Chaneysville Incident

by David Bradley

  I knew nothing about the Hill any longer, I had made it my business not to know. But now suddenly, inexplicably, I was curious, and so I thought for a moment, pulling half-remembered facts from the back of my mind—scraps of information—and made extrapolations. Uncle Bunk, his arms permanently bowed from sixty years of suitcases, trunks, train cases, hatboxes, golf bags, et cetera, now spent his hours playing checkers by the stove. There was usually no one there for him to play with, so he moved for both sides. Aunt Emma Hawley still made biscuits. She had seen no need to stop making them when Mr. Hawley died, and so she kept on making them and fed them to the chickens—she couldn’t stand sour milk biscuits. The gleaming white paint and meticulously applied green trim on Aunt Lydia’s house was flaking and spotted, for Aunt Lydia was no longer around to hire the workmen for shrewdly low wages and watch them like a hawk; she had been found lying on her spotless kitchen floor surrounded by her sleek murderous mongrels, who steadfastly protected her even after she had been dead for two days—from malnutrition. Miss Linda Jamison’s house looked little different, but now it was just a hulk. She and her girls had moved to better quarters a few blocks from the center of town; Miss Linda’s “good friends” had grown too old to walk so far, and their sons, who were “good friends” of Miss Linda’s girls, did not like to walk at all, and the cars were…conspicuous. There would be fewer sleepers in Moses Washington’s fieldstone house; the sons had gone away. And Old Jack Crawley was sick.

  I reached the top and stood looking at Moses Washington’s house. The walls were rock-and-mortar. The style of masonry was uneven, the lower, earliest-laid courses being of dressed stone, the upper two thirds or three fourths being of fieldstone. Despite the fact that all the stones were more or less triangular—the rocks in the lower courses having been trimmed to that shape, the ones in the upper courses having been, apparently, selected for it—the change in style from ashlar to rubble was apparent and abrupt and, in fact, quite ugly. The question of why the mason had changed styles had never been answered—my own early theory, that Moses Washington had wanted triangular rocks (the why of that being still another question) and it had been quicker and easier to find them than to cut them, proved erroneous—for the simple reason that the mason had been Moses Washington himself, and no one had ever been able to figure out why Moses Washington did anything; no one even knew where and when he had learned masonry. And given the ugliness of the house, one could say he never had.

  Certainly he had laid his own ideas on top of any formal knowledge he might have possessed. The mortar, for example, was cooked limestone, the sort of cementing agent that Henri Christophe of Haiti had used to build the famed Citadel. But where Christophe was rumored to have thickened his mortar with the blood of goats, Moses Washington had used portland cement—although it was rumored, too, that the bones of more than one of Moses Washington’s enemies might be discovered beneath the foundation.

  The dressed stone had come from the foundation of the house itself. The rest of it had been dug out of the foundations of houses that lurked in the underbrush on the far side of the Hill, hauled over by Moses Washington and Jack Crawley and Uncle Josh “Snakebelly” White during one of the most murderous Augusts the County had ever seen. It would have been sensible to wait for cooler weather, but Moses Washington had a schedule, and the schedule said move the stone in August, so he had. That was how Moses Washington was. The only times he had backed off from anything was in order to get up speed. Laws local, state, federal, military, and possibly international had not stopped him, threats of incarceration and/or bodily harm had not stopped him; the weather was not about to. Jack Crawley and Josh White had helped him because they had always helped him. The three of them had run together for forty years, hunting and fishing and drinking and generally scandalizing the County. They had run together through—or perhaps “over” is a better word—Prohibition, and neither the Volstead Act nor the relative fortune that Moses Washington had made because of it changed anything. They had run together through the Depression, and that just made them worse; some of the market for Moses Washington’s home brew dried up, and the three of them were forced to consume large quantities in order to keep the prices from falling due to oversupply. They had done a heroic job. When World War II had begun they had tried to enlist together, even though Josh White, the youngest of them, was fifty. They still tell the story on the Hill about how the three of them had stormed the old Espy House, drunk as lords, demanding to be signed up, threatening to take the place apart if they weren’t. Uncle Josh and Old Jack actually did tear the place up, scattering files and file clerks, until they passed out. Moses Washington, seeming suddenly sober, had waited until the dust had settled, and then had taken the director of enlistment aside and spoken to him for a while, and nobody knows exactly what was said, but the next time anyone heard of Moses Washington he was a noncommissioned officer in the Army of the United States, and the next time they heard of him he was in Italy, and then they heard no more until he came back from the war with medals and ribbons bearing witness to his valor and discharge papers certifying his total insanity. This, it was rumored, was because he had tried to shoot one of the white Southern officers that were invariably placed in charge of black combat units. It was a rumor that nobody believed, since the last time Moses Washington missed something he was aiming at was a matter not of record but of legend, and it was widely suspected that the charge of attempted murder was really the result of the workings of Moses Washington’s bizarre sense of humor. But as the days following his return from the war passed, it became evident that he was, if not actually crazy, certainly changed. He did not go back to his work, which, for as long as most people could remember, had been supplying the half of the County that drank with corn liquor. He gave that up, and he gave up drinking whiskey himself. He gave up cards. And he more or less gave up hunting—he still went out, but he went without a gun; no one, as usual, knew why, and no one was fool enough to ask.

  Those changes, fundamental as they seemed, still might have been explained adequately by a simpler theory than insanity, but the rest could not. Moses Washington was seen to enter the church occasionally, although never during an official service; he was fond of attending choir practice, and he took over the job of keeping the sanctuary clean. He was seen to spend time in conversation with whatever minister the Central Jurisdiction of the Methodist Episcopal Church saw fit to send—it was suggested that he was the main reason that none of them lasted more than two years. Not that he was sectarian; rumor had it that, especially during the winter months, he would prowl the countryside for miles around, and in the dead of night, appear at a parsonage and roust the preacher out of bed for far-reaching theological discussions.

  But all that came after the biggest event; in 1946 he shocked everyone by asking for the hand of Miss Yvette Franklin Stanton, whose father had been a professor at Howard University before retiring to a neat house at the far side of town—away from the “other ones,” as the Professor put it—in order to drink the local mineral water, which, the Professor maintained, had not lost any of its curative powers since the days when President James Buchanan had partaken of it. Miss Stanton was a spinster at thirty-one not because she was ugly, but because she had somewhat haughtily refused to become involved with any of the young men from the Hill, although, unlike the Professor, she was active in the Hill’s affairs. The people called it uppitiness, the rejected suitors something else, but they all nearly fainted when Miss Stanton accepted not only a ruffian, but the Ruffian of Ruffians, even if he did appear to have settled down some.

  Moses Washington and Miss Stanton were married in 1946, but the marriage was not consummated for a solid year, while Moses Washington enlisted the help of Josh White, and Old Jack Crawley, and built the house. The three of them lived in it while they built it, raising the walls around them, constructing the roof over them, and, if rumor has it correctly, adding numerous four-letter words to the English language while doing it. When it was
finished, Jack Crawley and Josh White went back to their battered cabins on the far side and Moses Washington moved his wife in. Mrs. Washington did not approve of drinking in any form, or of cussing, or of Old Jack and Uncle Josh, for that matter, and so Uncle Josh never again set foot in the house he had helped to build; even during Moses Washington’s funeral he, along with Old Jack Crawley, stood outside on the porch. And Old Jack had only entered it once more, on the afternoon of that day, when he had come looking for Moses Washington’s elder son.

  It was hotter than hell on the day they buried Moses Washington. All the men said so, muttering it softly, after making sure that neither their wives nor the preacher was in earshot. It was just barely hyperbole; it was the dry part of August and air that had been baked on the Great Plains hung unmoving over the mountains, heavy with tan dust that made a haze like smoke on the mountaintops and the trees gray like powdered wigs. There were nearly a hundred people at the funeral; everyone on the Hill who was both old enough to respect death and young enough to walk to meet it, and more than a few people who had left the Hill, and even one man who was white. They stood out behind Moses Washington’s house—among his effects had been found a letter giving strict instructions about his burial, and the specifications pointedly excluded the church—while the sunlight came slamming down out of a too-blue sky, listening to the preacher deliver a eulogy that tried very hard to give the impression that Moses Washington had been deacon rather than doubter, bishop rather than bootlegger, and it must have occurred to everyone that the minister’s designation of heaven as the destination of the soul of the deceased ran directly counter to the message from Mother Nature. Finally the minister finished, and the pallbearers present raised the coffin and carried it up the slope to the back door and through the house and out the front; that was easier than fighting around the corner of the house, where the slope was abrupt. When they had carried it out to the front porch, Old Jack Crawley and Uncle Josh White took up their part of the burden, and the boxed remains of Moses Washington moved across the brow of the Hill, the pallbearers sweating and grunting, the minister following, the too-long cuffs of his baggy black pants dragging in the dirt.

  I moved along behind the minister, my mother’s hand on my shoulder guiding and pushing me at the same time, my head shielded from the sun by the hat she had made by knotting the corners of a handkerchief. Behind us came the procession, moving slowly, a spiritual rising above it as if it were not a group of people but one giant organ. I wondered how they could sing in the dust and the heat; it could not have been easy. But they did sing, and the song that Moses Washington had called for rose like the dust itself. It was a tune I knew—Moses Washington had hummed it for as long as I could remember—but I had never before heard the words. Now they rose, languid and mournful: And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord, and be free.

  We reached the graveyard and stood watching while the minister prayed over the coffin, and then as it was lowered, in the old way, as Moses Washington had stipulated: six strong men slowly, solemnly paying out the rope. The undertaker, a greasy-headed black man who, as Moses Washington had demanded, had been imported from forty miles away, viewed the process with thinly concealed disgust; he would have preferred, no doubt, a gentle mechanical cranking, with the coffin dropping slowly and smoothly as if it were being lowered by the Hand of God. The men stood silently, the women were crying softly—all except for my mother, who remained brisk, efficient, and dry-eyed throughout. We dropped the ritual spades of earth on the coffin, and then we turned away and went back across the Hill. The pallbearers stood awkwardly for a moment, and then Old Jack and Josh White disappeared into the woods and the other four were free to join the rest of the people, who came crowding into the house to present their final comfort to the bereaved family and to consume the contents of the covered dishes they had brought to the house in the days since the word of Moses Washington’s death had come rushing up the slope like a grass fire.

  In the depths of the house, the heat was even worse: like oil, stubbornly refusing to circulate despite the almost frantic motion of two dozen paper fans thoughtfully donated by the Mordecai D. Johnson Funeral Home of Altoona, Pa., and expertly wielded by the ladies of the Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society—middle-aged women of various shapes, sizes, and shades, who spoke often simultaneously but rarely unanimously. Many of the people left quickly, knowing that although the heat was everywhere they could at least escape the odor of dying flowers mingled with two dozen variations on the theme of cheap perfume that hung in Moses Washington’s house like a fog. Those who remained had “duty” to do, or nowhere else to go. The minister stayed for reasons known only to himself; it would have been expected for most people, but Moses Washington had not been most people, and the church was abundantly represented by the WH&FMS. My grandfather, the Professor, stayed too, a thin frail man with pale liver-spotted hands who sat holding a glass of iced tea with fresh mint crushed into it, occasionally raising the glass to lips that reached out to take it like the mouth of a trout taking a lure. He did a manful job of looking mournful, but in moments of inattention a look of relief would spread across his face; there had been no love lost between him and his son-in-law, who had more than once suggested that the lightness of his skin and the manumission papers that he proudly displayed were both the result of a series of miscegenetic liaisons in which his female forebears had been ready, willing, and possibly even eager partners. They stayed, though they could have left. The rest of us had no choice; we lived there.

  Bill was there, sitting on the couch, the soft pillows rising around him, seeming to swallow him. He was lonely and confused, and he had rejected every offer of food and drink. I sat in the far corner, gnawing on a turkey sandwich that had been prepared for me by one of the WH&FMS ladies. I was their darling, because I accepted their overtures. Periodically one of them would swoop down upon me and clutch me to her ample bosom and call me a poor orphan. I accepted everything and smiled and was quiet. They thought I was being brave, but I was not. I just did not know how to act. I had no idea how I should feel, what I should do. I knew what I wanted, though: I wanted them all to go away and leave me alone. Because something had happened and I knew it was something important, but I did not really know what it was. And so I wanted to sit and figure out the what of it, so that I could begin to figure out the why of it. Then I would understand it. And then I could begin to figure out what I needed to do—laugh, cry, hate, whatever—so that I could go about more pressing business. I did not think about it in those terms then, of course—I was only nine years old—but I knew it. And I knew that until I had time to think alone I would not do any of the laughing or the crying or the hating, because I simply would not know what to do.

  And then Old Jack came. It was as if a boulder dropped into a pool; the silence had that same hollow sound to it that water makes as it swallows a stone. He stepped into the middle of the room and looked around, swaying drunkenly, blinking like some weird sleepy reptile. There was a collective gasp throughout the room. Old Mrs. Turner, who was noted for seeing signs and omens in nearly everything—she claimed to have foreseen Moses Washington’s death in the actions of a flock of birds—stood up and raised her hands above her head and began to wail, her voice rising from a low, barely audible whisper to a keening that was painful to the ear. I heard a rush of feet as my mother came in from the kitchen.

  Old Jack took another step forward, his eyes searching. They came to rest on me. “Mose tole me,” he said. “Tole me to come for this here boy. An’ I come.” The statement must have stunned everybody, for no one moved when he advanced upon me.

  I stood there, unable either to flee or to pretend to fight as he came towards me, bending, his face coming down at me with the speed, it seemed, of an express train. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath warm and sour. I could see the blemishes in his skin, see where the dirt was ground into the folds and wrinkles, see all the little irregularitie
s around his eyes and lips. But my eyes fastened on an uneven wart that lay just beside his low, flat nose. “Come with me,” he said. He reached out for me.

  Suddenly my limbs were free from paralysis, and I let go with what must have been my first accurate punch: a short, chopping overhand right that landed squarely on Old Jack’s wart. He howled and jumped back, and with that the spell was broken. The people in the room rushed forward and grasped him. “Get that…man out of here!” my mother ordered, and they hustled him out the door, trying to be gentle despite the fact that he was fighting like a wildcat, and shouting drunkenly about Moses Washington’s last will. They maneuvered him across the porch and onto the street, where they released him. He fell to the ground and remained there, on all fours, his head hanging, his tongue lolling. Then he raised his head and his eyes met mine, and we stayed like that for a moment. And then I had felt my mother’s hands on my shoulders, pulling me back inside.

  As I had stood looking and thinking, the fatigue had come on me with a rush, all the force of the sleepless night and long walk. I felt the growing of old tensions, a sudden chill at the base of my belly. I tried to ignore it as I watched as morning chinned itself over the mountains. The sky was clear but the air seemed moist, and the sun was a deep red ball. I thought of the ancient adage “Red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” and wondered exactly how old it was, knowing that it was common when Shakespeare wrote, in Venus and Adonis: “a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d/Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,” having its origins probably before the year of our Lord 1, for in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus of Nazareth, when asked to provide a sign from heaven, said: “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring,” an event reported differently in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, which records Jesus as saying: “When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass,” and thinking that the weather patterns of ancient Israel were almost directly opposite to those of the present-day Alleghenies…and then realizing what that red sky might mean, for him and for me, and I turned and left the porch.