The Lesser People Read online

  “Hello there,” the old man said. He stepped inside. His clothes were ironed and white and crisp. Other people moved behind him. They filed in one after another, a half dozen men, all Conover’s. Then Bordeaux shuffled in, limping, probably having hurt himself when he’d jumped over the railing at Grandpa’s office. He pointed at me and said, “Untie him.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  The young Conover shrugged and moved behind me and set to work on the knots.

  The older ones, his brothers and uncles, stood staring at me. I figured that Ben must have made it back to Uncle Tommy and he somehow got a hold of Bordeaux and maybe he knew some of his dark secrets and he’d used them to make the sheriff set me free.

  It all seemed possible, likely even, in my head.

  The boy cast the ropes aside. He stood up behind me. Bordeaux nodded to him. I glanced over my shoulder, saw his arms rising, something black, something made of fabric, in his hands. I tried to duck but he slid the bag over my head and wrenched it tight.

  I was immediately back in the tunnel, alone with the darkness and my fear, but Ben wasn’t there, or Sarah, or Leonard. He pulled some strings tight and my air disappeared. I clawed at the bag, tried ripping it free, but struggling only made it worse. Men grabbed my arms and lifted me from the chair. I kicked out, trying to hurt them but they pulled separate ways like they were going to rip me apart and I breathed hard, forced my body still. I sucked small breaths, the best I could get through the bag. As they carried me away from the light, my vision grew darker and one of them laughed. Bordeaux said, “Let’s finish this.”

  But he didn’t sound thrilled about it.

  I tried to cry but I couldn’t. The air outside was hot and damp. It got like that in July after a hard rain. Their shoes squashed in the mud as they carried me. I whispered, Please, to God, to them, to anybody that would listen, but nobody did. They just kept carrying me through the darkness, their fingers digging into my arms. It was worse than being tied up in the chair. After a while the men carrying me began to huff and complain. They set me on the cool ground. Two other men took their place, lifted me from the ground like I was paper. I said, “I want my dad.”

  They ignored me. The only sounds occupying the night were the rustle of their clothing, the bag on my head, and the slings on their guns.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The trees above us blocked the rain. The Conover’s talked about the local economy, how things had seemed to be taking a turn for the worse like they had been before the start of World War Two. I couldn’t feel my arms. I wanted to pass out, prayed for it, but every little jostling step they took jarred me. My ribs felt stretched out. I could feel my feet just inches above the ground and as much as I wanted to feel them touch the earth again, I didn’t, because I knew that when they placed me on the ground…

  Bordeaux said, “Okay.”

  I thought, Okay, they’re going to let me go now. They can’t do to me what they did to Isaiah. I’m white. I’m one of their own.

  But deep down I knew I wasn’t.

  It wasn’t about color at all.

  It was about what they wanted and what they’d kill to protect. Just some massive illusion, an ideal that they had of a superiority over everybody. An entitlement that sickened and repulsed me like it had Daddy and Preacher and maybe even Uncle Tommy.

  I thought, I won’t beg anymore. Even if they cut me up. I will tell them what Preacher had told them, that they’re cowards. That they’re the lesser men, not even men, nothing more than animals. They’re animals. Their voices are grunts and growls, incoherent, cruel, vicious.

  They threw me into the dirt. I landed hard, hit my chin and pain shot through my skull like a bolt of lightning. I laid there for a minute, struggling not to scream against the agony of it, or the thought of what was to come. Nobody approached me but I heard them laughing softly, heard a woman say my name, “Elijah,” and her voice was desperate and broken.

  Mom, I thought.

  My insides froze. It felt like my heart stopped beating.

  No, I thought.

  I pushed myself up and loosened the string around my neck and jerked the bag from my head. Torches lit a circle around us. The men were huddled close.

  Bordeaux held Momma by her arm and he pressed a pistol to her ribs. Her face, stricken by grief like I’d never imagined, lit her eyes. The black dirt lay cool beneath my toes, against the soles of my feet.

  “I’m all right,” I told her.

  I looked around for Ben. For Daddy.

  There was a dark depression in the earth behind me, not five feet away. Shadows and flickers of light danced over it.

  The hole was the size of a coffin.

  I swallowed, wanting a drink, a thick horrible feeling squirming in my chest.

  I turned back to Momma. She hung her head. I said to the sheriff and the Conover’s, “You men kill Daddy and Ben?” I pointed at the hole. I said, “Are they in there?”

  A sob broke loose, one that had felt like it was building up inside me since the men had first come to our house after Daddy broke Fred’s hand.

  Momma cried openly, unashamed. I wanted to tell her that it was okay, like Sarah had told Leonard, but she wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t stupid and I knew they were going to kill us and throw us down in that grave and Daddy’s flesh would be cold and Ben’s too, and their unseeing eyes would stare through us as the men above tossed down dirt that tickled the back of my neck, and the tears they’d come, with me and Momma clinging in the dark.

  They’d come until the air ran out and the men moved on with their lives, putting it all behind them, somehow telling themselves that they’d done what they had to, that there wasn’t any other way.

  Behind me and behind the grave a fire flared bright with a loud whoosh as someone set a cross aflame. I shielded my eyes, watched the man stumble into the open circle, his cane tapping the soggy ground, poking holes in it.

  My grandfather’s waxen face glowed above his dark suit and he’d applied a bandage to his cheek. He tried to speak but doubled over from the pain it caused him. Bordeaux brought Momma closer and she fell at my feet, holding them, kissing my bare flesh, wetting my insteps with her tears.

  Bordeaux said, “No need to talk, I got this under control.” He patted my grandfather on the shoulder. They were more like father and son than the old man had ever been with Daddy or Uncle Tommy.

  I said, “You can’t kill us.”

  Momma pulled herself up and clung to me, wrapped me up in her arms so hard I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even hear anybody else for a minute. When she let go I saw they were all watching us with their cold, dark and still eyes, the flames dancing on the torches, the cross burning bright.

  The oldest Conover came over carrying a shovel. He stabbed it in the ground near my feet. I stepped back. Momma shook her head and tried to wipe her eyes but it wasn’t any use. She looked pale, dirt smeared across her forehead and nose. The brace that Mr. Clarence had put on her arm was missing.

  She looked at Bordeaux and said, “Don’t make him do it. I’ll do it.”

  I closed my fingers around the shovel. I thought I could use it as a weapon.

  Bordeaux pointed his pistol at my mother’s chest. She straightened her back, looked him in the eye though I could tell it took all the strength and courage she had left. She said, “You’re all evil men.”

  My grandfather glared at her.

  Bordeaux said to me, “Fill that hole, boy.”

  “How about I plant this in your neck instead,” I said.

  “You can try, but I’ll shoot your Momma. You want to see her bleeding to death?”

  I glanced back at her. She said, “Don’t listen to them. I’m not afraid.”

  She looked terrified. More terrified than I felt at that moment.

  I said, “Are you going to let us go?”

  “After you fill the hole,” Bordeaux said. “Sure. Though you may be begging for a bullet by then. I wish I could say
we didn’t try to give you all enough breaks, but we did.”

  My mom’s fingers closed over my shoulders. She pulled me close to her, sank her head to top of mine. “Don’t do this,” she said.

  “They’ll shoot you.”

  “Please, Eli.”

  I pulled myself from her and she sank to the ground and turned her back on all of us. The men grouped together moved closer until they were almost right on top of us.

  Bordeaux said, “Fill in that hole, Eli.”

  I inched toward it, not wanting to get too close because I was afraid they were tricking me and that they’d push me in. Or just shoot me in the back, let gravity do the rest.

  I stopped a couple feet from the edge.

  I took a deep breath and leaned forward a bit to see what lay down there, already knowing they’d killed my father, that he’d probably have a dark hole in the middle of his forehead, or maybe he’d be torn to ribbons like Uncle Tommy had said Preacher had been, and I didn’t want to see but knew there wasn’t no way around it if I wanted to get Momma out of there.

  But there was a small voice in the back of my mind, as I leaned forward to see my father’s corpse, that said they wouldn’t let Momma and me go free, there was a tingling at the base of my neck, a sharp pain. I rubbed the spot, leaning on the shovel like grandpa did his cane, and looked in the grave.

  The hole was only four feet deep. They’d mounded the dirt on the left side and behind it. I leaned forward, expecting not to see much, but the cross had lit the grave well and my father stared back at me. He had a knowing look in his eyes, a horribly sad one.

  They’d bound his hands behind his back. They’d tied his feet together at the ankles. They didn’t gag him and he huffed, trying to get the bonds on his wrist free until he looked up and saw me. His eyes filled with tears, his face a mask of grief like Momma’s had been, like mine felt at that moment. It was like our faces were made of glass and someone had smashed them and pieces were still falling. I said, “Daddy?”

  He shushed me.

  Bordeaux moved closer, then past me, and he ripped Momma from the ground and dug the pistol into her neck. He said, “Fill that hole, Eli.”

  I shook my head, glanced at my grandfather who smirked though it brought tears to his eyes.

  I stared back into my father’s grave.

  Daddy said, “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not!” I cried.

  I thought I could jump down in the hole and untie him, that if I did it quickly enough Daddy could fight them. But I couldn’t move. I knew they’d shoot him and they’d shoot Momma and they’d shoot me. I rubbed my eyes with my wrists.

  Old Man Conover said, “Make that boy hop down in there and I’ll bury them both alive.”

  I spun toward him, swinging the shovel before I even knew what I was doing.

  The tip of the blade was like a razor, probably having been honed from lots of digging, thin and sharp like a talon, and it sliced through his white suit just above his belly button and he jumped back screaming, his blood spreading out over the linen fabric and I smiled, wanting to see his guts fall out of the cut, but he peeled his shirt up, crying until he saw that the tip of the shovel had barely broke his skin.

  He dropped his shirt and stepped forward and smacked me on the ear. My ears rung and it felt like the muscles in my neck tore from the force of his strike. I collapsed on the ground, sobbing, holding my head. He grabbed me by the shoulder and the thigh and lifted me over his head. The night sky was full of stars.

  Bordeaux said, “Set him down.”

  I hung there in his grip for a second longer before he let go and dropped me. Air whooshed from my lungs. My elbows dug pockets in the earth. I tried to stand but my legs trembled too much. Momma watched me, and I thought she was scared for me but she was awful proud. And I remembered hearing somewhere that pride killed us. It was pride that killed the devil and damned him.

  Bordeaux cocked the hammer of his pistol. He said, “You’ve got to the count of three, boy. Then I put a bullet in your mom’s leg. I count to three again, put a bullet in her other leg.”

  A couple of the Conover men, one older than Daddy and one about his age, moved closer to them and their fingers toyed with Momma’s shirt, with her chin, with the buckle of her pants. One with a rat-like face said, “Don’t ruin her just yet, Bill. Girl like this needs a chance to repent of her sins.”

  She spat in his face.

  He back handed her.

  I thought I’d swing the shovel, go for his neck, but the sheriff fired a bullet into the sky.

  I cowered.

  Momma went still.

  Bordeaux told the men to step back. He looked at me, said, “One…”

  I squeezed the shovel’s handle and shook my head, clenching my eyes shut.

  “Two…”

  I thought of that terrible tunnel and of the suffering tree and of the spider out there in the hot damp night.

  “Three…”

  I pushed a little dirt off the side into the hole.

  Daddy grunted as the weight of it hit him.

  “Keep going,” Bordeaux said.

  I couldn’t look in the hole and I couldn’t look at Momma.

  I worked slowly at first and Daddy didn’t make a peep and I wanted him to tell me that he understood, that he still loved me, knowing it was selfish and not caring.

  Breaking inside, all of us.

  Each shovelful breaking us more than the last.

  Chapter Thirty

  The torches had burned down some by the time I shoveled the last of the dirt on the grave. I trembled so badly I could barely stand and my guts were so tied in knots that I threw up a hot liquid bile that scorched my throat, on my knees now, at the foot of Daddy’s grave.

  The men were silent. The little creatures of the forest too. I buried my head in my hands and sat there like that a while until Bordeaux let Momma go and she wrapped me up in her arms and cried, “You had to. It’s okay, Eli. You had to.”

  But she pulled on my hair and her fingernails dug at the back of my neck.

  I tried to fall into her and disappear. I tried for a good ten minutes, ten minutes of hard, unabashed crying, but I couldn’t disappear. And the grave was right there by my knee.

  Off in the woods a stick broke.

  Momma raised her head first, I felt the weight of it there tight against my shoulder one moment, and gone the next.

  One of the men said, “What was that?”

  Another said, “Probably a deer.”

  I stared at the tears in Momma’s eyes and the reflection of the burning cross there, thinking that she was never going to be able to forgive me because I’d never be able to forgive myself. I stuck a hand in the dirt and grabbed a handful of it and sprinkled some in my pants pocket.

  The men got jumpy as another stick broke. I turned my head and peered off into the darkness surrounding us. I whispered to Momma, “It’s Ben.”

  I almost pointed but stopped myself as the double barrel of a shotgun crossed that plane between night and firelight. He pointed the barrel at our grandfather, and Old Conover and Bordeaux, who stood huddled close together to the left of the grave. Nobody moved. Just that barrel there shining in the torchlight, a little unsteady, but even I knew that a load of buckshot at that range didn’t take much skill to use.

  Bordeaux cleared his throat.

  But before he could say anything Uncle Tommy stepped out of the shadows behind me and Momma and he lifted me up and he pushed me and her back behind him.

  Ben kept the shotgun trained on our grandfather. Some of the younger Conover’s had their hands up, not wanting to die though they were fine with killing. I wanted to tell Ben to drop those hammers and kill them all but Uncle Tommy said, “Benjamin, take your mother and brother back to the car. Do what I told you, you hear?”

  Bordeaux and the others smiled at that. Thinking it was just him against them and that shotgun disappearing into the murk they thought they stood a good chanc
e of walking away.

  Ben said, “Where’s Daddy?”

  Uncle Tommy rubbed my head and there was something hard in his hand. He cast a quick glance at the grave and said to my brother, “Do what I told you.”

  Ben cursed and I watched his finger scratch the trigger.

  Grandpa looked like he wanted to hide behind Old Conover and Old Conover looked like he wanted to hide behind him, with Bordeaux’s face serious and set in the dying light.

  My brother said, “Eli? Momma? Come on around.”

  Uncle Tommy urged us back into the darkness he’d climbed out of and when he waved us on I saw the grenades he held, the ones that I’d seen in his crappy little travel trailer, the ones in the fruit bowl on the counter, the ones his father, our granddaddy, had juked him into stealing so they could sell the weapons to grandpa’s friends in the KKK.

  Me and Momma joined Ben. He asked where Daddy was but Momma just clung to me and her silence and I was afraid that she’d never be able to talk again, and I felt sorrow welling up in me as it had in Daddy’s eyes.

  The sheriff said, “Tommy?”

  “Shh,” Uncle Tommy said. “Just shut your mouth.”

  He showed them the grenades he held. Their faces went white, chalky in the night. He said, “Got some dynamite rigged up all around you boys, too. And a couple of Claymore mines.”

  “Bullshit,” Grandpa said hoarsely.

  All the other men looked ready to run.

  Uncle Tommy said, “You boys try to run and you’ll hit those mines and it will rip your legs clean off.”

  He pulled the pins from the grenades with his teeth. He looked over at where we huddled close together in the shadows and said, “Get out of here, Benjamin.”

  Ben walked backwards, still holding the shotgun waist high. We followed him, listening to Grandpa yell in a choked voice, and feeling the hysteria in the air thick like a thousand moth’s beating wings. We ran for the Impala that Uncle Tommy had stolen which was parked in front of the cabin. I saw blonde hair in the back seat and the flash of Leonard’s muzzle next to it as Momma threw us inside. She cried as she cranked the engine and whipped the big automobile around. And we left Uncle Tommy and our Daddy there in the woods.