The Bottoms

  Daddy nodded. “That’s all right, Cecil. I got things to do. I just thought you might could help us and I could get a haircut in the meantime. I’m cleaning myself up. I’ll be comin’ in more regular. I know that affects your money, but I wanted you to know.”

  “I’m glad for you,” Cecil said, snapping the scissors. “Jesus. Louise.”

  “You rest a bit,” Daddy said, flicking off the sheet and rising. “Not like there’s a rush on customers. You don’t feel up to it, go home a while.”

  “I’m all right. I’ll just sit a moment.”

  Daddy put on his hat, said, “All right then.”

  Me and Daddy went outside. When we were out to the car, Daddy said, “Run back in there and get a bottle of that coconut hair oil, will you, son? I’m gonna clean myself up, I might as well smell good all around.”

  I went back for the hair oil. Cecil was in the barber chair with a magazine.

  He lowered the magazine when I came in. He said, “It’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it?”

  “Daddy wants some hair oil,” I said.

  “Sure. He uses that coconut kind. It’s on the end of the shelf there.”

  I got it, said goodbye, and went out.

  I felt horrible about Mrs. Canerton, but I felt good that Daddy was doing so much better. I liked the idea of him smelling good for Mama.

  We drove out to Mr. Sumption’s. When we pulled up in his yard, he came out of his house and walked out to the car. Daddy got out and stood by it. Mr. Sumption said, “You didn’t kill him?”

  “No,” Daddy said. “But it wasn’t from want of tryin’.”

  “I can’t think of a sorrier sonofabitch than Nation. Doin’ what he done to that old colored man, and bein’ proud of it. Hard to figure on a man like that.”

  “And we won’t waste time doin’ it. I want to apologize just leavin’ you in the yard like that.”

  “It was a short walk, Jacob.”

  “We want to look around some, Clem. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  I think Mr. Sumption thought he’d go with us, but Daddy, without really saying it, made it clear he meant just the two of us.

  As we walked down to the outhouse and the river, Daddy said, “We washed her off, Harry, but that was most likely a mistake. There were probably things could have been learned from the body. If I had any education, I’d have thought of that. All I was thinking was here was this nice lady in all that mess. Unclothed. Cut up. Tossed out like garbage.”

  We climbed down the bank and stood near the mound of waste. It stunk something terrible. Flies rose up in a blue-black cloud. The water, though no longer high, was still tumbling along at a rapid brown clip.

  “It’s funny the good stuff goes in a belly, sure comes out rotten,” Daddy said.

  “He dump her here, Daddy?”

  “I don’t think so. This is just where she ended up. Body ain’t that long dead. Few days.”

  “Maybe about the same time Miss Maggie was killed?”

  “Could be.”

  “That night, I went by Mrs. Canerton’s. Tryin’ to return a book. She wasn’t home. You think she could have been dead then?”

  “It’s possible, Harry. Way the river looks, she could have been dumped down a spell, and with all that floodin’, carried up to here. I doubt the killer come through Clem’s yard and dumped her. It’s possible, but it seems more risky than he’d have to be. So far, he’s been dumpin’ down deep in the bottoms.”

  “You know what I was thinkin’?” I asked.

  “That Miss Maggie and Mrs. Canerton were killed about the same time. And you seen that car of Red’s, and we found his car and he’s missin’. You’re thinkin’ he could have done it. That right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Daddy took his pipe out of his shirt pocket, stuffed it and lit it. “I guess Red could have killed Miss Maggie ’cause she told him the truth and he didn’t like it, but that don’t mean he killed Louise. ’Course, it’s quite a coincidence, ain’t it?”

  “Red could have left his car and took a boat downriver, Daddy.”

  Daddy nodded, lifted a leg, thumped his pipe against the bottom of his shoe. “He could have at that. Thing is, I can’t imagine Red doin’ this kind of thing. I’ve known him a long time. He might have killed Miss Maggie, and that’s hard enough to believe … Jesus, I can’t believe he was actually colored. Way he looked.”

  “It’s what Doc Tinn told us.”

  Daddy tucked his pipe into his pocket, looked out at the river. “Doc Tinn seems like a fella not prone to gossip. Now I think on it, things kinda fit. And the way Red felt about colored, and findin’ out he was colored, he could have lost it. He could have found out some time ago in fact, and this led to the rage of him killin’ them colored women.”

  “Not all of them were colored,” I said.

  “Yeah. But I’m thinkin’ it set him off.”

  I told him then what Doc Tinn had told us about these kinds of killers, his thoughts on them.

  Daddy listened carefully, bent, picked up a stone and tossed it into the river. “Why don’t you and me walk the trail yonder.”

  We climbed the bank and took the trail along the river. It was narrow and we had to push limbs and brush out of our way. The trees were thick and dark and held water from the rains; they leaked it as if they were rain clouds.

  I watched Daddy out of the corner of my eye. His tan hat was damp with the water drops and they had fallen on the shoulders of his shirt, creating a dark wet mantle. He looked big again to me, as if he had gained three inches in height from just a short time ago.

  It wasn’t easy to see the river, and yet we could hear it rumbling like a contented lion a few feet away, behind and below the thick growth of trees and brush. It gave off a smell of decayed fish, wet dirt, and aromas unidentified, mixed with the sweetness of the pines.

  “What are we lookin’ for, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We walked along the river for an hour or two, shoving our way through the brush from time to time, looking at the river, trying to find I didn’t know what.

  As we walked, Daddy said, “Doc Tinn said somethin’ to me about when a body gets dragged in the river, it gets scratched up along the belly, ’cause that’s how it flows in the water. Louise, she wasn’t cut up like that. Just the knife work of that nut. All along in front of Clem’s house, and for a couple miles along here, ain’t nothin’ but sand. All this stormin’, water must have carried gravel with it, but if she ain’t cut up bad, that means she might not have been thrown in the river before the sand bottom. There ain’t but one other area that’s that smooth with sand, it’s miles up, and there’s plenty of gravel in between.”

  “I don’t get it, Daddy.”

  “She had to have been chunked in the water along the sandy bottom, or, with all this flooding, and the river pushin’ on her, she’d have had gravel marks.”

  “For sure?”

  “Well, no, but I figure it’s a logical stretch.”

  “So this here is the sandy section?”

  “Yep. I’m bettin’ she didn’t go any farther than that. Another thing, there ain’t but two or three good spots she could have been dumped. Rest of it’s just like we’re goin’ through now, all that thick brush and trees on either side of us. A man was determined enough, he could have done it by fightin’ these bushes. But if it’s like I suspect, someone knows the river, I figure he picked one of the good spots.”

  The sunlight was weak in the thickness of the woods, and as we walked, and it grew later, it became weaker yet. Where the forest broke above and the limbs didn’t wind, it fell through in gold red globs like busted apples dipped in honey.

  The trail finally thickened and the trees gave way to a wide swath that wound down to the river in a sandy sink that disappeared in the water.

  “Normally, this here is so clear, you can see bottom.”

  You couldn’t see bottom now. The water
was filthy and foamy, carrying tree limbs and hunks of bark down it lickity-split.

  “I don’t know what there would be to see,” I said.

  Daddy grinned. “Me neither. But I got me a hunch that our killer not only took Louise’s car, but he got rid of it. He took enough of a chance drivin’ it with her in it, or makin’ her drive. But he killed her, he got rid of it. I wouldn’t be surprised he done it one of them spots I’m tellin’ you about. You could drive a car through that wide trail over there, right up to the bank. Ain’t but two or three more spots on this sandy stretch you could do that.”

  “He got rid of the car, how’d he get home?”

  “I ain’t got that all figured out, son. But I figure him for one that plans. In the past, he ain’t taken the victim’s car. Fact is, them others didn’t have any. This time looks as if he did. Well, he comes down here, kills poor Louise, dumps her in the river, tied up like he likes, then he had to get rid of the car. He could have run it off in the river, or just left it.”

  “Red’s car was just left.”

  “That’s right,” Daddy said. “I tell you what, son. Comin’ out of that bottle, I’m feelin’ like I can truly think a little again. You don’t hate me, do you boy?”

  “No sir,” I said. “Not even a little bit.”

  “Good. Then everything’s all right.”

  We walked down the wider trail a piece. Come back to the river, got on the narrow trail alongside it again. It wasn’t long before we come to the next spot in the river. It was kind of like the other sandy slide, but here you could see where brush had been broken down, washed over by the water. The sun shining on the broken brush made the bits of sand caught up in it twinkle like grit-ground diamonds.

  Down in the river you could see the roof of a car. It was, of course, Mrs. Canerton’s.

  “You was right, Daddy.”

  “Reckon so,” he said. “It’s probably the first piece of truly successful detective work I’ve ever done.”

  It was the next day before Daddy had some men help him pull the car from the water. Inside they found two water-soaked books, The Time Machine and White Fang. They also found a metal flask containing a partial of whiskey, and a bottle of headache pills that the label said was prescribed by Doc Stephenson.

  Daddy’s theory was Mrs. Canerton was bringing me out two new books to read, and that whoever killed her had followed in his car, and either coaxed or ran her off the road. It could have been someone she knew. Someone she would easily stop for.

  From there, whoever it was killed her and dumped her and her car. Most likely his own car was nearby, and it was easy enough then for him to return home in his own car.

  It seemed logical, and it made me ill.

  If Mrs. Canerton had been bringing books out to me, then I felt partially responsible. Everything seemed to be coming down on me like an anvil.

  Just a short time before I had been a happy kid with no worries. I didn’t even know it was the Depression, let alone there were murderers outside of the magazines I read down at the barbershop, and none of the magazines I read had to do with killers who did this kind of thing. And Daddy, though a good man, sincere and true, if briefly distracted, was no Doc Savage.

  In the detective magazines the cops and private eyes saw a clue or two, they put it together. Cracked the whole case wide open. In real life, there were clues a plenty, but instead of cracking the case open, they just made it all the more confusing.

  Bottom line was, no one really knew any more than they did the night I found that poor woman bound to a tree with barbed wire.

  I had learned too that the people I knew, or thought I knew, had problems and lives. Mama and Daddy had a past. I had seen Daddy fall off the wagon, and suspected at one time Mama had fallen off as well, only it was a different wagon; the fall from it recorded by a tattoo on the missing Red Woodrow’s forearm.

  I found out my Daddy had a terrible temper. I found out Mr. Nation could beg and cry and his boys could run fast.

  Miss Maggie was Red’s mother and Red might be a killer. But had he killed Miss Maggie and Mrs. Canerton? And if so, why? And where was he now?

  People I knew had turned out to be strange and savage. They had hung Mose and kicked and hit me and my father.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised right then to discover the moon could be reached by climbing to the top of the highest tree, and with a good pair of scissors you could snip it in half.

  22

  We all went to Mrs. Canerton’s funeral. Me and my family stood in the front row at the Bethel Baptist Church. Cecil was there. Just about everyone in town and around about, except the Nations and some of the people who had been in the lynch mob that killed Mose.

  Even Doc Stephenson showed up, stood in the back and looked more disappointed than sad. Doc Taylor showed up as well. He sat next to Doc Stephenson with his hands in his lap, his face as blank as the wind. It was said he was taking it very hard; that he and she had recently become a serious item.

  Within a week Daddy’s customers at the barbershop returned, among them members of the lynch party, and the majority of them wanted him to cut their hair. He had to go back to work regularly. I don’t know how he felt about that, cutting the hair of those who had beaten me and him that day, that had killed Mose. But he cut their hair and took their money. Maybe Daddy saw it as a kind of revenge. Maybe he was easy to forgive and forget. And maybe we just needed the money.

  Mama took a job in town at the courthouse. She rode in and back with Daddy. That left Grandma with us, and she had developed a habit of driving into town a couple times a week to annoy the men at the barbershop and to go over and visit with Mr. Groon.

  They rode around town and throughout the country together. He sometimes drove her all the way over to Tyler just to eat dinner at a cafe and go to a show.

  As was the habit with things, talk about the murders died down. Daddy dried out the pulp paper he had removed from Mrs. Canerton, but like the others it was too far gone. And even if it hadn’t been, it was hard to see how it could mean anything.

  Mose was no longer mentioned. It was as if the poor man never existed. Some still wanted him to be the killer, in spite of Mrs. Canerton turning up like she did. The most common story now was Red had done it, then gone off somewhere, never to return. No one claimed to be getting postcards from him anymore. Just goes to show you how fickle people are.

  The world slipped back to about as normal as it would ever be again, though to my eyes it was never as sharp and clean and clear as it had been, and nothing I could do would ever completely bring it back.

  As for the murderer, me and Tom weren’t so convinced it was Red, or that it was over. We still had it in our heads it was the Goat Man. And on a day when Mama and Daddy were at work and Grandma had spiffed up and gone into town to flirt with Mr. Groon, we decided to head out to Mose’s shack, carrying the shotgun.

  That’s where the Goat Man had last been seen, and I was determined to find out more about him, maybe capture him. There was a part of me that wanted to be a hero. To that end we took along the shotgun and some good strong rope.

  Looking back on all this, it seems damn foolish. But at the time it made perfect sense. We thought we could hold the Goat Man at bay with the shotgun, or maybe wound him, then tie him up and bring him in.

  Then again, could the Goat Man talk? Could he confess? Did he speak English? Did he have supernatural powers? We suspected he might, and to that end, we also took along the Bible. I had read somewhere, probably in one of those magazines at the barbershop, if you held up the Word, evil would cringe.

  Me and Tom had made this plan to kill or capture the Goat Man the night before, after sitting around for days thinking about it.

  As soon as Grandma’s car had rolled out of sight, we lit out for the woods. I carried the shotgun. Toby slinked along with us, and even with his injured back, he made pretty good time.

  We also had a notion the Goat Man didn’t have any powers by day, and i
f we could find his lair, he could be killed. How this notion had been formed is hard to say, but we had come to believe it as certain as we believed Daddy would crack a stick over Nation’s noggin faster than a chicken can peck corn, and that the Word could be held up against evil.

  We worked our way deep into the woods where the river twisted wild and loud between high banks and higher trees, where the vines and brush wadded together and became next to impenetrable.

  We walked along the bank, looking for a place to ford near the Swinging Bridge. Neither of us wanted to cross the bridge, and we used the excuse that Toby couldn’t cross it, but that was just an excuse.

  We walked a long ways and finally came to the shack where Mose had lived. We just stood there looking at it. It had never been much, just a hovel made of wood and tin and tarpaper. Mose mostly set outside of it in an old chair under a willow tree that overlooked the river.

  It looked to have weathered badly since that time Grandma and I had been trapped in it and we had seen the face of the Goat Man at the window.

  The door was wide open.

  “What if the Goat Man is waitin’ inside?” Tom asked.

  “I’ll cut down on him with this here shotgun,” I said. “That’s what.”

  “Maybe we ought to peek in a window first.”

  That sounded like good advice, but we couldn’t make out much in there, just enough to assure us the Goat Man wasn’t lurking about.

  It was a bigger mess inside than before. Toby went inside and sniffed and prowled about till we called him out of it. We went inside and looked around. Light came through the yellow paper over the paneless window, and wind whipped in with it. The window that had glass had been broken out, probably by kids, and from that direction the light was weak.

  The framed photograph with the Sears picture stuck in the frame was knocked off the table, and I picked it up. With the door open rain had run in and ruined it, meshing the Sears photo to the photograph, blurring the whole thing into a kind of mush. I put it on the table, laying it face down this time.

  “I don’t like it in here,” Tom said.