Black Hammock

by Michael Wiley

  ‘Kay stayed at the banister, and Amon, surprised but sure of his power in the house, remained in his chair. I was too scared to move. Only Tilson shoved back from the table.

  ‘Amon cupped his chin in his hand and said, “What can we do for you, Walter?” If he’d gotten up and gone for one of his guns, everything would have been fine – he must have owned forty by then, and he kept some of them loaded.

  ‘Walter came to the table and stood by him. “I’ve come to tell you it’s time for you to go,” he said.

  ‘“Go?” Amon said, and he grinned.

  ‘“Go,” Walter said. “Time to leave. You did it before. No one missed you. I didn’t.”

  ‘“You didn’t, no.” Amon nodded at me, as if he had everything under control. “No, you moved right in. A man might forgive another man for walking into his house uninvited once. He might even forgive him for walking into his bedroom. But twice? That wouldn’t be a man. That would be either a saint or a man with no self-respect. A coward. And I’m none of those.”

  ‘“I’m sorry, Amon, but you can’t stay.” Walter almost managed to sound apologetic.

  ‘“That’s your decision, is it?” Amon grinned around the room – at me, at Tilson, at Kay.

  ‘“It’s our decision,” Walter said. “Kay’s and mine.”

  ‘Amon’s grin cracked. He looked at Kay.

  ‘She said, “You’ve exhausted me, Amon. There’s too much of you. Soon there will be nothing left of me.”

  ‘Walter said, “We’ll give you one chance, Amon. You can walk out now. If you don’t—”

  ‘Amon bellowed, his chest and face swelling in his rage. He looked as if he would vomit, as if tears would shoot from his eyes. He rose from his chair and turned over the dinner table. Plates, bowls, and glasses shattered on the floor. At that moment, I knew that someone in the room would die that night.

  ‘Walter backed away one step, but one step only. Kay moved from the banister and threw something to him. It was one of the splitting chisels that Amon used to hack pine logs into strips for the kiln. Until that afternoon, the chisel had been rusty and dull, but Kay had taken a stone to it, and it spun as bright as a star into Walter’s hand.

  ‘Tilson rushed him, but Walter went to Amon and sank the chisel into his chest. The chisel made a sucking noise as Walter pulled it out. Each time that he thrust it again, it cracked bones and ground against something inside of Amon. Amon fell to the floor, and Walter mounted him. Amon must have died fast, but Walter kept plunging the chisel into him until his chest and stomach were a black bloody hole.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ Lexi shouted. ‘My dad ran away. He’d done it before.’

  I said, ‘That’s what Kay told the police when Lane Charles reported him missing. She didn’t call the police herself. When they asked her about that, she said that Amon had left once and she’d taken him back. Now that he’d done it again, she said, she didn’t want him back.’

  ‘No,’ Lexi said. ‘Why would the police believe her?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they?’ I asked. ‘As she said, he’d left before. They knew he’d been unstable, and a quick check – if anyone bothered to make one – would show that he had never gotten the treatment that the doctors in San Francisco had said he needed. It seems that only one young cop thought something was wrong.’

  ‘Daniel Turner,’ Lexi said.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘And Lane Charles also knew in his heart that his friend was dead, though he had no more proof than Daniel Turner did. He’d seen Kay walking up-island toward Walter’s place all those mornings when Amon was cutting wood, and he’d kept a close eye on the house. But when Daniel Turner asked, Walter admitted to the affair and hinted that learning of it might have sent Amon running for a second time. When Daniel Turner pulled the charred scraps of a bloody dress from the tar kiln, Kay pointed out that, with all the axes, chisels, and saws, everyone in the house bled from time to time. When the police – who, in an unrelated case, were searching a section of South Georgia woods along the Interstate Highway – found the burnt-out car that Amon supposedly left in, Kay and Walter could offer no explanation and acted like it wasn’t their obligation to offer one.’

  ‘How about Tilson?’ Lexi asked. ‘He saw—’

  ‘He saw everything,’ I said. ‘He knew everything. He buried Amon’s body by the chicken pen.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ she asked.

  ‘Self-interest? Self-preservation?’ I said. ‘He knew that justice is slow and it takes years and years to get rid of the blood of a killing like Amon’s. Tilson is smart. He knew that you can scrub the floorboards with bleach and a wire brush, and you can rub pine oil and pitch into the rest of the floor so it takes the same color as the stain, but those are superficial cures. Tilson disliked Kay and Walter. Walter treated him badly, and Kay mostly ignored him. Only Amon had been good to him. But the best he could do for Amon was to dig a hole for him in the yard so he could be close to the house when justice came. That and he could protect me.’

  ‘What happened to you?’ Lexi asked.

  ‘When Amon was lying on the floor, I climbed on top of him the same way I’d climbed on to him when we were driving west. The pool of blood and broken bones where his belly and chest should have been felt hot, and if I could have, I would have climbed into his skin and stayed. When Walter pulled me away, I bit and scratched him. I tried to kill him. But Walter threw me down on the floor and left me there.

  ‘However much planning Kay and Walter had done before killing Amon, they’d failed to figure out what to do with me. I might be old enough to be believed by the police and the courts, and I wouldn’t be coaxed or threatened into silence. But Kay had drawn the line at killing me. Walter could torture Amon if that’s what it took for him to feel free. He could cut off Amon’s arms and legs. He could stir his insides with a wood chisel. But I was a child – her child, even if I didn’t act like it. Walter had reasoned with her. He’d countered every scenario she had offered where they remained safe after Amon’s murder with a scenario of his own where I betrayed them. Still she had refused to let Walter hurt me. Even when Walter came into the house that night – even when she held the wood chisel to her thigh as she stood by the banister – she had convinced herself that there was another way.

  ‘But as I lay on the floor where Walter had thrown me, covered with Amon’s blood, Kay knew that Walter was right. She watched me lying on Amon’s body, burrowing into it. She must have thought that I was irretrievable. Amon had taken me, made me his own and no one else’s. If Amon had to die, then I did too. I was no longer her child. Outside, the frogs and crickets began to sing. The air in the house smelled of brine, the first smell of death. “Not here,” Kay said.

  ‘Walter sighed with relief. Not here meant In another place. He asked, “Where?”

  ‘“In the woods,” she said. “I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to hear it.”

  ‘He came to me and picked me up – like a father picking up a sleeping child to carry him to bed.

  ‘But Tilson, who had stood by Amon’s bookshelves as if he wished to be forgotten, said, “I do it.”

  ‘Walter and Kay stared at him.

  ‘He said, “You never trust me again if I don’t. You think I tell the police unless I got blood on me too. I do it, then you don’t got to worry.”

  ‘They stared at each other, and Kay nodded. Walter said to Tilson, “Take a shovel. Do it where the soil is wet.”

  ‘Tilson said, “I live here my whole life. I know where to put him.”

  ‘“Don’t tell me where,” Kay said. “I swear, if I hear anything—”

  ‘Tilson said, “I know how to be quiet. All you life I been quiet. That ain’t no problem for me.”

  ‘Tilson carried me out into the night, across the yard, and into the pine woods. Maybe I should have panicked but I felt as secure in the arms of this man who had just promised to kill me as I’d felt in my dad’s arms. A yellow crescent moon, as sharp-e
nded as a bull’s horn, was rising through a cloud, and I watched it over Tilson’s shoulder. “It all right, boy,” Tilson said as he walked. “Ain’t nobody but nobody, yeah, it all right.”

  ‘In the woods, Tilson circled to a path that ran along a rise that separated a grove of slash pines from a stand of loblollies. A night bird dropped from a low branch and swept past us, and then the only sounds were Tilson’s heavy breathing and the crush of pine needles under his feet.

  ‘The path left the woods and cut across a low meadow. Tilson carried me through long grasses and over the tops of sand dunes, then into neighboring woods and back out into another meadow.

  ‘Tilson lived in a windowless shack under a pecan tree, and the ground around it was covered with dried husks and split shells. The shack was made of weathered wood that Tilson had mudded to fill the cracks. A padlock held the door shut.

  ‘“Hush now,” Tilson said, and set me down. He unlocked the door and hurried me inside.

  ‘The floor was made of wooden planks laid side by side, swept clean of dirt and dust. The bed – a mattress on a thin wooden frame – was covered with cotton sheets and a piece of carpet. Glass jars – holding stones, small branches, and dried leaves – lined one of the side walls. The facing wall was pasted over with the yellow sheets of an old newspaper. The air smelled of animal skins and rotting wood and cheap wax. Tilson said, “I come back tomorrow, maybe next day, maybe day after. You don’t make a sound, you understand? They water in the jug if you got to drink. They meal and biscuit in the tin. You got to piss or shit, you do it inside against the wall. We worry about that later. You understand? I come back when I can.” He went outside then, closed the door, and snapped the padlock on it, locking me inside.

  ‘He returned three nights later, at which point I was more than half insane with fear, filth, and hunger. I had wrecked the inside of the house so badly that the best that could have come to it was burning, but Tilson just helped me clean myself, fed me half of a sandwich, and, with neither anger toward me nor an apology for being away so long, led me away from the shack, across some fields, and to a road that reached from the interior of the island to the bridge. There, a brown sedan was standing on the shoulder with a woman at the wheel. “She take care of you, OK?” Tilson said, and pushed me toward the passenger door. “You keep you mouth shut. You understand? You do that for you daddy. And you never come back. You understand? You come back and someone got to die, and I think that someone be you.”

  ‘I asked, “Where is she taking me?”

  ‘“Far away, boy,” Tilson said. “Farther the better.”

  ‘The woman in the brown sedan was a cousin of Tilson’s mother, and she lived outside of Atlanta. Her name was Bessy Ross – “like the flag,” she said – and she was big-boned and diabetic and suffered from ulcers. She was tough, though, and when her neighbors asked what a sixty-year-old black, Southern woman was doing with an eight-year-old white boy, she let them know it was none of their damn business, and when whites on the bus or on the street looked at her with suspicion, she gave them a look that made them turn away in embarrassment or shame. She wasn’t loving toward me, but she was caring. I had never been to school, though Amon had taught me to read, so, after teaching me the basics of addition and subtraction, she found a place that would take me. After my second day, I told her, “The flag isn’t Bessy. It’s Betsy.”

  ‘“No, child,” she said. “They’ve got that wrong.”

  ‘She bought me good-enough clothes and fed me good-enough food. When I cried at night, she closed the door so I could have privacy.

  ‘She cleaned house and cooked meals for a divorced lawyer and her two sons, and on days when I had no school she brought me with her to the woman’s house. She put a broom or a dust rag in my hands and she didn’t complain when I left my work unfinished and played with the lawyer’s younger son, who was my own age. One evening, after she had finished cooking the lawyer’s dinner, the lawyer asked her to sit at the table with her and then said, “Now, Bessy, tell me about this boy.”

  ‘Bessy Ross shooed me out of the room, and for two hours she and the lawyer talked. After that night, I often caught the lawyer watching me as I swept the kitchen floor or played with the younger son. I learned fast. If nothing else, after living in the house with Amon and Kay, I’d figured out how to pay attention. I caught up with the other children in school, and when I was at the lawyer’s house, I copied her sons’ manners.

  ‘Then Bessy Ross got sick with cancer, and on a Saturday morning, two months after the diagnosis, the lawyer pulled up in her Audi and helped me carry my belongings to the trunk. “You’re going to live with us for a while as Miss Bessy takes care of herself and gets healthy,” she said. “Would you like that?”

  ‘I said I would.

  ‘Three weeks later, Bessy Ross died.

  ‘A careful lawyer would have turned me over to child welfare. But, like Bessy Ross, this lawyer was more interested in being charitable than careful. For the next nine years, I shared a bedroom with her younger son, Jimmy. On my last night on Black Hammock Island, I had slept in a windowless shack, and now I woke each morning when sunlight shined through a clean window in an air-conditioned house that smelled of furniture polish and lavender soap. Downstairs, the cook would be setting bacon and toast on the kitchen table, and a woman who I barely knew but who treated me more gently and kindly than anyone else I’d ever known would be reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. As if this was the way real people lived.

  ‘When the lawyer’s sons became teenagers, they turned wild, the way that kids with parents who are more generous than sensible sometimes do. They talked their mother into buying them a dirt bike, which they rode on a local trail. Once, while stoned, they jumped from their second-story roof over a tile patio into the deep end of their backyard pool. I took a hit from the joint and, closing my eyes, jumped from the roof into the air after them.

  ‘Neither of my brothers – that’s what I came to think of them as – went to college. Their interest in dirt bikes grew into a love of motorcycles, and, after some long arguments, the lawyer agreed to give them money to open a dealership, which, by the time that Jimmy turned twenty-two, had expanded into three dealerships and an offshoot repair garage.’

  Outside, a heavy piece of metal slammed against the roof at the back of the house. Unless Paul had changed our plan, that would be a ladder.

  Lexi and I listened. There was no more noise. Lexi asked, ‘Are the men outside the lawyer’s sons?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Jimmy and Robert.’

  ‘Who’s the man who drove you here?’ she asked.

  ‘Paul. A friend of mine.’

  ‘The woman?’ she asked.

  ‘Carol. I’m going to marry her,’ I said.

  ‘This is screwed-up,’ Lexi said.

  The ladder scraped against the roof.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Lexi asked.

  ‘What would you do?’ I said.

  More scraping.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ I said. ‘And you think I’m right to do it.’

  ‘What about me?’ she asked. ‘And Cristofer?’

  Footsteps went up the roof above us. Robert and Jimmy were climbing on to the house. If I punched through the plywood, the shingles, and the tar, I could have grabbed their ankles.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Lexi asked.

  ‘It’s moving day,’ I said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ she said.

  Then, down inside the house, the front door slammed.

  ‘Are they coming in?’ Lexi asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. Not unless they were innovating.

  They weren’t. Walter had gone out. In the yard, his .22 popped twice, three times, twice more. Then the heavier guns shook the house. The door slammed again. Walter was back inside.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Lexi asked.

  ‘Don’t you think I deserve it?’ I asked.
>
  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not this.’

  ‘I’m doing it for you too,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  The footsteps went down the roof. The ladder scraped. Then the house was quiet.

  Lexi flipped on the flashlight and slid to the attic hatch. ‘I’m going down,’ she said.

  I repeated what I’d said the first time we came to the attic. ‘You can’t tell Walter and Kay who I am.’

  ‘Or what?’ Lexi asked.

  ‘What will they do to me if they know?’ I said.

  ‘What will you do to us?’ she asked.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ I said.

  ‘Cristofer?’ she asked.

  ‘Never,’ I said.

  ‘Mom?’ she asked.

  I turned my eyes away.

  ‘Walter?’ she asked.

  I said, ‘What do you expect?’

  ‘Not this,’ she said.

  ‘You could help me,’ I said. ‘You should. Walter has hurt you. They both have.’

  ‘No,’ Lexi said.

  ‘Are Amon’s guns really gone?’ I asked.

  She gave me a look that could have pitied me. ‘A long time ago,’ she said. ‘Mom made Walter dump them.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  She said, ‘In Clapboard Creek.’

  I saw no reason for her to lie.

  ‘We’re defenseless,’ she said. ‘You can do whatever you want with us.’

  I said, ‘You should help me. I’m your brother.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said.

  THIRTY

  Lexi

  Death smells sweet. As if sweetness met sweetness and met sweetness again. Until all that sweetness got sick and choked on itself. It gets in your nose and throat. A leech. It goes only inward. You try to blow it out. You hold your breath. You run outside into the air. But it goes up to your brain. And down to your belly.

  I dropped from the attic hatch. The smell bristled on the inside. Licked against the top of my mouth. I gagged.