Mississippi Cotton (22 page)

Big Trek said the screams came from close to the swamp, and he was so frightened he began kicking the old mare on her sides as hard as he could, trying to get away from the swamp. But her age and a lifetime of work had left her with a slow gait, no matter how hard she was kicked. Big Trek said it was the longest horseback ride he had ever made.

When they got home he told his daddy about the screams. His daddy told them to go to bed. His daddy walked outside and held up a lantern looking as far away as the light would stretch into the darkness. But he never went beyond the porch. Big Trek said that after he and his brother were sent to bed the light in the front room burned brightly that night. His mother and daddy stayed up into the early hours talking about something. But he never learned what they talked about.

The next day two colored sharecroppers had been found dead, mutilated almost beyond recognition. The man was on the porch with his throat torn away; parts of his wife had been dragged or carried to the edge of the field where it met the woods. No man could have done this, the sheriff had said.

Also, men didn’t make claw marks or leave panther tracks. The thought of a wild panther about kept Big Trek and his brother close to the house for a long time.

Throughout the county there was a mild panic that year. Men kept their shotguns loaded with buckshot or slugs close to the front door. As a rule, wild animals don’t attack humans unless the animals’ young are threatened or they have rabies. An animal attacking someone on the front porch put everyone on alert.

Water stood in large pools around the house. We stared into the yard, absorbing Big Trek’s tale.

“Now Big Trek, you shouldn’t be telling these boys horrible old stories like that. They’re too young.” Cousin Carol had come back just as he finished the story.

“Aww, they’re old enough. And anyway, it’s a true story. They’re gonna hear ‘bout it someday anyhow. It’s a growin’ story.” He grinned. “Like rain, ya know?”

“Just the same, I don’t think it’s something appropriate for them to hear. They don’t have to grow up all the way right now.”

Big Trek puffed and blew a smoke ring. He didn’t reply.

Cousin Carol sat down next to him in the swing. She was wiping her hands with a dish rag; a troubled look covered her normal smile. “But the reason I came out here was to tell y’all that the phone is out of order. I tried to call down to the feed store to see if Trek was there, but it’s dead. Must have something to do with the storm.”

She walked back inside. I think she just told us to reassure us that there was a reason Cousin Trek hadn’t called. Or maybe she just wanted to interrupt the story.

“Did you know the colored people, Big Trek? I mean the ones who got killed?”

“They were Ben Samuels’ momma and daddy,” he replied, a huge cloud of smoke rising up around his face. His stare focused across the open, soaked cotton fields.

The three of us looked at one another—Ben Samuels’ parents.

After a minute I asked, “Did they ever get the panther, Big Trek?”

“No.”

Taylor and Casey and I had started playing Chinese Checkers, since we couldn’t go out. The rain was steady. Big Trek had remained in the swing smoking his pipe, staring down the road, which looked more like a creek now. Cousin Carol was inside and occasionally came out onto the porch to look down the road herself.

“Look!” said Casey. “I see Daddy’s truck. There he comes.”

We pushed our faces against the screen, trying to see through the rain. Cousin Trek’s truck slid down the road. The tires seemed like wet feet in the tub, sliding to one side then the other. The windshield wipers swished back and forth trying to keep ahead of the rain. The headlights made it seem like he was driving faster than usual.

“Looks like he’s home, Carol,” Big Trek called into the house. But she had already come out and was waving at the truck.

Cousin Trek wore one of those yellow raincoats with a hood that made him look like a sailor on a ship’s storm deck. It was the same kind we always had to wear on rainy days at school. Farley says they make you look like a loon, like a giant egg yolk with legs.

As soon as Cousin Trek got to the porch he took it off and shook it, then hung it and his hat on a hook by the screen door. He didn’t seem to have his joking way that he always had. He looked at us without saying a word, beads of water ran down his face.

“Is something wrong? I was kind of worried. This is a bad storm,” said Cousin Carol.

“Looty’s gone. He broke out, I guess you’d say.”

“What?” Big Trek asked. “Whadaya mean he broke out? I didn’t know he was in. You mean he was arrested? I thought they had jus’ been talkin’ to him. Just holding him down there for questions.”

Casey and Taylor and I sat in silence. We were scared that if we said anything we would be told to leave. Cousin Carol didn’t speak either.

“He walked out the back door. He wasn’t locked up or anything and at some point everyone looked around, and he was gone,” Cousin Trek said.

A crash of thunder shook the house and we jerked. Big Trek opened the screen door and banged his pipe on the door sash. No one spoke. I wondered if everybody else was thinking the same thing—was Looty really a murderer?

CHAPTER 17

I awakened to Taylor nudging me, whispering. “Shhhh. Be quiet. Don’t wanna wake up everybody.”

It was still dark. The rain must have stopped, since I no longer heard the torrents that had worked like music, putting me to sleep. I had been sleeping so soundly that it still felt like a dream even though I was awake. “Wha..? Whadaya want?”

“Shhh. Something’s goin’ on. Somebody came to the house after we came to bed. It was around midnight. I heard them talkin’ downstairs. Their talkin’ waked me up.”

“Hey, what are y’all doin’. How come y’all are up?” Casey walked in from his room. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and sat on the bed.

“Shhh. Not so loud.”

“Whdaya mean, not so loud? Y’all woke me up.”

“Whisper. I think Mother is awake. The light is on downstairs. But I think she’s alone. I think Daddy and Big Trek have gone somewhere.”

I got up and cracked the door just enough to see a light streaming up the stairs.

“Close the door,” Taylor said. “We don’t want her to know we’re up.”

“Well, what’s going on? Who came to the house?” I said.

“I couldn’t see but it sounded sorta like Ben Samuels. I swear that’s who it sounded like.”

“What’d he be doin’ here at this time of night?” I asked.

Casey was still rubbing his eyes. He flopped back on the bed.

“I don’t know. But he wasn’t here very long before he left. And I’m pretty sure Daddy and Big Trek went with him.”

“Where did they go?”

Taylor opened the window. “I think they said they were going downtown to see Mr. O’Grady.”

“What are you lookin’ at out there?”

He opened the screen and pushed it out enough to stick his head out. “It’s not raining. And the moon’s out.”

“So what?”

“So, we’re goin’ downtown.”

We were living dangerously, for sure. Sneaking out in the early morning wasn’t something you wanted to get caught doing. You’d get one of those lectures and there was always a chance you could get a switching.

It was well after midnight and the town was quiet, the streets deserted. We parked our bikes in the bushes on the edge of the square. We crept over to the windows on the side of the town marshal’s office. Parked out front were two highway patrol cars, a county sheriff’s car, and the Cotton City police car. Across the street we had noticed Big Trek’s pickup as well as Ben Samuel’s. This was a lot of cars for something like shooting chickens.

We saw figures through the open window and saw someone pass every couple of minutes, like they were pacing.

“Crud!”

“Shhh!” Taylor put his hand over Casey’s mouth. “What’s wrong? You want someone to hear us?”

Casey crouched like Yogi Berra and pointed underneath his legs at his butt. He had sat in a puddle. “It looks like I wet my pants. Now I’ll have to hide ‘em when I get home or I’m dead.”

“Worry about that later,” Taylor said. “We’ll dang sure get killed if we get caught. Now c’mon, let’s go. And keep quiet.”

We sprinted for the corner of the marshal’s office, staying away from the light from the window. We crouched below the ledge, trying to stifle our heavy breathing in order to hear the voices inside, clear, like a radio program.

It sounded like everyone in the room was trying to talk to Ben at the same time, and he was trying to answer them all at the same time. It was as if Ben knew some great secret and everybody in the room wanted to know it.

“Well, Ben, how in the hell do you know who she is?”

“C’mon, Billy Joe. Don’t get so excited. Ben is volunteerin’ to come in here.” There was a sputtering and cracking of voices comin’ over the two-way radio that covered the rest of what was Big Trek’s voice.

“She called me, Mistuh O’Grady. She called me one night and told Julius and me. She said I had better be careful of strangers. Dat dere was one who had wanted it, and dere might be more, and they’d want Looty’s.”

“How would she know that?” the sheriff asked.

“She jus’ said dat. She told me and Julius dat we was lucky.”

Since the rain had stopped, the air was heavy and humid. As we crouched under the window, we were sweating like wild hogs. I started thinking about Cousin Carol at home. What if she went upstairs to check on us? We’d be better off getting arrested.

Everybody started talking over each other. Every now and then we heard a question about Looty—where is he? What did he do? There were so many questions about Looty, and questions about some woman who might have some information. Why were they asking Ben Samuels all these questions? I worried that right now Cousin Carol might be checking our beds.

“Maybe we oughta go home,” I whispered to Taylor.

“Not now. We’re about to find out something.”

Casey tugged at Taylor’s shirt. “I’ve found out enough.”

“Shhh! You’re just scared.”

“Yeah. That, too.”

“Y’all be quiet. They’re gonna hear us if y’all don’t shut up,” Taylor said.

Then we heard another unmistakable voice. “Daddy, tell ‘em what you know—what she told us. Tell ‘em now. If you don’t I will.” It was BB. He and Ben Samuels were both in there. More sputtering and cracking obscured most of what he said.

Taylor raised his head to peek in the window, hoping for a glance at who was in the room. He dropped back down like a fallen rock. “Ben and some other men are standin’ around in their raincoats. I couldn’t see Looty though. I saw Daddy and Big Trek, too.”

“Whodaya s’pose they’re talking about?
Who is she
?” Casey asked. “What’s Ben s’posed to be tellin’ ‘em?”

The next thing we heard was clear. Mr. O’Grady said they had better go—to get out to Looty’s. That was a signal it was time for us to go, too. We didn’t want to get caught out here listening at the window. We took off for the bushes in the square. From there we saw six or seven men come out of the office and move toward the squad cars. Although it had stopped raining they were wearing their yellow raincoats, all but one who wore a poncho. Silhouetted against the light from the office, BB in his old army poncho was a dark figure in the dim light. He looked like a vampire.

It was almost two when we got back to the house. No one was waiting up for us. And we had beaten Trek and Big Trek back. Casey stuffed his pants under the bed. If they hadn’t dried by morning he wanted them hid good. They would have until after noontime to dry since we would be wearing our Sunday clothes tomorrow morning.

We all were still wide awake, but two things we knew were true. One was that there was a
she
involved in something; and two, the silhouette of BB in his poncho had convinced us who was at Looty’s that night.

“Y’all think my pants will be dry by morning?”

“Will you stop worrying about your pants? They’re gonna be dry. Momma ain’t gonna check under the bed before we get back from church. Anyway, I told you not to sit down out there. I told you it was wet.”

“You didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout not sittin’ down. You jus’ said don’t get your shoes muddy or we might get caught if we tracked it in the house. An’ anyway you oughta be as worried as me. If we get caught I’m spillin’ my guts. I ain’t gettin’ a whippin’ by myself.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll be branded a dirty little squealer if you do. You’ll be shunned in Cotton City. You’ll be an outcast.”

We sat up for another hour and talked in low whispers. Was BB involved in whatever Looty was involved in? Was Looty involved in anything? Was BB? As much as anything, I had begun to wonder about the ‘she’ who was mentioned. I probably wouldn’t have thought about the straw-haired lady except I had seen her at Greenville with Looty. And she was a she.

I didn’t bring the topic up to Casey and Taylor, but after we lay down I thought about her some. Was she involved somehow or just an accident that she showed up?