The Bottoms Read online

  I hadn’t no more than got under there good than Tom crawled up beside me. I hadn’t worn a costume, but she had on her ghost outfit, an old white pillowcase with eyeholes.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Go find your own place.”

  “I didn’t know you was under here. It’s too late for me to go anywhere.”

  “Then be quiet,” I said.

  While we were sitting there, we saw shoes and pants legs moving toward the porch steps. It was the men who had been standing out in the yard smoking. They were gathering on the porch to talk. In passing, I recognized a pair of boots as Daddy’s, and after a bit of moving about on the porch above us, we heard the porch swing creak and some of the porch chairs scraping around, then I heard Cecil speak.

  “How long she been dead?”

  “Couple of weeks, maybe,” Daddy said. “It’s hard to say. Water and tornado didn’t do the body any good.”

  “She anyone we know?”

  “A prostitute,” Daddy said. “Janice Jane Willman. She lived near all them juke joints outside of Pearl Creek. Maybe she picked up the wrong man. Ended up in the river.”

  “How’d you find out who she is?”

  “I brought Doc Tinn and the Reverend Bail from over Pearl Creek to take a look at her.”

  “How’d you know she was from there?”

  “I didn’t. But they seem to know most everybody. Colored do most of their personal business over there, for obvious reasons. They both knew her. Doc Tinn had treated her for some female problems, and the Reverend had tried to save her soul, of course.”

  “I didn’t know niggers had souls.” I knew that voice. Old Man Nation. He showed up wherever there was food and possibly liquor, and never brought a covered dish or liquor. “And one less nigger ain’t gonna hurt nothin’.”

  “She wasn’t all colored,” Daddy said. “She was part white. A mulatto. Not that that matters.”

  “Ain’t no such thing as part white,” Nation said. “A drop of nigger blood makes you a nigger. You shit in a snow bank, snow’s ruined. It don’t matter how white it was to begin with. You ain’t gonna melt that and drink it.”

  “You know who did it?” Cecil asked. “Any leads?”

  “No.”

  “Hell, a nigger did it.” Nation again. “He’d have liked it better had it been a white woman. And mark my words, it will be you don’t catch this sonofabitch. A nigger prefers a white woman he gets a chance. Hell, wouldn’t you if you was a nigger? A white woman, that’s prime business to ’em.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Daddy said.

  “I’m sayin’ it’s comin’, Constable. It’s nothing yet, just niggers, but a white woman is gonna get hers.”

  “I don’t get you,” Daddy said. “You think colored kills colored it’s all right—”

  “It is.”

  “—and you don’t care if anything’s done about that, but now you’re telling me this killer’s got to be caught because a white woman might die. Which is it?”

  “I’m just sayin’ niggers ain’t a loss.”

  “And what if the killer’s white?”

  “They still ain’t a loss,” Mr. Nation said. “But it’ll turn out to be a nigger. Mark my words. And all this murderin’ won’t end at just niggers.”

  “I heard you had a suspect,” Cecil said.

  “Not really,” Daddy said.

  “Some colored fella, I heard,” Cecil said.

  “I knew it,” Nation said. “Some goddamn nigger.”

  “I picked a man up for questioning, that’s all.”

  “Where is he?” Nation asked.

  “You know,” Daddy said, “I think I’m gonna have me a piece of that pie.”

  The porch creaked, the screen door opened, and we heard boot steps entering into the house.

  “Nigger lover,” Nation said.

  “That’s enough of that,” Cecil said.

  “You talkin’ to me, fella?” Mr. Nation said.

  “I am, and I said that’s enough.”

  There was a scuttling movement on the porch, and suddenly there was a smacking sound and Mr. Nation hit the ground in front of us. We could see him through the steps. His face turned in our direction, but I don’t think he saw us. It was dark under the house, and he had his mind on other things. He got up quick like, leaving his hat on the ground, then we heard movement on the porch, the screen door again, and Daddy’s voice. “Ethan, don’t come back on the porch. Go on home.”

  “Who do you think you are to tell me anything?” Mr. Nation said.

  “Right now, I’m the constable, and you come up on this porch, you do one little thing that annoys me, I will arrest you.”

  “You and who else?”

  “Just me.”

  “What about him? He hit me. You’re on his side because he took up for you.”

  “I’m on his side because you’re a loudmouth spoiling everyone else’s good time. You been drinkin’ too much. Go home and sleep it off, Ethan. Let’s don’t let this get out of hand.”

  Mr. Nation’s hand dropped down and picked up his hat. He said, “You’re awfully high and mighty, aren’t you?”

  “There’s just no use fighting over something foolish,” Daddy said.

  “You watch yourself, nigger lover,” Mr. Nation said.

  “Don’t come by the barbershop no more,” Daddy said.

  “Wouldn’t think of it, nigger lover.”

  Then Mr. Nation turned and we saw him walking away.

  Daddy said: “Cecil. You talk too much.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Cecil said.

  “Now, I was gonna get some pie,” Daddy said. “I’m gonna go back inside and try it again. When I come back out, how’s about we talk about somethin’ altogether different?”

  “Suits me,” someone said, and I heard the screen door open again. For a moment I thought they were all inside, then I realized Daddy and Cecil were still on the porch, and Daddy was talking to Cecil.

  “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” Daddy said.

  “It’s all right,” Cecil said. “You’re right. I talk too much.”

  “So do I. I shouldn’t have told you I had a suspect in the first place. I didn’t tell you to be quiet about it. I should have. I can’t say I’m much of a policeman. I think I was talkin’ so I could brag a bit. About what, I don’t know. Feeling like I’m on the job, I guess.”

  “Still, I knew better.”

  “Let’s forget it. And thanks for hitting Nation. You didn’t owe me that.”

  “I did it because I owed him that. This suspect, Jacob. You think he did it?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Is he safe?”

  “For now. I may just let him go and never let it be known who he is.”

  “Again, I’m sorry, Jacob.”

  “No problem. Let’s get some of that pie.”

  10

  On the way home in the car the windows were rolled down and the October wind was fresh and ripe with the smell of the woods. My belly was full of pie and lemonade and I was cozy and content. I was thinking of Louise Canerton, and I found myself wondering how she would look without her dress. The thought bothered me and I tried not to dwell on it. But I kept thinking about her bosom, her long legs and how they would feel beneath my hands.

  Finally I prayed silently to God, but all the while I was thinking of her naked. I wondered if God saw her naked. He must. What did he think about that? Did he like what he saw? Was there no consideration for what he saw? Didn’t he create her? If so, why did he make ugly people?

  I believe it was at that point, although I didn’t realize it at the time, my ideas of God and religion were starting to change, even erode.

  As we wound through the woods along the dirt road that led to our house, I began to feel sleepy.

  Tom had already nodded off with her dirt-stained ghost mask clutched in her hands. I leaned against the side of the car and began to halfway doze. In time, I realized Mama and Da
ddy were talking.

  “He had her purse?” Mama said.

  “Yeah,” Daddy said. “He had it, and he’d taken money from it.”

  “Could it be him?”

  “He says he was fishing, saw the purse and her dress floating, snagged the purse with his fishing line. The dress washed on by him. He saw there was money in the purse, and he took it. Figured a purse in the river wasn’t something anyone was going to find, and there wasn’t any name in it, and it was just five dollars going to waste. Said he didn’t even consider that someone had been murdered.”

  “So you believe him?”

  “I believe him. I’ve known Old Mose all my life. He practically lives on that river in that boat of his. He wouldn’t harm a fly. Besides, the man’s over seventy years old and not in the best of health. He’s had a hell of a life. His wife ran off forty years ago and he’s never gotten over it. His son disappeared when he was a youngster. Whoever raped this woman had to be pretty strong. She was young enough, and from the way her body looked, she put up a pretty good fight. Man did this had to be strong enough to … well, she was cut up pretty bad. Same as the other woman.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “How did you come by the purse?”

  “I went to see Mose. Like I always do when I’m down on the river. It was layin’ on the table in his shack. I had to arrest him. I don’t know I should have now. Maybe I should have taken the purse and said I found it. I believe him. But I don’t have evidence one way or the other.”

  “Didn’t Mose have some trouble before?”

  “When his wife ran off some thought he’d killed her. She was fairly loose. That was the rumor. Nothing ever came of it.”

  “But he could have done it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And what about his boy? What happened there?”

  “Telly was the boy’s name. He was addle-headed. Mose claimed that’s why his wife run off. She was embarrassed by that addle-headed boy. Kid disappeared four or five years later and Mose never talked about it. Some thought he killed him too. But that’s just rumor. White folks talkin’ about colored folks like they do. I believe his wife ran off. The boy wasn’t much of a thinker, and he may have run off too. He liked to roam the woods and river. He might have drowned, fallen in some hole somewhere and never got out.”

  “But none of that makes it look good for Mose, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “What are you gonna do, Jacob?”

  “I don’t know. I was afraid to lock him up over at the courthouse. It isn’t a real jail anyway, and word gets around a colored man was involved, there won’t be any real thinking on the matter. I talked Bill Smoote into letting me keep Mose over at his bait house.”

  “Couldn’t Mose just run away?”

  “I suppose. But he’s not in that good a health, hon. And he trusts me to investigate, clear him. That’s what makes me nervous. I don’t know how. I thought about talking to the county boys that cover Pearl Creek. They have more experience, but they have a tendency to be a little emotional themselves.”

  “You mean Red.”

  “Yeah. He’s rumored to be in the Klan, or was.”

  “You don’t know that for a fact,” Mama said.

  “If he ain’t got an official hood in his drawer,” Daddy said, “you can bet he’s got one in spirit.”

  “He ain’t always been that way.”

  “No. But things change … things can happen.”

  Mama quickly changed the subject. “But if it’s not Mose, who is it?”

  “After I was told about Janice Willman, I went over and took a look at the body. Same sort of thing. She’s been cut on, and tied with one leg pulled up to her neck, rope around her head and ankle. That seems to be a thing he does to every one of ’em, some kind of tie-up.”

  “Does that mean anything, tying them up like that?”

  “I don’t know. Doc Tinn thinks so. When I showed him this body and talked to him about it, he said he believes these fellas have a pattern. He’d done some reading on it, and he thinks they do pretty much the same thing over and over. Little difference here and there, but the same thing. Jack the Ripper did his killings the same, ’cept each one got more vicious than the last. Doc Tinn told me about some others he’s read about, and now these. All cut up. All tied or bound up in some kind of way, and all of them in or near the river. Or they had been in the river. He calls them pattern killers. He said he hoped to write some kind of paper on it, but figures being colored he hasn’t got a chance in hell of doing anything important with it.”

  “That doesn’t explain why,” Mama said.

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  I began to drift off again. I thought of Mose. He had white blood in him. Red in his hair. Eyes green as spring leaves. Skin dark as molasses. I had waved at him not so long ago. Sometimes, when Daddy had a good day hunting or fishing, he’d go by there and give Mose a squirrel or some fish. Mose was always glad to see us.

  I thought of the Goat Man again. I recalled him standing below the Swinging Bridge, looking up through the shadows at me. I thought of him near our house, watching. The Goat Man had killed those women. Not Mose. I was certain of it.

  It was there in the car, battered by the cool October wind, that I began to formulate a plan to find the Goat Man and free Mose. I thought on it for several days after, and I begun to come up with something that seemed like a good idea.

  Looking back on it now, I realize just how foolish and wild it was. Inspired by one of Mrs. Canerton’s books, The Count of Monte Cristo.

  But my plan, foolish as it was, never came to pass.

  Next day Daddy went to the barbershop and Mama had me stay home with Tom to help her do the canning. We did that all morning and well after lunch. Late in the afternoon, Mama sent Tom and me out to play and she set about putting up the vegetables we had canned in the cabinets.

  Although it’s called canning, we did it in jars. It was a lot of work, sterilizing jars, packing them with cooked vegetables, sealing them with paraffin and lids, setting them aside. I was glad to get away from it all. Tom and I played a game of chase at the edge of the woods, and finally took to resting under the oak. Tom fell asleep in the chair there right away, and I walked to the well to get a drink of water. I was still cooking on my plan to rescue Mose, although I was beginning to wonder what I was rescuing him from. Where would I take him?

  I cranked up the bucket and used the dipper to drink, and as I was putting it aside, I heard a car roll up around front. I thought it was most likely Daddy, maybe coming home early if the shop wasn’t well attended, so I went around the edge of the house to see.

  When I got there I saw the car was a black dented Ford. The man that got out was wearing a large gray cowboy hat and a holstered gun on his hip. He stood in front of the Ford with his right knee cocked forward and he was working the ground with the toe of his boot, way he had the day I first seen him. He wore a long-sleeve shirt with the sleeves buttoned down tight. There was a sweat ring around his neck. He was the same man Daddy had talked to outside of Pearl Creek. The one he had saved from a suck hole when they were both young. Red.

  He saw me and smiled. “How’re you doin’, partner?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Your Daddy here?”

  “My Mama,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “well, that’ll do. Tell her I’m here, will you?”

  I went inside and told Mama. When she went to the front door and saw Red standing in the yard, I noticed a change in her expression. I can’t describe it to you. It was surprise, but something else too. She reached up and gently touched her hair, then her hands dropped to her sides and she smoothed her dress.

  “Red,” she said.

  “May Lynn. You’re as lovely as ever.”

  She colored slightly. “Jacob isn’t here.”

  Red stood in the yard and looked around,
as if Daddy might appear out of the afternoon air. “Say he ain’t.”

  Of course he wasn’t. I had already told him Daddy wasn’t in.

  “Well now, maybe we could chat a few minutes,” Red said. “He be in soon?”

  “Yes,” Mama said. Then added: “Very soon.”

  “May I come in?”

  Mama hesitated. She looked at me. She said, “Harry, run on with you. We’re gonna do a little grown-up talk.”

  I hesitated, but went out on the screened back porch and sat in the swing. When Red came in and Mama shut the door, the air draft made the door to the screen porch push open a bit. I got up to shut it, pushed it almost to, then hesitated. I knew it wasn’t polite to listen in on other people’s conversations, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Well, sit down,” Mama said. She sounded uncomfortable and unsure of herself in her own house. I had never known her to sound like that before.

  “Thank you,” Red said. I heard chairs scrape, then there was a long moment of silence.

  Mama said, “I could make some coffee.”

  “No. That’s all right. He’ll be back soon?”

  “I can’t say exactly. He cuts hair until there isn’t any to cut.”

  “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it has.”

  “Nice house.”

  “Thank you. It isn’t much really. Jacob and I built it. I nailed down the floors myself. My Mom and Dad helped us.”

  “Floor looks sturdy,” Red said.

  “Thanks.”

  “How are your mother and father? I haven’t seen them in years.”

  “They moved to North Texas few years back. Mama went there to be near my sister Ida. Ida was ill and had children to take care of. Ida got better, but Daddy died.”

  “I’m sorry. How’s your Mama?”

  “Spunky as ever. We’ve been writing each other a lot. She may move back to be near us.”

  “I see. I guess that’s good.”