The Marrowbone Marble Company (30 page)

“Where'd you get the rock?”

W.D. didn't answer. His false teeth were in, and he worked his gums doubletime. He looked at his hands, stuck them in the pocket of his overalls. He looked at the broken clock on the wall, then turned to the kitchen again. “Where is that damned woman with the coffee,” he said.

“W.D.,” Ledford said. “You don't have to be afraid of the Ball boys, or Shorty Maynard either. I—”

“I ain't afraid of none a them,” W.D. shot back. “Maybe at one time I was, but rapture's a comin, and those three have fire at their feet already.”

Ledford nodded. “I believe you're right,” he said. Floorboards creaked above. A greasy yellow cat padded down the staircase. Ledford thought hard about what to say. “Mr. Ray, we've known each other a while now. You know what we've tried to do around here for folks that need it, folks that the Ball boys and Shorty Maynard have—”

“Look here Ledford,” W.D. said. Then he stood up and walked to the front windows. He looked out between two flat squares of cardboard. Did the same at the side windows. He sat back down. Scratched at his white stubble. “For years I been givin information to them three on who could be pushed around and who couldn't. I been tellin em things they wanted to hear, you know what I mean?” W.D. shook his head. “And they give me money here and there, gravel, what have you. You know they give me a telephone?”

“No, I didn't.”

“A damned telephone. Paid for the man to come out and wire it up. Shorty Maynard said for me to ring him or Noah anytime I heard of something fishy over at your place. Wrote down their numbers for me, one of the numbers for emergency. Told me they'd pay me pretty good for that.” He shook his head again. “I ain't never told em nothin on you, Ledford.” He was telling the truth. “That's God's people you got over there.”

Ledford thanked him. “I'm through with it,” W.D. said. “All of it. What you done out here has changed things, far as I'm concerned.”

Ledford didn't know what to make of all the man had said. “Listen,” W.D. said. He pointed to the phone where it hung on the wall. “I ain't used that telephone but once, just to see. My fingers is too big for the holes.” He held up his knotty hands. “Anyway, damned if that Shorty Maynard wasn't here in his police car in five minutes' time.” He laughed. “Huey Church had stole from me, so I told him Huey was runnin moonshine, and I reckon he used that to go and scare the Churches, keep em in line and votin how they should.” He smiled. “Keep em away from the likes a you,” he said. “But I've had it by God. I'm too old for it.” He stomped his foot to the floor and smacked his knee.

Before Ledford left, he thanked Mr. Ray for his time. “You hold on to that pressure cooker,” he said. “Rachel's got another one.” He told the old man not to rip his telephone out. To keep the Ball boys and Shorty Maynard close, let them think he was a pushover. “You give em false information if you want to,” Ledford said, “but keep em around.”

W. D. Ray stood tall as he waved to the bus from his porch. Rapture could wait a while. He was part of something.

 

T
HE
K
EITH
-A
LBEE
T
HEATRE
seated two thousand, and when Willy walked the aisle on the Saturday before Halloween, every one of them was full. It was the midnight show.
Point Blank
. Folks had heard about Lee Marvin's role, how he wielded his gun like it grew from his hand. How he threw men off rooftops.

Stretch Hayes waved to Willy from the front row, where he'd saved him a seat. Next to Stretch was his brother, Clyde. He craned his neck at the screen. It was his first full day of parole. Inside the penitentiary they didn't show moving pictures, and to Clyde the color looked neon.

He didn't speak when introduced.

There was a coming attraction for
To Sir
,
With Love
. When Sidney Poitier's face filled the screen, someone in the middle rows hollered, “Baboon!”

Clyde tore the ring-pull off his second can of beer and tossed it on the floor. He worked his jaw between swallows.

The crowd was young and rowdy. Halfway through the movie, someone threw a stink bomb vial at the wall.

By the time Lee Marvin punched a downed man in the balls, Clyde had drunk eight beers. “That ain't how it is,” he said to Willy and Stretch. “Don't no real punch sound like that.” He'd found flaw in gunshots and bloodspills all night.

On the movie screen, a black nightclub singer screamed his riffs. A few rows back, someone imitated a chimpanzee. Someone else let fly an egg. It smacked the screen and trickled down, slow and thick and yellow.

Clyde stood up and turned around. Two thousand empty faces. Another egg let fly. It broke against his Adam's apple and filled his shirt collar with yolk. “Motherfucker,” Clyde said.

Two white boys stood up and ran. “I know where your mommas live,” Clyde called after them. “Sit down, nigger!” somebody yelled.

Clyde threw his beer on the floor and raised a hand to block the projector booth beam. Dust swirled, glinting here and there, the stirring of an invisible storm. “Say it again!” Clyde called, searching the empty faces.

And it
was
said again, and another egg let fly—this time from the balcony—and soon enough, chairbacks were stepping stones and fists weren't picky.

Willy followed Stretch through the fire exit door. Stretch had followed Clyde, who'd opened the door with the face of a big, buzz-cut white boy who'd decided to take a swing. He'd missed. Now that boy was face down on the alley bricks, his letterman jacket soaking up a puddle, his nose cartilage refashioned.

He was the starting middle linebacker at Huntington East. His father was chief of police.

The alley spilled to the street, and Fourth Avenue became a stomping ground. Someone kicked the sideview off a Thunderbird, picked it up, and swung it against the back of Stretch's head. He dropped to his knees.

Willy got him by the armpits and they crossed Tenth Street, running.

Clyde was nowhere to be found.

Sirens sounded quick. The officers on duty had radioed when the first chair was jumped. Inside five minutes, there were seven squad cars in front of the theater.

By the time someone lobbed a brick through the front window of Kiser's Drugstore, the police had donned riot helmets. Some gripped clubs and others shotguns. They moved east on Fourth Avenue, by car and by foot, and when they got to Sixteenth Street, one car headed south.

Shorty Maynard was on a ride-along, and he was happy to navigate. He spotted Willy and Stretch in J. Carl Mitchum's front yard. The old man was pressing a handkerchief to Stretch's bleeding scalp. When the headlights lit them up, J. Carl stared down the beam. He was big, his white undershirt amplified. “You boys go inside,” he said.

But they didn't go inside. Stretch turned and faced the car.

Next to Shorty in the backseat, the buzz-cut linebacker had stopped his own bleeding with a grease rag. “That's him,” he intoned. He pointed a blood-streaked finger. “That's the one that did it.” His daddy gunned the cruiser.

Stretch took off in the direction of Douglass Community Center. His logic was clouded by the hot buzzing inside his skull.

The tires on the squad car were bald in back. It fishtailed on the sidewalk and straightened, then bore down hard, tore two stripes on Douglass's front lawn before stopping a foot short of the door. It was there that Stretch Hayes pulled at the brass handles with no luck. He just kept pulling, as if the locks might decide to give, as if refuge was more than a word used by preachers.

Shorty Maynard was on him before Willy and J. Carl could cross the street.

Stretch turned from the door and faced him. “You going to black my eyes shut like you did your daughter's?” he said.

Shorty swung his club and missed, Stretch slipping it like he would a boxing glove, his fists at the ready. The second swing caught him, put him on his knees. He threw a straight left that missed. Shorty's third swing put him to sleep.

The police chief and his buzz-cut boy held J. Carl and Willy off, kept them where they couldn't see. J. Carl tested the chief's resolve and walked toward the squad car. “Don't take another step,” the chief said, his eyes fixed down the squat barrel of his revolver. J. Carl froze where he stood.

“Stretch?” Willy called, craning to see. “Stretch?” He could only see the back of Shorty's head and shoulders, so tall above the roof of the car. It was the first time he'd seen him since he'd beaten up Josephine. Willy stared at that long neck and head, imagined those big hands striking Josephine. He wished for a moment that he carried a gun.

The blue and red lights spun on the squad car's roof, a beacon of fear to those peering through windows. Willy watched the mirrors and bulbs. They threw shadows on the bricks of the community center. The howl was relentless.

 

A
T NINE P.M.
on Halloween night, the raid came.

State policemen lined Marrowbone's main gate and spoke through bullhorns. “Step out of the house with your hands over your head,” they said. Dimple and Wimpy crouched on the floor in their longjohns. They peeked through the high window and surmised the number of men outside. They laid their rifles on the floor and did as they were told.

Up the Cut, Orb was running the dogs. They caught wind of the state police and came running, hard.

The dogs sensed a siege. From a hundred yards off, they saw Dimple and Wimpy on their knees, men in dark uniforms standing behind them.

When they leaped the creek by the lower footbridge, full bore and snarling, three officers opened fire. Jim-Jim, Doo-Dad, and Pug were struck in the head and neck.

They died where they fell before Orb could get there. Tug was hit in the back leg and retreated to the creek bed. Orb climbed down to him, held the dog while he whimpered, blood leaking slow into cold water.

Across front yards, the state police put people on their knees. They made neat lines of the residents of Marrowbone, careful to go easy on women and children. Ledford crept in the chicken coop's shadow, his.45 drawn. When he saw their number, he tucked the gun in along his spine, emerged, and demanded a warrant. One was produced, and Ledford went prone like the rest.

They caught Herchel in a circle beam of flashlight as he hacked at his marijuana plants with a hand axe. They hauled him off in cuffs.

They had proof that Marrowbone housed criminals.

Herchel looked at the ground as he stumbled along, barefoot and shirtless, gripped at the elbows. A trooper shined his light on Herchel's chest scar and stared. The skin there reflected light.

Orb was the only one Herchel glanced at. The boy's crying was too much to ignore. None had ever heard such a thing from Orb.

As he stepped into a squad car, Herchel nearly cried himself. They shut the door on him, and through the glass, he watched Orb go from one dog to the next where they lay on the ground. The boy bent and put his ear to each one, but there was nothing.

Tug followed along, limping, Orb's shirt wrapping his back leg. He nudged each dog with his snout. They lay where they'd fallen, in a line across the cold crabgrass. Tug licked at their bloodied ears and lips.

When Orb stood up and buried his face in Rachel's sweater to quiet his cries, Tug stayed put, his eyes on his brother and sisters. He whined. He limped back and started down the line again, pushing his snout against each dead dog, certain they'd wake up soon enough.

T
HE CARPET IN
B
OB
Staples' office was white, coffee stains marking a trail from door to desk. Reverend Thompson sat across from him in a highback leather chair, and beside him was Paul Maynard. Both would be character witnesses should Herchel or Stretch's arrests go to trial. The Reverend would speak on behalf of Marrowbone. Paul would do the same for Stretch Hayes.

Bob Staples and Harold did nothing but study case law and review the actions of the police. The rest at Marrowbone organized against a shutdown.

“These meetings and community marches ain't doing a goddamn thing for anybody,” Paul said. He looked at Reverend Thompson. “No offense.”

“None taken.” The Reverend shifted in his seat. “I wish your brother was well enough to soapbox, Bob. He'd whip up results.”

“I know it,” Bob said. “I wish he was too.”

The West Virginia Human Rights Commission had backed J. Carl Mitchum. He'd accused the Huntington Police Department of brutality the night of the theater riot. The papers weren't listening. The accusation had not stuck.

Stretch was out on bond. His brother Clyde had decided to run. It wasn't the first time he'd broken parole.

In the office corner, Harold sat on the floor behind a semicircle of stacked paper. “I got a woman here who saw Stretch Hayes on his knees
when Shorty swung the club, but she won't testify to it.” He hadn't slept in two days.

Paul shook his head. “None of that'll stick on Shorty,” he said. “We got to go after him with bigger than that.” Lately, he'd been wishing he'd lined pockets like the rest of them. He didn't have friends in the state police. He couldn't get a warrant based on nothing but shared hatred.

“I think we've got to fight it out in the paper, on the nightly news,” Reverend Thompson said. “Stand up for Marrowbone and what it's done for people.”

The results of the raid were disheartening. The local news had been calling Marrowbone a Communist training ground full of dope-smoking beatniks. Some residents had already moved away. Mrs. Wells and Herb were among them. They wanted nothing to do with such trouble.

Talks with the SCLC and Martin Luther King had been stalled by word of a drug bust. Marrowbone was no longer a stop for the Poor People's Campaign.

Paul Maynard looked at the floor. He twiddled his thumbs. He knew that scared black witnesses and newspaper editorials were useless. He knew his nephew had to be dealt with in blood.