The Rock Hole

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Something in the tone of his voice stopped them. The men holding pistols appeared undecided as to their next step. Behind the plastic shades their faces were without emotion, as if they were merely going about some common daily duty. Only Ralston was scared.

  Ned held the Colt with a steady hand on the man in front of him. “You’ll be first, you son-of-a-bitch. And when I go to work with this six-shooter, you’ll all be dead by the time you hit the ground. Now put the pistols down!”

  The cry of a jay was the only sound on the empty two-lane highway. All five men stood motionless. No one wanted to make the first move in the dangerously explosive situation.

  Ned looked over the front sight at the big man holding the pistol. He focused on the plain white tee shirt, keeping an eye on Ralston standing slightly behind him. Watching the other two men near the bumper on the passenger’s side, he had everyone accounted for.

  If he raises that pistol I’ll shoot both of them with the guns first, Ned thought. He watched the man’s face. I wish I could see his eyes. He’ll let me know what he’s gonna do with his eyes.

  The jay called again, an oddly familiar and comforting sound accompanying the potential tragedy playing out on the highway. The man’s pistol raised a fraction of an inch.

  Ned spoke conversationally, though his finger tightened on the trigger. “Don’t.” He realized he’d been hearing the whining of distant tires on pavement for a long moment.

  Big John’s car roared around the bend in the road and squalled to a white, tire-smoking stop in the middle of the highway. The big deputy stepped out of the car with his own handgun drawn. “Whoa! Put ’em down boys!”

  The gunman on Ralston’s side of the car flinched at the shrieking tires, but he kept the revolver in his hand. Startled, the other two looked over the sedan as the giant deputy charged across the highway.

  Seeing Ned in danger was almost too much for John. Always a man of action, he didn’t hesitate. Reaching into his back pocket with his free hand, he gripped the leather handle of his sap, and before anyone could respond to the new player in the dangerous scenario, he knocked Ralston senseless with a backhanded slap behind his ear. Without changing momentum, he took a forward swing to the back of White Shirt’s head. He also collapsed beside the car, and the pistol landed in the road.

  With the first threat gone, Ned shifted his aim toward the second gunman and the man behind. Neither of them made a move from the time Big John stepped out of the car until Ned’s pistol was pointed at them. Shocked at the suddenness of John’s actions, they dropped their weapons, threw up their hands, and it was over.

  Ned motioned with his pistol to get them started. “Y’all lay down over there in the ditch.”

  John’s rage was over as quickly as it had arrived. He slipped the sap back in his pocket. “Can you believe it?”

  “Believe what?”

  “Smell.”

  “What?”

  “Smell.”

  Ned sniffed. “Fish.”

  “Yep. These boys are the ones who stole the fish in Arthur City. I heard they were headed this way but I didn’t expect you to have them already.”

  “Nearly didn’t.” Ned ‘s voice suddenly shook. He wanted to sit down, but steadied himself on the fender instead. “I’m not sure why they were sitting here beside the highway. What the hell were y’all thinking?”

  Checkered Shirt raised his head. “We’s waiting on you.”

  “Waiting on me?” Ned suddenly realized why they simply sat there when he rolled up. Stealing the catfish was a ruse to get him alone on the highway, but he’d stumbled onto them almost without hearing about the theft. He was lucky they didn’t have sense enough to hide in the brush beside the road and ambush him then. “What fer?”

  “You been giving Ralston a hard time. We told him we’d take care of you and make everyone here in this sorry one-horse-town show him some respect. Then maybe our people here will see they got rights just like white folks. They don’t want to work for the white man no more.”

  “What’s you name, boy?” Big John asked, moving around and cuffing the men.

  “I ain’t your boy, Tom!”

  “You ain’t nothin’ layin’ in a ditch. Now I’ll ast you again. What’s your name?”

  “Bubba Walls.”

  “Bubba, I don’t know any Walls. Who’s your daddy?”

  “I ain’t from around here.”

  “Figures. You’re a little confused about a few things. You don’t want ‘no one’ to work for the white man, but at the same time you’re stealing from your own people. I think you’re sorry and no ’count.”

  Ned finally regained his composure. “I never asked anyone to work for me for nothing. I hired Ralston’s people.”

  The other man piped up. “But you’re paying them nigger wages. They have a right to make white man’s money.”

  “Who’re you?” Ned leaned against the hood of his car to steady himself.

  “Tyrel Johnson.”

  “Tyrel, I pay a good wage for a good day’s work. It’s what I can afford, and no one has to work for me. I don’t care what color a man is when I hire him. What have you done to change things besides start trouble with your city ways? Well, now you got you a good job for a long time. Pullin’ a gun on the Law done got you a place on the chain gang.”

  “Figures. Put colored folks to work cleanin’ the ditches.”

  Ned shook his head in frustration.

  John’s voice rumbled deep as he finished checking Ralston’s pockets and moved to the other man beside the rear tire. “You’re trying to draw us into something we don’t have any control over. You talking about changing the world, and there ain’t a thing me or Mister Ned can do about it. We’re trying to get along up here on the river, and I’m getting tired of talking to fools like you. Mister Ned, let’s get them to jail so I don’t have to look at ’em no more.”

  “But you don’t know what it’s like to be different from white folks.” Bubba ignored John’s presence.

  Ralston’s head quit spinning, though it hurt like the devil. “Yes, he does,” he surprised himself by defending Ned, a man they’d planned to murder. “He’s married to an Indian.”

  “Indians are as bad as white people.”

  Ned flushed. “Leave Miss Becky out of it.”

  Ralston considered the fix they were in. The fog of pain in his head caused him to question his association with the other men. He blamed himself for getting into this mess by stringing off down to Dallas and hooking up with the trio on the ground around him. He didn’t know anything about them, except their booze-soaked ideas sounded good in the dark, smoky Dallas club. Now he was lying on the ground, cuffed and bleeding.

  Pulling Bubba to his feet, Ned was wondering to himself why he was even in a conversation with his prisoners. “I’m trying to make a living, same’s you.”

  “By knocking people in the head.”

  Big John’s newfound patience was coming to an end. He tightened the cuffs around Bubba’s wrists harder than necessary. The man hissed in pain when John pushed him toward his car. “He didn’t hit anybody, fool. I did. I’ll jerk a knot in anybody’s head if they point a gun at a lawman, especially Mister Ned. You’re lucky. If we was on our side of the tracks, I’d-a shot you. And I haven’t made up my mind not to shoot you yet!”

  Bubba had already seen how the Deputy Washington handled things. He sighed in relief when John slammed the door of his car. John returned with Tyrel and put him into the back seat without saying a word and walked back to nudge the unconscious man with his toe. Getting no response, he knelt to tie the man’s hands with a length of cord since they were fresh out of handcuffs.

  Finished, John left him on the ground and rummaged in the sedan’s floorboard under the steering wheel. After a moment he stood up holding a knife wrapped in newspaper. “Looky here.”

  Ned joined him beside the open door and peeled the knife from the damp paper, feeling the knot return to his gut. With growin
g excitement Big John again searched the dirty floorboard under the driver’s seat and found another knife and two large screwdrivers that looked familiar. “We may have found your man.”

  Ralston grunted in an effort to see over his shoulder. “What are y’all talkin’ ’bout?”

  “Cutting up animals,” Ned answered. “You want to tell us about that?”

  Tyrel stuck his head through the open car window. “We don’t know nothing’ about no cut-up animals. That’s something you’re trying to get up so you can put us in jail.”

  Big John laughed at his convoluted way of thinking. “Aw, hell, I don’t need to get anything up to throw you in jail. You’re already there, boy, you just ain’t in the cell yet.”

  Ned knelt beside Ralston. “Tell me about this knife.”

  “Nothin’ to tell.”

  John held the second knife and screwdrivers. His greatest fear was realized. One of his people was terrorizing the countryside. “What have you been doing with this knife?”

  “Nothin’.” I always keep a knife handy, same as you.”

  “You cut anything up lately? Dogs or such?”

  “Aw, naw. You ain’t blaming none of that on me. I heard about all that stuff a little while ago, but I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

  Ned pondered the young man at his feet. “Somebody killed Cody Parker’s bird dog. Maybe it was you.”

  Ralston didn’t like it one little bit. “I wouldn’t mess with Cody’s dogs. He’d kill you for that.”

  “Hey, Law, you gonna leave us sitting here all day?”

  “Shut up, Tyrel, or I’m liable to leave you in there ’til the mornin’. What about this knife wrapped up in the paper here, Ralston?”

  “It ain’t mine. I thought you was talking about that watermelon knife in the floorboard. I found the one in your hand out in the woods not far from your cotton patch, Mr. Ned.” He turned his head to see. “I had to go outdoors this morning while I was talking to Ivory and the others and I went out behind some bushes. While I was squatting there I found that knife laying on that little ol’ piece of paper and picked it up. It looked like a good knife and it was dirty so I left it stuck on the paper till I could worsh it off. There was a wore-out old screwdriver there, too, but I didn’t pick it up.”

  Ned felt deflated. Somehow he knew Ralston was telling the truth. “What else did you find?”

  “Nothin’ else.”

  “Was there anything dead close by? A dog, a coon or maybe a possum?”

  “I’m having trouble thinking. Damn, John, you almost caved my head in.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “Aw, there was something stinkin’ not far away, but I didn’t go try and find out what it was. We can go look if y’ont to.”

  “I’ll go all right, but after I take you to jail.”

  “Why don’t you turn me loose?”

  John stared downward at Ralston. “You’re full of bull. You’re going to the pen for what y’all were fixin’ to do to Ned. If you’re real lucky you’ll be on one of them Huntsville chain gangs with Tyrel there.”

  “But we really didn’t do nothin’.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Ned put the knife in the floorboard of his car.

  “You want to hear where Lightfoot is hiding?”

  “Shut up, Ralston,” Tyrel’s scared voice came from the car. “That damned Indian will kill us all for talking about him.”

  Ralston wouldn’t quit, knowing his chances were slipping away. “I know where he’s hiding. You let me go, and I’ll tell you.”

  Ned was tired of talking. “You’re worrying the piss out of me. Here’s how it is. You tell me and I’ll let Judge Rains know how you helped us find Lightfoot, and it might make it easier on you. But I’m not foolin’ with you no more.”

  Ralston didn’t have to consider the offer. “Done. He’s hiding with kinfolk over in Chisum. They live in a little ol’ shack at the end of the dirt road that cuts back behind the Mt. Holiness Church. It’s the only house down in there. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  Ned and Big John exchanged glances. Things were going their way.

  “Let’s get these boys to jail, John. I’m tired of standin’ on this highway.”

  ***

  O.C. was happy to see Ralston in handcuffs and even happier to hear he’d been involved in a threat to a peace officer. The charges were solid. Within an hour of getting the information regarding Lightfoot, Sheriff Griffin’s deputies drove to the house in Chisum and took him into custody without incident. Everyone in Lamar County breathed easier.

  Three hours later, Ned and John were back in the river bottoms. The sun rested in the treetops by the time they returned to the empty field where Ralston found the knife. They scratched around the general area until they found where he’d done his business.

  Ned kicked through the tall dry grass between the field and the woods. Big yellow grasshoppers whizzed away in all directions. It was Big John who first got the whiff of death that led him to the corpse.

  “My lord, Ned.”

  “Didja find something?”

  “I reckon.”

  Ned joined him. “Whew, it’s…” he trailed off as he got a good look at the tiny, unmolested body of the Lightfoot baby lying in the grass in front of them. “Oh, hell.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  What Grandpa and Mr. John found near the field stayed with folks for a long time. Everything was there, the body, the knife and the newspaper clipping. The baby hadn’t been touched, though it looked like someone was interrupted before they got started. Grandpa figured Ralston or one of the other hands scared the killer off.

  Or he just wanted to send a message. The talk at the store and at church was about the goings-on in the bottoms. They wanted to say it was Frank Lightfoot, but Grandpa kept saying the timing didn’t work out. Even so, the newspaper said Lightfoot confessed. Grandpa learned the truth about what happened at the shack, but the part about the baby’s disappearance kept bothering him.

  The front page story in The Chisum News said Lightfoot snuck up on the house after a week of hard drinking to find his wife living with another man. When he looked through the open window and saw them all sitting around the table like a family, he lost his mind and grabbed the first thing at hand, which was a double bit chopping ax leaning against the wall beside the back door.

  The family didn’t know what to do when he kicked the flimsy screen door open. He killed the man who had taken his place with the first whack, before he could get up from the table. Willie, the young man I’d seen leaning on the porch post, was no match for his crazy daddy and went down before the rest of the shocked family could respond.

  By then Lightfoot was in a blind frenzy and said he didn’t clearly remember what happened afterwards, but he was sure the coal oil lamp got knocked over. The dry wood quickly caught fire. Some of the kids didn’t have a chance to get out of the house.

  Lightfoot chased his screaming wife out into the yard and killed her there, leaving the ax buried in her body. When he turned around, Willie had crawled from the burning house, trying to pull the baby with him.

  Lightfoot finished him off with his knife, but came back to himself when he saw the coughing baby on the porch, so he grabbed her up.

  Miss Becky clipped the story from the paper and read it to us. “The rest of the kids were hers but the least one took up with me,” Frank Lightfoot told the courtroom. “Two or three of them older kids crawled out of the house, but I could tell they were already burned pretty bad and they quit moving before y’all got there. I hid in the woods while y’all were millin’ around the fire like a bunch of cows. The baby had quit crying and was acting funny. I squatted there and held it and then it went limp and was dead. I guess the smoke or them culoil fumes killed it.

  “While y’all were still waiting for the fire to die down I set there in the dark holding it until it got cold. After a while I laid it down by a stump to come give myself up, but I ch
anged my mind. Then, when I went back to pick it up, it was gone. I thought I was wrong about it being dead and maybe it had crawled off, but then I seen someone ducking through the brush toward the cars on the highway, so I went the other way.”

  Miss Becky shook her head at the table and said, “Ummm ummm.” Then she read some more.

  “I was just drunk, that’s all. I don’t know why I did those things. But besides, I don’t think them kids was all mine. Mark is, because I can see myself in him, but the rest was nothing but mouths to feed.”

  He swore to Mr. O.C. he was telling the truth. Mr. O.C. was furious, though, the way Lightfoot referred to the baby, calling her an “it” and not getting help when every man in town was standing there in the yard. Lightfoot’s last words as they took him out of the courtroom were about his murdered wife. “That gal weren’t much to look at, but she sure could cook if she had something to put on the stove.”

  The trial was scheduled for the spring and things quieted down, except for what happened to the baby. The coroner said it died from the smoke. When Grandpa and Mr. John found it a full two weeks after the fire, the little thing looked almost normal, not like it would have if the body had been in that field for the whole time.

  Grandpa said he figured someone had kept it in an icebox for a while, before taking it to the field. He thought Ralston had scared him off before he could do anything to the little body.

  Everybody was glad Lightfoot was in jail, and they thought the animal mutilations were over. But Grandpa kept telling folks that the baby couldn’t have been laying there that long and Lightfoot couldn’t be the man people had started calling the Skinner. Even so, they just looked the other way when details came up that didn’t fit.

  Miss Becky said it was like them ostriches in the cartoons on television. They just wanted to bury their heads in the sand instead of dealing with the truth. We were ordered to stay near the house or have someone with us if we went anywhere.

  “There’s still a lot we don’t know about this crazy bastard,” I heard Grandpa say to Mr. O.C. on the phone one day when he thought I was outside, instead of listening from the bedroom. “He could be watching the house right now, and I’m about half-afraid Becky’ll shoot the first person who comes up to the house at night while I’m gone.”