Other Worlds, Better Lives, A Howard Waldrop Reader Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003

by Howard Waldrop

  “Which?”

  “The elephant one.”

  “Oh? Hope you weren’t too inconvenienced. I’ll just pop out there and repair it.” He picked up a claw hammer and some nails and set off up the right-side driveway.

  The woman had a long thin object wrapped in paper in her hand.

  “This is what you came for,” she said, handing it to Houlka.

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

  “Please return it,” she said. “It has great sentimental value.”

  “I’ll do my best, Mrs. Coomer.”

  “Mrs. Coomer,” I said, gulping. “I thought you could only see into the past.”

  “All times, all places in the past,” she said.

  “Then how could you have seen this, know what we was coming for?”

  “I saw all this tomorrow morning,” she said, and went back into the house.

  We went back up the left-hand drive, passed Mr. Coomer coming back down.

  “Going to be a pleasant day,” he said. “Probably very hot. I hope you’ll come again soon.”

  Mr. Coomer went back toward the house, whistling. We went out the gate. I closed it. It rattled. I looked up. It was covered with elephant tusks and had a sign on it saying “USE OTHER GATE.” Houlka was walking on up the road. I looked back. The elephant gate was on the left and the antler one was on the right. I didn’t say anything.

  * * *

  We rode the Interurban as far as it went, then caught a ride on a truck that took us a mile from Avernus. Water was still standing in the ditches on each side of the road.

  We walked into town. People was staring at us, what few there were in town. Houlka went into the post office. He came back out. “Buck up,” he said, “it ain’t very far to the place.”

  A few people followed us, down the street, talking among themselves. We didn’t look back. There were signs on the telephone posts leading out of town pointing the way we were going. Trucks passed up, people leaned out and gawked. Some of them slowed down. One actually stopped, backed up, stopped, then went on. We kept walking.

  We came to a Y in the road, we took the right one, same as the arrows on the poles. The trees began to overgrow the road, making it green and gloomy. The day was hot and sticky.

  More trucks and cars passed us. The road went down toward a low place. We came down and there must have been two hundred vehicles, cars, trucks, and wagons, parked there. There weren’t any people there, just the sound of cooling motors as we walked through.

  The pines rose higher and closed in the other side of the meadow, making it a dark green space. As we went in, people were just disappearing around the bend from us.

  We got to where they’d been and there before us was the long flat black tongue of a river. Three or four kids was standing at a landing on this side, and a couple of them started crying.

  There was a big island in the middle of the river, and coming back from it, guided by a rope tied off at posts on each side came a ferry being poled by one guy.

  We went down to the landing. So many trees grew on the island you couldn’t see anything there.

  When we came down, the kids, who carried bundles in their hands, started crying and screaming again, looking back and forth from Houlka and me to the ferry boat and the island.

  The ferryman was stripped to the waist and his shoulders were as big as Houlka’s.

  “Shut your yapping!” he yelled at the kids. “You’ll get across in plenty of time. If you hadn’t dawdled, you could have gone over same time as your mom and dad!” They stopped crying, and one by one they unfolded their bundles and put on their sheets, and after they got them on they turned and stared at me.

  The ferry hit. Houlka put his foot on it. The kids climbed on. Then I did. I was sweating. Even if it was a hundred below zero I’d be sweating. The man went to the front, poled us out. The line sagged downstream. The man grunted and heaved, and we crossed.

  The kids jumped off, getting the bottoms of their sheets wet.

  “Mister,” said the ferryman. “It’s pretty obvious you ain’t with the group rate, so that’ll be two cents each.”

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out a nickel.

  “Four cents,” he said. “Not a nickel. Four cents.”

  “Well,” said Houlka. “Hold that nickel and remember us, and we’ll give you three more cents when we come back.”

  “I hate to make a penny that easy,” said the man, and poled back into the river.

  We walked into the arch of trees and turned around the first bend. We stepped into the clearing. There was people doing things like at any family reunion or picnic, talking, running, jumping, like that. Only each and every one of them was wearing a pointed white sheet. Some of them had the cowls pulled back while they did stuff.

  Then a hush went across the clearing. There was some confusion, and we saw a raised platform on the other side of the field they was all looking at. They waited for a signal. They got it.

  As one, they all put their sheets over their heads and turned to face us.

  They all came to a sort of attention with a flutter and snap of sheets.

  They stood stock still wherever they are, maybe two thousand Klans-men and women and children.

  Houlka put his right hand on my shoulder then and started me moving toward the platform. I don’t remember anything but sheets and eyes, but they moved aside and cleared a small path for us, and after two or three weeks, it seemed like, we were standing in front of the speakers’ platform.

  There were huge dogs tied with about eighty pounds of barge chain each to the corner posts. One of them sniffed, bared his teeth, growled.

  “Well, I thought I seen everything,” said one of the sheets on the platform. There must have been fifty of them there.

  “It’s a little early for sausage-makin’, but looks like we gonna be eatin’ high on the nigger tonight,” said another.

  “I get the brains,” said a third.

  “His friend there looks a little tough. Hour or two o’ boiling take care of that. Let’s cut off his legs, put tourniquets on them, have him eat some of his own legs before we kill him!”

  “I say let’s quit talkin’ and do it,” said another. Fifteen guns came out.

  Very slowly Houlka reached in his pocket and took the golden ruler out and held it up in the air.

  “EVERYBODY SIT DOWN NOW,” a voice boomed from the back. You could hear the whistling of sheets and the snap of sleeves as everybody sat wherever they were.

  When they were all sitting down, I saw there was a big overstuffed chair at the back with a fat Klansman in it.

  “That there ruler bought you another two minutes living. Start talking.”

  “I’m Houlka Lee. I work for Boss Eustis up in Anomie, in Spunt County.”

  “Spunt County. Mighty pretty women in Spunt County. I was thinking of going up there sometime and getting me a wife,” said the Klansman in the chair.

  “Mr. Eustis sent me here to get your dog.”

  There wasn’t a sound in the place except the hot wind through the pines. Then the Klansman started chuckling and the sound spread around the platform, the field, all across the island, the river. It sounded like a thousand apples falling all at once. Then the sound died away.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so. I got an open invitation to any of the county bosses they can send someone down here for my dog any time. Why, he’ll walk right up to you. You might even say, he’ll be eager to see you.” He turned his hood toward me. “That still don’t explain the nigger boy there, and why we shouldn’t get a lot of fun out of him. This is a three-day meeting, you know?”

  “I brought him to hold my bow and arrows and my club. I figure both my hands are gonna be full.”

 
“You got that right. Only you probably won’t have no head left, so it don’t matter much about the hands.”

  “That’s the only reason I brought him. Had no idea this was a holiday.”

  “Well, after I give you my dog, it won’t matter much why you brought him ’cause that dog just sometimes don’t know when to stop greeting folks.”

  “I came here to get a dog Mr.—mister. It’s just another job to me, like mending a fence or painting a barn.”

  “Why . . .”

  Houlka held the ruler up high.

  The Klansman leaned back in his chair.

  “Which one is it?” Houlka asked, looking back and forth, taking off his quiver and bow and handing me his club, at the dogs chained to the posts.

  “Oh. Oh! You think it’s one of them? Why, them’s just puppies! Weaned last week. When you were sent after a dog, mister, you were sent after a dog.”

  The Klansman hollered over his shoulder. “Serbia! Up front, boy!”

  People moved out of the way at the edge of the stand. There was a jangling of a collar and a dog the size of a bear came around, shaking off the marks the bars had made in his cage.

  It came around in front of the platform and sat down on its tiny little hind-quarters. Its head was a foot wide and its front legs were the size of stovepipes.

  “That’s my dog, mister.” People moved out of the way, clearing a place around me and Houlka. “You take him off this island, your boss can keep him with my blessings. You don’t, I’ll send your Boss Eustis a letter saying thanks for taking me up on my offer.”

  “See Mrs. Coomer gets her ruler back,” said Houlka.

  “Good as done,” said the Klansman. “Any time you ready Mr. Lee.”

  Houlka took a deep breath. “Ready.”

  “Serbia,” said the Klansman. The dog came up, its hair bristling, lips pulled back. It shook all over in anticipation.

  “Serbia! Marcus Garvey!” said Mr. Dees.

  * * *

  I closed my eyes. There was a big long snarl and a smash. I opened them and Houlka was under the dog, twisting it over by the hind legs. It must have weighed a hundred-fifty pounds. It moved so fast it looked like it had three heads. It bit him on the arm and leg and the back, and then they changed ends twice and I closed my eyes again.

  * * *

  Dr. Sclape finished sewing up the cuts. Houlka was bruised and torn from one end to another.

  The dog was back at the Boss’s place, in the third cage that day. It had gnawed through two already on the way back to Spunt county. The Boss wanted him to take it right back, but the others on the porch said that wasn’t Houlka’s place.

  Miz Rio came running in. She looked down at Houlka.

  He tried to smile.

  “That sonofabitch Eldridge Eustis!” she said. “I’m going to get a gun and go over there and shoot his bony old ass off.”

  Houlka held up his hand and mumbled something.

  “What?” she asked. “What?”

  I leaned down. “He said it’s only seven more weeks.”

  “He gets you killed,” said Dianne Rio, “and I’ll kill him, dead, dead, dead, dead!”

  Houlka shook his head.

  First Miz Rio started crying, then I did.

  XI

  “You know what I’d like right about now?” said the Boss

  “No, what’s that, Eldridge?” asked one of the toadies.

  “I’d like about three of them big shiny apples from Mr. Hester’s orchard.

  “That would be real good, Boss, but as you know, Mr. Hester ain’t brought them to market yet, so you gonna have to wait.”

  “Well, good as they are,” said the Boss, “I always thought he picked them about a week late. I think right now they would be at the peak of their perfection.”

  “You must have spies, Boss, cause everybody knows no one got to sample one of them before it came to market in thirty-five years.”

  “I bet if a guy was real smart, real good like Mr. Lee here, I figure he could find a way to bring me about three of them apples before tomorrow night.”

  “What you’re advocating, Boss, is trespass and trover. At the very least, Mr. Lee would be faced with a writ of replevin. And of course you’re forgetting that he might end up back at Parchman if he was doing an illegal act, toots sweet.”

  “’Course it’ll never come to that, ’cause Mr. Hester would of course assume that first Mr. Lee would be coming for one of those luscious daughters of his, if it wasn’t so near harvest time. He’d have three or four reasons for shooting first and asking questions later. Which means the law won’t be involved at all.”

  “If he was caught, he would of course say you sent him which of course you would deny,” said JimBob.

  “Sounds like a mighty losing proposition to me. But I sure would like Mr. Lee here to bring me about three of them apples back from Mr. Hester’s orchard,” said the Boss.

  * * *

  We were on the road to the western edge of the county.

  “What they said,” I said.

  * * *

  We was on this side of the county road, and beyond was a stand of trees, then there was a field that Mr. Hester kept mowed so he could see anyone sneaking up on his place from where his big house overlooked the orchard from a rise.

  There was a bridge over the creek just to our right out on the road, the one that ran through Mr. Hester’s orchard, that his daughters pumped up to the orchard.

  We waited in the tall August grass on this side of the bar ditch. It was noon and hot. We were going to wait till dark, I guess, but of course that’s when Mr. Hester’s most vigilant.

  We heard trucks coming down the road and moved back into the grass. They slowed and stopped. It was the state chain gang trucks. The dog truck had pulled up about a quarter-mile back. The two trucks near the bridge were full.

  “Two you boys get out them big sledges,” yelled one of the guards. “A. T. Last, on the road.”

  There was a clanking of chains as the other men jumped down.

  “Come on down here with me, A.T. You men follow us.” The guard was carrying a 10-gauge pump shotgun with the barrel sawed off in front of the pump.

  “A.T., you done back-sassed a captain about one time too many. That’s once. Nobody does it twice. But we have a little ritual training exercise to drive a lesson home.” The guard looked around. “Speaking of home, you was born around here weren’t you?”

  “Mile from here, Captain.” A.T. was the biggest black man I’d ever seen in my life, built like Houlka only two feet taller. He wasn’t wearing leg irons.

  “Well, well. Don’t think about going there today. A.T., you see that bridge piling there? You get up under that bridge piling and you put your shoulder up agin’ the beam, you hear? I mean, put it up against it good. No, not that one out here, that one back in there about three feet. That’s just about right. Now you two other boys, you knock that pile right out into the creek like it was a baseball, hear?”

  There were sounds of hammering that would have killed an elephant, then a big whoof! from A.T. and the piling thudding into the dirt. We heard the two men with the hammers run out from under the bridge, and some timbers groan.

  “Go back to the truck boys, you done good. Extra beans for the two coming up!” he yelled up to the road. Then we heard him light a cigarette. “A.T., can you hear me?”

  We heard a groan.

  “I’ll take that for yes cap’n,” said the guard. “A.T., we gonna go up the road about two mile and have our cornbread and coffee and a cigarette or two. When we get back I want to find one of two things: the taxpayers’ nice county bridge here, or a pile of lumber with you under it. Ain’t no third choice I can see. You understand, A.T.? You learning about back-sass u
nder there?”

  “Yes, Cap’n,” he groaned.

  “Well, you have a long cogitation on it, A.T. We’ll see you in about an hour.” The guard walked back up to the road, climbed in and the trucks drove over the bridge. “Oh lordy,” we heard A.T. moan as they rolled over him.

  Houlka nodded to me, pointed down the bank to the creek. We got in the shallow edge of it, walked up to the bridge. A.T. was bent, straining, eyes closed in pain.

  “You from around here?” asked Houlka.

  “Please don’t make me talk mister,” said A.T. He shifted, dirt ran down onto his head from the bridge planks. “Can’t you see I got troubles?”

  “You know Mr. Hester?”

  “Godawmighty, mister. I worked for him for ten years, till I messed up in town and was put on the road gang.”

  “You reckon you could get some apples from the orchard for me?”

  “You better get out from under this bridge is what you better do,” said A.T.

  “If you was loose, I mean?” asked Houlka.

  “I could get as many as you need. But I ain’t gonna be loose anytime soon. I got three more years. I can’t waste my time with foolishness.”

  “I mean loose for a little while, today.”

  “I could get a whole tree worth. I killed a copperhead one time had Mr. Hester in a bad fix.”

  “Tell you what,” said Houlka. “I fix it so you can get away for a few minutes, you get me some apples, and we’ll have a little fun with the captain.”

  “Why you do that?”

  “I need the apples. And I got no use for cap’ns.”

  “I’ll be goddamned,” said A.T.

  * * *