by Tom Franklin
Sue Alma lay covered in sweat. The bedding was red and Oscar’s wife, Lucinda, was trying to hold her down. He saw that Sue had shat loose and bloody, saw the old woman had her whole hand up inside his wife’s body. “He keeps moving,” the widow said as Sue screamed and kicked—and only later, after several drinks, would Waite realize that the widow had known the baby’s gender. Without being told, he crossed to his wife and held her shoulders against the mattress as her fists beat bruises onto his back, shoulders, face. “Push,” the old woman commanded, and Sue did, thrashing, and each time she pushed, her rectum turned inside out, like a flower’s face, and more blood flowed until at last the widow said she saw the crown of the baby’s head. Waite felt faint with relief but still the baby didn’t come. “Keeps turning,” the old woman muttered, sopping up blood with a towel. “This one’s active, but we need to get him on out, now.” Waite and Lucinda tried to calm Sue Alma and encouraged her to push while the Widow Gates used a knife to split her open. Then Sue screamed once more and gasped and the old woman raised up the wriggling blue baby and thrust him into Waite’s hands and set to work sewing up the tear.
Later, Sue cleaned, asleep, pale but alive, the baby boy nursing at her breast, Waite joined the old woman on the porch. He looked down at his shaking hands and saw dried blood underneath his nails. Oscar’s and Waite’s daughters were rounding the corner and Waite’s eyes suddenly blurred. “I don’t know what I’d of done if I hadn’t found you,” he said to her. “What luck, you being in town that moment.”
“Wasn’t luck,” she said, and though he’d questioned her about it many times after, she never spoke of it again. She’d told him, too, that this boy was the last baby they’d have, that Sue’s insides were no longer capable.
When he’d asked her fee, the old woman had seemed surprised. “Most folks just give me what they can.”
He’d offered her five silver dollars, which she’d stared at for quite a long time, as if puzzled by the fact of them. Then she’d taken the coins and hidden them in the folds of her dress.
Her place was one of the highest spots in the beat, the hilly land deemed of lesser value by farmers. He rode onto the shaded property and looked up into the architecture of the pecan trees where a squirrel flung itself from one limb to another, barking. He expected the boys to come out—he hadn’t seen them since his last visit, when Macky had been surly and quiet. Just that age, he’d figured, as Macky and William had vanished to the barn to tend his horse. Waite and the widow had rocked in the chairs on the porch and spoke of the weather, the crops, Arch Bedsole’s murder.
“I knew the second it happened,” she’d said.
“Knew what?”
“The second Arch died. I can always tell when one of my babies, the ones I brought in the world, gets killed. If I’m asleep I set up in bed. Can’t catch my breath.”
“So you’ll know when my boy dies, too?”
“I will,” she’d said. “If I’m alive.”
Now he dismounted, letting the horse drink from the bubbling wooden trough by the well. He took from its peg a gourd cut to be a dipper and dipped it in and drank of the sulfur-smelling water so cold it hurt his teeth. Damn, it was good, though. He got another gourdful and drank it more slowly. Below, through patches in the trees, the land was so cotton-white you’d think you stood in Kentucky or some other northern state in dead of snow-battered winter.
He looked around the homestead. A smokehouse behind the house and a barn down the sloping land laddered by the black roots of magnolias. Her old one-eared mule gazed at him from its stall. He crossed to the side yard where she kept chickens in a pen and they all ran to the edge of the wire and watched him as if he might sling them feed. He supposed that, like most everybody else, he knew almost nothing about the widow, just that she’d been here as long as he could remember, had birthed practically every baby in the beat, both white and colored. She knew the healing powers of plants, too, and had saved many of these farmers’ lives.
He heard something. Without a thought he drew his sidearm and pointed it at the woods as the old woman stepped out from behind a dog-wood, lowering her skirts. Had she noticed him? Waite glanced away, holstered the pistol. When he looked back she was staring at him, then at the horse. If she was embarrassed at being caught doing her business it didn’t show. Her dog shot out of the woods, a fringe of wet fur along its nethers as though it’d been creek-wading, and began to bark at King.
“Hush,” she said, and it did.
“Evening, Mrs. Gates.” He approached her, took off his hat.
“You’re back, ain’t you,” she said. “Hello, Billy Waite.”
“Yes, ma’am. Hello.”
“How’s that Johnny-Earl?”
“Grown up. Out in Washington County cutting down trees, last I heard.”
She smiled.
Her hair was whiter than it had been, her eyes blue and small, her face like cured leather, wrinkles so deep it looked like you could stand a dime in there. Beneath her shawl and dress she wore a pair of men’s pants, rolled up to her ankles.
“Where’re your boys at?” he asked.
She looked past him. “Gone.”
“Gone where?”
She raised her cane and pointed east. “One’s working with War Haskew.” Then she pointed west. “The other’s working at the store.” She turned toward the house, leaning on the cane. The dog turned with her. She began to labor up the three stone steps, using the post to steady herself, and limped over the porch and went in. He followed her, ducking through the low entrance, into the good-smelling room, woodsmoke, biscuits, dried herbs and sprigs of things hanging upside down from the ceiling. A monarch butterfly perched on the table on an opened Bible, its wings folding and unfolding. A piece of mirror glass sat on the ledge over a clay washbowl.
She sat with great care in a rocking chair by the far window, green pine needles outside painting the glass with quick strokes. The dog lay on the floor beside her and watched Waite, not unfriendly, its tail thumping the boards.
“Do the boys still live here?” he asked.
“They do not. William,” she said, flipping her hand in the air as if to show the cavalier nature of aging, “he’s nineteen.”
“How old’s Macky?”
“Fifteen.”
“And he lives over at the store? With Tooch Bedsole?”
“Real name’s Quincy. They call him Tooch. He wanted Macky to pay off our debt. Work till our account was cleared. I said go get William. He’s older. Be a better worker. Tooch wanted the young one. Said you could mold a young boy better than you could a older one. Said nothing could rurn a good boy faster than years.”
The old woman had stopped rocking. She looked at him, then began to rock again and he watched her profile move into the window light and out. He saw that she didn’t have any teeth. She didn’t seem like she’d say more, but he waited. There was a row of snuff cans stacked on the shelf over the fireplace. Leather hinges creaked on the opened windows. Drapes raised into the room by a breeze which turned the Bible pages on the table. The closed cloth bag that he assumed held her midwife’s devices hanging on a nail. When he looked back at her she seemed surprised to find him there.
“I thought you’d left.”
“How much was your account?”
As if in answer, she began naming things she’d bought. Dates, prices. He understood that she was going soft, and he felt bad for her. He ought to come more often. Or make sure those boys did.
“I thank you,” he said, rising from the hearth, dusting ash off the seat of his trousers.
“August,” she said. “The loveliest pears. Three for a penny.”
Sitting his horse before the long porch of Bedsole’s Dry Goods, a bench beneath one of the two windows flanking the door, Waite had to look twice before he saw any change. Then he noticed that Arch’s name as proprietor had been painted out of the sign nailed over the porch and “Quincy” now replaced it. Careful, neat lettering. Other st
ores, like McCorquodale’s in Coffeeville, were plastered with advertisements, some tin, others paper, that were replaced on a regular basis. Those porches had old men sitting on them telling lies the way old men will, drinking and smoking five-cent cigars.
Here, though, was isolation that seemed unnatural. On the right side of the store was the blacksmith shop, he could see the anvil, a bucket of black water, and the cold furnace; on the left a stall for a horse and a place to park a wagon. Fresh ruts. Behind him, across the road, lay a wide and deep cotton field and a hundred yards past that an island of pine trees beyond which lay still more cotton.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his watch, a gift from Sue for some long-gone holiday. A little before five. Hell. There ought to be somebody here. He dismounted and wrapped the horse’s reins around the rail.
“I’ll get you some sugar,” he promised King, stroking his jaw and adjusting the bit in his rubbery lips.
He put his hands in the small of his back and pushed before going up the steps to the porch. He shielded his eyes with a gloved hand and peered inside. Nothing. He tried the door handle and found it unlocked.
“Hello,” he called, sticking his head in. A bell clanged above him and he let it ring, hoping it might bring somebody out.
Yet the aisles remained empty, sunlight from behind him igniting the long floorboards and stretching his long shadow the length of the store. He stepped inside and slammed the door behind him, the bell ringing again.
Still no one.
He set his right hand on his sidearm, slipped the rawhide thong off the pistol’s hammer and drew his Colt: something was wrong.
He went slowly down the center aisle. The shelves on either side were dusted clean and stacked neatly with merchandise; whoever stocked the place kept it well. Woodstove in the back, a door standing half opened. When he heard a board’s faint screak he stopped. It seemed to be coming from the adjacent aisle. He knelt and with his pistol barrel slid several boxes of baking soda aside and moved another larger box that faced the other way.
Somebody sneaking by on hands and knees.
Waite rose and walked back toward the door in leisurely steps, as if to leave. He even whistled. When he got there, however, he sidestepped and leaned into the aisle where he saw Macky Burke kneeling.
“Damn, boy,” Waite said. “What the hell’s going on?”
They stared at each other as Macky stood up—he’d grown as tall as Waite, who’d held him as a baby, thrown him in the air and caught him under his tiny arms while the boy giggled, had seen him on a couple of dozen occasions over the years, taken supper with him, his brother, and the widow. Waite had made water spew out of Macky’s nose with his stories, given the boys pieces of hard candy, let them ride his horse and even hold his unloaded sidearm as he instructed them in its use and dangers.
“You doing okay?” Waite pushed aside his coat flap to holster the pistol. “You look spooked.”
The boy nodded. “Yes, sir, Mr. Billy.”
“You’re spooked?”
“No, sir.” He canted a thumb at the shelf, as if to explain. “I’m okay. How about you?”
“Getting along. I was just over to see your granny. She told me you work here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long since you seen her?”
He thought. “Been a while.”
“A while.”
He nodded.
“Paying off your all’s debt, she said.”
He nodded.
“You know how much it is? She couldn’t seem to recall.”
“No, sir.”
“Bedsole ain’t told you?”
“No, sir.”
“How come you ain’t asked him? I don’t know about you, but I don’t take folks’ word for much.”
“I’ll ask him,” Macky said.
“Get him to show you. On paper.”
“Yes, sir.”
From outside there came the sound of a wagon. A horse whinnied.
Waite turned to see a dark-haired man walking up the steps, the wagon behind him drifting backward as if the brake hadn’t been set. The fellow came through the door with a quick hand silencing the bell.
He resembled Arch, but a scarred, harder version, like a brother who’d gone off to war. There were lines in his face, tracking outward from his eyes, and an assortment of freckles and moles that darkened his complexion. A bushy mustache and scruff of beard on his cheeks and a tooth gone in his bottom set. Shorter than Waite and the boy, but a man confident in his carriage, a large head that made him seem bigger than he was, though about his chest and shoulders he looked frail.
“Tooch Bedsole?” Waite asked.
“Who wants to know?”
“Billy Waite.”
“Our sheriff,” he said, taking off his flat-topped hat. He laid it on the counter. “I’m Quincy Bedsole.” He worked off his leather gloves a finger at a time and laid them beside the hat. “What can we do for you?”
“I was talking to your helper here,” Waite said, indicating the boy with a thumb. “Telling him I wanted a few nickel cigars. Some sugar cubes.”
“Mack,” Bedsole said, and the boy nodded and hurried to the back.
“There’s something I’d like to ask you,” Waite said to the storekeeper, “if you got a minute.”
“I do,” he replied. “Come onto the porch.”
Outside, Bedsole’s horse, a white mare, had backed the wagon up a few feet. He said, “Damn,” and went down the steps and set the brake and came back dusting his hands. “That’s a nice chestnut you got out yonder,” he told Waite.
“Thank you. Raised him from a foal.”
“You want to sell him?”
Waite thought this forward. Where the hell would he get that kind of cash? “No,” he said. “I’m content with him.”
They stood gazing at the cotton and the pine trees past it, a pair of buzzards smudged in the sky.
“Fine crop,” Waite said. “You ever raise any cotton?”
“Once.”
They stood looking.
“I was sorry to hear about your cousin,” Waite said. “Called him Strut, didn’t they?”
Bedsole leaned against a post. He folded his arms. “His friends did.”
“I understand he told you something before he died. It’s become quite a legend.”
“It ain’t a legend.”
“Well, I’ve heard everybody else’s version. So I’d appreciate hearing it from you.”
The storekeeper took a long time to say anything. Then he told how he’d been home, reading, when he heard a commotion. Said he went out with a lantern and found his cousin nearly dead in the yard, bled plumb out, and he ran to him. Got there just before Arch breathed his last, but in that last breath he whispered something.
“What?”
“He said, ‘They was from town.’”
“Who was?”
“Who you think? People that killed him.”
“Did he say what town?”
“He meant Grove Hill.”
“You sure about that?”
Bedsole didn’t answer. Then he said, “Yeah. I’m sure.”
Waite turned to Bedsole expecting him to turn, too, so they could talk eye to eye, but the storekeeper remained with his attention given to the field, showing the sheriff a profile hard as an ax.
“There’s other towns,” Waite said.
Bedsole said nothing.
“What about your house? I heard it burned down.”
“That’s right, it did. When I seen Arch I dropped the lantern and time I remembered it the house was burning good. Wasn’t nothing to do but stand there and watch it.”
Waite tapped the crossbeam of the porch over their heads. “You live here now?”
Bedsole nodded. He leaned and spat off the front of the porch. “There’s a room up there,” he said, indicating the attic.
“You mind if I ask how you was able to afford to buy a store?”
“You r
eckon it’s any of your business?”
“I do. If I’m to locate your cousin’s killer and the killer of Joe Anderson.”
Bedsole turned then, a little. “Arch’s daddy sold it to me. My uncle Ed. You can check the papers. We done it right there in Grove Hill. Lawyer and everthing.”
“What about that boy in yonder?”
“What about him?”
“You own him, too?”
Bedsole stepped back and now they were face-to-face. “It’s a business arrangement.”
“That what you call it? I ain’t so sure but I wouldn’t call it something else.”
The door opened and the boy came out with a handful of cigars and a small sack of sugar cubes. He offered them to Waite, who took them. “How much?” he asked Macky.
“Fifty cents.”
He took out his coin purse and paid him and watched him go back inside. He opened his coat so his badge showed where it hung on his shirt and put all but one of the cigars in his pocket. Bedsole looked away again, off toward the field. Waite licked the tip of the remaining cigar and bit off its end, spat the cap into the yard and picked tobacco flecks off his tongue. He fished in his pants for a box of matches and got one and struck it on his thumbnail and lit the cigar and blew smoke across their view.
“Tell you something, Bedsole,” he said. “Good sheriff has to know things, be they secret or not. Was a time back yonder in my ambitious years, when you was still chasing girls in pigtails, where I knew just about everything went on in my county, no matter how delicate, from the bowel movements of men to the ministerial cycles of women. A fly couldn’t light on a stack of horse shit I didn’t know about it. But then it happened I got older, as men will, and had to let some slack in my grip. You know. Now the habits of flies are unknown to me and men shit and women bleed unattended. And so there’s two or three places I’ve let go too far. This here is one of ’em.”