Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League

by Jonathan Odell

  Thank God for the Senator’s stubborn pride. If he and Levi ever had a heart-to-heart, Sheriff Billy Dean Brister would be history. The experience had made an impression on Billy Dean. Since that one close call, he had sworn off colored women. Except for Sweet Pea, of course. One nigger baby looking like him running around the county was plenty.

  Sometimes he wondered who got the best end of this deal. For two terms he had done the Senator’s bidding as his plantation sheriff—patrolling the train station to make sure no tenants skipped town owing the Senator money, keeping the local yahoos away from the colored prisoners until the traveling electric chair could get to town, closing down the jukes during times of short labor, shooting up any stills not personally sanctioned by his majesty, not to mention trying to keep his ugly-as-sin daughter happy.

  Now, to add to it, every day the Senator was hounding his ass to “find the nigger that killed my little girl!” He was going to have to come up with something pretty damned soon to satisfy the Senator on that count.

  Billy Dean tossed the lighter and snatched it in midair. On the other side of that same nickel, he had become accustomed to the jangle of the handcuffs and the tug of a pistol on his hip, deputies who had to do for him. For the first time in his life, Billy Dean knew how it felt to have something to lose, and it wasn’t that bad of a feeling. This was as far as his kind ever came. He sure wasn’t going to let somebody’s colored maid come between him and that.

  Through the tangle of trees and vines, Billy Dean saw Vida. That gold-toothed whore was with her. He pocketed the lighter. After letting them walk a little farther down the road and out of earshot, he cranked the engine. Then he slowly pulled out from the trees and rolled after them, coasting at a snail’s pace with his foot on the brake. They never even glanced around.

  Pulling up alongside, he leaned across the seat and glowered at Vida through the opposite window. “You! Girl! Get in the back.”

  When Vida didn’t respond at once, the sheriff slammed the car into park, sprang out, and marched around to the other side. He jerked open the back door and shoved Vida inside, striking her head against the roof edge in the process. “I ain’t got all day,” he said, banging the door shut.

  As Vida sat hunched in the backseat, holding her head, he looked at Sweet Pea, whose face was stupid and blank. “Keep on ahead, minding your business, you hear?”

  The sheriff got back in the car without another word. He just drove. A light rain began to fall. Every once in a while he checked Vida’s expression in the rearview. Cold as a stone. The same way she looked every morning and every evening when she stood outside the Grahams’ house, staring him down. No sir, he thought to himself, no colored girl was going to kill his gold-shitting goose.

  They were miles out of town and speeding down a road that coiled through the bluffs as it ran north. The sun had already dropped below the tree line and the fields were mostly shadow.

  Eventually the sheriff turned off the blacktop and onto a gravel road cut on a deep downward slope that would inevitably strike out into the open Delta. Before reaching the bottom of the descent, the sheriff turned again, this time onto an ungraded and much narrower road cut between high earthen banks. The farther they traveled, the narrower the road became and the more disused it looked, until it was nothing but a double footpath with goldenrod and jimsonweed growing up between.

  When there was no path left at all, the sheriff pulled to a stop. Sitting off in the growth of weeds and brushwood sat a half-burned shack, much of it covered with vines. It leaned crazily to one side, as if the green twisting tentacles were ever so slowly lowering the house into the underbrush.

  The sheriff lit a cigarette and then sat motionless, looking off in the direction of the house. Vida stayed dead still in the backseat. She was damp with fear. Her hand was down in her bag, her fingers firmly gripping the wooden handle of the ice pick.

  From the glove compartment the sheriff produced a half-pint of whiskey and then got out of the car. He opened her door. “Out.” It was the first word spoken since they’d begun their journey.

  Still she didn’t move. Looking down at his boots, considering her options, she tightened her grip on the pick. When she saw him reach for her arm, she jerked her hand out of the sack, empty. She struggled to exit the car on her own, revolted by the thought of his touch. On her feet, Vida’s legs buckled and she nearly fell, finding her balance just before the sheriff shoved her, sending her stumbling into the wild tangle of a yard.

  Briars bit her legs, but she kept moving toward the house, clutching her sack. She stopped when she got to the fire-scorched porch. There were no steps.

  “Keep on ahead,” came the dry growl from behind her. He pushed her again and she caught herself against the plank edging.

  She hoisted herself onto the porch and walked toward the door. Each step made a loud hollow sound that seemed to reverberate through the woods. The sheriff followed close behind.

  Once inside the shack, Vida saw that the far wall was mostly burned out, nothing left except charred boards. The vines had stitched over the breaks, keeping the house dark and cool, the smells thick and musty. All the windows were busted out, and dirt daubers busied themselves around the stone fireplace, filling in the gaps where the chinking had fallen out. It was past twilight and the house was alive with shadows, half-real shapes that seemed to loom about in the room, vanishing when looked at straight on.

  Vida’s eyes adjusted to the dark. She noticed broken chairs and pieces of a table strewn across the floor; against the wall was an empty pie safe, its screened door hanging askew like a broken arm. The place gave off a sense of death and despair.

  Vida judged the distance across the floor to the window. If she didn’t get shot first, she figured she’d make it in three steps and then take off into the woods. Or, if she could get a grip on her pick. . .but again she felt his hand at her back. He shoved Vida so hard, she went stumbling through a doorway into the back room. On the floor in the corner lay a ruined cotton mattress, its striped ticking darkened to a dingy brown. Strewn about were dozens of empty whiskey bottles, a chair with the cane seat busted out, tatters of old clothing. It was exactly as Sweet Pea had described it.

  A flicker of hope rose up in Vida’s chest. Maybe Sweet Pea would find Willie and tell him what had happened! Willie had a gun. Could Sweet Pea remember where this shack was? Then just as suddenly, the hope vanished. She remembered that Willie had gone to Louisiana on a run for Hannah. Vida was alone in the world with this man.

  The overpowering smell in the room was not of old smoke, but of rot and mildew. The stench, laced with her own terror, gripped Vida’s belly. More afraid of the mattress than of the gun, she turned to face the sheriff. She did not dare look into his eyes, yet she could feel them running over her body like cold hands.

  The sheriff opened the whiskey and flung the cap across the room. “Go on, girl. This what you been wantin’, ain’t it? To get a close-up view? Well, here I am. Take a look.”

  Vida began to shake. Still she kept her eyes riveted to the floor.

  Then he roared, “I said look, goddamn you!”

  She tried, but was able to raise her eyes only to the level of his badge before dropping her head again. All she heard was the pounding in her ears and the ugly grunts as he drank from the bottle. When he spoke at last, his voice was like the cold edge of a blade to her throat. “What kind of games you playing with me, girl?”

  Still she remained mute. She closed her eyes and saw Nate’s face.

  “What’s the idea, you working right next door to me?”

  “Needs the money,” she was able to mumble.

  “The Senator know how you done run off his place?”

  “Yessuh,” she said. “He know it. We all paid up with the Senator.”

  “And what you doing with that whore?”

  “Who that?”

  “You know the hell who. The one you was walking with.”

  “She ain’t a whore no more.
” Vida bit her lip, not meaning to contradict him.

  He laughed. “Sure thing? She been revirginated, I reckon.”

  “Yessuh. She Miss Cilly’s maid now.”

  There was another pause while the sheriff raised the bottle and took a long pull. She lifted her eyes for only a moment and saw him wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He had seen her look. Again he laughed. “You still wearing white, I see.”

  “Yessuh,” she mumbled.

  “Same as the first time I seen you. I bet you remember that night good, don’t you, girl?”

  “Yessuh,” she said, thinking again of the ice pick the sack held.

  He took a step closer to her. “What was his name?”

  “Whose name?” She knew, but she couldn’t believe he had really meant it.

  In a hoarse whisper he said, “The boy’s name.”

  “The boy you. . .” Vida said, stopping short of what she had intended.

  “Your boy,” he said. “His name. What was it?” He moved closer again.

  Her head still bowed, she could see the pointy toes of his boots. She began again, “The boy. . .the boy you kilt.”

  Once said, now she had to find the courage to study his face. His reaction meant the world. Would his expression at least tell her he remembered that night? That in one blast of a shotgun he had destroyed the lives of her son, her father, and herself? Did it matter to him at all? She lifted her eyes. The room went perfectly quiet. In that moment, nothing else existed except for the man’s face and the message it held.

  She saw his thin, pinched lips, his jaw that jutted out sharply, the dip in the chin like a thumbprint. Yet nothing in his face moved, except a muscle under his ear that hardened and released and hardened again. Then she dared to glance quickly into his eyes. There was nothing. Nothing apart from cold and darkness. She shut her eyes to him.

  “Wha’d you call him?” he asked, terrifyingly patient with her. “How old would he be?”

  “Nate,” she said, thinking how peculiar to be telling a father the name of his own son. What would he do with it? What could he do with a name?

  “Nate Snow,” he said almost to himself.

  “Nine years old,” she said. “He would have been nine.”

  She waited for more, but he only stood there holding his bottle at the level of his star, still nothing telling on his face. She glanced quickly at his eyes again. They were as dead as burnt-out coals.

  No longer able to bear not knowing for another second, Vida blurted, “How come you asking me that? Why you want to know?”

  He smiled, as if amused at her boldness. “No reason particular,” he said coyly.

  “What you going to do with me?” she asked, though she was now certain he meant to hurt her bad. “Why you carry me out here? What you want?”

  The sheriff drained the bottle and tossed it out the window. She heard it land with a clink somewhere out in the brambles. Sensing that his eyes were no longer on her, she looked up and watched him as he slowly surveyed the room, as if he were able to see what she couldn’t. Vida half expected something to melt out of the shadows.

  That’s when she knew it. What this place was. If thinking about someone made it so, she knew this man better than any man in her life. Fearing him. Studying him. Turning him over and over in her mind, till she believed she could prophesy his movements. This was where Billy Dean Brister belonged. This was where he watched his mother burn to death. This was where the biggest part of him was buried, what he kept coming back to find.

  It was as if Billy Dean had snared her thoughts and didn’t like them one bit. He struck like a rattler. Sudden and swift, in the blink of time between two thoughts, he had her by the throat.

  Vida fumbled at her bag. Before she could touch her pick, he flung her bag across the room and lifted her by the neck to her toes. “Think you smart, don’t you? Spying on me. Sneaking in my house.”

  The sheriff’s face was in hers. His breathing was hard, and she could smell the sourness of whiskey. His eyes had caught fire. “You know what I’m going to do to you now, don’t you?” His spittle flew into her face. “Answer me,” he said.

  He had cut off her breath. “Nosuh,” she gasped.

  “Nosuh, Sheriff! Nosuh!” he raged. “That it? That’s all you niggers know how to say?”

  Vida couldn’t have said anything else if she’d had to. The sheriff’s face was now a glowing ember at the center of a darkening sky.

  He pulled the gun from his holster and carefully placed the bore against Vida’s temple. He eased back the hammer, and like thunder she heard it lock into place. “Let this burned-down shack be the last thing you see. My daddy set fire to it, his own place, before he’d let the bank take it. And that’s how far I’ll go to keep what’s mine. Shooting you ain’t going to mean jackshit to me.”

  The red ember that was his face burned out.

  When Vida came to, she was lying with her face flat against the stinking mattress. She had no idea how much time had passed. She only knew she was still alive. The second thing she knew was that she hadn’t been raped, not yet.

  The house was dark and cool now. A breeze stirred in the room. She reached to touch the searing pain in her throat. When she turned herself over, the sheriff was standing several feet away. He seemed to be studying her through the dark.

  “Girl,” he said, his voice low and even. “I’ll say it once. Stay out of my house. Away from my wife. Away from my girls. Do you understand that?”

  “Yessuh,” Vida whispered hoarsely.

  “And next time your daddy tries to get a message to the Senator, through Pearl or anybody else, he’ll be one dead nigger. Tell him.”

  “Yessuh.”

  “Now, you be a good girl and let sleeping dogs lie.” The whites of his eyes shone in the dark. “Remember, I’m watching you. Like you watching me.”

  He reached down and picked up her sack. After he removed the ice pick, he tossed the sack on the mattress. “I’m glad we have reached this understanding,” he said, eerily formal. “Now, let’s you and me get on back to the car.”

  As the sheriff headed toward Delphi, Vida rubbed her throat, thinking hard about the man driving. She had more questions now than ever. Why hadn’t he killed her? He could have, easy. Nobody would have been the wiser. Killing now must be so easy for him. The letter she had taken from his house proved that.

  Yet he had let her live. Why? she asked again. To carry a warning to her father? Why hadn’t he killed them all long ago? She could think of no reasonable answer. Any more than she could figure out how a little colored boy could draw so much hate from a grown man.

  Vida had no idea what time it was when the sheriff pulled over at the spot where he had picked her up a lifetime ago. He simply told her to get out. In the dark of a starless night, she stumbled down the hill and through the mud to Tarbottom.

  When she neared her house, she could see Willie’s car parked in front and his silhouette on the porch.

  “Vida!” he shouted, jumping to his feet and scrambling down the steps to meet her in the yard. As he approached she noticed the pistol he was toting.

  “Vida, you all right?” He strained to see her face in the dark.

  “I’m fine, Willie. Please, put up that gun.”

  He shoved it in his belt. “I been driving ’round the country for hours looking for you. Sweet Pea was waiting at Hannah’s when I got back from Louisiana. She was crying so hard I couldn’t hardly make it out. Then she told me about the sheriff. I tried my best to find you, but. . .” He paused, narrowing his eyes. “What he do to you, Vida?”

  She looked up at the darkened cabin. “Where’s Daddy at?”

  “Inside, sleeping. I ain’t told him nothing. Said you was out visiting.”

  Vida was relieved. “Don’t wake him up. Come on. Let’s go around the back to the kitchen.”

  Once inside, Willie got the lamp lit, then turned to Vida. Seeing her holding her neck, he grabbed Vida’s wrist. She re
sisted, but Willie was stronger.

  Her skin was already bruising. Willie spat, “That son of a bitch! I’ll kill him.” His hand automatically touched the gun. Gripping Willie by the arm, she drew him down into a chair, then sat down next to him. “Willie, I’m all right,” she said in her calmest voice. “Let it alone. It don’t hurt.” She managed a smile.

  Willie stared angrily at her throat, his jaw clenched. Vida could tell he was ashamed, probably because he hadn’t been there to stop it. “Willie, listen,” she said. “I know how to get the Senator to turn on the sheriff. Just like he did on Daddy. I found a letter from Miss Delia. Him and her—”

  “That’s real good,” he said evenly.

  Vida reached over and shook him by the shoulder, trying to break him out of his mood. “Willie, now we can get him. We got to play it right, but we got to do it soon.”

  He looked into her eyes and, as if hearing for the first time what she was saying, smiled tenderly. “Yes, Sister. I want that, too.”

  He got up, went to where his special coat hung on the back of the door, and retrieved a milk of magnesia bottle from a hidden pocket. Setting it on the table beside Vida, he said playfully, “How about a drink? Might do you good.”

  “What you meaning by this?” Vida asked, having to smile.

  “Open it and take a swaller.”

  “You crazy? Don’t need no laxative. I ain’t backed up.”

  “Go ahead on and open it. It ain’t what you think.”

  She unscrewed the top and lifted it to her nose. “This is hooch!”

  Willie laughed. He was his smooth, charming self again. “It was my idea. I make deliveries to white women all over the county. They rather get it from a colored man who ain’t going to tell it on them, like a white bootlegger might do. Smart, huh?” He laughed again. “I pretend I’m from the drugstore dropping off medicine to constipated white ladies.”