Unraveled

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  “If they’ll stay away from us.” Hollis rocked and sipped at the sweating jar.

  Ned didn’t like that comment at all. “I’ll come by and check on you, too. Y’all call me if there’s trouble.”

  “Ain’t got no phone.”

  Ned wasn’t surprised. “Well, somebody close by does.”

  “I do.” Avon shifted the baby to her other hip. “But I’m on the other side of the pasture. Daddy cain’t run over to tell me every time sum’m happens.”

  “You’ll know if there’s trouble.” Hollis finished his tea.

  “How, Daddy?”

  “You’ll know.”

  Ned worried at that statement all the way home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mark and I were finishing breakfast Monday morning when a car pulled up our gravel drive. Miss Becky was washing dishes and humming her favorite sacred song, “In The Garden.” The wooden kitchen door was open and the candy-apple red ’67 Impala I saw through the screen almost took my breath away. Hootie barked a couple of times before slipping under the porch.

  “Uh oh.” Grandpa took one last sip of coffee from his saucer and rose from the table.

  Miss Becky dried her hands on a flour sack dish towl. “Who is it?”

  “Frank Clay’s brother, Donald Ray.” Grandpa took his hat from the rack beside the door and set it just so on his head. He stepped onto the porch. “Shut up, Hootie! Get out Donald Ray.”

  “Does he bite?”

  “Naw. The worst he’ll do is histe his leg on you.”

  “My lands.” Miss Becky cleared the table around me. “He don’t have to talk like that.”

  Mark and I snickered ’cause we’d heard worse up at the store. Miss Becky raised an eyebrow. “You watch what you say when you get older, Mister Terrence Orrin Parker, and you too, Mr. Lightfoot. Hurry and brush your teeth. The school bus’ll be here any minute.”

  Grandpa and Donald Ray were talking in front of the Impala when we came out, spitting Pepsodent. We sat on the porch to wait for the bus.

  Mr. Donald Ray was about half mad. His horn-rimmed glasses had slipped down on his nose and he pushed them up with a finger. His voice rose. “What are you gonna do about it?”

  “I don’t see much to do, Donald Ray. It was a car wreck and we’re looking into it.”

  “Shouldn’t you be trying to find out why he was in the car with a nigger gal?”

  Grandpa flicked his eyes at us, and I pretended to be interested in the ink scribbles on the brown paper cover on my math book. I probably should have been paying attention to the contents, because I was lost as a goose in “new math.” I’d been pretty good at arithmetic, but all those sets and unions got past me on the first day and I was still having trouble catching up.

  Mark didn’t have any books because he wasn’t even enrolled yet, so he just studied his feet. Grandpa promised to come up to the school before classes took up so he could sign the papers.

  “I don’t believe there was any laws broke, him riding with her.” Grandpa’s hands were in the pockets of his overalls. “We’re thinking she was giving him a ride home and lost control and went off the dam, or maybe somebody might have strayed into her lane.”

  “He was in the car with a jigaboo and somebody got mad about it and ran ’em off the road. It’s clear as the nose on your face.” His glasses slipped again, and this time he looked over the top of them.

  “We don’t know any such thing.”

  “You should be investigatin’ or something instead of hanging around here at the house.”

  I figured that was one of the worst things anyone could say to Grandpa. He hated for people to tell him his job, the one he’d been doing since World War II. He was good at it, too, catching moonshiners, drunks, and even a murderer or two.

  “Tend to your own business, Donald Ray, and don’t tell me what I oughta do.”

  I knew more about the Clay family than the Mayfields. It was a pretty good sized family, and all of them were used to giving orders. A couple of ’em were the most well-to-do folks in Chisum with money earned from cattle and crops raised by sharecroppers. Grandpa said others always operated right on the edge between good and bad, and they’d skin their hands for two bits on a wagonload of cotton if they saw a chance.

  Grandpa sighed. “Cody has a deputy working on it. But she hasn’t found anything yet.”

  “She? He got some secretary making phone calls?”

  “Did you hear me? I said a deputy. He hired a woman deputy.”

  “Good God. You got that Washington feller on it and he ain’t doing nothing ’cause that Mayfield gal was half nigger, and now a split-tail workin’ on Frank’s case. I want somebody who’ll take it serious and find out who did the killin’.”

  Grandpa’s ears were getting red, a sure sign he was mad.

  “I’m getting tired of saying this. There weren’t no killing, as far as I know right now. It was an accident until we find out otherwise, and if you have trouble with that, you need to take it up with Cody’s deputy handling the case. Her name’s Anna Sloan and she’s as good a hand as anybody else I know. Do you have anything that’ll help us, or are you here to just yap and not listen to me?”

  “You better be glad it’s me here instead of Royal. You know how he is.”

  Grandpa rubbed his neck, telling me he was doing everything he could to hold back. Listening to Donald Ray, it was like telling a two-year-old to quit being nosey. “That’s enough of that. I don’t want to hear you call nobody that word no more. Now, murder’s a hard thing to prove.”

  “I’ll take Royal and Wes over there with me to Slate Shoals and they’ll beat the goddamn truth out of Hollis Mayfield. I bet he knows.”

  I’d heard of Royal Clay ever since I came to Center Springs. I wasn’t sure how they were all kin, whether they were brothers, cousins, or uncles, or even how old they were, but everything I’d ever heard about him told me he was tough as boot leather and mean as a snake. The adults talked about him in soft voices that always sounded full of fear, like they were talking about the Boogie-man.

  Grandpa took his hands from his pockets and closed the distance between him and Donald Ray, who jerked for a second like he was about to jump back in the car. I didn’t have to see Grandpa’s ice-blue eyes to know they were flashing. He lowered his voice, but the wet air was so still we could hear him clear as a bell.

  “You keep on and I’ll haul you in for being a public nuisance and interfering with an investigation, and maybe even trespassing, if I think it’ll stick. You better settle yourself down, hoss, and stay out of my business. All you’re gonna do is start trouble.”

  “You can’t tell us where we can go and where we can’t. Royal’s done said what needs doing.” Donald Ray poked at Grandpa’s chest with a forefinger. “He don’t want to wait.”

  “You better fold that finger in if you want to keep it!”

  They were both breathing hard, like they’d been throwing sacks of feed into the back of the truck when Miss Becky’s voice floated through the screen. “Ned, your eggs are ready, if y’all are finished talking.”

  She cut through his mad with just a few words. I knew there weren’t any eggs on the table. It was her way of cooling things off.

  Donald Ray’s hand dropped.

  Grandpa’s voice was still chilly. “If I’s you, I’d back off for a while and let me alone.”

  I was disappointed when the school bus made the corner in front of the church and headed towards us. I sighed, picked up my books, and we headed down the drive, looking back over our shoulders a time or two to see if they were still going at it.

  Donald Ray was back in his car by the time me and Mark got halfway to school, and that red Impala was nothing but a blur that disappeared toward Forest Chapel.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We were eating supper when G
randpa pushed back from his plate. Pepper was with us, because Uncle James and Aunt Ida Belle were in town, signing some paperwork on the Ordway place. “Did I hear y’all are going fishing this weekend?”

  Pepper stopped, holding her fork in the air and twisting her hair around one finger on her other hand. “Uncle Cody says he’s gonna try.”

  She was acting like her old self now that she’d gotten that California hippie phase out of her system and Mark was back. One day a few months earlier she went stringing off toward San Francisco to find out that the hippies weren’t as colorful and cool as they looked on television.

  During that week she run off, Pepper learned that even though they wore bright tie-dyed and beads with their bell bottoms, fringed vests, and peace signs, the Counter Culture Revolution was just a bunch of inexperienced kids with big ideas and empty pockets.

  She hadn’t said much about California since she got back, and I figured that little jaunt took some of the starch out of her. She whispered one night that the thing that soured her the most was their ideas of what the kids called “free love.” The love we felt from our family was one thing, but some of the boys she ran into wanted a lot more. She teared up when she told me about it, and promised that someday I’d hear the rest.

  The whole thought gave me a sick feeling in my stomach, because I had a good idea what’d happened.

  Grandpa drained the last of his sweet tea. “I thought you’d growed out of fishing.”

  “I thought I had too, but when Uncle Cody said the white bass were running, I remembered how much fun it is to catch them.”

  “You gotta clean ’em, too.” Mark grinned down at his plate. “And I bet you won’t like that part.”

  “Top can do it. He’s faster than I am.”

  “Hey! I’m not cleaning all those fish. The last time you only gutted two and then said you were sick or something and I had to help Uncle Martin ’til it was nearly midnight. I’m not doing that again.”

  “It was kinda like being sick. I got my period.”

  “Pepper!” Grandpa and Miss Becky both hollered at the same time, but they weren’t mad, they just wanted her to hush.

  Mark lowered his head even farther, hiding his grin behind a curtain of black hair. Miss Becky rolled her eyes toward Heaven. “My stars, girl.”

  Grandpa studied his own plate for a minute. “You kids want to go to the carnival tonight?”

  Our heads snapped toward the head of the table. “What carnival?”

  “There’s one set up down from the army camp. I need to go out there and look around, and figured y’all might want some cotton candy or ride a ride or something. Mama, you want to come with us?”

  “Lands no. They have those gambling games and I don’t want to be anywhere around that kind of sin. I’ll stay right here. This is a school night, remember.”

  “I know, but John’s taking Rachel and the kids, so I figgered these urchins can go too.”

  “Well, they don’t need to be out late.”

  “It’s just a carnival and not the fair. They can see everything in an hour or two and we’ll be back around their usual bedtime.”

  Grandpa sounded like one of us trying to talk him into letting us have some fun. It gave me a little peek of what Grandpa was like when he was our age. “I bet James’ll go with us. They oughta be back in a little bit.”

  Pepper’s face fell at the thought of her daddy going along, though she tolerated him a lot more than she used to. Grandpa noticed. “It’ll be fine. I ’magine your mama’ll come over here instead of going with us.”

  I felt better when I heard that. I love Aunt Ida Belle, but she was always a drag when we wanted to have fun.

  ***

  We came over the hill an hour later. The glow of bright colored lights not far from Camp Maxey was a base for two spotlights at the carnival gate. Grandpa was surprised. “Well this is a bigger outfit than it looked when I was here a while ago.”

  We joined a line of cars waiting their turn to get into the pasture. Grandpa parked at the end of a long, wavy line of dusty cars and mud-caked pickups. Far from the carnival lights, it was dark and shadowy.

  I thought Grandpa was going to take us straight back home when Pepper stepped out and said, “Well, shit.”

  Uncle James’ blue eyes flashed. “What did you just say?”

  “Shit. Cowshit. I just stepped in cowshit.”

  Grandpa chuckled as he slammed the door. “Well, this was a cow pasture last week, and it will be again the next. Watch where you’re walking.”

  “And watch your language, young lady.” Uncle James wrinkled his nose like he didn’t like the smell of cow flop, which we were around all the time. “There’s nicer ways of saying what comes out of the south end of a cow.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at her as we joined a stream of people walking toward the entrance gate. Pepper kept dragging her foot like the Mummy in that Boris Karloff movie.

  Mark held back to walk with her. He made a sound like the Mummy. “Mmmmmmmgh.”

  “Shut up!” She drug her foot again, trying to scrape the last of it off, but she wasn’t mad like she would have been with me. She gave him a funny little grin and ducked her head. “Or I’ll knock your damn head off.”

  Mark stuck his arms out and walked like Frankenstein, but she still didn’t get as aggravated at him. I didn’t understand a thing about he’ing and she’ing, and wondered if she’d ever get mad at him.

  Grandpa was at the ticket booth when we caught up. The woman behind the glass looked like she didn’t know what to do. “I have a note here that says to let you in, but it don’t say nothing about anyone else.”

  I wasn’t paying much attention, looking instead at all the bright lights that turned the night into day. I bet the ticket booth had five hundred lights bulbs all by itself.

  “I ain’t asking for them to get in free.” Grandpa pulled a few limp bills from his wallet and passed them through the slot.

  We breathed in the thick odor of fried foods, cotton candy, gas fumes, and hot grease. At the same time we were blasted with a wall of noise, flashing lights, loud music, shouts from the carnies manning the game booths, and screams from kids on the most exciting rides.

  The Octopus was the first attraction inside the gate and we felt the air whooshing past from the spinning arms. The long midway was lined with game booths like the Shooting Gallery, Darts, Ring Toss, and Basketball Throw. Short trailers sold corny dogs and hot dogs beside a gypsy fortune teller. In the distance I saw a line of tents with painted canvas signs advertising freak shows. If I squinted hard enough there were other tents and signs beyond that. One said, Girls! Girls! Girls! Featuring the Latest Go-Go Dances.

  I was immediately overwhelmed with the whole thing and just stopped.

  Pepper’s eyes were bright. “Let’s ride it!”

  That Octopus thing scared me to death. Grandpa and Uncle James were talking to someone they knew and weren’t paying any attention to us. “Let’s look around first.” I wanted to get an idea of what we could do before committing our money to a ride I really didn’t want to get on.

  “Grandpa, we’re gonna walk around.”

  He reached into his pocket handed us each three dollars in quarters. “Y’all stay together. I want you back right here in an hour and not a minute more.” He returned to their conversation before we even walked away.

  It seemed like everybody in northeast Texas was there, and we were careful not to get separated, even though I felt like I knew half of them and was probably related to the rest in some way. That’s what they always say about small towns, don’t talk about anyone, ’cause they’re probably kinfolk.

  The rest of the crowd was a mix of farmers and town people, and the families passing through were almost as interesting as the carnival itself. Some of them looked as if they hadn’t seen civilization in year
s, and many of them reminded me of the West Virginia coal miners I saw in our history book.

  When he thought I wasn’t within hearing distance, Grandpa called them river rats.

  He didn’t have anything against poor folks. He always said they come in all colors and a lot of them can’t help it. Him and Miss Becky grew up dirt poor, but that didn’t stop them from working hard to get what they had.

  Miss Becky always made sure of a few basics when Mama and Uncle James came along during the Depression. They were fed, had clean clothes, even though they might be homemade or patched over and over again, had their hair washed and cut, and the men always shaved.

  His complaint about river rats wasn’t usually due to how they looked, even though that carried a lot of weight, but it was about how they acted. That went for everyone, including the Negros.

  I was a little surprised at the number of colored folks there, too. I was used to seeing mostly white people. They liked fun just as much as us and a carnival was cheap entertainment, if they were careful and stayed away from the games.

  There were even a few Indians that I figured were from over in Oklahoma and more than one person slowed down to look at Pepper and Mark in their headbands she’d made of old material. Her eagle feather hung on one side and glowed in the lights.

  And there I was in my Boy’s Regular haircut, sneakers, jeans, and a button-up shirt.

  I found myself looking for Mr. John Washington and Miss Rachel. It’d be easy to find them what with his size and the number of their family and all. Mr. John didn’t have any kids when they got together, but Miss Rachel had two of her own, Bubba and Belle, and they were raising her dead sister’s kids, too, so there were fifteen of them total.

  I knew Jere and Daisy the best, because they were closest to my own age. Their stair-step brothers and sisters, Betsy, Frederick, Christian, Josephine, Bessie, Myrlie, Florynce, and baby Bass Reeves, all hung together pretty close. I figured it was because their mama was killed after their daddy run off, and that drew them tight to one another.