All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (31 page)

"How did the confrontation with your people come about?"

"Because of Beau, who was not like his daddy at all. He had ideals, and true concern for sick and hungry men. He was a young Bolshevik, at a time when folks around here was not too well acquainted with that word. Through Hackaliah he met Elias Pearman, and was swayed by his radical arguments. Beau thought it would be sensible for Boss, a scholarly man who studied history and knew about revolutions, to meet a genuine revolutionary. Not the evil-minded anarchist he'd been hearing about, but a prophet of the change that was surely going to come.

"Boss finally agreed, after a couple of all-night discussions that hotted up enough to keep my daddy wide-eyed awake in his bed up under the attic. Boss must have loved Beau a lot, because he wasn't impressed with the boy's political philosophy. In fact Beau caused him considerable pain and embarrassment among his peers. But you have to hand it to him, he was willing to let Beau think his own thoughts and make his own mistakes in life. 'The hard way is the way that sticks,' Boss wrote in his journal. And he went forth to debate with Elias Pearman, an angry man who could handle the language ever' bit as good as Boss himself."

"It was a public forum?"

"At the Vauxhall community church on Chisca Ridge. It's all colored there—except for Boss and Beau there wasn't another white man in the church that night. Tension was high. Took courage for Boss just to walk in without so much as a peashooter on his person. After all, Elias was a radical man despised by whites, and shots had been fired in his direction. But Boss knew what he was doing. He knew he had the respect of most colored, even if they didn't love him. And he knew just how to ease the tension. Held out his hand to Elias and fixed him with a keen eye. 'Been lookin' forward to this.' Ooo-wheeee! Everybody relaxed. Then the two of them, two giants, commenced to talk. They had at each other, but it was fair; it was clean. I do wish I could have been there that night, before the flames and the killin'."

Tyrone broke off and abruptly got up to rummage in the cabinet next to the table, like a hungry man in search of a midnight snack in the kitchen. He brought out a majolica humidor.

"Boss left these fine Havana Upmann cigars behind. Now and then I get the urge to smoke one. How about you, doctor?"

Jackson, impatient to hear the rest of the story, declined. Tyrone, awkward because of his injured hand, finally got the cigar going, drew on it fiercely and sat down again. He was a greenhorn with a cigar, however; it didn't suit him and emphasized a certain callowness of manner. He seemed to be smoking it only as an expression of obscure privilege.

"Their debate lasted a good three hours. The trouble started away from church. Maybe Boss didn't know his men were out there. I expect some of the white sharecroppers at Dasharoons got worried and came to keep an eye on things, and brought along their shotguns for company. Then word got passed around in town: 'Boss Bradwin gone up to Vauxhall tonight, and there's a thousand niggers layin' for him.' That kind of twisted story. So they came on horseback, and they came in flivvers, armed and mean. They gathered just outside of Vauxhall. It was a dark night. Just imagine what the colored people, those that wasn't in church, thought when they got wind of this mob on their doorsteps.

"Nobody to this day knows if a colored man opened up with a gun in the dark, or if it was one of the mob that was millin' around got spooked and lost control of his trigger finger. But a man named Griffin Albright, who was Boss's top foreman at the time and a personal friend, pitched down off his horse, back of his head shot away. The church all of a sudden emptied out, everybody runnin' to see what had happened. Boss was right up front, highly visible in his white suit, else the mob would have cut down on 'em. Griffin Albright's brother Bob had the dead man in his arms; he was screamin' and carryin' on. It was an ugly situation, with colored men faced off against white across the road, only a little bit of a yellow streetlight shinin' down between. But Boss took the upper hand right away. He calmed Bob Albright and sent him and a couple others away with the body, a smart thing to do. Then he turned to Elias Pearman.

"I want the nigger that did this," he said.

"'It looks to me,' says Elias, cool as always, 'like all the guns are in your hands.'

'There was a growl from Boss's men, but Boss stared them down. Then he turned back to Elias. 'Does that mean,' Boss said, 'you think one of these men shot Griffin Albright in the back of the head?'

"Elias nodded. 'Check your own guns for one that's just been fired.'

"That was a good suggestion, but Boss never had the chance to act on it. All the armed men held their guns in the air, firing round after round. It must have sounded like the crack of doom. A panic would've started, but Elias shouted at his people not to run.

"When the gunshots died away Boss said, 'You have one hour to hand over the nigger that killed Griffin Albright.'

"Some say Elias smiled at Boss, but it was a bitter smile. "I'll ask about this matter. And then I'll come and tell you what I know. Will you accept my word if I tell you it was not a colored man who did the shooting?'

Tyrone paused and rubbed his eyes, pondering the long-ago confrontation as if it were an invisible chessboard set in front of him.

"I think Boss's nerve failed him then; he had all those men behind him loaded for bear, their weight was on his back. But still he had control, and time to lead them all back from the edge of the abyss. 'I've got to know you some tonight, Elias, and I think you're a righteous man.' He could have said it simple as that, and walked away with his dignity.

"What he said was, 'Bring me a nigger in one hour, or you'll regret it.'"

"After that, there was no backin' down for either of them."

Tyrone sat smoking and brooding over the climax of his story. Jackson said, "Where was the sheriff while this was going on? Or was there no pretense of law in Chisca Ridge?"

"There was a good sheriff back then, and he kept the peace. Happened to be away on a fishin' trip. Boss had all kinds of badges from state authorities, gave him the right to make arrests. All he wanted was to come up with some poor colored boy to shut away in jail for a while. It could've been settled Boss's way. Colored people knew when they had to cooperate with the boss man, so lynch fever wouldn't take over. But Elias Pearman was there, and Boss made the mistake of puttin' it to him on a personal basis, 'stead of takin' Elias aside and kindly explainin' how things had to be done to cool the heat from the murder, if that's what it was.

"Elias didn't say another word to Boss; he led his people back to the church. Boss probably thought he'd got his point across. He left a few dependable men there on the street of Vauxhall Community to keep an eye on things and withdrew with the rest to a higher point up the ridge, in a pasture that overlooked the church. A couple of jugs got passed around and there wasn't much ugly talk, it was dark and chilly up there and the men just wanted to go home. Boss and Beau sat on a runnin' board and talked to each other. It was quiet in Vauxhall for almost an hour. Then commenced singin' in the church, soft at first. 'By and by we will see Jesus.' Boss checked his watch once or twice, gettin' worried, I don't doubt. It was no time for hymns.

"They heard it then. '
There's a nigger runnin'—there's two of 'em!
' Lanterns flashed in the street and the woods below; the chase was on. More gunfire. Screams this time. Boss stood up.

"'The lyin' son of a bitch,' he said. He meant Elias Pearman. 'Let's finish this.'"

"Who ran?" Jackson asked.

Tyrone shrugged. "Elias had everybody in church, and he told them they needed to stay there, until daybreak or longer, stay until reason could be restored. He promised nobody would be hurt, long as they remained calm and prayed. A couple of boys—they weren't more than fourteen—may have got scared thinkin' about what could happen. Or else they were just bored and wanted to see if they could slip by the guards and get home undetected. Both boys were chased down and shot dead when they didn't have breath to run another step. A lantern was thrown, a house fired up, more people left the church. Some were hysterical with fear, some in a mood to kill a white man. A few ran for their guns; others just kneeled in the street, petrified, and they were run over like toads when Boss's little army swooped down from the pasture.

"In all the madness Elias Pearman was helped to escape from the church. When Boss found out, he flew into a rage. I think the smell of blood had all but unhinged his mind. 'We're goin' after him, and we'll find him.' He didn't try to organize a search, just turned his men loose in packs to roam wherever they pleased.

"As the night wore on, destruction spread across the ridge: Vauxhall, Tambourine, Tchula Bend. Some places they were met by gunfire, colored men tryin' to protect their homes and families. That was the excuse for slaughter that numbed the soul. The sun rose the next morning on smoke and grief and ruin. Bodies laid out in rows in the fields. The national guard had to move in to prevent an uprising. But Boss claimed a victory through his bloody mouth. Had the gall to say it was all necessary to preserve order and the southern way of life!"

"What happened to Elias Pearman?"

"He was on his way out of the county in a truck driven by daddy Hackaliah when Boss caught up with them. It was dawn by then. Boss turned them both out and unlimbered his big old horsewhip. Beau had been at his side all night, pleadin' with Boss to let up. But Boss was like a drunken man. He shook off Beau and lashed out: Once, twice, three times, the blood flew. Daddy Hackaliah sank to his knees in agony. Beau just couldn't take any more. Grabbed a rifle from one of the men and drove it butt first into Boss's face. Boss dropped like a sack of wet meal, and that was the end of the Chisca County War. Over fifty dead, includin' white. By the end of the day Beau was nowhere to be seen. I don't believe Boss mentioned his firstborn son again, not as long as he lived."

"I'm surprised Hackaliah was allowed to remain here."

"He had the good sense to lay low for a time. It's a big plantation; you can go weeks at a time without seem' a man if you don't want to see him. Just about everybody ignored daddy, he was like a pariah. But he's been with Boss for a long time, and he did suffer a whippin', so Boss gradually allowed him back into his good graces. If I'd been daddy, though, I don't think I would have been so quick to forget and forgive. He should have gone away when Beau did."

Tyrone got up out of the chair, looking powerfully troubled by his lifelong ambivalence toward Boss Brad win.

"Oh, I forgot to mention. Elias Pearman took his proselytizin' across the river, and the next year he was murdered in Greenwood, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan. Only skin left on his body when they found him was behind his ears and on the soles of his feet. In the old days that was called 'blanching.' It turned a disobedient black slave white by parin' him down to the—what do you call it? The subcutaneous tissues."

Tyrone held out his hands as if inviting inspection; his hands trembled. "Some of us, as you see, been
blanched
in other ways; more enjoyable for the boss man, and not near so bloody." He smiled bleakly. "Not a pleasant way to end this conversation, but I better had get along. Sometimes I just can't shut my flap, and your ears must be fixin' to drop off."

"I find everything about the Bradwins intriguing, particularly Beau's story. What a sad end to his youth. Mine ended rather abruptly, too, but under different circumstances."

Tyrone wasn't listening. He took a fair-size roll of currency from his twill work pants. "Let me pay you now for patchin' this finger."

Jackson waved the money away. "Nonsense. I should look at it again in two days, and change the dressing."

"Appreciate your kindness, doctor. I'll just shut the light then and lock up."

It was after eleven o'clock and the house was quiet. Hackaliah or one of the maids had turned down the counterpane of Jackson's bed and laid out his pajamas. The balcony doors had been closed against the sultry night. It seemed cooler in his room than it had been in the library, a welcome relief.

Jackson unknotted his tie and put on his slippers, then Placed on a Chippendale secretary the late Dr. Talmadge's case history of Nancy Bradwin. As he leafed through the dog-eared and sometimes illegible pages he mulled over what he knew of her strange metamorphosis from a rather shy and quiet woman with not very great emotional reserves into an aggressive trollop. Successive shocks—the loss of a baby, Clipper's terrifying patricide at Blue Ridge—apparently had brought on the change in Nancy's personality. Or could there have been a pathological reason? Her pattern of wanderlust following a term of unnaturally deep and prolonged sleep seemed to indicate emotional imbalance rather than a lesion of the brain . . .There was, of course, a third possibility, rooted in the preconscious, in race memory, plausible only to someone of Jackson's particular background and experience.

Once more Jackson witnessed the dark fall of the coffin from the speeding train, her body loose, wraithlike, supernal in the moonlight, free from the sorrows of a troubled house and ill-fated family, free of hex, released from the spell of tainted blood. In the forest of his youth, a place of heat and deep moody silence and tenors swifter than the eye can follow, he had learned that none of us belong to ourselves, but to spirits good and evil.

Jackson shuddered and bent to his work, but the atmosphere of the house distracted him. Nancy Bradwin, by circumstance, had been committed here—eventually to die, beside herself, dispossessed. In this house people walked with guns and jumped too easily, looked sidewise down the dark hall, eased around corners and blamed their nerves on the threat posed by Early Boy Hodges. But something else was in the house: something dark, swollen and miasmic, threatening to explode. Jackson felt thin-skinned and vulnerable, a child in the forest again.