Turnbull: Based on a True Story

by Jonathan Jackson

  Part II

  “So this is good music.

  South Carolina, 1908

  “Before our sermon today, I had a chance to, ahem – inspect the lunch baskets outside with Mister Jerry. I want to thank all you ladies for bringing what you did. I know times are hard on all of us, some more than others, and bless my soul you are all so very generous.” The Pastor spoke in front of his small congregation. They met no less than four times per week and the seats in the meager church building were almost always filled. His flock always needed “tending.”

  “I do appreciate Mrs. Idella Brock for bringing her delicious fresh pickled beets to our lunch on the grounds today. I can only pray she remembers how much I appreciate her when she’s giving out the servings. Make mine two!” The Pastor laughed from behind his maple podium pointing out Mrs. Brock, making her fan herself a little faster as he pretends to lick his fingertips.

  “They sure are fine to eat, just like Loula’s chicken livers!” The Pastor was working up an appetite as was the crowd by their chorus of “Amen!” The children in the front rows made faces and similarly ugly sounds when he mentioned chicken liver. It’s universally not a child favorite.

  It was hot that South Carolina day and all of the church windows were open to let the breeze blow through. The ladies in their hats and lace collars all fanned themselves with fans made from the pages of newspaper. The men who attended either sat with their wives, to be chided by their unattended friends, or in small groups to be the chiders of those men dragged to hear the Good Word.

  According to church policy, which changed from week to week depending on the particular mood of the Pastor, or more accurately, the Pastor’s wife; all of the church children sat on the front two benches. Many believed, and fervently hoped; this was so they would pay attention during the sermons and thus be more Christian in their lives. The Pastor knew it was to keep the kids in front of everyone so they would behave and be easy targets for a slap across the back of the neck if they needed “tightening up.” Whatever the motive, it did seem to work. Once you reached the age of 13 you could move toward the back but horseplay within easy reach of the adult congregants had consequences.

  The leader of this small, rural, Baptist Church was none other than the right honorable Pastor Blakely. He was a gentle soul until it came to preaching the Word of God and then some would swear you could see a heavenly light leak out through his eyes. On greater consideration, leak probably isn’t the best choice of words to use. It indicates that something is being withheld and only manages to slip out. The Pastor held nothing back and shared the Good News at every opportunity. Heaven poured out of this man of God. He undoubtedly was a true believer and made sure he did his best to help everyone else in town to be true believers also.

  They called him the “right honorable” because he was a handsome man and gained the attention of all of the single women in the community, some of the married too. Fortunately for him and unfortunately for them, he was faithfully married and celebrated it. Because of his “right honorable” reputation, he was also well-respected by most of the men in the town, even those who would never be caught dead in a church.

  “Before we break today to go take our lunch,” He winks at his wife on the third row. “I want to hold your hearts and thoughts to one more thing. I’ve heard a lot lately about a new juke joint opening up down by the river.”

  Clutching his bible against his chest with his left hand and raising his right, “Now I’ll be the first to hold my hand to the Lord and say I love good music, but the carrying on out yonder is a bit much I hear and I’m positive that it isn’t in accordance with scripture!” He sets down his bible and pauses to wipe his glasses with his handkerchief.

  He slaps the top of the podium without warning, startling the children in the front row and drawing a “Whoop” from a lady in the back of the room.

  “Whiskey is my concern! Yes we can all call that drink by its true name, ‘Spirits,’ because that’s exactly what takes over when you drink too much – wicked spirits.” As if throwing down a hot rock, the Pastor points his long calloused index finger to the ground, shouting.

  “Wicked, wicked spirits come forth in men who should be acting on behalf of the Lord!” He raises his bible mightily in his hand over his head, “Luke 21 verse 34 – and take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life…”

  There is a collective gasp by the ladies as they pretend they’ve never heard such talk before. The men, of course, all nod their heads knowingly. Most of them have seen or dealt with calamity of some kind because of alcohol. Many had firsthand knowledge in the previous days and were dragged to church by their wives because of such.

  “Be ready for the temptation of this evil and resist it! Away from me satan!”

  The children on the front row, mostly boys under the age of 10, all sit in wide-eyed terror of the finger being pointed down from the pulpit and the wicked spirits it calls to the imagination. They were all very knowledgeable about the monsters under the beds, inside the outhouse holes, under the houses and out in the woods at night. Any one of them could have recited to you numerous stories about haunted lights in the swamp or trains on the track that never stopped. This was a new one, a Whiskey Monster!

  The pastor continued, “Gentle folks, I plead…I say I plead with you to stay away from those places! Keep your families and your children safe by not bringing that temptation into your lives! Your lives are distressed enough day to day without this. Alcohol isn’t the answer to find peace. We all know that path is only found through Jesus Christ! Can I get some amen power?”

  A chorus of amens resounds.

  He takes a deep settling breath. “Now let us pray.” The Pastor raises both hands over his congregation, lifting his head, but cracking one eye to make sure the kids were praying too.

  As one, the whole congregation bowed their heads as the Pastor started the prayer that seemed to the children to last for three hours, but was actually just a couple of minutes. There where choruses of “amens” and “Lord have mercies” but when the Pastor closed the prayer with the final amen, the children were the first to bolt out the door of the church, running to the picnic tables under the Elm trees.

  They nearly bowled over fragile, old Mister Jerry. Mister Jerry’s job was to stand in the open church door where he could hear the sermon but could also see the picnic tables where the food was waiting. If he saw a local dog or other animal approach the tables, he was responsible for running them away, giving rise to a few loud whistles and shouts of “Get on out of here!” during the sermons. Sometimes his passion for shooing away critters would fall on opportune moments. The Pastor would say something like the ever popular, “Get behind me satan” and outside you’d hear a “Scat, go on!” It would certainly draw a laugh and sometimes even the Pastor’s wife would slip up and snort.

  In return for his valiant efforts, Mr. Jerry got first choice of the pies although he never took a single piece, claiming it made him too sleepy to eat something so sweet. Instead he’d fill up on green beans and boiled okra which the kids were happy to let him have.

  As the afternoon progressed and having eaten as much as they could stand, the Pastor and his wife sat back against one of the old Elm trees in the picnic grounds and watched the kids chase each other with sticks and rocks. His wife, sometimes acting like an over-protective hen, soon began to protest and wanted to stop the game. She could reasonably predict an injury to be in the making. The Pastor puts a hand on hers in an “I’ve got this” sort of way. He admired her concern for the children, not just her own, but sometimes you have to just let a boy be a boy. Looking back on his own childhood, post war, he was grateful they could be just boys.

  A shrill whistle erupts from the Pastor and all
of the kids skid to a halt as well as the adults in the area cleaning up their left-overs. They were all well attuned to the Pastor’s whistle. Two young boys come trotting up, one short and stocky, the other taller and slender.

  “Theo you’re worrying your mama. Why don’t you two go find something a little less dangerous to do, like helping these ladies clean up the trash?” He waved his hand around indicating the whole of the church grounds. “Haven’t they already done enough work in preparing this food for all of us? You youngsters need to help clean up.”

  The taller of the two answers, “Ok Papa.” They both run toward the nearest lady holding sweets. She was like the pied-piper with a chess pie. Clearly their intent is to offer to finish off what she has so she doesn’t have the enormous burden of carrying it home with her.

  “Dear remind me to address this at the service tonight. The children need to be given some tasks, even if small ones.”

  “Oh I won’t forget!” His wife smiles.

  Theo Blakely was their son and a true-to-form preacher’s child. He had appropriate manners, an advanced biblical intellect and the love of every elderly woman in town. He was tall for his age, handsome, and quick on his feet. The old ladies all knew he would be the one to eventually marry their great-grand-daughters as well as be the next in line of Blakely Baptist Ministers.

  The other boy was Tug. His real name was Jeremy Rhine and it was unusual for a black boy in the south, to have a German surname. However, everyone called him Tug, not because of his stature, but because he was always tugging on the seat of his pants. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact he seemed to respond well to the attention, even if it wasn’t all positive. It was probably because all of the attention he got at home was probably abusive.

  Kids speculated that he tugged on them because he was always sitting on something wet that they giggled about. The adults sadly knew it was because he was often sore from the frequent and sometimes-brutal spankings the boy would get from his uncle, Razmus, who was poorly raising him. The frequent end result of the battering he received was that the Blakely family would often take him in for days at a time to keep him “safe from dangers.” Razmus never seemed to notice he was gone, but he probably didn’t care either. Despite all of his hardships for his young years, he as a good boy at heart and everyone recognized it.

  Tug was very light skinned for a Negro child and often drew unwarranted attention from some of the others in the black community. They questioned his heritage behind their hands but it made no difference to the Blakelys. The two boys were best of friends and as close to being brothers as someone unrelated by blood could be. Rumors traveled about how is mother was 3rd generation Caribbean, as was Raz, but his father was of European ancestry, although no one had ever seen him before.

  Mama Blakely would often shake her head at the boy and say a prayer for him. It seemed that her son Theo was the only real blessing he had in the whole world. She encouraged all of her children to pray for Jeremy’s welfare and that of his family on a regular basis. She didn’t know what success their prayer had for that family, but she knew they were being heard. What happened after that was up to God.

  Oddly enough, she did feel sorry for his uncle too. She was raised on “turn the other cheek,” and “hate the sin but not the sinner.” She was yet to be born when it happened, but her mother had told her stories about Razmus being raised by someone who was slow in releasing the slaves by about ten years after the War Between the States. How he got away with it, no one knows. She told her daughter that Razmus was beaten nearly to death a couple of times by other slaves because he was a weak child. He was angry and mean, through and through.

  • • • •

  The two boys lay silent in the leaves on the edge of the creek bank, listening. They both knew they had heard a cough in the creek bed below them as they hiked and did idle things wandering through the woods, as boys are expected to do as a part of growing up. Something all children learned in the south during that time frame was to be wary of all adults you may encounter alone out in “the woods.” Numerous children disappeared without a sign or trace of them to be found ever again.

  “Who do you think it is?” Tug whispered hoarsely to Theo. “He’s in our swimming hole.”

  “I don’t know but why is he hiding in a creek? Theo countered, suspicious himself.

  “You think he’s hiding from someone because he did something?”

  “I don’t know. I think…” A whisper interrupted by another cough from below.

  The boys crawl toward the edge of the steeply eroded creek bank to look off down in the deeper part beside their swimming hole. They don’t see anything right away but soon hear water being poured into water. The amusing after-thought they had later in the day was wondering how the “trespasser” go to the hole in the first place. It was a treacherous climb down the bank and otherwise he had to walk half a mile down the creek bed. They laughed later also that he must have tumbled in.

  They sneak quietly around to the side where they can have a better view of the gravel bar where they spend much of their summer time. There they see a man they recognize but don’t know. They’ve seen him around town and at certain events, but neither knows his name. He’s staggering and upending the contents of a clear glass bottle, some down his throat, some down the front of his dirty shirt.

  “Ahh, who do you think you are?” They hear him ask some invisible cohort.

  “Is he sick?” Theo asks in a whisper, desperately trying not to laugh.

  “Be a man, she says. Take care of business, she says. Stand up to him, she says.” He grumbles loudly to no one. “What do I care what a flowered dress costs?”

  “He’s drunk!” Tug exclaims as quiet as he is capable of being, “Just like Uncle Raz on Saturday night.”

  Tug grabs a big rock in his hand and leans back as if to throw. Theo grabs his hand, stopping the throw of the missile sure to do harm to the drunk. “What are you doing?”

  Theo knows that if Tug is angry and were to throw that rock, it would hurt that man in a bad way. Tug may be short and nearing pre-teen fat, but he is strong and can throw a rock better than most can shoot a gun.

  “Mean! I swear to God he’s mean. He deserves it!”

  Theo sees tears brimming in Tug’s eyes and he puts his arm around his friend. “That’s not your uncle. Let him be.” Theo stares at the man. Tug sees drunkenness often but Theo never had. It was more amusing to him than to Tug.

  “I’ll show you!” They hear glass shatter on rocks and see the drunken man sit down hard on the gravel bar just before he lies back to snore loudly. Theo commented that he must be talking to those whiskey demons his daddy preached about.

  Tug wipes his cheeks. “Sorry.”

  “It’s ok. I won’t tell anybody.” Theo’s compassion and wisdom shined, recognizing the pain his best friend was feeling.

  They stand up, no longer cautious of alerting the man to their presence and walk farther down the rise overlooking the creek.

  Tug grabs a piece of cane growing near the creek and hand over hand, bends it over until he’s holding the flexed tip of twelve feet of air-swishing green death. With a swashbucklers relish he releases the plant to watch it whip up into the air.

  “Imagine if we tied a cat or something to the end of that.” Tug contemplates. “Woohoo, It would go flying!”

  Theo sits down and looks through a hole in a rock. Tug stops to look at Theo, his sadness, disappearing.

  “I know where they get it.”

  Theo looks up from his rock. “Get what?”

  “The whiskey,” Tug pauses, wondering if he made a mistake telling the Preacher’s son, even though he is his best friend in the world. “I know where they get their bottles of whiskey.”

>   “How do you know that?” Theo asks, squatting on his heels and hugging his knees, squinting at Tug.

  “I followed my uncle one night. He ran out of his hooch – that’s what he calls it -- and left out of the house really late. I heard him so I followed him,” Tug explained with a shrug as if what other logical answer could there be.

  Theo was rapt, “What did you see?” He sure did love a good mystery, much less a real one!

  Tug smiles and then conspiratorially shares with Theo, “There were a lot of people there. It’s down by the river where your papa said it was…”

  “You went to the juke joint?” Theo exclaimed loudly causing Tug to lunge at him to put his hand over Theo’s mouth.

  “Be quiet! Yes I did, er, well I didn’t go inside. There’s a tree outside with a perfect limb for sitting. I climbed up to watch through a window while my uncle was inside. Nobody saw me.”

  “What did you see?” Theo is visibly excited but beginning to get seriously upset he was left out of a real, honest-to-goodness adventure, planned or not.

  “I didn’t see too awful much.”

  “Yeah and?”

  “There were a lot of people but when I saw Uncle Raz walk toward the door, I jumped down and ran home. I got scared.” Tug rubbed absently at the side of his hip.

  “I had to get home before him and I didn’t want him to catch me there, or out of my bed.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Theo agreed.

  Tug told Theo about the loud music from the two horns and piano in the corner; the singing by the women and the non-stop laughter. He told Theo about the fish cooking outside knowing that Theo loved fish.

  “That sounds so exciting!” Theo said, “it is soo…” He stops in mid-sentence.

  “So what,” Tug asks.

  “It sounds so tempting,” Theo sheepishly admits, “Just like Papa’s sermon.”

  “Yeah I guess you’re right. I haven’t thought much of it since I’ve already seen it.”

  The two boys continued their idle trek along the creek bank, swinging sticks like sabers, throwing rocks at knotholes on trees and seeing who could spit the farthest.

  “I want to see it.”

  “See what?” asked Tug.

  “The juke joint, I want to go see it too.”

  “Oh Theo I don’t know!” Tug draws in a deep breath. “If I get caught, If you get caught. It’ll be really bad.”

  “We won’t get caught. I don’t want to do anything but look. We can sneak up on that tree limb you found. It’ll hold us both won’t it? Besides, Papa said it was good music there.”

  “Yeah it was good music,” said Tug recalling the night he sneaked away.

  “But if we get caught, Raz will kill me for sure. Your papa will kill both of us.”

  Theo, always confident, “We won’t get caught and if we do, we’ll say we’re frog hunting.”

  “You just remember that this is your idea. When your papa is tannin’ your hide, you don’t forget I told you so.”

  “We’ll go tomorrow night.”

  Tug hesitates.

  “Chicken!” Theo chides him and starts making cackling chicken noises and flapping imaginary wings, “Bok, bok, ba-bok!”

  “Oh all right. I’ll go.” The boys shake hands, “tomorrow night.”

  As they are walking back to the house Tug considers out loud, “You know I’m pretty sure that the son of a preacher-man shouldn’t ever call his best friend a chicken.”

  “Bok, bok, bok!” Theo replies.

  • • • •

  “Go on! Scat!” Tug waves his hands in the air, scolding the dogs following him down the road. They picked up his trail a few hundred yards earlier from the over-grown lawn of another house. They were just curious following him but he was trying to be stealthy and it wasn’t working. He was really trying hard not to be seen by anyone.

  A cat burglar or a Federal spy, he wasn’t. A rock thrown in the dark, followed by a yelp, lets Tug know the nosey followers are gone. He dropped the other two rocks he’d picked up in case he needed them. He rarely missed the first throw anyway.

  He strolls down the side of the familiar old road in the dark, carrying on a little boy style conversation with himself about how a bullfrog can’t walk backwards. He has sneaked out, leaving a wadded up comforter under his sheet in an attempt to fool his drunkard uncle. He whistles a soft tune after winning the argument with himself.

  A figure stepped out of the dark from behind a tree, startling Tug, punching him in the arm.

  “Would you shut up? You make more noise than a bag of frying pans.”

  It was Theo. He had semi-sneaked out of his own bed too, only Theo was holding on to a wicked looking frog gig. This gig was a three pointed trident on the end of a six foot cane pole used for spearing frogs.

  “What’s that for?” said Tug admiring the obviously adult sized frog-killer, “That one isn’t yours.”

  “Mine is broken. I told Papa we might go hunt bull frogs tonight so he let me borrow his. This way if he catches me out, he’ll remember that.”

  “You can’t carry that thing up in the tree with us.”

  “Oh I won’t,” Theo leaned it behind a tree. “Don’t let me forget it. That tip cost a whole dollar.”

  Impatiently, Tug started walking on down the road without Theo.

  “Hey! Wait up!” Theo chased after his friend, catching him quickly.

  “How far is it?”

  “I don’t know really. It’s about like walking to the milk barn and back.” Tug replied using their popular hide-out as a reference, meaning about two miles.

  “Shoo, that’s a long way! I didn’t think your fat bottom could get that far in one night.” Theo laughed, dancing out of the way of Tug’s swung fist. “Missed me, missed me!”

  Tug grumbled, “This time,” then he laughed himself. “I hope they have music playing tonight.”

  Theo frowned, “Me too. That’s why I wanted to go.” He did worry that he would miss the music and this would all be for nothing.

  The two boys hiked off of the road way down onto a well-worn path, pitching stones into the river when they heard a noise in the dark behind them, moving their direction. Their imaginations going wild with ideas of specters, demons and vampires, they warily stepped off of the path, far enough to be hidden from the moonlight and squatted down. Soon a man appeared around the bend, mumbling to himself and staggering slightly. He wasn’t looking for them so he wasn’t following them.

  “You think it’s a ghost?” Tug asked, leaving Theo not sure if he was serious or just playing.

  “I hope it’s not my papa!” Theo whispered.

  They both strained their young eyes trying to see who it was following them through the dark.

  “No, just another drunk,” he paused. “We sure are seeing a lot of them around here this week.”

  When he walks through an errant beam of moonlight penetrating the leaves of the trees overhead, they both instantly recognize him.

  “That’s your Uncle Raz!” Theo whispered urgently. “He’s looking for you!”

  “Wait.” Tug put his hand on Theo’s shoulder, staring at his uncle in the dark.

  “He’s not looking for me.” Tug bites his lip in anger. “He’s going to the joint to get some more hooch.”

  Tug stands up as if daring his uncle to look his way, all the while wishing the moon to fall from the sky and squash him flat. He can feel his pulse pounding in his temples.

  “Come on. Let’s see if that’s where he goes.”

  “He’s drunk already,” Tug says as they step back onto the path a short distance behind the swaying man.


  Theo asks, “Did he have whiskey at home?”

  “I don’t know. He was supposed to go to the granary across the river all day today and sell his corn from last fall. That’s the corn that I picked! I heard him tell a neighbor that they was running out of corn out in Oklahoma. Uncle Raz said he would be getting his high dollar for it.”

  “Did he do it? I helped pick it too, you know.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him today.”

  Theo knew that Tug was often hurt by his uncle, but he had never experienced such hatred for anyone like his friend did. He couldn’t imagine ever hating one of his uncles or his own father like that. Shrugging though, the boys continue the walk at a slower pace some distance behind him, knowing if they are caught; it’s a certain belt whipping for both of them.

  • • • •

  They heard the noise and the music long before they saw the juke joint. They smelled the meat roasting over an open fire pit to be sold to the juke joints customers. There was no hiding it. These boys were excited. The music revved them up and the thrill of being somewhere that was more or less forbidden to them was beyond description. It was better than jumping out of a barn loft into a pile of hay.

  They found their tree to climb, exactly where Tug said it was and the limb was in a perfect position. They hoisted themselves up just as Raz made his way through the front door.

  The sign on the front was painted sloppily in white letters, “Muzic.” Theo thought it comical that so many couldn’t read or write, much less spell. However, Theo didn’t realize just how unusual it was for a young boy his age to be able to read and write, at all. Illiteracy was actually very high among most rural people.

  The juke joint appeared to be built out of the remains of an old fishing shack with a covered deck on the back toward the river. None of the windows had glass in them and the shutters that protected those windows hung loosely on rusted hinges. The coastal storms that raged by on the ocean just a day’s ride away did great damage even this far inland.

  The joint was well lit inside and when the boys settled onto a tree limb about fifteen feet up, they could clearly see everything going on. It looked wild! Theo began imagining scenes from the Old Testament his father had preached about. “So that’s what they did,” he wondered aloud. It didn’t look worth the worry in his young judgment.

  There were musicians playing on a piano and a brass horn in the corner. They were the best Theo had ever heard, although they were the only jazz players he’d ever heard. Theo did truly enjoy the rhythm and tempo of the music.

  There was a sweaty, fat man in dungarees pouring drinks in jars along one wall and the rest of the area was covered with a mish-mash of wooden tables and chairs, all filled with people drinking it up and having a large time. There was even one overweight, sweaty, white man with a large burn scar on his forehead.

  Theo noticed a couple of women in very floral dresses kicking their heels up with the music and seeming to be the life of the crowd. Their dark cheeks were colored pink and their lips were as red as their shiny high heel shoes. He and Tug noticed them as did Uncle Razmus who was leaned against the “bar” watching. Tug elbowed him in the ribs, grinning largely in the dark.

  • • • •

  They watched Uncle Raz swallow his drink and tip up his jar to show it was empty. He then waved it and a hand full of cash in the air, demanding more. One of the “ladies” in a floral dress paid close attention to Raz, her eyes seeming to fixate on the hand full of loose cash he was waving around. Her head moved in a rhythmic coordination with Uncle Raz’ fist full of cash; just like a snake watching a helpless song bird.

  “It looks like your uncle sold his corn today.”

  “Look at all that money he’s shakin’ around in there!” Tug was amazed, never having seen more than twenty dollars at one time. “I bet he wastes every last bit of it.

  The floral dressed lady had Raz’s attention too. She stroked his shoulder and his chin, cooing sweet things into his ears, all the while cutting her eyes toward a large and mean-looking, bald man sitting at one of the tables. Theo and Tug didn’t notice this part.

  They saw her kiss Raz on the cheek and then turn her back to him, pushing back against him while speaking to the man at the table. Raz was oblivious. They then saw Raz wobble his head toward the woman as she stepped away; smile largely and with his whole hand, grabbed her backside. They heard the shriek that erupted from her and saw the fit of laughter that shook Raz. They also saw the bald man stand up with such force as to turn his table over. Raz still didn’t seem to notice him, though. He was still laughing and staring at his hand that still held a whole ten pounds of floral covered buttock. Neither Tug or Theo had ever seen Raz laugh, much less smile, and it disturbed them.

  The boys saw the bald man stomp over to Raz and jab Raz in the chest with a stiff finger, scowling and spitting as he spoke into Raz’s face. They saw Raz smile, pat the man on the cheek, and shove something into the man’s shirt pocket, just before he stumbled away toward the back door. The heavy of a man stood stunned and looked around the room to see if anyone saw his disrespecting. The woman seemed to be the only one.

  They witnessed the woman with her hands to her face; scold the big, mean looking man while others started to look on. The boys didn’t understand the obvious challenge she was giving to the bald man’s manhood; the “are you going to let him get away with doing that to me” scolding that was apparently going on.

  The two had intentions of robbing Raz of his money after he left for the night but this presented another opportunity for the woman to manipulate her personal muscle to her will. The big man looked around and the quickly followed Raz out the back door of the joint toward the outhouse.

  • • • •

 

  Raz stumbled out the back door of the juke joint struggling with the buttons on the front of his pants, needing terribly to relieve himself at the outhouse. Even drunk, he knew he would never make it that far, so he diverted to the nearest tree. Little did he know that his nephew and Theo were sitting on a limb just above his head in the dark fringe of the joint’s dirt lawn. The big man followed him out.

  The big man held a dollar bill between his thumb and index finger waving it around. “Hey old man, who do you think you are grabbing my woman like that?”

  Raz, who had already begun to relieve himself on the grass under the tree, passed gas and turned toward him, wetting his shoes.

  Raz mumbled something and the big man reacted, “My boots! You got that on my boots!” He reached down to pull his pant leg up a little and jerked back, “My pants too!”

  Raz mumbled again and grinned. “What did you say? Are you getting uppity with me?” Sweat shown like an oily sheen, on the shaved dark head of the man standing over Raz. The kids could see it reflecting and when the breeze shifted they could easily smell him.

  Tug held his nose, “Phew!”

  Theo, un-phased by the rampant body odor, saw him pull a big folding knife from his pocket and heard the “click” as the blade snapped open.

  “You want to try answering me again? I asked what you thought you were doing grabbing her, then shoving a dollar in my pocket. You saying she’s cheap? You saying she’s only worth a dollar?”

  The timing could be no worse but Raz became understandable at that moment. “If the red, high heel fits,” he laughed.

  “I think it’s gonna take all of your money to make this right.” The bald man spat. “You are already sorry and just sayin so ain’t gonna help none.”

  “Who said anything about being sorry?” Raz held out his arms as if expecting a jovial hug from the big, angry man. “If you think you can take it.” He didn’t see the knife.

  Without flinching, the big man stepped forwa
rd and stabbed the knife into the center of Raz’s chest. The knife slid in as if given a slot and Raz didn’t react. Either the whiskey was restraining him or he was shocked by what had happened. It wasn’t like in the comic pages. There was no big talk, scuffle or clash of enormous blades. He just pushed it right in.

  Grunting, the big man jerked the knife free of Raz, who continued to stand. Blood spurted from the wound as he withdrew the blade. He jabbed it back into his chest again. This time Raz fell to his back, looking up into the tree, directly at the boys. He clutched his chest, the pain reaching his brain, and moaned. The moan, coated with realization increased into a mind-numbing shriek.

  “He killed me! He killed me!” Raz wailed before going silent as the shock set in.

  Theo cried out and Tug sat silent, mouth hanging agape. Fortunately for the boys, the music drowned out the sound of the murder taking place below them, as well as the cries escaping from one of the two of them. Tug started to breathe hard, panting like a tired dog. “Did you see that?”

  The soon-to-be killer, overcome with whiskey and the energy of what he’d just done, runs back into the juke joint, bloody knife in his hand. The boys can see people start to react to it and run out the front door. A woman screams.

  Over the din of the panic and confusion, they heard the woman with the bald man ask, “Did you get the money?” and they clearly heard his answer saying he didn’t. They see her rare way back and with a mighty swing, slap his head and call him stupid. The man almost stumbled under the blow and the venom in her voice.

  Theo and Tug climb down the tree and stand over Raz, laying there with bloody bubbles in the corners of his mouth.

  Theo sees the blood seeping through the twin gashes in Raz’s shirt. He hears Raz gasp for breath.

  Not knowing what to do and as tears begin to seep from his eyes, Theo puts his hands over Raz’s wounds and pushes. He instinctively tries to stop the flow of blood.

  His hands are too small to staunch the flow and it pushes between his fingers onto the ground. Every time Raz’s heart beats under Theo’s hand the blood wells a little more.

  “There’s so much of it!” Theo cries out in alarm. “What do I do?”

  Tug just stands over them both, staring at his mortally wounded uncle and guardian. He spits on the ground. “Serves you right,” and spits again, ignoring Theo completely.

  “Help me Tug!” Theo pleads, “Put it back in him!”

  Theo scoops up the bloody dust off of the ground. He vainly tries to squeeze the blood out of it, back into Raz’s chest. “Help me!” he yells again, this time getting attention from inside the building.

  Raz reaches up grabbing Theo’s shirt and through a frothy foam in his mouth threatens Tug, “I’m gonna get you boy. Get yo’ self back home now.” He gasps one last, bloody breath and lays still.

  People are coming out and yelling in the dark, seeing the two boys. “Who are you boys?”

  The voices of many blend into an overwhelming roar in Theo’s ears.

  “Someone go get the Sheriff!”

  “Deke done killed a man!”

  Tug grabs Theo by the collar. “Run!”

  • • • •

  Out of breath from running and from the stress of the moment, Tug falls to the grass beside the creek. Theo stops and kneels beside him.

  “He killed him Theo! He killed Uncle Raz!” Tug wasn’t tearful or seemingly upset. He seemed to be more astounded. It was as if he had just witnessed some great magic trick and had figured out the magician’s secret.

  “I saw.” Theo says as he studies his bloody hands in the moonlight. Holding his hands in front of his face, Theo begins to tremble.

  “He died with my hands on him, Tug. He bled straight through my fingers.”

  “Yeah,” Tug is distant in thought. “Where will I go now?”

  “Tug he died,” Theo says, “and he thought I was you.”

  “What?”

  “He said for me to get back home, thinking I was you.”

  “Figures don’t it? I bet he threatened to beat me too, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He got what he deserved.” Tug mumbles under his breath convincing himself that Raz got exactly what he deserved.

  “But Tug, he’s dead!”

  “I know. I know.”

  Theo walks to the creek and washes his hands in the cold water, wishing the whole time he’d been frog hunting instead. Killing bull frogs for dinner is a great deal different than having a man killed under your feet.

  He listens to the stillness of the night, the burbling of water over the rocks and the crickets in the brush. He considers that his best friend’s uncle lay dying under his hands, blood seeping through holes in his chest and bubbling out of his mouth. He lowers his head, not knowing what to think and weeps.

  Much calmer, walking along the old dirt road back toward their homes, the boys start planning what to tell everyone else.

  “We can’t tell Papa we saw that. He can’t know we were there.”

  “I spect’ the Sheriff will come for me.”

  “No! He doesn’t know we were there unless someone recognized us,” Theo in near panic. “No one said our names!”

  “No Theo, Raz was killed. They’re gonna make me leave and live somewhere else.”

  “Oh.” Theo feels foolish and selfish now that he understands what his best friend is saying. Tug is now dreadfully afraid that he’ll be forced to move away. He gained a degree of freedom from a hostile and abusive old man to face uncertainty of where he’d rest his head that night.

  “I bet you can stay with us. We’ll be like real brothers then.” Theo lamented the idea of losing his playmate and best friend.

  “I sure do hope so.” Theo puts his arm around Tug and squeezes, momentarily forgetting his own recent break down.

  The boys return to their homes, Theo sneaking in and Tug walking calmly through the front door. Both agreed to say nothing about where they were or what they saw.

  Tug, unusually peaceful despite the tragedy of the night, went right to sleep in his bed. Theo, terrified and soul-sick lay wide-eyed staring at the ceiling. He could hear his brother breathing in his peaceful sleep, but none was coming to him easily. Eventually exhaustion overtook him.

  • • • •

 

  The sounds of boots walking across their porch and the knocking on their front door, wakes Theo from his restless sleep. He hears his father grumbling as he gets up to answer the door, “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  Theo peeks from his window and is surprised to see a horse standing in front of his house, and a white man on his front porch. The man is wearing a gun on his hip.

  His father opens the door and is surprised himself to see the Sheriff of the county standing on his step in the middle of the night. He strikes a match and lights a lamp. “Come in Sheriff, come in. What can I do for you tonight?”

  The Sheriff takes his hat off, knocks the dust off of his pant legs and then steps across the threshold. “I’m sorry to wake you Reverend but there’s been a death and you’re needed.”

  “A death,” asks Pastor Blakely. “Someone I know?”

  “Yes, it was Razmus.”

  “I didn’t even know he was sick. Let me go get my proper clothes and shoes on.”

  “Reverend, there’s more…”

  Theo peeked through the crack in his door trying desperately to hear what was being said but the voices were too low. He saw his father shake his head at the Sheriff and then the Sheriff held up his hand to stop him from walking back to his room.

  His father stopped and Theo could see his shoulders slump. Pastor Blakely turned to
look at the door to the boy’s bedroom, amazement and what looked like disappointment battling for control of his face.

  “He knows!” Theo thought to himself as he quickly returned to his bed. His sheet pulled up tight with his back to the door, he held his breath for fear his father would hear it and know he was awake. He heard more footsteps and then heard the sound of his door being opened.

  “See Sheriff, he’s right there, sound-asleep.”

  The Sheriff looked in at Theo’s inert form. “Okay, thank you Reverend.”

  The Sheriff walked away from the door but Theo’s father stayed. He leaned back in the room for a last look. “He better be sound asleep when I get back too.”

  He wasn’t fooled by Theo’s feigned sleep. “I recon I’ll go get Jeremy and bring him back over here.

  He closed the bedroom door and Theo sucked in a lung full of air, his heart pounding. He heard his father leave with the Sheriff.

  • • • •

  The next morning, Theo woke from his fitful sleep to hear noise from the kitchen of pots and pans being moved about and a hushed conversation between his mother and his father. He slowly climbed out of the bed and walked to the central room of the house which also served as a dining room, family room and side of the kitchen. He saw Tug sound asleep on the sofa under a blanket his grandmother had sewn herself. Papa must have really gone and gotten him during the night.

  Theo’s mother was in the kitchen. Theo eavesdropped on the conversation. “He can stay here as long as he wants. He can’t stay with that no-good aunt of his. Raz was bad enough!”

  The Pastor was with her. “They are his blood family. They will love him as they should,”

  “So that’s why he was living with Raz and getting beaten by the old drunk all the time? Is that love?”

  She had no way of knowing that before Tug was eighteen years old, he would die in an accident while he working at a saw mill dragging away the scrap. The saw didn’t get him, neither did the logs. A freak bolt of lightning during an afternoon spring rain struck the machinery and he was standing too close. She didn’t know that his death, and the grieving by Theo that followed, would be the final push Theo needed to propel him towards his calling. There was quite a lot that no one knew. It’s how God intended it.

  “He can stay here as long as he wants, or until his family comes for him.” The Pastor conceded looking up seeing Theo in the doorway. “You and I need to talk, son.”

  “Be gentle,” Mama Blakely reminded. Papa cut his eyes at her. He knew what needed to be said but she was right to remind him. Sometimes people say the wrong things at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.

  “Let’s go outside so we don’t wake your friend.”

  “Okay Papa.”

  The elder Blakely put his arm around his son’s shoulder and led him outside beyond the porch and into the woods across the road, where they sat down on a bench Theo had made the previous summer.

  Theo sat nervously and his father didn’t say anything. He sat there with his head back, eyes closed and mouth moving with silent words. Theo assumed he was praying for peace and mercy for Theo since Theo was about to be killed for doing something really wrong.

  “So how many frogs did you get last night?” The question stuns Theo.

  “Yes, frogs, you said you might go frog hunting last night.”

  “I didn’t get any.”

  “You didn’t see any or you didn’t go or you didn’t gig any?”

  Theo knew at this moment that to do anything other than tell the truth would forever mark him with his father. “I didn’t go frog hunting.”

  “Ah, so you were home all night last night. That’s odd because I couldn’t find my gig this morning in the shed when I looked.”

  Theo’s heart raced. He’d forgotten to get the gig from behind the tree where he leaned it when he met Tug the night before.

  “I know where it is. I can go get it.” He somehow managed to avoid the question at hand.

  “That’s not necessary. You can do it another time. I need to talk to you about something that happened last night.”

  “Yes papa.”

  “They said they saw two small boys there last night.” His father began, but before he could finish, Theo broke into sobs.

  “I couldn’t help him papa! I couldn’t save him.”

  Theo’s father knew the truth and suffered with his son as he watched him break down. He put his arm around his shoulders until he quieted.

  Theo looked up into his father’s eyes, “Are they going to hang us?”

  Stunned by the question, “Why in the world would they do that,” his father asked.

  “Because we were there and we’ll get the blame! We didn’t do anything, I promise Papa, we were up on a tree limb listening for music and then he came out and…”

  Theo recounted the entire night’s events to his father who sat quietly and listened, taking it all in. When Theo finished, he held his hands up in front of his father’s face telling him about the blood and how he could still smell the metallic smell in the skin of his fingers. He wept some more and again his father put his arms around his son.

  “Theo, listen to me,” he shook his son gently, “listen to me.”

  Theo stopped briefly, his breath hitching in his chest.

  “You’re not in trouble. There were plenty of people who know just what happened. Deke has already been caught and confessed to it all.”

  Theo sighed loudly. “You are in trouble for sneaking out and for lying to me and your mama.” It was a small blessing to Theo.

  “Son, the next time you want to listen to some good music, just tell me and I’ll take you to the city and we’ll listen to a real performance. You’ve seen how dangerous the other places can be.”

  They both stand and walk across the dirt road back toward their home, but Theo stops in the middle of the road, staring at his hands.

  Quietly he whispers as if ashamed of his helplessness, “I couldn’t save him Papa.”

  His father stops too, “I know boy. I know. God gives us talent and strength to do many wonderful things but there are just some things that men just aren’t meant to do, especially not young boys trying to grow up too fast.”

  “I tried to save him but I couldn’t.”

  “Look here son. You’re going to feel bad about this for a long time but turn it into something worthwhile.”

  Theo nods at him and his father draws him close and he begins to pray. “Lord my son has witnessed the evils of this world. Please ease his soul. Give him your undeserved grace and ease the burden on his young heart. Let him take what he’s witnessed at the hand of man and be your good Witness. It’s in your Son’s precious name that I pray. Amen.”

  He pushes his son back from his embrace, lifting his chin to look into his eyes.

  “Turn this tragedy into a blessing. Learn from it. Tell your friends what you saw. Tell them what you really saw, not a glamorous dance hall, but a filthy, murderous, snakes den.”

  Theo nods again.

  “Are you ok, son?”

  Theo dries his eyes with the backs of his hands and stares at his palms, knowing how much blood was on them. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, now let’s go wake up your new brother. I’m sure Mama has some ham ready for us. I think we all have a lot to talk about.”

  The two Blakelys walk to the house, fathers arm around his son. His father noticed that Theo seemed to be taller under his arm. Had he grown recently?

  • • • •

  Rural Tennessee, 1923

  “You’re going to have to hold still young man.”

  The frightened and squirming child was barely able to stay seated on the
table as the boyish-looking doctor pulled a large thorn out of the back of the boys scalp.

  “Hold still!” he pleaded again, going for a loose headlock on the child.

  “You hold still right now.” the boy’s mother scolded as she smacked him on the calf. He yelped and sat still, obviously fearing his mother much more than the doctor.

  The doctor pulled the green and brown thorn from the boys scalp and then dabbed on iodine to clean the wound. “Just a couple more -- what did you do, dive head first into a briar bush?”

  The boy started to answer but his mother spoke first. “He and a friend were playing on a log over a creek. I seen him do it.” She cut her eyes sharply at her son. “He was someplace he didn’t need to be.”

  The doctor flinched, remembering doing something similar as a child. “Yes ma’am.”

  “I saw him start to fall. Instead of just jumping off in the water, he started running across the log, twirling his arms, like some fool bird trying to take off. I guess he was trying to outrun his fall.”

  The doctor says, “Yes, go on,” his attention truly on pulling the thorns from under the boy’s scalp.

  “He made it to the end of the log and just flopped off on his head in a briar patch.” She muffled a laugh behind her hand at the consternation of her injured son. “My but it was funny to watch.”

  Turning serious again, “but he still shouldn’t have been there. He could have put out his eyes or fell on a copperhead.”

  The doctor winked at the little boy and shrugged his shoulders. He stage whispers to the boy, “Mama’s do know best don’t they?” The boy nods.

  “But we have the most fun.” The boy nods emphatically.

  “He’s all done Mrs. Hardin. I think I got all of them out and I put iodine on all of the wounds. He should be ok.”

  “Thank you, doctor.” She straightens her dress, then her hat. The boy jumps off of the table and nearly knocks over a pair of men coming through the door.

  The doctor sees them, “Be right with you gentlemen.”

  Mrs. Hardin leans in to the doctor, “Doctor, I know you’re married but if you ever have need, my cousin Loretta is a beautiful, single, young, Christian woman…”

  The doctor cuts her off, “Thank you, Mrs. Hardin. If your son starts running a fever bring him back here and let me look at him.”

  She pulls a jar of green beans from her purse and presses it into the doctor’s hand. She looks at the floor, “I hope this is ok.”

  “It’ll be just fine,” he says, opening a small closet and putting the jar on the shelf with about two dozen other jars of assorted canned vegetables. “Watch his scalp though. If it’s still tender in a few days, bring him back.” She says goodbye and walks away.

  “You have a nice day,” he says to her departing back as she leaves his small office, passing the two men who both tip their hats to her and mumbling, “Ma’am.”

  The doctor somewhat recognizes one of the men, an older black man who he’d given treatment earlier that year for a bad tick bite. The other man, odd to be in this particular office, was a large, sweaty white man with saw dust on his boots.

  “What can I do for you two today?”

  The white man steps forward, “This fellow works for me out at the mill and got himself cut on a nail that flew out of a timber we were shaping.” He looks to the other fellow.

  “Come on up here and show the doctor.”

  The older black man mumbled and stepped forward, un-wrapping a cloth from his forearm. “It didn’t need to be doctored, Mister John”

  “I can’t have you getting gang green and losing your arm.” He turned to the doctor. “He wouldn’t agree to see anyone but you on the way over here. Said you took care of him once before.”

  “I remember him.” The doctor gently pulled the man’s arm toward him and looked at the wound. “Now let’s have a look.”

  “Yes, that’s a pretty deep cut, but it didn’t get to muscle so it should heal ok if we can keep it clean.” He looked at the injured man. “You’re going to be fine.”

  The doctor laid the man’s arm across a basin and rinsed it with water beginning to remove saw dust from the wound.

  The man called Mister John spoke again, “So you from around here Doc? I don’t recall seeing you in these parts much.”

  Talking as he worked, “No sir, I’m from South Carolina originally. I ended up going to a medical college in Nashville. I went to The Capital, Washington, for a short while and then returned here. We liked the area so much that my wife and I decided to stay. We moved here about a year ago.”

  “I see. I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of a black doctor before, except for maybe in the war over yonder. I don’t mean no disrespect you know.” He points over his shoulder with his thumb, meaning France and WWI.

  “No offense taken. Times are changing.”

  “Yes they are.” He continued, “My wife teaches school and would probably enjoy getting to meet you. She enjoys educated conversation. My talk of grabbling catfish from the Turnbull or Beaver Dam Crik just bores her to tears.”

  Awkwardly acknowledging the obscure compliment, the doctor knows that propriety would never allow a white woman to sit and have a conversation with a black man. It was a shame because he did lack for intelligent conversation with his own wife. He shakes his head slightly.

  “Something wrong,” Mister John asks.

  “Not at all, I’m just thinking about my own missus. There’s a lot to be said for a smart woman.”

  Mr. John laughed, relaxing greatly. “Ain’t that the truth? Mine keeps me on my toes all the time.”

  The injured man sat silently, intently watching what the doctor was doing.

  “Ok look here. Part of this cut is deep and I need to sew it closed. Do you think you can stand it?

  The injured man nods his head.

  “What’s your name?” the young doctor asked.

  “My name is John.”

  “I thought your name is John?” The doctor asked of the man standing over them, watching.

  “It is. We are both named John.” He laughed. “I was named for the Book of John and I have no idea where this one was named for.” He swatted the man on the shoulder gently with his hat, making the doctor shield the wound with his hand to prevent saw dust from going in.

  “Oh, sorry,” The man said.

  “So, John, do you think you can stand a stitch or two?

  “Yes sir I can and I’m named for the Good Book too,” he said looking back at the other John, “in fact my mama, rest her soul, named me for the verse John 17:4.”

  Just as he began to quote the verse, the other John joined in grinning at his employee. Apparently they’d done this several times before, “I have glorified thee on the earth…”

  They were both surprised when the doctor joined in their oration, “I have finished the work thou gavest me to do.”

  They both stared at the Doctor who just smiled, “My father was a minister. I can do this all day with you. So how about those couple of stitches?”

  The un-injured John steps back toward the door. “I’m going to go wait out front. I don’t know that I can watch this,” Mister John said, seeing the growing look of alarm on his injured employee’s face.

  Standing outside on the step, he hears a yelp or two of pain and then silence. A few moments later, the doctor comes to the door with his man cradling a bandaged arm. “It was just like he was sewing up a pair of socks Mister John.”

  The Doctor grinned, “No, I don’t sew socks nearly as well.”

  Mister John approached, “How much do I owe you Doc?”

  The Doctor squinted at him. “You don’t have green b
eans do you?”

  “Huh? No, I have money.”

  “That’s excellent. I have plenty of green beans. That’ll be one dollar.”

  “Fair enough,” the big man says and pulls a silver dollar coin from his pocket, handing it to the doctor. “I appreciate you taking care of John here. He keeps my mill running.”

  “Where is your mill?” The doctor asks, “In case I ever need lumber or something.”

  “It’s about twelve miles south-east of here, over on the edge of Turnbull creek, almost to Nails creek. Folks call it Spencer’s Mill.”

  “Twelve miles,” The doctor was amazed, “You brought him twelve miles to me? I know there are at least three other school-educated doctors between here and there.”

  “As I said, he wouldn’t see anyone else.” Mr. John stepped up and did something strange. He held out his hand to shake with the Doctor. “Thank you.”

  The Doctor shook his hand, “My name is Theodore Blakely, by the way.”

  The big man nodded, “Spencer is my name, John Spencer.”

  They rode off on their lumber truck, leaving the doctor to shake his head, “Interesting friends, those two.”

  He opened the screen door to his clinic, chuckling but paused, watching the truck depart, “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands.” He wished that he had shared that one with them. It seemed appropriate and was one of his father’s favorites.

  “Good afternoon!” He shouted and waved to the neighbor lady across the street, sitting on her porch chair shelling beans – a sentinel observing their street. She tilts her head and waves as he closes the door behind him.

  • • • •

  The Barber looked through the screen door on his shop, which was nothing more than a single room on the back side of an old building that he borrowed a few days a week to cut hair. He stared at the two old men arguing on his steps. He continued to clip his customer’s hair but the commotion outside bothered him.

  The man in his chair getting the hair cut seemed to be blissfully asleep, ignoring it all, with a hot towel wrapped around his face. Despite his ordinary wool trousers and pressed shirt, he wore exceptionally nice wing-tipped shoes.

  “Would you two come inside or go away and stop making such a racket on the sidewalk?” The Barber scolded.

  One of the men opened the door and looked in at the man sitting in the chair and then at the other older man sitting against the wall looking at a newspaper. “How long you figure it’ll be before I can get a cut?”

  The Barber addressed the man with the paper, “You getting a cut or a shave today Harmon?”

  The older man rubbed his chin as he set down the paper. “No, I think I’m ok today.”

  The Barber nodded, “About 10 minutes – can you wait that long or are you and Earl going to kill each other out there?”

  “Pah! He couldn’t hurt a fly” said Earl as he sidled past James, intentionally sticking an elbow in the other man’s ribs as he held the door.

  Swatting him with his hat, James followed him in, “I’ll take a shave and a trim when you’re done with him,” he said pointing at the man asleep in the chair with the hat in his hand.

  “What were you two arguing about anyway,” questioned the Barber. “That’s all you old coots do is fuss and fight.”

  Both of the older men started talking at once, neither willing to yield to the other just out of sheer spite. The Barber and his other visitor, Harmon, could catch bits and pieces of the tirade and surmised that it had something to do with a boxing match that took place ten years earlier, somewhere up in New Jersey.

  They continued to discuss the merits of this unknown boxing match. The bell over the door tinkled as it was opened and slammed shut behind the person entering. All of the men, except for the one in the chair, froze and stared in silence at the woman that came in the door. Women just didn’t come into a men’s barbershop, just like men didn’t go into their parlors. There were secrets to be maintained!

  “Theodore!” She screeched. No man said anything, afraid to draw her undivided attention to him, along with her well-known ire.

  She swung her purse hitting the foot of the man asleep in the chair with the towel over his face. “Theodore, wake up!”

  The man in the chair stirred and pulled the towel from his face as the barber sat the chair upright. “Hello dear.”

  “Theodore, I’m hungry. Take me down to the diner so we can have lunch.”

  The man in the chair looked up at the barber who said, “We’re almost finished.”

  “Dear, go ahead to the diner and order for both of us. I want a ham sandwich and a side of their coleslaw. I’ll be in shortly to pay for it and we’ll eat together.”

  “No, I want you to go now! You can come back and finish being trifling with these trifling people later.”

  Seeing trouble brewing, the barber stepped away from the chair. Theodore sat straighter and took a firm but casual tone. “I am in the middle of a haircut. I will be down as soon as I’m finished.”

  She stood staring at him, slack-jawed.

  “Now, dear, go order us some lunch and I’ll be in shortly to pay for it.” He sat back in the chair so the barber could finish what he was doing, “We’ll enjoy a good lunch together as soon as I’m done here. I have to look at that Jopsin girl’s jaw when we’re done.

  His wife looked as if she was preparing to explode in fit of rage. Instead, she turned on her heel and left the shop, slamming the door so hard that it rattled all of the pictures hanging on the wall.

  “I supposed I had better join her.”

  “I wouldn’t be in a hurry to do it, doc. If that was my wife, I may just hold off on going home for a day or two,” Said one of the men watching the spectacle.

  “She’s just having a bad day.”

  The three men in the shop all stared at the young doctor. Surely he didn’t believe that his wife was simply having a bad day. None of them was educated beyond what they could get in church as a child, but they all knew a crazy-woman when they saw one.

  “You just be careful what you say to her doc. You may just pick some flowers for her for later on.”

  The Barber quickly finished the cut, accepted the two bits payment and whisked any hair from the man’s shoulders.

  Theodore, no longer an anonymous barbershop customer, transformed back into Doctor Blakely when he lifted his bleached white doctor’s coat from the coat rack and put it on as he exited the shop.

  He had no sooner stepped down two of the three steps when he saw a motion out of the corner of his eye. Shrieking in fury, his wife was standing beside him, trying to ambush him with a brick to the side of his head. He jumped away from her, catching her wrist. He gently forced her to drop the brick which was intended for a killing blow.

  She screamed something unintelligible and the doctor quickly drew her to him, wrapping his arms around her from behind.

  “Let go of me!” He held fast, looking around, he saw the four men in the barber shop looking out of the door at them.

  “See, I told you.” He heard one of them mutter.

  “She’s having a bad day.” He said apologetically to them and slowly, but gently, carried the thrashing woman down the sidewalk toward their small home over his office -- sad look on his face.

  “You let go of me! I’m no poor, bean eating Negro! You let go of me!”

  He continued carrying her forward, hoping a crowd wouldn’t gather from the commotion.

  “I’m the wife of a doctor! I don’t deserve to be treated like a slob!”

  Still moving forward, her kicking at his shins, scratching at his arms, spittle flying with her eve
ry word, he squeezed her tightly. “Woman you need to calm yourself and have a little dignity!”

  Obviously he didn’t yell this or even say it loudly. He spoke forcefully into her ear.

  “I’m taking you home and when we get there, I’ll go get you some lunch.”

  She calmed somewhat but he didn’t release her until they were off of the sidewalk and moving up the stairs toward their apartment.

  A small crowd had gathered in the neighborhood windows, all watching the spectacle but none came outside out of respect for the doctor, save for the four men at the barbershop. The whole community knew how his wife was and the whispers around church were that she was “touched.” They would always tap their temples when saying that.

  The four old men who didn’t mind standing on the sidewalk to watch, all shook their heads.

  “She’s plumb crazy,” said one, receiving a chorus of agreement from the others.

  “That boy deserves better than that. God blesses his soul for putting up with her,” lamented the barber as he turned back toward his shop, shaking his head.

  Another chorus of muted agreement came from the other men and those who overheard him from the windows of their homes and stores.

  • • • •

  “Yes, ma’am, they do send good news by telegram.” Theodore told the woman sitting in the chair across from his small desk. “Telegrams aren’t always bad news, you know. I could read it to you, if you like.”

  Theodore knew that she didn’t know how to read and she trusted him to not embarrass her for her lack of proper schooling.

  The elderly woman gave the sealed telegram to the Doctor, her hands shaking from age, anxiety and poor health.

  “I’ve not held an official telegram in a long time. I think the last time I got one, it was about the death of my father.”

  The woman gasped but Theodore quickly put her at ease. “Oh it wasn’t completely a bad thing! My father was a Minister. I am sure that when he died he was ready for it and the Good Lord had a place ready for him. It took the sting out of it, so it wasn’t all bad news.”

  His attempt wasn’t completely successful in calming her. She is still afraid that the telegram is a bearer of bad news. “Please read it for me. If it’s something terrible, I don’t wanna know. Just tell me I don’t want to know and I’ll let it go at that.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be alright. Now, let me see.”

  The Doctor opened the envelope and unfolded the telegram. He read through it, mumbling as he did so, and then looking up at the woman, he smiled. Her small fists were clenched in her dress at her throat, anticipating what he would tell her.

  “It’s not bad. This is all good news! Here, I’ll read it to you. Dear Aunt Eliza, stop. We are all well, stop. The flood didn’t take the farm, stop. The Mississippi killed a lot but missed us, stop. We’ll see you this fall, stop.”

  The old woman wiped newly forming tears from her eyes with her handkerchief. “That was my sister’s daughter.” She took a deep calming breath.

  “I was so worried. When I heard the Mississippi was killin hunderds of people I feared for them.”

  “Well now you don’t have to worry.” He handed the yellow telegram and envelope back to her. “You may want to save that. Not too many people around here get sent telegrams like that in this day.”

  She reverently took it from him, folding it carefully and placed it in her tattered floral handbag. She gave the doctor a quick kiss on the cheek thanking him for some peace and told him she’d say prayers for him and his own family.

  “Thank you, we all need them.” This was the truth in every way for the young doctor. His wife, a well known fit-thrower had threatened to leave him many times in the past and almost four weeks earlier had followed through and disappeared without a trace.

  They chatted briefly about the weather and about the new blue and yellow train engine that came in to town the previous morning. Finally, the elder woman made her way to the door. Looking through its glass pane she had one last comment. It remains to be seen if what was about to happen was a moment of good fortune or just plain bad luck.

  “Looks like your prayers got answered,” but under her breath, “only the Lord knows why.”

  Helen, the Doctor’s wife, came through the door at that time, followed by another woman, a stranger. They were both dressed as if they were going out to a club to listen to music and dance. Gaudy was too complimentary. She encountered the old woman, in the doorway, who neither moved aside nor backed up to allow her access to the interior of the room.

  “Bout’ time you showed back up.” The old woman scolded as she pushed her way through the door.

  Helen huffed and put on an indignant expression.

  “You better mind your own business old hag!” Helen shouted at the back of the exiting senior, who truly could care less about anything she had to say.

  Helen whirled on Theodore, striking out, pointing her index finger at him like a weapon about to unleash a bolt of lightning, “Don’t you say a word either!”

  Theodore, in a staged whisper took on a truly innocent look. “What would I say? Who could imagine that I have would have any comment to make?”

  She smirked as did the strange woman with her.

  “You’ve been gone for almost a month, with no warning, no goodbye, and no note. Now you show back up, being rude to my patients and to me.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “You have some nerve behaving this way. And look at you! Have you been selling yourself lately? You’ve never made efforts to look so, so cheap!”

  “Look Theo, I’m just here to get my trunk and the rest of my belongings. Minerva and I are moving to Chicago.” She indicated the woman standing behind her glaring at her husband.

  “So you’re leaving me – again. Does this mean divorce is coming?”

  “Go right ahead and file it. I won’t be anywhere around these parts to have anything to do with it.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “Look, I’m going to go up and get my things. You just stay away from me and stay out of my way. I’m going to find me a rich, older doctor who’s mature, and has sophistication. I don’t know why I picked a country bumpkin playing doctor, like you.”

  Theodore didn’t move or say a word. He was considering what to say, if anything, as she ascended the stairs toward their, or rather his, home. Minerva followed her up the stairs.

  Despite the heartache he was feeling over the loss of his wife, he also experienced a bit of relief, for which he immediately felt guilty.

  “She’s not always been right, but at least she knows what she wants,” He paused, “and who is this Minerva person?”

  He had never seen her before and wondered who she was and where she came from. Helen, his wife, was significantly older than him. Minerva looked to be about the same age as him, if not even a little bit younger.

  “Is she Helen’s family?” He wondered aloud to himself. He had never met any of her family members in the seven years he had known her, six years of which having been as her husband. He assumed they were all gone, or she was intentionally avoiding them. He had also wondered in her times of “having bad days” if her family wasn’t intentionally ignoring her. For that matter, was Helen really her name?

  He decided he would ask Minerva and went up the stairs as well. Maybe she would have some answers for this stranger-than-usual behavior of his wife.

  He entered their small upstairs apartment and found the two women in the kitchen, Helen packing up a small bag with silverware and Minerva standing over her quietly humming and looking bored.

  “Helen, I need some answers.”

  He stands there with his fists on hi
s hips then indicates Minerva, “Who is she?”

  Helen stands mutely, as if deciding whether or not he deserves an answer.

  He looks at Minerva, “Who are you?”

  “Don’t speak to her! Don’t you dare speak to her! She’s mine!”

  As if jabbed with a hot poker, Helen erupted into a fit of profanity at her husband, claiming he was worthless and had no ambition staying in the small, hick town. She screamed how she wanted what was due to her. She screamed about his prowess as a husband and as a man. She ended her tirade in a fit of jealous rage how all of the women around him would stare at him and talk behind their hands.

  “My husband! You were my husband! They don’t get to look at you!”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a small blue-black pistol, aiming it at the doctor. “You need to be marked. You need to be ugly like everyone else. I’m through being hurt by you.

  Holding up his hands, “Hey now, you know you don’t need that. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You’re sure not going to hurt me! I’m in charge and I’m taking Minnie and my stuff to Chicago! You can die right here!”

  Minerva, in the meantime, seemed as surprised to see the gun as Helen’s husband. “Whoa now, Helen, you didn’t say nothing about killin’ no body. I ain’t going back to jail cause’ you wanted to kill your ole’ man.”

  Theodore turned on her, “Back to jail? You were already in jail? Who is this woman?”

  “None of your business,” Helen screeched. “She’s here with me and she isn’t going to be drooling over you.”

  She raised the pistol toward him, the muzzle looking like a cavern to the doctor. “I can kill you now and then everything will be mine!”

  He and Minerva both held their hands out in front, both trying to talk Helen into putting down the gun. She wasn’t listening but seemed to be deciding whether or not to kill him right there in their small, comfortable kitchen.

  Theodore was too far from her to be able to reach her and he was too far from the door to make an escape without being hit easily by a bullet. He began saying silent prayers, knowing that his end may be at hand.

  “Helen! I don’t want to stay in Tennessee! Can we please just go on to Chicago?” Minerva pleaded.

  The mention of Chicago seemed to momentarily distract Helen. Theodore took two quick steps, grabbing the pistol away from his wife. He put it in his pants pocket as she screamed and flailed at his chest with her fists.

  A voice from the stairs shouted up, “Doctor Blakely, are you ok? It’s the police.”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Helen is just having a bad day, is all.”

  “She’s back?” he asked, then repeated to someone else downstairs, “Helen’s come back.”

  Others could be heard talking downstairs.

  “I’m coming up.” He shouted and eventually a police officer holding a very similar pistol emerged into the kitchen, aiming at the two women. “Someone said they saw a woman with a gun through a window.”

  Minerva instantly pointed at Helen and ratted her out, “She did officer. I didn’t have nothing to do with it. I’m just along to help her carry her trunk so she can move out.”

  The officer looked at the doctor. “Moving out she says,” he continued. “Doc, I know this sounds bad, but I’m inclined to let them leave right away.”

  He looked around. “Where’s the gun.”

  Theodore patted his front pocket. “I took it from her.”

  “Good, you keep it. Lord knows you may need it before this is all over,” looking sternly at Helen and Minerva.

  “Helen, do you have all of your things you need? Once you go out that door, unless the good doctor invites you back, you better never set foot in this building again.” He looked at the doctor for confirmation, who nodded his head sadly.

  Helen grumbled she was moving out of state.

  “Probably for the better then,” the officer stated seemingly relieved.

  He stood over the two women as they finished gathering Helen’s possessions and left the building, dragging the trunk down the sidewalk in the direction of the train station.

  Theodore, while visibly saddened, had spent the last month wondering if Helen would ever come back and whether or not she was safe. It was a small consolation that she wasn’t hurt, although he doubted he would ever see her again.

  And so the divorce papers stated, recalling the repeated incidents of Helen attacking him in public, her constant verbal humiliation and harassment of him, the regular insults and rude attitude toward his patients. They went on to say that Doctor Blakely was an upstanding member of the community and of his church and that her constant bad behavior caused him great worry and grief, as well as potential damage to his reputation. The court agreed and ordered the marriage dissolved.

  Besides, the doctor was a handsome man and an educated man. Even as a child females were drawn to him. He wouldn’t be alone for long.