The Lesser People Read online

  She looked up, studying Ben’s face, maybe thinking what I was thinking, that we had Negro blood in us and they might have been our ancestors. I wondered if Preacher had Negro blood in him. He sure liked Mr. Clarence who set Momma’s arm. And he liked the dead man he put in the backseat of his car, and he loved Isaiah and his blank, searching eyes, the strange tilt of his head, his laughter.

  Sarah sighed and toyed with the corner of the album. She flipped through several pages and we moved in close to her to see black and white photos of the servants working the fields, and others of them relaxed, laughing, their hard faces softened with each other’s smiles and a slight reprieve from long hours in the sun.

  Ben said, “What did your mother do when your grandpa went crazy and ran them off? I imagine he didn’t want her getting sick with whatever he had either.”

  I said, “Where was your grandma?”

  “Grandma died the year before. It was just granddad and the servants. He loved them like a family and treated them fairly and he taught my mom to do the same. She was affectionate with one of the older boys and when granddaddy killed him, she ran away for a while.

  “I think that’s what did him in, why, when everybody had taken off and his daughter had left him, and he was alone with his sickness that he took the shotgun he’d used on some of them and stuck the barrel in his mouth.”

  “He killed himself,” Ben said.

  Sarah nodded.

  “Momma didn’t know it for more than a year, wasn’t until the state caught her in Oxford and brought her home. Granddad’s property was inherited and the taxes paid at the beginning of each year directly from his banking account so they had no need to check on him. He was still sitting there in the chair in the living room when the case worker and the police brought Momma back. He’d decomposed, been eaten on by critters that got in, and was mostly just bone, his skeletal fingers still holding the shotgun.

  “Momma tried to run away again but a rich black man came down from Memphis and he bought the farm for cheap. Nobody had known he was black though since his skin was so white and he always wore a hat and kept his hands stuffed in his pockets like he was content to never hurt a man, like he’d never raise them in anger.

  “He had a son about Momma’s age, around fifteen, and when the state of Mississippi put my mom in an orphanage, the rich man who bought granddaddy’s farm heard of it from the gossips in town and he went and got her and brought her back here. Even though he was gentle with her it took her a while to come around because all the people she cared about and trusted were gone, some of them at each other’s hands or by disease.

  “This is him,” she said.

  She pointed to a picture in the back of the album that showed a big strong man with high cheekbones and a short nose. His lips were full and his eyes looked honest, warm even. I didn’t know if it was her grandpa that killed and then killed himself, eaten up by a virus, or if it was the rich man who had bought the farm after and who had taken her momma in. Ben didn’t know either and he asked her who the man was.

  She said, “He’s the rich man from Memphis. Big Joe Kinsley. He took good care of Momma but by the time she was sixteen the town had found out that he was black and they run him out. He left the house to her, deed signed and everything. He didn’t want them to burn the place down or for them to set on his boy, who was a man now, and angered by the way those in Forksville had went from warm to cold in their attitude. But the son came back years later, after Momma had married a traveling salesman and got pregnant with me. My dad wasn’t good for much and Little Joe Kinsley saw that. He tried to look out for Momma and he’d swing by to bring me candy and hold me on his lap until I was too big to hold anymore.

  “Then he kinda drifted away just like my dad did. Neither of them ever came back. Momma made her things to sell and she wrote for some papers, but she always seemed to feel empty, displaced, I guess, lonely too, until she met your uncle.”

  She smiled. “Part of me worries for her because he has those leaving and not coming back traits. I don’t know that she could handle that happening again to her even though deep down she probably knows it’s inevitable.”

  She looked really sad from all that talking so I sat on the cot next to her and hugged her, thinking that she’d probably make a good big sister.

  Ben said, “And where is your daddy now?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think of Little Joe as my dad. He loved us.”

  “But he done went away too,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “He done went away by the time I was your age, Elijah.”

  She shook her head. “Men do that, you understand? You boys will end up doing it to somebody, someday.”

  Ben stood there rock still. I said that we would do like Daddy and stand by those we love. Sarah said, “Maybe.”

  Ben, wanting to change the subject, looked around the lantern lit interior and said, “Do you come out here often?”

  I could imagine her doing that, in her loneliness, or just wanting some quiet, since it was so peaceful in there. She stood and moved over to the little partition that held all the work bibs. She stared at them a while like she wondered where all the bodies were that used to fill them. I wondered that too. I imagined most of them probably went north where they could live better lives without crazy white men beating the tar and dreams out of them.

  Thinking that made me angry at myself, at the cruel white blood in me.

  I figured it was probably why Daddy and Uncle Tommy never had any peace. When they weren’t fighting someone else, they were fighting themselves and all the generations of history that loomed over them.

  Ben hitched his pants and stationed himself tight to her side. He said, “What is it?” His eyes trailed where hers had, down beneath the dusty bottoms of the cotton pants where a dozen mud speckled shoes stood in a straight and even line, each heel perfectly squared with the one next to it. They both stared at the worn wooden floor. I glanced at the floor outside the partition and noticed it was hard packed earth, trampled flat and solid as concrete from decades of shuffling feet. I said, “Floor is different in here.”

  “There’s a reason why,” Sarah said.

  “What?” Ben asked.

  “Come on,” she said, approaching the dirty bibs. She knelt there and pulled the shoes out and trailed her pale fingers over the wooden floor beneath where they’d sat. I inched closer, thinking there was a trapdoor hidden somewhere close by and my imagination got to jumping about where it led to and why it was there in the first place.

  Her hand stopped moving. She looked at Ben and smiled.

  I squatted next to my brother, who said, “What is it?”

  She pulled a board loose, a strip about three inches wide and three feet in length. She set it aside then slid her long fingers beneath the open lid it’d created. She said to Ben, “Help me.”

  He did, both of them lifting together and the panel rose in their grasp revealing a dark entrance that existed beneath the floor we huddled upon. Ben said, “Huh,” his eyes wide, focused, trying to gaze into the darkness. He said, “Eli, go grab one of those lanterns.”

  I boosted up and came back a minute later with the one Sarah had set on the dresser that had contained the photo album. They’d pushed the bibs back on their wire hangers so they were out of the way and the panel leaned against the wall. Ben took the light and held it over the hole. The blackness in the pit blended in with the light and shadows seemed to rise from the mouth of whatever waited beneath us.

  I swallowed, annoyed with the tick in my throat. I’d never been under ground before and the idea of it didn’t thrill me at all but I could tell that Ben was contemplating climbing down into the secret place.

  He leaned over further, said, “Look, got a ladder built into the side.”

  I saw it. Sarah nodded to us. She said, “I haven’t been down there in a long time. My mom doesn’t like it. She’s a little claustrophobic.”

  “What’s down there?”
Ben said.

  I backed up, thinking Uncle Tommy should have Sheriff Bordeaux about convinced to set my parents and Preacher free by now. I didn’t know what any of them would think if they came back and found us down in the pit. They’d probably spank us. I didn’t want to get spanked. I looked at the section of floor that leaned against the wall. I thought that it probably wouldn’t take much to fall over and if it landed right we’d probably be stuck down there because we wouldn’t be able to push it off while standing on the ladder since it took both Ben and Sarah to remove it from the top.

  Sarah said, “You want to go down?”

  I shook my head but Ben smiled, his face pale, and said, “Hell yeah.”

  I took a deep breath, telling myself that if a girl had been down there before and came back all right then I could do it. But my scalp prickled as a soft breath of earthy smells issued from the hole and hung around us like a cloud.

  Somewhere far off I heard a boom like something exploding in the woods.

  Neither Ben or Sarah seemed to notice it.

  I said, “Is it safe?”

  Sarah shrugged, said, “Safe as anything else, I guess.”

  Ben nodded, his eyes feverish in the lantern light. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you,” he said.

  I choked on my fear for a moment, looking into that darkness we huddled over. I said, “What about your mom. Will she be mad if she finds out we went down there into whatever?”

  “She’s going to be depressed until your uncle gets back and loves on her,” Sarah said. “She won’t ever know we were down there.”

  “You can stay up here,” Ben said. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. We could use a lookout anyway. You hear somebody coming you just holler, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, relieved, a little ashamed of my cowardice. If they noticed it or thought anything of it, they didn’t show it, Sarah first descending into the blackness down the ladder as Ben held the light aloft, then him too following, throwing a look my way that said It’s going to be all right, you’ll see, before his head disappeared and the light went down and the darkness overcame it.

  On my hands and knees I listened, close by, thinking I should have gone with them. Their voices carried up, echoing among the walls and about my ears, their words indistinguishable over the beat of my heart, the forced, unnatural labor by which I was breathing. I called down to Ben, “You all right?”

  “Be quiet,” he said, “or you’ll cave this whole place in on us.”

  I swallowed hard, wiped my sweating hands on my jeans, and didn’t move a muscle.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was getting on to dark, the old servants’ quarters deep in evening shadows when I heard Ben or Sarah place a hand and foot to the ladder. The vibrations from them climbing pulsed through my hands and knees.

  The light Ben carried flickered in and out as if low on kerosene. I could just make out the shape of his face, the tousle of his hand as he struggled to ascend the ladder while carrying the lantern. I thought it was probably hot as sin and probably burned him but he didn’t complain, just kept climbing with Sarah beneath him following him out of the abyss.

  My muscles were sore and stiff from holding still, scared to death of making too much noise or movement, afraid the floor I stood on, the ceiling to Ben and Sarah, would collapse and bury them.

  My brother set the lantern on the floor and pulled himself out. Cobwebs and dirt clung to his hair and elbows and shoulders. He bent over and offered Sarah a hand as her head poked from the hole but she said, “I can manage, move back.”

  He slid back. I tried to gauge how he was feeling but it didn’t do much good because he wore expressions I didn’t know the meaning to. Didn’t have the time to ask either because we all froze as we heard Miss Jessie holler for Sarah.

  Her daughter’s eyes grew wide, her mouth a big ‘O’ for a second before she grabbed the trapdoor and said, “Help.” Ben grabbed the other corner and they placed it back in the slot, her reaching for the single board she’d removed first but I had a hold of it and hadn’t even remembered grasping it. I held it out. She slapped it into place and stood and dusted my brother off the best she could then asked him to clean her up. Miss Jessie’s voice faded. I figured she was probably mad and the longer we were gone the madder she’d get and she was one of those women who it didn’t pay to make angry, I could tell that.

  Sarah said, “We’re not able to get all the cobwebs off, they’re clinging.”

  Ben said, “What do you normally do?”

  “Make her wait,” Sarah said. “She’ll go back in out of sheer boredom and she’ll get occupied with something or other then we can sneak in and change.”

  “I don’t have anything to change into,” Ben said.

  “Oh,” she said. She shook her head. “I’m so used to it just being me.”

  “We’re going to get into trouble, aren’t we?” I said.

  “Hush,” Ben said. “Let’s go out into the field and we’ll cover up with dirt, you too,” he said, pointing at me. “Then we can tell her that we were just making a fort or something.”

  “Will she buy that?” I said, looking at Sarah.

  She looked uncertain but shrugged. She said it would have to do. We followed her out to the main room and they extinguished the lanterns. Sarah glided to the door, a pale ghostly shape in the gathering dusk, and she opened it slowly, scanning the back yard to the house for signs of her momma. When she didn’t see her she waved us out and we stood in a tight cluster outside the worn building as she gently closed the door.

  The sky was purple like it was bleeding. The air outside felt fresh and smelled of more rain. I thought if we could just wait till it rained it’d be okay because it’d wash them clean but Sarah disappeared around the side of the building and Ben followed her.

  I looked at the back of the house and saw that dark human shape in an upstairs window, just watching us. I raised my hand to wave then thought better of it and lowered my arm. The person upstairs watched me, unmoving, seemingly unreal and unapproachable.

  I heard more explosions in the distance and standing outside in the coming night air, I realized that the sporadic pops were guns discharging.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It only took the two of them ten minutes to smear dirt all over them and it stuck well due to the sweat slicking their flesh. It was full-on dark by the time we crashed through the back door, making a lot of noise while a truck sped by out front with men hooting and hollering and firing their weapons.

  Ben said, “Something’s going on out there,” as we paused in the kitchen at the back of the house. Hearing the gunfire made me want to go home. My eyes felt suddenly damp. My brother rubbed my shoulder and said, “Don’t be scared. It’s probably nothing.”

  But the look on Sarah’s face disagreed with him and the gnawing in the pit of my stomach thought he was lying too, that something was about to happen to me and I didn’t want it to be like what happened to Isaiah.

  Another car raced up the road full of more men screaming for blood, screaming, “Going to get all you goddamn niggers! Going to teach you your place so you ain’t never going to forget it.”

  Sarah’s mom stood just to the left of the window in the foyer that was attached to the dining room. The living room next to it was pitch. She heard us moving in and pressed a finger to her lip to keep us quiet. There was a shotgun leaning next to the door. Sarah whispered, “What’s happening?”

  “Men are happening,” Miss Jessie said. “Stay in the back of the house now until I tell you it’s okay, you hear me?”

  Sarah nodded. Ben stared at the shotgun. He swallowed hard the same time I did and he said, “Is there anything I can help with?”

  Miss Jessie shook her head. “No, go on to the back like I told you.”

  The flesh on her face was stretched tight. It scared me. I asked her if Daddy and Momma were okay, trying not to cry because I’d heard tales about how the Klan worked, how the l
ocal police worked with them, and Sheriff Bordeaux and the others didn’t like Daddy and once they found out he had a drop of black blood in him all that hope I felt blowing through me like a chilly October wind would still and leave me dead inside. Seeing Daddy hanging from the old tow truck south of town with Momma weeping at his feet kept playing through my head.

  I sobbed. Miss Jessie told me to be quiet. Ben trembled next to me, something playing out behind his eyes and he whispered, “It was that goddamn rally, wasn’t it? Got them all stirred up.”

  “It’s more than the rally,” she said.

  She glared at me like she hated the bit of Daddy that was in me because it had got Uncle Tommy caught up into a bunch of trouble. A second later her face softened and her shoulders sagged and she said, “Now move your bodies to the back of this house and don’t make me tell you again.”

  Headlights glared across the window beyond her. A couple cars pulled into the driveway and I wanted to believe that it was Uncle Tommy, that he’d helped get our parents free and they’d stopped by the fair and Daddy was driving the second car, Miss Jessie’s car, that they’d picked up. But the car doors slammed and someone racked a shotgun. A man said, “This is the place? You sure?”

  Another man answered him. Miss Jessie snatched the shotgun she had tucked next to the door. Her hands shook and she was hunched over like she was hiding, and she said to Sarah, “Run upstairs and get your brother and you all hide and don’t you come out until I tell you it’s okay to. Go on now!”

  “Hello the house,” someone called outside.

  Miss Jessie straightened her shoulders and flicked the safety off and snaked her finger over the trigger, caressing it like she was scratching at it as she opened the door. My heart was stuck in my throat thinking about how it had been when Bordeaux and the others had kicked my father into unconsciousness and how they’d broken Momma’s arm and Preacher had dropped the jade curtain so that I couldn’t see my family’s defeat.

  Sarah said something behind me. I inched nearer the door, not wanting to see what they did to Miss Jessie but unable to stop myself, knowing that I’d hate the men until I breathed my last breath and maybe after, hungry for justice and wanting to have faces to hate.