The Bottoms

11

Mama made me swear not to tell Daddy about Red’s visit. She said she wanted to do it. Word it right so he didn’t get angry and go off half-cocked. I didn’t worry much about that. Daddy could be a little impatient at times, and I had seen him angry, but I hadn’t never seen him go off half-cocked.

That night I listened with my ear close to the wall to find out what Mama told Daddy about Red, but they were whispering so light I couldn’t make anything out but their bedsprings making noise. I drifted off to sleep finally, and when I awoke the next morning I remembered faintly dreaming of the Goat Man.

It was a Monday, and Daddy was off from the barbershop. He had already gotten up and fed the livestock, and as daybreak was running like a broken egg yolk through the trees and the birds were calling out that they were in search of breakfast, he got me up to help tote water from the well to the house. Mama was in the kitchen tending the wood stove, cooking grits, biscuits, and fatback for breakfast.

When we came in she smiled and he kissed her on the cheek and ran his hand down her back. She gave him a quick peck on the mouth and a wink.

We left out then for another bucket of water, and about halfway to the well, I said, “Daddy. You ever figure out what you’re gonna do with ole Mose?”

He paused a moment. “How’d you know about that?”

“I heard you and Mama talkin’.”

He nodded, and we started walking again. We got water and started back to the house. He said, “You ain’t mentioned you know anything about that, have you?”

“No sir.”

“Good boy.”

“So what have you decided to do with Mose?”

“I haven’t decided. I can’t leave him where he is for good. Someone will get on to it. I’m gonna have to take him to the courthouse, or let him go. There’s no real evidence against him, just some circumstantial stuff. But a colored man, a white woman, he’ll never get a fair trial. I guess I’d done let him go, but I got to be sure myself he didn’t do it.”

“I thought you said the woman was colored. Or part white.”

“You was listenin’ from somewhere at Mrs. Canerton’s house, wasn’t you?”

I admitted it.

“Well, let me tell you somethin’. That woman was white. She didn’t have a drop of colored blood that anyone knowed of. She was dark-lookin’ ’cause she was bloated and dead and up there in that tree for the wind and rain to hammer on. Folks that found her just thought she was colored, way her skin had turned. Around here, someone gets a good burn in the sun and it turns brown, there’s someone whisperin’ there’s colored blood in ’em. Hell. I thought she was colored too. Body gets like that, you can’t tell much about skin or race or nothin’. Death puts us all even, boy.”

“Mr. Chandler said she was colored.”

“She’s dark-skinned, son. Just like I said.”

“But you said-”

“I threw that in to keep from stirrin’ people up. You put white and colored in the same sentence, folks start to stir.”

“You did put white and colored in the same sentence. You said she was part white.”

“You’re right.” Daddy paused to take his pipe out of his pocket, stuff it with tobacco, and light it. “I’m not sure that was smart, son, but I was playing the odds. I said she was colored, no one cares. Had I said she was white, there’d have been lynchin’s all over this county. But she’s got white blood, it gives most folks pause, makes some folks see her as a human being. On the other hand, she’s not so white they’d get worked up over it. It’s a sad state of affairs, but that’s how it is.”

“How’d you find out she was a white lady?”

“Thinking she was colored, I drove her body over to Pearl Creek to see if Doc Tinn or Reverend Bail knew who she was. They did, but not because she was colored. She was white and had a bad reputation and mostly worked the colored section over Pearl Creek. That gave her a worse reputation. A white woman that’ll lie down with coloreds don’t get the respect of one will lie down with her own kind. And a woman like that don’t get much to begin with. She hoboed to get to Pearl Creek from Tyler, rode the train back when she could catch it. Did most of her work at the dance joints and about. But, word gets out – and it will eventually – that she was white, well, it won’t matter she was a woman none of the so-called self-respectin’ men over here would have given the time of day, even if they might have given her a dollar. Them same men are gonna be up in arms, ravin’ about how a colored killed her and how all white womanhood is in danger.”

“Ain’t it in danger?”

“Womanhood in general is in danger, son. Anyone could be in danger with a killer like this. But I think it’s mostly women he’s after. I’m just sayin’ she’d gotten killed by a train or drowned by accident, wouldn’t have been no mournin’. But folks like Nation think maybe a colored had his way with her, well, Mose and every colored boy over twelve might end up bein’ lynched.”

We carried the buckets toward the house.

“You said you got to be sure Mose didn’t do it, but you don’t think he did, do you, Daddy?”

We were on the back porch now. Daddy set his bucket down. I set mine down too. “It’s like I’ve opened this box and I don’t know how to close it. Mistake I made was mentioning it. That was pride talking.”

“You were proud of arresting Mose?”

“I was proud of the fact I was doin’ somethin’. So far in this whole business all I’ve done is look at a couple dead bodies, talk to a few folks, and that’s it. I don’t know no more than I did when I started. ’Cept these women got names, and I figure they got loved ones. Worse thing about it, I don’t even know for sure. I didn’t try to find any of the families or go see ’em. I was gonna do any real investigatin’, that’s what I should have done. It’s what I ought to do. Mistake I made was arrestin’ Mose in the first place, then tellin’ I’d arrested someone. And I did that on account of Doc Stephenson.”

“How’s that?”

“He was in the shop. He came in to get Cecil to cut his hair. He used to come in now and then for me to do it, but after that little event over in Pearl Creek, he only has Cecil do it. I guess my pride got to me, him thinkin’ I didn’t know what I was doin’, and Cecil gettin’ the bulk of the customers, so I shot my mouth off like I was talkin’ to Cecil.”

“But you was talkin’ to Doc Stephenson?”

“Afraid so. And it come back to haunt me at Mrs. Canerton’s.”

We took the water inside, poured it up in the pitchers and one of the washtubs where Mama kept extra water throughout the day, then started back.

We came to the well and Daddy rested his bucket on the curbing for a moment. He turned to me and said, “You know why I haven’t seen any of the folks of these women got murdered?”

I shook my head.

“ ’Cause one’s colored, Harry, and the other is a prostitute. I don’t really know no colored people, ’cept Mose. I talk to a bunch of ’em, and like ’em okay, and I think a bunch like me okay, but I don’t know ’em, and they don’t really know me. Hell, I don’t really know Mose. All me and him ever talked about was fishing and the river and now and then tobacco. I guess I don’t want to know no prostitute’s mother or Daddy. Down deep, I think I may be just like everyone else. And you know what, Harry?”

“No sir.”

“That bothers me.”

Daddy dropped the bucket into the well. When it splashed, he began cranking it up.

“You ain’t like everybody else, Daddy. You don’t hate colored.”

“Down deep, like I said, I ain’t so sure. I have my feelings.”

“But you and Mama, you’re different than the others.”

“There’s lots of folks feel like we do. It’s just the ones feel the other way got bigger mouths and they’re meaner. Let me tell you somethin’, son. When I was a boy every word out of my mouth about the coloreds was nigger this and nigger that. I fished on the river as a boy a lot, and there was this colored boy down there, and he was catching big ole catfish. I was jealous of him. The idea of a colored catchin’ those big ole fish, and me not able to catch anything. I’m ashamed to tell it, but I was gonna beat him up one day. I was down there, and there he was near my spot, pullin’ them fish out like they was trained to jump on his line.

“He looked over at me, and said, ‘Sir, I got some good bait I done made myself, you want some?’

“I took some, and I still didn’t have any luck. But we sat there on the bank and we talked, and by the end of the day I knew somethin’ I’d never known before.”

“What was that?”

“He was just like me. He had a mean old Daddy too. Old man had killed half a dozen folks, all colored, so not a damn thing had been done to him, and the boy was afraid of him. I was afraid of my old man. He taught me how to make the bait, how to take blood and cornmeal and a little flour dough, and knead it all together in little balls and let them harden, then fasten them to the hook just right.

“Me and him didn’t become best friends, but I quit thinking about what color he was. It got so I looked forward to goin’ down there and fishin’, just so me and him could talk.

“Well now, a white girl come up dead and naked in the river, and somehow, and I don’t remember how, it was decided this boy, name was Donald, was the one did it. I didn’t hear nothin’ about it happenin’ at the time, but one afternoon I was comin’ home from squirrel huntin’, and I hit over there on what some folks are callin’ Preacher’s Road, and there was this big crowd, and when I worked my way in there, they had Donald in a wagon bed, and they had nailed his hands and feet to that bed and they had castrated him.

“He saw me, son. Looking out of that crowd at him. I still remember his eyes. They looked to me as big as saucers. He looked at me, and he said, ‘Mister Jacob. Can’t you help me?’ I stepped back into the crowd, son. I was thirteen years old and I didn’t know what to do, and here was a boy my age dying and calling me Mister and beggin’ me to help.

“They set the wagon on fire and finished him. And it wasn’t two days later they found a trail of that little girl’s clothes, and they was followed to a little camp where they found some more of the girl’s belongin’s, and a dead colored man. But there was the girl’s goods, her little purse and such. Now, I don’t know that fella did it, but I can be pretty sure Donald didn’t. I figured the crowd was mad, and the cry went up a nigger did it, and they found them one. Poor Donald. I ’spect it was that man they found that actually done it.”

“How’d he die, Daddy?”

“Just died, I suppose. Another thing. They took that man’s body and dragged it through the woods, dragged it down Preacher’s Road and all over and finally cut it loose and set fire to it. The damn corpse, mostly bones, laid beside the road for a month before animals or someone dragged it off.

“Donald’s old man. The mean sonofabitch. He was finally killed trying to rob a house in Mission Creek. He come through the window and was shot. I remember thinkin’, good riddance. Donald, he was a good kid. He wasn’t no worse than any kid that age, and he was killed like that. Burned a memory, Harry, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you, and it ain’t a memory I like worth a damn.

“Bottom line is, I ain’t so pure, Harry. I didn’t do a thing to help Donald.”

“Daddy, wasn’t nothing you could do.”

“I like to think that’s the truth. But I ain’t never been the same since. I don’t hate no one because of their color if I can help myself. Sometimes bad things wash back on me, but I try, Harry. I try.

“As for your Mama. Well, she’s always been that way. Some people can just see a thing is true right off. Your Grandma is like that too, and she passed it on to your Mama, and your Mama helps me understand it when I ain’t always willin’ to. It’s easy to hate, Harry. It’s easy to say this and that happens because the colored do or don’t do one thing or another, but life isn’t that easy, son. Constablin’, I’ve seen some of the worst human beings there is, both white and colored. Color don’t have a thing to do with meanness. Or goodness. You remember that.”

“Yes sir, I will.”

“You see, Harry, there ain’t no future in the way things been. A change has got to happen if people are gonna live together in this country. Civil War’s been over seventy years or so, and there’s still people hatin’ folks ’cause they’re born in the Northern or Southern part of these United States.

“And the only difference for colored now is the masters can’t sell ’em. Mose just missed being a slave, but he ain’t never had nothing but white folks on his butt. That’s why he went off to live in the woods like he done. To get away from white folks. And you know what, he trusts me. Or seems to. I go over to check on him, he’s glad to see me. He thinks I’m protectin’ him.”

“Ain’t you?”

“He’d been more protected had I left him alone. I think I partly arrested him ’cause he’s colored and had that white woman’s purse.

“Part of me, not a good part, was bothered by that. Him havin’ that white woman’s purse and him bein’ colored. Even if he did find it. I was a boy, he taught me how to put bait on a hook so it wouldn’t come off. How to skin catfish with a pair of pliers. How to tell directions in the woods and where all the good fishin’ holes are, and how to look for new ones. He ain’t never showed me no signs of being a killer, and I arrested him right away.”

“You was just goin’ on evidence, Daddy.”

Daddy smiled like his lips might run off the side of his face, poured the well bucket’s water into the tote bucket.

When we finished with the water, Mama had breakfast on the table, and Tom was sitting there with her eyes squinted, looking as if she were going to fall face forward into her grits.

Normally, there’d be school, but the schoolteacher had quit and they hadn’t hired another yet, so me and her had nowhere to go that day.

I think that was part of the reason Daddy asked me to go with him after breakfast. That, and I figured he wanted some company. He told me he had decided to go see Mose.

We drove over to Bill Smoote’s. Bill owned an icehouse down by the river. It was a big room really, with sawdust and ice packed in there, similar to the one at Pearl Creek. People came and bought ice by car or by boat on the river. He sold right smart of it.

Up behind the icehouse was the little house where Bill lived with his wife and two daughters, who looked as if they had fallen out of an ugly tree, hit every branch on the way down, then smacked the dirt solid. They was always smilin’ at me and such, and it made me nervous.

Behind Mr. Smoote’s house was his barn, really more of a big shed. It looked like it had fallen down once, then been blown back together by a high wind. That’s where Daddy said Mose was kept. We pulled up at the house and Daddy went up and knocked on the door. A ragged, big-breasted, teenage girl with dirty blond hair answered.

Daddy said, “Elma. Your Papa in?”

“Yes sir, I’ll git ’im.”

A moment later Mr. Smoote was on the porch. He was a porky man in greasy overalls. He was missing several teeth and wore a big straw hat with dark sweat stains where the crown met the brim. He liked to curl his upper lip and spit tobacco through a gap in his teeth. He did that almost immediately, smacking a wad of tobacco in the sand around the porch.

“I come to see him,” Daddy said.

Mr. Smoote nodded. “All right. Let’s go on up there and get it over with. Someone come up on us, find out I’m housin’ that nigger, it could be trouble.”

“I appreciate you doin’ this, Bill.”

“I owe you some. You sure this nigger’s okay to have around here? I mean, he killed somebody, I don’t like him around my family. I got girls.”

We stepped off the porch and started walking toward the barn.

“Bill,” Daddy said, “I just brought him in for questioning, you know that. I can’t take him into town. Folks find out, it’ll be trouble. Your littlest girl could whip Mose’s ass.”

“Well, he might use an axe.”

“Bill, you’ve known Mose long as I have. What do you think?”

“It’s hard to figure a nigger.”

Daddy didn’t answer that. He said, “I really appreciate you, Bill.”

“Well, it’s like I said. I owe you.”

When Mr. Smoote opened the barn door the sunlight barged in. Dust floated up and made me cough. The sunlight poking through the dust motes made it seem as if I were seeing the barn and its contents through a veil. There was a smell about the place. Old hay. Sweat and soured sewage. The sewage part obviously came from a nasty-looking black can with flies humming around it.

In one corner, sitting with his back against a hay bale, was Old Mose. I hadn’t seen him in a time, and I was shocked by how small he’d become. He wasn’t any taller than me, and not as wide. His arms were like sticks and the skin didn’t fit; it was loose enough to be double-wrapped. His patched overalls, gone nearly white from wear, flapped around his bony legs when he stood up. He grinned at us. He had a few teeth and a couple of them weren’t black. He bowed his head and it wobbled in our direction as if it hung there by a loose screw. His eyes were squinted, trying to accustom to the light. When he finally widened them, I was reminded that they were green as emeralds. They were the only part of him that seemed alive. His reddish black complexion, odd combination of freckles with kinky, red hair gone gray, made him look like some kind of gnome from a book Mrs. Canerton had loaned me. I couldn’t imagine when Mose had gotten so old.

“Missuh Jacob, I’m sho glad to see you,” Mose said. His voice was like a crippled man trying to rise up on crutches.

As Mose shuffled toward us, something dragged and thumped against the ground, stirring up dust. It was a chain and it was attached to a cuff of metal around his ankle, just above where his small foot poked sockless into a worn-out shoe. The chain was attached to the barn’s central support post.

“Goddamn,” Daddy said, then turned on Bill. “You’ve chained him.”

“I owe you, Jacob. But like I said, I got a family. Girls. Mose always seemed a good nigger to me, but a favor only goes so far. He stays here, he wears the chain. Hell, he’s got it all right. He eats good cookin’ and shits in a can over there. I have it emptied every day. And he don’t want for water.”

I could see Daddy was exasperated, but he sighed and said, “All right. Let me talk to him, just me and my boy.”

“Your boy can know what I can’t?”

“If you don’t mind, Bill.”

“I mind, but I’ll do ’er. Jacob, you get this nigger out of here pretty damn quick.”

“That’s the plan,” Daddy said.

Mr. Smoote left out, leaving the barn door slightly open. Daddy went over and touched Mose’s shoulder.

“I don’t unnerstan’, Missuh Jacob,” Mose said. “You knows I didn’t do nuttin’ to no white womens. No coloreds neither.”

“I know,” Daddy said. “Let’s sit down.”

Daddy sat on the hay bale and Mose dragged his chain and sat on the other side of it. I went and leaned against the post that the chain was fastened to. From that angle, way the light was slicing in, I could see Mose’s ankle had been bleeding. There was a brown cake of blood below the metal cuff, just above where his shoe started.

“I didn’t mean for this, Mose,” Daddy said.

“Yessuh,” Mose said. “I ’spose not.”

“I’ll get you out of here.”

“Yessuh. Missuh Jacob?”

“What, Mose?”

“How come you done me like this?”

“The purse, Mose.”

“I fount it, Missuh Jacob. I tole you that.”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t hurt no white womens. I wouldn’t hurt nobody ’cept a fish, a coon, a possum. Somethin’ to eat. And I don’t eat no white womens. Coloreds neither.”

“I know.”

“You know, Missuh Jacob, but here I is.”

Daddy looked at the dirt floor.

“I could have run off that firs’ night, but I stayed here ’cause you asked me to, Missuh Jacob. Next day, him and a boy came put the chain on me.”

“I thought you having the purse was evidence. Not that you did it, but that it was some kind of evidence.”

“You done got that purse, Missuh Jacob. You don’t need me.”

“Wait a minute. Boy? What boy helped chain you?”

“Jes some white boy.”

“Okay, Mose. Listen here. I’m gonna get this chain off of you, and I’m gonna let you go. We’re gonna take you home. Hear?”

“Yessuh. I’d like that, I would.”

Daddy got up. “Stay here a minute, son.”

Daddy went out. Mose looked at me. He smiled. “You ’member that ole grennel you and me caught?”

“Yes sir.”

“Had them teeth like a man. It really scart you. ’Member that?”

“Yes sir.”

“I cooked it up fer us. ’Member that?”

“Yes sir.”

“It was good too. You don’t cook ’em right, they taste jes like cotton. But I done it good. We ate it on a stump down by the river. My boy was little, me and him used to do that. Sit down by the river and eat.”

I started to ask him about his son, but considering all Daddy had told me, I thought it might not be the best idea. No use dredging up more bad things for Mose to think about.

“You still got that coon dog?” I asked.

“No, Missuh Harry, I don’t. That ole dog done gone on to his rewa’d. He was nigh on fifteen year ole when he done up and died. He couldn’t see none last year of his life. I had to hand-feed ’im. He couldn’t eben smell no mo.”

Daddy and Mr. Smoote came in. Mr. Smoote had a hammer and chisel. “Get that off of him,” Daddy said.

“You takin’ him away?” Mr. Smoote asked.

“I am. And don’t mention he’s been here. Just keep on keepin’ it a secret.”

“We even then?”

“Yeah. And Bill, you tell that boy you hired to help put this chain on not to say nothin’ either.”

“I done told him that.”

“I mean it. I told you not to let no one know Mose was here, and you done told a boy.”

Mr. Smoote made a noise in his throat like a hog makes when it pokes its nose into slop and snorts. He went over to Mose, put the chisel against where the cuff had been squeezed shut and pinned. He struck off the pin with one whack of the chisel and hammer.

Daddy helped Mose up from the hay bale. “Let’s get you on home,” Daddy said.

From our house it’s no big problem to walk through the deep woods, hit Preacher’s Road, take the trail down by the river to Mose’s shack. By car it took longer. We had to travel some distance. At first Mose and Daddy just sat, but after a while they talked fishing. It wasn’t until we were on the Preacher’s Road and nearly to the trail that the subject of the murder came up again.

“It gonna be okay now, Missuh Jacob?” Mose asked.

“You just go on about your business, Mose. I got the purse. You told me what you know. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“Well, I guess you had to do it.”

“I’m sorry you had to stay at Bill’s.”

“He done all right by me. ’Cept that chain. He fed me all right, but he didn’t empty that ole mess can much as he said.”

“I didn’t figure he did,” Daddy said.

We drove onto the trail that led down to the river. The trees were close and limbs lapped over the top of the car and bathed us in shadow. Daddy had to drive slow and careful because the trail was full of washouts and slippery with leaf mold.

We drove down a good ways, parked, left the car, and walked down to the river with Mose, over to his shack. A cool wind was blowing off the brown churning river and it felt good, but carried with it the faint aroma of something gone to rot.

“You need to come fish, Missuh Jacob,” Mose said.

“It’s been a while.”

“Sho has. You ’member when them ole Davis brothers down the river there poisoned the water with all them green walnuts, killed all them perch and bass. Even some of them big ole catfish?”

“I do.”

“I remember how mad you was. You said, ‘’At ain’t no way to do no fishin’,’ and you walloped one of ’em. You ’member that?”

“Sure.”

“You and me, we never did go in for them green walnuts or dynamitin’, did we?”

“No, we didn’t, Mose. We just fished the way you’re supposed to. With a pole, line, hook, and patience.”

“Yessuh, we did.”

“Dem Davises you know they eventually turned they boat over and one of ’em drowned an other’n got snake-bit.”

“I heard that.”

“Now that’s somethin’, ain’t it, Missuh Jacob.”

“It is.”

“Now they ain’t no Davis brothers.”

We walked him to his shack. He was limping as he went. When we got there he pushed the unlocked door open. It didn’t look any better inside than Mr. Smoote’s barn, except there wasn’t the smell and as many flies. It was just one room with a window near the door, and a window on the opposite side. One window had glass in it, the other just a thin strip of yellow oilcloth.

Mose went inside and we stood in the doorway.

“You gonna be all right, Mose?” Daddy asked.

“Yessuh, Missuh Jacob.”

“You got somethin’ to eat?”

“I got couple cans a stuff. I’ll fish me up somethin’ too.”

Mose got a small can off a shelf and pulled the lid free. He stuck his fingers in the black mess inside, bent over and rubbed it on the spot where the chain had cut his ankle. It was axle grease. Lot of folks used it back then to lubricate sores or help stop bleeding from minor wounds.

When Mose was finished with that, he limped over to one of the two chairs he had and sat down at a small wood plank table. He looked even smaller than he had looked at Mr. Smoote’s place.

“All right, then,” Daddy said. “Well, you take care, Mose.”

“Yessuh. And you come to fish, bring the boy.”

“I will.”

As we were climbing into the car, Daddy said, “Ain’t no doubt, this hasn’t been my finest hour.”