“Weren’t none a the kids,” Peter Kane said without bothering to look up or pause at his task. The Sheriff couldn’t help but notice the man was agitated and taking it out on the earth with the posthole diggers.
“Yeah? How you so sure ‘bout that, Pete?”
Peter Kane stopped then with a final great stab.
“On account of I know it weren’t no damned kids what done that.” Looking up with two dark slits pinched by crow’s feet from too many days out in the fields, the farmer locked eyes on the Sheriff and then peered off to his farmhouse in the distance. Puzzled, the Sheriff followed his angry gaze.
A lazy wisp of gray smoke rose on the horizon from the charred and smoldering cross that stood planted as tall as two men in the Kane’s front yard.
“What in the hell?”
“Goddamn Klan is the hell,” Peter Kane spat with a scowl and resumed his digging.
“Did ya see ‘em, Pete? Was any ya family hurt?”
“No an’ no. An’ them bastards can damn well be glad on both counts. ‘Cause if I had seen ‘em, ya can be sure I’d a filled ‘em with birdshot. And if they was to lay a hand to one head a hair of my family, you can be damn sure I’d do a good sight worse. A damn good sight.” Peter Kane was more attacking the earth than digging at this point.
The Sheriff tried to calm him. “Now, Pete….”
“And I don’t give a good goddamn that you the Sheriff either. I tell it for God His self to know!” As he shouted he plied the two handles of the posthole diggers apart so strongly that one cracked and splintered from the metal shovel blades. “Summabitch!” Peter Kane exploded and threw the broken tool to the ground.
Sheriff Gladwell stepped back and stood quietly as Peter Kane fumed, pacing around the hole with nostrils flaring like a corralled and spurred maverick. Sheriff Gladwell realized in that moment that Peter Kane would be of no use. He’d come to see Kane for the same reason he’d gone looking for John Sayre, and since he considered Peter Kane to be one of Melby’s more upstanding sons, the Sheriff wanted to ask if he could count on him to be deputized if the need arose. But with Kane brimming over with rage as he was now, there was no way Gladwell could arm the man with a gun and badge.
“Why don’t we finish up here an’ then you can ride up to the courthouse with me and we’ll do the paperwork for that,” he said with a gesture towards the cross. “You give me your statement and then I’ll bring you back and I can photograph the crime scene and whatnot.”
“Ahh….” Kane heaved, dismissing him. “I can’t be worried with all that. I should be searchin’ for my damn cows. Summabitches tore down the fence when they come through.”
“Oh, well, say now, I did just see me a heifer just down the road a piece. Put Paul on it already.”
“Yer deputy?”
“Yeah. Paul Tippen. He’s a little green yet, but he’s a good man.”
Suddenly ignoring him, Kane picked up the two pieces of the posthole digger and disgustedly threw them a few feet away along with the old, mangled mailbox. Then he gathered up the new mailbox and post and began the work of planting it into the hard earth.
The Sheriff rubbed his neck with a pained expression and sighed. “Okay then, I’ll leave ya be here, Peter. But you don’t hesitate to call me you have any more trouble.” He turned to go but then turned back. “I mean it now…I don’t want you takin’ matters into your own hands. That’s what the law is for.”
Peter Kane snatched up a shovel and began kicking the mound of excavated dirt back down around the mailbox post.
“Pete, you got my word, I’m gonna take care of this business.”
The farmer stopped what he was doing and stared the Sheriff down. Gladwell was just as adamant and so after a moment Peter Kane was moved to give in.
“Yeah…yeah…I reckon you would at that. Thanks, Sheriff.”
“No need for that. Just the job folks pay me to do.”
“I, uh, I didn’t see them summabitches, like I said. Least not their faces. But that truck…it was that sorry-assed Jimbo. Got that rundown Ford with the ‘federate battle flag hand-painted on the tailgate. Summabitch paints worse ‘en my littlest one’s coloring scribble-scrabble. Least she can keep in the damned lines.”
Sheriff Gladwell broke into a satisfied grin and nodded. “Well, Pete, why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” Finally his investigation was making headway. “Looks like I have some roundin’ up to do myself now.”
“Now Sheriff, you know why I didn’t want to say.” Peter straightened a bit to have passed on his burden. “This is bigger than that chowder-headed sumbitch.”
“It is. It is. And I am going to take care of this, Mr. Kane. All of it. Right quick like.”
“I ‘preciate that, Sheriff.”
As the Sheriff got in his patrol car and began to pull away, he stopped.
“Say, Pete?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You don’t know of anything goin’ on out over at the Sayre place?” No sooner had he asked the question then he regretted it. Putting neighbors into one another’s business just wasn’t the way he liked to do things.
“How so?”
The Sheriff waved his hand, “Aw, no, ain’t nothin’. Do me a favor, forget I asked. Say hello to the missus for me, and stop by the courthouse soon as you can find the time to give me that statement. I’ll be back directly to take some pictures and whatnot, so leave all that alone for the time bein’,” he said with a nod to the smoldering cross. “Take care now.”
Peter Kane watched intently as the Sheriff drove off down the road. He wasn’t sure what the lawman was getting to about the Sayre’s, but he made up his mind to stop by his neighbor’s place as soon as he had his own house back in order. If the Klan was harassing them as well, he meant to know about it. After all, Peter Kane wasn’t going to wait forever for Sheriff Gladwell to make good on his word—no matter how good it was.
Chapter Eighteen
Luna had risen into the night full, plump, and dull blood red. But now, near the zenith of her transit, she’d transformed into a bright concrete orb. Although appearing much smaller than when first she had begun her ascent—born of the wooded horizon—her luminous sphere maintained steadfast dominion over the heavens. Almost everywhere along the dome of night sky, wonting stars peeked out, twinkling defiant across the void, meager testament of their majesty and authority among those far, far away reaches. But here within her province, minute as it was within the Grand Scheme, those Giants were lost, nothing more than shimmering pinpricks, trespassers on the black skin of night, swallowed as they fell within the midst of Luna. Here, she was goddess. And, just like those distant celestial bodies, the fleeting wisps of clouds that skimmed by overhead, those were but banished ghosts, disturbances she would not suffer to trouble her radiance.
Ben and Cicada, sitting barefoot and side by side, could still hear and smell the festivities they’d left behind just down the dirt road a piece. Smoke from meats roasting over an open fire still clung to their clothes, and from off in the dark, children’s laughter rang out slightly shriller over that of the accompanying adults’, finding the two in the gloom and eliciting their own smiles. Above all else, the clap and drum of multiple hands keeping time to the party’s music was as ubiquitous as rain on a tin roof. Most of those whose mouths weren’t filled with barbeque or jovial banter sang in layered harmonies; all present were welcome members of the band.
Before long, once the food was gone or forgotten and the beer and moonshine had taken over, the children would be swept away to their beds. The gospel music would be put away as well, making way for the wilder rhythms and lyrics of jazz and calypso, blues and soul. The celebration would pitch boisterously into full swing then with some couples shedding their sainthood, and those newly emerged sinners reveling as though they’d magically found their way from that dirt road in the middle of nowhere to the manicured estate of Gatsby’s lawn.
These newest of Melby’s residents we
re doing one better than even that fiction they knew nothing of. Since, even in this trying place and time, their song was God’s voice, their dance one of jubilation in the praise of life and His glory.
“Ah, Jesus,” Ben gasped as he drew a forearm across his lips.
“Mm-hmm,” Cicada intoned with a mother’s all-knowing scold. “You can go blind drinking that foolishness, don’t you know.”
Ben gagged a little as he laughed and nodded in agreement. He offered up the Hellmann’s Mayonnaise jar he was drinking from, not expecting her to accept. When she took it from him, his watery eyes glinted a little more in the radiant moonlight, struck by the surprise of her action.
“Gimme that,” she said, and then took on a deep swig that caused Ben to throw his head back and crow.
“Hear now, hear now, lil’ girl. That ain’t no rum. You drinkin’ grade A ever-clear! You’d better respect that business!”
For several long seconds Ben’s throaty laughter nearly drowned out all else.
“Gracious!” she managed to gasp out after the bite of grain alcohol passed enough to return the voice it had stolen from her.
“See now,” Ben said, letting loose another small fit of laughter. He threw back his head, nearly falling over from where he sat next to her on the open tailgate of his pickup, and caught sight of the moon. In fact, he caught sight of two moons. He was ‘nice ‘n’ tight,’ as their Uncle Nef liked to say. “Here, here,” Ben said, gesturing for the jar back.
“Oh, no sir, you done had enough for three nights, mister.”
It was the first Ben had drunk since the Juneteenth celebration a few weeks prior. He’d gotten quite soused on that night as well. Before that, he’d gotten drunk to have left the troubles of Ternsville behind. Even Uncle Saul drank on that night.
The big man waved his little sister off and settled back contently to watch the night sky. Cicada paused her scolding and smiled over him. After stealing another drink when she thought he wouldn’t notice, she gave in and lay back beside him.
“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout?” she asked, thoughtlessly slipping into the lazy diction she’d spent the last few years doing her best to leave behind.
“Not a damned thing,” Ben chortled. She playfully slapped his thigh. “Girl,” he reprimanded.
“Wo-man,” she corrected. She’d been trying to make the men in the Anderson household see her as a woman for years. She’d not succeeded. No matter how much she accomplished, she would always be little knobby-kneed Cicada to Nef, Saul and Ben.
She thought for a second that he’d passed out, but then Ben replied, “Why, excuse me, Miss Cicada.”
“Fool.”
“Yes, fool. We all fools.”
“Sit up a minute, you,” she said, kicking her big toe into his dangling calf.
“Here now,” he said, but made not the slightest effort to do as she had commanded.
“Sit up!” The whole foot whacked into him this time.
“Girl,” Ben warned again, but this time sat up as he did.
That seemed to satisfy her. “I wanna talk.”
“We is talkin’.” He made a move for the moonshine but she easily kept it from him.
“You’ve had enough for one night. I want to talk.”
“Ya, ya, ya…” he said as he made a made a yapping gesture with his hand. “So talk.”
“How many women you been with, Ben.”
“What?”
“No, I guess that ain’t what I want to know anyway. How many women…have you ever been in love with?”
Away over at the celebration, a great unexplained whoop and roar passed through the crowd, followed by a fit of laughter before things continued there as they had been.
“Let’s go,” Ben said and stumbled up from the tailgate to return to whatever it was they were missing.
“Benjamin….”
Her plea was as effective as if she’d been a bitch snatching up her pup by the nape.
“Aw now, what lil’ girl?” he said, cringing into a hangdog expression complete with slumped shoulders.
“They’ll be carrying on for hours. Can’t you spend a bit of time with your sister?”
“Sure, sure,” he said. He plopped back onto the tailgate, his weight pressing a creaking from the truck’s shocks and bringing Cicada’s toes back down to the dirt from where they’d risen following his momentary departure. “Whatcha wanna chew the fat o’er?” he sighed.
Pleased, Cicada passed him the jar of moonshine, but not before taking two quick nips for herself.
“Ah…” Ben intoned as he gladly accepted his reward.
The moonshine had begun to take hold of Cicada as well, and now it was like a pack of hunting dogs chasing the rabbits of her flitting thoughts. She’d forgotten what she’d originally meant to talk to Ben about, so now she conceded to be content just to talk about anything at all. Suddenly a new rabbit was flushed from the thicket and she set her dogs bounding after it.
“What you plan to do when Saul an’ Nef is gone?”
He cocked his head and gave her his best expression of bewilderment; one brow cocked on high, his chin pulled in.
“They ain’t gonna go on livin’ forever,” she said with the honesty of the bottle in her blood, sullying her otherwise superior grammar.
“Don’t beat ‘round the bushes, do ya, lil’ girl? That what they taught ya in them ivy-covered halls…fret o’er this an’ that? Death an’….”
“It’s not fretting. And yes, they taught me to be pragmatic.”
“Uh-huh. Prag…math, prag…phhh.”
“You should consider the future, Benjamin. Anticipate life. Don’t simply react, but have a plan of action for those rapids and waterfalls that wait ahead…before it’s too late to put to shore.”
“Oh, I see, I see, now you a steamboat capt’n. Uh-huh.”
“Fuck you, Benjamin.”
“Shoo-wee! More hun’red dollar words!”
He laughed while she fumed, but then he knew he’d best straighten up and make good.
“C’mon now, Cicada. Whatcha ‘spect? Here I am with my lil’ sister pressing her education on me like I was her youngin’.” She ignored him and took another pull from the jar that’d soon be catching up with her after it was too late to know better. Ben went on, “I may not know much, but here you come talkin’ ‘bout a river a life an’ puttin’ to shore….”
“Uncle Saul.”
“Where?” He startled upright. There was no one about. “Do what now?”
“Uncle Saul was the one told me that. ‘Have a plan for the rapids of life,’ he said to me. Told me when I left off for school. I know you don’t respect my education none, but do you still have time to listen to the man who raised us?”
“Saul….Saul…Sau…Sau….” Ben chuckled the name away.
Nature conspired to put aside their disagreements in that moment as a sudden flurry of fireflies settled around them. At first the insects numbered just three or four, but in no matter of time a cascade of twinkling green commanded the surrounding night. Cicada wasn’t sure if Ben gurgled with amusement at the lightning bugs’ luminescent mating dance, or if it were thoughts of Saul, or perhaps some other even more mystifying joke birthed from the moonshine polluting his coherence. For her part, even though she was nearly as inebriated, Cicada decided that her own devilish grin was brought about by some combination of the wonder for those curious flickering bugs and unspoken musings over what she considered her “secret mischief” with John Sayre.
“How many married women you think Uncle Nef had over his years?” she asked.
“Humph,” Ben grunted as he considered. “Mama tol’ me,” he said after a few seconds of rumination, “back when she was a child…he got his-self shot in the rear end with rock salt climbin’ outta some woman’s bedroom winda.”
Cicada guffawed and Ben joined in.
“They sure do put a good deal into passing along their seed don’t they?” she said.
“They
who? Saul ain’t ever even looked at no woman sideways, far as I can tell.”
“I was talking about the fireflies, silly.”
“Ah.” He considered the swarm of little lanterns flitting around them. “Yeah, that is a might effort,” he agreed, “but no more than any other God’s creature, I suppose.”
“You think?”
“Think? I know’d. Hell, I gotta dollar says Nef’d strap a candle to his ass if he thought it’d ‘tract the ladies.”
They fell on each other in drunken merriment once more.
Between gasps, Cicada added, “Never mind the candle…he’d set his rump on fire!”
With that, Ben went to pieces. In a convulsing fit of thigh slaps, howling and hooting, he accidentally knocked the moonshine out of Cicada’s loose grip. It fell to the ground with a thud and the remainder of the contents instantly sloshed from the jar’s large mouth. The clear alcohol pooled on the hard dirt road for a fleeting snapshot, seeming to magically reflect its namesake on high overhead, before suddenly disappearing into the thirsty earth.
As quick as the moonshine was gone, so was Cicada’s good humor.
“Shoot!” she pouted. Although she made no effort to get up from the tailgate, she ineffectually thrust out her hands for the now empty jar at her feet like some helpless child in a highchair begging for sweets just beyond their reach. Her puckered expression of frustration only reinvigorated Ben’s hearty laughter.
Chapter Nineteen
It had been back in the fall of the previous year—perhaps October, maybe November—when Timothy was first called ‘Buckshot.’
Alone in his son’s room late one afternoon when the house was unusually quiet, John would later desperately try to recall the fading moments of that day not quite a year gone by, the day when his son had acquired his unusual nickname. One detail was recalled easily enough. The name wasn’t bestowed upon the boy by a family member, or even a friend. It’d been given by a man who hardly knew the boy. And while such nicknames were almost the norm in those parts, it was more than a tad peculiar to come by one in that manner.
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