A Fine Dark Line Page 15

  I hadn’t gone far, thinking this, when I realized to my horror that the bricks that were my guide were no longer under me. I was on the grass that led alongside the street on the creek side. I knew it was the creek side because the rain was causing the water to run fast and I could hear it as loud as if it were running and splashing inside my brain.

  I got under a big oak tree, or rather I walked into one and stopped, put my back against it, and shivered in the cold rain. I thought about what I had been taught about trees and storms. Worst place to be was under a tree, as lightning tended to seek the tallest object. But the oak was big and thick. The leaves were large and close together and blocked out some of the rain, and because of that, I could see around me. Not very far, but farther than with it coming down in sheets against my face.

  I thought maybe I might be better off to chance the protection of the tree, wait until the storm slacked or passed, but when the lightning flashed again, I had to change my mind.

  Standing no less than a dozen feet away, a hat slouched over his face, was a huge colored man, his hands hanging limp at his sides like hams on twisted strands of thick dark rope.

  In that flash, he lifted his head and his eyes latched on me. I have never seen such hatred in a face; those eyes were as black as peepholes into hell. Nub growled, pressed up against me. Then the mean face was gone and I was inside my little umbrella of vision. The rain beyond the thick, leafy boughs of the oak was as compact as the black curtains on a hearse.

  I thought: What kind of man is he?

  How could he see to follow me?

  The brim of his hat? Did that give him an edge?

  Or was he just a man of the outdoors? Maybe he had adjusted his eyes longer and better to the rain-swept darkness?

  It didn’t matter.

  It was a mystery beyond me, and not one I was going to solve. The final answer was simple. He could get around and see out here better than I could because he was not afraid of the forces of nature; he was one of them.

  I rushed around the oak, to the other side, leaned there, trying to consider what to do. Any moment I expected to see his head nod around to my side of the tree. Then he would grab me.

  It was too much to think about.

  I started running, all true planning out the window.

  I ran hard until I hit a tree and was knocked back, dazed. I tried to get a knee under me, but I kept falling down, partly because the grass was slick, and partly because I was addled.

  Nub was leaping up against me in encouragement, and he had begun to bark.

  I was almost to my feet when I was grabbed by the shirt collar and spun around. There was a shape close to me, and I could feel heavy breathing against my face and smell tobacco and whiskey. Then there was a voice, like something coming up to me from the depths of a cave, carried on the wings of a bat. The hand gripped and twisted my collar so tight it was cutting off the blood flow to the side of my neck. I was starting to get woozy.

  “You peckerwoods took away my Rosy Mae. Now I’m gonna take you away, all your little goddamn white ass family.”

  Any doubt that Bubba Joe might not hold a grudge against us for Rosy Mae leaving, or that he wouldn’t hurt white people, was tossed out the window of the world in that moment.

  Then I heard a growl and a snap. Bubba Joe let out a yell, and I knew Nub had him by the leg.

  The lightning flashed again, and I could see Bubba Joe clearly. His face was covered in scars and his nose was slightly off center from some old break, his mouth was wide open and he was letting forth a stream of profanity.

  Nub was clamped down, going for the bone.

  Bubba Joe shook his leg, yelled, cursed, tried to kick Nub free and not let go of me. But it wasn’t working. Bubba Joe shot a hand under his coat, brought out a knife big enough to use in the Trojan War, and at the same time let go of my shirt.

  “You little bastard,” Bubba Joe said, and I realized he was talking to Nub, not me.

  I screamed, “Run away, Nub. Run.”

  But Nub didn’t run. He kept biting.

  I heard Nub yip and I tried to lash out with my hands, hoping to take Bubba Joe down. But it was like striking a bag full of sand. I could feel my hands being scratched on his thick stubble of beard. Bubba Joe clutched my shirt again.

  I waited for the plunge of the knife, but it didn’t come.

  There was a jerk. Bubba Joe’s hand came loose of my shirt, and the next thing I knew, two dark figures were wrestling in the rain. One of them the stout and wide Bubba Joe. The other tall and lanky. I couldn’t really see him, but I knew that one was Buster Abbot Lighthorse Smith.

  My eyes were better adjusted to the darkness now. I could make out Buster sliding up against Bubba Joe. Bubba Joe’s feet went up in the air, and over went Bubba Joe, Nub still hanging on to his leg. Bubba Joe smacked the ground hard. Nub came loose and went spiraling.

  The lightning flashed again and I saw Buster better. He had a clasp knife in his hand, one knee on Bubba Joe’s left arm, his other leg stretched out, holding Bubba Joe’s right wrist with his foot. I could see Bubba Joe’s big knife in that hand, but of course, being held down like that, he couldn’t use it.

  Nub had lost his grip on Bubba Joe’s leg, but now he had Bubba Joe by the ear and was biting and pulling for all he was worth, growling so loud it sounded like a car engine running. Bubba Joe, pinned or not, had not stopped his string of profanity.

  I saw Buster’s hand and clasp knife move. I heard a yell. Then a gurgle. Some moans. I stood there for what seemed like the turning of the century.

  Slowly my eyes adjusted. Buster was still in the position I had last seen him, holding his clasp knife, but his head was turned toward me. Nub was sitting by Bubba Joe’s head, panting, looking as contented as if he had just caught a rabbit.

  Bubba Joe lay still. I went over, loomed above them, and when the lightning came again, I saw clearly that Bubba Joe’s throat was cut. The wound looked like the mouth I had cut in last year’s Halloween pumpkin, only bloody; the blood ran along his throat, mixed with the rain and was carried away. Bubba Joe’s head was turned toward me. His eyes were open. He was shivering.

  Then his eyes changed. They were no longer peepholes into hell. Those holes had been boarded up, and that left him down there in the pit, no way out.

  Buster grabbed me, pulled me over to a tree, pushed me up against it. “Damn you, boy. Damn you . . . Are you okay, boy? You cut anywhere?”

  “No . . . no, sir.”

  “Damn you, don’t you listen to me I get like that. I got the moods. It’s the whiskey. It gives me the moods. Shit, boy. You okay? You ought not have run off like that.”

  “I thought it was better than being hit with a book.”

  “Ah, Jesus. Damn, boy.”

  “What about Bubba Joe?”

  “Strong sonofabitch.”

  “Not for you.”

  “Jujitsu, boy.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry about it, son. He’s dead . . . Goddamn, that is some dog you got there. He’s not big enough to climb up on a step without a grunt, and did you see the way he took after that Bubba Joe? You see that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Some dog, he is. Keep that dog.”

  “I was going to.”

  “That there is a dog, boy. Ain’t big, but he’s got the fight in him. Balls like a brass elephant . . . Damn. Let me think. Right now we got to get rid of Bubba Joe. Creek there is good enough. Ain’t no one gonna miss this fella. He turns up, ain’t no one gonna be sad. Tell you what. You stay where you are.”

  Buster took hold of Bubba Joe, dragged him off. In the distance I heard a splash. Buster came back.

  “Water will carry him along, I reckon,” Buster said. “It’s runnin’ good and hard . . . You can’t say nothin’. Nothin’ at all. Maybe I’m wrong and someone will miss him. You understand me? Don’t say nothin’.”

  “No, sir. I won’t.”

  Buster bent over and
threw up. He did this for several minutes. I was glad for the pounding rain, or the smell would have been overwhelming.

  “You sick?” I asked.

  “Drunk,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get back to the house and get you dry. And make me some coffee. Damn, boy. I didn’t mean to send you out in the rain.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “It’s the moods. You understand, don’t you? I knew what I had done and shouldn’t have done right after I done it. You’d already gone out then. Can’t blame you. Decided to come get you . . . See the way that dog lit into him? Some dog you got there, boy. You know about moods, don’t you? Understand, don’t you?”

  My sister certainly had them, and so did my father, but nothing like this. Looking back now, I know that Buster’s mood swings were probably due to some chemical deficiency mixed with the alcohol, but as of that moment in time, I could only think what so many Southerners thought back then about an odd friend or relative: “It was just his way.”

  When we got back to Buster’s, he let Nub inside with us, had me strip off my clothes. He wrapped a blanket around me and I sat in a chair while he stoked up that old stove of his with chunks of wood and scraps of paper. When the fire was burning hot enough to melt silver, he had me sit by the open door of the stove, next to my clothes, which he shook out and racked on the back of a chair. I thought about what had almost happened to me, and had happened to Bubba Joe. I shook not only with cold, but with fear. I felt vulnerable and embarrassed sitting there in wet underwear.

  “You sure he’s dead?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, Stan, he’s dead. I know dead when I see it. I’ve seen it a few times.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell the law? It’s self-defense.”

  “No tellin’ how them law will act when it’s a colored done the killin’. Even if it’s colored killing colored. No tellin’, so we ain’t gonna tell. Are we?”

  “No, sir. You saved my life, Buster.”

  “Wouldn’t have needed to had I not acted like a jackass.”

  “He must have been following me from home. He’s been watching our house, ’cause of Rosy Mae. I saw him the other night. Me and my sister and a friend sneaked out of the house to go down and look for Margret’s ghost, and we saw it, a kind of light, and then we saw Bubba Joe. He chased us. But we lost him by running in front of a train, leaving him on the other side.”

  “You knew he was out there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But you came here to tell me about my job?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You little fool.”

  I hung my head. A few moments went by, then Buster, almost bright, said: “The railway light. I’ve seen that. That ain’t no ghost, boy.”

  “What is it then?”

  “I don’t know. I seen similar lights out at Marfa, Texas, once. But whatever it is, it ain’t no ghost. It’s some kind of gas or somethin’. Hell, I don’t know. But it ain’t no ghost.”

  “You killed him, Buster. He’s dead.”

  “Yep. He’s dead all right. In time he’d have got Rosy or one of you, ’cept maybe your daddy. That’s a hell of a man, your daddy.”

  “I’ve never heard you say anything good about him before.”

  “You haven’t really heard me say anything bad about him.”

  “No.”

  “Listen. I recognize him for what he is. A good father. I wasn’t never that. He cares for you. He’s tough, and everyone in town knows it. White town, and here on the colored side. Your daddy is known, boy.”

  “How?”

  “Men know. I can’t tell you how. Way he carries himself. ’Course, I don’t think he likes colored all that much.”

  “I don’t know. He helped Rosy Mae. He’s still helpin’ her. He says some things that sound bad, but he does pretty good.”

  “I suppose you’re right. You didn’t get cut nowhere, did you?”

  “No. It was like he was studying on me. Like he was looking to make it last.”

  “That would have been his way. He got in a knife fight up the old sawmill once, took his time on that nigger. Cut him maybe fifty times, near killed him, got cut a lot himself, but he didn’t mind it. Figured he could finish a knife fight at any time.”

  “He didn’t finish you.”

  “I took him by surprise, and I had a couple of Jap tricks up my sleeve. I learned them from folks picked it up in the army. And I wasn’t gonna give him a chance. I threw him, pinned him, finished him. He’d have killed me otherwise. I had to do what I did. You understand that, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Buster looked down at his shirt. It was covered in blood and the rain had washed it down and into his trousers.

  “You’re hurt,” I said.

  “His blood. It sprayed. I’ll change shirts.”

  He took off the bloody shirt and put it in the stove. It burst into flames. His skinny body was covered with scars. Across his back there were welts that made it look as if barbed wire were under his skin.

  He got a folded shirt from a box under his bed, slipped it on.

  “Someone will find him, won’t they?” I said.

  “Starts to smell . . . Yeah, they’ll find him. And you and me, we ain’t gonna say a word. Are we?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I don’t mean that as a threat, boy. I’m askin’ as a friend.”

  “You did save my life.”

  “Suppose I did. Your dog took a little cut.”

  “What?”

  “It ain’t nothin’. I’m gonna pour some stuff on it. He’ll be good as new. Hell, tough dog like this, he don’t even know he’s been cut.”

  Nub may not have minded the cut, but he sure minded that alcohol. He bit Buster.

  ———

  WHILE MY CLOTHES finished drying, we moved to the table, me with a blanket draped over me, Buster drinking coffee, trying to get “the mood out of him,” he said.

  He got a record player and put a record on it and let it play. “Need to get my mind off this,” he said. “Got to not think on it too hard.”

  The record was of a kind I had never heard before. It wasn’t rock and roll, but it reminded me of it.

  “That’s the blues,” Buster said. “Big Joe Turner.”

  We listened. While we did, I looked at his notes. I said: “What does this mean, Buster?”

  It was what I had seen earlier: “Girl’s mother.”

  “That means we got maybe a wedge into this. A way of pushing open the case and seein’ what’s inside. You find the roots of somethin’, then you can better understand the flower of the thing. The flower bein’ the murders and the murderers.”

  “So what do you know?”

  “Well, what I know is the mother of that little white girl killed down by the tracks is still alive and maybe she knows something. You remember, I told you how I knew her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I talked to some folks I know would know if she’s still alive, and she is. She ain’t that old actually. She’s still in the same house.”

  “I know,” I said. “Down by the tracks near the swamp, not far from the trestle bridge. That’s where we went to see the ghost. It’s near where Margret was killed.”

  “You gettin’ to be a first-class snoop, Stan. The momma, Winnie, she might know somethin’. I think we can talk to her. Normally I wouldn’t bother to talk to no white woman ’cause it could get me lynched. But I know who Winnie is, and she lives with a black man down there by the slough. He’s an ornery sort named Chance. Besides, she’s not all white. She’s dark-skinned ’cause she’s got that Mexican, or Puerto Rican, or whatever in her. But I told you that.”

  “We’re going to see her now?”

  “Of course not. Not in this weather. And though she’s used to seein’ men with little or no clothes on, I don’t think you’d be all that anxious to go over there in your drawers. Now am I right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What we need to do now is
get you dressed and home.”

  “You’ll be at work tonight?”

  “If I can stay away from the liquor.”

  “Daddy told me you don’t come to work . . . he’s gonna make me the projectionist. I don’t want that.”

  “I know you don’t. You’re a true friend. And I ain’t much of one.”

  “It doesn’t get any truer than what you did for me.”

  “You go on home and don’t think about this no more. You ain’t at fault no kind of way. And Bubba Joe, he’s about as important to the world as a flea. Another thing. I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, you ain’t doin’ me no shame takin’ my job. A man’s responsible for what he does or doesn’t do. Hear what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yes, sir . . . But, Buster . . . Please be there.”

  “I will. I really do try to keep my word, but that old alcohol gets on me sometimes. You ever been coon huntin’, boy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, you get dogs runnin’ a coon, and you get down in the bottoms, and that ole coon, when he’s bein’ chased, he’ll lead those dogs out into the wetlands, deep water if he can, then he’ll jump on a dog’s head and try and drown him. I ain’t a lyin’. That’s what he’ll do. And that dog, he’s done committed himself to that deep water, and he’s got this coon on him with teeth and claws, and a coon’s strong for its size, and it’s pushin’ down on him, and it’s all that dog can do to swim and fight and keep his head above water. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he don’t. Alcohol is like that. It’s like I’m out in deep water, and that stuff is jumpin’ on my head, tryin’ to hold me under. I keep fightin’. One day, I don’t shake it, that ole coon is gonna win. Gonna push me under for good . . . Good thing, though, is, I’m out of whiskey and ain’t got money for more.”

  ———

  THE RAIN HAD DIED, but it was still misty. I decided I had to go home anyway. I got dressed. My clothes felt strange, toasty in spots, damp in others.

  “You get home. You pet that dog good, you hear?”

  “I will,” I said.

  As I tentatively stepped off the steps, started away, Buster, who had followed me as far as the porch, said, “You ain’t got no worry about him anymore. Trust me on that. But that storm ain’t through yet. You just got a lull. You get on. Hear?”