Bert does not have a smile for this occasion. His head turns toward Big Willie, but his eyes are looking past him, but are not focused on anyone or anything. Sweat glistens on his forehead and above his upper lip.
“What about it, Bert? Is that nigger telling the truth?”
Bert recognizes Zeph’s voice. “Well, Willie claims Zeph done this,” he says in a hoarse voice, as if he has swallowed his tears. “But—but no white man would do that to a white girl just entering the flower of southern womanhood.”
Though Bert spoke so softly that only those next to him could hear, the crowd does not need to hear his words. They know what Bert had to say if he was going to continue living in Davis.
“Anybody gon’ over to Shireville to get the sheriff?” someone asks.
“He’s gon’ fishing with his brother-in-law.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for him?”
“For what? We know who done it, and we know what needs to be done.”
“And the sheriff would be mighty angry if we brought him back from his fishing trip to deal with a nigger.”
“That’s the God’s truth!”
And the crowd moves Willie toward the square, toward the large oak tree.
Ansel does not understand. “Big Willie didn’t do it, Papa,” he says to his father in a quiet voice, mindful of Reverend and Mrs. Dennis at the front of the church, looking down at their daughter’s body.
“Well, we don’t actually know that,” Bert responds to his son.
“Yes, we do,” Ansel insists. “That’s Zeph’s knife. Everybody knows that’s his knife. And Zeph is all bloody.”
“This is grown-ups’ business,” Bert responds, angry now. “You hear me? We didn’t see a damn thing. You understand me?”
Just then Reverend Dennis walks up.
“Bert? I believe the boys could probably use some of that good stout rope from your store. My daughter would be alive if I hadn’t let you talk me into hiring that nigger. We all knew he was crazy. What in God’s name were you thinking wanting that nigger to work here where he could do what he did to my daughter?”
“Reverend, I—”
“The boys could use some rope, Bert.”
“Yes, Reverend. Let’s go, Ansel.”
“Get the rope by yourself!” Ansel says.
Bert grabs Ansel’s upper arm and squeezes it tightly as he hurries him outside. “You listen to me,” his voice quiet but hard. “I don’t like this any more than you do. Don’t you think I know it’s wrong? Well, I do, but what I think is right and wrong is different from what they say is right and wrong. And at this moment, what I think is right and wrong ain’t worth pig slop. You’re going to come with me to get the rope, and we’re going to stay around and watch whatever happens, whether we want to or not.”
2.
When Bert and Ansel return to the square with the rope, a large bonfire is blazing beneath the tree. The crowd has swelled in size, and it looks like everybody in town is there. Though the fire only intensifies the stultifying heat of the night, the fire also makes it easy to see, and everyone’s eyes are on Big Willie.
Two men hold him tightly by the arms while another ties his hands behind his back. Willie is bare chested because someone has ripped off his khaki shirt with its military stripe. His face is bloody, and blood pours from his mouth because anyone who wants to hit him does, using an ax handle someone took from Anderson’s Store because everybody knows you’ll break your hand if you hit a nigger’s hard head with your fist.
Willie would have been beaten into unconsciousness if someone hadn’t realized it would be better to keep him conscious so he would know, so he would feel what was happening to him.
Ansel looks around for his mother but doesn’t see her. He didn’t expect to. He sees her parents, though, his grandparents. He scarcely knows them because his mother does not let him visit them nor invite them to the house. They have big grins on their faces.
Everybody else’s parents and grandparents are there, because he sees every kid from school. There are always bonfires under that tree every November before the homecoming football game, and this almost feels like that. Only thing missing are the cheerleaders, but they are there, just not in uniforms.
He sees the choir director from church, all the choir members, the Junior Choir, and the ushers.
Ansel’s eyes wander away from the crowd to the road leading into Davis. He is not sure, but way up the street he thinks he sees Miz Davis, Little Willie, and Little Willie’s mother standing next to a car.
Now that death is at hand, Big Willie is surprised that all the confusion that ordinarily occupies his mind has disappeared. He does not want to die, and yet, considering his life, he hopes death will free him from the evil he witnessed, the evil that robbed him of his mind, the evil that will soon take his life.
The people staring at Willie are uneasy because he is not begging them for his life, not crying tears of remorse, not acting like a nigger is supposed to act who raped a white girl, the pastor’s daughter.
“You proud of what you did, nigger?” someone calls out.
“I ain’t done nothing,” Willie yells back. His voice has never been stronger, his words never more clear. “It was young Mistah Zeph done this. And y’all know it.”
The crowd is hushed, not knowing how to react to a nigger who dares accuse a white man. Yet all eyes shift to where Zeph the Third stands next to his father. Cap’n Davis is not tall like his son, but short and thin. Perhaps it is his unprepossessing physique he compensates for by a remorseless attachment to power, a compulsive need to dominate the life of every man, woman, and child in the town that bears his surname.
He knows what his son has done. He does not disapprove. No one could be allowed to stand in the way of anything a Davis wanted, not even if it was the pastor’s daughter. But the next day he will take his son to New Orleans or maybe Memphis. Cap’n Davis has uncles in both places with whom Zeph the Third could stay for a year or so.
Bert taps Ansel on the shoulder. “I’m going to open up the store,” he whispers. “Hot night like this, that bonfire making things hotter, people are thirsty. Come on!”
Bert then turns to the man next to him. “Spread the word through the crowd. I’m going to open the store. I figure folks might appreciate a cold bottle of soda pop.”
The man grins. “I’ll tell folks. Save a root beer for me.”
It could be the annual Fourth of July picnic. Not only were people drinking sodas, Cap’n Davis had brought some cases of moonshine whiskey into town, and Zeph the Third was selling them from the back of the truck. The only thing missing was a pig roasting, but a nigger would do.
Little children ride on the shoulders of their fathers so they can see better. Men stand with their arms around the waists of their wives or girlfriends. Somehow, Fred Fuller, the photographer from Shireville, got the word, and he is there with his camera and plenty of film and flash bulbs.
Ansel sits in the darkness behind the store. From inside he hears loud voices and laughter. He knows he should be helping his father, but he does not move.
Whether he looks into the darkness toward the field and the creek behind, or whether he closes his eyes, all he can see is Mary Susan’s body. All he can hear is her voice calling out to him that she was sorry. She wanted to apologize, to make up, and he wouldn’t let her.
If he had, maybe she would have been at the store with him instead of at church. He knew she had gone there to ask God to turn his heart away from anger and spite.
Ansel’s entire body feels like it is in flames, and the flames will never die because the fuel on which they feed—sorrow and regret—will never be exhausted.
From outside there comes loud cheering. People in the store rush out.
“My papa told me about a lynching he went to once. Said wasn’t nothing quite like it. I wish he were here ’cause I wonder if this one is better than the one he went to.”
“My grandpappy told me that once eve
ry few years you had to lynch a nigger, whether one had done something or not. He said there was nothing like a lynching to keep niggers in their place, and nothing like a lynching to remind a white man who he is.”
“I was a little girl when my parents took me to one. It wasn’t in our town. We had to take the train to get there. That was my first time on a train. That train was full of folks going to the lynching. There’d been an article in the paper that said there was a nigger who’d raped a white woman and he was going to be lynched. A daytime lynching is better ’cause you can see more. We had so much fun that day. Somewhere at home I still have the picture of me on my daddy’s shoulders looking at the nigger. Oh, I almost forgot! How could I forget that! They hung two niggers that day! You know what else happened that day. I met my Sammy. He was nine and I was seven, and we both knew we was going to marry each other. Eight years later we did. Just think. If not for that lynching, I never would have met him.”
“Come on, Ansel. You can’t hide back here. Folks will think we’re nigger lovers if they don’t see us out there by the tree.”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“If you’re going to be a successful storekeeper, you better start caring what they think. Those people are your bread and butter.”
“I’m not going to be a storekeeper!”
The words come out of Ansel’s mouth before he can stop them, but now that they are out, he’s glad.
“You don’t know what you’re saying. We’ll talk about this later.”
Big Willie stands on a tower of wooden crates, the thick noose around his neck, the other end tied to a thick limb of the oak tree. Willie feels so calm, he is almost happy. He looks at the faces in a semicircle before him. No one will meet his eyes.
Reverend Dennis steps out of the crowd. “Let us bow our heads in prayer.”
There is silence.
“Our Heavenly Father, we stand here tonight to make right a terrible wrong. You are a God of justice who has taught us right from wrong. Although hanging this nigger will not bring back my daughter, it will remove from our midst the one who, in his mad nigger lust, took her from us. We know, Heavenly Father, that you have already prepared his place in the hottest part of hell, where he will burn for eternity. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”
“Amen,” the crowd responds.
As the Reverend walks back into the crowd, people eagerly step forward to shake his hand, pat him on the back, express their condolences over his loss. Many of them will think back on this night when, the very next summer, the Reverend is caught with one of the girls from the Junior Choir, which is what had happened in Atlanta. The Reverend and his wife were barely given time to pack before they left Davis. No one knew where he went, and no one cared.
Reluctantly, Ansel follows his father out of the store, but he does not watch. He hears the wooden crates being kicked away, and the crowd’s cheers.
When he finally opens his eyes, he sees the body of Big Willie hanging from a tree limb. His head is on his chest. The flames from the bonfire are licking at the soles of his feet. People stand in front of the body to have their pictures taken.
Eventually, the bonfire ebbs. As it does, a stillness slowly comes over the crowd. From somewhere there is a breeze. Big Willie’s body sways slowly back and forth. The rope makes a squeaking sound as it rubs against the limb.
People start moving away. It is as if they have been in a stupor and only now are waking up to wonder where they are, and who did this awful thing. They know they didn’t.
Then it starts to rain. The old-timers who always knew what the weather was going to be are surprised. They swore that the storm they saw in the southern sky would not come this far.
There are only a few drops at first, but suddenly it is as if the part of the sky where the rain is kept has broken, and the rain comes down so hard it hurts. People run to get away from the stinging drops.
Ansel and his father hurry back to the store to get out of the rain.
“Sold just about every bottle of pop we had,” Bert says. “We’re going to have to change the order. You want to do it?”
Ansel stands at the screen door, the rain spattering on the sidewalk spraying him. He stares at the body of Big Willie, rain running down it like forgiveness.
Then he sees the white beam of car lights in the rain, and he watches as the car turns left at the end of the square and parks beneath the oak tree.
All four doors of the car open. Out of the driver’s side steps Esther Davis. From the other door comes Little Willie’s mother. Out of the back doors come three colored men and Little Willie.
He is the one who climbs the tree, crawls out onto the branch from which hangs the body of his father. Because the rope is thick and tightly woven, it takes him a few minutes before he is able to saw through it with a handsaw as the rain continues to come down.
When the body falls, the three men below catch it before it can fall into the sodden ashes of the bonfire.
Without thinking, Ansel runs out the door and toward the small group beneath the tree. The rain beats like fists against his head, his face, his body.
“Willie!” he shouts as loud as he can as lightning flashes back and forth across the sky and the sound of the thunder rattles the windows of every building in town.
“Willie!” he shouts again.
Little Willie turns. He knows whose voice is calling his name. He turns and looks at Ansel. Ansel does not know what he wanted to say, does not know what he wanted to do, but through the darkness he thinks he can see Little Willie’s eyes staring at him and those eyes are filled with a hatred that began with the first African who walked off a slave ship, a hatred that would extend farther into the future than either boy could see. And seeing that hatred, Ansel realizes that he wanted to ask Little Willie to forgive him, to absolve him of responsibility, and that Little Willie would not, could not, should not.
As the body of Big Willie is placed gently inside the trunk of Miss Davis’s car, his son who, from that night on, would never permit anyone to call him Little Willie or even Willie ever again, turns away from Ansel and hurries to the car.
Ansel watches as they drive into the night, back to the quarters.
As suddenly as it started, the rain stops. In the distance there is a faint, lingering rumble of thunder, and closer, the whine of mosquitoes.
Ansel walks slowly back toward the store where his father stands, having witnessed the scene.
“Let’s go home,” Bert says quietly. “Someday you’ll understand.”
Ansel looks at his father. “Do you mean I’ll understand why you let Big Willie die?”
When his father does not answer, Ansel walks away.
Friday Night, Later
The Anderson house is too far away from the center of town for Maureen to hear what is going on. Her parents stopped by to see if she wanted to “see a nigger get lynched.”
Of course they knew she didn’t, but why pass up an opportunity to show their resentment of her for not sharing some of that money they knew she and her husband had.
After they sped away, the tires of their car sending a thick cloud of dust onto the porch where she was sitting, she wished she had gone with them to get Ansel. She could have gotten a ride with one of her neighbors, all of whom had gone as if it was carnival time.
Where is Ansel? Why hasn’t Bert taken him away from there, brought him home? she wonders.
Maureen waits, never moving from the porch. It is almost eleven when a car drives slowly down the road past her house. Then another and another. Lights go on in her neighbors’ houses.
The storm that she has watched move slowly in the direction of Davis breaks, and the rain comes down like vengeance.
She goes inside, sits in the living room, and waits.
It is almost midnight when she hears Bert’s car.
Ansel comes in first. She does not have to ask. He refuses to look at her.
His eyes move desperately around the r
oom as if searching for a place to hide. She goes to him, folds him into her arms, and his sobs sound like rasping crows.
When Bert comes in, he doesn’t want to look at her, either.
“How could you, Bert?” she asks softly. “How could you?”
“How could I what?”
“Couldn’t you at least have brought Ansel home? He didn’t need to be there.”
“Yes, he did. He’s going to be running the store one of these days. He had to be there. Folks would have talked if he hadn’t been.”
“Let ’em talk!” Ansel turns around and screams at his father. “Who cares what they say?”
“You better start learning to care what other people think of you,” Bert responds. “A businessman has to get along with his customers, and sometimes that means doing things you aren’t proud of.”
“Like not telling the truth?” Ansel glares at his father.
Maureen looks from one to the other. “What happened? What’s going on?”
“It was Zeph!” Ansel shouts. “Zeph killed Mary Susan. We were there. We saw him. We knew Willie’s papa didn’t do it.”
Bert sighs. He looks at Maureen, a plea on his face. “What was I supposed to do? We would be on the way out of town right now if I had said it was Zeph. Do you think people would have believed me? They know I helped Big Willie get the job at the church. Damn Esther Davis! They know I’ve had Little Willie working at the store. All they would’ve said was that I’m a nigger lover, and they might have hung me, too. Reverend Dennis told me to my face that it was my fault his daughter was dead, that I should have known better than talk him into hiring Willie.”
“Oh, dear God,” Maureen says, tears coming into her eyes. “You mean to tell me you knew that poor man was innocent and you didn’t do anything?”
“What do you think I could have done, Maureen? So what if he was innocent? So what if I know that Zeph is a mean, nasty son of a bitch? Do you think anybody in this town is going to do anything to anybody with the name Davis? Do you think any white man in this town would choose a nigger over a white man even if they knew the white man was guilty? What did you want me to do, Maureen?”
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