The Bottoms

6

The icehouse was a big worn-out-looking barn of a place with peeling paint that had once been white but was now gray. It had a narrow front porch of new lumber, the only new lumber on the building.

I knew that inside the icehouse would be lined with sawdust. Big blocks of ice would be stacked about. There would be a table for cutting up slabs of ice with a saw, and a scale to weigh it, and a chute to send it down into wagon or truck beds. The ice would be so cold if you put your hand on it, it would burn you, and cause the flesh to stick.

And there was the body. The body I’d found.

As we came to the icehouse, Daddy said, “I’ll be damned.”

Sitting on the porch, dressed in a dusty white suit with mud splashed on his shoes and pants legs, fanning himself with his straw hat, was Doc Stephenson.

There was a flat bottle of dark liquid on the porch beside him, and when he saw Daddy he took a swig of it and put it down. Doc Stephenson had a mouth that looked as if it did not want to open wide, lest tacks and nails fall out. His eyes made you uncomfortable, like they were looking for a place to stick a knife.

“What’s he doin’ here?” Daddy asked Dr. Tinn.

“Can’t say as I know, suh,” Dr. Tinn said.

“You don’t need to sir me,” Daddy said. “I won’t sir you, you don’t sir me.”

“Yes suh… Very well, Constable.”

At that moment, Doc Taylor came walking toward the icehouse. He was carrying a Dr Pepper and some sort of candy from Pappy’s place. He looked sharp in his clothes, which were a little more special than we were used to seeing. Very-well-made slacks, the cuffs of which he had somehow managed to keep clear of mud, though with the shoes he had not succeeded. He wore a clean white shirt that was so soft-looking it seemed to be made of angel wings. He had on a thin black tie that glistened like the wet back of a water snake, and his soft black felt hat was cocked at a jaunty angle that made him look more like he was going to a dance than to examine a mutilated body. I wondered if he had on his chain with the dented coin attached.

“That there’s Doc Taylor,” Daddy said to Doc Tinn. “He’s what I think they call an intern. He’s with Stephenson ’cause he’s thinkin’ about retirin’, and he thought he’d get to know folks so he could take his place. He’s a little dandy, but he seems all right to me.”

“I doubt he wants to know us folks,” Doc Tinn said.

“I suppose you’re right,” Daddy said. “Let’s get this over with, then.”

Daddy turned to me, gave me a pat on the head, said, “See you later, Harry.”

Dejected, I wandered up the street a ways, turned, looked back at the icehouse, watched Daddy and Doc Tinn go inside with Doc Stephenson.

It was confusing to me. I had heard Daddy say the doctor didn’t want anything to do with the body because it was colored, but here he was, away from his office, down in colored town for a looksee. And he had Doc Taylor with him.

I was thinking on all this when I heard a squeaking behind me, turned to see an ancient, legless, colored man in a cart covered by a willow stick and tarp roof, drawn by a big glossy white hog fastened up in a leather harness. The old man was bald and his scalp was wrinkled like a leather bag that had been wadded up and smoothed out by hand. He could have hidden a pencil in the wrinkles on his face. There wasn’t a tooth in his head. He looked much older than Miss Maggie. In fact, she was a girl compared to him.

He carried a thin green willow stick he was using to tap the hog on the hind quarters. The hog was grunting, trundling along at a pretty good gate. Walking beside the old man and his cart were two boys about my age, one colored, one white. Their clothes were even more worn-looking than mine. The colored boy’s pants were gone at the knee and there wasn’t any attempt there to hold patches. The white kid’s pants were gone at one knee, and there was a cotton sack patch there that had been multidyed by life, most likely the dye consisting of grass stains, clay roads, dirty riverbanks, and berry stains.

I noticed folks that had been standing around were edging toward the icehouse, congregating outside of it like a bunch of blackbirds on a limb. I realized then the body in the icehouse wasn’t much of a secret.

The old man in the hog-drawn cart pulled up beside me. He looked at me with his rheumy eyes and opened his toothless mouth to say: “How’re you, little white boy?”

“I’m fine, sir.”

The truth of the matter was he scared me. I had never seen anyone that looked that old, and certainly no one in that circumstance, minus legs and drawn about in a cart by a hog.

The white boy who had been walking along with him said, “I’m Richard Dale. I live on down the bottoms.”

Richard Dale was a little older than me, I think. Thin of jaw, ripe of lips, with a nose that we used to call Roman. Some smart alecks used to say, “Yeah. It roams all over his face.”

I told him I lived in the bottoms too, explained my part of the country. His part of the bottoms was on the other side from me. His section was called the Sandy Bottoms, because there was more white sand there than where we lived, which was rich with red clay and brown dirt.

The colored boy with him introduced himself as Abraham. He looked very energetic, as if he had been drinking lots of coffee and was expecting something big to happen, like a tornado, a flood, or tripping over a boxful of money.

Being all of the same general age, quick to bore, and a little tired of adults, we were immediate friends.

Abraham said, “Me and Ricky got some cards with nekkid women on ’em.”

“But we ain’t got ’em with us,” Richard hastened to add, lest I might ask for him to lay them out for examination.

“Yeah,” Abraham said, disappointed. “They in the tree house, and it ain’t nowhere near here. We got nigger shooters too. I can shoot a tin can at maybe thirty feet.”

A “nigger shooter” was a word for a slingshot made of shoe tongue, tire rubber, and a forked stick. The name was common, and Abraham had said it without shame or consideration.

“We hear they’s a body in there,” Abraham added. “A woman got murdered.”

I couldn’t contain myself. “I found the body.”

“Say you did,” Abraham said. “Naw. Naw you didn’t. You pullin’ our leg.”

“Did too. That’s my Daddy in there. He’s the constable over our parts.”

“This ain’t his constablin’ here,” the old man in the hog cart said. He could hear right good. I figured he’d heard us talking about those cards with naked women on them, and I was embarrassed.

Richard Dale said, “That’s Uncle Pharaoh. He got his legs torn up and cut off ’cause of a wild hog. Hog is Pig Jesse. That ain’t the wild hog. That’s a tame one.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to the old man.

He looked at me like I was some sort of strange vegetable he had never seen before. “Sorry ’bout what?” he said.

“Your legs.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, don’t be. Didn’t happen yesterd’y. I done got over it.”

“Where’d you find that body?” Abraham asked, and I told all three of them the story. I finished with: “I thought since I found it and done seen it, Daddy might let me look again and hear what the doctor’s got to say about it, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“That’s the way it always is,” Richard said. “Adults think they got to know everything and we ain’t supposed to know or see nothin’. Hey, you want to go off and play?”

“No,” I said. “I think I’ll wait here.”

Richard winked at me. “Let’s play.”

Abraham was smiling, and I wondered what it was they were after. I hoped they didn’t want to smoke grapevine, or even tobacco, ’cause I never liked either a bit. Times I had tried they had made my stomach sick.

Richard leaned over close and said, “Me and Abraham know somethin’ you might like to know about that body. Come with us.”

I thought on that, but only for a second. They told Uncle Pharaoh goodbye, and I went running with them, away from the crowd, toward the creek. They led me along the edge of the creek and up behind the icehouse to where the big chinaberry tree grew.

Richard whispered: “Me and Abraham we know everything there is to know about over here. There’s a big hole in the roof up there, right over the front room, where they bring the ice out. There’s a piece of tin over it, but it’ll twist aside and you can see in. If you don’t twist it too much, they won’t notice ’cause the tree shades that spot. Won’t be a bunch of sunlight slippin’ in. ’Sides, there’s all sorts of cracks in that roof anyway. Little sunlight here and there won’t be noticed none.”

“What if they ain’t in that room?” I said.

“Then they ain’t,” Abraham said. “But what if they is?”

Richard led the way up the chinaberry tree, Abraham after him, and me following up last. The chinaberry was a big one, and several of the limbs branched over the top of the icehouse. We climbed out on those and onto the roof. Richard moved along the roof to a spot in the shingles with a tin patch. He used his hand to push the patch back. Cold air came up from the icehouse and hit us in the face, and it felt good. Above us, the clouds had turned dark, as if filling up with shadow to aid our cause.

We looked out at the crowd. Most of them could see us. Some of them waved. I thought: Boy, am I gonna be in for it. But it was worth the gamble. These folks had no reason to tell my Daddy anything. They didn’t even know him. And like most colored, they pretty much minded their own business when it came to whites.

There wasn’t nothing to see at first, but we could hear men talking. I recognized Doc Stephenson’s voice. He sounded loud, and drunk. Just when I was getting cold feet, and thinking about climbing down, Richard put his hand on my shoulder, and into view came two colored men carrying a long, narrow, galvanized tub packed with ice and, of course, the body.

The corpse was covered with a big burlap sack, and soon as they set it down on the ice-cutting table, they removed the sack, and I got a good look.

Looking down on it, I felt strange. It was the same body I had found that night. But it had seemed ten feet tall and terrible then. Now it was small and bloated and sad-looking, and suddenly, a person. Someone’s spirit had inhabited that body and it had been alive and had eaten and laughed and had plans. Now it was a pathetic shell of wasting flesh, minus a soul. I either smelled, or imagined I could smell, the decaying odor of the body rising up with the cold from the icehouse’s interior.

In that moment, something else changed for me. I realized that a person could truly die. Daddy and Mama could die. I could die. We would all someday die. Something went hollow inside me, shifted, found a place to lie down and be still, if not entirely in comfort.

Her head was tilted back and slightly submerged in chunks of ice. The mouth was open, and missing teeth. Many of the remaining teeth were jagged or broken, and I immediately realized they had been knocked out. The woman’s breasts were split open and laid back and the blood had gone gray and was frozen.

For the first time I was seeing a woman’s privates, but there was really nothing to see. Just a triangle of darkness. The poor woman’s knees were slightly bent and she lay with her left hip down and her right hip up. Her hands were out to her sides and cupped into claws. Her face was hard to make out. Things had been done to it. There were rips in her body where the barbed wire had torn it. There were cuts all over.

Doc Stephenson, sucking from his flask, wobbled over to the body and looked down. He said, “Now that is one dead darkie.”

The colored men who had toted the body out in the galvanized tub looked at the floor. Doc Stephenson punched the one on his right with his elbow, said, “Ain’t it, boy?”

The man lifted his chin slightly, and without looking at Doc Stephenson directly, said, “Yas suh, she sho is.”

It embarrassed me to see that colored man have to act like that. He was big and strong and could have pulled Doc Stephenson’s head off. But if he had, he would have been swinging from a limb before nightfall, and maybe his entire family, and any other colored who just happened to be in sight when the Klan came riding.

Stephenson knew that. White folks knew that. It gave them a lot of room.

I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Abraham. The look on his face had gone from boyish excitement to one I couldn’t quite identify.

Daddy moved to look at the body then, and said to Doc Stephenson, “I thought you couldn’t look at the body? Wouldn’t.”

“Not in town. Wouldn’t a white person within a hundred miles have anything to do with me they knew I was hauling a colored into my place. A decent white woman sure wouldn’t want to be examined in no place like that. No offense, boys, but colored and white need their separation. Even the Bible tells us that. Hell, you boys are happier when you don’t have the worries we do. You’re lucky, is what you are

… Taylor here told me I ought to have a look. That we ought to come out and help you boys.”

Doc Taylor grinned shyly; the dampness on his teeth caught the lamplight and made them shine.

Doc Tinn had not stepped forward. He stood slightly back of Daddy and Doc Stephenson, his head down, not quite knowing what to do with his hands, though I had an idea what he’d like to do.

Doc Taylor stood at the end of the table, looking at the body calmly, taking it all in.

Doc Stephenson looked the body over, touched it, moved it slightly, said, “Looks to me a wild hog got her.”

“Then tied her with barbed wire to a tree?” Daddy said.

Doc Stephenson looked at Daddy as if he were an idiot. “I mean before she was tied to the tree.”

“You saying a hog killed her?”

“I’m saying it could be like that. They got tusks like knives. I’ve seen them do some bad things to flesh.”

“Doctor Tinn,” Daddy said. “Do you know this woman?”

Doc Tinn came forward, looked the body over. “I don’t think so. I’ve sent for the Reverend Bail, though. He’s supposed to be here already.”

“What’d you do that for?” Doc Stephenson said.

“He knows most everybody in these parts,” Doc Tinn said. “I thought he might could identify her.”

“Hell, how you tell one colored woman from another is hard for me to figure,” Doc Stephenson said. “I wouldn’t think you boys could keep up with your wives. ’Course, maybe you don’t try to.”

Stephenson laughed as if everyone were in on the joke. He had no idea he was being rude. He believed so strongly that colored and white were truly different at the core, he thought it was evident to everyone.

I could see Doc Tinn’s shoulders shaking. Doc Taylor’s expression changed slightly. He glanced at the floor briefly, then looked up again, focusing on the body.

Doc Stephenson said, “Now that I look at her better, I think a panther did it.”

“A panther ain’t any more prone to tying bodies to trees with barbed wire than a hog,” Daddy said. I saw Doc Tinn’s face change slightly. He had liked that.

“I know that,” Doc Stephenson said, and his tone was sharper than before. “What I’m suggestin’ is she was killed by a panther, then someone else came along, some colored boys, and tied her to a tree.”

“What for?” Daddy asked.

“For fun. Why not? You was a boy once. You ever done somethin’ foolish, Constable?”

“Lots of times. But I wouldn’t have done nothing like that, and I don’t know any boys would.”

“Maybe not white boys. And listen here now, Tinn, I don’t mean nothin’ by it. I know you. You’re all right. But colored and whites is different. You know that. Down deep you do. Hell, there’s things that a colored can’t help, and I think folks are wrong to hold every little thing you coloreds do against you. Boys wouldn’t have meant nothing by it. It’d just be somethin’ to do. You know, like finding a dead fish and draggin’ it around.”

“A dead fish ain’t a woman,” Daddy said.

“Yeah, but don’t you think a couple little colored boys would have a pretty good time playin’ with a naked colored gal?”

“Doc,” Daddy said. “You been drinkin’. Why don’t you go somewhere and get sober.”

“I’m all right.”

Doc Taylor, who had been silent, said, “Doctor, maybe you have had a bit too much to drink. I ought to get you home.”

“What for,” Doc Stephenson said. “Nothin’ there.”

I had heard how his wife had up and ran off from him, and since he always seemed mean as a snake to me, I couldn’t say I blamed her.

“You could rest,” Doc Taylor said.

“I can rest fine right here, anywhere I want to.”

I saw Doc Taylor look at Daddy and shake his head, as if to indicate he was sorry.

“I don’t want you here,” Daddy said. “Go somewhere and get sober.”

“What’d you say?”

“I don’t stutter. Go somewhere and get sober.”

“You talkin’ to me like that in front of these colored boys?”

“These men haven’t been boys in years. And I’m just talkin’ to you, period.”

“This ain’t your jurisdiction no how.”

“Did I say anything about arresting you? Now get on your horse and ride.”

“I got a car.”

“It’s an expression, you jackass.”

“Jackass. You callin’ me a jackass?”

Daddy turned and moved close to Doc Stephenson. “I am. I’m callin’ you a jackass. Straight to your face. Right now. Here. Ain’t it bad enough we got a woman’s been murdered, and not by no goddamn panther neither. Ain’t that bad enough? We ain’t supposed to be quarrelin’ over her poor dead body. Get out before I put you out on the end of my shoe.”

“Well, I never…”

“Right now. Go. Taylor, get him out of here.”

Doc Taylor touched Doc Stephenson’s arm, and Stephenson jerked it away. “I don’t need no damn seein’ eye dog.”

Doc Stephenson, perhaps trying to show some defiance, took a big swig of his whiskey and wobbled off toward the door. Just before goin’ out he turned and said, “I ain’t forgettin’ you, Constable.”

“Well, I almost done forgot you, and will, quick as you go out that door.”

Doc Stephenson hesitated, then said, “I’ll just leave you then. See what you can learn from that boy. I can’t believe they even give the title Doctor to a colored. You ain’t no doctor to me, nigger. You hear me?”

“Come on,” Doc Taylor said.

“You leave me alone,” Doc Stephenson said.

And out the door he went.

I looked at Richard, then Abraham. They both had big grins on their faces. We looked back down through the split in the roof.

“Sorry about him,” Doc Taylor said. “His wife run off from him. He ain’t got over it yet.”

“He’s not the kind that will.”

“I talked him into coming,” Doc Taylor said. “I thought he could help. And I guess I was curious.”

“I appreciate you,” Daddy said. “You better take care of him.”

It was polite, but it was clear Daddy wanted Doc Taylor out of the icehouse too.

“Yeah,” Doc Taylor said, and left.

Daddy said, “Doctor, would you like to examine and give me your opinion on the patient?”

“Yes, I would,” Dr. Tinn said.

He set his bag on the edge of the table and opened it. He said, “Billy Ray, light me up a lantern, would you?”

Billy Ray, one of the colored men who had carried the body in, lit a lantern and brought it over to the table, as it was pretty dark inside the icehouse. The only other light was light from cracks in the roof and from a few breaks in the board siding.

The lantern made the room glow orange. Doc Tinn draped the lantern handle on a hook that hung from a rafter over the table. When he did that we moved back from our place at the hole, waited, then slid our faces back. I was afraid we’d make a shadow that would cause them to look up and see us, but with chinaberry limbs hanging over us, and that cloud across the sun, there wasn’t a noticeable change. Least I wasn’t aware of one. And the bottom line was curiosity ate up caution.

Doc Tinn pulled on a pair of big rubber gloves and poked the body with his big fingers. He took off the gloves, lit a match, held it close to her mouth and looked inside. He waved the match out, slipped on the gloves again, stuck a finger down her throat and worked it. He came up with a little something on his finger, wiped that on a cloth he took out of his bag. He stuck a finger up her nostrils, worked it around, wiped what he found on the same rag, then folded it.

He said, “I’m gonna have to cut on her to see the inside of her stomach.”

“The inside of her stomach?” Daddy said.

Doc Tinn nodded. “I ain’t maybe had the schoolin’ Doc Stephenson’s had, but I got my hunches.”

“Well,” Daddy said, “I know for a fact Doc Stephenson learned his doctor’n out of a book and he did his first doctor’n on horses and cows.”

Doc Tinn grinned. “So did I.”

Daddy grinned back, said, “Go on and do what you got to do.”

“This won’t be pretty.”

Daddy, less humored now, nodded. “I know.”

Doc Tinn took a tool from his bag, a scalpel, began cutting at the woman’s chest and down to her navel. I thought at first I was gonna lose my breakfast, but I was just too mesmerized to turn away. Doc Stephenson wasn’t entirely wrong. Boys were fascinated by a dead body, but not in the way he had suggested.

The cutting was odd in that there wasn’t any blood. She was long dead and pretty well frozen, but there was a hint of gas that rose up from the corpse and through the slit in the roof. It made me feel sick for a moment, then it passed.

I squinted when he started handling the sweet meats inside her. Finally he cut open something, reached in with his hand, took out some dark things, and put them on the table.

I turned away for a moment, saw that Richard and Abraham were still looking. I didn’t want to be thought a weak sister, so I looked again.

Doc Tinn had Daddy open the front door to let in some more light. There were people out by the porch and Daddy had to run ’em off. They moved away reluctantly. They were looking up at us on the roof, but no one spilled the beans. I think they were glad someone was getting a look.

Doc Tinn went to work on the woman’s privates, cut, probed around down there for a while, and Daddy moved across the room with the other two men.

This went on for some time, and finally the doctor stopped, rolled the body over, looked at it, rolled it on its back again, said, “Billy Ray. Will you or Cyrus bring me a pan of water and some soap and a towel?”

Both Billy Ray and Cyrus went away. Doc Tinn pulled off his gloves and lay them on the table. He said, “Now this is just my opinion, mind you.”

“I appreciate it,” Daddy said, walking up to stand beside him. “Go on.”

“Wasn’t no wild hog nor a panther done this.”

“I never thought it was. Panthers don’t normally attack people. It could happen, but it ain’t normal.”

“Panther. Wild hog. They don’t work a body like this no how. This was a man done it.”

“I figured as much.”

“Used a real sharp knife. These cuts was made while she was alive. Mostly. But some was after. Look at her hands here.” Doc Tinn reached down and took hold of one, lifted it, turned it so Daddy could see. “There’s cuts on ’em, like she was tryin’ to fend the fellow off. Also there’s fingernail wounds. This means he did most of this while she was alive. See how she’s buried her own nails into her palms, trying to deal with the pain. There’s a stab here on her back, and a slash at the kidney area. None of these are deep, ’cept for the stab. It’s pretty deep, and it was twisted to be pulled out. I think she tried to fight him off, he had a knife, he slashed at her, she put up her hands, they got cut, she turned to run, he stabbed her in the back, then slashed her, or maybe the other way around. She went down, and from the looks of the way she’s been used… you know, down there

… she was raped. She’s all torn up, so she was forced. He got through with that, he cut on her some while she was alive. Her clitoris is missing.”

“Her what?” Daddy asked.

“It’s down there with her private parts. You rub it on a live woman and they get really excited.”

“Yeah?” Daddy said.

“Yeah.”

Doc Tinn said, “It’s a little nub and it rolls under your thumb or finger. It’s a thing a man ought to know, you know what I mean.”

Daddy nodded again, as if contemplating a great mystery, or rather common information that had somehow been denied him. I filed it away in my own file cabinet, though at the time I wasn’t sure it was something I’d ever need.

Daddy said, “He cut it off? This cli…”

“Clitoris. Did it just as precise as could be. And from the looks of the wound she bled good. Probably still alive through that too, though I don’t know for sure. Lot of the other cuts and slashes and such I think he did after he choked her to death.”

Doc Tinn leaned over the table. “See her throat there. Those bruises. Them are from hands. He finished up with her, I think he threw her in the river.”

“How would you know that?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure, but there ain’t no river in her lungs, so she didn’t drown. I know a little about drownings. Flood five years ago there was twenty-five people drowned. I seen what it did to bodies.”

“Twenty-five people?” Daddy said. “Five years ago. I don’t remember anything about that.”

“Wasn’t none of ’em white,” Doc Tinn said.

“Oh,” Daddy said.

“This woman was dead when she was thrown in. There’s all kinds of scrapes on her forehead there, and there was a piece of gravel in one of her eyes, lodged in the corner there. River gravel. Body thrown in a river will mostly go face down, and the current will drag it along and scrape it up, like it’s done on her forehead there. There was bits of river in her mouth, throat, and nose, but not in her lungs, so I figure she was dead already.”

“Makes sense,” Daddy said. “But if he threw her in the river, how does that account for her being tied to that tree?”

“Well now, Doctor Stephenson may be kinda right. Someone got the body out of the river and cut on it some more. Way her breasts are all cut up there, that was done afterward. You can tell ’cause there ain’t no real blood wound. He was cuttin’ on a corpse.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Then he tied her to that tree with barbed wire, way you said your boy found her. Wrapped some vines around her and such, and left her there. I wouldn’t be surprised he came back a few times and messed with the body. Your boy hadn’t found it, he might have come back some more. I think he would have.”

“You couldn’t know that?”

“No. But like I said, some of them wounds was after death. It might have been done in one trip, but they’re some with maggot eggs in them, and some not so many. The maggots was just gettin’ started in some of them wounds when your boy found it and you got her down before they was thick. Maggots don’t just work one wound at a time. Flies get all over them wounds, lay eggs in them. Ones wasn’t packed with eggs was because there wasn’t time for ’em to.”

Daddy considered on this for a moment. “Like you said, though. Stephenson could have been right. It could have been someone else found the body and did those things. It don’t mean there was just one fella did it all.”

“Uh huh, but what do you think? What’s your gut tell you, Constable? Man did this in the first place is the more likely to do it some more. I think he threw her away, like she was garbage, threw her in the river, but then figured he hadn’t got his fill, come back, got her out, and did the rest.”

“How would he know where to find her? She could have washed downriver.”

“She could have. But I figure he threw her in there, tied her out like a trot line. Look here. You see this around her ankle. See that friction. I think after he killed her he tied a rope around her and tossed her out. Maybe had some kind of weight tied to her. That way he knew where to find her. And just for the record, on her butt there, I think that’s a turtle been nibblin’.”

The sun came out from behind its cloud and it was bright enough to burn right through the leaves on the chinaberry tree, giving our immediate world a shade of green. I could see the shapes of our heads move across the woman’s body on the table, and Daddy looked up as we pulled our heads back.

We didn’t look again. We just sat there listening. Doc Tinn said, “You know ain’t no one here gonna worry about her none.”

I didn’t hear Daddy respond. Doc Tinn continued.

“She’s colored, but colored over here don’t want no trouble. If it’s one of our own did it, and we find out who it is, well, it’ll get taken care of. We tell the whites a colored did it, well, ain’t no tellin’ who all will pay.”

“Could be a white man done it.”

“Even better reason colored won’t get involved.”

“Can you see to it she gets a proper burial, and let me know when?”

“I can. We got a graveyard that’ll let anyone in.”

“Yep. Dirt ain’t particular.”

“Nor the worms,” Doc Tinn said. “And one other thing.” He pulled a long pair of tweezer things out of his bag and picked something up lying between the woman’s legs. “Soon as I went to work down there, this fell out. It was pushed up in her.”

“What is it?”

“It looks like paper. It’s so bloody and wet, there’s no telling now, but that’s what it looks like.”

“He stuck paper up her?”

“Rolled up a small piece and put it there,” Doc Tinn said.

“Why?”

Doc Tinn shook his head. “It means something to him. I couldn’t begin to tell you what.”

We heard someone else come in, speak, and I realized it was the Reverend arriving. After greetings, I heard the Reverend say in a high voice, “Uh huh. Oh, my God. That be Jelda May. Jelda May Sykes. She was a harlot, but she come around now and then to talk to me. She was always wantin’ to do different and get salvation, but couldn’t. She worked them juke joints way down yonder on the river. Take in both black and white trade I hear. She did some conjurin’.”

“Conjurin’?” Daddy asked.

“She worked the juju. Magic spells and such.”

“You don’t believe that?” Daddy said. “You, a man of God?”

“Wasn’t all bad spells she worked,” Reverend said. “Poor, poor thing. Good Lord! Who cut her up like that?”

“Some of it was done by whoever killed her,” Doc Tinn said, “and some I did as way of examination. Checkin’ the cause of death.”

“Ain’t nothing like that need to be done after someone done had the indignities of death. Good Lord, what a mess. You ought not have done that.”

“You know what kind of animal you’re huntin’,” Daddy said. “How it lives, how it kills, you got a better chance of catchin’ him.”

“Lord, poor Jelda May,” the Reverend said. “She better off now. She in a better place.”

“I hope you’re right,” I heard Doc Tinn say. Then me and my newfound pals eased toward the chinaberry tree and started down.