The Bottoms Read online

  “Bubba?”

  Miss Maggie paused to spit in her cup again. “Uh huh. Bubba. I always figured Bubba was probably Beezlebubba. You gets it. BeezleBUBBA.”

  “Oh, yes ma’am … Who’s Beezlebubba?”

  “It’s just another name for the debil, Little Man. Like Scratch. It’s probably a Northern name or somethin’. But this here fella, whether he’s really the debil or the debil’s man, I can’t tell you. But whoever he was, he got the power to make the deal. So he takes that peed-in whiskey and drinks him a big jolt, and he say to Dandy, ‘What is it you want?’ and Dandy, he say, ‘I want I can play this here fiddle better’n anyone they is.’ And Bubba tell him, that’s fine, he can do that, but Dandy gonna have to write his mark on a line.”

  “His mark?”

  “Them can’t write they name, they use they mark.”

  “Oh.”

  “So Bubba pulls out of his coat this big long paper, which is what them lawyers, who is a lot like the debil, calls a contact.”

  “Contact?”

  “Yes suh, Little Man. A contact.”

  “Oh, a contract.”

  “All righty then, then it’s that. But don’t be correctin’ me now. Ain’t polite.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then Bubba, he jerks the fiddle bow out of Dandy’s hand, and it cuts him on the tip of one of his fangers. Then he has Dandy make his mark on the line with the blood on his fanger, and he says, ‘Now here’s your fiddle bow back. You done give me your soul for what I done give to you.’

  “That’s good with Dandy, and he goes to play right there, and danged if that ain’t a different bow in his hand than the one jerked from him, and a different fiddle. I mean it’s the same, but it ain’t. You follow me?”

  I didn’t entirely, but I said I did.

  “So Dandy, he gets to playin’ right there, and it’s the most beautifullest sound you ever done heard. And when he looks up from hittin’ a few notes, Bubba and that blood-marked contact … contract, is done gone.

  “Now Dandy a happy man. He got the best fiddle playin’ ’round. And the womens love him. He goes to dances, and them womens all around. He gets give free drinks and lots of folks tell him how good he is. It’s the life for Dandy. Then he goes to this barn dance over’n Big Sandy, and he’s playin’ and people are dancin’, and when he pauses to get him some rest, this stutterin’ fella with a fiddle comes up and asks can he play and sang a bit. A song or two, you see.

  “Dandy sees a chance to look even better. He lets this fella play. Figures that man ain’t gonna match what the debil’s done done for him, and if he sangs some, all that stutterin’, he’s bound to sound like a chicken workin’ on a ear of corn. It gonna make Dandy look even better, see.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “So now, Dandy, he ’sides to really polish the apple, so he brings up this here fella and says how he’s a man wants to play a song or two, sang a little. And he says how he ain’t never heard him, but always wants to give a fella a chance. So this nervous fella, who turns out is from a little ole town called Gilmer, gets up there, hits on his strangs with the bow, then cuts into it. And you know what, Little Man?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “He good. He can play that fiddle like he part of it. And sang. He sang real purty, ’cause when he sangs, he don’t stutter. So all them folks is dancin’ and start’n to happy hoot and holler, and after one tune, this here fella, who I heard was named Ormond, he plays him ’nuther, then a ’nuther, and it’s like one of the angels got hold of that fiddle bow, and pretty soon, ole Dandy, he done forgot. Ain’t nobody missin’ him.”

  “Bet that made him mad.”

  “Oooowweeeeee. All of a sudden, right in the middle of a breakdown, Dandy jump up with his fiddle and crack that Ormond fella right upside the head and knock him down. Then he go to beatin’ on him. And he beat him till he done broke that fiddle all apart, and then he start to choke Ormond, and pretty soon, Ormond, he’s dead.

  “Well, now. People are starin’ at Dandy, and he got death on his hands, and no fiddle. Busted it all to pieces. So he snatch up Ormond’s fiddle and bow an run off through the back door ’fore folks can figure on what to do. Then they after ’em. But it’s too late. He know them bottoms like the back of his hand, and he gone. He done become a Travelin’ Man.

  “Since it was a colored killin’ a colored, white law didn’t go after him none, and all the colored ’round here wasn’t in no place to do nothin’, so Dandy, he get off on the other side of the bottoms, and he start at it.”

  “At what?”

  “Travelin’. He kind of like a bum, you see. He go from house to house, tryin’ to beg him a little somethin’ to eat and such, and people hear about this fella travelin’ around with a fiddle, playin’ a tune or two for his dinner, but he ain’t no good on the fiddle. No good at all. So folks that hear this, they don’t figure on it being Dandy, ’cause Dandy, he can play good as a pig can eat. But it’s Dandy.”

  “How come he can’t play?”

  “Comin’ to that. You jumpin’ ahead.”

  “Sorry, Miss Maggie.”

  “Where this Travelin’ Man and his fiddle go, they’s womens start turnin’ up dead. You see, he got a bitter thing in him now. He always did want the womens to like him, but now he ain’t got that goin’ for him ’cause he ain’t got no fiddlin’ to draw them in, and it’s boilin’ him inside. Or, that’s how I figure on it. Ain’t no one really knows. But this is certain, for three years he wandered all over East Texas killin’ colored womens and girls, and to the white law it don’t mean a thing.

  “But he finally gets him a little white girl, mistreats and kills her. Kluxers get on his tail, ’cause it ain’t just about niggers killin’ niggers anymore, you see. And he gettin’ bolder and bolder, and he kills a white woman over near them honky-tonks in Gladewater, and the Klan run him down and cut him where a man don’t want to be cut, tar and feather him, hang ’im and light him on fire. And that’s the end of Dandy on this here earth, and it one of the few times the Klan do us all a favor.”

  I thought about that for a while. I said, “But why couldn’t he play the fiddle no more? If the devil gave him the power, wouldn’t he be able to play?”

  “I done some thinkin’ on that. What I figure is that ole pumpkin head give him that fiddle and say you can play good on this here fiddle, that’s exactly what he meant. That fiddle. When he smashed it up, and took a dead man’s fiddle, a man learned to play it by hard work and not no pee in a bottle and a trip to the crossroads, he couldn’t play no mo’. You see?”

  I did. But I still had questions. “If you didn’t see the devil, or the devil’s man, how do you know he had a pumpkin head?”

  “I knowed how he looked ’cause there’s folks I know, includin’ cousins, seen the debil and know what he and all his men look like. They can look different ways too. Might not have a head like a pumpkin all the time. Might have horns. Might look like a banker or one of them polatickans, but I’m just figure’n on how he might have looked that night. I’m colorin’ the story some, but that don’t mean it ain’t true.”

  “And this woman me and Tom found, you think it’s someone sold his soul to the devil done that to her? A Travelin’ Man?”

  “If’n you ain’t sold your soul to the debil you wouldn’t do such a thing, Little Man. It could be the debil himself. Sometime he like to do his own work.”

  “What about the Goat Man?”

  “Little Man, I think the Goat Man might be the debil. I said he can look anyway he wants, and ain’t them goat horns and hoofs jes like the debil? If’n I was the debil, them bottoms is where I’d be a runnin’ ’cause they dark and wet and got all manner of thing in ’em. Let me gives you a word of smarts. You stay away from anything to do with what the debil likes, ’cause you get in with him he’ll trick on you. You hear?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Now you need to run on. I got me some washboard’n to do.”
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  “Yes ma’am. Thanks for the food.”

  “You welcome. Now you draw some water out of the well and water that ole hog of mine. And you come back and see me.”

  I went out, letting the screen door loose, not so that it would slam, but enough it would jar the flies that were on it.

  I went out to the well, dropped the bucket and cranked it up, poured from it into the totin’ bucket. I made several trips with the bucket to fill the hog’s tub with water.

  As I went away I remembered another time Miss Maggie told me about how flies are the devil’s eyes and ears, and that got me to thinking.

  When I turned my head to look back at her house, the flies had already filled the screen again, and a big fat one was buzzing around my sweaty head.

  I swatted at it, but it got away.

  5

  That night, back at the house, lying in bed, my ear against the wall, Tom asleep across the way in her own little bed made of crude lumber and nailed tight together by Daddy, I listened. The walls were thin. When it was good and quiet, and Mama and Daddy were talking, I could hear them.

  “Doc Stephenson, the old pill roller, wouldn’t even look at her,” Daddy said. “Said if folks found out he’d had a colored in his office wouldn’t nobody use him no more.”

  “That’s terrible. What about Doc Taylor?”

  “Well, I figure he’s at least had some actual medical school. I guess they got medical schools in Arkansas or Oklahoma, wherever it is he’s from.”

  “Missouri,” Mama said.

  “Anyway, he’d have come looked at her. He wanted to real bad, like it was some kind of adventure, you know. But I didn’t want to take the chance on him gettin’ in trouble with Stephenson to do me a favor. Might go bad for him in the long run, mess up his doctorin’ career. He’s set up to take over Stephenson’s practice when he retires in a year or so, he seems like a nice enough fella. I drove the body over to Pearl Creek to see a doctor there.”

  Pearl Creek was an all-colored town.

  “She was in our car? I mean, didn’t it foul the car?”

  “It didn’t hurt anything. After Harry showed me where she was, I came back, drove over to Billy Gold’s house. He and his brother went down there with me, helped me wrap her in a tarp, carry her out, and put her in the car. We wrapped her up good. No leakage. I drove her over to Pearl Creek and they packed her in ice in the icehouse.”

  “I wouldn’t be wanting any of that ice.”

  “Body was in pretty bad shape to begin with. Some pieces come off her. We had to throw the tarp away.”

  “And she was in our car? Dear me.”

  “I blew the odor out driving it home.”

  “Oh, my goodness.”

  “Doc Tinn, the colored doctor, he was out of town. Won’t be back till tomorrow. He was out country deliver’n a baby. I’m gonna drive over there in the morning, see if I can learn somethin’. I don’t know nothin’ about this kind of murder.”

  “You’re sure it’s murder?”

  “Well, honey, think about it. I don’t suppose she cut herself up like that and ended up tied to a tree with wire.”

  “You’re awful impatient, Jacob … Wire? She was tied with wire?”

  “She was bound with a couple strands of barbed wire and a bunch of vines. Someone sure had enjoyed that wire part. They’d taken a piece of wood and fastened it to the wire and used it as a kind of crank so they could wrap it around the tree, loop it, and tighten it by twistin’ that wood like a handle. Then I ’spect he messed with her.”

  “Surely not.”

  “I don’t know much about these things, but I know she didn’t fix herself to that tree. And as for people doin’ these kind of things, well, two things come to mind. I had a fella tell me once about this Jack the Ripper guy in London. He cut women’s bodies up. For fun. He cut pieces out of them. He messed with their womanly parts.”

  “That’s got to be just some kind of story.”

  “That’s history. They never caught him. He killed they don’t know how many, but they never caught him or had no idea who it was. Then Cecil, at the shop, and bear in mind he’d rather hear himself talk about most anything than to let a room go quiet, told me when he was in the war in France, there was a fella that at night would roam the battlefield looking for someone alive, you know, hangin’ on from wounds. Germans. And he’d do things with the bodies. Like a man would with a woman. Only in a different place.”

  “A different place.”

  “You know. There.”

  “You can do that?”

  “If you’re determined,” Daddy said. “This fella, they could see him from the trenches. Had on an American uniform, and he was doin’ these things to the bodies.”

  “They didn’t stop him?”

  “Wasn’t no one crazy as he was. They wouldn’t get out there on the battlefield, and they weren’t gonna shoot their own. It was war. And way they was thinking then was at least he was doin’ it to Germans. Cecil said you got so you thought different. War does that. He figured it was just punishment for the enemy. They could see this fella at night, one that was doin’ it, and he’d wander among the dead an dyin’ lookin’ for someone to mess with, and Cecil said they didn’t always have to be alive.”

  “He’s lyin’, Jacob. Got to be.”

  “Cecil said this fella would do this kind of thing, then disappear back into the trenches. They all had their suspicions who it was, but no one knowed for sure. They just saw his uniform, never got a good look at his face. Or if anyone did, they didn’t come forward. Cecil said he saw him once, but he was just roamin’ out there, like a ghost. Not doin’ anything strange. Just lookin’ over the bodies. He was surprised the Germans weren’t shooting at him. Cecil said he never met anyone had actually seen the man doin’ anything. Just seen him roamin’.”

  “Cecil didn’t actually see him do nothin’ then?”

  “No. He just heard the rumors.”

  “So it could have been a made-up story? A lie told to Cecil and he told it to you.”

  “Could be Cecil lyin’ right out. But say it ain’t a lie. Think about it. Fella like that gets by with doin’ them things in the war, and comes home …”

  “But he was doin’ it to men.”

  “Maybe ’cause they were available. Maybe he’d just as soon, or rather, do it to women. I ain’t no expert on these matters. Far as I know, there ain’t no expert on these matters. One thing I come to figure though. Way that woman’s body was punctured by that barbed wire, figure the body was already dead when he put the wire to her. She’d been alive, it would have bled out, and those wounds didn’t look to have drawn much blood. ’Course, river could have been up and washed it away, but I think she was dead awhile and he come back to play with her. Like an alligator will stuff its kill in a hole in the riverbank, come back when it’s ripened some.”

  “No one would do that.”

  “When Jack Newman shot his brother-in-law while drunk and there were fifteen witnesses seen him do it, that wasn’t so hard to figure. This … I don’t know. It don’t look like anything I’ve seen before. I got my ideas, but that’s all they are. I’m hoping this Doc Tinn can help me out.”

  Mama and Daddy went quiet after that, then a little later on I heard Mama say, “… I ain’t exactly in the mood after that little bedtime story you told me. Sorry, hon.”

  “All right,” Daddy said. Then came complete silence. I snuggled under the covers, overcome by something I couldn’t quite put a name to. Fear. Excitement. A sense of mystery. They had talked about things I never even suspected could exist or happen.

  I decided right then I was gonna be up early in the morning, see if I could get Daddy to let me ride with him over to Pearl Creek. I thought he owed me that. After all, I had found the body.

  I lay there, drifting off, then it began to rain, softly at first, then hard. The sound of it helped put me to sleep.

  “No. You can’t go.”

  “But Daddy—”r />
  “No ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. You can’t go.”

  It was just daylight. I had hardly slept a wink last night, fearing I’d miss being up in time to talk to Daddy about the trip. But I didn’t feel a bit tired. I was boiling with energy and excitement. I hadn’t let on I had heard them talking through the wall. I had innocently asked Daddy what his plans were that day, and when he said Pearl Creek, I asked why Pearl Creek, and he told me had to check with the doctor over there about the woman’s body I had found. That’s when I asked if I could go.

  “I wouldn’t be any trouble,” I said.

  “That may be, son. But I don’t think you oughta go with me. This is grown-up business.”

  We were sitting at the table. Daddy was eating a couple of eggs Mama had fried up. He was poking the yellows with a big biscuit. I was having the same with a glass of buttermilk Mama had poured for me. She kept it cool by lowering the capped bottle down in the well and pulling it out when we wanted a taste.

  I drank and ate quickly, fearing Tom would wake up, ’cause back then we were all early risers. Once Tom woke up, found out I was trying to go with Daddy, then it would darn sure be spoiled because Tom would want to go, and if Daddy didn’t want me to go, he sure wouldn’t want her to go. It was easier for him to say no to both of us than yes to one of us when we were both wanting the same thing.

  ’Course, he had already told me no, but I had learned that no didn’t always mean no, right at first anyway. By the time Daddy got to the third no, then I knew it was best I shut up.

  Mama was pouring Daddy coffee when she said, “Jacob, he done seen the body. Why not let him ride over with you. He don’t have to see the body again.”

  That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but if I could get Daddy to let me go, that would at least be a leg up. Who knew what I could work from there.

  Daddy sighed. He looked at Mama, who smiled. Daddy said, “Well, I don’t know. He’s got chores.”

  “There ain’t a lot to do this morning. I can do it for him. Me and Tom.”

  “Tom will love that,” Daddy said.