A Fine Dark Line

17

WHEN WE CAME into the house Rosy and Mom were sitting on the couch. Mom had her arm around Rosy, and Rosy was crying. Daddy was leaning against the corner of the wall where the living room led into the kitchen.

Callie said, “Rosy, are you okay?”

“Let her be for a moment,” Daddy said. “Y’all come in here.”

We went into the kitchen. There was no door between the kitchen and living room, just an opening, so when we sat at the table he spoke softly.

“Bubba Joe,” Daddy said. “They found him.”

“Where?” Callie asked.

“Dead,” Daddy said. “Washed up out of Dewmont Creek. They found him on the edge of a pasture. Creek had swollen during the rain, receded during the dry spell. He’d been dead awhile. Man owned the land where they found him didn’t go back there often. When he did, to check on a cow, he found Bubba Joe. He was so blowed up he thought he was a calf at first.”

“Yuck,” Callie said.

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” I said. “Not that he was blowed up, but that he’s dead.”

“Rosy still loves him,” Callie said. “That’s so sad.”

“He tried to kill her,” I said, and started to say he tried to kill me, but caught myself. “He might have tried to kill someone else. He might have killed someone else.”

“That’s true,” Daddy said. “I don’t miss him any.”

“Did he drown?” Callie asked.

“Throat was cut. They think he might have been in the water awhile, but mostly he’s been laid up in that pasture, going ripe.”

“How did you find out about it?” Callie asked.

“Barbershop.”

“It could just be a rumor,” she said.

“Man told me was the man who found him,” Daddy said. “And the police called to tell me too. I told Gal and Rosy.”

“Sorry as I am for Rosy,” Callie said, “it’s a relief.”

“True enough,” Daddy said.

Daddy went back into the living room.

Callie said, “You think that was him that chased us that night?”

“Sure of it,” I said.

“Then I guess it’s good he’s dead, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “It’s good.”

———

LATER THAT DAY I went out on the veranda where Rosy had retreated. She sat there looking out at the projection booth. I sat down in a chair beside her. I said, “Rosy, I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t no need to be, Mr. Stanley. He wasn’t no good man. He had it comin’. I don’t know why I feel like I do.”

“I’m sorry you and him didn’t work out better. That he wasn’t a better man.”

“Me too, Mr. Stanley.”

“Just Stanley,” I said.

“You know what your daddy done say?”

“No,” I said.

“He told me now Bubba Joe dead, it don’t matter none about stayin’ here. I don’t got to go nowhere. He gonna fix that top floor up and get me a fan, and cut me out a window right there above them cowboys and Indians.”

“That’s good, Rosy.”

“He say I can stay on and work and he gonna give me a wage and I gonna have weekends off if I want ’em. Gal didn’t say that, and she didn’t put him up to it. He tell me that, and he pat me on the back.”

There were tears in my eyes. I looked away from her, out toward the projection booth.

Rosy reached over, took my hand. I gently squeezed it. She bent her head and cried more deeply than before. I pulled my chair closer to hers. She put her head on my shoulder and kept crying. We sat that way until she was out of tears.

———

ON MONDAY, near dark, me and Nub went out to greet Buster as he came to work. In the projection booth I told him about Bubba Joe being found.

“I know,” Buster said. “I heard it through the grapevine. Ain’t nothin’ happens in this town, or the Section, gets by them birds on that porch over by my house. Word gets to them fast as if it come by telephone . . . It was just a matter of time . . . You didn’t say nothin’, did you?”

“No, sir. ’Course not.”

We had a new picture to run. The Fly, starring Vincent Price. A year ago it would have frightened me to death, and that part where the fly with the little human head says “Help me!” would have given me a nightmare.

Not now. Not after seeing the ghost light, being chased at night by Bubba Joe, nearly being hit by a train, and then seeing Buster cut Bubba’s throat and throw him in the creek.

This night I wasn’t watching the movie. Buster and I were sitting in the projection booth with the little light on, sitting at the small table on which were spread a number of newspaper clippings and a manila folder.

“Yeah, I know you’ll be quiet about it, Stan. Ain’t that I’m ashamed of killin’ him, you want to know true. I ain’t lost one minute’s sleep. He had it comin’. But I don’t need no police.”

“You sure we shouldn’t tell them?”

“I’m sure. They might just let it go. Not give a damn. But they could decide to make sure I went upriver. That ain’t exactly what I had in mind for an old-age pension. Prison stripes and workin’ on a chain gang in the hot sun. I wouldn’t last six months at my age.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “These clippings, the folder? You have something to show me?”

“The folder’s got police reports in it. Told you Jukes would come through. Let me lay some of this on you, Stan. Now just listen. Put it together with what you know, but don’t hold to anything you know. Understand?”

“I think so.”

“Think around corners. Figure out what it could be, but don’t hold to that bein’ it till there’s nothing else to hold to but that.”

“All right.”

“These clippings, we got news that the oldest girl, she left town. You remember me telling you that before?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She went off to London, England. It’s right here in the society section. Ones that make up this town’s society is about three families. Stilwinds is one of the families. This Stilwind girl goin’ off was five years before the murder of either them other girls, Margret and Jewel. Now we got an old police report here. Jukes didn’t give this one to me right off, but when I read this in the paper about Susan, that was her name, goin’ off to London, it got me to thinkin’. She’s fifteen it says, and it’s a January when she goes. What’s that say to you?”

“It’s winter?”

“That ain’t got a damn thing to do with it. Think, boy. How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Yeah. And what you got to do when the summer’s over?”

“Go to school.”

“Give the little boy a candy cigar. That’s right. Go to school. Now, does what I told you come up different now?”

“She left during school . . . She had to leave.”

“There you go. So I’m thinkin’, she goes off during school-time, and she’s fifteen, and they send her to London, what’s the reason? I figured she was pregnant. That’s what them rich folks do if they got a girl gets knocked up. They send them away to have the baby or they send them away to get rid of it. I thought, well, maybe they just wanted her to be educated in England. It could be that way. Rich folks do that. But high school. All of a sudden, three years or so before she graduates . . . Didn’t sound right.

“So, I say to Jukes. Jukes. Go back to when this gal left and get me the police reports for then.”

“Wouldn’t you want hospital reports? To see if she was pregnant?”

“Good thinkin’, but can’t get ’em. May not even exist now.”

“But why police?”

“Nothin’ says this has anything to do with the police, but I got to go on my gut sometimes. I get to thinkin’, what if some event happened with Susan about then and they want to send her off.”

“But why would the cops care if she’s pregnant?”

“What if it isn’t that she’s pregnant?”

“I’m confused now.”

“That was just my guess, but I had to guess another way too. Maybe somethin’ happened with her that was in the police files. Anything. Like she got into some kind of robbin’, and her daddy wanted to send her off. Delinquent stuff.”

“I guess it could be that.”

“But it wasn’t. It’s like both ideas I had come together. See, Stan, the old police chief, he kept all his records just like you’re supposed to do. Figure I was him, I would too. Things can come back on you. My figure is the chief, Rowan was his name, his idea of justice was whatever he wanted to dole out. Colored usually got justice right then and there from him. Same with some cracker. It’s the rich folks get judges, when that’s even bothered with.”

“What are you buildin’ up to, Buster?”

Buster opened the folder, took out some pages.

“This here is written by the chief himself. Just his notes. Says: ‘Susan Ann Stilwind came in tonight and said someone had been messing with her. I asked her who, and she said it was her family. She said she didn’t want to say, but she wanted to be taken away from there. I said, who in your family, and she still didn’t say. She hadn’t been here more than a few minutes talking to me when her daddy, Mr. Stilwind, come in. He said she was going around spreading lies. What she was saying wasn’t true. She was saying it because he had run off the boy that did it to her and now she was ashamed and so mad she wanted him to look bad by saying what she was saying. I didn’t ask her anymore. I told them it might be a good idea if she didn’t stay home anymore. That she should go off somewhere for a time. Mr. Stilwind said he’d make arrangements. She broke down crying and wouldn’t let him touch her, but she went off with him after cussing me.’

“Then you read the society pages, and she’s goin’ off to study in England. This was in the paper a week after this chief dated his entry. She was probably already gone when that word hit the paper.”

“Her father did it?” I asked.

“Chief thought so. Says for her daddy not to have her at home anymore, and to send her off. What’s that say to you? Chief’s way of solvin’ the problem. Send her off so the old man can’t do it to her no more, and she’s able to have the baby in privacy.”

“I guess the chief wasn’t all bad.”

“How do you figure? He was protectin’ the old man more than the girl. Sent her off so the old man doesn’t get embarrassed, it doesn’t hurt the town. He wanted to help that girl, he’d have looked into the matter and done somethin’. Only reason he wrote it down and kept it is if somethin’ came back on him. That way he could show he tried to do something about the matter. Wouldn’t be accused of sweeping it under the rug.

“Better yet, he could use that file to make sure Stilwind didn’t push him around, money or no money, ’cause that’s what Stilwind does. He pushes people around with his money. Other thing. Chief retired not long after Jewel Ellen was murdered.”

“Susan leaving and Jewel Ellen dying are connected to the chief?”

“They’re connected to the Stilwind family and the chief. Remember them letters? I believe Jewel Ellen was pregnant by him, like the other’n. The old man sent one off, but maybe this one was determined to talk.”

“So he murdered her.”

Buster nodded. “Could be. I know the chief bought a nice little house down by the river. Gets a new car every year or so. All this on a lawman’s retirement. Jukes done told me all that.”

“But if he was paid off, why would he leave the notes in the file for anyone to see?”

“ ’Cause he never actually went to Stilwind and said pay me off. Stilwind just did. Didn’t want chief to say what he knew. Stilwind may not have known a report was written down and filed, but he might have feared it was. Chief was willing to take the money without argument and Stilwind was willin’ to pay it ’cause that’s how he solves his problems. With money.

“As for the notes. That’s all they are, notes. They don’t really say Stilwind did somethin’ to her. But it sure makes it look that way. He left them there so if things come back on him, he wouldn’t have taken them with him when he left, to maybe use as blackmail. He could say, ‘They’re right in the files. And you know, it does look like he might have done somethin’ to that girl. Didn’t pick up on that then. Should’a, but missed it.’ Hear what I’m sayin’?”

“Yes, sir. I think so. But what about Margret?”

“Maybe Jewel Ellen told Margret, and Stilwind found out. Jewel got mad, blurted it out. Could’a told him she liked girls, not men. That would hurt his pride even more. Could have said she and Margret were gonna raise the baby. He wouldn’t want that. Wouldn’t want a granddaughter by his own daughter runnin’ around. That’s bad for business.”

“Could he kill his own daughter?”

“There’s people will do anything, Stan.”

“What can we do about it?”

“Done told you, boy. Just a game. Who’s gonna listen if we tell this? We back to the same old problem. A boy and an old nigger with a big tale. And there’s this. Could be this is just part of the tale. Could be like the blind men and the elephant. Everyone’s holding a different part of the elephant, and they all got the elephant all right, but they all describe the part they holdin’ as the whole elephant. They’re all right and they’re all wrong. What it may come down to in the end, is we done our best and we figured some things, but we ain’t got nothin’ left but to let it go. I know that’s all I got left. Lettin’ it go.”

“James Stilwind could know something.”

“You’re not letting it go, are you?”

“No, sir.”

Buster sighed.

“He lived in the house with Jewel Ellen and his father,” I said, “so he might know some answers.”

“He ain’t told them answers already, what makes you think he’s gonna tell ’em now?”

“How would I talk to James about such a thing?”

“I ain’t got no answers on that,” Buster said, pushing the chief’s notes back into the folder. “That’s your problem. You figure on it.”

“Do you have any advice?”

“No.”

———

LATER, I went back to help Callie at the concession stand. After all of his explaining, and my not being ready to drop it all as a finished game, Buster grew morose, like one of his moods was coming down on him. I’d seen all of his moods I wanted to see.

I was sure he was on to the truth, but that there were more concrete answers out there, something we could take to the police. If James knew something, maybe he could be tricked into letting it go. It wasn’t a very clever thought, but when I was that age clever thoughts were not my forte.

Me and Callie hadn’t had a customer for an hour. We sat and tossed stale popcorn toward Coke cups, seeing who could get more popcorn in. Callie was winning.

“What did you think of James Stilwind?” I asked.

“He gave us tickets, didn’t he?”

“But what did you think of him?”

“Oh, he’s cute. He’s arrogant. A little full of himself and show-offy. And he looks very young for his age. He must be in his late thirties at least. Right?”

“That means he was fifteen or so when his sister was burned up in that fire.”

“I suppose . . . Are you still thinking he did that horrible thing?”

“I thought that was your idea.”

“Surely not.”

“Well, one of us had that idea. Maybe it was me.”

She looked at me and smiled. It was that special way of hers that let you know she thought you were an idiot, but she was going to pretend you were precious, even if you knew she was pretending and she knew you knew.

“Drop it, Stanley. Quit snooping.”

“Tell me you’re not interesed.”

“Okay, I’m a little interested. James intrigues me. Some.”

“And it makes Drew crazy.”

“Yes. It makes Drew crazy.”

“Why do you do that, Callie?”

“Because I can, I guess. It’s harmless.”

“Do you think you could talk to James?”

“Talk. About what?”

“About the murder case.”

“There is no murder case. You’re not a detective, Stanley.”

“It’s still fun. You could talk to him about it. You know, use your charms.”

“I don’t know, Stanley. It’s one thing to flirt. But to pry . . . I don’t know.”

“Guess you’re right,” I said. “No one would talk about something like that. Not even if they thought you were pretty.”

“Oh, they might. But I wouldn’t do that.”

“Sure. I understand.”

“If I wanted, I could make him talk.”

“I bet you could.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“What’s it matter to you? You’re right. It’s silly. I’m sure you could do it if you wanted.”

“I don’t believe you think I can, Stanley.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, but I can tell the way you act you don’t think I can . . . All right. You’re on. Give me a few days.”

I kept myself cool, calm, and collected, so as not to blow it. By golly, for once I had outsmarted my sister.