I kept thinking Mr. Nation and his boys would show, as they were always ones to be about when there was free food or the possibility of a drink, but they didn’t. I guess that was because of Daddy. Mr. Nation might have looked tough and had a big mouth, but that axe handle had tamed him, and Mr. Sumption had seen that word had gone around town about it, and long after my father died, there were still those who talked about that beating as if they had seen it, and in time it joined in with the story of Mr. Crittendon’s hogs and eventually attained a position in local mythology.
As the night wore on, the music was stopped and the movie was shown. It was an older one. Silent and full of cowboys and gunplay. The tent under which it was reeled was full of yells and hoots and young drunk men talking for the voiceless characters.
Finally, late in the night, fireworks were set. The firecrackers popped and the Roman candles and rockets exploded high above Main Street, burst into burning rainbows that pinned themselves against the night, then fizzled.
Tom had deserted Taylor, who had found a young woman to dance with—Miss Buella Lee Birdwell—and was sitting on Cecil’s knee, clapping and keeping time to the music, bouncing up and down, waiting for the next big slap of colors against the smooth night sky.
I remember watching as one bright swath did not fade right away, but dropped to earth like a falling star, and as my eyes followed it down, it dipped behind Cecil and Tom. In the final light from its burst I could see Tom’s smiling face, and Cecil, his hands on her shoulders, his leg riding her up and down as it kept time with the music. And nearby, next to a table loaded with food, stood Doc Stephenson, hands in his pockets.
I had noticed him earlier, moving among the dancers but not dancing himself, just weaving through as if he were threading them with himself. Now he stood wearing his usual grim face, looking at Tom on Cecil’s lap, his face slack and beaded with sweat. Above and beyond him the sky exploded with color.
When we got home late that night we were all wide awake, and we sat down for a while under the big oak outside and drank some apple cider. It was great fun, but I kept having that uncomfortable feeling of being watched.
I scanned the woods, but didn’t see anything. Tom didn’t seem to be bothered. Mama, Daddy, and Grandma didn’t show any signs either. Still, that didn’t soothe me.
Not long after a possum presented itself at the edge of the woods, peeked out at our celebration, and disappeared back into the darkness. I felt a sigh of relief.
Daddy and Mama sang a few tunes as he picked his old guitar, then he picked while Mama and Grandma sang a couple songs together. From time to time Toby howled.
After that Grandma, Mama, and Daddy told stories awhile, Mama sitting in his lap as they did so. Daddy knew one about an old gunfighter who had been buried with his horse. Supposedly no one but him had ever ridden it, and when he was wounded while being pursued by the law, he killed first his horse and himself rather than be caught or have his horse ridden by another man. The posse found him buried him on the spot with the animal, and Daddy said he had relatives claimed there were times of the year when they could see that old bandit riding his horse down the road at a dead run, and then when it got to where he and the horse were buried, it would disappear.
Grandma said her grandmother told stories of a pigeon appearing in a room when someone was about to die. And upon the moment of their death, the pigeon would fly up and away to the ceiling, and would cease to be seen, but for moments after you could hear the beating of its wings. Her grandmother said the pigeon came to carry the soul away.
Mama told one about how up in the Ozarks a panther had chased a woman and her baby in a buckboard one night. The woman could see the panther gaining on them in the moonlight. It ran right alongside the horses, nearly panicking them. Thinking quickly, the mother began throwing pieces of the baby’s clothing out along the road to distract it with its human smell. When the panther ceased to maul the clothing, and would reappear, running close to the carriage and the horses, the lady would toss out yet another piece. Finally, she was down to tossing out her own clothing, and finally she was able to gain pacing ahead of the cat. But when the lady, nearly naked, arrived at the house of a relative, she found to her horror the back of the carriage was scratched out, and the cradle where the baby had lain was empty.
After the stories we took turns going to the outhouse, Tom having Grandma walk out with her, and me wanting her to walk with me, but being too proud to ask. I did my business quickly, in the dark, in the stink, an owl hooting somewhere, a Sears and Roebuck catalogue clutched in my hand.
Finally, we washed up, said our good nights, and went to bed.
As I lay on my pallet that night, I decided to slide over and put my ear to the wall. I hadn’t done that in some time, but this night I wanted to hear my Mama’s and Daddy’s voices; I wanted to feel that they were once again connected, and that all was right with the world.
I listened for a while, and they talked of this and that, then they begin to talk softer and I heard Mama say: “The children will hear, honey. These walls are paper-thin.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Of course. Sure.”
“The walls are always paper-thin.”
“You’re not always like you are tonight. You know how you are when you’re like this.”
“How am I?”
Mama laughed. “Loud.”
“Listen, honey. It’s been a while since I been right … You know … And really, you know, I need to. Don’t you want to?”
“Sure.”
“I want to be loud. What say we take the car down the road a piece? I know a spot.”
“Jacob. What if someone came along?”
“I know a spot they won’t come along.”
“Well, we don’t have to do that. We can do it here. We’ll just have to be quiet.”
“I don’t want to be quiet. And even if I did, it’s a great night. I’m not sleepy.”
“What about the children?”
“It’s just down the road, hon. Grandma’s here with them. It’ll be fun.”
“All right … All right. Why not?”
Thunder rumbled. I heard Mama say, “Oh, Jacob. Maybe that’s a warnin’. You know, we ain’t supposed to.”
“Be fruitful and multiply.”
“I don’t think multiplying is what we need.”
I heard Daddy laugh, and Mama giggled.
I lay there wondering what in the world had gotten into my parents. Their room went silent, and not long after I heard the car start up, and glide away down the road.
Where could they be going?
And why?
It was really some years later before I realized what was going on. I had begun to learn about sex, of course, but I wasn’t so well versed in it that I understood what was going on between grown-ups, especially my own parents. I just couldn’t imagine that, them making love. I suppose the main reason they drove off that night was that the idea of doing something a little different, making love in a car appealed to them. That way, for a moment they were just two lovers enjoying each other’s bodies in a romantic setting.
I contemplated it for a time, then nodded off, the wind turning from warm to cool by the touch of oncoming rain.
Some time later I was awakened by Toby barking, but it didn’t last and I went back to sleep. After that, I heard a tapping sound. It was as if some bird were pecking corn from a hard surface. I gradually opened my eyes and turned in my bed and saw a figure through the screen door. It was just standing there, looking in.
Though it was cool, the storm was still in the distance, and there was no cloud cover, and the moon was bright. In that moment of awakening, in the glow of the moonlight, I realized there was a huge hole cut in the screen and that the latch had been undone.
It was then that sleep wore away completely and I realized it wasn’t a dream. I sat bolt upright on my pallet, looking at the shape beyond the screen.
It was dark with horns
on its head, and one hand was tapping on the screen’s frame with long fingernails. The Goat Man was making a kind of grunting sound.
“Go away!” I said.
But the shape remained and its gruntings changed to whimpers. The wind blew, and the shape seemed to blow with it, coast to the right of the screened porch and out of sight.
I jerked my head toward Tom’s pallet, and saw she was gone.
I got up quickly and ran over to the screen, looked at the hole that had been cut in it. I pushed the screen open, stepped out on the back steps.
Out by the woods I could see the Goat Man. He lifted his hand and summoned me.
I hesitated. I ran to Mama and Daddy’s room, but they were gone. I dimly remembered before dropping off to sleep they had driven off in the car, for God knows what.
I opened the door into Grandma’s room. “Grandma!”
She sat upright as if jerked up on a string. “What in hell?”
“The Goat Man, he got Tom.”
Grandma tossed back the covers and rolled out of bed. She had on her nightgown and her long hair fell well below her shoulders, framing her face like a helmet.
She ran out on the porch. She saw the empty pallet, the cut-open screen.
“Get your Daddy,” she said.
“He and Mama ain’t here.”
“What?”
“They went off in the car.”
Grandma was considering that, trying to put it together. I said, “Look Grandma, out by the woods.”
The Goat Man was still there.
“Keep an eye on ’im. I’m grabbin’ my shotgun and my shoes.”
Moments later Grandma reappeared with her shotgun, her shoes on her feet. I had slipped into my overalls and pushed my feet in my shoes while I was waiting. The Goat Man had not moved. He was waving us on.
“The sonofabitch is taunting us,” Grandma said.
“Yeah, but where’s Tom?” I said.
I could see Grandma’s face drop, and there in the moonlight, netted by the shadow of the screen, she suddenly looked ancient, almost hag-like.
“Come on,” she said.
She pushed open the screen door with the stock of the rifle, started racing toward the Goat Man. She moved very fast. The wind caught at her white gown and flicked it about her and the moon danced blue beams off the barrel of the shotgun. She looked like a wraith burst loose from hell.
I rushed after Grandma, and found it hard to keep up. The Goat Man ducked into the shadows, silent as thought.
As I ran, I began calling for Tom, and Grandma picked up on it and started doing the same, but Tom didn’t answer. I tripped and went down. When I rose to my knees I saw that I had tripped over Toby. He lay still on the ground, just inside the woods. I picked him up. His head rolled limp to one side. He whimpered softly, his back legs kicked desperately. Blood leaked from his head where he had been whacked.
After all he had been through he had had his head battered, and was probably dying. He had barked earlier, to warn me about the Goat Man, and I hadn’t listened. I had rolled over and gone to sleep, and the Goat Man had come for Tom. Now Toby was injured and dying and Tom was missing, and Mama and Daddy had gone off somewhere in the car, and the Goat Man was no longer in sight.
And for that matter, neither was Grandma.
24
I didn’t want to leave him to bleed and die, but I had to help Grandma find the Goat Man and Tom. I put Toby down easy, pushed back the tears, ran blindly into the woods, down the narrow path Grandma had taken in her pursuit of the Goat Man. I fully expected at any moment to fall over Grandma’s or Tom’s body, but that didn’t happen. I finally began to catch up with Grandma. She wasn’t moving so fast now. She was limping, breathing hard. Her nightgown had been ripped by limbs, and so had her hair. She looked absolutely crazed.
“Hon, you got to follow,” she said. “I can’t go another step … I got to sit and rest … I ain’t as tough as I thought. He went through them brambles there. You got to hurry … Take the shotgun.”
“I don’t want to leave you here.”
“You got to follow him, find Tom. You got the gun. He ain’t got none, but I seen he’s got a knife. A big’n, strapped to his side. You make him tell where Tom is, hear? Oh, Jesus, I feel like I’m gonna die. My heart’s actin’ up. Go … go, Harry.”
Grandma collapsed to the ground on her butt, her chest heaving as if pumped with bellows. As Grandma lay down, I snatched up the shotgun, darted through the brambles, broke out onto a narrow pine-straw-littered trail. The moonlight danced through the boughs overhead and lit up the path. I could see where the Goat Man had pushed back limbs, even broken a few, as if he wanted me to inspect the direction he had gone.
There was enough moon for me to see where I was going, but not enough to keep every shadow from looking like the Goat Man, coiled and ready to pounce. The wind was sighing through the trees and there were bits of rain with it, and the rain was cool. Gradually the moon was being bagged by rain clouds.
I didn’t know if I should go on, or go back and get Grandma and try and find Mama and Daddy. I felt that no matter what I did, valuable time was being lost. There was no telling what the Goat Man was doing to poor Tom. Had he tied her up and put her at the edge of the woods before coming back to taunt me at the window? Maybe he already done what he had wanted to do to Tom, and now he wanted me too.
I thought of what had been done to all those poor women, and I thought of Tom, and a sickness came over me, and I ran faster, deciding it was best to continue on course, hoping I’d come on the monster and would get a clear shot at him and be able to rescue Tom.
It was then that I saw a strange thing in the middle of the trail, prominent in the moonlight breaking through the trees. A limb had been broken off, and it was forced into the ground. It was bent to the right at the top and whittled on to make it sharp. It was like a kind of arrow pointing the way.
The Goat Man was having his fun with me. I decided I had no choice other than to go where the arrow was pointing, a little trail even more narrow than the one I was on.
I went down it, and in the middle of it was another limb, this one more hastily prepared, just broken off and stuck in the ground, bent over at the middle and pointing to the right again.
Where it pointed wasn’t hardly even a trail, just a break here and there in the trees. I went that way, spiderwebs twisting into my hair, limbs slapping me across the face, and before I knew it my feet had gone out from under me and I was sliding over the edge of an embankment, and when I hit on the seat of my pants and looked out, I was at the road, the one the preachers traveled. The Goat Man had brought me to the road by a shortcut and had gone straight down it, because right in front of me, drawn in the dirt of the road, was an arrow. If he could cross the road or travel it, that meant he could go anywhere he wanted. There wasn’t any safe place from the Goat Man. That story about the road stopping him, about him not being able to leave the bottoms, it was all wrong.
The Goat Man could do anything he wanted to.
I picked up the shotgun I had dropped, ran down the road. I wasn’t even looking for sign anymore. I was heading for the Swinging Bridge and across from that the briar tunnels. I supposed he could have Tom under the bridge, in the cave, but in spite of what Grandma had said, I knew those tunnels were his nest, and I wanted to find him there, and I wanted to shoot and kill him. I wanted Tom to be okay. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted not to be dead. I wanted that a lot. Then I wondered if a shotgun blast could stop the Goat Man. I had thought on that before and wondered, but now, chasing him like this, him leading me on, I certainly wondered it more than ever before.
As I ran, I became more certain that the place I was being taken was the briar tunnels, and that Tom, for better or worse, was there. Those tunnels were where he had done his meanness to those women before casting them in the river. By placing that dead colored woman there, he had been taunting us all, showing us not only the place of the murder, but the probable pl
ace of all the murders. A place where he could take his time and do what he wanted for as long as he wanted.
I felt confident of my conclusions, though I could base them on little more than intuition and childish fantasy. I wished then I had pushed my ideas on Daddy, but I hadn’t, and now I had to deal with the consequences.
When I got to the Swinging Bridge, the wind was blowing hard and the moon showed itself to the world in patches. The bridge lashed back and forth, and I could easily visualize myself being tossed through the air, a stone snapped from a sling. I decided I’d be better off to go down to Mose’s cabin and use his boat to make my way to the briar tunnel.
I remembered we had left the boat along the shore, and my heart sank momentarily, then I thought of how it had been returned before, and ran down there hoping.
When I got there, the boat was in its spot, but when I put the shotgun inside it and tried to push it out in the water, it bogged in the sand and I couldn’t move it. I struggled a full five minutes, unable to budge it, bursting into tears.
I took a deep breath. I had no choice but the bridge. Way the boat was bogged down, there was no way I was going to move it by myself, and I knew in my heart where the Goat Man had taken Tom.
As I raced past the cabin, up in the woods I saw the nose of some kind of vehicle sticking out of the brush, the rest of it tucked between trees. It occurred to me that it might be Mama and Daddy for a moment, but a quick look and I could tell it wasn’t their car. It was a truck. It really didn’t matter. It could be someone down on the river with a boat, running night lines, or hunting possum or coon.
I turned and ran behind the shack on my way back to the bridge, saw something that grabbed my attention. It was hanging from the nail on the back of the cabin. It was a hand and part of a wrist. Something bright dangled from the hand.
The Bottoms Page 26
