I Got to Keep Moving

by Bill Harris

  “What?”

  The desk sergeant stuck his head in. “Talk with you a moment, Chief?”

  The chief mumbled a curse under his breath, shook a cigarette from the pack; he rose and moved to the door.

  The first thing the sergeant told the chief was about that little colored boy in the bloody shirt and two colored women sitting on the bench across in the square.

  “What’re they doing?”

  “Nothing at first, then somebody brought them sandwiches.”

  The chief lighted the cigarette. “They litter, shoot them,” he said, fatigue in his voice.

  The sergeant noted the chief’s tone and took a moment before he added about the several others, young bucks, and a bunch of white boys who’d showed up. Collected like crows on a wire, he said, wishing there was more to report, and thinking he hadn’t explained it right.

  “And?”

  He had a ready answer for the chief on that one: Chap was there to see him.

  “You should have told me that first,” the chief said. “Put a man out front to watch them,” he told the sergeant as he headed for his office.

  “I’m here to get him,” Chap greeted the chief where he was waiting in his office.

  “Ain’t that simple this time, Chap.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “He killed two men.”

  “Who had killed a goddamned preacher in a fucking church full of people.”

  “That’s a lot of shooting for a stranger.”

  “He’s been rooming with me for damn near a year.”

  “I’ve had phone calls,” the chief said.

  “The mayor and his stooge, Councilman Bradley, and . . . ?”

  “Members of the business community . . .”

  “Them sons of bitches,” Chap said.

  “. . . who don’t like the idea of a sharp-shooting Negro being on the loose. They were questioning me about why we didn’t go in guns blazing, because they’d heard there were snipers firing out of the church windows and from the bell tower. They were afraid of a full-scaled race riot.”

  “Did you explain to them that this is bigger shit than their nightmares about boogie-man Negroes? It was self-defense, Maloney. No telling how many lives of Chilton’s finest colored citizens he saved. Tell me I’m fucking lying and I’ll head on home, let you keep him.”

  “But his kind of killing is new for us, Chap. And when you get into new territory the safest thing is to be guided by the rules you already know.”

  “That sounds like a politician.”

  “I might not always want to be chief,” Maloney said.

  Well, you sonofabitch, Chap thought. The possibility of Maloney wanting to one day be mayor surprised Chap. He cursed himself for not having counted on that possibility sooner, and for therefore not figuring on it in his long-term dealings with the man.

  “First things first,” the chief said. “What we all know is that whoever he is that’s not an ordinary nigger in there.”

  “He is from Malone, Oklahoma. His uncle was a famous lawman. I’ve talked with the people out there. They are going to call you to vouch for him, if they haven’t already.”

  Maloney thought for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I know about his connection to the marshal there, in Oklahoma.

  “He is trouble in dark skin. And we cannot afford him in Chilton.”

  Chap didn’t deny it.

  “I have to think of my future same as you do yours,” Mahoney said. “Either way it’ll never be on my tombstone Francis J. Maloney was the chief when some outside gunslinger set off some kind of colored uprising.”

  Was that the policeman or the politician or both? Chap wondered.

  They’d known each other all their lives. Chap had always thought Mahoney as even-tempered as they come. There were only two things upset him; one was his wife’s relatives, and two, people telling him how to be chief of police.

  “I don’t write the laws, but I enforce them as they are, fair or not.”

  Chap’s ability to read people was momentarily shaken. Mayor hell, Chap thought. Maloney, you son of a bitch, if you can sneak cheese by a fucking rat like me you might be sneaky enough to be the goddamn governor.

  “Best way to keep this quiet and peaceful,” Chap said, “is for Branch to disappear. I promised I’d either bring him out or have your guarantee he was all right now, and will be all right when you let him out.”

  Maloney, all business again, maybe fearing he’d revealed more than he’d intended, maybe rolling another wooden horse up to the door said, “I told the city fathers that the shooter is in custody, and I’ve got some more looking into it to see just who he is and how much of a threat he is. I’ll hold the suspect and continue our investigation on Monday, until I’m satisfied.”

  “You could’ve said that up front,” Chap said.

  “I’m the law in Chilton,” Maloney said. “I didn’t have to say anything. I want you and the mayor and Harden and Bradley to know it. Now go out and tell them across the street I’ve got everything under control, and I want them the hell away from in front of my station. And if I’m satisfied after tomorrow, I’ll let him go.”

  “By the end of business tomorrow,” Chap said.

  “You handle your business I’ll handle mine.”

  “I’ll see him before I go,” Chap said.

  —

  The Oklahoma flatlands stretched quiet and tranquil, clear to the skyline. As his uncle Cochrane had taught him, Branch inventoried the small room again for weapons: the bandy-legged stool, pencils on the desk, the goosenecked lamp with its iron stand, the electric cord on it, in addition to his hands, fists, feet. Surprise would also be on his side.

  He said, “I asked the white cop why you weren’t taking my statement.”

  Bradshaw made a sound.

  Ottley continued, “He said the chief wanted him to do it. I just thought it should’ve been you. You were first on the scene. You arrested me. Where was the other guy when you were controlling the crowd, keeping order, while the sergeant was what? Getting coffee for the chief?”

  Bradshaw made the sound again. It was part grunt part snort.

  “You’re the one out there being the guardian at the corral gate,” Ottley said, “heel-nipping, circling, barking, keeping the Dunbar Negroes from straying, keeping the captain and the good white folks satisfied so they can go about their daily business, sleep cozy at night.”

  “I should’ve done it because we’re both colored? That what you’re tipping around? Well it don’t mean shit to me. And you know something else? Don’t think if I had interrogated you that you wouldn’t’ve told me everything I want to know.”

  “I do believe you’d try,” Ottley said.

  Bradshaw made the sound again.

  “Being a lawman means straddling a shifting line,” Ottley said as if he knew what he was talking about. It was the way he said everything.

  Bradshaw looked at the back of Ottley’s head, waiting.

  “Casting your lot with the chief as guard dog at the ‘lo’ Dunbar border must’ve seemed the safest bet when you took the job,” Ottley said.

  “I know my job.”

  Ottley said, “Like always with them it’s use one to control another. You get along out there now because Chap and the ‘lo’ Dunbar Negroes tolerate you.”

  Horace, conceding nothing, said, “You got a point?”

  Ottley said, “This might be new frontier for you. It’s when a situation gets really desperate is when you find out something about your true self. Anything untoward happens to me in here it’ll be your doing, that’s the way the chief will tell it. How I leave this room will determine how the rest of your life goes in this town.”

  “You having a special opinion of yourself don’t change my job.”

  “You ever tasted your own blood anywhere but a playing field, Officer Bradshaw?”

  “Turn around,” Ottley was told.

  He did and said, “Just so you’ll know, I
’m not one of your ‘lo’ Dunbar Negroes that will take a lesson from a roughing up.”

  “You’ll take what you’re given.”

  “No. I won’t,” Ottley said.

  Bradshaw tried not to blink but he did.

  Ottley asked, “You killed for them yet?”

  “It ain’t come up.”

  “It has now,” Ottley said.

  They looked at each other.

  Ottley said, “I took my last beatings when I was a boy. A hand raised to me now with intended harm will end in death. Do you hear me?”

  Bradshaw glanced down to make sure the prisoner’s handcuffs were still secure. He said, “I got my job to keep.”

  They left it at that.

  Branch was facing forward, his back to Bradshaw, seeing cattle watering themselves, prairie dogs, quail, antelope, deer, sagebrush, short grass, and hardpan lakebeds, when the chief’s return interrupted him.

  The single knock on the interrogation room door gave Horse just enough time to step aside before the chief opened it and entered, leaving it open. “Turn around,” the chief said to Ottley, who did. Chap was there one step back in the hall. The chief said to Chap, “You’ve seen him.” As he closed the door he stepped back in the hall with Chap and said, “You go tell them you saw him and there’s not a scratch on him.”

  Chap said, “I’ll tell them you’ll release his ass when you’re satisfied that all he is is the motherfucker who saved a church full of people from probable bodily harm. I’ll tell them you expect to complete your investigation by fucking end of business tomorrow.”

  “I’m going to tell the cop outside that within a half hour he is to clear everybody, colored and white, from the front of my station, or they will be arrested for loitering. The mayor and the good businesspeople of Chilton want everybody fit and ready for work in the morning.”

  Chap nodded and turned without a word and moved up the hall.

  Chief Maloney knocked twice, opened the door, and said to Bradshaw, “I’m going home, have a shot or two of bourbon, and a piece of lemon pie. Thomas should have some word on him soon. Meanwhile you take him and lock him up. It’s your responsibility to see he doesn’t bump his head or stub his toe.”

  “Yes sir,” Bradshaw said.

  Before closing the door he said to Ottley, “You are one lucky black son of a bitch.”

  Branch sat astraddle the stool, looking at the closed door and thinking of the Oklahoma flatlands stretched quiet and tranquil, clear to the skyline.

  —

  “When there’s blood spilt,” Chief Maloney said to Branch Ottley the next afternoon, “we want to spill it. If some sharp-shooting, brown-skinned buckaroo is doing my job then they won’t need me.”

  Bradshaw could see the chief had thought up the brown-skinned buckaroo last night and was pleased to get it in.

  “We heard from the mayor and the head marshal in your home town. So here’s what happens next,” the chief continued. “You get your boots and saddle and ride the hell out of my town, no, make that my state.”

  “Wednesday soon enough for you?” Ottley asked.

  —

  First thing that morning Vienna had sent Peck a telegram. She did not want him to hear the news before she had a chance to reassure him that they were all okay.

  CHILTON 845AM MON NOV 30 1941

  MR. PECK MORGAN

  PALMS HOTEL 193 WALTON STREET GALLERT ILL

  WE ARE FINE. DON’T WORRY WILL WRITE TONIGHT STOP

  VIENNA

  “Or fucking what!” Chap asked Branch, laughing, so angry for so long that everything was funny now.

  Branch was sitting in the back seat on the driver’s side behind Hughes, who was driving. Chap was in the front passenger’s seat, on their way to 560 from the police station.

  “What the hell he think he’s going to do, meet you in the goddamn street? Him and who? Horse?”

  Branch was even smiling.

  “Get out of town by Wednesday,” Chap said, the laughter gone.

  Son had been awake earlier that morning. He had heard Chap when he began making telephone calls, local and long distance. To the members of the Negro Businessmen’s Association, following up on the calls he had made to them the evening before, to the two colored lawyers, and the ministers. He had talked to some people he knew in Riverton, and then to Reverend Richmond’s people. Chap would make arrangements to claim the reverend’s body. He would let the coroner worry about what happened to the two other bodies.

  That evening, seated around the dinner table, they worked it out. Branch said he knew he had to go because he had turned into a lightning rod, and therefore he was a liability to Chap. It was decided that Branch would accompany Richmond’s body to Riverton, and then see if he could pick up a lead on who sent the shooters. They’d had no ID on them; only the labels in their overcoats, suits, and hatbands were from Riverton stores. They had no keys in their pockets, not for an automobile or a residence. How had they gotten to the church? Where had they stayed before? Who? What? Why?

  Chap had given Branch a list of names of people who might be of help in Riverton, including Reverend Richmond’s guy—Erskine Churchill—who’d set up the arrangements, first for Richmond’s visit, then relating to the transfer of the body.

  The next morning Ada read to Son from the Extra edition of the Chilton Daily.

  TRIPLE KILLING IN NEGRO CHURCH

  Reverend Gunned Down in Colored Church

  Killers Shot by Third Man

  Two unidentified negro gunmen gunned down Reverend Cook Richmond during Sunday service at Zion A.M.E church. Minutes into his sermon two gunmen fired multiple shots into the minister, killing him. Richmond was a visiting minister from Riverton.

  The police, led by Chief Frank J. Mahoney, detained negro Branch Ottley. Ottley shot and killed the gunmen during a gun battle in the church. None of the others in the church were hurt. Ottley is a resident of 560 Fuller, a boarding house in Lower Dunbar, owned by local businessman Chap Metcalf. The mayhem erupted with approximately 100 present in the church on Spain Street.

  Branch Ottley is in custody at the police station pending further investigation.

  Local negro Attorney Lars Walton, retained as counsel for Ottley, said he expects his client to be released on an undisclosed bond.

  Chief Mahoney reports that the investigation into the identity of the deceased killers continues.

  There were pictures of the church with the crowd outside and interviews with a few of those who been inside during the shooting.

  Vienna wrote to Peck. She gave him a brief-as-she-could eyewitness report. Then,

  . . . Just in this little while I get the feeling that things are going to change because of this. I’m not even sure what it is but I think someday we’re going to look back on this and point to it as a moment of change.

  V

  Wednesday morning Branch Ottley left for Riverton.

  3

  Kin–The Nettles

  26

  Kin

  c. 1960s

  I’m Emmie. Emmie Mto wa moto Nettle. I was Flo’s older sister, Page’s great aunt. I’m gone now. Deceased at fifty-four. I’ve got my own headstone in the Nettle family’s plot. I lay proud among the others so long gone.

  Ezekiel Reason Nettle was the first after slavery to own land, this land, in Acorn, Alabama. He named himself Nettle to remind him and all that followed to be an irritant to the white folks. It was Emilia Nettle Dillon who started the colored school on this land. Noah and Sara Hicks Nettle who sent the first child to college off this land. Ella Nettle was that child. Nettles from before and after. Lives. Stories.

  This is how it was for me:

  I started working for the Kimbroughs when I went into my senior year of high school. Mister and Missus Ethen Kimbrough. The banker. Kimbrough Savings Bank and Loan. I was innocent as creek water.

  “Good morning, Mister Kimbrough.” Like Mama taught me. Mama was their “gal” during the week: cleaning, was
hing, and cooking, babysitting their two little hellions.

  “Good morning, Mister Kimbrough.” He wouldn’t even grunt or look up. Cracker. Fine. They paid me my little money the same either way.

  I cooked their breakfast and dinner Saturday and Sundays.

  If he wanted something he’d tell Missus Kimbrough, off-handed, short, and she’d tell me. Hard to tell sometimes if he was being nasty to her, or just to me through her.

  “Mister Kimbrough would like so and so, Emmie.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  And I’d pour him some hot coffee, or get more grits. Fine. All the same to me. Cracker.

  I was cleaning up the kitchen after their Sunday breakfast. Nobody there but me. And I hear the car crunch in their gravel side drive. And the motor cut off. Humph! They back early—no—just his footsteps. Crunching up the steps onto the front porch. That’s strange. He had taken Missus Kimbrough and the children to church, Grove Baptist, and like usual he didn’t stay. He always headed straight for his home office when he came back. He would work there til time to pick them up and come eat the dinner I’d cooked and left to warm in the oven. Ordinarily. But the front door opens and eases shut. He usually just let it slam.

  Just another few minutes by the mantle clock, tick-tocking now like it’s mocking, and I would have taken off my apron, folded it into my bag, and locked the door behind me. Now Mister Kimbrough is standing in the doorway, still hasn’t announced himself.

  Even in the kitchen smelling of roast, potatoes, string beans, she smelled his cigarette smoke, his aftershave. The warm summer morning air whistling in his nose as he slowly inhales and exhales. My back still to him, “You back, Mister Kimbrough?” He doesn’t answer, like I’m not even in the world. But I am. I’m standing there, humming a made-up tune, halfway between a spiritual and a fox-trot. The noon-nearing sun is making lacey-rose patterns on the drying dishes and glasses and utensils as it streams through Missus Kimbrough’s parted kitchen curtains.

  I’m looking out at the river that runs along the back of the property, at the line of dead trees.