Stop! Stop!
Though they refused his directive, they looked in the rear view and turned around respectively in order to pay him attention. He who had been mute, who’d barely moved a muscle since his rescue, was greatly agitated.
Stop! Stop! Stop! This is it! This is where they took us!
Now is not the time, Mickey Moe said.
Oh no, oh no. Stop! Stop! He might still be alive.
It was a terrible piece of news. There was a “he,” and he might be alive. Laura Anne swallowed to get her throat wet enough to speak.
Who is “he”?
My partner. Jeffrey Harris. He’s one of you. I mean, he’s a Negro from Raleigh-Durham. We were assigned together to come out here and canvass the local Negroes for a literacy program. It was great for a while. Everyone was so kind, so hospitable. Then the trucks came. With the white men in ’em. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please. You have to stop. He could be alive.
Dang!
Mickey Moe stopped the car. He banged his head on the steering wheel three times. He looked at Laura Anne, and there were tears in his eyes, tears of fear and frustration and internal moral combat.
Dang! he repeated. He picked up the gun. Banged that against the steering wheel twice. He left the car. Slammed the door. He paced outside in circles, waving his arms around and muttering in a way that frightened Laura Anne more than the impossible circumstances of the moment. She rolled down a window.
Honey. Honey, she said. What are you doing?
He stood by her window wild-eyed. His shoulders heaved from breathing hard.
Well, I’m about to go into those woods and look around for Jeffrey Harris from Raleigh-Durham, he said. I want you to stay in the car with our guest here. . . .
He hit the rear window with the gun butt.
And what is your name, sir? I’d like to know the name of the man I’m about to give up my life for. . . .
The stranger gulped. Walter Cohen, he said.
Alright. Now, darlin’, you stay in the car with Walter Cohen and keep the doors locked. Anyone comes by while I’m in those woods, you take off. Run ’em over if you have to. Now where exactly about here did you think Jeffrey Harris is lying, breathin’ his last?
Back there a bit. There’s a tree down, a tree with pink flowers. I don’t know what it is, but it’s lying in a ditch. I remember it, because I was trying to remember everything in case I got out alive. There were seven of them in two trucks, and they parked the trucks there and dragged us into the woods. Not very far in there’s a campsite. That’s where they took us. They put us against some kind of posts that were there. They made a fire. They drank. They spit and pissed on us, and then they cut us. They had whips, too. Every man took his turn. Then they took Jeffrey off somewhere, and I could hear him screaming. I don’t know what they did, but it was awful. I know it was awful from the sound of his screams. He was in agony. His screams went on forever. I never heard anything like that before in my life. I knew I had to get away or I’d be screaming like that next, and I don’t know, I guess the bonds they had us in were compromised from the whipping and the cutting, and I was able to break loose. I just ran and ran and ran until I landed on your car, miss. That’s what happened, I swear to God.
Mickey Moe walked off in the direction indicated by Walter Cohen to seek out a fallen tree with pink flowers stopping up a ditch. He walked flat-footed with his head down like a child having a temper tantrum. He stiffened his arms and talked to himself. There’s not going to be a tree with damned pink flowers lying in a ditch anywhere, he muttered. Walter Cohen has gone crazy from trauma is all, and why couldn’t he’ve just remained incoherent until we got to Memphis anyway? Oh no, Walter Cohen has to perk up and put me and my darlin’ Laura Anne in jeopardy for the sake of some dang tortured Negro out here, who brought it on himself, didn’t he. . . .
But there it was. The tree with pink flowers stopping up a ditch. And not far into the woods, a campsite with empty whiskey bottles lying around, wood still smoking a little, two bloodstained posts, and Walter Cohen’s shoes. Mickey Moe released the safety of his gun and tried to calm himself. They’re not still here, he said out loud. No one’s stupid enough to hang around and lay claim to this scene.
Unless they were looking for Walter Cohen.
He walked a ways off down a path to find Jeffrey Harris or what was left of him. He walked through brambles and bush with his gun hand shaking and his heart in his throat, his ears pricked for the sound of others. An animal broke a branch, and he jumped, then stumbled to his knees. When he looked down in the moonlight to see what he’d tripped over, he saw a foot. A black, bare foot with its pink sole staring up at him like the face of a living thing. There was nothing attached to the foot, it just lay there along the path in a blackened pool of blood as if someone had dropped it. Mickey Moe didn’t have to see any more. He scrambled up and ran back to the car. He banged on the door. Laura Anne unlocked it as fast as she could. He got in, pushed her aside, turned the key, and stepped on the gas.
Did you find him? Walter Cohen asked. Did you find Jeffrey Harris?
It took a while before he could respond.
I found a piece of him.
The others tried to ask him what he meant, but he held up a hand to silence them and drove as fast as the road permitted to the interstate. They weren’t a mile away from the safety of blacktop and street lamps when a red pickup truck hurtling down the road in the opposite direction nearly ran them into a tree.
Walter Cohen gasped and whipped his head around to stare through the back window. That was them. That was them, I know it. It was a red truck they threw us in and a white one that followed.
Mickey Moe’s blood was already up about as high as it went. Walter Cohen’s outburst maximized his irritation. Simmer down! Do you know how many red trucks there are around here? Do you? Then set down and stay quiet ’til we get to Memphis. I’ll take you to the hospital, and then we’ll file a report to the police. After that, you’re on your own. I will have gone as far as I can go.
Laura Anne patted Mickey Moe’s closest driving hand to show her approval of his plan. She noticed something new that’d gone wrong.
Honey, she said. Where’s Daddy’s forty-five?
Mickey Moe’s eyes near popped out of his head. The gun, the gun, the gun, he thought, what happened to the goddamn gun.
I don’t know. Maybe I dropped it back there. Probably when I fell down. Maybe not. It should’ve gone off if I did.
Well, honey. I’m not so sure it was loaded.
You’re not?
I never checked.
You didn’t.
I forgot.
He stared ahead at the road with his mouth working a while before sound came out. You sent me back there with an unloaded gun.
Her face wrinkled up. Tears flowed. Her body shook.
He couldn’t stand her pain. It’s alright, darlin’, he said. He reached out and pulled her close to him. It’s alright. I’m in one piece.
He glanced through the rear view at Walter Cohen, who had not spoken at all but sat slumped over looking mournful and miserable, when really, thought Mickey Moe, he should be feeling some kind of elated that he’s alive at all.
Well, one thing’s sure now, son, Mickey Moe said.
What’s that?
We will not be going to the police with you. I’ll take you to the hospital, but the police, no. I’m not going to put my future father-in-law in jeopardy by having them discover his gun.
I don’t understand.
Believe me, if the Memphis, Tennessee, police can find a Jew from Greenville, Mississippi, to blame for body parts turning up in their woods, they will jump at the task.
Then I’ll have to tell them, Walter Cohen said.
No, you will not. If you have any gratitude in you at all, you will not.
The men argued. Laura Anne put a hand on Mickey Moe’s arm to silence him and took over. No one bests a well-trained Southern girl in convincing a man t
o do the noble thing. She fixed Walter Cohen with a penetrating look and employed her most honey voice. Mr. Cohen, she said, my fiancé here is right. My daddy is an innocent in all of this. He is a hardworking, generous man who is kind to white men and Negroes alike. Why, he offers Negroes credit in our store and at the same rate as everyone else. My mama is frail and depends on him. If anything happened to him, if he was so much as held overnight in a jail cell, it’d outright kill her.
Laura Anne allowed her eyes to blink as if stemming tears at the thought of her mother’s untimely demise. She sighed and put a hand over her heart.
For some coldhearted notion of justice, Mr. Cohen, would you have her suffer?
She was a very pretty woman, and Walter Cohen, ragged and spent as he was, was not made of wood. He relented. He would not go to the police.
It was close to dawn before they found a hospital and dropped their cargo off at the emergency entrance. Once they were rid of him, they checked into the first motel they could find. As soon as the door was closed and locked, they were in each other’s arms. She shook against him.
Oh sweetheart, she whispered, a sob in her voice, I am so sorry about the gun. I am so sorry I never checked it. Everything seems to be happening so fast. I just didn’t think.
Mickey Moe took her face in his hands and held it a few inches away from his own.
But the way you handled Walter Cohen, darlin’. That was perfection.
They beamed at each other. They kissed and did not stop ’til they hit the bed backward, falling onto it laughing. Laura Anne swore it was a wonder they could laugh after the day they’d had. Oh, that’s not the only wondrous thing we can do after a hard day, Mickey Moe said, undressing her with one hand and stroking her with the other.
Later, they fell asleep entwined. They were so worn out not even the frequent sirens of ambulance after ambulance screeching outside their window woke them up.
They planned to head over to Aurora Mae’s at the address Mama Jo Baylin had given them the next day. After what they’d been through, they figured that part of their journey would go easy. When he opened his eyes at high noon to the sound of his beloved taking a shower, the first thing on Mickey Moe’s mind was not joining her or getting coffee from the machine down the hall. His first thought complicated matters. His first thought was of her daddy’s gun lying in the dirt next to Jeffrey Harris’s severed foot.
XIII
Memphis, Tennessee, 1926–1927
BALD HORACE HATED THE FIRST job they set him to. While Bernard lolled around at a house job, for the first two weeks Bald Horace filled bags with wet sand then trekked them up to the flat of the levee wherever the river fronted the property. He did it bone cold and in the rain. Sometimes he was told to load the bags onto a truck for sale at neighboring farms where men more flood fearful than Ghost Tree’s owner and without his workforce paid jacked-up prices. The men working side by side with Bald Horace cursed the big man as a greedy Jew.
Who else could profit over a neighbor’s despair? they said.
Bald Horace defended his friend’s race. They not all like that, he said.
How do you know? they asked.
Big man’s not the first I ever met.
That night, he looked for Bernard outside the white men’s barracks.
They’re talkin’ about the boss bein’ a greedy Jew, he said. Better watch out.
Bernard heard his granddaddy’s voice. Don’t forget who you are, son. Alright, he wouldn’t. But he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with this intelligence now that he had it. Watch out, he guessed. Like his friend said.
Sandbag detail was the worst backbreaking job on the farm. Every bone and muscle Bald Horace had ached so much, he could not sleep at night. It got so bad, he thought about leaving Ghost Tree even if he left alone. One morning, he was about to pack up his kit and tell Bernard he quit when the rain stopped and it stayed stopped. Every day, the sun shone, and the sky was a hard, brilliant winter blue.
It didn’t take long before folk stopped caring about sandbags. Fresh opportunity knocked, and Bald Horace answered. Much of the help had been wayfarers working at Ghost Tree as shelter from the deluge. Once the rains stopped, they went back to their homes with a little coin in their pockets and the intent to rebuild what they’d lost. Bald Horace had his pick of the vacancies created. He chose to take care of the farm animals, which meant everything feathered or furred except the horses and hunting dogs. He looked after donkeys, chickens, cows, pigs, and goats. He watched them mate, argue, and play to learn their individual natures and habits. He knew when one of them was footsore or bad in the belly. When feeding time came around, the joyous way they ran to him braying, clucking, lowing, bleating, or grunting filled his heart. He named them, cared for them, and they cared for him, too.
His work was so pleasant, he saw Aurora Mae’s hand in things. Though Aurora Mae was surely dead, he felt that she hadn’t forgotten her brother and his friend, that her spirit was close and blessed them both. How else to explain how they’d wound up at this paradise called Ghost Tree where they paid the help on time and didn’t skimp on the vittles, either? To think he’d been this close to leaving. It was as if Aurora Mae saw his misery and plugged up the hole in the clouds with one hand then grabbed his shirt collar with the other to pull him back. Yessir, he told whoever would listen, Ghost Tree Plantation was a sacred place for all those who mourned someone. His own sister’s soul was set down by the hand of a merciful Lord in the forked arms of one of the willow trees that draped the border of the puzzle garden. He’d seen her there one morning when the fog lifted. Day and night, he could feel her like she was in the next room. This gave him peace. In fact, for the first time since Aurora Mae went missing, he was happy. His friend said that was because he didn’t have much to do with that other Bernard.
Once it was established that Bernard could read and write, he was made a secretary to the big man himself. He didn’t have to wear the Negroes’ livery, but he was given three fresh shirts and two pairs of pants in the plantation colors, crimson red and the near black green of the shutters, a pair of paddock boots and a red-and-green cap with a short visor. He was told to keep these and himself clean. He reported to the big man himself on the front porch every morning. He knew it was not his place to question why he was not allowed over the threshold. Depending on the terrain, the name-twins made inspection rounds together in a truck or on horseback. They were together so much, people all around started calling him Bernard the ugly to differentiate him from the big man. Bernard didn’t like that much, but he understood the joke and tried not to take offense.
Together, the two Bernards inspected the cotton fields, the rice fields, the vegetable fields along with the various stock barns, the tannery, the smithy, the silos, the millhouse, all of which were in the process of rehabilitation. Bernard the ugly wrote down whatever he was told without knowing why because Bernard the handsome didn’t think him important enough to explain things to. He didn’t converse with him at all except to command. Bernard the ugly made lists of mysterious percentages and inexplicable dollar figures, the names of people he did not know and of equipment of indeterminate function, comprehending little. Every two weeks, he rode in the front seat of the big car next to the driver and delivered envelopes to the bank and to the pea-colored house in town. He never questioned what was in them, because he never would have gotten an answer.
Two years before, Bernard the handsome bought Ghost Tree Plantation from a family of blue bloods gone to ruin with war, gambling, and disease, dragging the property down with it. Soon after, he purchased a few hundred acres of abutting land and set about creating the finest plantation Tennessee had known since Grant’s and Sherman’s men destroyed them all. It was his great dream, what he saw as his life’s work. His ambitions were stuck in a vision of the past, when a man might behave like Caesar on his own property and get away with it. Ever since his granddaddy died, leaving him a fortune in the family agricultural supply business
, he desired to use that fortune to make himself a mighty lord with the power of life and death over man, beast, and the river. He thought such his birthright because of his good looks and the size of his purse. What’s more, he thought his vision an ideal life, worth resurrecting from the boneyard of history.
Although he had a pretty wife of excellent lineage, he loved nothing so much as his gold, of which he had a great deal since he did not like nor trust greenbacks. He preferred fondling his chests of coin to his wife. This was fine by her, as she didn’t much like him. They argued often about the way he conducted business or the way he treated the help. He told her she was a soft-headed nag, who didn’t understand commerce. She told him he had a tiny soul, small and hard as a pebble, and the heart of a devil. He made his name-twin his secretary to irritate her. When her local friends telephoned with social invitations, it was his delight to send Bernard the ugly over to their farms with handwritten notes of acceptance or regrets and instructions to announce himself by name as he did so. This proved more annoying to his secretary than to the lady of the house, who’d long ago given up caring what her husband did. She was more interested in the work of the young Italian stonecutter who chiseled lions, stags, and cupids for her flower garden. She couldn’t get enough of them. Once the garden was stuffed with more figures than rosebushes, winged cherubs appeared on the lintels of doors all over the big house. Her husband complained that her decor was too funereal. She countered that if a plantation named Ghost Tree was to be her home, it should be festooned in a manner that reflected the death of her innocence. When she ran out of doorways and windows in the big house, winged cherubs appeared over those of the workers’ barracks and even the latrines.
Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly happy, Bald Horace would point at one and tell Bernard, Look, you see? We were led to paradise by our own angel.
And Bernard would answer, No. We have wandered into an asylum for the insane.
One More River Page 17
