“It’s a dead man. He’s hung up in a tree.”
“A hanging?” Frances asked in disbelief.
Minister Scott took a step back and pushed his tongue deep into his cheek.
“Yeah. I mean, yes, ma’am,” Buckshot said as his breathing began to settle as much as it would for some time. “It’s a colored man, what somebody done hung up like, like....”
“Oh, sweet Lord,” Frances said and pulled the child in to hush him.
Minister Scott looked to Frances and then to Timmy. “Well, we don’t know someone…. Perhaps this man hung himself….”
“How very Christian of you to give folks the benefit of innocence,” Frances seethed. “At least, given to most folks, that is to say.”
“I best get the Sheriff on the phone,” Minister Scott said. When Frances didn’t respond, he turned and started back for the house anyway. After a few cautionary steps he broke into a little trot.
With that, Timothy David ‘Buckshot’ Sayre was spent. His personal marathon finished, and his calamity of fear, pain, confusion, and exhaustion overtaking him, the boy finally broke down and sobbed uncontrollably in his mother’s arms.
Chapter Six
A many-tongued mimic berated the men for being a bother as they passed the time cajoling and spitting tobacco juice into the gravel from the loading dock of the Feed ‘n’ Grain store. The bird began with dog growls and when that garnered no attention it moved on to wailing off-key as it’d learned from the Melby High School marching band. Still, the men did little but sweat and shift their weight.
“Ya hear? That fool, Crispen, he been plowin’ at night again.”
“Again?”
“Yup. Again.”
Two of the five men grunted and one coughed up a blob of yellowish phlegm which failed to clear the loading dock when he expelled it.
“Thit,” he muttered a curse in a thick lisp and smeared the mess with the toe of his boot. Around one of his eyes, a shadow of purple and greenish yellow tainted the flesh.
“At night?” one of the five asked incredulously after a delay, as if such news needed much consideration to digest.
“Yep. Night. Folks done seen ‘im.”
“That one always has been a little screwy.”
“A little? Hell, a lot.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” a skinny man, who wore starched blue jeans with worn white ironed creases, said with a shake of his head.
Off in the trees, the mockingbird that had meant for the men to take notice of it decided to go one further and so it swooped in to settle on the head of a fiberglass stallion that needed a dime to be put into motion. It was a ride for the children who seldom frequented the Feed ‘n’ Grain, and although it made very little money for the proprietor, the stallion remained at the end of the loading dock year in and out, and always would, if only because it had been won on a hand of poker. As the bird landed, or tried to, it was put off by the slick surface of the horse’s glossy, wild mane. After a few misguided flutters of its wings, and fruitless mad grasps of its bony feet, the bird became flustered and beat its way back into the trees.
“Two more families of ‘em done took up in them shacks over to the Patterson’s ol’ place.”
“Yup.”
“Heard that too.”
“Nigger just don’t learn,” the skinny man said.
“Need to find out who owns them places now. Who’s renting ‘em out.”
“I can do that,” the man who’d spat on the dock said.
The mockingbird considered the men once more, but then conceded defeat and took to the wind as a pickup rumbled into the gravel lot. The men looked conspiringly at one another at first but when John Sayre slammed his truck door and approached them they responded to his casual greeting with an abundance of feigned enthusiasm.
“How ya boys doing?” he said.
“Hey there, John.”
“John.”
“Hey now.”
“Sayre.”
The skinny man spat more tobacco juice and only nodded.
As John strode up the four wide steps onto the platform he couldn’t help but notice when one of them elbowed another in the ribs. The prodded man grunted in response and spoke up.
“Say there, Sayre. You know we was just talkin’ about something might be a interest to ya.”
John stopped and looked them over for a few long seconds.
“Yeah, just talkin’ about all them coloreds what done moved in out past 301,” the skinny man said.
John was well aware of the people he referred to, the several families that had abandoned their homesteads outside of Ternsville for the bottom land out past State Road 301 in the southern portion of the county. Still, he said nothing. His steadfast gaze seemingly made three of the men nervous, and they grinned stupidly as a result. But two of the men—the skinny man and another who looked as though he might be his brother since he shared the same thin lips and wispy brown hair—they merely stared back with piercing eyes, but otherwise dead expressions.
“Don’t ya think there ought to be somebody does something afore things get outta hand?” the skinny man said in an acidic voice.
John considered a reply, but then thought better of it and made his way inside through the dark maw of the loading dock’s open double doors. He was still in earshot when the lisping man who’d spat on the dock fired a parting comment.
“Far asth I’m concerned, we got usth two problems, really. The goddamned jigaboos and them bastards like Kane what love ‘em. Wouldn’t you thay?”
The air inside the Feed ‘n’ Grain reeked of dozens of odors mingling with one another before being overwhelmed by the smell of green hay, the bales of which were scattered throughout the place. Most were stacked for sale, while others had stayed on to become makeshift furniture, serving as tables, chairs and footstools for the men who passed time there. Off in the dark, not immediately visible to eyes not quite adjusted to the shift from sunlight to gloom, Miles Perkins, the store’s long-time proprietor, sat on an old oak barrel behind his desk. His massive girth, some nearly four hundred pounds of it, couldn’t be supported by a mere hay bale.
Miles was a fat man, but he wasn’t jolly. Although he fit the bill in appearance—with his formidable build and full white beard—he never once played the part of Santa for the Baptist church’s annual pageant and parade, and no one would think of asking him to do so, either. Just two years earlier Miles had split open the forehead of a local “nitwit” who’d called him “Tiny,” as if that might become Miles’s new nickname. Miles required a cane to move about—which he refrained from doing as much as possible—and he was forced to buy a new one when he split his favorite four feet of hickory in half on Abel Stubbs’s thick skull. After he eventually came to that day, Abel did as he was told and never showed his newly-scarred “ugly mug” around the Feed ‘n’ Grain again, and, to be sure, no one dared try out any other nicknames on Miles Perkins following that.
As if the irritable Miles wasn’t enough to contend with, his dog, Mack, could be just as temperamental, if not more so. Since his arrival to the Feed ‘n’ Grain some eight years prior, Mack, a mutt with what appeared to be a good deal of chow in his blood, had bitten three people and tried his best to get at a handful of others. Not one of the attacks had been provoked or otherwise called for, but none of the victims were injured bad enough—or had the gall—to tangle with Miles over the dog’s unwarranted assaults.
“Keep ‘way from my damn dog!” Miles had commanded as Mack’s hapless victims had cursed and bled.
When Mack wasn’t drawing blood he was usually making sure to let the store patrons know that he was capable of doing so, barking and raising his hackles at least half a dozen times each day. It was when he acted up in such a way that folks learned just how the dog’s mean streak had come about.
“Shut up, Mack!” Miles would bellow, but first he would strike.
Had Mack not been short-leashed to Miles’s desk, the poor creat
ure might have been able to escape the cane lashing from time to time. With a yelp and a sulk the dog would go silent, slinking away as best he could to the end of the five feet of leash, tail-tucked and eyes fearful of being pulled back for more. So that was how the pitiful scene ran several times a day, day in and day out.
As though on cue, Mack began to growl from the first moment John Sayre’s broad frame was caught in silhouette against the open double doors of the Feed ‘n’ Grain warehouse.
“Hey now,” Miles scolded and rapped the concrete floor beside the dog’s head with his cane.
“Miles,” John said with a nod.
“Sayre,” Miles responded in kind. With the exception of his mother and Minster Scott, he referred to everyone by their last name only.
While they shared little else in common, what made John Sayre and Miles Perkins somewhat alike was that they both were men of few words. It was no surprise then that John spent nearly twenty minutes puttering around between the dusty shelves and bins without another exchange between the two.
Miles was content to ignore his only customer by thumbing through one of the many pornographic magazines that he didn’t bother to conceal no matter who came in, be they man, woman, child or elderly, equally perverted or pious. John was busy in the hardware aisles pretending to be concerned with varying sizes of washers. After Miles finally became suspicious enough to glance up from his tattered magazine more than three times, John folded and headed for the door.
“Didn’t find what you were looking for?”
“Naw.”
“Figures,” Miles snickered just as John passed his desk, “From what I hear you’re poking ‘round all the wrong places.”
John stopped mid-stride and Mack snapped his head up from the cool concrete.
“Come again?”
“Why don’t you take your business over to Wheedling. Probably have better luck out that way,” Miles said, not bothering to look up from his magazine.
John asked, “We got a problem here?” He didn’t realize it, but his fists clenched as he spoke.
Although the group on the loading dock wasn’t normally the most observant of their surroundings when they were gathered together, even they couldn’t remain ignorant of Mack’s threatening growl going unchecked by Miles. They ceased their conversation and, at the gesture of the lisping man, gathered at the door. John knew they’d blocked the way when their shadows made the warehouse go dim, but he stayed with his back to them as he dealt with Miles.
“Well, if you really want to know...yeah. Yeah, we do got ourselves a problem,” Miles said, as he finally let the magazine in his plump hands drop to the desk.
...
Buckshot’s tears had all but dried, yet he still jerked with the occasional heave of hyperventilation as the remnants of adrenaline coursed through him. His mother stroked his hair and kissed his brow with each such surge, reminding him that he was safe.
“I don’t wanna go to school ta-morrow,” he said.
“That’s fine, Buckshot. School year’s done with, sweetie.”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“How’s your hand?” she asked, taking his smaller palm into hers.
“Good.”
“We’ll go picking and you can help me can,” Frances said, referring to the blackberries that speckled the patch of woods off to the east side of the family farm.
As if Buckshot’s harrowing news hadn’t been enough, the peculiar conversation she’d observed through her kitchen window a few minutes earlier between Minister Scott and Deputy Tippen certainly made her plead to the heavens aloud.
“Oh, dear Lord,” she’d said as she caught the two men laughing and patting shoulders before each drove off. It was an unsettling truth. She caught herself trembling as much as her son as she went back to him where he lay sprawled out on the living room couch.
“Why do people do things like that to one another, Mama?”
“Oh, Buckshot,” was all she could manage.
“They ain’t gonna do that to us, is they?”
The question made her dizzy as she considered just who her son meant by “they.” Her little boy was learning how to fear others. Where there is fear, there is hate, her grandfather once said to her when she was just Buckshot’s age.
“Nobody wants to hurt us, Buckshot.”
“Ya shore?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“I wished Daddy was home.”
“He’ll be home directly.”
“I’m gonna go to my room now,” the boy said, dragging his sleeve across his face and pulling himself from her.
“That’s fine,” she said, but struggled a bit against his departure.
“Hey, you know what?” Frances offered as he made for the stairs once he was finally free. “Guess what I found?” She held up a finger to tell him to wait.
She disappeared into the kitchen and after a few seconds of mysterious noises she returned with one hand behind her back. She met Buckshot at the foot of the stairs and did her best to smile as she held out a dollar bill.
“This is yours for doing such a good job with your studies.”
“But I ain’t even got my report card yet.”
“Well, whether you get proper marks or not, you’ve studied hard and that deserves as much as anything.”
“Can I spend it...or do I have to save it?” he asked as he tentatively took the money from her.
“You know what my granddaddy used to say?”
The boy shrugged his slender shoulders.
“If you don’t spend it once in a while, what’s the use in having it in the first place?”
Buckshot blinked as he pondered his long-departed great grandfather’s wisdom and his own newfound wealth.
“That’s yours to do whatever you like with,” she said.
As shameful as she felt the gesture was, it still proved effective. The thoughts of the dead man were pushed out of the boy’s mind. Timothy Sayre had replaced those morbid images with the realization that he had more than enough now. Considering his mother’s generosity he even toyed with the idea of telling her of the purchase he’d been planning in secret for some three weeks. However, weighing the risk that she might not see her way through to allowing it, he quickly decided against such honesty.
“Thanks, Mama,” he said. He tucked the bill into his overalls and mounted the stairs by jumping the first two steps.
The hour was late, sometime after eleven, when John Sayre finally came home. As Frances had awaited his arrival she’d gone from worry, to angry-frustration, and back to worry again over his absence.
John slipped into their bedroom in his stocking feet, and, as he did, the lamp on Frances’s nightstand came to life with a click.
As if the sudden illumination and Frances’s scowl weren’t enough to stop him in his tracks, the fact that his sleeping son shared their bed was.
“Hey,” John said. He began his slink towards the bathroom.
“Have trouble finding the house?”
“Franny, it’s been a long day. Don’t start.”
“You been having a lot a long days of late.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Ben stopped in when he was done this evening,” she said referring to the field hand that had been hired to help out with the plowing. “He wanted you to know he’ll be in come morning but he needs the afternoon off tomorrow.”
John paused for a moment as he unbuttoned his shirt. He nodded to Buckshot. “What’s this?”
Frances ignored her husband’s inquiry.
“Said he’s got a funeral to attend.”
“Oh yeah? Okay,” John shrugged as he started to close the bathroom door.
“They got to bury the man your son found hung up in a tree today.”
John froze and then took a step back into the room.
“Normally wouldn’t have the services so quick,” she continued, “but they said they needed to get him in the ground since he was so far along. If you ask
me they just want to bury the evidence.” Her voice trembled a bit with the emotion that propelled it.
“What in the...Buckshot found a body? Who? What’re you talking—”
“You want to keep your voice down?” Frances said. She pulled her son in and cupped a hand over his ear.
“Frances, what’re ya talking about?”
“Somebody lynched a black man out on the grade and your son had the unfortunate luck to be the one to find him. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Lynched?”
“Murdered. So, John, tell me, just what business is it that you’ve been having these past nights?”
“What? For the love of Peter, Franny. Just what’re you gettin’ at?”
He did his best to act offended. It wasn’t a very commendable performance.
“You’ve been keeping some pretty odd hours for more than a few weeks now. I was just starting to wonder why. So tell me, you got to go back over to Wheedling again tomorrow night?”
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” he argued.
With that, Buckshot stirred and his sleepy eyes cracked open. “Mama?”
“I put some sheets on the couch. For sleeping…not wearing,” she said and threw a pillow at John’s feet. “Believe me, John Sayre, we will talk about this a good deal more come morning.”
He drew in a deep breath as if to retaliate, but, sensing his wife’s cold demeanor, John Sayre decided it best to take his pillow and head for the couch downstairs. And so that’s just what he did.
Chapter Seven
By the time Cicada—for that was the name her parents had given their second child—was nine years of age, she stood several inches above all three of her brothers including Ben who was two years older. Her height was found mostly in her spindly legs and that wasn’t something that went unnoticed or unmentioned.
“Girl’s got legs knobby as a mockingbird,” her Uncle Nef had remarked one afternoon as he watched her at play looming over the other children.
“Here now, ain’t no call to be findin’ such faults in that child,” her other uncle, Saul, had scolded. And then after looking her over himself he muttered, “Heron.”
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