The Lesser People Read online

  “To ask straightforward questions?”

  “To ask stupid questions,” Fred said. “Questions best left unasked.”

  Daddy said, “He’s got a mind, same as you, same as me. And he’ll be able to speak it no matter who’s around. Seems the problem here is that you claim to hate the colored people, but really you don’t. You hate the whites that don’t hate them even more.”

  My throat tightened up. My eyes felt shiny. He smiled at me again, with more than his eyes this time, looked like he was proud of me for something but I had no idea what. All I knew was that I wanted the feeling to last and it made me a little sad to think that it probably wouldn’t.

  Fred said, “Listen to me, Hank.”

  Daddy said, “Preacher’s right.”

  Fred said, “What?”

  Daddy tapped Momma’s shoulder, said, “Let’s go.”

  Fred grabbed his elbow to stop him from turning away. I don’t think he meant anything by it but to keep talking because he seemed to be one of those men who loved the sound of their own voice, maybe loved being looked at, no matter whether it was in a good way or bad one.

  Daddy looked down at Fred’s fingers clasped to his elbow. He looked at his eyes. He said, “Get your hand off me or I’ll break every one of your fingers.”

  Fred seemed to consider the threat, weighing if it was a possible bluff, thinking probably that they were on sacred ground and people just didn’t fight in God’s house. Least that’s what I would have thought, but Fred opened his mouth and his fingers tightened on Daddy’s elbow and Daddy stomped on his instep. The lawyer or dentist screamed like a girl and jerked his hand away but not before Daddy turned, caught his wrist and rapped Fred’s knuckles off the back of the pew right in front of me. I heard something snap like a dry twig, but we weren’t out camping or out by the river where Isaiah cried his last cry. Fred tripped over Daddy’s foot, or Daddy tripped him. The well-dressed fella landed on his back and air exploded from his lungs, out his purple lips, his pale face full of color now. Some unnatural one.

  Daddy looked down at him.

  Other men stood.

  I stood too.

  Daddy shook his head, whispered, “I warned you.”

  He smiled at his Daddy far over there across the room and Daddy’s father shook his head, his fingers, which were tapping incessantly on the back of the pew a moment ago as still and lifeless and white as his face now.

  Daddy chuckled softly, without much feeling or mirth, then stomped on Fred’s hand.

  The man’s teeth were a beautiful white like a bleached shirt but his lips were twisted in agony and he cried like the time I fell off my bicycle two summers ago and the road tore up my knees and elbows and I hit my head so hard I could barely walk.

  A few men moved closer, cautious, while a few women slid back and gave them room. The aisle was crowded. I wiped my hand under my nose. The church smelled like mud and blood.

  Fred rolled back and forth, cradling his broken hand to his stomach. He didn’t look very full of himself anymore. I didn’t think he’d try to intimidate me again. But I felt bad for Daddy. He was outnumbered. And I felt bad for him because later he’d probably feel sorry for fighting in God’s house and Preacher would probably have to console him until they both said God understood fighting so God would probably forgive them for their trespass.

  It made sense to me. I nodded to myself, my brother standing next to me. He pushed by me as Daddy faced three men. They were spread out about an arm wide between them. Daddy looked relaxed, almost bored, and I remember later, when me and Ben were laying alone in our dark room with the lights extinguished, asking my older brother if Daddy had been in a lot of fights before because he sure seemed at peace with it. And Ben told me that sometimes you gotta fight or you’ll just get beaten.

  Ben stood by Daddy’s side. He looked bigger than normal, but his voice came out tiny. He said, “Bunch of cowards won’t fight you one on one will they?”

  The men cast angry and ashamed glances at each other.

  Momma never moved. She sat with her back straight, her hands in her lap. I wondered what went through her head. Sometimes I wondered if she even cared.

  Daddy balled his hands into fists. He told Ben to step back, said, “I’ll fight them however they want to handle it.”

  Fred scooted back on his butt until his back hit the corner of a pew. A big bearded man helped him up. Daddy said, “I warned him, now I’m warning you three,” as he looked from man to man in front of him, “you cross this line and I’ll do more than break your hands.”

  I didn’t know what he had in mind and my imagination jumped all over the place and I looked at each man in turn and saw that their imaginations were jumping too. A moment ago their chests seemed full of air but now they just deflated, one by one. They said something but I didn’t hear it. Daddy didn’t reply. He just watched them move over to Fred and the big fella, all of them making tracks for the dark doors at the back of the sanctuary.

  Chapter Three

  The ride home was quiet and dark and I enjoyed it. I spent most of the time thinking about how brave Daddy was, kept thinking that somewhere up ahead on the dusty country road men waited with shotguns, them hoping they could get the jump on us and me betting that Daddy would outsmart them somehow.

  He seemed larger than life to me at the time. Unstoppable. To Momma he didn’t seem like so much though and it made my chest hurt a little to see how their eyes wouldn’t meet, how they both refused to smile. Daddy’s hands were relaxed on the wheel though, his gaze scanning far ahead and close up on the shoulders of the road where shadows met the late evening gloom and they sat heavy one upon the next, sometimes broken by the blink of a dozen fireflies’ lazy flight.

  I wanted to ask Daddy what he thought the men would do to Preacher, or what Preacher would do to them, because to me it seemed something had to be done for somebody killing Isaiah. I couldn’t figure what he’d done to them and if Preacher was right and all they worried about was Isaiah growing up and liking one of their daughters then they were cruel, jealous men, men you couldn’t trust with reason, men you couldn’t have faith in because they were desperate in a way, worrying over shadows far up the road.

  We pulled into our drive. The house was parchment paper tossed upon a stained ink blotter and seemed to lean a little to one side as if the muddy bank of the river beyond was slowly sucking the foundation down into the earth. I tried not to think about it since I already had enough going on in my head and Momma would complain and tell me to stop whining.

  Daddy watched the house, the windows reflecting the headlights, holding his breath for a moment before he shut the car down and opened his door.

  Momma followed suit, silent, stern, casting her gaze to Daddy’s back as he exited the vehicle and stood in the driveway with some invisible weight on his shoulders. Ben stood next to him. I hadn’t even seen him open the door, but he was sneaky like that. He whispered something to Daddy. Sounded like, Is somebody in our house?

  Daddy shrugged, said, “If they are then they’re even stupider than I thought.”

  But he didn’t move forward.

  He was unarmed.

  They would be armed.

  I tried not to picture his body down by the river bank, cut up, red and white, his privates gone.

  Trying not to think about it made me think about it and tears burned my eyes. I saw Momma look in the window at me. She swam around, seeming to float on the other side of the glass. She opened my door, said, “What’s wrong?”

  Wind whispered through trees.

  The air felt suddenly hotter. Momma’s face drew closer. She said my name.

  I nodded at her as if to say, I’m here. I’m okay. I’m not on the riverbank. Daddy won’t let them take me to the riverbank.

  She touched the back of my hand with her calloused fingers. “Come on,” she said.

  Daddy and Ben hadn’t moved. They were speaking quietly. Momma repeated herself. I climbed out, felt
like my knees were going to give out beneath me as I glanced past her at our house. Daddy took a few determined steps toward the porch. I realized what was wrong. He usually left the living room lamp glowing on Sunday nights. It was almost a ritual as if a preplanned warmth to welcome us home and out of the dark.

  Now the lamp was out.

  Momma held me tight to her side but didn’t move forward or tell me I should go in with my father. Ben was halfway to the house when Daddy’s boot landed on the first step and he snatched the screen door and jerked it open, moving inside and quickly to the left side of the hall, disappearing. It felt like we were all holding our breaths. The fireflies blinked on and off. The wind kept whispering over the trees and out back across the river. I swallowed, my mouth dry, glanced at Momma’s wide, nearly wet eyes as she stared at the house waiting for Daddy to return and tell us that everything was okay.

  But several minutes crawled past us and our flesh grew sweaty, my mother’s hand tighter on my shoulder. I wanted to glance up at her again but I couldn’t pull my eyes from the front of the house, waiting for Daddy to step out or the lamp to light the living room window.

  Ben moved closer to the door.

  Momma said, “Get back here.”

  He shook his head. He said, “I’ve gotta check on Daddy.”

  He searched around the front yard, scuddling about until he found a broken tree limb. He hoisted it up on his shoulder and headed for the house. Momma didn’t move. I couldn’t. I thought she should call out his name. I thought we should get back in the car. I thought she should make Ben come back because even though he was mean to me sometimes and the lesser folk a lot of time, he wasn’t all that bad. He was just trying to fit in, be like most of the men around Forksville, or around the entire world for all I knew.

  I whispered, my voice foreign to my ears, “Benny?”

  He stopped near the porch. He looked back at me. He said, “Don’t worry. I’m just gonna check on Daddy real quick and I’ll be right back out.”

  He looked confident, sure of himself, but I knew that whatever had happened to Daddy could easily happen to him.

  But before he could take another step a dark form filled the doorway and its hand snatched the stick from Ben’s hands. He fell back on his butt in the grass, raised a hand to protect his face in case the attacker took a swing at him.

  Daddy stepped down the steps, threw the stick back in the yard.

  He said, “House is clear as far as intruders.”

  Momma said, “Who’s here?”

  Daddy offered Ben his hand and helped him up. He dusted his back and bottom off and said, “That was real brave of you, but if you do something stupid like walking into a dark house when you don’t know where I’m at, it could cost your mom and brother as well as you.”

  Ben hung his head. “I was just trying to check on you.”

  “He was worried, Daddy,” I said. “We all was.”

  He said, “You had a right to be, I figure. But when I tell you to stay put, you do it.”

  He threw Momma a quick, leveling glance. She seemed to wilt, withdrew her hand from my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him say we should stay put yet knew I could have missed it while I was trying to figure out what was happening when we parked in the drive and noticed the living room light off.

  Momma said again, “Who’s here, Hank?”

  Daddy said, “You boys get on to bed. I’ll see you in the morning before I head out to work.”

  We said, Yes, sir, and jumped by him and up the steps. I heard someone move in the living room but couldn’t see them. Daddy had left the light out and so had whoever was in there and I figured they must have had a reason for it because it seemed to me that everybody had a reason for everything, even if the reason was a simple one.

  Ben and me shared a room. We spent a lot of time there since Daddy pulled us out of school and had Momma teaching us because he was sick of the propaganda they handed out in class. Ben always laughed at the little pamphlets, said the darkies looked and smelled funny and the world had to make fun of somebody. I didn’t think it was so important and I missed my friends and figured if Daddy was wrong about anything it was that writing could hurt people.

  Ben closed the door behind us and left the light off, slid over to the window and I saw his thin fingers work the latch, his long arms raise the window as quietly as he could. I held my breath, not sure what he was planning. He’d done the same thing before, disappearing into the night like that, and he never told me where he went or who he was meeting.

  I whispered his name. He ignored me, slipped a leg over the window ledge and quickly dropped from sight. I wanted to follow him. Following him seemed like the right thing to do. I neared the window, felt the cool night whisper thin and growing darker. Ben wasn’t in the yard. I glanced back at our bedroom door, didn’t have to worry about Daddy or Momma coming in because they knew we didn’t need hand-holding to fall asleep, plus most of the time they had their own grownup issues to sort out, sometimes noisily in the still of the night. Sometimes they sounded like they were fighting with moans and licking and scratching.

  I shivered, slipped a leg over the ledge like Ben had, thought if he could do it I might as well too. I dropped to the hot ground, rolled to break my fall, pressed myself tight to the side of the house and listened, didn’t hear nothing but the river, my heartbeat, that familiar tick in my throat.

  Skirting around the house I found Momma and Daddy standing on the front porch. They spoke in hushed tones. I really wished I could hear them but I only caught Momma crying and Daddy saying, “What would you have me do? I know it’s not easy on you but I can’t change who I am, not even to save you some discomfort. Not even to shield our children. We do that and the assholes like Fred and all the others win. This is bigger than us, Beth.”

  I really wished I knew who was in our living room, thinking that it was probably Preacher, but not knowing stuff for sure bothered me. I rubbed my eyes. Momma looked lovely though a little bent as Daddy rubbed her shoulder gently, lowered his chin and looked her in the eye the way he looked everybody in the eye, but there was something extra special, something softer, hopeful even, when he looked at her like that.

  He stroked her cheek, wrapped his arm around her waist and led her inside. I heard the screen door swish shut but not the main door. The porch light switched off.

  I huddled among the shrubs near the corner, fingers digging into the black dirt, thinking I should get back to bed and not wanting to because several headlights, a half-dozen of them maybe, sped down the quiet road, cutting through the quiet night, and one by one pulled into our driveway. I slipped further behind the shrub, watched from beneath its brittle branches as men exited their vehicles, some of them holding shotguns, some of them sheriffs like Daddy, some of them with a bloated look, pale, their feet flopping one in front of the other toward the house. I heard the door swing open, looked over and saw Daddy on the porch all alone. He’d left the porch light off and his hands hung easily by his sides.

  I wondered where Ben was, thinking he was braver than me, believing he’d have rushed forward and stood by Daddy’s side to face the men. I wanted to, just couldn’t, watching their guns glint in the moonlight, hearing their labored breathing, scared of the direct manner with which most of them moved, all stopping at the steps, huddled up, staring at my old man and him staring back, silent, rock-steady.

  I knew some of the men: Fred and the big man from church who held him like a small child after Daddy crushed his hand; our doctor, Mr. Herman; two men who worked with Daddy—Mr. Bordeaux, his boss, and another sheriff named Conover who had a lean build and snake-like eyes that frightened me even when he smiled, like he was doing now.

  There were two other men I didn’t know, men in suit pants and dress shirts, and I couldn’t tell if they’d just come from the church or if they’d been working in town at one of the offices. They reminded me of attorneys, studying everything, watching the living room window, casting about for trace
s of criminal activity. Mr. Bordeaux and Conover held their shotguns propped on their hips. Daddy’s boss didn’t nod, which he normally did when seeing someone he knew. Instead, he said, “Heard you had a dispute this evening, Hank.”

  Daddy said, “It’s resolved.”

  He smiled at Fred who looked away quickly, his face turning red with anger or embarrassment. I held my breath for a moment, watched the tension in the men double. Daddy said that the Council and some of its backers would kill somebody and not bat an eye. I didn’t want them to hurt him, and knew somehow that they would if he fought back, and knew too that he would fight back because Daddy didn’t run from anything or anyone.

  Sheriff Bordeaux shook his head. “Afraid not, my old friend. Afraid Fred here heard some bad news that he’ll never be able to use his hand again.”

  “I doubt he had time to see a doctor. And even if he had, it might teach him not to place that hand on anyone ever again,” Daddy said. “Could be a lesson a lot of people around here need embedded in their blood and bone so it’ll stick and they don’t forget.”

  Sheriff Bordeaux shook his head. “You can’t do that to people, Hank.”

  “Seemed the right thing at the time. Still does.” He glanced from man to man. “You all here to run me in?”

  His boss rubbed his finger against the trigger guard. He nodded, finally, said, “Fred is pressing charges. He can’t be talked out of it.”

  “I wasn’t expecting him to be.” He looked hard at the suited men. He said, “Why are you two here?”

  They didn’t answer him, both just kinda smiling in the dark. Fred looked at them, seemed nervous, took a step back and the big man who reminded me of a lumber jack wrapped an arm around his shoulder to steady him or keep him from fleeing.

  Daddy leveled his eyes on his boss and said, “I’m not going anywhere, Bill.”

  Sheriff Bordeaux said, “You don’t have a say in the matter.”

  “Hell I don’t,” Daddy said.

  His hands were like rocks attached to his wrists. His eyes shone bright in the wan light. The wind coming in from town was hot and dry and I blinked against it, seeing that the men would shoot him, or at least beat him down, so I sprang from beneath the shrubbery and the men whirled about, catching the movement out of the corner of their eyes and a shotgun blared, Conover’s, a bright stab of flame from hip-level, and the wind beside my head exploded with thunder and all my hearing on that side was gone so I tripped over my feet and landed heavily on my side, the wind knocked out of me.