Several men, including Cousin Trek and Big Trek, were talking out of earshot with Mr. O’Grady. I was pretty sure what they were talking about today, and it wasn’t about any ball games or the weather. But if you got too close they would clam up or change the subject.
Taylor and Casey and I were waiting by the car. Casey had picked up a rain frog and was sizing him up for his leg power. In his efforts to wiggle free, the frog would kick his legs kind of like a bird trying to flap his wings. Casey said this was a decent gauge of how far he could jump.
He started sneaking up on a girl about his age named Patty. He was just about to put the frog on her shoulder when Cousin Carol screamed across the lot, “Casey Mayfield! Don’t you dare! I will kill you!”
Patty almost jumped into a puddle. I think Cousin Carol’s scream frightened her more than the frog had.
Just then Mr. Hightower walked over, and Casey chunked the frog in the grass. “Well, you boys workin’ tomorrow or going fishin’? Ground’ll be a little soft, but the sun’ll dry it out pretty quick. That is if we don’t get any more rain.” He lit a Chesterfield cigarette and exhaled columns of smoke through his nose and mouth.
“We’ll be workin’, Mr. Hightower,” I said. I looked at Casey and Taylor.
“Yessir,” Taylor followed.
“Yessir,” Casey said. There wasn’t anything else he could say. He had no choice either.
We all knew that sometimes if you caught a grownup off by himself and maybe off guard, you could get the answer to a question that usually he wouldn’t answer. I think that was what Taylor was after when he said, “Mr. Hightower, you got any notion where Looty is? Do you think he killed that man they found in the river?”
Mr. Hightower took another draw on his cigarette. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of Cousin Trek and Cousin Carol, embedded in one of the grownup clumps. For a minute I thought we might get some real information. But I guess Mr. Hightower caught himself in time. Or maybe he just didn’t know that much.
“Well, boys, I don’t know any more than y’all know, prob’ly. Looty ran off from the jail and they haven’t found him yet, I understand. It‘s kinda suspicious though.”
“Why is it suspicious?” Casey almost interrupted. “The only thing they know was a man was shot. Lots of people can shoot.”
“Well, the man was shot with a .22, and Looty has done some shooting with a .22 and for some reason his rifle can’t be found. Sounds a little suspicious to them.”
“That’s still not much, it doesn’t seem like to me,” I insisted.
“Like I said—” He flipped his cigarette into a puddle. “I really don’t know that much about what the sheriff and Mr. O’Grady know. Maybe he’s got more. Anyway, I got to be goin’. See y’all tomorrow.” He walked toward a line of cars on the road.
I looked at Taylor and Casey. “Did he mean they were looking for Looty’s rifle? I wonder why it wasn’t in his house.” We were to find out the next day.
After we got home Cousin Carol fixed dinner —fried chicken. There was little conversation. Nobody said so, but everybody was thinking about Looty. It was strange the way everybody seemed to feel sorry for him. He wasn’t a relative or anything, but he was so harmless and alone that I think everybody felt kind of like he was a stray dog. It seemed like maybe he had killed that man.
“Daddy, do you think Looty did anything wrong?” Taylor asked.
Casey glanced at me. “Pass the chicken, please?” he asked.
There was nothing said for a moment by anybody. Cousin Carol lifted the platter of chicken and asked Casey, “What piece do you want?”
“A wing, please?”
She tried to place a wing on his plate.
“Don’t let it touch my peas!” He pulled back his extended plate.
“Oh, Casey! You’re such a baby. Just hush now, and take this.”
Cousin Trek still had not answered Taylor, and Big Trek had said nothing either. Finally, Cousin Trek spoke.
“Well, I really don’t know. What do you boys know about Looty and his doin’ anything? Anything at all?”
Taylor said, “Well, sir, we heard you say yesterday when you came home that he had broken out of jail. Why would he be in jail if he hadn’t done something wrong?”
“Well, nobody knows at this point. But Looty is kind of a mixed up fellow and the sheriff and Mr. O’Grady aren’t sure what to think at this point. They just want to find him and make sure he’s all right.”
“That’s enough talk about Looty for now,” said Cousin Carol. “Let’s talk about somethin’ else.”
“But—” said Taylor.
“You heard your mother. Drop it.”
We finished the meal in silence, and though I had been hungry, I only ate two drumsticks. Thinking makes me eat less, I guess. Cousin Carol had asked nothing about having seconds. A courtesy that was absent today.
The dust had settled and was packed from the rain. Though water was still in the drainage ditch, it was solid enough in the middle to ride without getting muddy. We rode our bikes in single file to avoid hitting the few muddy spots, and soon pulled up in front of the B. Samuels mailbox. The gray wooden house with the chickens and tractor in the yard seemed lonelier than before, though I wasn’t sure why. We wondered if BB would tell us anything.
There was a gray tarp covering the sofa and chair on the front porch. The porch overhang wasn’t wide enough when the rain was blowing from the west, and Ben and BB had pulled up the tarp to keep the rain off the furniture. There was still water in the creases.
No one answered the door. We went out back, leaving our bikes stacked against the porch. BB was atop a ladder cutting a limb out of a willow tree. The storm had broken it. It was green and dangling, waiting to drop as soon as it died. Ben held the ladder, trying to stabilize it in the soft ground.
Before we could call out, Ben turned his head. “Why, hi there, young uns. Whad y’all doin’ today? Y’all come vistn’?” He looked up in the tree at BB. “This un’s ‘bout to cut his finger off if he not more careful.”
BB had his left hand wrapped around the branch and the saw close to his thumb. “I ain’t gonna cut my finger off, Daddy. Howdy fellows.” He turned back to the branch and began to saw, marking the point where he would cut it. “What are y’all up to?” he said. “Got some wind with that rain yesterday.”
“We’re jus’ ridin’ around lookin’ for something to do,” Taylor said. He looked at me when he said it. I think he was thinking the same thing I was—that it would be easier to bring the subject up if Ben weren’t there. It was easier to talk with somebody closer to your age than a really old guy. Sometimes I could say things to Farley that I couldn’t to my daddy. I hoped Casey picked up the signal and didn’t blurt something out like, ‘Did you and Looty kill that guy?’
I worked my way behind Ben and waited for BB to look at me so I could give him some hand signals. He was sawing and had his back to me. Finally Taylor yelled something at him just to get him to turn, and I motioned with my hand that we wanted him for something. I nodded at Ben indicating I wanted BB to get his daddy to go into the house for a minute. BB kept sawing, and in a moment the limb toppled to the ground.
“Hold the ladder, Daddy. I’m comin’ down.”
I could see the sweat through the back of his shirt. The rain had brought a steamy and humid day. “I’ll bet these boys would like some iced tea. I know I would. If you go inside and get us some, Daddy, I’ll get them to help me drag this limb outta the yard. They’ll earn their glass of tea.” He winked at us.
Ben wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Now Julius, dat’s a gud idear. Y’all git to draggin’ and I’ll fetch us some tea.” He turned and walked toward the house, then glanced over his shoulder at us. By the way he looked at us, I think he knew we were trying to get BB alone. He kind of nodded without comment. Ben was pretty smart for an old guy.
BB climbed down and leaned the saw against the tree. “Now what you fellows up
to?”
“Did y’all know—I mean you and Ben—know the sheriff and Mr. O’Grady were lookin’ for Looty’s rifle?” Casey blurted.
BB said nothing.
“And they couldn’t find it in his house.” I couldn’t hold it in.
BB looked at me. There was another pause. “Well, they said last night that they needed to find the murder weapon to check the ballistics.”
“What’s that?” Casey asked.
“It’s some way they can tell what gun shot what bullet,” Taylor said.
Just then Ben came out with the iced tea. He handed us jelly glasses filled with tea and told us to sit down under the willow tree. He returned to the house to get himself a glass.
BB took a glass and put it against his face. “Well, that’s the truth, I s’pose. They ain’t found the rifle.” He took a large gulp of iced tea. “They just ain’t found it.”
“I wonder where it is?” said Taylor.
BB didn’t say anything. And none of us had brought up the mention of a she. And we dang sure didn’t mention a poncho. We had talked about it, and decided we’d better not even let BB know we were outside the window last night.
“Well, boys, I got to get back to clearin’ limbs. Y’all better get on home. You got a big work day tomorrow. Rain’s gone and the cotton’s needin’ attention.”
Ben walked back out. He saw us getting on our bikes. “Y’all leavin’?”
All of us turned and waved. Taylor yelled, “We gotta get home, Ben. See you.”
We went home without helping BB drag the limb.
CHAPTER 19
It was only four days until my family came to Cotton City to take me home.
The field had dried since Saturday’s rain, but the ground was still soft. The cotton bolls were dry and the sun seemed harsher, with the wet ground throwing up steam as if punishing the Delta for taking a break. And everything looked greener after a storm. Daddy once told me it was because lightning added nitrogen to the soil. I always thought it was strange that something so deadly could also add life.
We worked like a chain gang—those convicts you sometimes saw on the side of the road, swinging sling blades and sweating in their black and white striped clothes. We were hoeing and sweating. BB set the pace. And it was a pace more than he usually set. He didn’t seem like his usual cheerful self. He worked today like he was fighting. It was as if he had something he was holding in. And I had seen enough picture shows to know when a man was holding something in.
After two weeks, I had toughened to the work and the heat. I wasn’t done-in as fast as that first day. Still, I was happy to see Ben’s old pickup rattling down the road, a sign it was time for dinner.
We all gathered under the shade tree and sat for a minute before we started eating. Ben didn’t bring anything special today like watermelon, just a couple of brown bags for him and BB.
BB took his bag from Ben and opened it. He sat on the ground next to Ben. “Ham and hard-boiled eggs? I love ham.”
Ben handed BB a salt shaker from his bag. Ben didn’t laugh the way he usually did. He often had a funny little story he’d punctuate with a chuckle. Sometimes the stories were funny, sometimes not. It was his chuckle that made me smile, made the stories memorable. Ben had that way about him. But today Ben was just another old man who seemed to have taken on a size of the world’s troubles. I wondered if we had caused it by asking too many questions yesterday.
Perhaps the only reason BB and Ben ever confided in us was because we had shown such an interest in them. But, maybe we had asked too much.
BB placed an egg shell on the ground as carefully as if it were a piece of Cousin Carol’s china. The hardboiled egg looked like a marble in his oversized hands as he sprinkled it with salt. But it didn’t seem like his mind was on eggs, or eggshells, or salt, or even ham sandwiches.
He said, “I think Mr. O’Grady and the sheriff are gettin’ close to findin’ out who killed that man. They searched Looty’s again. This time they found a pocket watch in the house. The dead man had a broken watch chain hangin’ from his watch pocket when he was found in the river. That’s what they said.”
“But dey still didn’t find no rifle.” Ben looked directly at BB.
“Nope,” BB said.
“How come they didn’t find the watch when they looked last week?” Taylor asked.
“Maybe it wasn’t there,” BB said. His face looked darker than it ever had. He didn’t seem positive. He appeared to be a different man.
That was curious. Why was it not there, and then there? Had Looty taken it home? Where did he get it? Did someone else put it there?
BB and Ben were talking about things they hadn’t talked about yesterday, but I still felt BB was holding something back.
The roads had dried more than the fields, what with traffic and drainage ditches, so in the distance we could see a small cloud of dust following a car coming toward us. When it pulled up, the sudden stop threw the long whiplash antennae into a rhythmic flopping back and forth like a deep-sea fishing rod. It was Mr. O’Grady’s police car, and Sheriff Bilbeau from the county seat was with him. No one got out for a minute or two. The dust settled. The antenna wound down. The two men got out and walked over.
We had been at the city jail for almost an hour, and Cousin Trek hadn’t come down yet. He was probably out in the fields somewhere where Cousin Carol couldn’t reach him.
Mr. O’Grady and the sheriff had come out to the fields to tell BB and Ben that they needed to come on into town to get this thing straightened out. We went with them, so Mr. O’Grady told us to call Cousin Trek or Cousin Carol to come down and pick us up. Taylor had tried telling Cousin Carol that we hadn’t done anything wrong. But being in jail probably didn’t sound very good to her. If she didn’t find Cousin Trek or Big Trek pretty quick she’d be down without them. You could bet on that.
I wasn’t surprised to hear BB admit that he was the caped figure we had seen that night at Looty’s. He had worn his Army poncho to conceal the rifle and disguise himself, in case someone saw him at a distance.
He told Mr. O’ Grady and the sheriff that because of the rumors, he had suspected Looty might have known something about the man he and Ben had found in the river. BB said he didn’t think Looty was a murderer, but maybe somebody was taking advantage of him. Anyway, he knew the man had been killed with a .22 and wanted to hide Looty’s rifle in case there was some connection. He had just wanted to protect Looty. A lot of people knew Looty was always popping birds and chickens with his rifle. Maybe he had shot someone—not on purpose—but just because he wasn’t that smart and something might have happened, maybe an accident. BB told the sheriff that was what he was thinking when he took the rifle. It wasn’t Looty’s fault he was the way he was.
“I don’t see why they’d put him in jail for taking a rifle. That ain’t much,” Casey said.
“I think it’s called messin’ with evidence or something.” Taylor was repeating something he had heard on Big Town more than likely.
The four of us just sat in the straight-back wooden chairs in Mr. O’Grady’s office. It had yellowed walls with little furnishings except for a calendar provided by Thompson’s Cotton Gin and Company, a pendulum clock, and a picture of Jefferson Davis. The walls didn’t have any wanted posters. There weren’t many people wanted in Cotton City for high crimes, I guess. The biggest crime in Cotton City, according to Cousin Carol, was the domino game. A ceiling fan spun full blast, blowing papers on the desk and cooling us a little in the process.
Mr. O’Grady had BB in his office next to the front office where we were sitting. The door was about half way open, and we could see everybody.
Ben looked at Casey and Taylor then turned his head toward me. Ben had a gentle look that he sometimes got, and I felt sorry for him. I couldn’t imagine him or BB doing anything wrong.
After a few minutes talking to BB alone, they took Ben in. We were left in the room with President Davis and Thompson’s Cotton Gi
n, and the clock, its pendulum moving back and forth. The door remained partially open, and my chair was set so I could see everybody. I still craned my neck to look. I saw BB and Ben.
“What in the world were you thinkin,’ BB?” I heard Sheriff Bilbeau say.
I looked at Casey and Taylor and whispered, “I thought he had just told him what he was thinkin’.” They looked back at me and shrugged.
“I think it’s one of those questions you aren’t supposed to answer,” Casey said. “It means you weren’t thinking.”
BB’s face tightened and his fists seemed to clinch. He must know he had not been thinking. “I was jus’ trying to help Looty. I know it prob’ly wasn’t the right thing to do, but I wanted to help him.”
Mr. O’Grady moved around behind BB and Ben. Both remained rigid in their seats. He took off his hat and scratched his head. He ran his hand through his hair before replacing his hat.
“Do you know you could go to prison? They don’t let jail birds go to college. In case you ever planned to go.”
This was getting serious. It had always been serious, but now they were talking about jail—and not just the city jail or the county jail but prison. Prison sounded a lot worse than jail. Prison was where guys like James Cagney went.
“Now, one thing we got to get straightened out is this business at the river. It’s hard to believe that y’all jus’ happened to be fishin’ there, and jus’ happened to find this body. I mean—you can see what it looks like, you taking his rifle and all.”
BB’s lips quivered. For a minute I thought he was going to cry. He looked scared. His mouth opened, and he took a deep breath.
“We didn’t just happen to be there, Sheriff. We were invited.”
For a minute the ticking of the pendulum was the only sound. Sheriff Bilbeau said nothing; he just pushed his hat back on his head and stared at BB.
Mississippi Cotton Page 18
