by Tim Bryant
"We all knew we were up against a time constraint. They were trying to work the clock against me, and I was doing my best to work it right back at them. All the same, I did want to have Massey there in my corner. I could play the game a little, but he knew what probate meant. Knew all their little tricks. He seemed like a decent enough man.
We took a light load, partly just to get out of the house. I knew we could come back after bankers' hours and do whatever we needed to do. The other reason is, I wanted to take one last trip into town, drop in at Lester Massey's office and have a word with him and then stock up on a few supplies.
Far as I was concerned, the Lady Camargo was setting sail the next day, come hell or high water. I was ready for either one.
"I was prepared to push off early, hopefully leaving nothing but an empty spot in the river whenever the people from town returned. I knew bankers' hours, and they weren't mine. We would have made out alright too, except for Harmon deciding to stop by and get a box to hold his guitar. To be fair, it was I who had made the suggestion the day before, but we had left in too big a hurry to check them out then.
"George Delafield, you see, was a fair woodworker himself, and he specialized in pine boxes. He, of course, had started with his daddy, William, building them coffins for the bodies brought into the business, but he had expanded out from there. He made boxes for all kinds of things, right down to little bitty things no bigger than a matchbox.
"I saw that there was still a good assortment of them to be had, all stacked up against a wall behind the bedroom. I mentioned them to Harmon, and we decided to stop by and load up a few. He picked one out real quick for his guitar. It looked like George had likely made it with just such a thing in mind, as it had musical notes and shapes etched into the top of it.
I was looking through a couple of others, and already had one set aside when I heard Harmon let out a shriek like I'd never heard come out of him. Sounded like he'd dropped a heavy one on his toe. He immediately let made this sucking sound, like he was trying to get some wind into his lungs. When he did, he let out a racket even fiercer than the first one.
"Harmon, I said, what in the Sam Hill is wrong with you?
"Then I saw with my own two eyes, and I think I must have let out a holler all my own. There in that little box, with the lid thrown back and the morning light shining in, was a little dead baby boy. It had been hiding in there for some time, but you could still tell what it was easy enough.
"He sure does stink, Harmon said.
"That wasn't no dirty diaper, I can tell you. That's for sure. That stink was on account of him being all shut up in there for good spell and, naturally, on account of him being dead and all.
"Well, I suspect we better go on and close that back up, I said. We don't want that box.
"We definitely didn't want that one. I was trying to think what we should do with it, and I was leaning toward hauling it down to Mount Violet and putting him away properly. Seemed like only the right thing to do. That's when I heard the front door edge open.
"My good god, what in heaven's name done happened up in here? It was the banker man from the day before. And right behind him come the very one I had threatened with the hack saw.
"Hold it right there, he said. You fellas ain't going nowhere."
And with that, Art and the boys piled all of their gear onto the back of a '48 Ford pickup with a wooden bed and said their goodbyes. The long lost cowboy was passed out in the back seat of his own car, his hat newly cratered for a souvenir. I watched Willie T take his drum set down, hoping for a moment to ask him about it. I had never seen a set like it. Sometime while I was doing this, Art made his getaway. He was there, and then he wasn't. Willie T and Biscuit waved and drove off in the direction of Dorr Creek.
I went home the long way that night, taking the detour through Patton's Landing to Marion's Ferry, then coming into Nacogdoches. I was halfway up Laceyville Road, coming back into the colored end of town, when it occurred to me that this had to have been the road that Art and Harmon took when they passed the white lady on the porch. What was her name?
Almost all of the homes on Laceyville were big. Big and full of white people. Farmers, people who worked at the businesses downtown and the plants to its south. Most of the doors I still wouldn't have knocked on had I had a flat tire or car trouble. I could only imagine what it must have felt like coming through with a mule and wagon, thirty or forty years earlier.
I passed a couple of small, newly built homes with manicured lawns. Then, on the other side of the road, a two story Colonial style house. I had driven by it before surely, yet I couldn't remember ever noticing it. There were more like it in the area, and yet, the way its porch encircled it, as if it were protecting it and its inhabitants, made me feel like I was looking through Art Patton's eyes.
I remembered a nearly-forgotten incident from my early school years. Going to E.J. Campbell, the colored school, I didn't come into contact with many whites, adult or otherwise. The only place where it ever happened was downtown, going to movies at the Main Theater or walking along in front of the stores, all of which were owned and operated by white people. Most of them, we were instructed to never go into. In the movie theater, we had to sit in the balcony. In the department stores, we might be allowed to go in, but, like going in to the courthouse, you had to display the right attitude, and it helped if you had a white co-worker or friend with you. You were also expected to do your business and not tarry.
So this must have been either right before World War II ended or right after, because it was just about the time I started first grade. It was a Saturday, and I had been downtown with a couple of friends watching a matinee movie. I can't remember what it was. Maybe an East Side Kids movie or Lassie. After the movie was over, I was walking along and saw a handful of soldiers turn the corner and walk in my direction. That wasn't anything too unusual. The bus station was one block to the north, and a lot of discharged servicemen came up from Houston on their ways north and east, heading back home.
The thing that made this particular group stand out, at least to my young eyes, was its racial makeup. Four white guys and one negro. Walking along as if it were the most natural thing in the whole world. It drew my curiosity enough that I turned around and followed them for a block, stopping to watch them enter the most popular downtown sandwich shop.
This shop was high on the list of shops we were told to steer clear of. In fact, many a story was told of the shop owner calling the chief of police on some colored man who made the mistake of walking through its doors. I sat down on the curb, making sure I was well out of the path of any pedestrians, even though the street was fairly empty.
It only took two or three minutes for the colored soldier to walk back through the door. He walked a few yards in my direction and stopped, leaning against the front wall of the bank and checking his watch. He looked at me, and I smiled. I felt bad that I hadn't been able to warn him. I might have warned him against getting off the bus at all.
All of a sudden, a young white woman exited the sandwich shop— she looked like a student from the local college— and walked straight up to the colored soldier. She handed him a brown paper bag full of food. He fumbled through his pockets to pay her, but I saw her shake her head. She turned away and walked back into the shop. At my age, I didn't have a clue why, but it was quite plain that she was crying. There was so much food in the bag that the soldier shared one of the apples with me when he left.
I would see more scenes play out that way over time, but that was a first for me, and it stuck with me over the years. I often wondered about that soldier. Had he been in Normandy or in the Philippines, fighting for freedom? Did he still think about his stopover in our little town? Which did he think about first, the sandwich shop owner or the college girl? Did he remember that apple?
Looking at the big white house with the wrap-around porch and the picket fence, I slowed down and waved. Sometimes it don't matter if no one waves back.
> I spent most of that week trying to get all of my notes in some kind of order. Trying to make sense of the story that lay in front of me. I seesawed between absolutely knowing that there was no way Art would ever show up for Eulalie's radio show and absolutely believing that he would. The one thing I neglected to do was mention it to Eulalie herself.
Everybody in the family called her Aunt You— it was even spelled that way— even though she was only an aunt to four people, and none of them lived within a hundred miles. Aunt You was what she called sanctified, and although I wasn't sure just what that entailed, for some reason, it made me think she would get along with Art. Him being transfigurated and all.
Aunt You also played a real mean organ. In fact, it was this talent which had got her kicked out of the Church of God, the church most of our family attended, if they attended at all. The Church of God didn't allow for any musical instruments. Aunt You, of course, fully expected them to make an exception in her case. I didn't go to church very often anymore, but I had been there to witness her attempt at insurrection in the Church of God at Saints Rest.
"I'll have you know I've played the organ, both a foot organ and an electrified organ, and a piano, but mostly the organ, in a Pentecostal church and an Adventist church. I've played in a Baptist church and an Anabaptist church. I've played in an Apostolic church, an evangelical Lutheran church. A Reformed Church. A Free Reformed church."
By this time, I think she was just making things up, but she got her point across. Aunt You was really good at doing that, and that's why she ended up with her own radio show. She said, from five a.m. until six a.m. on Sunday morning, the little radio station up on Tower Road was her church, and its membership included the whole holy race of mankind. That made hers the church that Jesus took a special interest in.
I wasn't real close to Aunt You, but she was one of my favorite family members. I listened to her program every once in a while, usually when I was still up from whatever I had been doing on the previous night. I liked how she always started off reading from the scripture, and then she would put it down and let her own heart take over. It usually got good about that point.
She also had an autoharp playing older sister named Earlina Harper that came up from Byspot, Texas every now and then. Aunt You liked to bring in musicians from the community. For color, as she put it. She didn't like them talking too much, but, as long as they didn't mind her playing along with them on her organ, she didn't care if they played the autoharp or the juice harp or what.
I had a feeling she was going to get a real kick out of playing along with Art's music stick.
Police Chief Battle was on a rampage that year, beefing up the law presence in the colored neighborhoods and generally making our lives a little more complicated than they already were. Whereas on the other side of town, he might have even been a help to me and my explorations, he was just another problem to work around for me.
Mostly, it meant I had to do as much of my work during daytime hours. That meant convincing my boss at the Gazette that, every time I walked out the door for the afternoon, I truly was working on something that would be print-worthy. To be fair, she was supportive, even going so far as to suggest that I go and speak with as many of the secondary people in the story as possible while waiting for Art to resurface.
I had a short list of names. Names Art had mentioned. Names other people had mentioned to Art. Names of people who were said to know everything that happened from Nacalina to Oil Springs. Both my boss and my momma knew of Oda Whitaker, although momma was fairly sure she had passed some time ago. It took half of an afternoon to find her place.
There's a way you can tell that country people are home, even when it appears that there's nobody within miles. The fact that I couldn't hear a dog bark or howl anywhere when I shut my car door made me wonder if momma wasn't right. I knocked on the door anyway. To my surprise, a young man answered. A few minutes later, I was sitting in a small kitchen with a glass of tea and an audience of Oda Whitaker herself. Oda who said she never forgot a name, as least as far as she could remember. Oda, who said her mother took the word "today" and lopped off the first and last letter to come up with her name. Who claimed to have a sister named Ester and a brother named Omor named after yesterday and tomorrow. People have lost the art of naming their children.
"Of course, I remember Art Patton," she said. "A couple of white men dropped him off with me and asked could I fix him up. Wasn't anything to fix that a bed and a good night sleep didn't do."
The boy walked in and picked a piece of bread off the stove top.
"That and a plate or two of greens and sweet potatoes," he said.
Oda smiled at the boy, who must have been a grandson or maybe a great-grandson. Or maybe just another stray soul who she had picked up along the way.
"This here is Ephriam," she said. "He spent more time with Mister Patton than me or Ivory did. He's the one you should talk to."
Ephriam turned one of the kitchen chairs around backwards and sat in it. He didn't wait until he was finished eating to talk.
"What did he tell you? He tell you about being a hundred and nine years old? He tell you about traveling to South America and Africa? He tell you about his brother getting killed?"
I liked the way he got right to the point.
"Blue Dick," I said.
Oda was off and cleaning up leftovers from whatever meal they had just finished, but she couldn't help but overhear.
"He had a brother by the name of Blue Dick?"
Ephriam snorted so hard cornbread came out.
"Was a mule named Blue Dick, Big Momma. Kicked Art's brother in the head and killed him."
I waited until Oda had finished her work and moved on.
"He tell you what his brother's name was?"
Ephriam nodded.
"Want some milk and cornbread?"
"What if I told you I knew where the body of that little baby was."
I must have looked like he had pointed a gun at me and told me to reach for the sky.
"Art Patton's brother?"
Ephriam checked the room.
"Part of me don't think there is no baby, and part of me does" he said. "I don't know which part it is, but one of them parts wants to find out the truth."
He was whispering low— low enough that I could hear Oda Whitaker rummaging through something in the next room— but there wasn't any need to ask him to repeat himself.
Art had spent at least three days of his recuperation sitting on the back porch of the house, playing his banjo and giving Ephriam a few lessons. He had also been going over stories. Lots of stories. Some I had heard before. Some I hadn't.
"According to Art, when his brother died, they carried the body up to the undertaker. His momma must have gone crazy, because everybody thought they was gonna end up burying her too. Art's daddy got word to Mister Delafield, the undertaker, just to hold on to the baby. He said Miss Jodora wasn't up to no funeral, and if they had it, it might end up being hers too. Art said that baby stayed at the undertaker for a long time, and then later, George Delafield must have carried it up to his house. Art said he figured the plan was to bury that baby with its momma when Miss Jodora died, but I guess the plan was forgotten or fell through.
"So then the baby got found again when Art and Harmon were moving things onto the Camargo," I said.
"That's right," he said.
I had the strong sense that Oda was hanging just around the corner and listening in. Not that I cared a whit.
"Well, Art Patton says that, after he and Harmon left, Sheriff McBride took the baby down to the old plantation and dropped it down the well. Said he didn't have no time or interest in giving no negro baby a proper burial."
I thought about what Bobby Lee Conray had said to me.
"That could just be an old story," I said, "meant to keep people away."
Ephriam nodded.
"I know it."
We both stopped and nibbled on cornbread. It tasted goo
d. Better than my own momma's. I wondered what she put in it.
"There's something else I need to tell you," Ephriam said."
He leaned in closer and spoke so low I had to strain to hear him.
"Part of me thinks there ain't no brother."
I didn't follow his line of thinking.
"Sometimes I think there was only two brothers, and Art Conray was killed by that dang mule. Blue Dick."
I didn't have a clue how to respond to this.
"Who is Art then?"
"I don't know," Ephriam said. "I haven't figured it out. But maybe it has something to do with this transfigure stuff that he talks about."
"You think he's a ghost?" I said.
I was trying to poke a little harmless fun at the boy, but he didn't take it that way.
"Something like that, I guess," he said. "Some transfigurized version of the boy maybe, I guess."
I tried to remember. Had I ever actually touched the man? He seemed more real than anybody I had ever come up against, but had I actually come up against him? Could I swear in a court of law that he wasn't some kind of ghost? I didn't think I believed in ghosts, but, then again, I didn't usually believe in 109-year old ex-slaves who looked half their age, running around with music sticks and wild stories either.
I'll readily admit I had ulterior motives in getting Art Patton into the radio station. I had attended two of Aunt You's broadcasts within the past year, and had made myself useful by helping behind the glass. Mostly getting coffee and running errands for the station's morning manager whose job it was to make sure everything was transmitting as intended and that the local sponsors were all getting what they paid for.
I had also stuck around at the station manager's request one time when the show that followed Aunt You featured a western swing band from Fort Worth. The morning manager was a big fan of the band, and he had promised to reward the band with an acetate of the morning's performance. The station had a quarter-inch recorder and a cutting lathe that was set up to do such things, as long as everything was properly mic'd and all of the wires were plugged into the correct sockets.
