Page 22 of The Bottoms


  “Thanks.”

  “It’s okay.”

  We walked out on the front porch. I felt awkward and didn’t know what to do with my hands. Finally I offered one to Cecil. He took it and we shook. I got Sally Redback and started for home.

  It was dead dark, and as fate would have it, the wind had picked up. I went by Mrs. Canerton’s to see if I could give back the book, but the lights were out and the book was still on the porch swing. I was nervous about leaving it there, lest the rain should start up again and blow water on it. I got the book, put it in Sally’s saddlebag, mounted up.

  I rarely ever was out this late by myself, so I decided to take advantage of it. I rode Sally over to Miss Maggie’s. Unlike Mrs. Canerton’s, there was a light in the window. There was also a car in the yard. I couldn’t see it good, as its rear was to me. I rode Sally into a clutch of trees and waited a moment, trying to decide if I should bother her or go home. I had come to the conclusion I ought to just go on home, when I looked up to the sound of the car door slamming. The car started up. The taillights showed. One of them was broken. It was the same car that had sped away that time we got the message about Mose.

  The car looped fast around the house, right through Miss Maggie’s yard, came around the side, between some trees. I tried to get a look, saw a man in a hat, and that was it. The car hit the dirt road, flashed its broken taillight at me, and was gone.

  I started to chase after it, but that idea went away quick. Sally couldn’t keep up with that car, not even a little bit. She’d fall over dead if I pushed her to even try.

  I got off Sally, tied her to a tree, walked toward Miss Maggie’s. I felt something in the air I can’t explain. Maybe it was just the car that had set me on edge, but it was as if the night were filled with needles and the cool points of them were sticking in my skin.

  I walked quietly up on Miss Maggie’s porch. I turned to look toward the mule pen. The mule was there. The hog was in his pen, lying down in a mud pit it had made in one corner.

  The screen was closed, but the door was slightly open. I could see the kerosene lamp sitting on top of the wood stove. I had never known her to keep it there.

  I called her name.

  No answer.

  I knocked.

  Still no answer.

  I called some more. And when she didn’t answer this time, I opened the door and eased inside.

  “Miss Maggie,” I tried some more.

  I went over to the little curtain, still calling her name. I eased it back. The light from the lamp spilled inside, giving a greasy orange glow to the bed.

  Miss Maggie, wearing one of her potato sack gowns, was lying on the bed, her hands extended above her in praise Jesus position, her wrists were bent against the wall, causing her thin black hands to fold downward as if she were dumping something from them. Her eyes were open.

  I felt a tightening in my stomach, then a sourness. I called her name. I went over and touched her gently on the shoulder. I could feel that she was warm, but she didn’t respond.

  “Miss Maggie,” I said, and began to cry.

  I stepped out of there and pulled the curtain back. I went over to the lamp and blew it out.

  I went out on the porch and stood there for a long moment, considering the night. The night had nothing to say. I walked back to Sally as if in a dream. I untied her and mounted. I started riding toward home.

  I didn’t push Sally too hard, but I rode at as good a gait as she could carry me without wearing herself down. In the meantime, I was mentally trying to put something together; I was trying to figure on the broken taillight.

  A man jumped out of the dark and grabbed Sally’s bridle.

  “Harry,” Daddy said. “I’m sorry, boy. I didn’t mean to scare you. I think someone stole the car. I was walkin’ home, ’side the road. Saw you comin’ ’round the curve. I was afraid you’d get away from me.”

  “You’re drunk,” I said.

  “I was,” he said, and let go of Sally’s bridle. “I ain’t now. I’ve walked it off.”

  “I thought you slept it off.”

  For a moment, from the cock of his head, I knew he thought I had said too much. But he eased his posture, let it go.

  “Car ain’t stolen,” I said. “It’s back at Cecil’s house. We had to use it to pull Grandma’s car out of a ditch. I come over there to get you, but you was sleepin’ it off.”

  “I’m sorry, Harry.”

  “Miss Maggie,” I said. “She’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “She’s dead. I was goin’ home, to find you. I thought maybe you might have got back. I was hopin’ you wouldn’t be too drunk to do somethin’ about it. Not that anything’s gonna do Miss Maggie any good.”

  “She was old, Harry,” Daddy said, practically leaning on Sally.

  I told him about the car, about the taillight.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m climbin’ up there.”

  He pulled himself up on Sally with some difficulty, and we rode back to her place.

  Inside, Daddy lit the lamp, pulled back the curtain, sat on the edge of the bed and took a look. First thing he did was use his hand to close her eyes. He touched her skin.

  “She feels a little warm.”

  “She was real warm when I found her,” I said.

  He held the lamp close to her face. “Someone’s had their hands around her throat. And that there pillow on the floor. I’d figure that ended up over her face. She was murdered, Harry.”

  He turned to look at me when he said that, and his face in the light of the lantern looked as if it were made of wax.

  I guess something in my face showed him something he didn’t want to see.

  “I don’t know much of anything anymore, son,” he said, “but I do know that.”

  Part Five

  20

  Only our memories allow that some people ever existed. That they mattered, or mattered too much. No one speaks of Old Maggie anymore. I can’t say I know anyone who remembers her but me. Remembers her cooking, which if I think about hard enough, I can taste; remembers her stories, strange and wonderful, and told without doubt.

  Then perhaps that is conceit. She has family somewhere. They might be alive. Old as, or older than me.

  They could remember.

  But they can’t remember my memories.

  Maggie.

  Gone now.

  Murdered.

  And the seasons change as if nothing ever happened.

  We went back and got the car at Cecil’s, him and Daddy not saying much, then with Daddy driving slow and me riding Sally, we went home.

  All the way home I thought about poor Miss Maggie, and that the last time I had seen her she had been upset. I got all my crying out on that ride to the house so I wouldn’t be crying in front of the family when I got home.

  At the house Daddy sat at the table drinking coffee, Mama sitting beside him, and he tried to figure on Miss Maggie’s murder.

  I told him about the car I had seen with the broken taillight, the same that had sent us the message about Mose. I also told him how when Grandma and I had last seen Miss Maggie, I had mentioned Red Woodrow and she had gotten upset. Grandma told him we had heard rumors Red was really Miss Maggie’s son.

  Daddy seemed amazed at this.

  “Me and him was once like brothers,” Daddy said. “I think I’d have known such a thing.”

  “Well,” Mama said. “It was that old woman who raised him, so it’s possible.”

  Daddy nodded. “But, since she did, why would he kill her?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Grandma said. “Accordin’ what Harry here told me, he didn’t care for coloreds. He seen himself as white, and he seen himself as superior, then one day maybe Miss Maggie told him. For whatever reason, she just told him. He couldn’t stand the idea, and he killed her.”

  “If she told him,” Daddy said, “and say he realized Mose was his Daddy, and he had Klan connections, and it was him tried to
warn us about Mose, then why would he turn around and kill Miss Maggie?”

  “I got that one too,” Grandma said.

  “I figured you had an opinion on it,” Daddy said.

  “Say he did find out, and from his Klan connections he heard that someone had told Mose was bein’ held as a suspect, and say he then knew what they were gonna do to the old man. Say just the day before he was all for it, then he found out the old man was his Daddy. He sent you the note, tryin’ to stop it. But he didn’t, and say Miss Maggie then said somethin’ to him about that, about how he let his Daddy die by not steppin’ in and just stoppin’ it on his own, or helpin’ you. So, in a rage, he killed her too.”

  “That sounds possible,” Daddy said.

  “Thing to do, hon,” Mama said, “is go see Red. See if he’s got that busted taillight.”

  Daddy nodded. Tom crawled up in his lap and put her arms around his neck. He patted her softly on the back.

  Next day Daddy went looking for Red, but it turned out he was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t been doing his job, and no one had seen him in a week. His car was missing.

  Couple days later a fella huntin’ over in the next county found it parked down in the woods on a little trail. It wasn’t really a trail big enough for the car, but it looked to have been driven down it fast and wild. It was scratched on all sides from brush and limbs. It had a missing taillight.

  It wasn’t concrete, but it seemed Red had murdered Miss Maggie, and he had been the one to warn us about Mose. Grandma’s theory seemed to make sense.

  There was still another mystery.

  Miss Maggie was buried at the back of her property in a cedar chest that was donated by Mr. Groon. It was simple but lots of folks showed up, both black and white. Miss Maggie was well liked.

  A paper was found in her house that had been written out for her and her name was signed on it, scrawled out in poor letters. She wanted her mule and hogs to be given to folks could use them, and she wanted friends to come and pick the house clean. That was done right away, even before an owner for the mule and hogs could be found. Also in this will of hers was the plan to sell her property and give the money to Red Woodrow.

  The property was sold all right, but Red Woodrow never did come and collect it.

  Mystery was, day after Miss Maggie was buried, the body was dug up. Wasn’t nothing but a hole left in her yard, and to the best of my knowledge, to this day no one knows what became of it or why it was taken.

  After the business with Miss Maggie, it got around town that maybe Mose hadn’t been the killer of all them women, and it had been Red, and in a final rage he had killed Miss Maggie.

  ’Course, ones sayin’ this didn’t know she was his mother or that Mose was his father, or that it looked as if he had given Daddy a warning note about the lynching. All this Daddy kept to himself.

  What Daddy let be known was I had seen the car at Miss Maggie’s, and thinking something suspicious I had gone and got him and he had investigated. Where he fudged a bit was he didn’t let on I had discovered the body. He was afraid it might point to me somehow.

  The supposed reasons Red killed Maggie were as many as the ants on the ground. A popular one was that Red, who had some reputation as being a bit crooked, had stolen the money she had buried at her house.

  This led to speculation as to why money from her property had been left to him in her will. Some said he made her write it that way, but that didn’t explain the mule, the hogs, and her household items.

  Years later, when the story got around that Red was Miss Maggie’s son, the particulars changed some. It was said by some Red come back and got the body and buried it private like. There were other rumors that a colored voodoo man came and dug it up to use the body parts, and it was even said by some that Miss Maggie’s wilted, dried hand had been turned into a hand of glory. There were those over the years claimed to see it, just like they’d know one dried black hand from another.

  At the barbershop one day, while me and Tom was there with Cecil, I remember Mr. Evans speculating as Cecil clipped at the hair above his ears. Mr. Evans was one for speculating. Like Grandma, he read murder mysteries and saw himself as quite a detective, though the only detecting he’d ever done was trying to puzzle out a story in one of the magazines at the barbershop.

  He was a short, fat, bald man with a habit of pursing his lips when he was making a point, or setting up a mystery.

  “Say Miss Maggie had her money buried, or hid out, and Red found out about it.”

  “How?” Cecil asked.

  “Some nigger knew somethin’ and told him. You know, somethin’ about Miss Maggie, and he got it figured, and maybe Red picked him up for somethin’. You know, a crime of some kind.”

  “Picked who up?”

  “Some nigger. Ain’t you listenin’. No nigger in particular. Just a hypothetical nigger. And this here nigger, to lighten his load with the law—”

  “What’d he do?” Cecil asked.

  “He didn’t do nothin’. He’s hypothetical. Anyway, this fella, he knew about the money and told Red where it was supposed to be, and Red went to get it, and it wasn’t there. So he tried to make Miss Maggie tell him, and he accidentally killed her.”

  “If’n I was him,” said Mr. Calhoun, a normally quiet man in overalls, “it’d be that hypothetical nigger lied to me got a beatin’. Not some poor ole nigger woman.”

  “You people are impossible,” Mr. Evans the Great Detective said.

  “Did Red get the money?” Cecil asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Evans said, “but I’d wager he did. He maybe had someone else help him. A woman. And he dumped his car and they went off in hers.”

  “Why would he dump his car?” Cecil asked.

  “Harry here had seen it and thought it would be recognized,” said Mr. Evans.

  “How did Red know he’d seen it?”

  “He must have seen Harry,” Mr. Evans said. “Hell, I ain’t got that part figured out yet. But give me a day or two.”

  Besides this version of events, there were others. Some said Red not only killed Miss Maggie, but was the Bottoms Killer, as the murderer had come to be known.

  But this wasn’t a popular theory. It had too many things against it. Miss Maggie wasn’t mutilated or tied, for one. Second, there were those that figured white men didn’t go in for that kind of horrible killing. And thirdly, most were certain the real man responsible had been lynched. Their conclusions as to why it had to be Mose were simple. There hadn’t been another murder like the ones in the bottoms since.

  Many didn’t even think Red killed Miss Maggie.

  ’Course, that left a series of questions. Why was Red’s car at Miss Maggie’s? Why had he disappeared? Why was his car found in the bottoms, run off in the woods like that?

  There were answers given for all of these. Like he found the money and run off somewhere to spend it. Hadn’t folks heard him say he wanted to go abroad someday?

  Bottom line was, no real conclusions were come to, and finally it became an “unknowable nigger murder.” Wasn’t anyone besides Daddy concerned about it. More people were concerned about Red.

  Had he actually been abducted by the Bottoms Killer? Maybe he had found some clues to the killer’s identity, and the killer had gotten rid of him.

  No matter Red hadn’t been concerned about the killer before, this became a popular theory, right up there with him having found the hidden money and gone off to Paris or some such.

  There was even a rumor that one of his friends got regular postcards from him under a disguised name and that the cards came from exotic places all over the world. It was also said some of the cards had lipstick stains on them, kisses he had asked his girlfriends in all those countries to stick to the cards with their soft red lips.

  ’Course, since these cards were supposedly coming in over a short time from all over the world, this wasn’t an entirely convincing story.

  I think the fact that Daddy didn’t com
e up with any answers just made things worse than before. For a few days there he had been his old self, but his investigation had stalled at Red’s car being discovered and then nothing else.

  The whole thing settled down on him heavy as a boulder, and he fell back to the dark place where he had been lying for so many months, and unlike before, he didn’t even bother to dodge us when he was on a drunk, and pretty soon the whiskey bottles showed up at the house in plain sight.

  Grandma took the hard line with him, calling him this and that, but it didn’t budge him.

  Finally, he moved out to the barn with his bottles and it was as if he didn’t exist anymore. Oh, he got some money from the barbershop, though now Cecil was getting the bulk of it, and he did a little work around the place, but the plowing was left to me and I wasn’t real good at it.

  We were scratching for a living like never before.

  If things weren’t difficult enough on the farming scene, it started in raining real hard, beating on the ground worse than that day Grandma and I had been trapped in Mose’s shack.

  With it pouring like that, there wasn’t any real plow work to be done. The rain went on for days, gushed through our fields, washed away our topsoil, carried plants with it, or beat them down in place.

  Grandma said it was the darnedest thing yet. She’d already been through everything drying up and blowing away, now she was having to go through everything turning wet and washing away.

  The rain turned to flooding and the Sabine flowed high and wide and fast, swirling mad water in brown foamy heaps. The river even changed its course by churning away weak standing banks and uprooting and toting off trees, some of them large enough to have built the front end of Noah’s Ark.

  But eventually it passed. The rain quit, the black sky cracked open, showed blue behind it, as well as the sun in all its hot golden glory. In fact, it turned hot as hell and dry as Arab sand; mud heaped up in hard crust, like scabs healing all over the earth.