The Lesser People Read online

  I said, “Huh.” Ben nodded. He said, “If all else fails maybe he can use that to buy Daddy’s freedom, if’n Daddy will even listen.” He frowned, said, “He probably won’t. One thing about all us Irons is we’re stubborn.”

  Ben found me a Spider Man comic book to read while he found some magazine beneath the bunk and giggled as he moved off to the rear of the trailer. I was fine with being alone. At least I told myself that. Deep down though I was worried about everything. Unable to focus on reading I said, “How are we going to get them out of jail now?”

  Ben looked up from his magazine at the small built-in kitchen booth and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I don’t want to live here forever.”

  “We’re not going to.”

  “Ben?”

  He folded the magazine and set it on the cushion next to him out of sight. “What? Will you stop freaking out? It doesn’t make anything better, you know that.”

  I did. I knew that. But it was like that tree in my heart was dying for sunlight. It’d had enough rain, enough of suffering. It needed the clouds to part and the sky to clear and the birds to nestle in its branches. I rubbed my eyes and then rolled up the comic book and swatted my leg a few times because it was starting to go numb. Uncle Tommy’s bed was lumpy and I figured besides magazines he probably had guns and ammunition under the mattress in case anybody was dumb enough to come hunting him.

  Ben stood from the table and shook his head. He said, “I almost had Momma out of there.”

  “She wanted to stay with Daddy,” I said.

  He nodded. “That’s good for her I guess but it makes me mad too ‘cause it’s not good for us.”

  In a few moments of silence a crow cawed and the trailer creaked in the wind.

  “Does Uncle let you use this place like a tree fort?” I looked around, wondered for a moment. “Is he not around much?”

  Ben shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “He’s always got something going on. Lately it’s a girlfriend.” He looked away from me, to the door, almost looking like he hoped it would open. He said, “I know he scares you but he’s not all bad. Like Mom and Dad said, he’ll look out for us.”

  “Are you scared of the Conovers?”

  “They’re mean,” he said. “I’d be stupid not to be a little scared.”

  He sat back at the table and traced lines across the top. “I figure they’re cowards too from what I’ve seen and that means they’d probably jump us and be okay with doing it.”

  I thought about them hiding somewhere like Indians and waiting for us to pass by so they could ambush us, maybe some of the boys our age bearing sticks and rocks. My stomach felt too empty and my throat too full. I said, “Why’s everybody gotta hate on everybody else?”

  Ben shrugged and stared at me. “They’re stupid is all.”

  I shrugged too figuring that if somebody was stupid there probably wasn’t any fixing it.

  A loud motor rumbled, approaching, and I jumped up to look out the window, fearing that Daddy’s enemies had found us.

  I held the comic book like a club but knew that whacking somebody with it wouldn’t do much damage but I’d hit another kid before and it hurt my knuckles and I hit the sheriff and he pulled my hair. I didn’t want to fight if I didn’t have to but even at ten years old knew that sometimes you didn’t have a choice because some people will just beat the tar out of you since it makes them feel better about themselves.

  I couldn’t see the car from the window which meant it must have come from the other way. It sounded like a mean machine—like a racing car—as it parked outside and the thin walls of the trailer thrummed like guitar strings.

  I turned back to my brother and waited for him to grab the pistol but he just said, “Relax, that’s uncle’s car.” Ben didn’t look relaxed though so I don’t know how he could tell me to relax. The motor died out in the gravel lot and I heard the jukebox in the bar playing Merle Haggard’s Momma Tried. The song made me sad. It made me miss my mom. It made me think about Daddy going to prison for killing a Conover.

  Ben moved to the door, swiping a hand across the knee of his pants like they was dirty, and he peeked outside and his shoulders, tense a moment ago, let loose, dropped back to their normal place. He said, “He brought me cotton candy.”

  I closed the distance on him and tried to sneak a look over his shoulder but he was too tall and it didn’t matter anyway because Uncle Tommy opened the door and smiled at us. He had a couple days’ worth of stubble, his raven hair slicked and shiny, his eyes lit with that awful glow. He wasn’t pale like I’d imagined he would be, like he used to be when he hit the bottle too hard, so I guessed he must have slowed down on drinking and been working out in the fields with the Negroes. He wore black jeans, cowboy boots, a sleeveless t-shirt that showed off his muscled arms. He smiled like a salesmen and I didn’t want to buy whatever he was selling but I wished he’d known I’d have been there so he would have brought me some cotton candy too. It swelled like a bouquet of flowers from his knotty hand. He said, “Hell, didn’t know you were over here, Elijah.”

  He squinted and looked at Ben, measuring and testing something about him, maybe trying to figure out why he let me into their man world when I was just a little kid.

  Ben said, “He didn’t have nowhere else to go. Daddy and Momma are in jail.”

  “How’s that?” Uncle Tommy asked.

  He motioned for Ben to step back and my brother gave him room and our uncle had to hunker down a bit so he didn’t hit his head. He was as tall as Preacher, a head taller than Daddy. He handed Ben the cotton candy and asked what had happened as he went to the small refrigerator and opened it and pulled a black pistol from inside.

  He tucked the gun in his waistband and pulled his t-shirt over to hide it. Ben explained what he knew the best he could and Uncle Tommy waited and listened. I had the urge to tell him how brave I’d been the last day or two but I didn’t want to lie and it felt weird that I wanted him to like me and I didn’t know if it was because now that he wasn’t hitting the sauce so hard he looked more like Daddy, or if I just wanted him to like me like he liked my brother.

  When Ben finished the telling, Uncle Tommy said, “The Conover’s are a bad lot. I had a go-round with the bunch of them a while back.”

  Ben said, “Really? What happened?”

  I imagined my uncle in the middle of circle of Conover’s, the group of them like a bunch of hungry vultures pecking at a wounded animal, and I saw in my mind’s eye my uncle lashing out and breaking their beaks, and those vulture Conover’s screaming in pain and backpedaling, wishing they could fly away and not able to since he ripped off their wings.

  Tommy said, “I killed two of them. But they deserved it. The rest of them left me alone after that.”

  Ben said, “I imagine so.”

  I stood next to the bed, said, “What’d they do?”

  “Stole from me,” Uncle Tommy said, but he wouldn’t elaborate.

  I guessed I’d never steal from him, not that I wanted to steal from anybody, expect maybe some of Ben’s cotton candy, and I wouldn’t even do that since he’d pelt me and I’d have it coming.

  Ben said, “How we going to get our parents out of jail? Daddy won’t leave it since he killed a man even if it was on accident.”

  Uncle Tommy said, “No jury around here will let it go as an accident either.”

  He rubbed the stubble on his jaw and then pulled a pack of cigarettes from the table and lit one up and the trailer quickly filled with smoke. I wanted to open the door because it burned my eyes but Ben didn’t complain so I wouldn’t either. My brother looked at the pack in Tommy’s hand and I thought he might ask for one and I thought that if he did our uncle would probably give him one. Seemed like he liked giving my brother things.

  Ben sniffled and said, “They’re probably going to hang Preacher aren’t they?”

  Uncle Tommy grabbed an ashtray from a cupboard that was attached to the wall near the ceil
ing and cracked the window. He sat at the table across from Ben. He shrugged. “It’d take a lot of men to hang Art.”

  I thought that was silly because people hung art on their walls all the time but then I remembered that was Preacher’s name. I felt ashamed of myself and blushed but they didn’t seem to notice, which was good.

  My brother’s eyes watered and he waved some of the smoke out the window. He said, “Eli said he killed those two suits easy as hell.”

  I was about to correct him and say I didn’t use the word hell at all but Uncle Tommy said he figured Art did, figured they must have pressed him hard. Before I knew it I told them about the black man, the painter of the church, who somebody had hung from the old tow truck south of town and how Preacher had pulled him down and put him in the back seat with me. Ben seemed surprised and a little delighted, almost a hunger in his eyes that cried for more details but I didn’t want to give them since talking about sitting next to a dead man made my skin crawl. Uncle Tommy put the cigarette out and said, “Got a big rally going on today.”

  “KKK,” I said.

  Ben looked at the table, his face blank. When he looked up at our uncle he said, “You think they’ll storm the jail?”

  I waited for them to explain what that meant but they didn’t. I glanced at Ben’s cotton candy. He hadn’t touched it so he must have been more worried about Momma and Daddy than he let on.

  Uncle Tommy said, “Your dad’s a fool for staying in there. He should have got out when Art cuffed Bordeaux and he could have got you guys the hell out of here.”

  “Daddy won’t move,” Ben said. “He grew up here.”

  “It’s a dangerous place right now,” Uncle Tommy said. “He’s got a different set of ideas than a lot of people.”

  I said, “What do you think?”

  He scratched his back against the seat and cupped his hands on the table in front of him. “What do I think about what, Elijah?”

  “The colored folk,” I said. “Do you hate them? Is that why you sold guns to the Klan?”

  He shook his head and laughed.

  “No,” he said. “I was just bored as hell in the Army and home on leave. I saw them sitting there so I took them. Some fellas saw me take them and asked me later if I’d be interested in selling a few.”

  He pulled another cigarette but didn’t light it, just tapped the butt against the table top. “I figured it never hurts to have more money. I didn’t give a damn what they used them for and with all the other states giving in on de-segregation I believed they wanted them to fend off the Army if it came to the President sending them into Mississippi under Martial Law.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Cleaning house,” Uncle Tommy said.

  Ben cupped his hands in front of him. He resembled Uncle Tommy a lot. He said, “You didn’t know they were going to use them to shoot a bunch of coloreds?”

  “No,” he said. He looked at me a moment, then muttered, “Shit.”

  My brother said, “You did know, huh?”

  “Well,” Uncle Tommy said. “I’d like to pretend I didn’t know, that’s a good policy to have when you’re selling something illegal, but I knew.”

  “Then why’d you lie?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  Ben scratched the corner of his eye, looking tired. He said, “Do you think Daddy will move away?”

  “I’m thinking I should go visit him and try to convince him too.” He glanced out the window at the back of the bar. I imagined he wanted a drink really bad. I got thirsty thinking about it. I wanted to ask him if he had any root beer but he said, “Maybe if I talk to Bordeaux we can come to an agreement.”

  “What about the Conover’s?” Ben said.

  “They won’t hassle us.”

  “But what about Daddy?”

  “They might hope they can brace him but with any luck you guys will be on your way out of town before they can find him.”

  “What about our house?” I asked. I didn’t know how we were supposed to move it and take it with us. I guessed it’d take a big crane like they had to use on the bridge on the side of town but those machines moved so slow it’d take forever to haul our house a mile.

  Uncle Tommy said to me, “You eat lately?”

  I thought about it.

  “I can’t remember when I ate last.”

  “Come on,” he said. He stood and headed out the door. Ben jumped up and followed him. I followed Ben. I shut the door firmly but didn’t lock it since I didn’t have a key. Uncle Tommy stood tall and straight by the fire pit where I’d first spied my brother’s shoes. I wanted to ask him who the girl was there earlier but I didn’t see Ben at all. For a brief moment I feared that the vultures had swooped down from the sky and carried him away while our uncle stared at dead coals and I worried about a girl without a face and a laughter full of life.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Uncle Tommy drove his muscle car to the Klan rally. I sat in the front seat between him and my brother. He drove with the windows down and that motor racing like he dared the police to pull him over and me and Ben kept grinning because the wind felt amazing and the tires roared right outside the door. We passed empty fields and fields full of blacks and I waved to them and Ben smiled at them and Uncle Tommy kept his gaze on the road, his hands loose on the wheel.

  I hated myself for thinking about the fair, the cotton candy, all those rides and people screaming fun screams. I knew I should have been worrying about my parents but reasoned that they were safe and they were together and soon they’d be out of there once Daddy got to talk to the judge and explain that killing Conover was an accident.

  And he could tell them how the deputy almost shot me and that made him real angry, even angrier than it made him that they brought guns to our house to begin with.

  To my mind it wasn’t unconceivable that a judge would understand that and he’d look at Daddy and see that he was a good man, that most everybody always liked him.

  And I knew Momma never caused anybody trouble but Sheriff Bordeaux and that was only because he pulled my hair. Neither did Preacher cause anybody problems until he protected himself from the men who didn’t want to let him bury his dead colored friend, which was a shame.

  It hurt my heart to think about and I hoped it’d hurt the judges too.

  Before I knew it Tommy pulled into a dirt-packed lot among hundreds of cars and a tent as big as Preacher’s old church off in the distance that glowed brightly in the dusk and between it and us a large Ferris wheel full of close bodies and relaxed faces spun lazily. I was hungry but didn’t want to complain or beg Ben for money yet knew I’d have to eat at some point, though I thought I could wait until he was hungry too.

  I followed my brother out of the car and our uncle saw his girlfriend and her daughter gravitating around a knot of people, other women mostly, who laughed easily and seemed to be having a good time. Children ran about wearing nice clothes and it made me think of the poor colored people in the fields, slaving away under the hot sun in what appeared from the road to be rags as they glanced our way sadly with hollow eyes.

  Ben asked me, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said, pushing the blacks from my mind and soaking up all that failing light, all the noise and laughter. Momma always hated crowds, said she could never think among them and I tried to tell her once to not think at all and just enjoy herself like she didn’t have anywhere to be and all the time in the world to get there. She didn’t like my advice and cuffed me in the head before Daddy laughed and said to cut me slack because I was little and didn’t know no better.

  Uncle Tommy’s girlfriend saw him and he waved. Her daughter smiled at Ben and me and she was pretty though so skinny she could have fit through a key hole. She looked like our mother in the face with very strong features. Her eyes were almost violet. Ben stared at her as she approached like she was an angel and he was so terrified he couldn’t have run if he’d wanted to.

  I elb
owed him and said, “She your girlfriend?”

  “What?” he said. “No. Shut up.”

  Uncle Tommy laughed as they drew closer, the mob of people behind them tightening up as more people strolled in from all directions and the rides beyond them began to twirl and beep and coast on tracks of polished steel.

  My pulse tapped faster and faster. I wanted to go see the rides but Uncle Tommy and my brother said hello to the ladies and seemed content to stand there all night in their glow. My uncle’s girlfriend studied me for a long moment but her daughter looked only at Ben. Uncle Tommy said, “You ladies hungry?”

  I prayed they’d say they were famished. Would have willed them too if I could have and I knew they were going to say that they’d already ate and they’d just keep standing there until everybody went home and we’d miss out on everything.

  Tommy’s girlfriend said, “I could eat a horse.”

  Ben laughed and smiled real big at her daughter. She punched his arm and looked ashamed of her mom. She said, “Can me and Ben go on some rides?”

  Uncle Tommy looked at his girlfriend. She shrugged, smiling. He said, “Stay where we can see you.”

  As Ben and the woman’s daughter turned away I made to follow after them but Uncle Tommy stopped me. He squeezed my shoulder and said, “Why don’t you stick close by?”

  I tried to pull his hand from my shoulder but it was too heavy. I said, “I want to go with my brother.”

  Ben and the girl were already a ways off, bodies passing by them like a sea of flesh, and a moment more and they disappeared beneath it. Uncle Tommy squeezed my neck and said, “They just want to spend some time alone is all. You can give them that much. Hell, you’ll understand it in a few more years.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I’m just thinking about right now.”

  His girlfriend laughed at me which only made me angry. I pointed at her and said, “Don’t you laugh at me.”