t much of a thinker, and he may have run off too. He liked to roam the woods and river. He might have drowned, fallen in some hole somewhere and never got out.”
“But none of that makes it look good for Mose, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“What are you gonna do, Jacob?”
“I don’t know. I was afraid to lock him up over at the courthouse. It isn’t a real jail anyway, and word gets around a colored man was involved, there won’t be any real thinking on the matter. I talked Bill Smoote into letting me keep Mose over at his bait house.”
“Couldn’t Mose just run away?”
“I suppose. But he’s not in that good a health, hon. And he trusts me to investigate, clear him. That’s what makes me nervous. I don’t know how. I thought about talking to the Mission Creek police, as they have more experience, but they have a tendency to be a little emotional themselves. Rumor is, sheriff over there is in the Klan, or used to be. Frankly, I’m not sure what to do.”
I began to drift off again. I thought of Mose. He was an old colored man who got around on shore with use of a cane. He had white blood in him. Red in his hair, and eyes as green as spring leaves. Mostly you saw him in his little rowboat fishing. He lived in a shack alongside the river not more than three miles from us. Living off the fish he caught, the squirrels he shot. Sometimes, when we had a good day hunting or fishing, Daddy would go by there and give Mose a squirrel or some fish. Mose was always glad to see us, or seemed to be. Up until a year ago, I used to go fishing with him. It was then Jake told me I ought not. That it wasn’t right to be seen with a nigger all the time.
Thinking back on that, I felt sick to my stomach, confused. Mose had taught my daddy to fish, I had gone fishing with him, and suddenly I deserted him because of what Jake had said.
I thought of the Goat Man again. I recalled him standing below the swinging bridge, looking up through the shadows at me. I thought of him near our house, watching. The Goat Man had killed those women, I knew it. And Mose was gonna take the blame for what he had done.
It was there in the car, battered by the cool October wind, that I began to formulate a plan to find the Goat Man and free Mose. I thought on it for several days after, and I think maybe I had begun to come up with something that seemed like a good idea to me. It probably wasn’t. Just some thirteen-year-old’s idea of a plan. But it didn’t really matter. Shortly thereafter, things turned for the worse.
It was a Monday, a couple days later, and Daddy was off from the barbershop that day. He had already gotten up and fed the livestock, and as daybreak was making through the trees, he come and got me up to help tote water from the well to the house. Mama was in the kitchen cooking grits, biscuits, and fatback for breakfast.
Me and Daddy had a bucket of water apiece and were carrying them back to the house, when I said, “Daddy. You ever figure out what you’re gonna do with ole Mose?”
He paused a moment. “How’d you know about that?’
“I heard you and Mama talkin’.”
He nodded, and we started walking again. “I can’t leave him where he is for good. Someone will get onto it. I reckon I’m gonna have to take him to the courthouse or let him go. There’s no real evidence against him, just some circumstantial stuff. But a colored man, a white woman, and a hint of suspicion … He’ll never get a fair trial. I got to be sure myself he didn’t do it.”
“Ain’t you?”
We were on the back porch now, and Daddy set his bucket down and set mine down too. “You know, I reckon I am. If no one ever knows who it was I arrested, he can go on about his business. I ain’t got nothin’ on him. Not really. Something else comes up, some real evidence against him, I know where he is.”
“Mose couldn’t have killed those women. He hardly gets around, Daddy.”
I saw his face redden. “Yeah. You’re right.”
He picked up both buckets and carried them into the house. Mama had the food on the table, and Tom was sitting there with her eyes squinted, looking as if she were going to fall face forward in her grits any moment. Normally, there’d be school, but the schoolteacher had quit and they hadn’t hired another yet, so we had nowhere to go that day, me and Tom.
I think that was part of the reason Daddy asked me to go with him after breakfast. That, and I figured he wanted some company. He told me he had decided to go down and let Mose loose.
We drove over to Bill Smoote’s. Bill owned an icehouse down by the river. It was a big room really, with sawdust and ice packed in there, and people came and bought it by car or by boat on the river. He sold right smart of it. Up behind the icehouse was the little house where Bill lived with his wife and two daughters that looked as if they had fallen out of an ugly tree, hit every branch on the way down, then smacked the dirt solid. They was always smilin’ at me and such, and it made me nervous.
Behind Mr. Smoote’s house was his barn, really more of a big ole shed. That’s where Daddy said Mose was kept. As we pulled up at Mr. Smoote’s place alongside the river, we saw the yard was full of cars, wagons, horses, mules and people. It was early morning still, and the sunlight fell through the trees like Christmas decorations, and the river was red with the morning sun, and the people in the yard were painted with the same red light as the river.
At first I thought Mr. Smoote was just having him a big run of customers, but as we got up there, we saw there was a wad of people coming from the barn. The wad was Mr. Nation, his two boys, and some other man I’d seen around town before but didn’t know. They had Mose between them. He wasn’t exactly walking with them. He was being half dragged, and I heard Mr. Nation’s loud voice say something about “damn nigger,” then Daddy was out of the car and pushing through the crowd.
A heavyse
t woman in a print dress and square-looking shoes, her hair wadded on top of her head and pinned there, yelled, “To hell with you, Jacob, for hidin’ this nigger out. After what he done.”
It was then I realized we was in the middle of the crowd, and they were closing around us, except for a gap that opened so Mr. Nation and his bunch could drag Mose into the circle.
Mose looked ancient, withered and knotted like old cowhide soaked in brine. His head was bleeding, his eyes were swollen, his lips were split. He had already taken quite a beating.
When Mose saw Daddy, his green eyes lit up. “Mr. Jacob, don’t let them do nothin’. I didn’t do nothin’ to nobody.”
“It’s all right, Mose,” he said. Then he glared at Mr. Nation. “Nation, this ain’t your business.”
“It’s all our business,” Mr. Nation said. “When our womenfolk can’t walk around without worrying about some nigger draggin’ ‘em off, then it’s our business.”
There was a voice of agreement from the crowd.
“I only picked him up ‘cause he might know something could lead to the killer,” Daddy said. “I was comin’ out here to let him go. I realized he don’t know a thing.”
“Bill here says he had that woman’s purse,” Nation said.
Daddy turned to look at Mr. Smoote, who didn’t acknowledge Daddy’s look. He just said softly under his breath, “I didn’t tell ‘em he was here, Jacob. They knew. I just told ‘em why you had him here. I tried to get them to listen, but they wouldn’t.”
Daddy just stared at Mr. Smoote for a long moment. Then he turned to Nation, said, “Let him go.”
“In the old days, we took care of bad niggers prompt like,” Mr. Nation said. “And we figured out somethin’ real quick. A nigger hurt a white man or woman, you hung him, he didn’t hurt anyone again. You got to take care of a nigger problem quick, or ever’ nigger around here will be thinkin’ he can rape and murder white women at will.”
Daddy spoke calmly. “He deserves a fair trial. We’re not here to punish anyone.”
“Hell we ain’t,” someone said.
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