“Can we at least carry on like we used to?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “I think so.”
“Don’t blame me, Pete. Do you blame me?”
“Huh,” I said. “I blame myself for everything. That’s my policy.”
“But that’s not fair,” she said.
I shrugged. “That’s how it is.”
She gave my hand a final squeeze and then pressed her index fingers to the inside corners of her eyes. “I’ve been missing sleep.”
“That’s probably my fault, too.”
“No,” she said. “It’s Alex. He’s just been so bitter lately. He’s never home. He goes out in the morning and sometimes he doesn’t come back till after dark.”
“You don’t know where he goes?”
“He doesn’t bother to tell me anymore. I can’t stop him, can I? He doesn’t even pretend he’s going to play ball like he used to.”
I mulled it over. I tried to picture myself as a boy—had my mother ever felt like this on my account? She would have had good reason, certainly. But things were different then. Despite the current war, which of course weighed over everything, I think it was a harder time, a harder world, in those days. Alex was softer in some way than Tommy and I had ever been, and we had always had each other to fall in with when a scrape came up.
“I’ll stash the car up the street and wait for him to come home tonight,” I said. “There’s at least one thing the old man was good for. If Tommy or me ever pulled anything like this, we’d get the strap. And it wasn’t anything to argue with.”
“I don’t know if that would do any good, Pete. You know how he is,” she said. Her eyes softened. “He misses his father.”
I knew she was right. I could tan the boy once, but I couldn’t be at the house all the time. He’d already had a taste of sneaking around and hiding things, and I knew that he’d get better at it quickly. He was smart enough to put on another face if he had to. Like everything else, my ability to figure out this new situation seemed limited.
“And there’s something else,” Eileen said. She stood up and walked over toward the sink. She drew down a cookbook from a shelf, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and brought it back to the table. “I found this in the back pocket of his trousers yesterday.”
I took the paper and opened it. Across the top in big letters it read A NIGGER’S BRAIN. The rest of the sheet was filled with a cartoon of a colored man shown from the side, with huge lips, drooping eyelids, and nappy, bug-infested hair. His brain was shown in cutaway, divided into sections labeled “Love of Watermelon,” “Laziness,” and a bigger part, “Lust for White Women.” But three-quarters of the brain had been darkened by crosshatched lines and labeled “Unused.” It was an old drawing, and I had seen a copy of the picture before, tacked up for a time on the board in the swing room at the old precinct. So soon after I’d seen the photograph of my father at the lynching of the colored boy, the smudged paper I now held in my hand struck at me. Everything at the edges of my vision started to go white.
“You don’t have any idea where he’s going at night? He’s not seeing a girl?”
She took it in for a moment. “I think if it was a girl he wouldn’t be so angry. He just won’t talk to me.”
“Know any of his friends?” I asked.
“I think he had a hard time at school this past year. He told me there were some colored children in his classes. I didn’t think anything of it. You know how Tommy was. He wasn’t like that.”
“No,” I said. “Tommy wasn’t like that.” But our father was, I thought. Maybe I am, too. I stammered, “Let me ask—Alex found some different friends lately, is that right?”
“I guess that’s right. He used to just play with the boys on the street here, but now he won’t have anything to do with them.”
We were still sitting at the little kitchen table. I kept my hands flat to the top because they seemed so heavy. The legs of the table were a little uneven, and I caught myself rocking the whole thing back and forth as I listened to her.
“He brought a boy named George here for dinner one day about a month ago. Redheaded boy about Alex’s age. But he didn’t seem like a hoodlum.”
“A month ago?”
“Oh,” she said, “I guess it was more like two weeks ago, I guess. George Dix is his name, I think. He lives just the other side of Campau, behind the Catholic school.”
I felt my blood stop. “Dix? Or Rix?”
“Rix, I think. Sort of a funny name.”
At once the room seemed too small. I wanted open space, room to swing my fists. At least in hell you’ve got some room to kick around. She must have seen it come up in my face.
“What is it, Pete?”
“I’ll have a look for him,” I said. I stood up and made a step toward the front of the house.
She caught my sleeve and stopped me. “Pete, please,” she said.
I couldn’t bear to tear my arm away from her.
“I won’t hurt him,” I said. “If I find him, I’ll just bring him back here, that’s all.”
Her upturned face and the plain smell of her flamed through me and wrenched my gut. I wanted to crush her in my arms and carry her to bed, but I bent and jerked down to touch my lips to her cheek. To get her loose from my sleeve, I put both hands on her shoulders and held her down in her seat. Then I turned and walked out—and felt a fool for ever having thought of a happy life.
What should a man be? I thought of my father and how he treated my mother toward the end of their time together—not such a pretty story, as it turns out. I can remember him as a happy fellow, taking my mother dancing in the long-ago days. He knew how to tell a story. He’d have everyone hanging on his next word, sure, and ready to throw their beer mugs at him when they heard the bad joke that topped it all off. Tommy and I would lay awake in our bunks with our ears to the wall, taking it all in. They talked and laughed halfway through the night about the drunks they’d rousted and the fingers they’d broken, letting out the spiel of a life of pickpockets and grifters and mashers, three-letter men they’d tossed into the Detroit River in winter, graft and petty thievery and dope fiends and wrong turns. They talked loud to keep from falling to the wrong side themselves, to keep from putting their own guns to each other or to their families. Or to themselves. Maybe the talking had finally failed my father; maybe that was what finally led him to his sorry end. I should have learned something from all of it. Tommy picked it up, the gift of gab, but I never did.
He must have loved my mother once, he must have. Things went sour, but I could imagine that once upon a time, life must have seemed like a happy proposition for them. I tried to see how I could make that kind of life with Eileen—but I just couldn’t. With Anna, I could kid myself that I could handle things. At least sex was sex. It was like fighting or sparring, two bodies coming together, no more; there wasn’t any sense in getting sentimental about it. With Eileen, it was more. And I had not picked up the trick. I had not ever learned how to manage it.
After I left Eileen’s house, I felt sour with all the tangled mess of my life. I knew that I should have ignored Captain Mitchell’s warning about going after Rix. Up from the dusty locker of my memory floated the nasty image of Barton Rix, always sneering, with his tuft of bright red hair pushed back on his head. Time had darkened everything, and yet the hair and the name and the timing stuck me like a needle. My mind raced through the possibilities. I could no longer ignore my own involvement in all of it. Maybe some of it could have been coincidence, after all—but it was too much. I knew Rix, all right. The blood between us wasn’t good. If my father had been messed up in the Legion, and if Rix had been wrapped up in it, too, then Rix might have a reason to target Alex. But with the old man dead, and Tommy dead, there was only me to rake over. Messing with Alex might be a way of coming at me from a blind side. At his young age, and shaky from all he’d been through, the boy wouldn’t be able to fend off anything they threw at him.
Wha
tever it was, I decided that I would find out tonight, Mitchell or no Mitchell. There wasn’t anything to keep me from it, and I knew it would be best to wade in while I was still hot. I wasn’t sure I would match up against Rix anymore with the bum eye and the bad hand, but I figured I might be able to make him see things my way if I could get a drop on him.
I drove across Campau and parked at the farthest edge of the St. Ladislaus parking lot. From the trunk I pulled out a box of shells for my revolver and dumped enough for two reloads into my coat pocket. I pulled an oversized sap from under a blanket and slipped it up the left sleeve of my coat, through the loop of cloth I had sewn in, resting the handle end in a little pocket inside the cuff. It was very heavy, filled with grapeshot, but I liked to carry it in my sleeve rather than in my pants because it was easier to handle and harder to spot. When I was all set, I closed the trunk and got behind the wheel. Just then it occurred to me to look around to see if anyone was following me, if anyone was watching all of it—perhaps a nun peering from one of the hundred windows of the school or the rectory. It made me realize that I was not much of a detective. It did not occur to me to check a telephone book, and I couldn’t very well call anyone at headquarters for Rix’s address. Even if Mitchell didn’t get wind of it, there was no way to be sure that anybody else I might talk to would be clear of the whole thing. But hope sprouted like a germ in me, despite my worst inclination; I had the idea that if things ended as badly as I thought they would, I might somehow be able to crawl away clean if nobody knew I was going in after Rix.
I drove slowly through the neighborhood behind the school, peering through the failing light at everyone passing by on foot, hoping to recognize Alex from his walk. After half an hour of driving, I began to work my way westward. The terrain began to open up a little to empty lots and older houses, left over from long-gone farms and country life. I saw that several cars and trucks were passing me, heading for a long driveway through a break in a small stand of trees. I turned around and followed until I came upon a little house swarming with hayseeds and shift workers in overalls and shirtsleeves. Out back of the house stood a large barn, spilling light from the door and from all the cracks in the siding boards.
I turned the car around to face the road, parked along the grass next to the driveway, and walked up to the barn. It seemed like a religious tent show except for the ring of hard faces near the big doors. Though it was still warm, I buttoned my coat to hide the revolver. I lingered in the yard, slowly taking in the scene. None of the faces looked familiar to me, though in the dim light I could not tell if my eye was faithful. I looked for a shock of red hair bobbing about but saw nothing of the sort. There were several young boys and smooth-faced men, but I didn’t see Alex. A general movement toward the doors and into the barn drew me along, and though it didn’t sit well on my face, I tried to look friendly.
At the door, one of the hard faces stepped up to block my path.
“Do we know you, brother?”
I squinted down at the little hayseed in dungarees. He kept his lips pressed tight to hide his bad teeth. I lifted my hand slowly and moved the man gently to one side. There was little movement but a good deal of bright attention from all the men in the doorway. I worked myself into the barn and glanced about to gain my bearings. The place was lit up well from a couple of big electric lamps hanging high up in the rafters. Perhaps forty men sat on plain benches arranged in rows like church pews. Another thirty stood along the walls of the barn, and I wedged myself alongside them, settling into a dark hollow between two framing studs with my arms over my chest. Two of the hard cases from the doorway, older men of about fifty, ambled up and took position on either side of me.
A table had been set up on platform at the far end of the barn, and I heard a kind of barking language from that direction before the standing men found their seats. When it cleared out, I could see the pale eyes and the bright red face of Barton Rix. He began to bang on an upturned milk pail with a metal ladle.
“Quiet! Quiet down, damn you! This isn’t a social club!” After the crowd settled, he continued, “Now, I know you all aren’t here for a quilting bee. We’ve got some pressing news about the mud people and the Communists that I know you all need to hear. So let’s get ourselves organized.
“First of all, I’ve got some grave news about our own police force, which as you know I have been proud to serve on these many years. But it might not surprise you to know that even on our own force and higher up in the government, there are a few Commie- and nigger-loving bastards.”
Laughter rippled throughout the room.
“Some of you might read the paper or listen to the radio. You might have heard about Jane Hardiman dying, thrown from a horse, they say. That’s a lie! I know for a fact that little white girl was killed up in niggerville on the west side of town! That girl’s father is Roger Hardiman, and you know who he works for. If you don’t, I’ll tell you. Jasper Lloyd. You heard me right. Backstabbing, union-kissing, nigger-loving Jasper Lloyd. There’s a man—you all know this—made himself rich off the sweat and blood of decent white folks, and now he’s sipping whiskey on his yacht off Belle Island while the darky hordes are killing little white girls! And telling his flunkies to lie about it! What could be the reason for all that? I’ll tell you! He’s a goddamned coward, that’s right! He made his money, and now he can afford to run scared while the Communists and their unions let in any old coon and his mother to take jobs away from the very people that made this country great! And that little girl laying dead! Raped by a nigger! How many y’all prepared to let that sort of thing go on?”
A roar went up from the crowd. Bottles were going around, and they were all getting plenty juiced up. I kept looking through the crowd for Alex and George Rix, and also for the runt and the two big blond boys I had seen in the alley. I realized that I might never recognize the two thugs if I saw them. They might have dyed their hair black and stepped right out of the feeble description I had been able to give. I kept looking, and since I figured it was just a matter of time before Rix or somebody else noticed I was there, I started to figure out how I might best draw the revolver with my right and drop the sap from my sleeve into my left hand.
“But I won’t jaw at you all night,” said Rix. “There’s someone here I know you’ve all been waiting to meet. And I hope you’ll listen up. Because there ain’t many times you’ll ever get to hear someone of this stature up close. You want to meet a man that’s not scared to stand up for what’s right, here he is. You want to meet a man that won’t run off with his tail between his legs when a big nigger says ‘Boo,’ well, here he is. You want to meet a man remembers how the automobile industry made Detroit into one of the greatest cities in the world, before the Jews and the niggers and the unions started taking over everything, here he is. Ladies and gentlemen, only there ain’t no ladies here, I give you the Colonel.”
There was a smattering of applause, but it died quickly as a hush fell over the room. Rix took a seat behind the table. I finally caught sight of a head of bushy red hair, what I took to be George Rix, sitting about midway to the back in the row of benches. Next to him sat Alex, watching with his mouth open.
A very old man with a grim-set mouth limped into the barn from the small door at the back. As he came into the light near the table, I saw his face bloom into view. Though it was wrecked by time and whatever else, I knew it was the same face I had seen in Bobby’s photograph. The cane, the bearing, and the round glasses, thicker now, came together in a sharp point for me and made me sure of the identification. From the way my head was swimming, though, I could have sworn I’d seen him in a bad dream somewhere. My gut churned and churned, and I was sure, though I couldn’t remember it, that I must have taken some lye. They say the appendix can burst and it’ll eat your guts out like that. I guess they call it adrenaline, what pushes your heart faster. I raced through my options. With the two hard boys right next to me, I might, at best, squeeze off one or two shaky shots at the old
man before they took me out. And that would be the end of me. They’d have me six feet under or ground up for hog meal before anybody realized I’d gone missing.
Alex would see all of it. He’d know me at a glance, he’d watch them take me down, and he’d feel nothing so much as embarrassment that he was related to me. I would never have any opportunity to explain or to try to talk sense into him. But Rix would be there to tell it to him, to fill the boy up with that easy food that says it’s best for a man to be tough and not take any guff.
I thought I might just walk up and arrest the old man. Arrest him for what? For having his picture taken with a dead nigger who probably couldn’t be identified as a murder victim anyway? What would it help? How much could the old man really mean to a barn full of men, half of them probably armed and ready to slit the throat of any unlucky nigger they could corner in a dark alley? It would be like kicking a hornet’s nest. I held myself still.
Bam! The man slammed his cane flat on the table, and the whole room jerked. He drew himself up to his full height and looked around the room, studying the faces of the boys and men. Then he poured himself some ice water from a sweating glass pitcher and sipped at his leisure.
He began to speak. “Now is the time,” he said in a reedy voice, “to choose up sides.”
The sound of his voice brought every man in the place to stillness. Only the moths whirled silently about the lamps in the rafters.
“The summer of purgation is almost upon us. We shall be privileged to bear witness to the joy and awe of a holy endeavor here in Detroit and across this great nation of ours.”
My head felt light. I wasn’t sure if I had decided to move or if my weak knees made me topple forward, but I stepped away from the wall and began to jostle my way across the back of the barn. Foulness seeped from the speaker like noxious gas, and I only knew that I had to pull Alex away from it if I could.
The Devil's Own Rag Doll Page 14
