The Bottoms

18

We drove over to Pearl Creek, and as we neared Grandma said, “Here’s how we’ll do it, Harry. We’ll go to the general store. Say we’re low on gas, which we are, and we’ll buy some. We’ll go in the store and get soda pops, but before we do that, you run over to Doc Tinn’s place… Said it was close, right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“You run over there, and you tell him I’d like to speak with him at the store. Bring his wife if he wants. That way ain’t nobody gonna blame him for messin’ with me. He comes to the store, I want to ask him some questions only I think he can answer. Tell him we’re tryin’ to clear Mose’s name and help Jacob. We’re tryin’ to get the real killer. Okay?”

We arrived in Pearl Creek just as black rain clouds were rolling in. Their shadows fell over the road and over the general store, moved on, were followed by even darker shadows that pooled over everything and hung there.

“That’s what I meant about East Texas,” Grandma said getting out of the car. “You don’t go long without rain.”

Only it wasn’t raining, just clouding. I went inside and talked to Pappy Treesome. He took me out back and filled me a can with gas. He walked with me around front, jerking his body this way and that. When he saw Grandma they hugged.

“How’re you doin’, you ole horse thief,” Grandma said.

He was wearing his store-bought teeth today, so I could understand him, even if there was an occasional click and pop from the teeth slipping.

“I was real young when I stole that horse,” Pappy said.

“When you was young is farther back than I can count,” Grandma said.

While they were talking, I eased off to Doc Tinn’s place, and Grandma went up the steps into the general store with Pappy. I heard Pappy’s plump wife, Camilla, yell out, “Ah, Miss June, you ain’t aged a day.”

“Uh huh,” I heard Grandma say, “and neither has no one else.”

I went over to Doc Tinn’s house and knocked on the door. His wife answered. She said, “Yes, sir.”

I explained who I was and asked if I might see Doc Tinn, if he wasn’t busy. He wasn’t. She let me in the house and Doc Tinn was sitting in a rocking chair in the living room, reading a book. He put the book in his lap, smiled at me.

“How’re you, little sir? How’s your Daddy?”

“That’s what I’ve come to see you about,” I said.

Doc Tinn and his wife, both dressed as if going to church, walked with me to the general store. Inside Grandma was chatting with Pappy and Camilla. Pappy was his usual jerky self, standing behind the counter, his upper body wagging off in one direction, only to be pulled in the other as if by unseen hands.

Camilla was on our side of the counter, wearing a dress made of enough potato sacks to have contained all the Irish potatoes in the county and a pretty good batch of the sweet potato crop. She was sitting on a stool laughing at something Grandma had just said.

The sacks her dress were made from had been bleached and dyed blue, but the bleach hadn’t done a good job and the dye hadn’t taken, or was washed out; her outfit had gone gray leaving the faint impression of a potato sack brand visible at the top of her butt; the words reminded me of bugs riding the rolling hocks of a pig on the run.

Camilla’s hair was highly greased and two long knitting needles were plunged through a knot at the top of it. When the light caught the tips of the needles, sparkles jumped, suggesting extreme sharpness. Rumor was, Camilla wore the knitting needles for self-defense.

Grandma was sitting on the stool next to Camilla, close enough they could exchange elbow jabs between funny remarks. All three were drinking Co’-Colas.

I introduced Grandma to Doc Tinn and his wife, and gradually Grandma eased away from her friends toward the Tinns, and we sat where Daddy and I had sat the day he had come to look at the body. I took a wooden chair with cloth wrapped on the arms to make it more comfortable, and left the stuffed chairs and a couch to the adults.

The little door that had been fixed into the stove was closed this time and a brown dog with a white spot on its nose lay in front of it. Since there was no heat, I assumed his lying there was out of habit. The dog saw us, got up, and wandered over to me with its head down. When it walked it limped. I noticed that part of its right front foot had been cut off in some kind of accident. I patted it and it lay its head in my lap for more attention. I stroked its nose.

Grandma gave a little background on Daddy to Doc Tinn, who listened intently, nodding his head now and then. I found it embarrassing, and wouldn’t have told about how lost Daddy was these days, but no one asked me. Grandma had her own methods.

When she was finished, Doc Tinn shook his head. “That’s a real shame. I like Jacob. I really do.”

“That’s one reason we’ve come to you. We’re trying to get a handle on who done these murders.”

“Ma’am, I knew, I’d have told somebody.”

“We know that,” Grandma said. “What we want to know is if you know what kind of person done these murders.”

“I heard you talkin’ to Daddy,” I said. “I was on the roof of the icehouse. Things you told him, seems to me you know a lot about this kind of thing.”

“I knew you was up there. So did your Daddy. Not right away. But we come to know it.”

“You should have called those boys down,” Mrs. Tinn said.

“They done seen what they seen,” Doc Tinn said. “Wasn’t any undoing that. As for these murders, nobody knows a lot about this kind of thing. You mind hearin’ all this, dear?”

“My heart and stomach is a little too delicate for it, but my curiosity is strong as steel. I’ll stay.”

“Well now,” Doc Tinn continued, “I don’t know anything at all. Not really. But I do some reading, and I’ve given it some thought. This kind of killer, he don’t kill ’cause he don’t want to pay his john bill, you know what I mean?”

Grandma nodded.

I thought on it. John Bill? I had no idea what he was talking about.

“He enjoys hurting people. Like that de Sade. The idea of them sufferin’ makes him happy.”

“That’s hard to imagine,” Grandma said. “Surely he can’t want to do this kind of thing. He’s got be driven to do it.”

“You’re right. He is driven. But he wants to do it. He likes doing it.”

“You don’t know that,” Grandma said.

“Ma’am, you asked me my opinion. That’s all I can give.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor. Please continue.”

“I have a book in my house called Psychopathia Sexualis, by a fella named Richard Krafft-Ebing. It’s a morbid curiosity, I suppose, but it interests me. It tells a lot about people who enjoy being hurt-”

“They want pain?” Grandma asked.

“Yes. De Sade discussed it in his books.”

“I haven’t read them,” Grandma said. “I don’t know that I would want to.”

“You’re probably right, ma’am. And there are those who enjoy giving pain. It gives them control over people they might not normally have control over. Or, maybe they just like the idea of power.”

“These women,” Grandma asked. “They’re prostitutes?”

“Seems that way.”

“Isn’t that control enough?”

“That’s control by permission. He wants complete control. It’s also possible he experienced something bad in his life, saw something affected him. Got him so he feels he’s got to do this. Someone else might not be affected by this thing happened to him, but for some reason, his basic nature, the intensity of the event, he has been changed. And, in the case of our man, not for the better. There’s another thing mentioned in the book. Fetishism.”

“What?” Grandma asked.

“Obsession with certain things.”

“I’m obsessed with peppermints, but I don’t kill people.”

Dr. Tinn smiled. “Fetishes like, say… an obsession with shoes. He might only pick victims that wear a certain kind of shoe. Or they’re of a certain type. Or maybe he likes to have relations with a woman while she wears a certain kind of shoe.”

“Like prostitutes?” Grandma asked.

Doc Tinn nodded. “That could be it. Could be he likes to leave a little somethin’ that means somethin’ to him. Say when he was young, he got all confused on sex and hurtin’. It happens. Could be he keeps some of their clothes or shoes after he does his murders. Could be because they’re colored. Prostitution may just make them available and it hadn’t got a thing to do with their color or their way of makin’ money.”

“But one of the victims was white,” I said.

“That’s the one got Mose hung,” Doc Tinn said. “I knew Mose. He didn’t have anything to do with any of this business. Lot of things make him look good for it. Mose was on the river. Had a boat. Went up and down the river all the time. Purse was found on his table. Also the fact his wife and son ain’t around no more and no one knows where they are. And there hasn’t been another murder. But Mose was too old and not strong enough.

“Whoever this is, they might be doin’ this ’cause they don’t like the way some women carry themselves. Maybe thinks any woman he can have, or has had, isn’t worthy to live. Wants to enjoy the woman’s favors, but soon as he does, she’s no longer on a pedestal. She isn’t the Virgin Mary any longer. Or in the case of the prostitutes, he already hates them for what they are.”

“Way he ties them up,” Grandma asked. “Anything in that book on that? Could it tell us somethin’?”

“We’re back to fetish. Bondage. Control. Humiliation. He likes all them things, I figure. He could be someone knows ropes and how to tie them. You know your Dad brought that dead white woman over for me to look at? He didn’t know she was white at the time. You know that?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Knots tied on her was like loggers use when they don’t have chains. Have to use ropes. Small operations. But that don’t tell you much. Darn near every man in the county and bunches outside have worked logs some. I’ve seen men use them same kind of ties for trussin’ up a dead hog to be carried. And on a smaller scale I’ve seen similar ties used to fasten on hooks to fishin’ line. I’ve used them myself. Used to be everyone knew how to tie a good knot.”

“If Mose didn’t do it, you think since there hasn’t been a murder, fella’s moved on?” Grandma asked.

“Possible. But I doubt he’s quit murderin’. He’ll do it again, wherever he goes, and there’s a chance he was doin’ it somewhere else before he come here.”

“But he could just work it out of his system?”

“Who am I to say. I doubt it. Unless they get too old. Or they’re in jail or a nut house or somethin’.”

“Any guess about the color of this man?” Grandma asked. “Any guess about anything?”

“Outside of what I told you, I can’t say. Maybe someday someone will make a science of this. I’ve tried to learn what I can out of curiosity, but what I know ain’t much.”

“There was a warning about Mose being lynched,” Grandma said, and she gave Doc Tinn some of the details. “Figure whoever’s been doin’ this didn’t want an innocent man to die for what he done. His conscience got the best of him.”

“You’re a credit to Christian thinking,” Doc Tinn said. “But I think he didn’t want someone else to take credit for what he done. He’s right proud. Kind of signs all his work, so to speak. Same kind of ties and cuts. Does it all along the river, or takes them to the river. He feels comfortable there.”

I thought: Like the Goat Man.

“I don’t think this fella’s got a conscience. Least not the way we think of one. But he ain’t no monster in his ever-day life. He’s normal like. Not someone you’d expect.”

“Unless it’s Mr. Nation,” I said. “Or one of his boys. They’re monsters.”

Doc Tinn rubbed his chin, then nodded. “I know them. That young one, Joshua, he likes to set fires. And Esau, the older one, he’s hired couple of colored boys to take him out boat fishin’, and they say he’s took the fish he’s caught and thrown ’em out on the bank and just stomped them. Had a real delight in it. So, you could be right. It could be any one of them Nations, and I wouldn’t be surprised. People got that much hatred and meanness in ’em, it’s got to come out somehow.”

It had begun to rain. We could hear it pattering on the tin roof.

“And there’s another thing I been thinkin’,” I said. “Red Woodrow.”

“You’re thinkin’ on some harsh things for a boy,” Doc Tinn said.

“Yes sir,” I said. “Me and Tom found the first body, and I’ve been in touch with everything since. I feel I’m part of it.”

“Red’s the law,” Grandma said, “so he’s got access to information and people. He could get a woman off by herself easy. Say to her it’s law business. Coloreds, they’ve got no say against the law. And Red’s known as someone that isn’t too fond of women. And he hates colored.”

Doc Tinn studied the air for a moment, as if trying to decide if certain information should be revealed.

“Listen here,” he said. “I’m gonna tell you somethin’ I shouldn’t. And I got it on rumor, but it’s worthwhile knowin’, considerin’ we’re all meddlin’ here. And this ain’t even well known in the colored community, but once when Miss Maggie took ill she come to me, and she had to spend three days at our house, she come down with such a case of the pneumonia. She got to talkin’, and she told me somethin’ I maybe shouldn’t tell now, but considering what happened to Mose, and what’s goin’ on, it might be best you know. I got to have your word, though, that you ain’t goin’ to spread it around. I don’t need the reputation as a gossip.”

Grandma and I agreed.

“Red, he ain’t white. Least not totally.”

“What?” Grandma was leaning forward in her chair now, as if being closer to Doc Tinn might make everything clearer.

“Red’s Daddy thought he put three children in Miss Maggie’s belly,” Doc Tinn said. “Two girls and a boy. All three of them children turned out white-lookin’. Red’s two sisters was raised in the black community until they was four or so. Miss Maggie seen they could pass for white, and she had relatives help them girls. They went up North somewhere. Story is, and it might not be true, is them girls was adopted by white folks wantin’ babies, and they don’t even know them girls are colored.

“Red, bein’ a boy, well, old man Woodrow wanted him at first. He was raised as his son, and his wife had to claim she gave birth to him. They kept it hid somehow.”

“Red know he’s got colored in him?” Grandma asked.

“No. And I don’t know it for sure. I’m tellin’ things I’ve heard. But I believe ’em. Red, he loves Miss Maggie ’cause she darn near raised him. He just come up thinkin’ he was white and she was his nanny and wet nurse.”

“Wait a minute,” Grandma said. “You said Mr. Woodrow thought he put three children in Miss Maggie’s belly. Thought?”

“You’re a good listener and a smart lady,” Doc Tinn said. “The third child, the youngest, that was Red. But in this case, it wasn’t old man Woodrow who put him there. It was Mose.”

At that moment, it was as if the roof had fallen in on us. “Mose was part white,” Grandma said.

“Yes,” Doc Tinn said.

“And Red was a kickback to that part of Mose.”

Doc Tinn nodded.

“You look real close, ’cept for the size, Red and Mose were the spittin’ image of each other. Red hair, freckles, and them leaf-green eyes. And there’s another thing she told me. Mose, his Daddy was the old man Woodrow’s Daddy.”

“Any way Red could have known?” Grandma asked.

“Not unless Miss Maggie told him. I don’t think she’d have told me had she not been half delirious. She’s proud of him. He made somethin’ of himself. Then again, he don’t know he’s colored, don’t know Miss Maggie’s his mother. She ain’t totally happy about all that.”

“Why doesn’t she tell him?” I asked.

“She thinks way things are is best, I figure. He gets treated a lot better as a white man than a black.”

I knew then why Miss Maggie had not wanted to talk about Red the other day. Why she had become so upset.

“Once again, I mention this only because Red Woodrow is puttin’ the pressure on folks here in the community to keep what they know in the community. He don’t want colored business flowin’ into white business. But it ain’t all hatred on his part. He may not know he’s colored, but in spite of what he says, he’s got a good streak. He’s thinkin’ it gets out more, whites are gonna get upset more, and it’s the coloreds gonna suffer. Things ain’t always how they look.”

“And the killer?”

Doc Tinn shrugged. “I don’t know any more than I told you. But if it’s like some other murders, like the Jack the Ripper murders in England, he’s gonna grow bolder, and more violent. Right now he’s takin’ women he don’t think matter. But he may not stay doin’ that. He might decide any woman is fair game. Man like that, he’s playin’ games with the law and everyone else. He don’t think he can be caught. He don’t think he’s doin’ anything wrong.”

By the time Grandma said her goodbyes and her and Camilla poked and laughed at each other a bit, the rain was coming down hard, slamming on the tin roof like someone was beating it with a chain. The air was heavy but cool with the rain. Outside the store’s open door you could see it splattering in the mud street, running ruts across the road. It was growing darker by the moment.

“Y’all ought to wait it quits rainin’,” Camilla said.

“I don’t want my daughter to worry about us,” Grandma said. “Besides, we’ll take it easy.”

We rushed out to the car, and by the time we were inside we were soaking wet, and chilly. Grandma started off. I said, “Did we learn anything, Grandma?”

“I don’t know, Harry. In the detective books they just keep askin’ questions of people, and finally someone tells someone somethin’ that matters. We did hear some interestin’ stuff, but I don’t know it helps any. Time will tell.”

Just outside of town, something stumbled through the rain, out into the road and stopped.

It was a naked black man. He was holding his privates, shaking them at the car, as if it were something he might use to flail the hood. He had his mouth open and seemed to be making some kind of sound, but over the motor and the rain, it was impossible to hear him.

Although I had never seen him before, I knew immediately who it was by reputation.

“Root,” I said.

“What?” Grandma said.

“That’s his name. He’s harmless.”

“You mean Camilla’s boy William?”

“They call him Root now,” I said. “He ain’t right in the head.”

Root stumbled out of the road, releasing himself, throwing his hands to sky, talking to the heavens. He wandered into the woods with his hands up and disappeared.

“Well, my goodness,” Grandma said. “He’s certainly… large.”