The Murderer Vine

by Shepard Rifkin

  “Fresh catfish,” he said. “Have yourself a seat, Mr. Wilson. We’ll be eatin’ in half an hour.”

  I looked around. The men were shy and grinned at me. Several old kitchen chairs were sprawled around the shack. Three of them had one or two back-slats that had disappeared. Wire held them together. A calendar was nailed to a wall. It showed a hound baying at a treed raccoon.

  “That calendar is ’bout eight years old,” one of the men suddenly volunteered.

  Next to the calendar was a crudely built shelf formed from an old orange crate nailed to the wall. On it were three mason jars filled with a colorless liquid. Several empty jelly glasses stood next to it.

  “Will one of you gennelmen do the honors?” said the sheriff.

  One of the men stood and filled the glasses. The white mule went down smoothly.

  The floor was full of cracks. Some were very small, two or three were an inch wide.

  The drainpipe of the icebox ended between two big cracks. The sheriff noticed my glance at the floor.

  “I laid the floor myself,” he said. “Laid it when I was feelin’ no pain.” He took a cheap tin pie plate filled with cigarette butts and shook it out over another inch-wide gap in the flooring. I could see a few white flecks floating past on top of the dark water.

  “Nice, huh?” he said. “The garbage what don’t get et by the ’gators or the fish ends up in the Mississippi three, four days from now. Makes housekeepin’ easy. Now, this here’s Ray, you remember him. He’s the bus driver.”

  “Hi, Ray.”

  “Hi, Mister Wilson.”

  “This here’s Joe Sam.”

  “Hi, Joe Sam.”

  “Wooo-woooo!” said Joe Sam. He leaned back and howled.

  “Pay him no never-mind,” said Ray. “He got some bounty money an’ he’s been drinkin’ all day.”

  I looked puzzled. Ray explained.

  “Up a ways,” he said, “we got plenty of timber rattlers. The county gives four bits a snake. Now, the county auditors want proof, right? They’ll take the snake’s head, or the rattles with two inches of the tail. But if you kills ’em all, why, you dries up the revenoo. So Joe Sam he captures ’em alive an’ he cuts off the rattles and two inches. Then he lets ’em go so’s they can breed. I’m sure glad I ain’t lumberin’ up there. I’d never get no warnin’ an’ them snakes’d be so mad they’d take off after me.”

  Joe Sam giggled. He called to Ray, leaned over and whispered in his ear, and slapped Ray on the back. Ray grinned and turned to me. “Joe Sam says to tell you this if you promise not to tell no one. He says he c’n trust you ’cause you’re a guest of the sheriff. You promise?”

  I looked at the red-faced, giggling Joe Sam.

  I held up my hand. “I promise,” I said.

  “Joe Sam,” Ray added, “Joe Sam has improved that system. He don’t want no pissed-off rattler goin’ around with a pain in its butt bitin’ them loggers, some of ’em is kin, so he jus’ kills all the males and cuts of they heads, but the females he keeps in a barrel till they give birth. He feeds ’em till they gets big enough, then he kills the brood.”

  Joe Sam bent over and slapped his legs.

  “Hoooo!” he said, gasping for breath. He beckoned Ray over. Ray listened.

  He turned to me. “Joe Sam wants you to know that he ain’t greedy. He says fifty, sixty tides him over until the railroad starts hirin’ section hands come spring. What he means is, he ain’t touched. Vince is touched. He’s all right, but he’s touched. Look, look at ’im!”

  Vince was hefting the heavy frying pan. “Now, Ray,” the sheriff said. “You stop bein’ mean. An’, Vince, we got us a guest here an’ I aims to do him proud.” He filled my jelly glass again with the whisky.

  “You just soak your tonsils in that an’ let me know how it goes down, Mr. Wilson.”

  It went down pretty good. It was smooth and had a lot of quiet authority. A warm glow began in my stomach and began to spread outward.

  I watched Vince as he dredged the catfish.

  “Vince don’t talk much,” the sheriff said.

  Vince took a big jackknife out of his back pocket and opened it.

  “You’re not gonna use that goddam rusty knife again!” Ray said.

  Vince turned and looked at him.

  “You shut up, boy!”

  “Aw Sheriff, I ain’t too particular ’bout dirty plates an’ all but that’s the knife he cuts off snakes’ heads with.”

  I must have looked puzzled. I thought it was Joe Sam who was in the bounty business, but Joe Sam leaned over and poured more whisky into my glass. “I borry it,” he said. “He keeps it mighty sharp. Hit don’t offend me none. But other people is delicate.” He snorted with pleasure.

  Vince lifted his head. He rattled off a monologue which it was obvious the others were waiting for.

  “This here,” he began, “this here knife is — is — ” he hesitated and scratched his head with the point of the knife.

  Ray prompted him. “This here is a fine silver steel blade knife with a moth — ”

  Vince held up his hand. “This here is a fine silver steel blade knife with a mother-of-pearl handle, brass-lined, round joint tapped and riveted tip top an’ bottom, a knife made under an act of Congress at the rate of thutty-six dollars per dozen, there is a blade fo’ ev’ry day of the week an’ a handle fo’ your wife to play with on Sunday, it will cut cast iron steam steel wind or bone an’ will stick a hog frog toad or the devil an’ has a spring on it like a mule’s hind leg!”

  Ray chuckled. “He bought that knife from a peddler maybe forty years ago an’ he remembers ev’ry word that man said when he stood by the co’thouse square that day. Mr. Wilson, I believe we are ready to eat.”

  There was a platter of catfish, a platter of just-baked hushpuppies, a pound of sweet butter in a cracked blue plate. I ate and drank with pleasure. The sheriff filled my glass up again. That made three of them in less than twenty minutes.

  I sipped it. After a while I unbuttoned my shirt. There was no wind and it was getting hot.

  “We ain’t got air conditioning,” Joe Sam said. “Ain’t like the big club.”

  “I like it better here,” I said, and I meant it. Everyone was eating and no one was trying to get next to anyone to make a deal or line up someone else’s wife or see how much another woman might have spent for a dress. They were all eating and drinking and enjoying it.

  These people were brutal murderers and yet they could be marvelous company. They could tell stories beautifully, they knew how to hunt and fish, they knew how to live. I wished I was down there for pleasure. It would easily be possible to have a great time.

  “Pleasure havin’ you here,” the sheriff said.

  I crammed more hushpuppies into my mouth enjoying the crispness and the firm succulence of the catfish.

  “You read ’bout them civil rights workers come down here, evvabody been lookin’ for them?”

  I was in the middle of a long swallow of whisky. I finished it and wiped my mouth carefully with the back of my hand while the sheriff told Vince he better keep some paper napkins for people who had been better brought up.

  “A headline or so,” I said.

  “We get along fine,” he said. “Pity them other Northerners came down. They shoulda stayed at home under their own vine.”

  Joe Sam dredged around in his teeth with a fork tine. “Sometimes in this wicked world,” he said, “a man dies because he can’t do nuthin’ else but.”

  “Amen, brother,” the sheriff said. “I’m a great big friendly ole country boy, but I don’t like to be crowded. Them civil rights workers crowd. They don’t know what it’s like down here. Hell, you get two Northerners arguin’ ’bout somethin’ an’ they’ll yell back an’ forth for ten minutes seein’ who’ll make the first move. Down here they don’t talk. They move fast. Hell, we was raised on guns an’ keepin’ down niggers, an’ we’re used to all that violence stuff they keep talkin’ ’bout on TV. Hell,
Mr. Wilson, it’s Southern towns got the country’s highest homicide rates. It’s Southern boys take home most of the Congressional Medals of Honor. Them civil rights people from up North they don’t know that. We down here we purely don’t like outside influences.”

  He filled my glass again.

  He chuckled. “Here’s a song a nigger prisoner was singin’ today.” He sang:

  If I had the guv’nor

  Where the guv’nor has me,

  Before daylight

  I’d set the guv’nor free.

  I begs you, guv-nor,

  Upon my soul:

  If you won’t gimme a pardon,

  Won’t you gimme a parole?

  “Now, ain’t that just a great song? They’s great people, but they oughtn’t to take up with radicals. They stupid but friendly, an’ them outsiders they don’t understan’ they nothin’ but animals. They nice animals, but they animals.”

  “The more I see them down here, the more I believe you’re right.”

  I took a sip and announced I was going to sing. I sang “Oh, I’m a Good Old Rebel” all the way through and added the last two stanzas Kirby had taught me:

  Three hundred thousand Yankees

  Is stiff in Southern dust;

  We got three hundred thousand

  Before they conquered us;

  They died of Southern fever

  An’ Southern steel an’ shot,

  I wish they was three million

  Instead of what we got.

  The sheriff joined me for the last stanza.

  I can’t take up my musket

  An’ fight ’em now no more.

  But I ain’t a-goin to love ’em,

  Now that is sarten sure;

  An’ I don’t want no pardon

  For what I was an’ am,

  I won’t be reconstructed

  An’ I don’t care a damn!

  They loved it. Joe Sam filled up my glass again so fast that it slopped over and soaked into my pants. He was apologetic. I took the jug and spilled some on his and said we were even. He was pretty drunk by then and thought that was funny.

  The evening went well. There were hunting stories; there were surprisingly few obscene stories. It was quite a change from a typical evening’s drinking session up North. Finally, I knew I was so drunk I couldn’t sit up. I cradled my head in my arms. But the sheriff took me to a cot in the corner.

  “You’re not used to drinkin’ this much,” he said.

  “Nope,” I said. My lips were numb. “Great food. Great people. Can’t stay awake ’ny more. Beg pardon.” He stretched me out.

  “Don’t you worry,” he said. “Couple hours from now you’ll be able to drive home. If you can’t, one of the boys’ll drive your car. Don’t worry ’bout a thing.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. The room was circling around and around, and I got up and vomited out the back window into the river.

  I made my way back, waving aside the offers of assistance. I was embarrassed at my inability to handle the liquor. I closed my eyes again. My mind was working along nicely. I just couldn’t give any orders to my body. It was willing to perform, but all the muscles had resigned for a few hours.

  A violent headache made an appearance. I groaned. The sheriff’s voice said, “Y’all right?”

  “Oh, God,” I said, “I want to die.”

  “You’ll live,” he said.

  I fell asleep but woke up. It must have been only a few minutes later. The level in the jug was about the same and they were still in the same positions. Someone was saying, “Man, I sure could go for one of Ole Man Ryerson’s watermelons, right now!”

  Joe Sam said he had one cooling in his refrigerator. I heard him leaving and the door closing and the roar of the car starting. I fell asleep again, and I woke up again when he came back. I smelled the fragrance of a ripe watermelon being sliced open. Joe Sam said, “The professor want any?”

  The sheriff said, “Let him sleep.”

  I determined to stay awake. I kept my eyes closed and began snoring very lightly. It must have had a soothing sound, because Vince grunted, “He won’t want none fo’ hours yit.”

  They chatted about dogs and inconsequential things. And then Joe Sam said, “This here’s a great watermelon. An’ no wonder, lookit the manure he got fo’ nothin’.”

  There was a sudden silence.

  Then the sheriff said in disgust, “Well, shut your mouth, you goddam fool.”

  They were silent a few seconds. Joe Sam suddenly said, “Give the perfessor a piece.” They had a lot of trouble waking me up, but they finally did. I ate a slice and fell back again on the cot. In a few minutes I was really asleep.

  29

  Next morning I swallowed three aspirins and looked through the phone book. I found a Sam Ryerson on Saw Mill Pond Road. I went in the bathroom and shaved. Through the open door I could see Kirby sleeping.

  She was stretched out on her stomach close to the edge of the bed. I wondered idly why people who sleep that close to the edge never fall off. Her long hair was more rewarding to think about. It flowed over her right shoulder and down to the floor. The thin sheet that covered her followed the lines of her rump very carefully.

  Even though my head was throbbing as if it were the big bass drum being pounded in a circus parade, I felt a sudden passion to get into the bed.

  Instead I went downstairs, got into the car, and leaned over to open the glove compartment. My head began to throb again and as I fished for the county map, I began to sense that something was unusual. I got the map, closed the compartment, put the palm of one hand on my forehead, and pressed hard. I guess I was trying to compress the headache into a smaller space. It did feel a little better. I took my hand away and then became aware of a little nagging tension at the base of my spine.

  It took my white-mule-damaged brain a few seconds to realize the reason for that. The car was parked with both right-hand wheels on the curb. Either Ray or Joe Sam or Vince had done it. I began to remember that I had been dragged upstairs by two of them. I got out of the car. There were no dents or scratches. I got in again, spread the map over the steering wheel, and found Saw Mill Pond Road. It was fifteen miles north of Okalusa. It was a good county map; it showed property lines and owners.

  Ryerson’s farm was only a quarter of a mile from an unpaved road that ran westward for eight miles. This road ended at the main highway from Memphis to Jackson. The Ryerson farm would be just about thirty miles north of Alexandria — thirty miles away from where the three boys had last been seen. It would be natural for searchers to prowl through the swamp near Alexandria. But all they would turn up would be frogs and water moccasins. Who would ever think of a remote farm thirty miles away?

  I decided to account for my appearance. First I stopped at a roadside stand two miles away, drank a Coke, and taped the old black woman who ran the stand. Near the farm I found a utility lineman on a pole. He came down and gave me ten minutes.

  Then I drove up to Ryerson’s place.

  His house was halfway up a long, gentle slope. At the bottom lay a pond. A few plump Herefords were standing in the mud up to their hocks, drinking. They lifted their dripping muzzles to stare at my car.

  Back of the house, and sweeping around to its left and down to the road, was a thick stand of long-leaf yellow pine. Halfway up from the road to the house was the watermelon patch. It was about a hundred and fifty feet down the slope from the house. Even from the road at the bottom I could see the big green cylinders of the melons.

  I drove up the road to the house. A small gray-haired man with gold-rimmed glasses and worn blue denim coveralls stepped onto the porch.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  He stared at me coldly.

  I was surprised. Up to now I had received only courtesy from Southerners. True, when they discovered my real purpose I expected that to end, but in the meantime — I shrugged.

  “I’ve been taping people of Milliken County,” I began,
but he cut me off.

  “Saw you talkin’ to the ’lectric feller on the road. Talkin’ in that machine you got there on the back seat.”

  “Yes, sir. I wonder if you’d mind talking into it. I pay five doll — ”

  “Where you from, mister?”

  “Canada, sir.”

  “Lived onct up t’ Chicago. I hates No’th’ners. Runnin’ this way, runnin’ thataway like cow-critters. Don’t have sense enough to walk slow.”

  “Well, Mr. Ryerson, I’m a Canadian. And I walk slow.”

  He looked at me impassively. Then he grunted.

  “Won’t talk. Talkin’s a waste.”

  “All right, I hear you have good watermelons. How about selling me one?”

  “I never turned away one o’ God’s images yet, even if they’s Yankees. An’ some on ’em is dreffel pore likenesses. You follow me, now.”

  He stepped off the porch. I followed.

  But he didn’t head for the patch. He walked toward the barn.

  “How’d you hear about my melons, mister?”

  “I ate one last night. The sheriff told me you grew it. I said to myself, I better get one all for myself and my wife, and when I was taping down the road, I suddenly remembered your place was here.”

  “You the feller from Canada who married a Georgia girl?”

  I admitted it. He seemed to soften. “I’ll git you a good one. Been aimin’ to sell these in town, an’ I’ll give you first crack.”

  “Won’t we get fresher ones in the patch?”

  “No, mister. They ain’t puffect yet. An’ you wouldn’t like to go in theah anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Theah’s plenty dry-lan’ moccasins come out of the piny woods an’ lie around under the vines waitin’ for frogs.”

  I felt the back of my neck tingle.