Getting Mother's Body (19 page)

“Where's the stuff on the old nigger?” the Sheriff wants to know.

“He ain't done nothing,” the Deputy says. “It was the young fella that was driving.”

The Sheriff leans against the bars. His belly squeezes through the metal slats. “The old nigger's an accessory,” he says.

“Oh, hell, Jim,” the Deputy goes.

“He's an accessory to the crime,” the Sheriff says again. His lips are wet and his eyes, round and pale-colored, look Uncle Roosevelt up and down. Uncle Roosevelt stands up. He's a head taller than the Sheriff but he stoops a little. On the way into town he was crying. Maybe he's got a record or something, maybe he's scared they'll find out he robbed a bank or shot somebody once.

“Take his goddamn picture and prints or I'ma take your goddamn badge,” the Sheriff screams. The lures rattle on his head. His voice is high.

The Deputy takes Uncle Teddy out and walks him down the little hallway. I sit there, letting the Sheriff look at me.

“We put out what you call an All Points Bulletin,” he says, lifting his fat hand up and fingering one of his lures. “We got you good and caught, now we just gotta find out whatchu done.”

I want to kill him right now. I want to stand up and reach my hands quick through the bars and bring his fat lure-topped head into the cell with me and leave the rest of his cracker ass just standing there. But I don't move. I sit. My elbows on my knees, my eyes on his.

“You look like Martin Luther Coon,” he says.

“My name is Homer Rochfoucault.”

“I wish to God you was Luther Coon. That'd be a good-looking feather in my cap.”

I want to kill him right now but I don't move. He might want to kill me too but he don't move either. The Negro-College-Going Youth eyeballing the White-Just-Back-From-Fishing Sheriff. If we was in a play those would be our parts. There's plenty of times a man has, in situations just like this, forgot himself and just played his part. In the middle of the quadrangle at school there's a little stone plaque dedicated to the memory of Randall Clay. I used to think it would be a fine thing to tell men like this Sheriff here just what I think of them and then end up killed and honored by a plaque with my name on it. Until now.

“I haven't been given my phone call,” I say.

“What phone call?”

“I'm allowed a phone call.”

“We don't got no phone,” he says smiling.

The Deputy comes back to the cell and leads in Uncle Roosevelt. We sit together. Neither of us saying nothing. Both of us looking at the floor. His picture took, his fingertips, like mine, black and inky-smelling.

The day passes. The Sheriff and the Deputy get tired of just standing there looking at us. They are waiting for the phone to ring, news of some white gal we done raped or some money we stole or some white man we shot or something. The phone don't ring with shit.

They both take up chairs across from the cell. The Sheriff not taking his eyes off us and the Deputy looking like we looking, down at the floor.

“I seen them somewheres before,” the Sheriff says.

“That's what I thought too,” the Deputy says.

“Especially the old nigger.”

“He don't got no record though.”

“Maybe he got a brother who's on the run,” the Sheriff says. “Old nigger, you got a brother?” he asks Uncle Roosevelt.

Uncle Roosevelt looks up but don't answer.

“Answer me, goddamnit!” the Sheriff screeches.

“He don't got no brother, Jim,” the Deputy says.

“I wanna hear it from him!”

“Mr. Beady,” the Deputy goes, saying the name wrong again but at least he's saying it.

“Bead,” Uncle Roosevelt says softly, “you say it Bead.”

“It's got uh ‘e' on the end,” the Sheriff says.

“You say it Bead,” Uncle Teddy says even more softly.

“Mr. Bead,” the Deputy says.

“He ain't no mister,” the Sheriff says.

“I don't got no brother,” Uncle Teddy says. “I'm pretty much the last Beede in my line.”

We all fall silent. I'm the last one in my line and maybe the two crackers are the last ones in their lines too. And all of a sudden I'm thinking of Cousin Billy. I'm locked up in a Texas jail with crackers with guns trying to hang some crime on me and here I am thinking of how nice it would be to get with my cousin. I should be thinking of other things. More respectable things like getting my law degree or at least digging up the treasure and paying off my mother's bills with my percentage of it or I should be thinking how one day I'll become president and pass laws for fairness. But I'm just thinking of getting with Billy behind her nonexistent husband's back.

“Any word, Shirley?” the Sheriff yells.

“You been here, you hear the phone ring?” Shirley yells back.

They sit there a moment longer. They took my wristwatch when they took my picture. My daddy gave me that watch. If they don't give it back I will kill them.

There is a piece of sunlight coming through the cell window slantwise. It's thin and yellowy, like watery soup. My father went out into the yard to check on the garden. My mother had the table laid for breakfast. We sat there waiting for him to come in and eat and he had fallen down dead in the mustard greens.

“It's time for my dinner,” the Sheriff says standing. The Deputy stands up too.

“What should I do with the prisoners?” the Deputy asks.

“Don't do nothing with them,” the Sheriff says leaving.

The Deputy stands there against the wall, watching his boss leave the jail and drive off.

“Shirley, go get the prisoners some sandwiches,” he says.

“You want to feed them, you go get them sandwiches,” she says back. When we came in I got a quick look at her. A big woman with a big tumbleweed of brass-yellow hair, arms like hams, tits like twin footballs. “It's Sunday and I shouldn't of even come to work today in the first place,” she says. I can hear her packing up her things to go.

“I'm gone,” she says. The screen door slams behind her.

“I guess I'll get the sandwiches,” the Deputy says. He leaves the room then, coming back, grabs ahold of the cell door, shaking it, making sure we're locked up good and tight, then goes out.

Me and Uncle Roosevelt sit there awhile.

“You ever been locked up?” I ask him.

“No,” he says.

“Me neither,” I says.

“I got a feeling about that Sheriff, you know the fat one,” he says.

My stomach sinks. I think of the plaque in the quadrangle at school. “What kind of feeling?” I ask.

My Uncle's voice is flat. “I got a feeling that fat cracker ain't seed his own dick in many a year,” he says.

We both laugh at that.

There's someone standing at the window of the cell. Standing on her tiptoes, barely able to see in. Cousin Billy.

“You wanna bust out?” she says. “I could bust you out.”

“The Deputy's gone for sandwiches,” Uncle says.

“You got a gun?” I says.

“I got a razor-file,” she says. “It could cut the bars.”

“We grown men, girl,” Uncle says. “If the bars was cut, no way in hell we could slip through this little window.”

“It was an idea,” she says.

“How's June?”

“Aunt June's fine.”

“I got a feeling we'll be out in the morning,” Uncle Roosevelt says. “Go back and tell your Aunt June to sit tight.”

Billy turns and goes across the road where they got the truck parked in the shade.

“She had a good idea,” I says. My hot and wild cousin.

“I tolt you she was a good woman,” Uncle Roosevelt says. “A good family-minded woman. Can't never go wrong with a woman like that.”

JUNE FLOWERS BEEDE

We can see the window of where they locked up. It ain't easy sleeping sitting in the seats so we laying in the truck bed now. Lucky it ain't raining is all I got to say. Nothing we could do about the police. Billy is laying on her side. First one side then the other. I done quit talking about the baby she got. I'm pretending she don't got no baby inside. She's getting rid of it. The Bible says
Thou shalt not kill,
but by the look on Billy's face, if me or Teddy was to try and thwart her, she'd most likely kill us too. She's made her mind up so I gotta make my mind up too, remake it away from having a baby in the house to just being me and Teddy and her in the house like it already is.

“Excuse me,” someone says. A white man, sounds like.

Billy sits up quick and I sit up slow. The white policeman, the one who took Teddy and Homer in, is standing there at the tailgate with a package in his hand.

“I brought your men sandwiches,” he says. “It took longer than I thought to get them. I had to make them myself. I made some for you all too.” He lifts the bag towards us. We don't move.

“We ain't hungry,” Billy says.

I look at my hand. It's reached out automatically for the food. I drop my arm, pretending like I was flicking the offer away. “Thanks just the same,” I says, trying to make my voice sound hard like Billy's do. We're in Tryler. I can only make my voice sound so hard.

“We don't got no colored ho-tel in Tryler,” the policeman says.

“We fine right here,” Billy says. Her voice has a thick strangling sound that loops around the voice of the policeman, his voice trying to be kind, and the sandwiches in his hand, strangling the kindness out of them both. This policeman don't know how lucky he is. He got a one-legged Negro woman who ain't saying much and a two-legged knocked-up Negro gal who is only being disagreeable. The white policeman's lucky that Billy ain't doing a Willa Mae right now. She'd be cussing him out and telling him to go south.

He leans on the side of the truck. Billy gives him one of her looks but he don't back off. “We got two extra beds in the jail. You two gals are welcome to them,” he says.

“No thank you,” Billy says almost before the offer clears the policeman's mouth.

“Ma'am?” he says, asking me directly.

I look at Billy. When you got one leg you feel like you deserve other things. Like an extra piece of pie or a real mattress on a real bed instead of sleeping in a truck. Billy's face is telling me blood is more important than comfort. But Billy ain't my blood. Roosevelt ain't my blood neither. Here I am, with my Flowers' blood still in me, in deep with these Beedes. Instead of being lifted up over the Brazos River and carried across to the young and good-talking traveling preacher and being enveloped in his promises of better things and being nestled in the bosom of the folks he had listening to his every word, I feel like I done fell into the river of Beedes and got swept along in they thick brown water. The first months of our marriage, I swam against the Beedes. I told Roosevelt I wanted to go to northern California where my family was at. He coulda preached there. We borrowed a car and went west for about a day then he turned around. He weren't interested in no California. He was the husband, after all. It came down to me or him. He bought me a hardcover map of the world and he built his church. It seemed all right for a while, then somehow there weren't no God in it no more and he knew it and I knew it too. But I couldn't just leave. I was too far downstream to just get out. Beede is more my blood now, I guess. Like I got me one of them transfusions.

“I'm good right where I'm at,” I tell the policeman.

He pushes against the side of the truck as he leaves. “If you change yr mind, I'll be right there in the office all night. And don't you worry about yr men folk. It don't look to me like they done nothing but speeding. They'll be out first thing in the morning,” he says.

“It'd be nice if they could get out now,” I says.

“I gotta do my job ma'am,” he says. He stands there, several feet away from the truck, looking up and down the length of it, then sighs and turns to walk back into the jailhouse.

“If you want to take one of them beds, I'll be all right out here by myself,” Billy says. “Willa Mae got me locked up more than once, that's how come I ain't too partial to them, you know.”

I wanna tell her that a bed would be good for her baby, but she don't got no baby, she and me have agreed on that much. “When me and my family was on our way to California we used to sleep outside all the time,” I says.

We sit there in the quiet. It gets dark. There are stars out. My Daddy knowd the names of some of them. Venus. Orion. Big Dipper. North Star.

“You miss your family?” Billy asks.

“Yes and no,” I says.

“I know whatchu mean,” she says. “Sometimes I miss Willa Mae. Sometimes I don't. I mean I miss that she ain't alive but I don't wish she was here. If she was here, me and her'd be in the jailhouse and I'd be listening to her either cuss that Deputy out or sweet-talk him into bringing her some Lucky Strikes. She got a Sheriff to bring her a bottle of champagne once.”

It's dark. No moon. She can't see my face and I can't see hers.

“How come you call her Willa Mae?” I says.

“That's her name,” Billy says.

“Don't be smart with your Aunt June, now.”

Billy lets a heavy breath out. “She liked being called her name,” she says.

“You liked it too, I guess,” I says.

“Look at all them stars,” she says.

“Big Dipper's right there,” I says pointing, but I can't tell if she's looking or not.

“I callt her ‘Mother' in my head, but not out loud,” Billy says. “That was the way she wanted it.”

I can't hear Billy breathe or move or nothing. I let out a long sigh but she stays quiet. I move toward her, sliding slow across the ridges of the truck bed. If I move too fast she may run off. I get close enough and put my arm on her shoulder. She lets it stay there for a minute then shrugs it away.

“This town is Tryler,” I says. “It's a hard town.”

“Every town's hard,” Billy says.

BILLY BEEDE

We was in the jailhouse in Abilene. We was in the jailhouse in Frenchburg. We was in the jailhouse in Sweetwater. We was in the jailhouse in Wildarado. The Galveston jailhouse caught Mother, not me. I stayed in the car hiding underneath the seat for a whole day. Brownsville jailhouse. The jailhouse in Santa Anna. A jailhouse in a place called Alice. Others I can't remember. I think it was Greenville where Dill came to get us out. They got Mother's fingerprints on file all over. She said she was running out of places to go. The beds all smelt like bad luck and piss and sweat. We was locked up once and Mother did something with a man and he turned the key. She didn't think I knew what she did, but I knew.

We was in Santa Anna. She told me she'd been locked up for stealing, but the way the men was looking at her, I knew she'd done something else. They locked me up too cause I was crying outside wanting my mother. The lady who worked at the desk looked at Mother sleeping in the jail then looked at me. “She your real mother?” the lady wanted to know. “Whatchu mean?” I asked the lady. “Your mother's the one you came out of, silly,” the lady said, laughing, thinking I didn't know that much. I just let her laugh. “I ain't come out of nobody,” I told her and that made her shut up.
I been in the jail from Abilene to Galveston.
Mother would sing that. I can't recall how it went exactly.
I been in the jailhouse from Abilene to Galveston. I seen the Gulf of Mexico, through the jailhouse walls.
It went something like that.

WILLA MAE BEEDE

I been in jail.

From Abilene way down to Galveston.

I seen the Gulf of Mexico through the jailhouse wall.

I wore my chain gang stripes digging ditches by the road

But I swear to you I never did much wrong.

They locked me up,

They thrown away the key.

They tell me that I'm never going home.

They got me wearing stripes and digging ditches by the road

The bad they do's worse than the bad I done.

I went begging to the Sheriff

I went pleading to the Judge

I swore on a stack of Bibles miles high

Still they put me on the chain gang

Still they threw away the key

Guess I'll live in this great prison till I die.

ROOSEVELT BEEDE

The Deputy comes to my cell just before the light comes up. He's got his keys in his hand.

“You can go now,” he says, unlocking the bars.

“The boy's still sleep,” I says, looking at Homer.

“I'll unlock the cell anyways,” he says letting the door yawn open. “Leave when you like.”

“The Sheriff wants to keep us,” I says.

“I'll take care of the Sheriff,” he says. “You all go on your way.”

“I'd like to take a walk around the town,” I says. He nods, giving me the OK, and I cross the threshold and walk down the steps. I've heard men say that free air smells and feels different from the air of bondage. It's true. There is a lightness to it and a crispness and a willingness of the air. In the cell the air is hard like the cell is hard. The first breaths They breathed when They was set Free, back in the day, that musta felt different too.

If it's where I remember it to be it'll be standing just around that bend there, past the cluster of thin pines. The pines are thicker than they was when we was here. I used to be able to see my church in between them as I walked up but I don't see nothing now. I will see it soon though, it's just around the turn.

And then I get there, standing where it used to be. Used to be. Standing where it is. No. It ain't there no more. There is a space of land. A clearing. And a sign, with seven letters spelling out some writing, posted in the lot. Nothing else. Not even the markings on the ground showing something used to stand here. The dirt-clumped grass is green, it ain't even flattened or worn. I stand there slapping my hand against the side of my leg, thinking if I slap myself hard enough or suck my teeth long enough I will suck and slap my church back into sight.

A fella comes up walking to work with his lunch pail. I can see him out the corner of my eye. A white fella. He stands a few feet behind just watching me look at the blank space on the land and not saying nothing.

“That land's FOR SALE,” he says. “You buying it?”

“No,” I says.

“You lost?” he asks.

Yes. That's it. I am lost.

I talk without turning around to look at him. “There is a church here,” I says. I can't say “was” because my church is still in my head.

“It was tore down,” he says.

“It was tore down,” I says repeating.

“It makes an interesting story,” he says kindly. “A crop duster hit it by accident. No one, not even the pilot, was hurt. After Best crashed into it, funny enough, that was the crop-dusting fella's name, colored fella too, you know, just trying to make his way, so Best, who I guess weren't the best of pilots, crashes down. Nothing suffered but the old raggedy church.”

“The old raggedy church,” I says.

“You musta seen it when it was up,” the white fella says. “It was all bowed wood. We used to bet money on when it was gonna come crashing down. It was whatchu call an eyesore.”

“It was a church,” I says.

“I don't mean no disrespect,” he says, “but it were an eyesore, I'm telling you.”

“An eyesore,” I says repeating.

“And after it got crashed into, well, the fella who owned the land at that point, I forget his name, some bigshot from Dallas, he had the damn thing—”

“The damn thing,” I says repeating. “The goddamn thing.”

“He had it tore down.”

The fella finishes his story and stands there, looking from me to the empty land and back again.

“You ain't from around here,” he says.

“No.”

“You maybe went to that church once,” he says, “that was, at least on one Sunday in your life, your place of worship, and here I am calling it a eyesore and whatnot,” he says.

“Call it what you want,” I says.

“I go to First Baptist,” he says. “My church ain't much to look at neither. My wife is wanting to convert, you know, she wants to be a Catholic like that President Kennedy. But what do I want with some I-talian pope fella all the way over in Italy telling me when to sit and stand and whatnot, I tell her.”

I close my eyes and open them. My church is still gone.

“All right then,” the man says going. He walks down the road with his lunch bucket creaking as he swings it.

I keep standing there. It weren't just a church. It was my church. I made it myself out of slats of pine wood. I rented and cleared the land. I was going to preach in a church like I'd done for years along the rivers. Me and June showed up here. God had been quiet from the moment I turned our borrowed car around, from the moment I put my foot down and reminded June that I was the husband, and the wife would bend to the husband's will because I'm my own man which means I didn't want to go to California and live under her daddy's thumb.
I just turned around,
I told God,
it ain't like I ditched my wife in some ditch by the road.
But God stayed quiet and I stayed turned around and we showed up here. Pastors wanted us to join their churches. Not build a new one. They guarded their congregations like money. And God was silent in my ear, but June didn't know that, she just thought building a church made me tired. She didn't know my calling had gone and I thought, if I could just build a church, my own church with my own hands, then my God would come back into my ear like he had been since I was small. A man gived me a good deal on the wood and I remember kneeling down with them pine boards and the smell of the pine and thanking God for making it possible for me to rent the land and buy the wood outright and I didn't need help from nobody. I could make it on my own all right in Tryler. I set the boards flush. Tongue and groove. It was as tight as a boat. No light shone through except in the spaces I had left for the windows. Me and June painted the church together. We painted it white. And it was ready. I would preach every day of the week. Loudly. There was a few people who liked what I had to say and folks who knew me from my river days would make a trip to hear me. But my calling—. And then it turned out that the pine boards was green. They hadn't been cured and, after a year or so, they buckled and bowed. Eyesore, the fella called it. I guess it was.