I looked at Manuel. “You can rebuild,” I said. “Cotton pickin’ is over and me and Ben will help. I can get some more of my friends, too.”
Manuel smiled at me and shook my hand. “Yeah, I’m not worried,” he said.
CHAPTER SIX
I left the house early, wanting to get a good start helping Manuel clean up the mess so he could get another building up in a hurry. I was trying to think of a place he might be able to rent until we could build a new structure. There had always been a couple of empty buildings in town, and now there were several since the depression had taken its toll.
When I got to Ben’s house, he was already dressed in his overalls and work boots. It was as if he knew what time I’d be there even though he didn‘t know I was coming. I wasn’t even sure if he’d heard yet, though news traveled pretty fast in Jones County, even out to the remote sharecropper shacks.
“Well, I guess you’ve heard already,” I said as soon as I got within earshot.
“Yeah, I saw the sky lit up last night, so I walked to Collinwood to see what it was. I thought it might be somebody’s house.”
“You walked all the way to Collinwood?”
“Yeah, what’s the big deal? Me and you walk to Collinwood sometimes. We’re fixin’ to do it right now.”
“Yeah, but it ain’t the middle of the night,” I said, as we started walking. “I must have already been gone by the time you got there last night.”
“They had the fire almost out by the time I got there,” Ben said. “I got to talk to Manuel, though. He didn’t seem any more concerned about it than somebody who’s cow had got out or something. He was actin’ kind of strange. He told me he’d talked to you and you said we were gonna help him rebuild. He said he didn’t need any help and that he might not rebuild anyway.”
As we walked along at a brisk pace, I thought about what Ben had just said. Manuel didn’t act like he was very distraught to me last night, either.
“I’ll bet you them rednecks threatened him,” I said. “Most of the town was there last night, but I didn’t see a single Klan asshole anywhere.”
It took us a little over an hour to get to Collinwood. It was still early, but the town was already alive and bustling with traffic and people going in and out of stores. It was Saturday, and that was the only day a lot of people who lived out on the farms got a chance to shop, or get haircuts, or just catch up on gossip.
We made our way through the crowded downtown area and up the little street where Manuel lived in a little rented house. He had made the little cottage into a showplace. He said he planned on buying it as soon as he came up with the money, and he started treating it like it was his own from the time he moved in. He had built a white picket fence along the front, with an arched gate that had locking hardware he’d made himself. There were flowerbeds along the base of the pecan and oak trees with rock borders in the yard, and rose bushes that climbed up ornate trellises he had built in front of the house. Manuel was as talented a man as I had ever seen. Not only was he educated, he was a master craftsman with his hands, and of course, an incredible chef.
Me and Ben walked up to the door and Ben started to knock. I held my hand up to stop him.
“They might still be asleep,” I told Ben. “I’m sure they were up late last night, and I don’t hear the kids runnin’ around like they usually are.”
We looked through the small opaque glass at the top of the door, but couldn’t see through it well enough to discern anything. Then we walked over to the window at the end of the porch. That was the first time I had noticed that the curtains were gone. The window was in the children’s bedroom. I cupped my hands on each side of my face and pressed my nose up to the glass. The bed and all the other furniture was gone. The room was totally bare. I walked back to the front door and tried the knob. The door opened with a tiny screech as I stuck my head inside. Everything down to the pictures on the wall had disappeared. Me and Ben walked through the door and back into Manuel and Maria’s bedroom. Nothing.
“How in the world did he manage to get everything into his truck?” I asked.
Ben didn’t answer. He just stood there in silence, not believing what he was seeing. He walked all over the small house as if he expected Manuel to jump out of a closet and yell “Surprise!” any second.
“He’s gone, Ben. I told you those redneck bastards got to ‘im.”
“He wouldn’t leave without telling me,” Ben said, almost in a whisper. “Surely he would have left me a note or something.”
“He prob’ly didn’t have time,” I told Ben, putting my hand on his shoulder. He looked like he was about to cry. Ben and Manuel had a special bond between them and were the best of friends, despite their age difference. Manuel was an educated man. Ben and Rachel were the only two people in the county he could have an intelligent conversation with on the subjects that interested him. Like him, Ben understood what it was like to be seen as being less than a man, even though the people who thought of you that way didn’t posses a third of the knowledge you did.
I helped Ben look around for a note or any clue at all as to where Manuel might have gone, but there was nothing to be found. Manuel had vanished and not left a trace.
*****
It was an unseasonably warm day for the end of October. The leaves on the trees that stood majestically on the hills and mountainsides looked like they had been removed one at a time and hand painted by some great artist, then replaced. Red, yellow and gold mingled with the evergreens. Rachel had to stop every few minutes and stare in awe at God’s handy work. How anyone could see this sight and claim to be an atheist or agnostic, she would never understand. It has to take more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian, she was thinking.
Ben had suddenly become interested in anything concerning Einstein and had been reading everything on physics Rachel could find at the library, which was very limited. Ben’s fourteenth birthday was only two days away and she was going to surprise him with a book she was lucky enough to find at a bookstore in Birmingham. It was a compilation of writings by Enrico Fermi, Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer. She had scanned through it and seen quickly that it might as well have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, for all she could understand of it. But of course, Ben would understand it. Even if he had to read it fifty times.
The beauty of the fall colors had prompted Rachel to take the shortcut on the little footpath through the dense copse of woods between her house and some of the tenets houses. If they could be defined as houses. Most of them were no more than three room shacks with leaky tin roofs. She argued with her papa constantly about improving the conditions the sharecroppers lived in.
Rachel was trying to remember the last time she’d been through these woods. It had probably been more than a year. The trees were thick enough to block out most of the sunshine, so there wasn’t much undergrowth. But she noticed that up the trail, there was one spot where the sun was shining brightly, like some of the trees had been removed. She quickened her pace, wanting to see if maybe someone had been cutting the trees for firewood. Her papa supplied the wood and coal for heating and cooking to his tenets and strictly forbade anybody from cutting trees anywhere near his house.
The trees had been cut close to the ground and been carefully removed. Not even a small limb had been left behind. Then Rachel saw three small plots where cotton had been grown. She then remembered Ben telling her about some experiment he was doing using different types and amounts of super phosphates and nitrates. This must have been his small experiment station he had hidden away from prying eyes or children who would pull the plants up just for the fun of it. She bent over, examining the remnants of cotton stalks, trying to figure out which ones looked bigger and healthier. She was in no particular hurry, and Ben’s experiments always fascinated her.
The sun was shining brightly through the clearing and was in stark contrast to the woods that surrounded it. Rachel thought she heard movement in the trees up ahead, bu
t didn’t look up. Probably just birds flitting from tree to tree or squirrels playing. She was raking the soil away from one of the plants when she saw a long shadow in front of her. It startled her at first, but she didn’t turn around. She smiled and raised up until she was sitting on her knees.
“Okay, Ben. I know you’re behind me. I thought by now you’d be smart enough to know that sunshine casts shadows.”
She kept sitting there, giggling and waiting on Ben to say something.
“Ben, you’re caught!” she laughed. “I didn’t know this was where you had done your experiment. If Papa knew you had cut these trees, he’d……”
Rachel had turned around while she was talking, expecting to see Ben with a big smile on his face. Instead what she saw was a black man in overalls, swaying gently from side to side like a pine tree in the wind. With the sun in her eyes, she couldn’t make out his face. She quickly jumped up, which made her lightheaded and caused little dots to jump around in front of her eyes. She moved slightly to one side and then recognized the face of Rube Evans. It was clear he had been drinking. A lot. Rachel took a couple of steps back.
“Hello, Miss Rachel. How are you dis fine day?” Rube asked. His words were slurred and it sounded like his tongue was a foot thick.
“I…I’m fine, Mr. uh…Mr. Evans. How are you?”
“Can’t complain much. Nobody would listen if’n I did,” Rube said, laughing as if he had told the funniest joke ever.
“Miss Rachel, I want you to know how I ‘preciate you bein’ sech a good friend to Ben. You’s always bringin’ him books to read and thangs like that. Why, I don’t reckon he’s got no better friend on God’s earth.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, Mr. Evans. I enjoy bringin’ him books and discussing them with him. Ben is a fine young man and I bet you’re proud of him.”
“Yessum, I sho’ is. Why, that boy is smart as a whip. Took after his mama,” Rube laughed again, bending over and slapping his knee.
“Well, I…I’d better be goin’. I got Ben a new book. An early birthday present.”
“Is it his birthday, already? My, my how time do fly. I reckon he must be ten or twelve years old now.”
“He’ll be fourteen Sunday, Mr. Evans,” Rachel said harshly. She couldn’t believe Rube had no idea when his children’s birthday’s were, or how old they were.
Rube took his hat off and started rubbing his head, “Miss Rachel, I been wonderin’ ‘bout sump’n. Has Ben been aholt of you yet?”
“What do you mean, sir?” Rachel asked incredulously.
“You know what I mean, girl. Has he bit you with that….that trouser snake of his’n yet?”
“Mr. Evans, that kind of talk is completely inappropriate and I won’t listen to another word of it. Now I know you’ve been drinkin’, but that’s no excuse. I’m gonna forget you said it, and I… I’ve got to go.”
Rube reached out his hand as quick as a rattlesnake striking and grabbed Rachel’s arm. He was squeezing it so hard she thought he would cut her circulation off.
“Wait, Miss Rachel. Don’t go yet. I…I sorry ‘bout what I said. It’s jest old Evergreen ain’t been a-spreadin’ her legs ‘nuff fer nuthin’ lately and I needs me a woman. You sho’ are a purty thang. Why,… yo’ even purtier than yo’ momma was.”
Rube had his free hand on Rachel’s cheek, rubbing it gently. Then he started stroking her hair, pulling it down from the bun she had it pinned up in. She struggled to try and free her arm, but the more she fought, the tighter his grip got. He was pushing her deeper into the woods, running his hand all over her body. She screamed, and he put his hand over her mouth tightly. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out an old checkered bandana and tied it around her open mouth. It smelled like old sweat and snot and tasted worse.
Rube pushed her to the ground and started undoing the straps of his overalls. He reached under her skirt, ripping whatever obstacles that were there away. Rachel managed to get one leg free and kicked as hard as she could, aiming for the part of his anatomy that was causing all the trouble. Rube let out a grunt, and loosened his grip a little. Then Rachel saw his countenance suddenly change from lust to rage. A fist smashed hard into her teeth and that was the last thing she remembered.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rachel could tell she was being dragged. She was only semi-conscious and it was as if she were somehow outside of her body watching it all from a distance. She could smell the pine straw and dried leaves, and feel the back of her head occasionally hit a small stump or rock. Her head was pounding and she was terribly nauseous and it only got worse each time her head was bumped or she was jostled in any way. Rube stopped to catch his breath. Rachel took the opportunity to look down at her naked lower body. She only had vision in one eye, and it was blurred. The other eye was swollen almost shut. She had blood on both her thighs and didn’t know if it came from her losing her innocence, or if her legs had been scratched from being dragged.
She could see Rube leaning up against a big hickory tree, panting like a dog that had been running a rabbit. She would have liked to have gotten up and run, but she didn’t have the strength to even raise her body. Whatever plans Rube had for her, there was nothing she would be able to do about it.
Rube caught his breath and grabbed her once again by the ankles and resumed the dragging. She was wondering why he didn’t just pick her up. Maybe he didn’t want to get blood on himself. She had no idea which direction they were heading. Through the thick canopy of the trees, it was impossible to tell where the sun was. She felt several painful little jabs on her legs and backside, and knew she had just been dragged through a patch of saw briars. She was whimpering under her breath like a small puppy. She didn’t have the strength or desire to cry out loud.
After a few minutes, Rube stopped again to rest. All the physical exertion had finally started the liquor in his belly to start churning. Rachel could hear him vomiting. The sound of it made her stomach turn upside down, and she started heaving, too. Apparently, she had already emptied her stomach, because nothing came up. Just painful, dry heaves that caused her whole body to tremble. She suddenly felt very cold.
Rachel was able to raise her head enough to see Rube was sitting down, his head resting between his knees. After a couple of minutes he reached in the bib of his old faded overalls and pulled out a can of Prince Albert tobacco and a book of Job rolling papers. His hands were shaking and he cursed under his breath as he spilled some of the tobacco on the ground, but he finally managed to get a cigarette rolled. Rube had managed to sober up considerably from all the physical activity and the puking. He quickly smoked his cigarette and got back up.
Rachel was pulled perhaps another fifty yards or so. When Rube stopped, he sat down once more to rest. Rachel could barely raise her head, but she now recognized her surroundings. She hadn’t been to this place in years. It was where one of the sharecropper shacks used to stand that had burned several years ago. Rube had stopped right beside the old well. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but she smelled the smoke from another cigarette. Then he was on his knees, straddling her. She could see the reflection of a thin ray of sun that had penetrated the thick trees on the stainless steel knife blade he was holding.
The look on Rube’s face gave away nothing. He could have just as well been busy at some mundane task.
“I’m sorry to have to do dis, Miss Rachel. But I can’t let nobody find out what I done.”
Rachel was praying silently, as fast as the words could move through her mind. She knew she was going to die and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The way she felt right now, she didn’t care anyway. Just let it come quickly.
Rachel thought the blurry figure she saw behind Rube was an apparition. Maybe it was her mother, ready to welcome her and lead her away with her. Then she heard a swishing sound, like someone swinging a scythe or maybe a baseball bat. Then a sound like someone thumping a ripe watermelon, only much louder. She heard Rube let out a yell and felt the weight o
f his body that was sitting on top of her shift. Then another loud thump, and he fell completely off of her. She could hear a voice calling her name, but it was as if it were coming from the far end of a long tunnel. She saw a familiar face, leaning in close to her own. It was Ben. He was saying something about staying put until he could get back.
Ben tied his unconscious papa to a tree with a piece of rope he carried with him at all times. He made sure it was tight enough that it would be impossible for him to free himself. He had looked at Rachel and assessed the situation. Ben was strong for his size, but he didn’t weigh much more than she did. If he tried to carry her, he would have to stop too many times to rest. He decided the best thing to do was run to the house and hitch the mule to the wagon. That was the reason he’d tied Rube to the tree, far away from where Rachel was lying.
*****
Ben had run the old mule a lot faster that he and the old rickety wagon were accustomed to traveling. He knew Rachel probably didn’t need the bumpy ride, but he also knew she needed medical attention as soon as possible. Ben pulled the wagon right up to the front door, although many people had been severely admonished for driving on George Winston’s immaculate lawn. He ran to the door and didn’t bother knocking, instead running in and yelling for Rachel’s father as loud as he could. After the third time, Mr. Winston came running down the stairs, buttoning his shirt. He saw Ben and knew that something terrible must have happened for him to come bursting into his house this way.
The Sharecropper Prodigy Page 5
