The Lesser People Page 8

  Preacher slid the man off his shoulder and got a hand behind his knees and a hand behind his neck, nearly cradling him, before he set him on the seat next to me. I slid tight to the passenger door, stared at the rope burn on the dead man’s neck.

  Momma said, “What are you doing, Arthur? I don’t want to ride in the car with that thing.”

  Preacher straightened the man up in the seat. He had such large hands. I thought if he wanted to hurt somebody like Daddy sometimes did that he could crush their skull. He said to Momma, “I’m taking him to the church.”

  I said, “Your church is burned down.”

  “I know,” Preacher said. “I’m going to bury him there.”

  My mom asked, “So you know him?”

  Preacher nodded. He said, “He was one of the painters they ran off. His name was James.”

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  Preacher shut the back door and climbed behind the wheel. He looked pale and angry, and the car smelled real bad. I stole a glance at the dead Negro, part of me afraid that his head would turn and that too-pink tongue would be poking out in my face. The corpse’s head had drooped. It almost seemed he was taking a nap, or praying. I told myself he was doing one or the other. Taking the long sleep, or praying the endless prayer.

  Momma grew quiet.

  Preacher said, maybe to nobody, “I’ll bury him there in the grass. I’ll make him a marker and nobody is going to be able to touch it since that’s my property. And I’m going to find out who did it. I’ll stir up their nest.”

  Momma turned her head and her lips parted to say something to him but she held her tongue at the last second. Preacher drove on. The dead man tipped in the seat as the car rounded a curve not far from our house and I put a hand out to stop the body from squishing me and the flesh was cold, colder than winter, and hard like stone, like he’d petrified up there in the blazing sun, and I hoped he was an angel now, wherever God needed him, and that all that stiff coldness didn’t slow his wings down.

  Chapter Ten

  On the way over to the jail I fell asleep and dreamed that Ben told me Fred had a thing for Momma, even back before our mother and father met. My brother said that Fred used to date Momma but she’d learned he was a coward when he was swimming in the river with a bunch of other teens and he let one of our mother’s friends drown. She couldn’t forgive him no matter what he said or what he did. After that Fred fell apart, lost in despair because he truly cared about her, but to Momma there wasn’t any redeeming qualities in a coward. After Ben told me about it I thought it made sense that she’d loved Daddy right away, that she’d met him and known instantly, or soon after, that he would not let those she loved sink to the bottom of the river with water in their lungs while he swam away for safety. He’d fight for her, for her family, for her friends. And he had up until the men came for him, and now he was locked up and there wasn’t much fight left in him.

  We stood outside his cell with its gray walls and gray blanket and the color gray washed into his cheeks and into his eyes. He limped toward us and sucked in a deep breath as he grabbed the bars with one hand and reached through the gap with the other to stroke the side of my mother’s face. He asked about her arm and she said that she was okay, just sore, but Arthur had done her a favor and taken her to see a doctor south of town. Recognition dawned in my father’s swollen eyes. He nodded once, tried to smile at me, maybe just glad I was there.

  Daddy said, “What is going on out there? They’re not telling me anything.”

  Momma tilted her head into the palm of his hand and closed her eyes. I touched Daddy’s fingers that gripped the bar and he looked down on me with a stony face, not seeming to recognize me now, or maybe seeing so much of himself and wishing he could warn me from following his path, and knowing he couldn’t warn me away, like no one could him.

  I squeezed his fingers, said, “We miss you.”

  Momma opened her eyes and pulled Daddy’s hand from her face. The sheriff standing behind us jingled his nightstick against the metal loop holding it. Preacher hadn’t come in with us and I wished he would have because Daddy would have been happy to see him. But Preacher decided to wait in the car with his dead servant, anxious, I thought, to bury the poor man in sacred ground.

  I wondered what people thought as they walked by on the street, if those in cars slowed to take a second look. I thought Preacher probably liked making them see what someone had done and I hoped that it’d make them think before they hurt any more Negroes.

  My mind wandered and I kept waiting for Momma to tell Daddy that we couldn’t find Ben and I needed her to do that before it spilled out my mouth and worried my father more than he was already worried.

  The sheriff strode near us, his body smelling of salt and wood smoke and mud. He said, “I’m afraid that’s about all the time I can give you, Beth. I got some errands that need tending and there’s nobody else around to keep an eye on you.”

  Momma ignored him. For a moment I thought she might go on standing there holding Daddy’s hand until Jesus came back in the rapture and carried all the fools of the world to their reward of eternal monotony. The sheriff didn’t reach for her though I thought he would have tried to pull her gently away. He said her name again softly. Then he looked at me and I glared at him, hoping he’d see what a coward I thought he was for what him and all the other men did to both of my parents. And though I didn’t understand at the time what all was going on, I knew that there was a line between right and wrong, and though it wasn’t always clear, most of the time it was, and you didn’t beat up women, and you didn’t point guns at children, and sometimes accidents happened, people got carried away, and always, somebody suffered.

  I hated thinking that, Always, somebody suffers. But it was a truth that sprouted like a great tree in my heart overnight, and as strong as I wished I could be, I could not uproot it.

  Daddy’s thumb stroked the back of Momma’s hand. She kissed his torn up knuckles.

  He said, “Where’s Ben? Have you found him?”

  Momma shook her head. Daddy looked passed her at the sheriff. The police man shrugged and mumbled something. Daddy’s gaze stayed on him for what felt a very long time. Momma said, “He hasn’t been home since he snuck out.”

  Daddy said, “He’ll be back.”

  I said, “He always comes back,” thinking that somebody was suffering somewhere.

  The sheriff said, “I can send a car out to look for him and let you know, Beth, but I need to escort you out of here right now so I can get back to work.”

  Momma said, “Your job is to protect and serve, Bill. You used to stand by that.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, other than I thought the sheriff was a traitor to Daddy just as Daddy’s boss thought he was a traitor to his own kind, all of us set in our thinking, unmovable as the tree that kept growing denser, filling the sky in my secret garden, where my childhood beliefs were dying and those of grown men were intruding. And I wanted to be like them, like Daddy mostly, grownup enough to do something. I knew Ben wanted that too, which was probably why he ran away for a night, to learn to do some things on his own, else he was up to no good. It was hard to tell with him sometimes.

  The sheriff said, “Hank?”

  Daddy said, “Go on, honey. Thank Art for me. Take Eli home and keep looking for Ben. Call the office here when you find him. Bill will let me know, won’t you, Bill?” He looked at the sheriff, his eyes searching, hoping. The sheriff nodded. He said he’d let Daddy know. I wrapped my arm around my mother’s waist because I didn’t want to leave since we’d barely spent any time there with him. My father touched the top of my head and roughed my hair, tears in his eyes, and for the first time I watched him ticking off the seconds of his life.

  I said, “We need to get you a lawyer.”

  The sheriff said, “Hank don’t want a lawyer. He knows he killed a man.”

  Momma said, “Can’t you blame that transient that’s been running around on this one?
”

  The sheriff gave her the stink eye.

  Daddy said, “Things will work out however they work out. Just be strong.”

  “Ain’t no one that strong,” I said, tears burning that I hadn’t even felt leave my eyes until they streaked my cheeks. “Get a lawyer, please.”

  I hated begging him, hated being afraid in front of him.

  Daddy said, “I’ll think about it.”

  Momma sighed but I wasn’t sure if it was in relief or not. She held my hand and leaned up to the bars and her and Daddy kissed the best they could through the gap where he’d reached to touch us.

  I looked away, stared at the sheriff who had a strange smile on his face. I said to him, “I like you less and less every time I see you.”

  His smile fell off his face and he reddened about the neck and it climbed up around his ears but his forehead was pasty white. He looked like he wanted to bend me over his knee but I thought Daddy getting a lawyer made him think twice about what he did in case my father got out of jail like Uncle Tommy had. The sheriff looked at my parents as if one of them should reprimand me and he kept waiting for one of them to until the door opened and the two men in suits who came to our house to help drag Daddy away came in. They had hard faces. The one Momma had stood down the first night glared at her now the way I’d glared at the sheriff a minute ago. I thought he was probably the one who broke her arm and I swore when I got old enough I’d break both of his if somebody else didn’t do it first.

  I imagined it was all about over, imagined the sheriff straightening up. He would hold his hand out to Momma as if he was a gentleman all the sudden. Momma would ignore him. She would hold her hand out to me, palm up. Her hands would be smooth and the wooden floor hard and the sunlight bright through the gash of window on the far wall where the gun racks hung. We’d head out the door and walk by the suits as if they didn’t exist. It would feel good to do that, to treat them like they treated other people. People like Mr. Clarence with gentle ways and his wife who made great cookies, people like Preacher’s servant that seemed a friend to him, not above or beneath him, both of them helping each other for what they had agreed on as men.

  The suit on the left jerked a thumb over his shoulder and said, “The crazy reverend is out there with a dead nigger in the back seat, Bill.”

  The sheriff looked confused. I guess it’d be hard to imagine if you never seen it. He cleared his throat and said, “What dead nigger?”

  Daddy groaned behind us, placed his forehead to the bars. His breath was hot on my shoulder.

  Momma said, “Somebody hung one of his servants out south of town. Art cut him down, and he’s going to give him a proper burial.”

  “Like hell,” the second suit said.

  The sheriff said, “Can’t bury him in town.”

  Momma said, “Cemetery’s full?”

  I thought someday it would be. Maybe someday soon.

  The police man gave her an irritated look, said, “I thought you understood, Beth. You used to. What’s happened?”

  “Compassion, maybe,” Momma said. “Maybe I ain’t afraid of thinking we’re all equal, maybe I don’t need to feel superior, maybe—”

  Bill said, “All right, shut your mouth.” He scratched his head. He said, “There’s probably some kind of law against hauling a corpse around. Either of you talk to him?” He looked at the suits. I wanted to ask Momma who they were because I’d never seen them in town much until recently when the blacks got a man speaking for them and a lot of other states were listening to what he said. But Mississippi wasn’t about to listen because we thought the old ways were the best ways, the way many communities do until the changing times level them.

  Both of the suits shook their heads. The one that broke Momma’s arm shrugged, said, “Hell, he’s crazy. No telling what he’d do.”

  I smiled and glanced back at Daddy. He smiled back, both of us thinking it funny that the men were afraid of Preacher who was one of the most passive and understanding men around. The sheriff grunted said, “Well, gotta be a law against it. Bring him in.”

  Momma said, “You men are the worst of your kind hassling him when you should be looking for who done that to his friend.”

  “Friend?” the Sheriff said.

  The other two laughed. It made me mad. I thought about punching one of them in the stomach, but Momma said, “Bunch of cowards, Art was right about that. Bunch of self-righteous cowards who have no—”

  Sheriff held his hand up, said, “Shut your mouth, Beth.”

  “It’s a free country, least for us, right? I can’t speak my mind without you—”

  He took two quick steps, faster than I thought he’d be able to move and slapped her. Momma fell back into the bars and Daddy roared deep down in his throat.

  Sheriff jabbed his finger in her face and yelled, “You don’t know nothing. You want unity? We got it! But what you’re trying to do is going to destroy it.”

  Momma’s lip was bleeding. She wiped the back of her hand against it and glared at him and said very quietly, “All you got is an illusion, Bill.”

  The sheriff told the men, “Lock her up in the other cell.”

  I shook my head, at first unable to move my body, not sure what me or Ben could do if they threw our mother in the cell next to our father. And I was angry because I didn’t know why they wanted to do it other than they could.

  I stepped up to the sheriff and punched him as hard as I could in the side. He let out a little air and stooped before he jerked back up, disbelieving, and snatched a handful of my hair. I screamed. It hurt like I stuck my head in a hornets’ nest. He pulled me back and Momma sprang up, her hands out in front of her as the sheriff tried to use me as a buffer between them, but her fingernails raked his face and he made an awful noise and cussed, then the suits grabbed Momma, each taking an arm and jerked her over to the other cell, one of them fumbling with a key in his pocket to open the door. They threw her inside, not caring if she landed on her bad arm or not. Momma sobbed, scooted back to the corner, cradling the brace Mr. Clarence had made and which was now bent.

  Daddy said, “Bill?”

  The sheriff looked at him, still holding me tight to his stomach, one hand around my neck and me afraid to move because I thought he could choke me if he wanted and there wasn’t anything anyone could do and I felt powerless.

  “What Hank?”

  “You just made a big mistake. All of you did.”

  The suits laughed, but it wasn’t easy laughter. They eyeballed each other, their faces a little grim. Bill didn’t laugh. He just said, “Seems to me you are the outsider here, my friend, and—”

  “You ain’t my friend,” Daddy said.

  The sheriff nodded. He said, “Fine. Just think about this…” he tapped my shoulder with his hard palm and his fingers felt like whips against my skin and I tried not to wince but couldn’t help it. He said, “Unless your brother wants to take care of your boys until this is all over then they’re going to be wards of the state. I highly doubt Tommy will take on the responsibility, know what I mean? And we sure as hell know your father ain’t going to do it. He’s a busy man with a lot of steam building, don’t need some little nigger-loving kids causing him any grief among his constituents.”

  Momma picked herself up from the corner of her cell and grimaced as she straightened the metal tubing holding the brace on her forearm. She said, “Art will watch after them.”

  “Art?” Bill said. “Thank you.”

  Momma said, “For what?”

  Bill said, “Last I heard he was homeless, which makes him a vagrant. And you know what we do with vagrants, right? We send them on their way to infest some other town, to make their way and pull their scams in some other city.” He nodded at the suits and said, “These boys will just have to persuade him to leave.”

  Daddy said, “He ain’t no vagrant. He’s our houseguest. And you may think you know him but those two,” he nodded toward the suits, “they know that he’s going
to hurt every one of you.”

  The sheriff shook his head, laughed. He said, “You talk a good game, Hank. Just not good enough to sway the way things are going to be.”

  The suits stood still. They were waiting for the sheriff to go talk to Preacher. They watched Daddy with fear deep in their eyes. He smiled at them and said, “You two are in for a hell of a rude awakening.”

  They ignored him. Sheriff said, “Don’t worry about these two. Worry about yourselves. Get comfortable. You’ll be in there a while.” He knelt down in front of me and said, “You going to be good or do I need to handcuff you?”

  I wanted to look back at my father and see what he thought I should do but I didn’t have the strength. I said, “I’ll be good,” thinking that I wanted to see Preacher and I wanted him to take me away from there and those men.

  The sheriff grabbed both my shoulders. He said, “We’re going outside to have a chat with Art. You move from this spot and I will put you in your own cell, understand? You think there’s a way you can help your parents you best stop that thought because it will only make things worse and they will get hurt, and after they’re dead you’re going to have to live with that the rest of your life. I don’t think you can handle that so I’m just warning you of the consequences.” He pointed at a chair behind a battered desk, the finish so worn off in places it was as gray as Daddy’s cell. “Have a seat there and don’t move a muscle.”

  I sat. The suits unlocked a rod that slid through the trigger guards of several shotguns on the far wall. They each took one and waited for the sheriff to lead the way out into the quiet afternoon, the sun baked street, toward Preacher and his dead friend. Again I thought I heard Isaiah’s voice calling from a far dark field and I squeezed my eyes shut wanting to block it out.