The Lesser People Read online

  Ben must have heard me stop breathing for a second because he rolled over and propped himself on his elbows next to me. The four men on the steps paused there, talking quietly, our grandfather’s right hand jerking as he talked, and his left slammed the cane’s tip against concrete. He looked upset and the other men withered beneath his verbal assault. I didn’t know why they even listened to him. I didn’t know why Uncle Tommy had either. He was a wrinkled, hard old man, but he wasn’t physically imposing.

  I glanced at Bordeaux, who had stuffed his hands in his pant pockets. He wore a pistol on his hip. I figured Old Man Conover had one too. And for all I knew our grandfather may have had a small Derringer up his sleeve.

  I thought about Momma crying out on our front porch, holding her broken arm, and I thought about Preacher’s boy Isaiah laying on the muddy bank of the river, and thought of Preacher wrestling his servant James from the back of the rusting tow truck south of town, and of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence and how they cared for Momma and treated us to cookies.

  I thought of Miss Jessie beneath a clean white sheet, her body red and black, and I thought of Sarah’s grief and how she had nowhere to live now and nobody to love her or Leonard.

  I bit my lip and flipped the safety off the rifle. It sounded like I hit a hammer against a full metal drum and I waited for the men to pause but our grandpa kept chattering, slicing the air with his thin hand, the other men recoiling into themselves.

  I thought about what Preacher had said, how some men needed killing and it was the only thing he was able to agree with Sheriff Bordeaux on. I thought this was a moment that buried my soul at the crossroads and the devil himself would someday come for my soul even though my body had walked one path or the other.

  I slid my finger into the trigger guard, took a slow, easy breath, imagining coins in the place of my grandfather’s eyes.

  He kept turning his head back and forth, not really looking at any of the men with him, looking back and forward, his whole body shaking with fury.

  I whispered to my brother, “How we going to get away again?”

  Ben whispered, “Do you think you can shoot all of them?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  As it began to rain, Ben whispered, “Do you think you can shoot all of them?”

  I nodded, not taking my eye from the sight I had locked on Grandpa Iron’s face.

  His silver dollar eyes shone bright in the gathering gloom.

  A soft rain suddenly pelted the street. Fred raised a newspaper over his head. I figured it’d only take about five seconds to squeeze off a dozen bullets. But I didn’t want the men to bleed out slowly so I had to make each shot count.

  My skin tingled and it felt like a feather was caught in my throat, tickling it.

  The rain came in harder, darkening the sidewalk and grandpa raised his hand, calling an end to his tirade. He placed a foot on the highest step, looking straight at the hedge.

  I squeezed the trigger.

  The little rifle bucked lightly against my shoulder.

  I wanted to close my eyes and not watch him fall, but Daddy had trained me to watch what a bullet did and to make sure it went where I’d intended and not anywhere else.

  Grandpa’s head snapped back and he looked like he was falling backwards in slow motion, his arms outspread like he was viewing the face of God.

  His cane clattered off the steps and bounced to the sidewalk right before a peal of thunder boomed and trailed off and the sky danced with heat lightning.

  I adjusted the rifle as the men’s mouths opened, Conover half catching our granddad before he slipped and Fred was looking right at us, lowering the newspaper he held, the rain washing his frightened face.

  I pulled the trigger again and his left eye disappeared and he crumpled, straight down, his knees giving out, and he slumped back against the double doors. I took a quick breath, trying to avoid thinking as I adjusted again for my next shot.

  Bordeaux dove over the railing and landed in the bushes.

  The old Conover used Fred as a shield and he poked a pistol out from under Fred’s arm and fired blindly across the road, shooting above and behind us, thinking that the attacker was in the garden of sunflowers.

  Grandpa was still kicking, alive, clutching his cheek as he slid down the steps on his back, one red hand pressed tight to his heart, all the color washed from him.

  Bordeaux poked his head up from behind the bushes, his arm extended and I saw that deep black barrel pointed at us and I saw in my mind’s eye the fire growing from that barrel with the boom of thunder and lick of lightning, and I knew I’d look over and see half of Ben’s head missing.

  I fired three times in Bordeaux’s direction, the bullets pinging off the building behind him, and he dove back into the bushes.

  Old Man Conover tossed Fred aside and used the distraction to slip back into the building. Ben said, “Conover got away. He’s going to call the cops. We gotta get out of here.”

  I kept the rifle trained on the bushes where Bordeaux hid. I thought that if we tried to make a run for it then he’d shoot us in the backs. My muscles ached. My heart was beating too fast and I could barely see through the rain as it began to pour.

  “We gotta move,” Ben said, pushing out from the way we’d come.

  I followed him, my blood pounding so hard I couldn’t hear anything but it and the rain. We ran in a zig zag for the garden, me fearing that a shot would ring out behind us, that thunder would boom and I’d have to see Ben get punched forward off his feet, his blood spraying the wet grass and the yellow sunflowers.

  But we dove right through the garden and came up breathing hard on the other side, both of our faces flushed with heat. Ben’s eyes as wide as mine felt. I said, “Where to?”

  He had that look on his face that said, I’m thinking, as he looked left and right and up ahead down the path of backyards. I glanced back toward the hedgerow and beyond it and saw Old Man Conover poking his head out of the door, looking right at us. I aimed the rifle at him and fired three quick shots. He ducked back inside as the glass cracked and the bullets ricocheted off down the street.

  “Come on,” Ben said, grabbing my arm and jerking me forward. I stumbled along for a second before I got my feet under me good and we ran like the wind with the rain drenching our clothes, the sky as dark as that tunnel and pressing down on us.

  Lightning crackled and tree branches whipped overhead. We pounced through lawns, around a sandbox here, a clothesline there, my hands shaking so badly and the rifle so wet I could barely hold on to it. Ben leaned against a privacy fence about six feet high and sucked in some long, hard breaths. He said, “Give me the rifle.”

  I didn’t want to. I figured Old Man Conover had seen us and if I didn’t have the rifle then we were going to die. I clutched it to my chest. “No,” I said.

  Ben looked angry for a moment, then his face softened. He said, “I can’t believe you shot two of them.” He glanced back the way we’d come, said, “I wonder if you hit Bordeaux too. I hope so. I hope he’s writhing around like the snake in the grass that he is.”

  “I don’t think I got him,” I said. “He saw us though. That’s not good, Ben.”

  “Shut up, all right?” he said. “We just gotta get back home.”

  “What if they’re already sending cars there?”

  “They don’t know we’re back there,” Ben said.

  He wiped rain from his face. He stood, stiffly, his flesh trembling. He glanced back the way we’d come and I stood and looked too. I didn’t see anybody trailing us and thought it was only because they were still shook up, or maybe just because they were old and couldn’t run worth a damn, but I still didn’t like that Old Man Conover had seen us. And I was sure that the sheriff had too. I felt like a fool for trusting Ben, mostly for the repercussions it might cause, and I was surprised that I didn’t feel much guilt over shooting my own grandfather or his assistant Fred. I figured the reality of it might settle in later but there wasn’t m
uch time to think about it until we were done running and had time to be still and talk to Uncle Tommy.

  Ben poked his head around the fence, ready to cut west across adjacent yards before we headed north back toward our house. But he was blocking my view and when he screamed it caught me off guard and at first I couldn’t see why he’d screamed.

  Then he ducked and arms appeared above his dipping head and shoulders, those arms trying to scoop him up, and Ben spun quickly and ran the other way, right past me.

  I turned, dumbfounded and watched him run away for what was only a couple seconds before those same arms jerked the rifle from my hands and Sheriff Bordeaux’s ugly face filled my side vision, that rifle butt growing closer and closer and me not understanding, my legs locked there, rooted in the ground, until the stock of my .22 caught me across the mouth and the force of it knocked me back into the fence.

  I couldn’t see.

  My head felt like somebody had hooked it to a car battery.

  I tried to scream and couldn’t tell if I was making any sound at all. The rain cut at my face. My mouth bled, I could taste it, and I felt loosened teeth with the tip of my tongue. I tried to cry for Ben, but he was gone. Pain enveloped me. Darkness was closing in as Bordeaux knelt in front of me, gripped my chin with his fingers, squeezing my loose teeth, and he turned my head from side to side, studying me.

  I wanted to spit in his face but I was terrified and him squeezing my mouth made the pain flare bright and intense until the darkness and cold wrapped me up entirely.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was night when I woke in a small wooden room. They’d tied me to a chair and a man sat on a bed in the corner, the cabin smelling of mold and wood smoke. The man was barely that, maybe only eighteen. His eyes were a pale blue and he jabbed a fork into a can of something or other. He smiled at me when he saw I was awake. He said, “How you feeling?”

  I tried to smile. “I been better.”

  He laughed, his fork motionless, driven deep in the can. He said, “You lose all your circulation yet?”

  I tried to move my arms and legs. They’d tied me pretty tight. I said, “I can’t feel my feet.”

  He said, “Yeah, gotta tie the legs especially tight so if somebody gets free and they think they’re going to make a run for it they’re in for a surprise.” He slapped his leg. “Bam, they go right down soon as they try to stand.”

  “You’ve tied people up before.”

  “Sure,” he said. “All the time.”

  I tried to take in the room, what this place was, who he was. That old familiar tick sounded in my throat. I swallowed hard, trying to kill it.

  There were barely any furnishings. But the wood stove he’d heated his can of beans on threw warmth. A small wooden table sat off to the wall on the left. It had nothing on it. Nothing hung from the walls either. There was only one window hung midway up the wall by the door across the room. Darkness outside. Night.

  I said, “Nobody lives here, do they?”

  He shook his head, forked more beans into his mouth. He chewed slowly. When he was finished he said, “You’re a pretty brave kid. Don’t think I ever met one your age who had the balls to shoot a man, ‘specially the mayor of no town, or their own kin.”

  He pointed the fork at me and said, “You might be a little crazy in the head.”

  “I ain’t crazy. He had it coming.”

  “Right.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m nobody. Lowest of the low, if you gotta know.”

  He set the can on the floor and perched on the edge of the bed with his bony elbows digging into his knees. He said, “Saw your brother put up a good fight at the rally. Everybody thought Jim could take him for sure, but your brother got some mean in him.”

  “You a Conover?” I said.

  He nodded. “Not by choice, but then again we ain’t get to pick who our family is, now do we? Otherwise you’d have picked a different grand pappy, right? One you didn’t have to shoot.”

  “Where is my brother?”

  He shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  He eyed me hard for a minute and said, “You don’t seem very scared. I think they meant for this to scare you right good.”

  “You’re not very scary,” I said.

  “Oh, I can be,” he said, but he remained perched on the edge of the bed like a cat that’s just ate a canary. His lazy eyes drooped. He said, “That sheriff busted you up like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “I like you.”

  “Thank you?” I said.

  He laughed again. “No, I really do. It’s just too bad you all were fighting on the losing side. Going to be a shame to kill you, but they’re right and we can’t have boys like you growing up to be men.”

  That tick snuck into my throat.

  His eyes were pale and his hands steady on his knees.

  He stared straight into me, said, “You ever wonder what it’s like when you’re dead?”

  I swallowed but my mouth was dry. I said, “I heard you miss breathing.”

  He straightened, then he bellowed and slapped his leg. “I heard you miss breathing, he says.” He nodded to some inner tempo. “Damn straight, boy. I bet you’ll miss that most of all.”

  “Where’s my brother?” I said.

  “Why don’t you stop worrying about him and worry about yourself? Don’t you know that you’re supposed to be crying and asking me to let you free, shit like that?”

  I shook my head.

  He said, “Well, you should be.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “When you’re tied up it’s not about what you want.”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I’m just making a living the only way I know how,” he said.

  He sprung from the bed quickly. Much faster than I thought he’d ever be able to move. He held a knife in his hand. Just a little pocket knife like Daddy had for tinkering on things or cutting off slices of apple. The boy held it loose by his side. He didn’t move a muscle and his face went still as stone.

  I said, “How do you make a living?”

  He shrugged. “Back in the swamps here you tend to skin things, sell their hides. Stuff like that.” He lowered his chin, said, “You ever see anybody skin an animal?”

  I nodded. “My daddy. He likes hunting.”

  “There’s an art to it,” Conover said. He squinted at me. He flicked his wrist and the knife thudded between my feet. I jumped, nearly wet myself. He smiled. “Good,” he said. “Now you’re getting into the spirit of things.”

  He worked his way over slowly as if moving hurt his bones and he knelt in front of me and jerked the knife from the floor. He placed one knee to the ground, said, “What you got to give me if I cut those ropes and set you free?”

  Hope blossomed in my chest. It flared so fast, faster than any pain ever could, but it subsided quickly, deflated, left me feeling empty. I said, “You ain’t setting me free. They’d kill you.”

  “Well,” he said. “You Irons are tough and smart.”

  He cleaned his fingernails with the knife.

  When he finished he looked up and said, “Do you know what castrating is?”

  I tested the limits of my bonds. I didn’t think I’d be able to slip free even if I had a couple hours alone. I swallowed hard, my chest feeling full of cotton as I imagined Isaiah on that muddy river bank, his pants gone, that horrible red mess between his legs. I cried out to God, suddenly, so forcefully it scared and startled me. The Conover boy laughed. He nodded. He said, “I got some people’s testicles in some jars. I kinda like to collect them.”

  His grin widened. He said, “Well, more than kinda like.”

  “Let me go,” I whispered hoarsely. “You could. Just let me go.”

  “I don’t think so.” He stooped forward and pulled my left shoe off, then my right. He set them side by side, heel flush with heel
, like those in the slave quarters at Miss Jessie’s. He coughed loudly into the crook of his elbow. Bullfrogs sang in the delta and higher pitched, some strange night bird.

  I wondered how far we were from home. I sobbed, wondering why he took my shoes off, thinking that he was going to chop me to pieces slowly, starting with my toes. And I knew it was going to hurt a lot because all he had was that little knife, and there’d be parts of me he’d add to jars filled with some strange liquid, the sound of him screwing the tin lids on the mason jars like a horrible screeching beast in my ears, that smile cut deep into his face and the backs of his hands dotted with my blood.

  “Please,” I said, not caring about my shame or groveling. “I’m just a kid.”

  “You know what I was doing by the time I was your age?” he said.

  Tears burned my cheeks. I shook my head.

  He said, “I was dreaming about my older sister, wondering what her boobs looked like. She had these huge ones, you know?” He put his hands out in front of his chest like he was holding two watermelons. “But she ran off so I never got to see ‘em.”

  I could barely hear him. My pulse pounded, louder and louder and I thought I heard a strange groan coming from outside, me thinking that it was Ben, me thinking that he was tied up out on the porch. But then the pitch of the sound changed and I knew it was a car engine. Sheet metal rattled, louder, closer. I swallowed hard, listening with all my might. The engine revved up for a second and then died. The Conover boy shook his head and cursed softly. He pushed himself from the floor and walked his lethargic walk toward the front door but it opened before he reached it.

  I tried to see past him, to see who was standing there, expecting Sheriff Bordeaux to drag Ben in kicking and screaming. But the young Conover moved and the oldest of their clan stood there in the doorway chewing on a cigar. I wondered if it was the same one he’d been chewing on when I’d tried to shoot him. My mind jumped all over the place, replaying the events from earlier in the evening, and I wondered what they told Daddy and Momma.