I heard them moving toward the door. Me and Tom slid over to the table and sat down. When Mama, Daddy, and Grandma came in we were sitting there, our hands folded in front of us. Daddy looked at us and said, “Y’all just sittin’?”
“Yes sir,” Tom said. “We was talkin’.”
“Say you were,” Daddy said. He reached over and got me by the shoulder. “Come with me.”
We went out the front door and started walking down the road. Daddy said, “Grandma told me she figured out about Mose.”
“Yes sir.”
“She said you didn’t tell her nothin’.”
“No sir.”
“I want you to know I believe that. You can’t hide a darn thing from that woman. Too nosy, and too smart.”
“She’s a lot of fun, Daddy.”
“In some ways,” Daddy said. “I want you to know I appreciate you tryin’ to not let your Grandma know, and I want you to know I know you kept shut about it.”
“Yes sir.” I was actually thinking: well, mostly.
“You hungry?”
“Yes sir,” I said, even though I was still full of pie.
“Let’s walk back and see if we can get Mama to rustle us up some supper.”
15
It must have been about two days later, early morning, just before daylight, when we were awakened on the sleeping porch by a pounding on the front door. It sounded as if someone had a log and was ramming it. It didn’t even budge Tom, who could sleep sound as a fence post.
I leaped up, pulling on my overalls, and ran into the kitchen. Daddy was already there, one overall strap in place, the other dangling, a pistol in his hand. He went to the window, looked out, grabbed up a lantern, lit it, and with his pistol in his right overall pocket, opened the door.
In the distance we heard a car gun. I looked out the window. Down the road I saw taillights. One of the lights had been busted, showing both tinted red glass and raw yellow light. The car sped from sight, dust swirled up to be tinted by the red and yellow, then that was gone, and there was only the moon to illuminate the dust, make it gold and fairy-like till it settled to the ground.
I saw Toby, who wasn’t quite as alert as he had once been, come limping around the side of the house, barking shrill enough to pop your eardrums. He hobbled down the road in the direction of the car, then made his way back to the house, looking embarrassed.
Stuck in the door with a red-handled pocketknife was a note. Daddy pulled the knife out and brought the note inside. He lay the note on the table and looked at it while he folded up the red-handled pocketknife and dropped it in his overalls next to the pistol.
Mama drifted in from the bedroom, her hair hanging, her face marked with concern. She looked at the note. So did I. It had been written in thick black pencil. It said:
MOSE IS IN TROUBLE. YOU OUGHT TO GO SEE TO IT.
Daddy didn’t say a word, he just hurried to get his shoes. I went out on the back porch and put on my own, slipped out the back way, got in the car, lay down in the back floorboard, up close to the seat.
It wasn’t a couple minutes before I heard the car door open and slam, heard Mama yell, “Jacob, you be careful. It could be some kind of setup.” Then the car was rolling.
I knew I had fixed myself up for a well-deserved walloping, but I felt as if I was a vital piece in these events, and to not have me in on it was playing a checker game without all the checkers.
After a while, the car bumped and slammed, and I was banged up and down hard enough to bruise my ribs. I knew then we was off the main road, on the path that led to the river and Mose’s shack. Eventually the motor quit and Daddy got out.
I waited a moment, sat up, looked over the seat, out the windshield. We were parked near the river, up the path a piece from Mose’s shack.
It was early morning still, and the rising ruby and amber sunlight tumbled through the trees like nectar busted from exotic overripe fruits.
In front of Mose’s shack and beside it was full of cars, wagons, horses, mules, and people. The river was stained by the morning sun, and the people in the yard were stained the same colors as the sky and the river.
I recognized a number of folks in the crowd. Some were friends of my Daddy. Many of the others I had seen around. I suspect there were nigh on forty people there.
The crowd broke open, and out of it came Mr. Nation, his two boys, and some other man I’d seen around town before but didn’t know. They had Mose between them. He was being half dragged. I heard Mr. Nation’s loud voice say something about “damn nigger,” then Daddy was pushing through the crowd.
A heavyset woman in a print dress and square-looking shoes, dark hair knotted on top of her head, yelled, “Hang that coon.”
I don’t actually remember getting out of the car, but suddenly I was down there in the middle of the crowd, next to Daddy. When he looked down and saw me, his eyes went wide, but he didn’t have the time to deal with me.
“Hold on here,” Daddy was saying.
The crowd closed around us, except for a gap that opened so Mr. Nation and his bunch could drag Mose into the circle.
Mose looked ancient, withered and knotted like old cowhide soaked in brine. His head was bleeding, his eyes were swollen, his lips were split.
When Mose saw Daddy, his green eyes lit up. “Missuh Jacob, don’t let them do nothin’. I didn’t do nothin’ to nobody. You said I was gonna be all right.”
“It’s all right, Mose,” he said. Then he glared at Mr. Nation. “Nation, this ain’t your business.”
“It’s all our business,” Nation said. “When our women folk can’t walk around without worrying about some nigger draggin’ ’em off, then it’s our business.”
There was a voice of agreement from the crowd.
“I only picked him up ’cause he might know something could lead to the killer,” Daddy said. “I let him go.”
“Bill here says he had that woman’s purse,” Nation said.
A couple of men in the crowd stepped aside, and there was Mr. Smoote. He stood wringing his hands, looking like a boy who had been caught pulling his rope to a underwear picture in the Sears and Roebuck.
“Bill, you sonofabitch,” Daddy said.
“Boy was with me that day I chained him,” Mr. Smoote said. “He’s the one told.”
“And because you’re such a Samaritan, you come out here to stop it,” Daddy said.
Mr. Smoote said, “I come here to see justice. I shouldn’t’a hid him out. And wouldn’t have, had you not been the law.”
“Justice?” Daddy said. “This is a lynch mob. Justice is a day in court.”
Mr. Nation grinned. “Who you think’s gonna be the jurors, Mr. High and Mighty? Let’s just save the time and money of a trial, right here, right now.”
“I’m the law here,” Daddy said.
“Not today, you ain’t,” Nation said.
“Let him go.”
“In the old days, we took care of bad niggers prompt like,” Nation said. “And we figured out somethin’ real quick. A nigger hurt a white man or woman, you hung him, he didn’t hurt anyone again. You got to take care of a nigger problem quick, or ever nigger around here will be thinkin’ he can rape and murder white women at will.”
The crowd grew tighter around us. I turned to look for Mr. Smoote, but he was gone from sight.
“There’s no evidence against him,” Daddy said.
“Had her purse, didn’t he?”
“That doesn’t mean he killed her to get it.”
Mr. Nation said, “You ain’t so high and mighty now, are you, Jacob. You and your nigger-lovin’ ways aren’t gonna cut the mustard around here.”
“Don’t take your personal grudge on me out on Mose. Turn him loose.”
“He ain’t gonna be turned loose, except at the end of the rope.”
“You’re not gonna hang this man,” Daddy said.
“That’s funny,” Nation said. “I thought that’s exactly what we were gonna do.
”
“This ain’t the Wild West,” Daddy said.
“No. This here is a riverbank with trees, and we got us a rope and a bad nigger.”
“He’s an old man,” Daddy said.
“Yeah,” someone in the crowd said, “and he ain’t gonna get no older.”
One of Nation’s boys had slipped off while Daddy and Mr. Nation were talking, and when he reappeared, he had a rope tied in a noose. He slipped it over Mose’s head.
“Please, Missuh Jacob,” Mose said. “I ain’t hurt nobody.”
“I know,” Daddy said. He stepped forward then, jerked the rope off Mose. The crowd let out a sound like an animal in pain, then they were all over Daddy, punching and kicking. I tried to fight them, but they hit me too. Next thing I knew I was on the ground and legs were kicking at us, then I heard Mose scream for Daddy. When I looked up they had the rope around the old man’s neck and were dragging him along the ground, him clutching at the rope with his hands, his old body making ruts in the muddy grass on the riverbank.
Daddy and I got up and staggered after the crowd. My eye was starting to close where someone had kicked me. I saw Daddy reach in his pocket for his pistol, but his hand came out fumbling. He looked around on the ground, but if the pistol had fallen out, someone had picked it up.
“Stop,” Daddy yelled. “Stop it, goddamnit!”
They dragged Mose over to a clutch of oaks. One man threw the rope over a thick oak limb. In unison the crowd grabbed it and began to pull, hoisting Mose up. The rope slid over the limb like a snake, made a cutting sound. Hemp puffed up smoke as it rubbed tight against oak bark. The limb creaked. Mose pulled at the rope with his hands, trying to work it free of his throat. He couldn’t get his fingers between it and his neck. His feet kicked.
Daddy staggered forward, grabbed Mose’s legs, ducked his head under, and lifted him. Nation blindsided Daddy with a kick to the ribs. Daddy went down and Mose dropped with a snapping sound, started to kick fast and spit blood-tinted foam. His eyes turned red and his face puffed. Daddy tried to get up, but the crowd began to kick and beat him.
I ran at them, yelling, swinging, striking anyone I could hit. Someone clipped me in the back of the neck. The world jerked and I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t kneel. I couldn’t do much of anything. I saw the sky going up fast through the limbs and leaves of the oak, then I was looking up at the bottoms of Mose’s feet. Last thing I saw were holes in Mose’s shoes and cardboard inside them to plug the holes; it had gone damp and was starting to come apart. I could see the flesh of his foot through one of the holes where the cardboard had torn and slipped. The hole was directly over me. It seemed to widen and drop around me, then I was lost within it.
When I came to Daddy was still unconscious, on the ground near me. Mose hung above us, his tongue long and black and thick as a sock stuffed with paper. His eyes bulged out of his head like little green persimmons. Someone had pulled his pants down and cut him. Blood dripped from between Mose’s legs, onto the ground.
The crowd was gone.
On hands and knees I threw up until I didn’t think I had any more in me. Hands grabbed my sides. I was figuring the crowd had come back and were gonna hang me and Daddy, or give us more of a beating. Then I heard Mr. Smoote say, “Easy, boy. Easy.”
He tried to help me up, but I couldn’t stand. He left me sitting on the ground and went over and looked at Daddy. He turned him over and pulled an eyelid back.
“You did this,” I yelled at Smoote. “You leave my Daddy alone. You hear? Leave him alone!”
He ignored me, and suddenly I was glad for his assistance. I said, “Is he …?”
“He’s all right. Just took some good shots.”
Daddy stirred. Mr. Smoote sat him up. Daddy opened his eyes.
“That boy told,” Mr. Smoote said. “I come with ’em, but I didn’t mean for nothin’ to happen. I didn’t try and hang him. You ain’t gonna tell about … you know, are you?”
“You stupid, simple sonofabitch,” Daddy said. Then his eyes turned to Mose. He said, “For Christ sake, Bill, cut him down from there.”
16
Two afternoons later Mose was buried on our place, between the barn and the field. Daddy made him a wooden cross and carved MOSE on it, swore when he got money he’d get him a stone.
A couple black folks Daddy knew who knew Mose came out, but the only whites there were our family. There was some didn’t have no truck with what was done to Mose, but they didn’t want it known they’d show up at a colored man’s funeral.
At night, when I closed my eyes, I saw Mose hanging, his pants down, cut, bleeding, his eyes and tongue bulged, that rope around his neck. It would be some time before I could lay down and not have that image jump immediately to mind, and some years before it didn’t come back to me on a regular basis. Funny things would set it off. Just seeing a rope, or a certain kind of limb on an oak, or even the way sunlight might be falling through limbs and leaves.
Even now, from time to time, it comes back to me clear, as if it happened day before yesterday.
Part Four
17
From my window is a view of a great oak tree. One evening, in early spring, propped in a wheelchair, looking out, just as evening shadows fell like tangles of black and blue cloth, as the birds gathered in the boughs of the oak like Christmas ornaments, preparing for sleep, I thought I saw Old Mose hanging there.
His body seemed very real in that moment, a twisting shadow amongst other shadows, but it was clearly his shape, and there was the dark line of the rope. But when I blinked, he and the rope were gone.
There were now only the shadows beneath the tree filled with birds, and there was the night descending, and another day of spring was slowly draining away.
No shadows now, not even beneath the trees.
Daddy wanted to quit being a constable, but the little money the job brought in was needed too badly, so he stayed at it, swearing anything like this came up again he was gonna quit.
But for the most part he had quit. He was constable in name only. It was as if he were fading right before our eyes. He had been washed out to some dark and infernal sea, and there he floundered, then ceased to flounder, merely drifted on a single crumbling plank left from the wreck of his life. His life having crashed and shattered upon a reef named Mose.
Many of those at the lynching had been Daddy’s barbershop customers, and we didn’t see them anymore at the shop. As for the rest, Cecil cut most of the hair, and Daddy was doing so little of it, he finally gave Cecil a bigger slice of the money and only came around now and then. He turned his attention to working around the farm, fishing and hunting, and not doing much of any of those.
Mama and Grandma tried everything to bring him around. Patience. Anger. Encouraging words. Right out mean remarks. They could have been talking to a duck. Only the duck would have startled at least.
When spring came, Daddy showed minor improvement. He went to planting, just like always, but he didn’t talk about the crops, and I didn’t hear him and Mama talking much, but sometimes late at night, through the wall, I could hear him cry. There’s no way to explain how bad it hurts to hear your father cry.
Daddy stayed in the bedroom a lot. He mostly ate his meals alone, when he ate. He spoke, but the words were dry and crinkled, like dead leaves. If he sat outside, and saw us coming, he got up and moved away, as if we had caught him doing something embarrassing.
The house changed. It had never occurred to me before that, but a house is a shell like a body, and like a body, it’s the spirit inside it that makes it whole. And if we, the family, were the spirit, part of us, a great and powerful part of us, was ailing.
Grass actually began to grow up through the porch, and the hard ground around the house began to fall off and wash away and turn to sand. The well water tasted less sweet. Wild dogs killed our chickens.
Only Grandma was a light in the dark. She was ever energetic, tried to be fun, but Daddy’s darkness hung over the
house like a tree about to fall. One day, as we put flowers on Mose’s grave, Toby limping along beside us, I asked Grandma if Daddy would soon be better.
She thought about it before she answered. That was unusual for her. She was usually quick to respond, and knew exactly what she thought about a matter, exactly what she wanted to say.
She put her arm around me. “I believe he will, Harry. But your Daddy’s received a blow. It’s not all that different than a fellow I knew named Boris Smith out there in North Texas. He was kicked in the head by a mule. He didn’t change right out, but he got sort of strange and stayed that way a long time. One day, he brightened and came out of it.”
“What made him better?”
“Well, for one thing, the mule died. That cheered him up. But I don’t think it was that simple.”
“You think Daddy got hit too hard by them folks?”
“You were both hit too hard. But no, that’s not what I mean. Your Daddy got kicked in the soul, sweetheart. So did you. But you’re young enough to see daylight. Jacob ought to be, but I think the kick to him was a little harder. He felt he saw it coming and stepped right into it.”
“But he’ll be all right?”
“I’m gonna tell you I think so. But I ain’t gonna lie to you, Harry. I don’t know. Boris, he got all right in time. But it took a long time. His was a physical injury, so you might say it’s harder to recover from that. I’m not so sure. A kick in the soul can take it all out of you forever. Lot of them Dust Bowl folks just pretty much laid down and quit. Most of them took a chance, went somewhere to try again. They had hope. Some of ’em will find out their hope ain’t hope, just a lie, and they’ll lay down and quit. Some of them will get up and try again. Your Daddy’s like that. If he can get up, he will. I just don’t know when.”
The Bottoms Page 18
