The Mercy Seat

by Rilla Askew

  I said, “Well, yes, Mama, I guess he did.”

  Lovena Wixon

  Granny Phelps come to the front porch, hollered clean through to the back.

  “Loveeny, you better come out here! John Lodi’s just this minute shot somebody in front of Dayberry’s!”

  I was doing the washing. I could hear her good as anything. She was hollering all the way through the house.

  “They ain’t even covered him up yet!”

  Little voice squeaking, seemed to me like I could nearly see her, tipping up on her tiptoes. I was plumb out by the smokehouse.

  “There’s kids down yonder all ever one looking at him,” she said. “Come on now. Quick!”

  Well, quick as I could rinse the soap off, I went. Run down there with Edna on my hip and I’d left Jelly in the bed, I never even thought about her. I’d forgot she was home. Whole front of my apron was sopping wet with washwater, but you can’t stop to think and change at a time like that. You never saw anything like it. Blood from here to yonder, half the men in town standing around waiting for somebody to do something. Ignorant things. Wasn’t anything to do. The man was dead. Well, he was a white man, you could see that. They were going to have to wait for the federal marshal to come from McAlester, Choctaw law couldn’t tell them what to do, though, yes, Tecumseh Moore was there. They were all there, half of Cedar, and what ones wasn’t there was coming. That’s how fast the news spread.

  Well, we didn’t know him, of course that’s the first thing I thought of, but when I saw we didn’t know him, I just went to trying to keep the children back. You want to be helpful. I could see those men weren’t being helpful, they were just standing around. Sheriff Moore and Jim Dayberry were yonder in the stable doorway with their heads together. I didn’t see John Lodi then. Sure did see the man he killed, though. He was laying on his back in the street right in front of the mercantile, and I guess John’d shot him with the shotgun, because the top of his head was blowed off. But Lord at the blood, you never saw the like, pooling in the dirt and it was still a-bubbling, worse than a stuck pig. You didn’t believe he lived two seconds. Half his neck was gone.

  I’ll swan to my time, those men stood around, stood around, I didn’t believe anybody was ever going to think to cover the man up. I was about ready to go back to the house and get Hank’s tarpaulin or something, but you couldn’t keep the children out of there. They’d just slip under your arm, the boys would, and edge right up where they didn’t have any business, and nobody was doing one thing to stop them, and I thought, Well, I better just stay here. If I’d ever thought about Jelly, I don’t guess I would’ve seen any of it, because I would not of let her witness such an awful scene as that. I don’t know where those other children’s mothers were. Oh, directly here come one or two of them, Hattie Chessley and Nan Tannehill and some of them, but they didn’t shoo their children off. People act so ignorant sometimes. Well, you can see I had my hands full, what with Edna bawling and me trying to keep those kids back, and I sure didn’t aim to be like the rest of them and stand around gawking at that poor man, so I did not precisely examine the body, I just heard some of them talking about John Lodi’d shot him in the back. Well, I don’t know about that, but I can tell you one thing: he sure enough shot him in the front one time, because his forehead was just a pulp. I got there quick as it happened, it must not of been over five minutes. Hadn’t even a fly landed on him yet.

  Well, it wasn’t twenty minutes after that before they brought that girl around the side of the barn. Of course, I didn’t have any idea then she was a girl. You can believe it or not, but that child had on britches. She isn’t even a child really, I’d put her at sixteen or better—old enough to be settled down married and not messing with such foolishness as wearing britches and whatever-all else she’s been at—but at first I thought it was a boy of twelve or fourteen maybe they’d caught back there doing something, into something he hadn’t ought to of been. To my mind they were bringing this little fella around from the back —it was Angus Alford and Field Tatum had ahold of her on either side by the arm. Brought her over to where Sheriff Moore was standing talking to Dayberry, took that child’s hat off—she had on an old slouch hat swallowed her face to the bottom of her ears nearly—and sure enough it was a girl. I liked to dropped my teeth. Her hair was twisted up in a stingy little bun, had her eyes scrinched up like a Chinese. But there wasn’t any mistaking it was a female. The men kept on talking, hardly seemed to look at her. I believe they were embarrassed. She was just as still as she could be. Well, I had to scrooch over a bit—Hattie Chessley had got right in my way—and that’s when I seen Lodi sitting on an old hay bale inside the barn. He was about as still as that child yonder, had a fat big-barreled pistol, I don’t know what it was, some kind of pepperbox or something, appeared to me like, laying in his lap. He was looking at that girl, she was looking at him, both of them still as a dead possum, and I didn’t know what to think. Afterwhile Grace Lovett sidled up to me and whispered that was his daughter. I wasn’t any too surprised to hear it. John Lodi’s always been about as strange as they come, didn’t surprise me any to see he had him a peculiar daughter. I just said to myself then, I said, Well, come to the hearing, they’re going to learn a whole lot more about it. Going to find out those two aren’t the only strange ones in that family. Provided they get as far as a hearing. Provided somebody don’t kill him before the law gets him to Fort Smith. Un-huh. You mark my words. That’s just what I said.

  So in another little bit, here come the other one. Walking down the street. Come from up north, around Lolly’s or somewhere. I seen everybody looking, so I turned and looked, and here she come, sashaying down the street toward Dayberry’s. Sashaying isn’t quite the word, because she was coming slow, but there was something in it gave the appearance of sashaying. Had on a little old calico skirt looked like it had about nine petticoats under it. Had her hair all swooped up, no bonnet on nor nothing. Now, this one’s about as pretty as the other one is homely, but you can see in a minute they’re kin. She come slow; everybody just hushed up and turned and looked at her. She didn’t blink an eyelash, never acknowledged a one of us nor the dead man on the street, just kept her eyes on her sister and come on. I wanted to slap her. I hate to say it, a time like that, but that child had a look on her face made me just want to slap her. That was her uncle laying yonder, she never even looked at him. Of course, I didn’t know that yet, but I knew it was a dead man her daddy’d blowed to Kingdom Come, you’d think she could’ve had the decency to at least look a little scared or shamed or something. She walked right in amongst us and past us, went over by the little scrawny one and stood beside her, kept her eyes straight ahead. Like she was sleepwalking nearly, except she never wiped that look off her face. I’m telling you the truth, there was more than a few of us would’ve been glad to wipe it off for her.

  It couldn’t have been fifteen or twenty minutes then, here come the rest of them, just a-going lickety in a brand-new flatbed wagon. Had a highstepping team of horses, and I’m telling you what, here they come. The one boy was whipping those horses, they barreled up there and the boy in the cowboy hat and boots jumped down. I don’t know how many of them there were altogether, the three boys and about a half-dozen grown girls on down to one little’un couldn’t have been over seven or eight years old. The minute the horses jerked up, those girls went to wailing. It was the pitifulest thing you nearly ever saw. That was their daddy laying with his neck blowed out yonder, I didn’t need anybody to sidle up and whisper me that. The one boy hollered at them to all stay put, and he jumped down, those poor girls just a-weeping and holding on to one another, and then the boy that was driving jumped down.

  That first boy that come out of the wagon, the one in the hat and the fancy boots, he took one look at his daddy and immediately went to swooping and prancing all over that street. Couldn’t be still a minute but he didn’t know what to do with himself, and he just walked quick with his arms out, up and down and aro
und, cussing. He didn’t look at his father any more after that, just swooped like an old fighting rooster or something, up and down, cussing, like he was nearly blind. Well, I thank my lucky stars Jelly wasn’t there to hear that kind of language, but every other child on the street surely was, on down to six and seven years old, and couldn’t nobody put a stop to it. Looks to me like a few of those mothers could’ve took their children on off away from there and home where they belonged.

  The one blond boy stayed in the wagon, held the horses, just sat there looking down, and then next thing I knew in all the commotion, he’d slipped down and come over to stand by the two girls. That was the first I knew he wasn’t a part of that other bunch but one of John Lodi’s. He’s a big old kid, I bet you going on six feet nearly, and blond as he can be. Wearing suspenders. Good-looking boy, kind of gawky. I don’t know what in the world he was doing riding up with the rest of them, but he come in with them, and then they separated after that. He stood with his sisters, and he did about like they did, which was nothing. Just stared straight ahead. In a minute Tecumseh Moore headed up to try and calm the cussing boy down some, and quick as his back was turned, the blond one went in the stable and squatted down by his father on the dirt floor. I didn’t see him say anything, he just crouched down there by him in the dirt, and here in a little bit Moore seen him and went in and told him he’d better come on outside.

  And of course along about then is when I remembered Jelly home sick in the bed, and I turned around with Edna on my hip and went on back to the house. I didn’t see when that colored deputy showed up nor anything more about it, but I witnessed plenty enough to allow I didn’t sleep too good that night.

  But, now, there’s one thing has got me completely baffled, and I want you to see if you can figure it out. You just calculate a little bit. All right. Now, I got there five minutes after the killing, maybe less even. Twenty minutes more, they found the little scrawny one. Five or ten minutes after that, here come the pretty one, and it wasn’t fifteen minutes more till the whole rest of the bunch come in the wagon from Waddy Crossing. Maybe you can explain it to me. In less than an hour they was every one there but the dead fella’s poor wife. You know and I know couldn’t nobody send word eight or nine miles to Big Waddy Crossing and them children get back to Cedar in that amount of time. And that one girl was walking—you know it takes two hours and better to walk it. Those children had to know a killing was going to happen, don’t you reckon? Long before it come down.

  Grady Dayberry

  Dad told it this way. Said it started back wherever they come from and there was another man in it besides them two, said there was guns mixed up in it some way, and old bad blood, and it was this third man somehow brought it all to a head. John Lodi never was one to tell his business, so I believe my daddy had to piece it together from one thing and another, whatever-all Lodi had told him and what folks around here said, and then, too, what Dad himself witnessed, which was pretty near start to finish of the killing—he was the main testifier at the hearing, I saw that myself—but if there’s anybody knew anything about it to speak of, I believe it was my dad. So Dad said there was a running feud between these two brothers went way back to the land of their birth, and now, how it worked out them to be simultaneously fussing and living just practically one on top of the other—that’s how my dad told it, said their houses wasn’t fifty feet across the lot from each other, front to back—well, that part I don’t know. This third man that was in on it, I don’t believe he was any kin, but he’d known them back in the place they’d come from and been with them somehow on this deal.

  So Dad said this fellow—his name was Tanner—said he showed up from Texas one evening. Rode into Cedar one evening on a big old bay gelding, leading a fine-looking train of fifty choice U.S. Army mules. Stolen, of course, but now I’ll tell you something: that man didn’t have to ride clear from the bottom to the top of the Choctaw Nation to sell those mules. He could have unloaded them just anywhere along the line, from Broken Bow to Talihina. Been a lot smarter to sell ’em down around Idabel or somewheres, the quicker shut of them the better, instead of parading them two hundred rough-going miles through the Kiamichi Mountains. There was deputy U.S. marshals crawling all around in these hills. I guess the man liked to live reckless, or else he was plumb ignorant, I don’t know, but anyhow, here he come, paraded them critters right through town here and on up to Big Waddy Crossing. Word got around about this bunch of mules Fate Lodi had for sale, and folks come around and bickered and bartered and bought maybe a half dozen, and then this fellow Tanner went up to Muskogee or somewheres and unloaded the rest. I believe he got a little nervous to get out of town. Dad said the law at Fort Smith had also got wind of this fine bunch of mules Fate Lodi had for sale, but said by the time the marshal come nosing around, Tanner was already on the scout up to Sallisaw or someplace in Cherokee country, and the six or seven mules they’d sold hereabouts all had new traces, new harnesses, new masters—and new marking, I expect, burned into their rear ends.

  Well, sir, that was the first of this fella Tanner coming, but it sure wasn’t the last. Him and Fate Lodi, I don’t know what-all they got into up yonder, gunrunning, horsethieving, bootlegging, no telling what. You’d hear about it, Dad said, like it was just a den of thieves at Big Waddy Crossing. That little community had quite a reputation at one time. Kept it up, Dad said, till that colored deputy carried Fayette to Fort Smith one time on a charge of introducing spirits into the Territory, but seem to me like Dad said they had to turn around and let him go again—couldn’t find no evidence and wouldn’t nobody testify against him. Old Tanner had already gone on the scout to Creek Nation, and that was all she wrote for them two’s little partnership. But, now, what-all Tanner had to do with it I don’t know, but I know it was something hatched up between them two, Fate and Tanner, that set a match to the feud between the two brothers. My dad told this to me in so many words, he said, “When Tanner showed up with them mules from Texas, John Lodi changed in his being from that day forward.” That’s just what my dad said.

  I can’t say that I noticed anything different. I can’t recollect that I knew anything about it at the time—or anyhow I didn’t hear about any mules Fate Lodi had for sale up at Big Waddy Crossing, because I was just a boy then and I had other things on my mind. And John Lodi walked in from Waddy every morning and came on to work and walked home at night same as always, and he didn’t quit that or miss a day of it, I reckon, from the minute he went to work for my daddy right up until the afternoon of the killing. I’ve thought about it since then, thought about what my dad said. “He changed in his being.” I’ve tried to fathom what Dad meant.

  After Lodi made me that muzzle loader I got to hanging around the stable pretty good, what time I wasn’t out in the woods hunting or just whenever I thought I could get by at it without my dad locating me some little chore. I wasn’t too work-brittle at that age. But I figured me and Lodi were pardners, and I’d go hang around when I could. He didn’t perturb me like he used to, whether he had his hat on or off, and he’d showed me ever bit of the gunmaking from start to finish, explained to me just what he was doing as we went. Lodi never was much of a talker, and he didn’t talk no more nor no less after he’d got that gun finished than I’d ever known him, so I didn’t lay that off to him being changed in his being. All I figured was he’d just turned back normal, which for him was silent, and I didn’t think a thing in the world about it then. Nor do I yet. That wasn’t the kind of thing Dad was talking about.

  Pondering on it, even now, all these years later, there’s only one little incident I can think of. It was inconsequential to my mind at the time—or I shouldn’t say inconsequential, because I remember I studied on it a lot—but what I mean, it wasn’t something I looked at and said, Well, here’s a man changed in his being. But later I thought back on it, and I believe this is part of what Dad meant.

  I’d come in the livery one morning. Now, it must’ve been a Saturday becaus
e I know it was morning—I had a little something on my mind, that’s how come me to remember—and I wasn’t in school. We had us a little subscription school right here in town then, first white school around in these parts, I believe, and Mrs. Edith Hawkins was the teacher, what we called the schoolmarm, and my dad paid a dollar a month to send me and DewMan both, but DewMan quit. But I did go whenever Dad didn’t need me, which was most of the time because he had Clyde and DewMan both still home till I was nearly grown, and my mama wanted me to and so I did. So I’m going to say it was a Saturday, and I come into the stable on this particular Saturday morning and Dad was there, naturally, bent over with a hoof grasped up between his legs, trimming a pitiful old white plowhorse belonged to Manford Slocum, and Mr. Slocum and two or three others was over in the new part, around the stove, waiting and talking, how I already told you folks were apt to do. Lodi was at the forge, working the bellows up good and hot, just huffing away. Well, the minute I seen my dad I kindly started backing up toward the doorway. I thought I might just go on to the creek bottom without any lead. I was entirely out of bullets, see, otherwise I’d a been long gone rabbit hunting—that’s what I had my mind set on. There was a nice little new snow on the ground.

  Right off, Dad looked up and saw me. I figured he’d say, “Step over here a minute, Grady, I need you to do this-that-’n’-the-other.” But he didn’t say a word, just went back to cutting on that old yella hoof. Well, none of the men over there seemed to notice me or pay me any attention, so I thought I might just as well stay, and I eased over to where Lodi was pulling a big old red froe blade out of the fire, and he laid it on the anvil yonder and went to town, bang bang bang bang. He didn’t pay me any mind either, and of course that’s what you want when you’re a boy, ordinarily. You don’t want grown men’s eyes too close on you; it kindly embarrasses you, and besides, you figure if they’re looking at you too hard they’re going to pretty quick find something wrong. Except, see, I had this little business on my mind, and I was looking to get Lodi’s attention without drawing any from my dad.