The foreman was a white man with great big arms and blood all down his thick apron. His curved knife was black and pitted, but you could see it was sharp by the way it cut through the cow’s shoulder joint; it made a tearing sound as it reaped. He was taller than anyone else in the slaughterhouse.
My father stood up straight and said, ‘You said it was seventeen dollars an’ this here is only ‘bout half that.’
‘I ain’t got time t’talk to you, boy. You take what you can git.’
My father stood up taller as if he was trying to get to be as tall as that white man; I got behind him and grabbed onto his pants.
‘You made me a deal, Mr. Mischew, and I want what’s mines.’
‘Niggah?’ the white man exclaimed as he slapped the flat of the blade on his apron. ‘You want sumpin’? ‘Cause you know I’m just the man give it to ya.’
If that white man did much business with my father he must’ve known that he was always soft-spoken and respectful. But when you cheat a man and call him nigger — and his boy is standing there too? Well that was why Mr. Mischew looked so surprised when he found himself flat on his back on the bloody floor.
Mouse cut open a fish and handed the limp corpse over to Dom, who scooped out the entrails and rinsed it in the pond.
I was sick and ashamed of being sick. My head felt hot.
‘Hey, Easy. You don’t look too good, son.’ Mouse smiled gently. ‘Why’ont you take a little nap. We get ya when it’s time t’go Dom’s.’
‘What you need all them fish fo’, man? We cain’t eat all that.’
‘Put ‘em in the smoker,’ Domaque said. ‘Smoke’em up an’ we got fish all the time. Go down t’Miss Alexander an’ trade some fo’drinks in the bar.’ Then he laughed and Mouse laughed and they kept on pulling guts out and tossing them in the water.
‘I’ma go back on t’Houston,’ I said. ‘I ain’t got no mo’ time fo’this mess.’
‘Com’on, Easy, gimme a break.’ Mouse’s mouth made a smile but his eyes were deadly. ‘Dom got a weddin’ gift fo’me but he wanna go fishin’ first. I tole you in the car we gonna go fishin’.’
‘How much longer you wanna be down here?’
‘Just a couple’a mo’ days. Anyway I need ya t’go out t’my stepdaddy’s wit’ me.’
‘Why?’
Mouse pointed a limp gar at me. ‘That man is the devil, Ease. Ain’t no way I can go out there alone.’
‘Com’on, Raymond, I ain’t never known you t’be scared’a nothin’.’
‘I am afraid of him,’ he said.
‘Abraham had cattle and silver and gold,’ Dom was saying as he led us through deep thickets toward his house. ‘An’ Lot was wit’ him an’ so was Abraham’s wife.’
‘What you always sayin’, Dom?’ I asked.
‘Rememberin’ the Bible like Miss Dixon say.’
‘What’s that?’
‘She say that to know the word you gotta make the Bible yo’ own. You gotta know the stories just like they happened t’friends’a yours.’ He laughed and went on, ‘An’ they was so rich that they built diffrent houses an’ after a time they vied fo’the land.’
Mouse came up next to me and said, ‘Dom wanna be a preacher, Ease. He always readin’ the Bible an’ whatnot. You know he’s a well-learnt boy, that ole white woman Dixon make him read ev’rythang.’
‘Who’s that?’ I asked, suddenly jealous of that freak’s knowledge. ‘How come she gonna teach him his letters?’
‘Just a crazy white woman, Ease. She ain’t got no knittin’ so she take on charities.’
We came to the clearing after an hour or so.
Dom’s house was an abandoned molasses shack. It was small and dilapidated but it was also nice because he had flowers growing all around it. Sunflowers on either side and golden wild rose bushes along the pebbled path that led to the front door. There were thick leafy bushes of pink dahlias at odd places in the yard. It looked as though all the flowering plants were wild but I knew they weren’t because there were no weeds to be seen. Sweet pea vines wound up the loose timbers that shored up the east wall of the shack. Purple passion fruit flowers knotted through the ash branches that surrounded the dale. There were other flowers of white and red but I didn’t know what kind they were, and neither did Dom.
Underneath the sweet peas was a clear patch of earth that was covered with the body parts of hard-rubber baby dolls. Arms and feet and heads with golden and brown hair. Mostly they were white dolls like the well-to-do white children have but there were some colored ones too. It looked like a pile of infant corpses washed up from their tiny graves in a terrible storm.
‘You got chirren, Dom?’ I asked.
He gave a high squeal that might have been pleasure and said, ‘Them there is my chirren, Easy.’ Then he chuckled and Mouse did too.
Dom said that his ‘room’ was too small for all us guests, so he went in and came out with three crates for us to sit on. It was very pleasant to sit out there in his wild yard. A garden as beautiful as any I’d seen in the rich part of Houston; it was almost like an inside room or greenhouse only with the sky for a roof. I told Dom how much I liked it and he smiled.
‘I’m always doin’ sumpin’ t’make it bettah,’ he said. ‘I’ma start puttin’ in fruit trees next year an’ by the time they grows maybe I have me a wife t’share ‘em wit’.’ He looked out over his garden with that terrible smile and dead eye.
‘Well, Dom, we got yo’ fish, now what you got fo’me?’ Mouse said in his taking-care-of-business voice.
‘I got it, Ray, right in the house.’
‘Well let’s have it. Easy an’ me got some miles t’cover fo’ we can rest.’
There were hummingbirds at the sweet peas, flicking in and out of the blossoms so fast you could hardly tell they were there. I felt funny, light-headed, but I didn’t want it to change. It seemed to me that this was the Eden Dom talked about; like he built his own garden right out of the Bible.
‘Here you go, Ray.’ Dom handed Mouse a doll that had been burned and mutilated. It had once been a white baby doll but the hard-rubber skin was now burnt black and the clothes it wore were the overalls that a farmer wore. The brown hair was clipped short and the arms were straight out as if it were being crucified on an invisible cross. The eyes were painted over as the wide white eyes you see on a man when he’s frightened and trying to see everything coming his way.
Mouse smiled and took the doll from Dom. It seemed that Dom was a little uneasy about giving away his ugly toy but I knew that it was hard saying no to Mouse.
‘Thank you, brother,’ Mouse said. ‘DaddyReese gonna just love it.’
Mouse’s laugh filled Dom’s garden until all the flowers seemed to vibrate with it.
Chapter Six
‘What’s that doll fo’?’ I asked Mouse.
We’d been walking for miles. He was moody again, the way he’d been when he and Etta first got engaged.
‘Just sumpin’, man. Nuthin’.’
‘You went th’ough all that fo’nuthin’?’
‘It’s sumpin’, I tole ya!’
It was a quiet country path, far enough away from water to be light on insects but dose enough to have trees and wildlife. I was coming down with something. My hands were cold and the inside of my head felt like cotton wadding.
‘How come Domaque make them dolls?’ I asked.
At first I thought he was going to ignore me, but after a few steps he said, ‘Dom started makin’ ‘em when we was small. Ya see, Dom got a crazy mad temper. He ain’t slow or nuthin,’ ‘cause you know he can read as good as that white woman teach’im. But he got nerves. Somebody make fun’a him an’ he start to shake an’ the next thing you know he’s actin’ crazy. When we was little the other kids would mess wit’ us, ‘specially when we all get together after Sunday school. One time this little boy, Bunny Drinkwater, started to rag po’ ole Dom till Dom was a tremblin’ leaf. An’ that just made all the other kids join in laughi
n’. But they didn’t know that Dom had carried a butcherin’ knife wit’im that day. He never said why but I guess he was tired’a bein’ the fool. Anyway he took out after Bunny but Bunny was quick an’ Dom couldn’t move fast t’save his life so we all was expectin’ Dom t’throw that knife down an’ cry... But that’s not what happened.’
A red fox ran out into the road ahead of us. It looked up at Mouse and pulled its head back like it recognised Raymond. Then it turned tail and slipped off into the brush. Mouse laughed and seemed to get in a better mood.
‘Anyway... Dom went out after Bunny swinging his knife so wild that I half expected he was gonna cut his own self; but then Bunny tripped. All the little boys screamed like girls. Dom swung down t’gut little Bunny but he missed and just kinda cut him on the arm. Bunny was so scared by that little cut that he was frozen on the ground an’ Dom raised his hand fo’ the kill...’ Mouse stared off into the woods remembering something. I was afraid to hear the rest. ‘Shit. One’a the big boys runned out and grabbed Dom fo’ he could finish it. You know I always feel bad when I think’a that; like I’m missin’ sumpin’.’
‘But what ‘bout the dolls?’
‘Yeah.’ Mouse picked up a thick branch from the path and started snicking off the switches to smooth it into a pole. ‘I tole Dom that he had t’git hold’a hisself ‘cause the folks ‘round there didn’t like humpbacks killin’ they babies. That’s when he got his first doll. He dressed it up like Bunny. He tore at it and pissed on it; threw it in a sty an’ let the pigs stamp it.’ Mouse laughed to himself. ‘Yeah, Easy, he had a fine ole time wit’ his dolls. An’ only me an’ Jo knew it.’
After a while the path grew crooked and rutty. The branches hung so low that I had to walk stooped over half of the time. Mouse said that the road had once been the way to town from his stepfather’s farm but that Reese let it go to seed years before, after Mouse’s natural mother died.
‘The ole man fell apart after Momma died,’ Mouse said.
When we got close enough to see the place Mouse stopped, wiped his mouth, and stared.
I was feeling tired so I said, ‘Well, let’s git on wit’ it. That’s it, right?’
Mouse didn’t say a word.
‘Raymond.’ I hoped his real name would shock him into moving.
‘Yeah?’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said, but he didn’t move.
‘What we waitin’ fo’?’
His eyes were colder than all winter long.
‘I’m scared, Easy.’
‘We cain’t turn back.’
‘Why not?’ he asked like a child might.
‘What kinda fool you gonna feel like if you come all the way out here an’ then you don’t even ask? You cain’t tell, you know, he might reach in his pocket an’ come out wit’ the bread.’
That seemed to tickle Mouse. The winter passed and he smiled.
‘All right, Easy. We see what he got t’give.’
The yard, if you could call it that, was a mess. There was an old wagon that had both of its axles broken, the rusted-out metal hulk of a steam boiler, and pointy-spouted oil cans scattered around. There was a jumbled pile of old bales of hay that must’ve laid there for five years and more. Old furniture tossed anywhere and many things I couldn’t even put a name to. I got the feeling that the old farmer went into a rage, taking everything he had and throwing it from the house and barn.
Little animals scurried in amongst the junk; there were mounds of ants; an opossum had made its nest in a hollow tree full of old clothes, rags.
There was a large stack of rotting timber that must’ve been intended for building at one time, laying in front of the house like a giant pile of dropped kindling.
A few wild roosters hopped around and four mongrel dogs sat in the shade of a sweet olive tree. The ground around them was scattered with dried turds and dead blades of grass.
The house was even worse.
It looked as if the main beams had been broken. The roof was caved in; all four walls leaned inward. The old two-story farm house had been folded into a squat hut. There was a pipe sticking out near the top of one of the slanted walls, a weak rag of smoke coming from it. If it wasn’t for that I’d’ve thought we had come on a deserted wreck.
One of the dogs got up, snarling and slavering at Mouse. It snapped and growled but just when it got near, Mouse slammed it on the side of the neck with his pole. It was a very simple thing; he did it almost like breathing, he was so blasé.
The dog’s yelp was so sharp that you could feel his pain. He rolled in the filth under the tree, making a terrible racket. The other dogs jumped up and started pacing, back and forth.
That’s when some boards that were once the front door of the house moved outward. A strong-looking black man stood in the wreck of that doorway. He wore overalls with no shirt and you could see the strength in his arms and chest like flats of dark steel. He looked like he belonged in the fields all day long, tearing up the sod and yanking trees out by the root.
Mouse dropped his stick. ‘Hey there, Reese,’ he said.
The big man came out of the doorway but he seemed to bring the shadows along with him.
‘This here’s my friend - Easy Rawlins.’
I said hello but the farmer didn’t even look at me. He was watching his dog, who by then had stopped wallowing and was simply laying in the dirt, shivering like one of the fish Mouse had stunned earlier that morning.
‘Wha’ happen my dog, Raymond?’
‘Search me. He run up like he knew me an’ then he fell into a fit.’ Mouse stared Reese straight in the face. He wasn’t letting anything show, except a slight squint from the sun.
‘Ain’t no room in the house fo’no guests, Ray. What you want?’
Mouse hunkered down against a rotted bale of hay and said, ‘Just wanted to shout at ya, Reese, you know it’s been some years an’ I thought I’d see ya while we down here.’
‘I ain’t got no food and no drinks fo’ guests neither. So if you got sumpin’ t’say then let’s have it.’
I was sorry I talked Mouse into coming.
‘Looks like you could use a hand out here, Reese. Farm’s goin’ to shit if you ask me.’
Reese took a deep breath, you could see the rage. Watching Mouse bait him was like watching a man striking matches over a vat of gasoline.
‘I mean you might need some help out here an’, well you know I’m kinda settlin’ down nowadays... gettin’ married to a girl down in Houston.’
Reese was through with small talk.
‘So I thought maybe we talk some business. You know after my weddin’ I might wanna come on out here an’ do some honest work.’
That got a smile from Reese. He said, ‘No, uh-uh. You go on an’ do whatever it is you doin’. I stay out to here.’
‘Well we don’t have to worry ‘bout that now. I thought you wanna come on out an’ celebrate wit’ me an’ Easy. You know it ain’t ev’ryday you get a daughter-in-law an’ maybe some grandkids.’
‘I gotta take care’a my dog...’ Reese said. He turned to go back into the house.
‘Reese!’ Mouse shouted as he jumped to his feet.
The older man stopped. Without turning he said, ‘I don’t take to folks raisin’ they voice t’me out on my farm, an’ I don’t take t’folks comin’ out an’ hurtin’ my dogs. So I guess you better go back to wherever you come from or I’ma go get my gun an’...’
‘I come fo’my part’a Momma’s dowry, Reese,’ Mouse said. ‘I know she had some jewelry an’ some money from her folks when you two got married an’ you leased land wit’ it. I know you got money out here now, an’ I want some for my own weddin’. It’s mines, Reese, an’ I want it.’
The last three words turned Reese around.
I fell back a step while he and Mouse faced off.
‘You ain’t got the right t’say her name, boy. She up ev’ry night worried ‘bout you an’ who knows what you doin’, or
where? She worried herself sick an’ then she died an’ who you think brought it on?’ There were tears in Reese’s eyes. ‘She died askin’ fo’you. It broke my heart, an’ where was you? You weren’t nowhere. Nowhere. An’ my girl layin’ in that bed all yellah an’ sick ‘cause she so worried ‘bout a rotten chile like you...’
‘What good it gonna do, huh?’ Mouse shouted. ‘I’s barely a teenager an’ you come after me wit’ sticks an’ fists. What good it gonna do her t’see you beat me?’
‘You was a rotten boy, Raymond, an’ you’s a rotten man. You kilt her an’ now you want my money, but I see you dead fo’ I give up a dime.’
‘I kilt’er? You the one. You the one ravin’ ‘bout how yo’ boy so good an’ how I ain’t even legal. You the one beat on her an’ beat on me which hurt her even more cause my momma was a good woman an’ you is the devil! The devil, you hear?’ Mouse reached in the back of his pants for the second time that day. He pulled out that long-barrelled .41 and blasted that poor shivering dog. Then he shot the other three: crack, crack, crack; like ducks in an arcade. Reese hit the ground thinking that Mouse was gunning for him.
‘I’ma have what’s mines,’ Mouse said as he brought the bead down on Reese.
‘You can kill me an’ you can take my soul but I ain’t gonna give you a drop’a what’s mine!’
‘Raymond!’ I shouted. ‘Let it go, man! You cain’t get nuthin’ like this. Let it go.’
Mouse lifted the barrel a hair and shot over Reese’s head, then he turned to me and said, ‘We better get outta here.’
We went fast down the way we had come.
Half a mile down, Mouse stopped and pulled the baby doll from his jacket. He took out a string and tied it roughly around the doll’s neck and then he hung the doll from a branch so that it dangled down over the centre of the road.
Gone Fishin’ er-6 Page 5
