Chaneysville Incident (18 page)

“We rode as hard as we could, but we couldn’t make no time on accounta we couldn’t keep Josh in the saddle. He wouldn’t hold on. He wouldn’t do nothin’, ’cept cry. I wasn’t too happy with him, but Mose was downright disgusted, an’ he commenced to cussin’ Josh three ways from Sunday. ‘Damnit,’ Mose says, ‘we go through hell an’ high water to rescue his pasty hind end an’ all he wants to do is cry. Goddamn you, you mutilated sonofabitch, if you don’t quit that cryin’ an’ start to ridin’ I’m gonna lynch you ma own self.’ ‘Mose,’ I says, ‘go easy on him.’ ‘Easy, hell,’ Mose says. ‘You think them bastards are gonna go easy on us when they catch up? Which they gonna be doin’ perty quick if we don’t start ridin’ hard. We got maybe ten minutes start in a two-hour ride outa this damn place, an’ God knows what kinda fancy steppin’ when we get back to someplace where we can hide, an’ we can’t do none a that with a Goddamn dead man to cart around.’ He reins in right there an’ he says, ‘Now, Josh, you listen to me. I know you been through a lot, but I swear ’fore God if you don’t straighten yourself up an’ start ridin’ I’m gonna leave you here an’ leave the bastards lynch you. I ain’t entirely sure you ain’t got it comin’.’

“Well, he was right in a way, an’ he was wrong in a way, but ’fore I could say nothin’ Josh looks up an’ says, ‘Leave me. I don’t give a damn.’ Mose jest stared at him. Then he says, ‘All right. I got a life, an’ I aim to keep it. Come on, Jack.’

“I says, ‘Now wait a minute. Let me talk to him. Looka here, Josh,’ I says, ‘I know how you feel. I swear I do. But you dyin’ ain’t the way to do things. Why, what you oughta do is go back there an’ take that bitch out in the woods an’ beat her till there’s no tomorrow. Kill her if you want to, I’ll help you. But lettin’ ’em kill you, that don’t make no sense. That’s what they wanted to begin with.’

“Mose looks at me an’ he looks at Josh. ‘ ’Zat it? ’Zat
all
?’ ‘What you mean, ’zat all?’ I says. ‘The man was in love with that girl. He worked honest labor all damn summer jest to stay close to her. He give up other women to stay clean for her. He was fixin’ to marry her. He trusted her. He was ready to pass for white, for
white
, so’s he could be with her. Then she turns around an’ tries to get him kilt, an’ then you come along an’ say ’zat all? Yeah, that’s all. Damn near all there is, anywhere. But what the hell would you know about that? You don’t love nobody. You don’t trust nobody. You don’t give up nothin’ for nobody. Well, maybe he was wrong, an’ maybe he shoulda knowed better, an’ maybe I think he’s a damn fool too, but I tell you, I can’t be real certain that if I was in his shoes I’d be too wild about stayin’ alive maself. Now you ride on if you want. I’m gonna stay here an’ talk to him, an’ if I have to leave him, I swear, I’m gonna kill me a white girl.’

“Well, Mose, he looks at me, an’ he shakes his head, an’ he says, ‘Jack, I swear, you as simple-minded as this here fool. Where you think I got this here sheet?’ I couldn’t think a nothin’ to say, on accounta I didn’t know where he got that sheet. So he told us. Told us how he’d gone on in that house, lookin’ for a sheet, an’ found that girl all beat an’ bloodied, an’ how she claimed she didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, that they musta been watchin’ her an’ Josh all along, an’ waitin’ for the right time, an’ when they was ready they wanted her to tell ’em when he was comin’ down to see her, an’ she seen they didn’t have nothin’ good in mind, so they beat her an’ made her tell, an’ then they beat her again when they caught her tryin’ to make some kinda signal to warn Josh off, an’ how she begged him to save Josh somehow, an’ give him the sheet, an’ told him where they was takin’ us.

“Well, I’ll tell you, sometimes I useta get a little hot with Mose, on accounta the way he could lie easiern most folks breathe, but I was glad he could make stuff up that quick right then—or maybe he didn’t have to make it up, maybe that was the guff she give him when he went in there to steal that sheet, to keep him from killin’ her right then. I don’t know. All I know is, Josh was whipped enough to believe it, an’ he started ridin’ better.

“Mose knowed a trail that ran along the top a Polish Mountain, an’ we followed it almost to Evert. I was all for comin’ on into town, but Mose kept sayin’ he wasn’t satisfied as to what was happenin’. I says to him, ‘We know what’s happenin’, on accounta we jest finished puttin’ a stop to it,’ but Mose wouldn’t listen. We finely holed up way up near dumb-butted town Mose called Oppenheimer. I hadn’t never heard of it. It was a Godforsaken place to hole up, too; dry as dust, not a stream for miles. But Mose knowed a spring, an’ he knowed a cave, an’ it turned out he had some food cached up there, an’ bandages an’ some horse liniment, an’ we cleaned Josh’s back up an’ bandaged him, an’ then we ate an’ then we had some whiskey, an’ by the time the sun come up we was feelin’ pretty good, most ways. ’Cept I could see that Josh wasn’t comin’ around the way he shoulda. He didn’t say mucha anything. I knowed what it was, too; he finely seen through the lyin’ Mose’d been doin’ about that girl. I tried to tell Mose that, but he wouldn’t listen. He jest wanted to go on an’ on about politics, an’ what them sheets was hopin’ to accomplish by lynchin’ Josh. I swear, Mose could make things about ten times as confusin’ as they needed to be. An’ I told him that. Said, ‘Hell, Mose, we know what they was tryin’ to accomplish.’ ‘Yeah,’ Mose says, ‘but why?’

“ ‘Why?’ I says. ‘Hell, why ain’t even a question. They done it on accounta white folks ain’t noted for feelin’ kindly towards colored folks, that’s why. They’re doin’ the same damn thing all over the country all the damn time.’ Well, Mose says, ‘I know that, Jack. But there’s more to why than jest that. There’s “Why here?” an’ there’s “Why now?” an’ there’s—’ ‘Yeah,’ I says, ‘I know you know all the letters in the whatchemacallit, but I don’t give a damn.’ Well, he says, ‘Jack, don’tcha see, we gotta figger out them whys so we can figger out who done it an’ then begin to do somethin’ about ’em. We can’t jest go in there an’ start beatin’ on everybody white.’ Well, I said, I didn’t see why we couldn’t, it sounded like they wasn’t too particular about which nigger they started in on, but anyways, I already knowed who they was. An’ I told ’em how I knowed, an’ I told him who they was. An’ Mose got real thoughtful.

“Well, we holed up that day an’ the next, which was Sunday. Josh got so’s he could move around pretty good, but his mind jest wasn’t there. He still wasn’t talkin’. Jest set there, sippin’ whiskey, sayin’ nothin’. By Sunday night, I was beginnin’ to think we was gonna have to shoot him, like you do a horse with a busted leg—he was that bad—Finely Mose sets down with him an’ he says, ‘Looka-here, Josh,’ he says, ‘we had about enough a this moonin’ around. If you worryin’ about that girl—’ ‘Hell with her,’ Josh says, an’ I begun to think that maybe that there whippin’ was a good thing some ways; it got some sense in his head anyways. ‘All right,’ Mose says, ‘hell with her. I ain’t got no time to be huntin’ down women anyways; we got twelve men to lay for.’ Well, there he was, lyin’ again, but I didn’t mind it this time, neither, on accounta I seen that he was tryin’ to get Josh’s juices flowin’. Course there wasn’t no way we was gonna ambush them twelve without causin’ a whole lot a stir, but maybe we coulda done one or two, which mighta been enough to get Josh back whatever it was he left down there in the South County. So I says, ‘That’s right, Josh, we got twelve sheets that needs to be taken to the scrub board an’ hung out to dry. An’ if that ain’t enough, we can go get that farmer an’ the one fool son he’s got left—’ Well, to tell you the truth, I was beginnin’ to warm to the idea. But Josh cut me off right there. ‘Leave it be,’ he says. That was all he said. But he said it in a voice that was lowern a mole’s belly an’ deadern Thursday night. An’ that took the starch right outa me. An’ I left it be.

“I left it be the next day when I come on in an’ took to shinin’ shoes. I shined every pair a shoes in the courthouse. An’ I shined every pair a boots that was down there in Southampton—’cept one. Story was a tree fell an’ busted up that one’s hip. They told me that. Othern that, didn’t nobody say nothin’. I didn’t neither. I left it be.

“Next day Josh come on into town an’ went down to Hawkin’s an’ bought hisself some Mail Pouch an’ walked around town half the day, chewin’ tobacco an’ spittin’ juice on the sidewalk, jest like Mose told him to do. Didn’t nobody say nothin’ to him; they was leavin’ it be.

“An’ the next day Mose come down, leadin’ two horses an’ ridin’ the third, an’ he hitched ’em to the post in front a the courthouse. Half the Town seen him doin’ it but didn’t nobody say nothin’, an’ an hour later them horses was gone, an’ didn’t nobody say nothin’ ’bout that, neither. They left it be.

“That’s the way it was. They left it all be. Course, Josh, he wasn’t never the same. I don’t think he ever did say moren three words at a time to anybody again. He’d walk aroun’ town silent as the grave. He’d go into Hawkin’s an’ half the time he’d say what he wanted, an’ the rest a the time he’d jest point. I guess he was so mad he didn’t want to start talkin’, ’fraid it would all come out. He left it be, too.

“But somebody didn’t leave it be, on accounta every month or so something bad would happen to one a them sheets. One went blind from drinkin’ leaded shine. One fell in a ditch an’ broke his leg an’ caught pneumonia an’ died. ’Nother one’s wife left him. On like that. Jest bad news. Not too much at any one time, but steady; somethin’ got every one of ’em. An’ inside a ’bout three years wasn’t none of ’em around here no more. Some moved on. ’Bout half was dead. Somebody didn’t leave it be….”

And then he started to cough. Long, racking coughs, as if he had been holding it all in while he told the tale, and now it had to come out. When he was finished the rag was bloody and his body was shaking with chills. I blew the candle out, got up and lit the lamp. When the light was steady I busied myself with stoking the fire and stirring the grate, with making the hot gases roar in the flue. I boiled water and made him a strong toddy. He could barely drink it but I got it down him, along with more of the penicillin. He swallowed and coughed. When the toddy was gone I let him lie back. He lay perfectly straight on the cot, but the chills made him shiver. He tried to talk. “Hush now,” I said.

I sat up through the night. I fed the fire and drank hot whiskey and tried to stay awake. He slept a sleep that was closer to coma, from time to time rousing to something close to consciousness to call a name or mumble bits of tales. The stories were breaking up inside him; he coughed out fragments. I listened to him, sitting by the roaring stove, sipping whiskey and feeding the fire.

T
HE COFFEE WAS WEAK.
I had made it that way on purpose; I needed the warmth of it and I needed to stay awake, but I needed to be calm too, and so I had made an insipid brew, lower in caffeine, as a compromise. Drinking coffee was itself a compromise. Because what I really wanted was a toddy. But I was going to call Judith, and if I had a toddy she would know. She would not say anything, but she would know. So I had made some coffee and sat there, sipping it. It was doing me no good at all. The only thing it did for me was to remind me of Judith.

It was seven o’clock; she should be coming home from the hospital now, unless some emergency had delayed her. I could see her fighting her way off the Spruce Street bus, and then wearily walking the block and a half to the apartment. The elevator would not be working, and she would curse it and—because I had told her once it was wrong to curse the instrument and not the author—the name of Otis, the foul terms coming lightly tripping off her one-of-the-finest-families-in-Virginia tongue as if she had been raised at a truck stop and not on Axe Trail Road. After the first distinct outburst she would mutter and mumble the words as she plodded up the three flights of stairs, hauling with her a battered briefcase that bulged with work: case files to review, articles to read, drafts of monographs to revise, books to review for one professional journal or another. Reaching the landing, she would set the briefcase down with a thump loud enough to waken the dead, open her purse and unerringly select the right key, unlock the door and push it open with a foot so small and dainty it seemed more suited to ballet slippers than to the “sensible” shoes she wore. Letting the door slam shut behind her, she would drop the briefcase on the sofa and head for the kitchen to brew coffee so strong it could lift the pot. She would sip the first cup while she watched the
CBS Evening News
—she never really believed anything unless she heard it from Walter. After that she would change into her leotard and do her exercises. Then she would draw a hot tub and soak in it while she sipped another cup and read a file or two and listened to something on the stereo; she preferred something breezy and contemporary.

The coffee reminded me of all that, and of the way I was, after three long years, just beginning to fit into it: that I never carried a briefcase, never carried papers at all, if I could help it, preferring to write my articles in my head and dictate them; that I never complained about the elevator because I never expected that it would work; that I never used street language, for to me it was and always would be a tongue as foreign as French or German; that I never got the right key on the first try, not even after three years; that I winced every time she banged the door; but that now I joined her in the coffee when once I had sipped hot toddies instead; that I would watch Cronkite more out of a desire to be with her than out of concern for current events, since it seemed to me that trying to evaluate the significance of news hot off the wire is a lot less useful and almost as dangerous as speculating as to whether the woman into whose lap you have just dropped your lasagna is destined to be your partner for life; that I would watch her as she exercised, thinking that the exercises were fairly useless—I preferred to get mine through long midnight walks—but that hers was the most lovely and graceful body in the world, the exercises the most erotic movements I had ever seen; that I would listen to the music—when I chose it it was something dark and complicated, Sibelius or Mahler or Hoist—reading something obscure while she soaked, waiting until I heard the sounds of splashing and then going in to have a towel waiting for her when she emerged, pink and dripping, from the tub. I would dry her carefully and slowly, just to have an excuse to hold her, then we would go into the bedroom and lie together for a while and talk. Not about anything much. She would tell me something strange a patient had done or said. I would offer a small tidbit, one of those fascinating, offbeat, seemingly useless facts that historians are forever discovering. Sometimes it would end there, and sometimes we would make love. When we did that in the evenings it was always a special thing, an expression, almost, of a desire to save the later time, the final going to bed, for tired kisses and chaste hugging. And when the sharing, whatever its shape, was done, we would stretch, and I would massage the spot just inside her left shoulder blade that seemed to always be a little sore, and we would get up and decide what to do about dinner.