The Bottoms

20

Only our memories allow that some people ever existed. That they mattered, or mattered too much. No one speaks of Old Maggie anymore. I can’t say I know anyone who remembers her but me. Remembers her cooking, which if I think about hard enough, I can taste; remembers her stories, strange and wonderful, and told without doubt.

Then perhaps that is conceit. She has family somewhere. They might be alive. Old as, or older than me.

They could remember.

But they can’t remember my memories.

Maggie.

Gone now.

Murdered.

And the seasons change as if nothing ever happened.

We went back and got the car at Cecil’s, him and Daddy not saying much, then with Daddy driving slow and me riding Sally, we went home.

All the way home I thought about poor Miss Maggie, and that the last time I had seen her she had been upset. I got all my crying out on that ride to the house so I wouldn’t be crying in front of the family when I got home.

At the house Daddy sat at the table drinking coffee, Mama sitting beside him, and he tried to figure on Miss Maggie’s murder.

I told him about the car I had seen with the broken taillight, the same that had sent us the message about Mose. I also told him how when Grandma and I had last seen Miss Maggie, I had mentioned Red Woodrow and she had gotten upset. Grandma told him we had heard rumors Red was really Miss Maggie’s son.

Daddy seemed amazed at this.

“Me and him was once like brothers,” Daddy said. “I think I’d have known such a thing.”

“Well,” Mama said. “It was that old woman who raised him, so it’s possible.”

Daddy nodded. “But, since she did, why would he kill her?”

“I’ll tell you why,” Grandma said. “Accordin’ what Harry here told me, he didn’t care for coloreds. He seen himself as white, and he seen himself as superior, then one day maybe Miss Maggie told him. For whatever reason, she just told him. He couldn’t stand the idea, and he killed her.”

“If she told him,” Daddy said, “and say he realized Mose was his Daddy, and he had Klan connections, and it was him tried to warn us about Mose, then why would he turn around and kill Miss Maggie?”

“I got that one too,” Grandma said.

“I figured you had an opinion on it,” Daddy said.

“Say he did find out, and from his Klan connections he heard that someone had told Mose was bein’ held as a suspect, and say he then knew what they were gonna do to the old man. Say just the day before he was all for it, then he found out the old man was his Daddy. He sent you the note, tryin’ to stop it. But he didn’t, and say Miss Maggie then said somethin’ to him about that, about how he let his Daddy die by not steppin’ in and just stoppin’ it on his own, or helpin’ you. So, in a rage, he killed her too.”

“That sounds possible,” Daddy said.

“Thing to do, hon,” Mama said, “is go see Red. See if he’s got that busted taillight.”

Daddy nodded. Tom crawled up in his lap and put her arms around his neck. He patted her softly on the back.

Next day Daddy went looking for Red, but it turned out he was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t been doing his job, and no one had seen him in a week. His car was missing.

Couple days later a fella huntin’ over in the next county found it parked down in the woods on a little trail. It wasn’t really a trail big enough for the car, but it looked to have been driven down it fast and wild. It was scratched on all sides from brush and limbs. It had a missing taillight.

It wasn’t concrete, but it seemed Red had murdered Miss Maggie, and he had been the one to warn us about Mose. Grandma’s theory seemed to make sense.

There was still another mystery.

Miss Maggie was buried at the back of her property in a cedar chest that was donated by Mr. Groon. It was simple but lots of folks showed up, both black and white. Miss Maggie was well liked.

A paper was found in her house that had been written out for her and her name was signed on it, scrawled out in poor letters. She wanted her mule and hogs to be given to folks could use them, and she wanted friends to come and pick the house clean. That was done right away, even before an owner for the mule and hogs could be found. Also in this will of hers was the plan to sell her property and give the money to Red Woodrow.

The property was sold all right, but Red Woodrow never did come and collect it.

Mystery was, day after Miss Maggie was buried, the body was dug up. Wasn’t nothing but a hole left in her yard, and to the best of my knowledge, to this day no one knows what became of it or why it was taken.

After the business with Miss Maggie, it got around town that maybe Mose hadn’t been the killer of all them women, and it had been Red, and in a final rage he had killed Miss Maggie.

’Course, ones sayin’ this didn’t know she was his mother or that Mose was his father, or that it looked as if he had given Daddy a warning note about the lynching. All this Daddy kept to himself.

What Daddy let be known was I had seen the car at Miss Maggie’s, and thinking something suspicious I had gone and got him and he had investigated. Where he fudged a bit was he didn’t let on I had discovered the body. He was afraid it might point to me somehow.

The supposed reasons Red killed Maggie were as many as the ants on the ground. A popular one was that Red, who had some reputation as being a bit crooked, had stolen the money she had buried at her house.

This led to speculation as to why money from her property had been left to him in her will. Some said he made her write it that way, but that didn’t explain the mule, the hogs, and her household items.

Years later, when the story got around that Red was Miss Maggie’s son, the particulars changed some. It was said by some Red come back and got the body and buried it private like. There were other rumors that a colored voodoo man came and dug it up to use the body parts, and it was even said by some that Miss Maggie’s wilted, dried hand had been turned into a hand of glory. There were those over the years claimed to see it, just like they’d know one dried black hand from another.

At the barbershop one day, while me and Tom was there with Cecil, I remember Mr. Evans speculating as Cecil clipped at the hair above his ears. Mr. Evans was one for speculating. Like Grandma, he read murder mysteries and saw himself as quite a detective, though the only detecting he’d ever done was trying to puzzle out a story in one of the magazines at the barbershop.

He was a short, fat, bald man with a habit of pursing his lips when he was making a point, or setting up a mystery.

“Say Miss Maggie had her money buried, or hid out, and Red found out about it.”

“How?” Cecil asked.

“Some nigger knew somethin’ and told him. You know, somethin’ about Miss Maggie, and he got it figured, and maybe Red picked him up for somethin’. You know, a crime of some kind.”

“Picked who up?”

“Some nigger. Ain’t you listenin’. No nigger in particular. Just a hypothetical nigger. And this here nigger, to lighten his load with the law-”

“What’d he do?” Cecil asked.

“He didn’t do nothin’. He’s hypothetical. Anyway, this fella, he knew about the money and told Red where it was supposed to be, and Red went to get it, and it wasn’t there. So he tried to make Miss Maggie tell him, and he accidentally killed her.”

“If’n I was him,” said Mr. Calhoun, a normally quiet man in overalls, “it’d be that hypothetical nigger lied to me got a beatin’. Not some poor ole nigger woman.”

“You people are impossible,” Mr. Evans the Great Detective said.

“Did Red get the money?” Cecil asked.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Evans said, “but I’d wager he did. He maybe had someone else help him. A woman. And he dumped his car and they went off in hers.”

“Why would he dump his car?” Cecil asked.

“Harry here had seen it and thought it would be recognized,” said Mr. Evans.

“How did Red know he’d seen it?”

“He must have seen Harry,” Mr. Evans said. “Hell, I ain’t got that part figured out yet. But give me a day or two.”

Besides this version of events, there were others. Some said Red not only killed Miss Maggie, but was the Bottoms Killer, as the murderer had come to be known.

But this wasn’t a popular theory. It had too many things against it. Miss Maggie wasn’t mutilated or tied, for one. Second, there were those that figured white men didn’t go in for that kind of horrible killing. And thirdly, most were certain the real man responsible had been lynched. Their conclusions as to why it had to be Mose were simple. There hadn’t been another murder like the ones in the bottoms since.

Many didn’t even think Red killed Miss Maggie.

’Course, that left a series of questions. Why was Red’s car at Miss Maggie’s? Why had he disappeared? Why was his car found in the bottoms, run off in the woods like that?

There were answers given for all of these. Like he found the money and run off somewhere to spend it. Hadn’t folks heard him say he wanted to go abroad someday?

Bottom line was, no real conclusions were come to, and finally it became an “unknowable nigger murder.” Wasn’t anyone besides Daddy concerned about it. More people were concerned about Red.

Had he actually been abducted by the Bottoms Killer? Maybe he had found some clues to the killer’s identity, and the killer had gotten rid of him.

No matter Red hadn’t been concerned about the killer before, this became a popular theory, right up there with him having found the hidden money and gone off to Paris or some such.

There was even a rumor that one of his friends got regular postcards from him under a disguised name and that the cards came from exotic places all over the world. It was also said some of the cards had lipstick stains on them, kisses he had asked his girlfriends in all those countries to stick to the cards with their soft red lips.

’Course, since these cards were supposedly coming in over a short time from all over the world, this wasn’t an entirely convincing story.

I think the fact that Daddy didn’t come up with any answers just made things worse than before. For a few days there he had been his old self, but his investigation had stalled at Red’s car being discovered and then nothing else.

The whole thing settled down on him heavy as a boulder, and he fell back to the dark place where he had been lying for so many months, and unlike before, he didn’t even bother to dodge us when he was on a drunk, and pretty soon the whiskey bottles showed up at the house in plain sight.

Grandma took the hard line with him, calling him this and that, but it didn’t budge him.

Finally, he moved out to the barn with his bottles and it was as if he didn’t exist anymore. Oh, he got some money from the barbershop, though now Cecil was getting the bulk of it, and he did a little work around the place, but the plowing was left to me and I wasn’t real good at it.

We were scratching for a living like never before.

If things weren’t difficult enough on the farming scene, it started in raining real hard, beating on the ground worse than that day Grandma and I had been trapped in Mose’s shack.

With it pouring like that, there wasn’t any real plow work to be done. The rain went on for days, gushed through our fields, washed away our topsoil, carried plants with it, or beat them down in place.

Grandma said it was the darnedest thing yet. She’d already been through everything drying up and blowing away, now she was having to go through everything turning wet and washing away.

The rain turned to flooding and the Sabine flowed high and wide and fast, swirling mad water in brown foamy heaps. The river even changed its course by churning away weak standing banks and uprooting and toting off trees, some of them large enough to have built the front end of Noah’s Ark.

But eventually it passed. The rain quit, the black sky cracked open, showed blue behind it, as well as the sun in all its hot golden glory. In fact, it turned hot as hell and dry as Arab sand; mud heaped up in hard crust, like scabs healing all over the earth.

At night the dark sack that held the skies was burst open and the stars fled from it and glowed like frightened animal eyes all across the black velvet heavens.

The river ceased to roar, murmured instead, like a man sleeping contentedly, his belly full of cornbread and beans. Earth stopped dropping off the banks, the ground turned solid again, and the river flowed comfortably within its new boundaries, happy as if the skies had never mistreated it.

Clem Sumption lived some ten miles from us, right where a little road forked off what served as a main highway then. You wouldn’t think of it as a highway now, but it was the main road, and if you turned off of it, trying to cross through our neck of the woods on your way to Tyler, you had to pass Mr. Sumption’s house, which was situated alongside the Sabine River.

Clem’s outhouse was on the bank of the Sabine, and it was fixed up so what went out of him and his family went into the river. Lot of folks did that, though some like my Daddy were appalled at the idea. It was that place and time’s idea of plumbing. Daddy thought it was not only nasty, but lazy. To have a proper outhouse you had to have the fortitude to dig a proper hole. A very deep hole. When the hole was packed, you dug a new hole, moved the outhouse, filled the old hole, and started about packing the other.

The lazy way, you backed an outhouse up to the river’s edge so your waste dropped down a slant and onto the bank. When the water rose, the waste was carried away. When it didn’t, you did your best to stay downwind. Big blue-green bottle flies collected on the dark mess like jewels shining in rancid chocolate. In the dry season if a sudden wind picked up, the stink could bowl you over.

During the flood, Mr. Sumption and his boys used pieces of lumber that fit into grooves on the side of the outhouse so it could be lifted and placed in an area safe from the rising waters.

What they did to relieve themselves during this time I’m uncertain, but when the flooding passed, they moved the outhouse to a location near its original spot.

As the river lowered, it was discovered that the mess from the outhouse had not completely washed away, but was now parked in a big dark hill under the outdoor convenience’s new slip-and-slide position.

But before I continue with events, it’s necessary to point out Mr. Sumption ran a little roadside stand where he sold vegetables now and then, and on this hot day I’m talking about, he suddenly had the urge to take care of a mild stomach disorder, and left his son, Wilson, in charge of the stand.

After doing his business, Mr. Sumption said he rolled a cigarette and went out beside the outhouse to look down on the fly-infested pile, maybe hoping the river had carried some of it away. But dry as it was, the pile was bigger and the water was lower, and something unusual lay in it.

Mr. Sumption, first spying it, thought it was a huge, bloated, belly-up catfish. One of those enormous bottom-crawler types that were reputed by some to be able to swallow small dogs and babies.

But a catfish doesn’t have legs.

Mr. Sumption said even when he saw the legs it didn’t register with him that it was a human being. It looked too swollen, too strange to be a person. But it was, and it was a woman. Her legs were crossed and tied at the ankles. One of her arms was pulled behind the back, stretched out and tied so tight to her feet it had caused the back to bow slightly. The other arm was tied in such a manner it looked as if she were reaching over the shoulder to scratch the small of the back, but the hand, from the wrist on, was gone. The cord was bound around the forearm, and was tied off to the other arm.

Mr. Sumption eased carefully down the side of the hill, mindful not to step in what his family had been dropping along the bank all summer. He saw the woman’s bloated body lying face down in the moist blackness, and the flies were as delighted with the corpse as they were with the waste.

Mr. Sumption saddled up a horse and arrived in our yard a short time after that. I was out trying to knock some splashed mud off of some tomato plants so they might stand up and not rot, when he showed up.

Mr. Sumption rode right up to the edge of the field, jumped off his horse, and started calling to me. Toby barked at him a few times, but it was a friendly bark. He knew Mr. Sumption.

I hurried through the field to where he stood, and he started in on how he had to see Daddy. Even though Daddy had taken to drinking, folks thereabouts didn’t know about it, least most didn’t. He kept it pretty much at home. I hated that Mr. Sumption might see Daddy that way; we had done a pretty good job of hiding it.

But there was nothing for it but Daddy had to be told. I asked Mr. Sumption to wait, and I went to the barn to get him. He was lying on a bed he had made with an old blanket and some hay, and he had his head propped up with Sally Redback’s saddle. He was awake, and he turned his head as I came in. I thought I saw something pass along his face that might have been shame or embarrassment or both. Then again, it could have just been a bellyache.

I suspected he wouldn’t even bother, but when I told him Mr. Sumption had found a body, and it was tied up, he got up quick, knocking over his whiskey bottle, not bothering to pick it up. I didn’t bother either. Daddy went out ahead of me. I watched the whiskey run out of the bottle and into the dirt.

To this day, I’ve never so much as taken a drink.

Daddy was a little sick-looking, like a man coming off a long bout with the flu, but he hurried ahead of me, through the field, and met Mr. Sumption at the far end.

When he told Daddy what he had found, Mr. Sumption rode back and Daddy followed in the car. I wanted to come, but Daddy insisted that I stay. There was a part of me that felt I was no longer subject to what Daddy wanted. He had given up the respect I had for him long ago, but I waited. Maybe I just didn’t want to be with him.

Later I learned Daddy and Mr. Sumption pulled the body out of the pile using a hoe and a rake, dipped it in the river for a rinse. Something a modern forensic-trained officer of the law would avoid these days. But back then, Daddy had never heard of forensics. I don’t even know if the word existed.

After fishing the body out, they were shocked to see the face of Louise Canerton buried in a mass of swollen flesh, one cold dead eye open, the other half closed, as if she were winking.

On closer examination, they discovered the body was very cut up, and one of the breasts had been sliced open and sewn back together with fishing cord. Something was visible between the stitches. Daddy used his knife to cut the cord free and to poke out what was inside. It was a wad of paper. Like was found in the others. And like the others, it was too far gone for him to figure what it was. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

The body arrived at our house wrapped in a tarp. Daddy and Mr. Sumption hauled it out of the car and toted it up to the barn. Me and Tom were out under the big tree, waiting, and as they walked by carrying their burden, we could smell that terrible reek of death and defecation through the tarp.

Daddy and Mr. Sumption were in the barn for a short time, and when they came out, Daddy had an axe handle in his hand. He also had a straighter back and a more determined stride. His eyes, though not clear, looked hard and brittle like dark beads of glass. He walked briskly to the car. I could hear Mr. Sumption arguing at him. “Don’t do it, Jacob. It ain’t worth it.”

We ran over to the car as Mama came out of the house, calling Daddy’s name. But Daddy wasn’t listening. Nothing seemed to register. It was as we always said about a determined mule. He had his nose forward and his ears back.

Daddy calmly laid the axe handle in the front seat, and Mr. Sumption stood shaking his head. Mama climbed into the car and started on Daddy. “Jacob. I know what you’re thinkin’. You can’t.”

Toby had sidled up to Mr. Sumption, and Mr. Sumption, knowing he was defeated as far as influence with Daddy went, bent down to scratch him behind the ears.

He hollered out once more, but like he didn’t really mean it. “Don’t do it, Jacob.”

Daddy started up the car. Mama called, “Children. Get in. You’re not stayin’ here.”

Maybe she thought our presence would slow Daddy down, I don’t know. But we jumped in just as Grandma came out of the house. She took in the situation, immediately pushed her way into the car, and Daddy, hardly mindful of our presence, roared off, leaving Mr. Sumption standing in the yard either bewildered or resigned.

Mama fussed and yelled and pleaded all the way over to Mr. Nation’s house. Daddy never said a word. When he pulled up in Nation’s yard, Mr. Nation’s wife was outside hoeing at a pathetic little garden, most of which had been washed downhill by the recent rain.

Mr. Nation and his two boys were sitting in rickety chairs under a tree, cracking pecans and eating them.

Grandma, who had begun to put it together, said, “Oh hell.”

Before Daddy could get out of the car, Mama grabbed the axe handle, but he carefully took it from her hands and got out of the car with it, started walking toward Mr. Nation. Mama was hanging on his arm, but he pulled free. He walked right past Mrs. Nation, who paused and looked up in surprise.

Mama started after Daddy again, but Grandma grabbed her, said, “Might as well let things be. He gets like this, he’s like Achilles after Hector. You know that.”

Mr. Nation and his boys spotted Daddy coming. Mr. Nation slowly rose from his chair, pecans falling out of his lap. The expression on his face was akin to discovering you hadn’t buttoned your fly and were standing in a room full of church women.

“What the hell you doin’ with that axe handle?” Nation asked.

The next moment what Daddy was doing with that axe handle became abundantly clear. It whistled through the hot morning air like a flaming arrow and caught Mr. Nation alongside the head about where the jaw meets the ear, and the sound it made was, to put it mildly, akin to a rifle shot.

Mr. Nation went down like a wind-blown scarecrow. Daddy stood over him swinging the axe handle. Mr. Nation was yelping and putting up his arms in a pathetic way. The two boys came at Daddy. Daddy turned, swatted the older one down. The younger one tackled him.

Instinctively, I started kicking at that boy, and he came off Daddy and climbed me. But Daddy was up now. The axe handle sang. The boy went out like a light, and the other one, who was still conscious, started scuttling along the ground on all fours like a crippled centipede. He finally managed himself upright and ran for the house.

Mr. Nation tried to get up several times, but every time he did that axe handle would cut the air, and down he’d go. Daddy whapped on Mr. Nation’s sides, back, and legs, until he was worn out and had to back off and lean on the somewhat splintered handle.

When Daddy got his wind back, he was at it again. Some of his sense had returned however, and he began to use the flat of the handle, banging it against Nation.

Finally Nation rolled on his back, lifted his hands in front of his face, and began to cry. Daddy stopped in mid-swing. The demon had gone out of him. I knew now what Grandma meant when she said Daddy had a temper.

Nation, ribs surely broken, lip busted, spitting teeth, bawled, lay there with his feet and hands up like a dog that had rolled on its back to impress its master.

When Daddy got his wind back, he said, “They found Louise Canerton down by the river. Dead. Cut the same way and tied as them others. You and your boys and that lynch mob didn’t do nothin’ but hang an innocent man.”

“You’re supposed to be the law?” Nation said, spitting blood. “You ain’t supposed to do nothin’ like this.”

“If’n I was any kind of law, I’d have had you arrested for what you did to Mose, but that wouldn’t have done no good. No one around here would convict you, Nation. They’re scared of you. But I ain’t. I ain’t. And if you ever cross my path again, I swear to God, I’ll kill you and beat your corpse daily till there ain’t nothin’ left of it. You just be glad this old handle wasn’t as sturdy as some I got.”

Daddy tossed the shattered axe handle aside, said, “Come on.” I started back to the car. Mama, Tom, and Grandma joined us. Mama put her arm around Daddy’s waist, and he returned the favor.

As we passed Mrs. Nation, she looked up and leaned on her hoe. She had a black eye, a swollen lip, and some old bruises on her cheek. She smiled at us.

Grandma said, “Good day to you.”

When the beating was over and we were home, Daddy explained to me whose body had been found. I sat on the screened-in porch and looked out at nothing and thought about Mrs. Canerton. Tom sat with me, doing the same.

Mrs. Canerton wasn’t just some poor unfortunate we didn’t know, she was someone we knew and really liked. It was hard to believe the woman I had seen at the Halloween party, all beautiful and pursued by every eligible man there, was now in our barn wrapped in a tarp, cut up like those other women.

It was a stunning blow.

As we sat there, Daddy came out on the porch. He pushed his way between us. He had a dried sweat coated with whiskey smell. He said, “Listen, kids. I know I haven’t exactly been right. But you can count on one thing. I’m through with all that. I’ve been an idiot. I’m on my feet now, and I’m gonna stay there. I’ll never touch another drop of whiskey, or any strong drink, long as I live. Hear me?”

“Yes sir,” we said.

“First thing tomorrow, we’re gonna start gettin’ these fields in shape, and the day after that I’m gonna start back regular at the barbershop. I ain’t exactly been settin’ a good example, and I ain’t got no excuse for it but my own self-pity. And you know what? I thought maybe Mose might have done it after all. I couldn’t figure how logically, but with the murders stopped, it crossed my mind.”

“Mine too,” I said.

“All right then. Let’s get back to being what we’re supposed to be. A family.”

“Daddy?” Tom said. “You’re gonna go back to bathin’ regular, ain’t you?”

Daddy laughed. “Yes, honey, I am.”