The Marrowbone Marble Company

by Glenn Taylor

  Ledford thanked him. “I’m through with it,” W.D. said. “All of it. What you done out here has changed things, far as I’m concerned.”

  Ledford didn’t know what to make of all the man had said. “Listen,” W.D. said. He pointed to the phone where it hung on the wall. “I ain’t used that telephone but once, just to see. My fingers is too big for the holes.” He held up his knotty hands. “Anyway, damned if that Shorty Maynard wasn’t here in his police car in five minutes’ time.” He laughed. “Huey Church had stole from me, so I told him Huey was runnin moonshine, and I reckon he used that to go and scare the Churches, keep em in line and votin how they should.” He smiled. “Keep em away from the likes a you,” he said. “But I’ve had it by God. I’m too old for it.” He stomped his foot to the floor and smacked his knee.

  Before Ledford left, he thanked Mr. Ray for his time. “You hold on to that pressure cooker,” he said. “Rachel’s got another one.” He told the old man not to rip his telephone out. To keep the Ball boys and Shorty Maynard close, let them think he was a pushover. “You give em false information if you want to,” Ledford said, “but keep em around.”

  W. D. Ray stood tall as he waved to the bus from his porch. Rapture could wait a while. He was part of something.

  THE KEITH-ALBEE THEATRE seated two thousand, and when Willy walked the aisle on the Saturday before Halloween, every one of them was full. It was the midnight show. Point Blank. Folks had heard about Lee Marvin’s role, how he wielded his gun like it grew from his hand. How he threw men off rooftops.

  Stretch Hayes waved to Willy from the front row, where he’d saved him a seat. Next to Stretch was his brother, Clyde. He craned his neck at the screen. It was his first full day of parole. Inside the penitentiary they didn’t show moving pictures, and to Clyde the color looked neon.

  He didn’t speak when introduced.

  There was a coming attraction for To Sir, With Love. When Sidney Poitier’s face filled the screen, someone in the middle rows hollered, “Baboon!”

  Clyde tore the ring-pull off his second can of beer and tossed it on the floor. He worked his jaw between swallows.

  The crowd was young and rowdy. Halfway through the movie, someone threw a stink bomb vial at the wall.

  By the time Lee Marvin punched a downed man in the balls, Clyde had drunk eight beers. “That ain’t how it is,” he said to Willy and Stretch. “Don’t no real punch sound like that.” He’d found flaw in gunshots and bloodspills all night.

  On the movie screen, a black nightclub singer screamed his riffs. A few rows back, someone imitated a chimpanzee. Someone else let fly an egg. It smacked the screen and trickled down, slow and thick and yellow.

  Clyde stood up and turned around. Two thousand empty faces. Another egg let fly. It broke against his Adam’s apple and filled his shirt collar with yolk. “Motherfucker,” Clyde said.

  Two white boys stood up and ran. “I know where your mommas live,” Clyde called after them. “Sit down, nigger!” somebody yelled.

  Clyde threw his beer on the floor and raised a hand to block the projector booth beam. Dust swirled, glinting here and there, the stirring of an invisible storm. “Say it again!” Clyde called, searching the empty faces.

  And it was said again, and another egg let fly—this time from the balcony—and soon enough, chairbacks were stepping stones and fists weren’t picky.

  Willy followed Stretch through the fire exit door. Stretch had followed Clyde, who’d opened the door with the face of a big, buzz-cut white boy who’d decided to take a swing. He’d missed. Now that boy was face down on the alley bricks, his letterman jacket soaking up a puddle, his nose cartilage refashioned.

  He was the starting middle linebacker at Huntington East. His father was chief of police.

  The alley spilled to the street, and Fourth Avenue became a stomping ground. Someone kicked the sideview off a Thunderbird, picked it up, and swung it against the back of Stretch’s head. He dropped to his knees.

  Willy got him by the armpits and they crossed Tenth Street, running.

  Clyde was nowhere to be found.

  Sirens sounded quick. The officers on duty had radioed when the first chair was jumped. Inside five minutes, there were seven squad cars in front of the theater.

  By the time someone lobbed a brick through the front window of Kiser’s Drugstore, the police had donned riot helmets. Some gripped clubs and others shotguns. They moved east on Fourth Avenue, by car and by foot, and when they got to Sixteenth Street, one car headed south.

  Shorty Maynard was on a ride-along, and he was happy to navigate. He spotted Willy and Stretch in J. Carl Mitchum’s front yard. The old man was pressing a handkerchief to Stretch’s bleeding scalp. When the headlights lit them up, J. Carl stared down the beam. He was big, his white undershirt amplified. “You boys go inside,” he said.

  But they didn’t go inside. Stretch turned and faced the car.

  Next to Shorty in the backseat, the buzz-cut linebacker had stopped his own bleeding with a grease rag. “That’s him,” he intoned. He pointed a blood-streaked finger. “That’s the one that did it.” His daddy gunned the cruiser.

  Stretch took off in the direction of Douglass Community Center. His logic was clouded by the hot buzzing inside his skull.

  The tires on the squad car were bald in back. It fishtailed on the sidewalk and straightened, then bore down hard, tore two stripes on Douglass’s front lawn before stopping a foot short of the door. It was there that Stretch Hayes pulled at the brass handles with no luck. He just kept pulling, as if the locks might decide to give, as if refuge was more than a word used by preachers.

  Shorty Maynard was on him before Willy and J. Carl could cross the street.

  Stretch turned from the door and faced him. “You going to black my eyes shut like you did your daughter’s?” he said.

  Shorty swung his club and missed, Stretch slipping it like he would a boxing glove, his fists at the ready. The second swing caught him, put him on his knees. He threw a straight left that missed. Shorty’s third swing put him to sleep.

  The police chief and his buzz-cut boy held J. Carl and Willy off, kept them where they couldn’t see. J. Carl tested the chief’s resolve and walked toward the squad car. “Don’t take another step,” the chief said, his eyes fixed down the squat barrel of his revolver. J. Carl froze where he stood.

  “Stretch?” Willy called, craning to see. “Stretch?” He could only see the back of Shorty’s head and shoulders, so tall above the roof of the car. It was the first time he’d seen him since he’d beaten up Josephine. Willy stared at that long neck and head, imagined those big hands striking Josephine. He wished for a moment that he carried a gun.

  The blue and red lights spun on the squad car’s roof, a beacon of fear to those peering through windows. Willy watched the mirrors and bulbs. They threw shadows on the bricks of the community center. The howl was relentless.

  AT NINE P.M. on Halloween night, the raid came.

  State policemen lined Marrowbone’s main gate and spoke through bullhorns. “Step out of the house with your hands over your head,” they said. Dimple and Wimpy crouched on the floor in their longjohns. They peeked through the high window and surmised the number of men outside. They laid their rifles on the floor and did as they were told.

  Up the Cut, Orb was running the dogs. They caught wind of the state police and came running, hard.

  The dogs sensed a siege. From a hundred yards off, they saw Dimple and Wimpy on their knees, men in dark uniforms standing behind them.

  When they leaped the creek by the lower footbridge, full bore and snarling, three officers opened fire. Jim-Jim, Doo-Dad, and Pug were struck in the head and neck.

  They died where they fell before Orb could get there. Tug was hit in the back leg and retreated to the creek bed. Orb climbed down to him, held the dog while he whimpered, blood leaking slow into cold water.

  Across front yards, the state police put people on their knees. They made neat
lines of the residents of Marrowbone, careful to go easy on women and children. Ledford crept in the chicken coop’s shadow, his.45 drawn. When he saw their number, he tucked the gun in along his spine, emerged, and demanded a warrant. One was produced, and Ledford went prone like the rest.

  They caught Herchel in a circle beam of flashlight as he hacked at his marijuana plants with a hand axe. They hauled him off in cuffs.

  They had proof that Marrowbone housed criminals.

  Herchel looked at the ground as he stumbled along, barefoot and shirtless, gripped at the elbows. A trooper shined his light on Herchel’s chest scar and stared. The skin there reflected light.

  Orb was the only one Herchel glanced at. The boy’s crying was too much to ignore. None had ever heard such a thing from Orb.

  As he stepped into a squad car, Herchel nearly cried himself. They shut the door on him, and through the glass, he watched Orb go from one dog to the next where they lay on the ground. The boy bent and put his ear to each one, but there was nothing.

  Tug followed along, limping, Orb’s shirt wrapping his back leg. He nudged each dog with his snout. They lay where they’d fallen, in a line across the cold crabgrass. Tug licked at their bloodied ears and lips.

  When Orb stood up and buried his face in Rachel’s sweater to quiet his cries, Tug stayed put, his eyes on his brother and sisters. He whined. He limped back and started down the line again, pushing his snout against each dead dog, certain they’d wake up soon enough.

  FEBRUARY 1968

  THE CARPET IN BOB Staples’ office was white, coffee stains marking a trail from door to desk. Reverend Thompson sat across from him in a highback leather chair, and beside him was Paul Maynard. Both would be character witnesses should Herchel or Stretch’s arrests go to trial. The Reverend would speak on behalf of Marrowbone. Paul would do the same for Stretch Hayes.

  Bob Staples and Harold did nothing but study case law and review the actions of the police. The rest at Marrowbone organized against a shutdown.

  “These meetings and community marches ain’t doing a goddamn thing for anybody,” Paul said. He looked at Reverend Thompson. “No offense.”

  “None taken.” The Reverend shifted in his seat. “I wish your brother was well enough to soapbox, Bob. He’d whip up results.”

  “I know it,” Bob said. “I wish he was too.”

  The West Virginia Human Rights Commission had backed J. Carl Mitchum. He’d accused the Huntington Police Department of brutality the night of the theater riot. The papers weren’t listening. The accusation had not stuck.

  Stretch was out on bond. His brother Clyde had decided to run. It wasn’t the first time he’d broken parole.

  In the office corner, Harold sat on the floor behind a semicircle of stacked paper. “I got a woman here who saw Stretch Hayes on his knees when Shorty swung the club, but she won’t testify to it.” He hadn’t slept in two days.

  Paul shook his head. “None of that’ll stick on Shorty,” he said. “We got to go after him with bigger than that.” Lately, he’d been wishing he’d lined pockets like the rest of them. He didn’t have friends in the state police. He couldn’t get a warrant based on nothing but shared hatred.

  “I think we’ve got to fight it out in the paper, on the nightly news,” Reverend Thompson said. “Stand up for Marrowbone and what it’s done for people.”

  The results of the raid were disheartening. The local news had been calling Marrowbone a Communist training ground full of dope-smoking beatniks. Some residents had already moved away. Mrs. Wells and Herb were among them. They wanted nothing to do with such trouble.

  Talks with the SCLC and Martin Luther King had been stalled by word of a drug bust. Marrowbone was no longer a stop for the Poor People’s Campaign.

  Paul Maynard looked at the floor. He twiddled his thumbs. He knew that scared black witnesses and newspaper editorials were useless. He knew his nephew had to be dealt with in blood.

  MARCH 1968

  WIMPY’S STOMACH WASN’T RIGHT. It was making sounds of the squeaking variety and he feared he’d shit himself if he let one rip. The fire trots, as he called them, were back again. They often accompanied trouble, frayed nerves.

  He sat inside the outhouse, reading a beat-up copy of Letters from the Earth. Morning sun shone through the cut half-moon on the door and illuminated the open book. Something moved there, cast a shadow on his page across the word microbe. Wimpy looked up.

  A cicada traversed the moon’s edge. “Hello there,” Wimpy said. “Where did you come from?”

  A cloud covered up the sun. Next to the cicada, a splinter of wood twitched in the wind. The little bug turned to face him, its red eyes like drops of blood. Wimpy had an uneasy feeling. “Party’s over,” he said. “You’re a year late.”

  He finished up and followed the cicada to where it flew. He lost sight of it out front of the house.

  Dimple was there, working a posthole digger at the parking lot’s edge. The floods had eroded another chunk of land. He wiped sweat from his nose with a hanky. “Gettin too damned old,” he said to his brother, but Wimpy looked past him to the gate. “What is it?” Dimple said. “What the hell you lookin at like that?”

  Wimpy didn’t answer. His face had lost its color, and he walked past his brother, on out to the gate. He stood and stared at what he saw there.

  Dimple followed. A cicada flew around the gatepost, then off to the trees behind the burying ground. Dimple leaned in close next to his brother. Together, they examined the tiny clawed feet perched on the crossrail. “What in the devil?” Dimple said.

  Wimpy reached out as if to touch the things, their points stuck in the wood, their lengths sticking up where a body should have been. He stopped short.

  Dimple pointed. “Is that foot missin a toe?”

  It was the left. “This was the redbird I told you about,” Wimpy said. He couldn’t understand what he saw. “Do you think somebody shot him?”

  “No,” Dimple said. He leaned in closer. Sniffed. “There ain’t no smell of birdshot. Looks to me like something ate him, left the feet behind.”

  Wimpy was certain the cicada had led him there. And now, in the trees beyond the burying ground, he could hear more of them, grinding their call—crying, it seemed to Wimpy. Orb’s book had confirmed that cicadas only came once in seventeen years, but here they were again. The book said they did not eat trees or plants like some supposed, but only struck egg slits in saplings and small bushes. In fact, the book said cicadas did not consume a thing, but here was the redbird, eaten alive.

  It was beyond peculiar, the little feet on the gatepost. Both brothers studied them for some time. Wimpy regarded them as a sign, but he didn’t know what of.

  Neither spoke a word.

  A car kicked mud and came fast down the road. Dimple walked back to his repair site. He’d left his shotgun and binoculars there.

  He put the binoculars to his eyes and had a look. “Erm’s Cadillac,” he said.

  When it got within fifty yards, the Cadillac finally slowed. It stopped at the gate. The front bumper hung loose on one side. There was an imprint on the hood in the shape of a man.

  The car whined in neutral, and the door swung open. Fury stepped out, dirty and bearded. His hair grew to his shoulders. He’d lost twenty pounds.

  “Morning, fellas,” Fury said. In his waistband was a little Colt .25.

  “Anybody up for playin cards around here?” He laughed. Then he went straight-faced, his hollow eyes flinching. He turned and looked at the trees as if they might uproot and come after him. “Is Ledford around?” he asked.

  Inside the factory, Fury sat down on the workbench, his skinny ankles dangling pale from his pantlegs. He blinked incessantly while he spoke, and everybody could smell his foul breath. Mack and Ledford exchanged a look. They recognized a man in love with morphine.

  “So I ran as fast as I could from Uncle Sam after that,” Fury said. He’d been chronicling his tour in Vietnam. His injury after walki
ng into a trip wire, his decision that the war was wrong. “And wouldn’t you know it,” he said, itching at his filthy beard, “I came back to Chicago and found nothing but more war.” Uncle Fiore had been shot and killed in his toolshed. Erm was running scared. “The only thing that’s kept Dad alive in the last ten years is Uncle Fiore,” Fury said. “Now that he’s gone, it’s open season on Dad.”

  Ledford threw a hunk of wet newspaper in the wastebasket. He wiped his hands on his overalls. “And you took his car?”

  “Probably not the best idea,” Fury said. He smiled. His teeth were yellow.

  “Where is your daddy now?” Mack asked. He didn’t trust the Bacigalupos. He didn’t want them around.

  “I don’t know,” Fury said.

  Stretch came in the back door and took his place at the welder’s table. He pulled the mask over his head and torched up.

  Fury twitched at the sound of combustion. He bit at his lip. “Listen,” he said. “I have seen things with my eyes closed, things that changed me.” He chuckled. “I talked to God,” he said. He looked from Ledford to Mack and back to Ledford. “Listen.” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Dad’s all torn up about this land deal with Charlie Ball. He wants to come clean, but he doesn’t know how.”

  “What are you talkin about?” Ledford said.

  “The land development deal. It’s all fallen through. Dad had wanted to build a racetrack out here, be your neighbor, but it turns out Charlie Ball gambled away the money.”

  Ledford glared at the young man. He wondered if he was being set up.

  Fury rocked back and forth, knocked over a jar of brads. “Sorry,” he said. “I run off at the mouth a lot.” He gathered up the nails. His fingers shook.

  Mack and Ledford looked at one another again.

  Ledford said, “Are you tellin me Erm was in cahoots with Charlie Ball behind my back?”