A Killing in This Town

by Olympia Vernon

  He ran down the stairs of the house, D.D. near the window in a phase of bewilderment: Lenora’s dead.

  The news crept upon her and the dirty line she’d forced upon Lenora Bullock—leaves a stain—lifted her hand to the table and she breathed inwardly, took and inhaled the item of her thinking: it was the momentary agent, both she and Lenora, their faces smudged and baited at the train station, waiting for a man from Bullock to resuscitate, restore, that flung her out of context.

  A spider crawled near the windowsill and its tune struck her with infection, a whirling tune she had made up like that of the widow, the piano, and whirled around and within her throat, as she lifted her fingertip in front of her. The spider trampled upon the bed of her arm, beneath the blouse, and near her larynx: she opened her mouth and ate it, the blood rushing through.

  Hoover Pickens walked up to the horse Gill had brought forth: Ain’t this Hurry’s bit?

  Gill patted the horse: Yes’r.

  Where is he? asked Hoover Pickens.

  Weak.

  Hoover Pickens looked at Adam: he remembered the morning he had sent him to pick up the contents of Curtis Willow’s pocket, how he had handed him the envelope, how weak he was. This was Adam’s killing.

  Now he—Hoover Pickens—would be the grandfather leading the genetic line up the stairs of his own house, a photo of him in white, and Adam and Adam’s sons, until the genetic line traveled upward, up to the round and full belly of the moon until the milk, like castration, spewed out and drowned the world.

  He remembered, too, how the Bullocks had laughed at him, Weak? they asked, Weak?, as if to mock the symptoms of his dull-bladed syringe—a shot, a gland he could neither aim nor hold and be one man at one time—or any or all of what he produced, Adam could, too, be this … courageous.

  He would show them, prove to the other free and automatic men that he belonged to this world and the one following, that he belonged to … and now, at such a time, must he show it? he thought.

  Yes, he answered, now, as good a time as any. Something good’s done come and it’s mine and his, Adam’s, and belongs to us. As good a time as any.

  Adam looked upon his father. He was fully suited, his eyes shone through the pale fabric. He had been silent until now. His father could not see it, nor anyone else in the world: he had begun to weep through the white. They had mastered a discrepancy within him, molded him—like dirt and clay—into a murderer.

  Ya! Ya! he yelled, causing Blade to strike out, gallop in the direction of the Thomas house, Gill and his father behind him.

  They had reached the Thomas house now, Adam in front.

  His father reared up beside him and Gill, the third person, lay in wait behind them, watching the porch-lit globe of the lantern sputter and turn from the base of the wick.

  Son, said Hoover Pickens, turning to Adam.

  Adam, upon his instruction, trotted toward the steps of the porch and yelled: Nigger, come out yonder.

  A long pause, a long wait, and nothing, nothing opened or came to. They could hear only the distant, wailing sound of Midnight, woken with sleep from Adam’s bed, ricocheting through the trees.

  Adam reared his horse, and Blade, one hoof in front, came down upon the earth with a crashing blow. Suddenly, ill-methodically, the door opened.

  Emma New stepped forward: Been wait’n, she uttered.

  She looked down at the lantern, barefoot and gowned, and disappeared into the mouth of the house. What had she done? Stumbled? Fainted? For they heard a disturbing noise in the body of the room, the sound of surrender: she dragged the body out of the house. It was fully wrapped in gauze, she took it up beneath the arms and it moved a little, moaned, the head resting on the edge of the porch, as if she positioned it in such a way to love it as if it were dead.

  Gill stepped down from his saddle and pushed Emma New aside: he picked up the lantern, sent it crashing through the horizontal window, and set the entire house ablaze, pulling the body near the pulley that had been attached to Blade.

  Hoover Pickens stood on the earth now, Adam watching, and walked over to Emma New—her hands were drawn together, as Sonny’s had been, and her back was away from the happening—when he reached her, he beckoned for her to face him: Turn around, nigger, he yelled.

  Indeed, she turned, the house burning.

  Smart nigger, ain’t ya? he said, pointing to the gauze, the moaning body. That won’t stop ’m from hurtin’ none.

  He had drawn an invisible line across her face, it quivered in the starkness of her cheek, fluttered throughout her bones like a hummingbird, systematic and disproportionate in width to the character of her standing.

  Hitch ’m up, son, he urged.

  Adam had not weakened, but carried the demand in his stomach: Gill accompanying him, he looked at the shoe of the gauzed man, felt his resistance, and gathered the sound of Midnight stirring from his sleep with that of the shot that struck his leg out from under him.

  No one had ever looked, considered the risk a boy takes to breathe.

  His father had traveled away from Emma New and looked down upon the hitched nigger and kicked him in the ribs, until his foot felt the blow, he had cracked a bone.

  He halted a moment: a peculiar setting of the thing he had done. And wondered why, with such narcissism within him, was he under the intimate, familiar scope of something horrible, the jungle blood, perhaps, the possibility of belonging to this animal, this creature … what bone was he a part of? Certainly not his. Certainly not … a nigger’s?

  The thought of it plagued him and he grew more imperfect, more solidified, as when he had kicked the nigger before, and he dug for the loose rib with his foot and felt it floating in the nigger’s stomach and pushed, pushed, until the moaning was unbearable.

  Emma New yelled out in the distance, Go, take ’m.

  Hoover Pickens spat on the ground in front of her and was proud … his boy had taken it, made it this far, and was not weak or sick at the stomach … and he urged them, Adam and Gill, to get on their horses and they, they dragged him, the nigger hollered out and they dragged him, the ground burning the gauze, burning his vertebrae into grit.

  Hoover Pickens yelled out: Take ’m to the wheelbarrow!

  And Adam, the hooded Klan suit suffocating him, steered Blade in the direction of the wheelbarrow and the moon was hot, the moon and the earth and the thing he was a part of suffocated him in his breathing and he took the hood and swung it in the trees and he could breathe now and this was when the load grew lighter—the nigger was dead, had stopped his moaning and lost something, his mouth swung open by the ground, perhaps, his lower mandible beaten and detached at the jawline, a shoe.

  Altogether, they needed no light.

  They knew the woods, were raised here in the illumination of darkness, only the moon to guide them to the center where the Mississippi leaked into the earth and dust.

  Adam halted: the wheelbarrow was yet propped against the tree in the woods, and when he deserted his horse, Gill and his father joined him. He searched with his fingertips for the reins of the pulley and released the feet, one at a time, from the restraints.

  The nigger had not lost a shoe, but something else: an eye.

  Hoover Pickens stood next to Adam. When the feet were taken out of the pulley, he knelt beside the corpse, the gauze had ripped clear to the bones, and he felt it, the sweltering heat of the grit on the spinal column, the nigger was dead.

  Good boy, Adam.

  Gill could not see Adam’s expression, but he sensed the disturbing horror of his volition. Whatever it was, he had killed it. Adam had killed it and had come to and Gill heard the discomfort of his voice when he answered his father: Grace.

  Hoover Pickens took to his horse, trotted homeward and away from the corpse, the web of his impatience spun around him the bloody stain of a birthmark.

  chapter twenty-nine

  A bird came down, flew, and arched its turning head in front of him—up there, the sky protruding and
swollen about the face, as if it had roamed all night like this, as if the debilitating luster of the living world had made it that way.

  The bird suspended, batted its eye, and measured the prediction and substance of Hoover Pickens’s posture: his hand wavered ahead, as if to disassociate himself from the looming of the bird: the creature flew and paused, paused with inclination, and would not leave him be.

  He looked up at the window, Adam sleeping, and stepped into the wood.

  The bird, its beak ajar, trailed him, hung closely to the oxygen, the revelatory symptoms of the morning, and nipped him: Hoover Pickens swung at it, his fists upward and spurring, but the bird would not release him and nipped him again … near the throat.

  Hoover Pickens struck out, the flesh of his larynx and earlobe bleeding, struck out and ran toward the wheelbarrow in an effort to see what he had done.

  The bird called out, like Sonny, and chased him through the forest, nipping him, nipping until its wing shifted with agility, full-blown, and weaved and darted ahead, above the wheelbarrow where Hoover Pickens had fallen to his knees: the bloated head, the eye loosed, hung in the wheelbarrow, and he saw that it was Hurry whose rib he had kicked out of position; he saw, too, the burned vertebrae. The rigor mortis had singed it, swollen and odorous.

  He could not stick his foot in the belly now, could not shake the rib, when it seemed so apparent that the killing was not Adam’s but his—his own rib and lung suffocating.

  There, dangling from the edge of the corpse’s pocket, was an envelope, dotted and folded. He reached for it: To the Men of the Pauer Plant. Courtesy of the Pastor; it told and warned, each of the symptoms striking him intimately, of an invisible, needle-like pang in the lungs, a bloody cough, the body shutting down, and the final warning, the Pauer Plant of Bullock, Mississippi.

  He could not take it all down, the memory of Earl Thomas, the morning he’d pinned him down at the factory, spat in his face, the laughter—how they had mocked him collectively—ape, they had called him. Ape.

  Earl Thomas had simply come to save them.

  Hoover Pickens turned from the rotted corpse and vomited.

  Just now he saw it: beneath the eye of the wheelbarrow lay the name of Hurry Bullock written upon the boarded cross Sonny had made.

  And so, in his quest, he followed the stench of rigor mortis through the forest, to where the shot had been fired: Lenora Bullock, dead in her costume jewelry, lay frozen and dead, the little bit of brain that oozed out on her shoulder now a massive heap of flesh. It had pushed her shoulder downward, her waist and hips fat like the pregnant stain of a whistle.

  epilogue

  Midnight, soon the train will come.

  Where was Gill? Adam?

  Sonny Willow and the Thomases sat in the waiting area of the train station: now that they had gotten over, the fear of their waiting pounded into their constructive mannerisms a vein of abominable restlessness.

  They were accompanied by the accordion player and the mother of the nude child—she was linear in her sitting, wilted and dangling from her chair like the indeterminable resistance of a pansy; her hair had been bathed in the Mississippi this evening, out behind the train station: she brought it over her shoulder, wrung it out, and the nude child was not there but in Memphis with a woman and her husband, for she had seen the doctor and retrieved to her purse the medicine, but it was addictive, like hypocrisy; she was not so vile, she thought. She was not so morose and unkind that she could not hold on. To what? she thought. Dignity?

  The accordion player touched her shoulder, not really her shoulder, but the hair she had bathed in the Mississippi: of course, he had seen her near the water’s edge, her head churning in the direction of the stream, had seen her dip her face and hair in the Mississippi and come up singularly, alone, patting her hands together.

  He would have asked, had his voice not been crushed by the cog wheel, How did you get here? Come so far?, but he could not ask, not ever, when she seemed so random, promiscuous as to leave him standing, watching her without any regret, a ruse.

  Now that you’ve got it, you’ve given it away? Chosen to lose it? he wanted to ask, for she had been waddling in her purse, the coupons mounding, and stuck her finger to the hollow and lopsided pocket of the rib of the thing she carried and emerged with powder, rouge, a bone-colored tube of lipstick.

  And when she arranged her face, she looked to him like confetti: shaped and vertical, blown out of proportion and glaring about.

  She stood from her chair and walked toward the horizontal window; the room could be seen in her reflection, Sonny and the Thomases—relics of where she once sat and stood, waited—how they flinched in the room, the sound of wind pushing the doorbell into a murmur. They looked upon her without judgment, never minding the powder, the rouge, the bone-colored lipstick. And with this, she chuckled within: her lips ajar, the purse dropped from her tiny hand.

  The coupons had fallen out.

  Sonny knelt to protect the contents of her privacy: the mother of the nude child joined her, looked up at the Thomases, and, with intimacy, remarked upon the coupons, Yes, the doctor. Memphis, and pushed them forward and grabbed hold for a moment of Sonny’s quivering hand.

  Neither she nor the Thomases were in need of the vouchers, but this gesture, separate and apart from the cruel symmetry of the world, hovered unanimously over her and the mother of the nude child; they were unseparate, unapart of the constitution.

  They were no longer included, willed out of the Garden at once, out of Bullock and into the aboriginal liturgy of the condition they had been born into: Sonny took up the vouchers, the mother of the nude child facing the poise of the horizontal window, as if what she was now was the moment she had always been and nothing could smear her cheek, rip the line from her face.

  It was hers, nothing to blur.

  Sonny had returned to her chair when Earl Thomas began to think: where was Gill? Adam? He had not seen them since they brought him here, Emma New here and Sonny and the light of the room, so dim it was, that he could not alter the perplexity of his position; he sat, holding Emma New in his head, shaping her from the outer; it was he who wanted to be held. Right now he wanted her to take him inward, bring her into her bosom and draw him together.

  But he was invisible, unseen and without purpose, in this place. And when he thought, in this place, the place he equated in his mind and body was the town of Bullock and, too, the church … no one had seen him, no one had crept into his rib and bone, the visceral aptitude of his reaching out, steadying himself on the base of a drum, pounding and pounding in his discomfort the startling effects of the word. Of nigger.

  How he hoped now that he would never have to hear it, that it would explode, collide with the elements of earth and sky, fire and never belong; he looked at Emma New, the smut of the burning house on her blouse, and wanted her to touch him, at this juncture, so the predicament of what brought them together could let him go.

  But Emma New did not hold him: the accordion player held her attention. Why had he looked to her so perturbed, so fidgety? He had not at all spoken, his hand drawn to the fabric of his collar. He was still, upright, and had woken in the room with a confounded gaze about him. In her restlessness, she had stripped him of his lung-wind, like Eucharist, opened his mouth and fertilized him, driven him into the ground.

  The door of the train station was ajar: the accordion seller’s face was turned to the railing. He had not fully come in; he stood unannounced, the irrigation of age settling into the contours of his hip.

  Are you sour? the obese woman would ask each morning, her lips puckered with conservation, as if she had returned upon him the silly, unapproachable comment he had made in his head at the sight of her: Too fat. Of course, she was aware of the language, the obligatory diction a man held and hooked above her. She had followed him home to the outskirts of Bullock, nipped and nipped like a fat, blistering bird at his bones, the religious and unkind slurs he had mocked, pounded into her head th
at she was of no use to a man like him, no use to anything worthy of vision.

  She bore a pouch within her, unlike the pregnant weight of the child, and she had pulled it out, plucked and plucked, until the hip bone, the thigh, eroded and, too, his constant and erosive commenting, plucked until he could no longer manipulate, destruct the orphanage with the symptoms of his blotted and distorted line.

  She had seen the accordion player, how he wrote down the terms of interrogation: Old one dead. Have mercy. But she had kept it, clayed and confined like the majestic intimacy of her sandal-toed foot: long before he had carried her home, she had taken his power.

  And so the door opened fully and the accordion seller emerged carrying an instrument, nodding to Sonny and the Thomases, the mother of the nude child who stood at the horizontal window, the fog of her breath, the Mississippi, circulating throughout.

  The accordion player stood erect from his chair, taking the bound journal from his pocket, jotting down in more definitive terms, the word: Mercy?

  Whether it was the shape of the thing he had written or the pitiful, elusive trap the accordion seller had been reduced to was unknown: the accordion seller looked around him, at Sonny—she had begun to pat her knee—and the seat beside her and all the rows of the train station, the bodies they possessed, how naked and dirty they were, and down at the instrument and the jotted line and, conclusively, at his crumbling hip where the obese woman had nipped him and handed over the accordion.