Proud Flesh

by William Humphrey

  Rex accepted Frank’s offer with thanks, but his expression made plain that while other dogs might succeed, none could ever replace old Blue.

  That night again, as soon as the sun went down, every dog in the district for a radius of ten miles set up a howl, the sound passing from one farm to the next and off into the night in an unending echo. Into this lugubrious chorus presently entered the baying of Tom and Jerry Partloe, Prentiss Partloe’s pair of purebred Walkers, famed among foxhunters for the beauty of their voices when on trail: a clear ringing note like a crystal bowl when the rim is struck—but now just two more hellhounds making hideous the still, moonlit night. Twice Prentiss went out to quiet them; each time they recommenced as soon as he was back inside the house. Toward midnight he had been on the verge of going out a third time when they fell quiet on their own. In the morning he had found them both dead, their throats cut.

  And again that morning one of the Renshaw Negroes had found another of Clifford’s coondogs dead.

  The third day it was Calvin Sykes’s turn. “I thought I seen somebody or something prowling around out by the woodshed by the light of the moon,” said Calvin. “Nehi was carrying on, howling and howling, and I got up to look out of the window. It was shining bright enough to read an insurance policy, and I thought I caught sight of—”

  “If it’d been me I’d’ve taken a shot at him,” said Dean Watson.

  “Next time I will too,” said Calvin.

  “I get my hands on whoever done it I won’t shoot him,” said Rex Bailey. “I’ll do the same to him as he done to old Blue. See if I don’t.”

  What were they waiting for? someone wondered aloud. And like bees suddenly swarming after days of restless gathering, that incipient posse began to stir.

  But before the mystery grew half an hour older news of a fresh development hit the square. Doc Metcalf had been found and brought in.

  III

  He was found, alive, on the road at a spot ten miles from town, fleeing on foot from his captors, suffering from exposure and hunger and exhaustion, and reduced by fear and indignation to a state bordering on nervous collapse, so that nothing could be gotten out of him except a repeated threat to “put them so far behind bars it would take a dollar to get a postcard to them.” Beyond this he was incoherent, the memory of what he had been put through making him sputter with uncontrollable resentment, and Dr. Weinberg, as soon as he had examined him, declared his condition critical, refused to let him be interrogated, and placed him under heavy sedation.

  The farmer who found Doc and brought him in, Lee Fowler, had been on his way into town with his last load of cotton for the gin. It was just daybreak and Lee had the road to himself. As he rounded a bend he saw ahead of him an old white-haired man limping along with one shoe on and one foot bare, and carrying a small black bag no bigger than a woman’s purse. Not until it was almost upon him did the old man hear the truck, much too late to escape being seen, yet he made a frantic, feeble attempt to hide himself among the bushes at the side of the road. Having seen that it was a white man, and thinking he might be a fugitive from the law, Lee stopped to render whatever aid and abetment he could. He got down from the cab and addressed into the leaves an offer of complicity. He was answered by a sob, and parting the branches, he found himself supporting the man, who fell into his arms. It was the missing Dr. Metcalf, but so altered that at first Lee did not know him. He was filthy and bearded and his face and hands scratched and his hair all matted and wild. He was covered with mud, the barefooted leg being caked to the waist, and his clothes in tatters. From his appearance Lee estimated that the old man had been in flight and in hiding for possibly as long as two or three days. But as to where he had been taken, by whom, and how he had managed to escape, at all this Lee could only guess, and for the time being, while they waited for Doc to regain consciousness, that was all the men on the square could do. Evidently he had been badly mistreated, according to Lee, and was in terror of recapture. As soon as he was questioned about his ordeal his head would commence to shake, his voice to choke, and his eyes to brim with hurt and angry tears. Then, the phrase having gotten lodged in his disordered mind, he would repeat his vow to “put them so far behind bars it would take a dollar to send a postcard to them.” However, if only he did not die without having named them, his abductors would be lucky if they lived to see the inside of a jail.

  While Doc slept, the town held its breath. The street he lived on was closed to traffic. Four sheriff’s deputies armed with shotguns guarded the house. Around the outlying blocks cars filled with aroused citizens cruised all day. On orders from the Sheriff’s office the hardware stores suspended the sale of ammunition as meanwhile down on the square Lee Fowler reproduced his affecting, his incendiary portrait of Doc for those who had missed it. Dr. Weinberg made several calls on his ranking patient, spent half an hour indoors each time, emerged looking grave, refused to comment. Mrs. Metcalf also being under sedation, the house remained dark all evening. The outside of the house was spotlighted on all sides that night. To guard against any attempt by his abductors upon Doc’s life the place was heavily patrolled. Chosen for duty from among the many watchdogs volunteered by their owners were a ferocious pit bull with a fixed snarl, an unapproachable giant Airedale, and a Mexican chihuahua so jumpy it seemed it would bark itself to death at the sight of its own minuscule shadow.

  IV

  “I did tell them! ’Od damn it, I did tell them! How many times do I have to say it? I told them they couldn’t do it. What more was I expected to do? Bar their way? One man against three and e’er one of them ready to fight a circular saw? Nuh-uh. Not me. That ain’t what you pay me to do. I get paid to handle sides of meat and saw and sell ice and chase away kids that pinch a bigger chunk than a nickel’s worth. I told them they couldn’t do it and they told me to open the door. You’d of stood up to them if it of been you, out of doubt, but me, I opened the door like they told me to.”

  The three men stood in the cold storage vault, their breath visible, their sighs of exasperation drawn out whitely in vapor on the air, their exclamations punctuated by bursts of fog. It occurred to the Sheriff that you could almost see what they were saying, as in the comic strip balloons. The walls were solid with ice. Along one wall were stacked crates of frozen shrimp. From hooks in the ceiling hung chines of pale gray veal.

  Here in the deep-freeze was not where the Sheriff had expected to find himself at this hour today. The day the Sheriff was expecting had yet to begin. But even on the day when the Metcalf mystery was about to break, one way or another, such a call as the one from Mr. Gibbs, which got the Sheriff out of bed even earlier than he had meant to get up, had to be investigated. He realized while shaving, using hot water from the cold water tap, how much he was relying on Mr. Gibbs’s ice house today. It was going to be a hot one—was a hot one already, and the sun was not even up yet. Not all the electric refrigerators in the town would be enough to supply the demand today for ice water—ice-water: it was one word, and meant drinking water. By evening a cake of ice from Mr. Gibbs’s ice house in your bathwater would be the only way to bring the temperature down to the tolerable, so close to the surface were the town’s water mains laid, there being never any danger of frost.

  Driving through the square the Sheriff had seen that already they were coming in, leaving their cars and trucks parked there and setting off on foot up West Main. He himself went out by Depot Street, past the gin and compress, meeting cars headed for the square with what looked like gunbarrels sticking up among the passengers. Country men these would be, idle now that their crops were in and always up earlier in the morning than town men, but especially on a day when it might be their civic duty to take the law into their own hands. He went past the vast cotton storage shed. That place was usually a headache to him at this season of the year. At this season of idleness and of money in circulation from the year’s cash crop, the crap games that were played there among the maze of bales of cotton were usually good for at
least two cuttings and an ice-picking per Saturday. Not today. He crossed the tracks and went up the hill to the ice house. It was both better and worse than he feared. All Mr. Gibbs had managed to say over the phone was that there was a corpse in his cold storage vault. There was. And there seemed to be no way to get it out.

  “They can’t do it. Just can’t do it, that’s all.”

  “That’s what I told them but they did it all the same.”

  The three men stood looking down at the pearl-gray metallicized coffin with the hip roof and the bright brass handles dewy with cold that rested on brass feet in the shape of griffon’s paws.

  “Christ almighty!” said Mr. Gibbs in an explosion of mist. “What’s going to happen when all the folks that’ve got space rented in here get wind of this? Won’t nobody in this town eat a shrimp for the next six months. Wait’ll Bob Sewall hears about his veal! You know what veal is selling for in the stores? Christ almighty, looks like ever time I just take off for a minute you have to go and—”

  “Me! I’d just like to of seen you tell them Renshaws anything. I’d just of liked to of been here to of seen you tell that damn Clifford Renshaw he couldn’t put his ma in here on account of tainting a few boxes of shrimps. I’d of just liked to of been here to of seen you.”

  “When are them two expected to get back with that other one?”

  “Kyle? How should I know? If you ast me they’re going to have to find him first.”

  “What makes you say a thing like that?” This was spoken so low it was invisible.

  “You ain’t never noticed how they all hem and haw whenever you ast about him? ‘Oh, Kyle, he’s fine, just fine, yes, he’s making out just fine, thank you.’ Things like that. Nothing in particular. Nothing definite. And the way they look when you ast. Haven’t you never noticed?”

  “Oh, my Lord! Well, you get on the telephone and tell them to come and take her out of here and bury her. Tell them I don’t mean no disrespect to their mother. But I’ve got a business to run. I’m responsible to a lot of people. They’ve got to realize when somebody is dead—”

  “Clifford Renshaw is as mean a man as e’er God wattled a gut in. Nuh-uh. Not me. You can do your own calling. It’s your ice house. Me, I just work here.”

  Wasn’t there a law?

  The Sheriff was blessed if he knew. Nothing like this had ever come up during his time in office.

  By the time the Sheriff arrived on the scene it was evident that the town had taken a holiday to attend Doc Metcalf’s awakening—or his failure to awaken. Evident, too, that the town would be unprepared to handle any emergency not connected with Doc that might arise. Half the fire department was there, at least, as was the total force the Sheriff himself could muster. The National Guard was there in force, out of uniform. The universality of Doc’s popularity was attested to by the presence of black faces among the white, making this the first racially integrated lynch mob in the town’s history.

  The Sheriff’s arrival was followed shortly by that of Dr. Weinberg. Another five minutes brought the stranger with the Northern accent who had been in and around the town for the past several days. He was passed inside the house by the Sheriff’s deputy on guard at the door, thus confirming the suspicion that he was from the FBI, and arousing a new one: Doc was awake, awake and talking—or attempting to talk.

  V

  “Cept Amy. I except her. I don’t believe Amy was in on it. Not that she wouldn’t have been if they had asked her. But they never had to ask her. I want to be fair. I except Amy—if she is still alive. But only her. The rest of them, the whole damned Renshaw tribe, I want to see them all so far behind bars …”

  Thus began the tape recording of Doc Metcalf’s deposition. What went before was missing because Mr. Murphy, the FBI agent, had switched off his machine.

  Because as anybody could plainly see, anybody but the Sheriff—and he could see it, too; he just did not want to—the old man who lay staring at the ceiling, staring through the ceiling, was finished and done with this world. He seemed already to have shed its coloration and become a ghost. His head, still uncombed, with twigs and bits of leaves still tangled in his hair, was of the whiteness of the pillowcase beneath it, his chin was frosted with whiskers as white as the sheet drawn up to it. A tourniquet of red rubber surgical tubing was wound and knotted around his upper left arm like a phylactery, while in the sphygmomanometer the mercury which gauged his blood pressure stood at the ebb. To the Sheriff’s pleas that he tell how many of them there had been, that he try to describe them or “just one of them,” he was deaf. He had the look of one past caring for earthly redress of his wrongs and already laying his grievance before the bar of eternity.

  They had stood around the bed waiting for the Bible to be brought. At her husband’s request, his first words on awaking and seemingly his last request, Mrs. Metcalf had gone to the study to fetch it, sobbing all the way down the hall. It was then that the FBI agent had quietly closed the lid of his tape recorder. He was readier than Sheriff Benningfield to see the hopelessness of the case. His job did not depend upon his solving this mystery. He was a stranger here and would soon be leaving town. He would not have to face that mob outside—quiet now, but wait until they heard that Doc was dead!

  “Ecclesiasticus,” the fast-failing old man said, and the sorrow in his tone and the awesomeness of the prophet’s name combined to wring from Mrs. Metcalf, just then returning with the big book held before her, a wail of despair.

  “Not Ecclesiastes,” he said. “Ecclesiasticus. Chapter 38, verse 1.”

  Mrs. Metcalf was too distraught ever to have found the passage had the book itself not come to her aid. Impatient with her fumbling, it flung itself open with a flop to the right page. All present gaped at this. It seemed to them that the invisible finger of God had turned the pages of His book. In fact, the book always opened there, at Doc’s favorite passage of scripture.

  In a tearful voice Mrs. Metcalf read aloud, “Honor a physician—”

  There were tears in the old man’s eyes. “Honor a physician,” he said, his voice breaking. “That’s the Bible, gentlemen. That’s not The Boy Scout Handbook, you know. That’s the Bible.”

  “Just give us a lead, Doc,” the Sheriff begged. “We’ll make them wish—”

  Doc rose from his pillow; the mercury in the sphygmomanometer rose with him. “Honor a physician! Is that how to honor him, gentlemen: hunt him through the woods and the swamps like a wild animal? Is that how to honor an old man, and one not in the best of health himself? Is that how to honor the physician who brought them all into the world? Hold him prisoner and not let him even tell his poor wife he’s alive? After all I have done for them? Who would believe it? I don’t myself, and I’m the one it happened to. Well, I’ll show them! I’ll make them pay for it! I’ll put them all so far behind—Except Amy.”

  He waved aside the hypodermic needle with which Dr. Weinberg was advancing upon him, and he ignored the doctor’s disavowal of responsibility if he let himself go like this. A sedative was not what he needed now. He did not want to be calmed. He had been raging to himself for days, for a week, more, and now he wanted to make the world rage with him. He had the audience he had longed for: lawmen—his avengers.

  He wanted to tell it all at once, could not choose where to begin, which of the wrongs done to him to place at the head of his bill of indictment. Long solitary brooding upon the outrage being done to him had robbed him of the capacity to distinguish the major injuries from the minor indignities; they were all the same size, all monstrous, all clamoring with equal voice for redress. His account of his ordeal was highly repetitious. Accustomed to universal respect, both for his profession and for his years, he could not believe what had happened to him and did not expect to be believed; thus he had to repeat everything to convince himself and his listeners that such enormities were true. He was somewhat evasive, too; for all the while he was pouring out his story he was struggling to keep back one part of it, a part which ca
me out despite him. It mortified him for anyone to know the mistreatment he had endured and the unmanliness with which he had endured it. This came out unavoidably as time and again his tale forced him to show himself complying with his captors’ demands without resistance, indeed with a cringing eagerness to anticipate their demands. To excuse himself he would remind his listeners and himself that he was an old man, and not in the best of health himself.

  He refused the sedative but he did take the nitroglycerin pills that Dr. Weinberg gave him, which quickly stabilized his blood pressure, and while the FBI man got his tape machine going and after the Sheriff got done shaking his head and repeating, “So that’s where you’ve been all this time!” Doc told how that first night, or rather morning, after a breakneck dash in the car with Ross’s Elwood and that crazy sailor, that Derwent, at the wheel, through town at ninety miles an hour and across country at so much more he had not dared look at the speedometer (“That’s the first thing I want them charged with: speeding and reckless driving”), into and right on through what appeared to be about half a dozen bales of loose cotton lying strewn at one point across the highway—for that was the only way a Renshaw knew how to drive a car, just as the only way they knew to stop one was to brake to a cliff-edge halt that automatically ejected all passengers—they had arrived to find that they were too late. And anybody who knew the Renshaws knew what that meant. He cringed already from the accusing looks he knew awaited him inside the house. He had been wakened out of his sleep and rushed out there at risk to life and limb every inch of the way, and he would get the blame for getting there too late. Because halfway across the yard they heard voices coming from the house and then—

  Not for a moment could the overwrought old man be coaxed into doing as the Sheriff urged: confine himself to the main facts and fill in the details later on when he was rested, stronger. Details were what his story was made up of, what he had been marking down as a score to be reckoned up now and settled. Unless he went into details how could they be made to feel what he had been through?