The Bottoms

22

We all went to Mrs. Canerton’s funeral. Me and my family stood in the front row at the Bethel Baptist Church. Cecil was there. Just about everyone in town and around about, except the Nations and some of the people who had been in the lynch mob that killed Mose.

Even Doc Stephenson showed up, stood in the back and looked more disappointed than sad. Doc Taylor showed up as well. He sat next to Doc Stephenson with his hands in his lap, his face as blank as the wind. It was said he was taking it very hard; that he and she had recently become a serious item.

Within a week Daddy’s customers at the barbershop returned, among them members of the lynch party, and the majority of them wanted him to cut their hair. He had to go back to work regularly. I don’t know how he felt about that, cutting the hair of those who had beaten me and him that day, that had killed Mose. But he cut their hair and took their money. Maybe Daddy saw it as a kind of revenge. Maybe he was easy to forgive and forget. And maybe we just needed the money.

Mama took a job in town at the courthouse. She rode in and back with Daddy. That left Grandma with us, and she had developed a habit of driving into town a couple times a week to annoy the men at the barbershop and to go over and visit with Mr. Groon.

They rode around town and throughout the country together. He sometimes drove her all the way over to Tyler just to eat dinner at a cafe and go to a show.

As was the habit with things, talk about the murders died down. Daddy dried out the pulp paper he had removed from Mrs. Canerton, but like the others it was too far gone. And even if it hadn’t been, it was hard to see how it could mean anything.

Mose was no longer mentioned. It was as if the poor man never existed. Some still wanted him to be the killer, in spite of Mrs. Canerton turning up like she did. The most common story now was Red had done it, then gone off somewhere, never to return. No one claimed to be getting postcards from him anymore. Just goes to show you how fickle people are.

The world slipped back to about as normal as it would ever be again, though to my eyes it was never as sharp and clean and clear as it had been, and nothing I could do would ever completely bring it back.

As for the murderer, me and Tom weren’t so convinced it was Red, or that it was over. We still had it in our heads it was the Goat Man. And on a day when Mama and Daddy were at work and Grandma had spiffed up and gone into town to flirt with Mr. Groon, we decided to head out to Mose’s shack, carrying the shotgun.

That’s where the Goat Man had last been seen, and I was determined to find out more about him, maybe capture him. There was a part of me that wanted to be a hero. To that end we took along the shotgun and some good strong rope.

Looking back on all this, it seems damn foolish. But at the time it made perfect sense. We thought we could hold the Goat Man at bay with the shotgun, or maybe wound him, then tie him up and bring him in.

Then again, could the Goat Man talk? Could he confess? Did he speak English? Did he have supernatural powers? We suspected he might, and to that end, we also took along the Bible. I had read somewhere, probably in one of those magazines at the barbershop, if you held up the Word, evil would cringe.

Me and Tom had made this plan to kill or capture the Goat Man the night before, after sitting around for days thinking about it.

As soon as Grandma’s car had rolled out of sight, we lit out for the woods. I carried the shotgun. Toby slinked along with us, and even with his injured back, he made pretty good time.

We also had a notion the Goat Man didn’t have any powers by day, and if we could find his lair, he could be killed. How this notion had been formed is hard to say, but we had come to believe it as certain as we believed Daddy would crack a stick over Nation’s noggin faster than a chicken can peck corn, and that the Word could be held up against evil.

We worked our way deep into the woods where the river twisted wild and loud between high banks and higher trees, where the vines and brush wadded together and became next to impenetrable.

We walked along the bank, looking for a place to ford near the Swinging Bridge. Neither of us wanted to cross the bridge, and we used the excuse that Toby couldn’t cross it, but that was just an excuse.

We walked a long ways and finally came to the shack where Mose had lived. We just stood there looking at it. It had never been much, just a hovel made of wood and tin and tarpaper. Mose mostly set outside of it in an old chair under a willow tree that overlooked the river.

It looked to have weathered badly since that time Grandma and I had been trapped in it and we had seen the face of the Goat Man at the window.

The door was wide open.

“What if the Goat Man is waitin’ inside?” Tom asked.

“I’ll cut down on him with this here shotgun,” I said. “That’s what.”

“Maybe we ought to peek in a window first.”

That sounded like good advice, but we couldn’t make out much in there, just enough to assure us the Goat Man wasn’t lurking about.

It was a bigger mess inside than before. Toby went inside and sniffed and prowled about till we called him out of it. We went inside and looked around. Light came through the yellow paper over the paneless window, and wind whipped in with it. The window that had glass had been broken out, probably by kids, and from that direction the light was weak.

The framed photograph with the Sears picture stuck in the frame was knocked off the table, and I picked it up. With the door open rain had run in and ruined it, meshing the Sears photo to the photograph, blurring the whole thing into a kind of mush. I put it on the table, laying it face down this time.

“I don’t like it in here,” Tom said.

“Me neither.”

When we went out, I made sure to close the door good.

We walked around the house, to the side facing the river, and finally down to the water. Looking back at the house, I noted there was something hanging on a nail on the outside wall. It was a chain, and from the chain hung a number of fish skeletons, and one fresh fish.

We went over and looked at it.

“It looks like it’s just been hung up there,” Tom said. “There’s still water drippin’ off of it.”

The fish bones along with the fresh fish showed me someone had been hanging fish there on a regular basis, and for some time, like an offering to Mose.

On another nail, strings tied together, was a pair of old shoes that had most likely been fished from the river. Hung over that was a water-warped belt. On the ground, leaning against the side of the house, below the nail with the shoes, was a tin plate, a bright blue river rock, and a mason jar. All of it laid out like gifts.

I took the dead fish down, all the old bones, and cast them into the river and put the chain back on the nail. I tossed the shoes and belt, the plate, rock, and mason jar into the river.

“What’d you do that for?” Tom asked.

“I think that fish was still alive. It don’t need to suffer. Ain’t no one gonna come get it and cook it.”

“We could.”

“But we ain’t.”

“You throwed all that other stuff away too. That seems kinda mean, Harry. Someone is hanging it here like a gift.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I done it. Not out of meanness, but so the gifts would seem to be taken.”

I couldn’t really explain it. It just seemed like the thing to do.

Mose’s old boat was still by the house, laid up on rocks so it wouldn’t rot. A paddle lay in its bottom. We decided to take it and float it downriver to where the briar tunnels were. We loaded Toby in the boat, along with our shotgun, pushed it into the water and set out. We floated the long distance back to the Swinging Bridge and under it, watching to see if the Goat Man might be lurking about. Our idea that he was afraid of daylight was fading, and we had begun to feel nervous, and just a bit foolish.

We had been a lot braver planning than doing.

In shadow, under the bridge, deep into the bank, was a dark indention, like a cave. I imagined that was where the Goat Man lived, waiting for prey.

The thing to do, of course, was beard him in his lair. But we didn’t. We didn’t say a word. We just paddled on by.

We paddled gently to the riverbank where we had found the woman bound to the tree. There was no real sign she had ever been there. It seemed like a dream.

We pulled the boat onto the dirt and gravel bank and left it there as we went up the taller part of the bank, and into the briars. We hadn’t discussed this, but we wanted to see the spot where we had found the first body, where we had been frightened in the tunnel of briars.

The tunnel was the same, and it was clear in the daytime that the tunnel had, as we suspected, been cut into the briars. It was not as large or as long a tunnel as it had seemed that night, and it emptied out into a wider tunnel, and it too was shorter and smaller than we had remembered.

There were little bits of colored cloth hung on briars, like decoration. There was a red strip and a blue strip and a white strip with little red flowers on it. There were pictures from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue of women in underwear and there were a few of those playing cards like I had heard about. The briars were poked through the pictures where the women’s crotches were.

In the middle of the tunnel was a place where someone had built a fire, and above us the briars wrapped so thick and were so intertwined with low-hanging branches you could imagine much of this place staying dry during a rainstorm.

We hadn’t seen all those pieces of cloth and paper that night, but they, or ones like them, might have been there. Dry as the place was, during all that raining and flooding, it couldn’t have remained completely dry. Someone would have to have been adding fresh material to it from time to time.

Toby was sniffing and running about as best his poor old damaged back and legs would allow him. He was peeing on one spot, then another, leaving his mark all over. He was as agitated as if the briars were full of squirrels.

“It’s like some kind of nest,” Tom said. “The Goat Man’s nest.”

A chill came over me and it occurred to me that if that was true, and if this was his den instead of the cave under the bridge, he might come home at any time. I told Tom that, and we called up Toby and got out of there, tried to paddle the boat back upriver, but couldn’t.

We finally got out and made to carry it along the bank, but it was too heavy. We gave up and left it by the river. We walked past the Swinging Bridge and for a long ways after that till we found a sandbar. We used that to cross, went back home, finished the chores, cleaned ourselves and Toby up before Mama and Daddy and Grandma came home.

We thought about what we had seen all day, and considered telling Daddy, but since we weren’t supposed to have gone anywhere, our young minds were at an impasse. What would have seemed obvious to someone older didn’t seem all that obvious to us.

That night, as me and Tom were out on the sleeping porch, whispering, Grandma came out. We went quiet. She said, “You two been actin’ like conspirators all day. I’m too nosy to let it go.”

“It ain’t nothin’,” Tom said.

“I believe it is somethin’,” Grandma said, seating herself on the swing between our beds. “Why don’t you tell me. I promise I ain’t gonna tell your Mama and Daddy.”

We, of course, were dying to tell someone. I looked at Tom, she nodded. I nodded back. Tom said, “You swear not to tell, less’n your head falls off and gets covered in ants.”

Grandma laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t want that. So I swear.”

We told her all about it. When we finished she said, “You ain’t the only detectives. And since all three of us are detectin’, we need to make a pact right now. We’re gonna keep what we know between us.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Daddy might need to know some of this.”

Grandma considered. I knew enough about her to know she was the one that always wanted to be in the know. So it was no surprise to me when she made her proposition.

“Tell you what. Let’s keep it to ourselves, unless, or until, we got enough evidence your Daddy can use. That fair enough, kids?”

We agreed it was.

“Then we’ll make a pact to that effect, lest our heads fall off and get covered in ants.”

Grandma said, “I was in town today. I went over and visited Mr. Groon. He’s such a nice man.”

“You visit him a lot,” Tom said.

“I suppose I do.”

“Then you don’t think he had anything to do with this mess?” I asked.

“Heaven forbid. No, I don’t.”

“He’s in the Klan,” Tom said.

“Was,” Grandma said. “Me and him talked, and he brought up the little incident here on his own. He said he dropped out. And he is Jewish. Said he joined up with them boys without really thinkin’. He thought they was out for right doin’. He saw a movie once called Birth of a Nation, and in that the Klansmen were good fellows. But after the other night, out here with your Daddy, and Mose gettin’ hung and all, he got to figurin’ that for the grace of God should they figure on the fact he’s a Jew, he could have been on the end of that rope. He got out of the Klan. Burned his robes.”

“Grandma?” Tom asked. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“Hardly… Well, not yet. It could happen that way.”

Tom giggled. “Grandma. You’re too old.”

“Just by your standards, young lady. What y’all say we look at this shack of Mose’s tomorrow, and that cave and that briar tunnel too.”

Next morning, when Mama and Daddy left for work, me, Grandma, Tom, and Toby climbed in Grandma’s car with her shotgun, and she drove us over to Mose’s shack. About halfway there, I remembered that I forgotten the Bible.

I had a hunch about Mose’s old shack, and I wanted to check it out. But my hunch was wrong. There was nothing new hung from the nails, or leaned against the wall outside. But there was something curious. The boat we had left on the bank was back in its place atop the rocks with the paddle inside.

We told Grandma about that.

“Well, I’ll swan,” she said.

We looked around the shack for a while. It was the same as yesterday, except the water-meshed photograph in the frame had been set up on the table, and the faded Sears and Roebuck cutout of a little boy colored in pencil was nowhere to be found.

When I told Grandma that, she said, “Someone visits here, that’s for sure. Question is, why? Tell you what, let’s take the boat and see this place of yours,” Grandma said.

Grandma got in the boat, me and Tom pushed it into the water, and with me paddling, Tom sitting in the front of the boat playing guide, we made our way to the briar tunnel. It was a pleasant trip. The day was warm, the river was running swift, and the water was dappled with the shadows of overhanging trees.

On the shore I saw a huge water moccasin basking on the twisted root of a big willow tree. Frogs plopped off the bank and into the water. Little black bugs darted about on the surface of the river as if they were Northern ice skaters. Twice I saw turtle heads poke out of the water to see if we were edible, then bob out of view.

When we docked the boat and got up there in the tunnel, it was dark in spots, but there were streamers of light shining in and the edges of the lights were like the sharp blades of archangels’ swords, and the light showed the bits of cloth and the paper cut from the catalogues. Grandma looked around, touching the bits of cloth and paper.

She said, “I don’t judge this to be any kind of killer’s nest. Some kids, boys most likely, have made them a playhouse. They got them some colored cloth and some pictures to spice up the place.”

“But some of them pictures are of women in their underwear,” I said.

“You don’t look at them same pictures while you’re out there in the outhouse, Harry? You just use that catalogue to wipe on?” Grandma asked.

I blushed.

Tom gave me a look that told me I hadn’t heard the end of this.

“You can see where he built him a fire,” I said.

“Kids or hoboes could have built a fire,” Grandma said. “And if you think about it, why would the killer want a fire? I don’t think he stays down here. I think he lives among us, or near us.”

“He built it so he could see at night,” Tom said.

“I guess that’s possible,” Grandma said. I could tell she had already made up her mind.

“But he could come here,” Tom said. “He could use this place.”

“You could be right,” Grandma said. “But I think you’ll find kids are makin’ ’em a playhouse here. Hoboes might be usin’ it to hide out.”

“Ain’t it far in the woods for hoboes?”

“Who’s to say?” Grandma said. “Let’s see we can get this boat back, and be back home when your Mama and Daddy get off work.”

“Aw,” Tom said. “We got plenty of time.”

“Yeah,” Grandma said. “But we’re goin’ anyway.”

We went back to the boat, ready to carry it upriver, but when it came down to brass tacks, Grandma decided not to bother.

“Mose is dead,” she said. “And we ain’t gonna have good luck paddling against the current. Carryin’ it will wear us down. We’ll just leave it. Besides, whoever brung it back last time might do the same.”

We started walking. All the way to where we could cross over in the shallows, and all the way back to the car, I had a feeling that someone was moving silently between the trees, looking at us through the leaves, peeking out from the shadows. But every time I looked, I didn’t see anything but the woods and the leaves and river.

That night I lay in bed and tried to think on things, and I kept coming back to this. Grandma was a grown-up, and a smart one, but she wasn’t no better detective than Daddy, and he wasn’t worth a hoot, and he’d tell you so. Me and Tom wasn’t so good either, but both of us had come to one decision. The murderer was the Goat Man, or what Miss Maggie called a Travelin’ Man.

Thinking on Miss Maggie I felt sad again. There wouldn’t be any more of her fine cooking, or her wonderful stories. She was gone. Murdered in the very home where I sat with her many a time and she had laughed and called me Little Man.

And Mrs. Canerton. She might have died because she was bringing me books. She might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but a feeling of guilt passed through me just the same.

Poor Mrs. Canerton had always been so nice. All those books. The Halloween parties. The way she smiled. Her breasts in that dress last Halloween night. White and pure, with a collar touched with little red roses.

As I drifted off to sleep I thought of telling Daddy about the Sears catalogue pictures and the cloth and such in the briar tunnel, but I had made Grandma a promise not to tell. I wasn’t sure I should have made that promise. I was thinking about going back on it, or begging off of it, when sleep overtook me.

When I awoke the next morning, none of it seemed so all fired important, and in time Grandma seemed to forget all about it. She had found something new to occupy her. Mr. Groon. She even took to doing what a lot of folks thought was unladylike; she stayed around his store, visiting with him, helping him stock shelves and such, and for no pay at all.

From time to time, me and Tom slipped off and went down to Mose’s old cabin. Now and then there would be a fish on the nail, or some odd thing from the river.

I reasoned that someone was bringing Mose gifts, perhaps unaware he was dead. Or maybe they had been left there for some other reason.

We dutifully took down what was there and returned it to the river, wondering if maybe it was the Goat Man leaving the goods, and if so, why would he do it? Could a monster like that have liked Mose? Could they have been an offering to the devil, like in Miss Maggie’s story about the Travelin’ Man? It wasn’t peed-in whiskey, but who was to say if the devil liked fish and junk from the river?

When we looked around for sign of the Goat Man, all we could find were prints from someone wearing large-sized shoes. No hoofprints.

Sometimes we both sensed someone watching us. I always brought the shotgun with me, hoping that old Goat Man would show himself, give me just one shot. All the detective work in the world couldn’t do what one shotgun blast could.

Then a thought hit Tom one day while we were down on the river.

“What if the devil ain’t bothered by no shotgun?” she said.

I hadn’t considered that. But I should have. After all, he was the devil.

We went away from there, less sure of ourselves, shotgun or no shotgun, and we didn’t go back for a long time after. For the next few days I wondered if fresh fish and things from the river were on them nails, and what did the provider think when they weren’t gone when he came back? Or had he been watching us all along from the concealment of the woods? It was a mystery too large for my mind, and finally, I had to tuck it aside.