The Sharecropper Prodigy (5 page)

             
Manuel looked around the room, thinking, and trying to remain calm.

             
“What are we gonna do, Manuel,?” Ben asked, surprisingly keeping cool.

             
“I don’t know yet. I guess we need to get in Mr. Winston’s truck and go tell him what happened. I only hope he believes us.”

             
“I ain’t so sure,” Ben said. “Mr. Winston might not take the word of a Mexican and a black kid over his foreman whose worked for him for years.”

             
“Well, if you’ve got any ideas, I’m open to any suggestions. What do you think we should do?”

             
Ben thought for a minute, looking out the door into the darkness, hoping nobody had been around. He was sure no one had been, and prayed it remained that way. Then he turned to Manuel.

             
“I’ll tell you what let’s do. Let’s turn the lights out and leave, locking the door behind us. We’ll get in the truck and drive down to the old grist mill road. Nobody ever goes down there much anymore since they opened the new mill. We’ll wait ‘til the Winston’s have had time to go to bed and then go wake Miss Rachel up. I know which bedroom window is hers. We have to tell her. Maybe she’ll know what’s best. At least we’ll have a respected white person on our side, and I have always trusted her judgment.”

             
Manuel thought that sounded better than anything he could come up with, and agreed. They got in the truck and drove down the road that led from the cotton gin back out to the main highway, without turning the headlights on. When they got to the old grist mill road, they took it all the way down to the mill and parked behind it. They sat there in silence, occasionally checking there watches.

             
Manuel turned to Ben, “I don’t want you to get caught up in this, Ben. I’m the one that hit him. You were just an innocent bystander.”

             
“Uh uh, there ain’t no way and don’t you even think about it. You saved my life and I’m the one that threw the pepper sauce in his eyes. We’re in this together. Let’s just wait and talk to Miss Rachel and see what she says.”

*****

              Ben snuck up to the huge front porch that ran the entire length of the Winston’s old antebellum house that had been in the family for four generations. Buck, the old hound that belonged to Mr. Winston, had been around Ben for years. He growled a little and let out a couple of short barks, but Ben called his name, patted him on the head and rubbed him behind the ears. Buck walked back over to his place at the corner of the porch and laid back down. The night was still, with only the faint sounds of crickets chirping and the occasional hoot of an old owl down in the woods. Ben didn’t have to worry about boards creaking, because the porch was covered with polished limestone tiles.

             
Ben walked up to Rachel’s bedroom window and began knocking on the glass quietly. He waited, holding his breath and hoping she heard the knocks. After a minute, he knocked a little louder. A light came on in the room and Ben could hear movement inside. He hoped he hadn’t frightened her and caused her to go get her daddy. Then the drapes started moving and Ben was suddenly staring down twin barrels of a double barreled shotgun. Staring into them and knowing what they were capable of, they looked as big as railroad tunnels to Ben.

             
“It’s me, Ben, Miss Rachel,” Ben said as loud as he dared to speak.

             
The window raised and Rachel stuck her head out. Her hair was down and was flowing down past her shoulders and a few strands fell across her face. Ben thought she looked beautiful. Like one of the many princesses he’d read about and seen pictures of in story books.

             
“Ben? Ben, what’s wrong,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

             
“We got bad trouble Miss Rachel. Can you get out of the house without wakin’ up your daddy?”

             
“What kind of trouble?” Rachel asked, still rubbing her eyes.

             
“I ain’t got time to tell you, here. Can you get out?”

             
“Y..yes. I can get out. Just wait for me down by the tool shed. Let me make sure Papa is still asleep.”

              “Bring the key to the cotton gin office with you,” Ben told her.

             
“Why do we need the key to….”

             
“Just bring it, Miss Rachel. We ain’t got much time.”

             
Ben trotted off toward the tool shed. In a few minutes he saw Rachel running across the yard wearing a pair of old overalls.

             
“Okay, Papa is sound asleep. Now do you want to tell me what’s goin’ on?”

             
“I’ll tell you while we walk,” Ben said. “We ain’t got no time to lose.”

             
They left in a trot down the path toward the cotton gin. Ben explained to her what had happened on the way, talking so fast she could barely understand him. When he told her that Ned Higgins was dead, she stopped in her tracks.

             
“Oh,…. Lord no. Where…..where is he now?”

             
“He’s still inside the office at the gin. Me and Manuel didn’t move him. We didn’t know what to do.”

             
“Papa should have known better than to leave Ned to drive Manuel home. He knows what a hot head he can be and how much he despises anybody that has skin darker than his.”

             
“Well, I don’t know what he planned on doin’ with us, but me and Manuel wasn’t about to give him the opportunity to find out. It was a pure accident that he hit his head on that spike, though. Don’t you think people would understand? Folks who knew him knew how he was about black folks.”

             
When they arrived at the gin, Rachel took out the key from the bib of her overalls. Manuel had been hiding down in the edge of the woods and came running when he saw them. He walked in the door right after they did.

             
“Okay, Miss Rachel,” Ben said. “I’m gonna turn on the light. What you are about to see ain’t pretty. Are you gonna be okay?”

             
“Yes, Ben. I’ve seen dead people before. Turn on the light.”

             
Despite knowing what she was about to encounter, Rachel still let out a small gasp when the lights came on. Ned was still sitting up, propped against the wall, his chin resting on his chest like he was taking a nap. There wasn’t a lot of blood, due to the small puncture wound.

             
“I’ve decided it’s best just to tell the truth,” Manuel said. “I won’t have you two getting mixed up in something that I did. I’m the one that struck the fatal blow and Ben had nothing to do with it.”

             
Rachel looked at Manuel, considering what he’d just said. Under any other circumstance she would agree with him. The sheriff of Jones County was a bigot, just like a lot of people in the county, but he was also a fair man. But it wasn’t the sheriff she was worried about. It was those ignorant and cowardly men who donned white hoods and traveled in packs like wolves. Although the Ku Klux Klan didn’t have a large presence in Jones County, there were a lot of them in neighboring counties and in other parts of the state. They would come from miles around once they had heard one of their own had been killed by a Mexican while a black boy looked on. She knew Ned was a member of the Klan, though he hid it well. She explained this to Manuel and Ben.

             
“I hate lying with a passion,” Rachel said, pointing her finger at Ned. “But these cowards stick together like peas in a pod. It won’t matter who was at fault, or who started the fight. You two are guilty in their eyes, just by the fact that your skin is a different color, don’t you understand that?”

             
“Well, what do we do then?” Manuel asked, running his fingers through his thick black hair. “Hide his body somewhere? How do we explain him missing when we’re the last ones to have seen him? We’re still gonna look guilty.”

             
“I have a plan that might work. It has got to work. Now listen, we have to work fast. It’s already near midnight and Papa is usually up by five-o’clock. Ben, you look in the cabinets over there,” Rachel said, pointing to a small row of cabinets in a little hallway that connected the office from the warehouse portion of the gin. “There are some strong chemicals in there the men use to clean the office and some of the machinery. There should be several hand clothes, too. Clean this blood up and don’t leave a speck. There should be some gloves in the cabinet where the cleaner is. Be careful not to get much of that stuff on your skin. Manuel and I are gonna take the body down the back roads over to Cherokee County. I know a place on the Coosa River where there is a steep bank and the water is deep. We can push the truck down the bank. It’s a remote place, and as deep as the water is there, the truck will most likely never be found.  Maybe everybody will just assume Ned stole Papa’s truck and ran off. Manuel, we’ll stop and get your truck. I’ll drive it and you can follow me. Now let’s move quickly.”

             
Rachel had given orders like a military officer. Ben knew she had an extremely sharp mind, but was very impressed with the way she acted under pressure. And if Ben had ever seen a pressure situation, this was it.

             
Manuel spoke up, “Miss Rachel, what if……”

             
“We don’t have time for
what if’s,
Manny. Let’s go.”

CHAPTER FIVE

             
Ben waited three days to tell me about what had happened to Ned at

the cotton gin. I couldn’t believe that he told me, even though we were best friends. I’m not sure I would have told him, if the shoe had been on the other foot. He didn’t tell me much that day, but told me to meet him instead the next day and he would give me the details. The place of our meeting was down at the creek about a half mile from our usual fishing spot, at a place where the creek took an almost ninety-degree turn. When I got there, Rachel Winston was with him. She and Ben, of course, each had books and from their voluminous appearance, I knew any discussion they were having was gonna be way over my head. All I wanted to know about was the events that had happened last Friday night.

             
Ben and Rachel both greeted me as if they were as carefree as ever.

             
“Hey, Tom,” Ben said. “We were just catchin’ up on some of our discussions that were interrupted the other night.”

             
Interrupted,
I thought to myself. If that wasn’t an understatement, there never had been one.

             
“You two got something you want to tell me?” I asked, trying to get straight to the point.

             
Ben looked at Rachel as if he were getting approval. I didn’t really know why since he’d already told me Ned Higgins was dead and that he and Manuel Cruz were responsible for it.

             
“Well, I told you Ned was dead and that me and Manny killed him in self-defense. But I didn’t tell you what we did after that. The only people in the world I trust to know something like this are you, Miss Rachel and Manny. I didn‘t even tell Nellie, and I’m not going to. She’s got more than enough to worry about, anyway.

             
“Well, tell me what happened after that,” I said. “I figured you buried ’im somewhere.”

             
“Well, I guess you could say that. Only his grave is a watery one. Miss Rachel and Manny run her papa’s truck off in the river with Ned in it.”

             
I turned to Rachel, “I hope you made sure the doors were shut good and the windows were rolled up. Them bodies will float back to the top.”

             
“It’s the gasses in the body that cause that,” Ben started, “what happens is…..”

             
“It don’t matter how it happens. I just know that it does,” I said.

             
“Manuel and I thought of that,” Rachel answered, as if she were offended that I would even question her on the subject.

             
“Tom, I need to know from you. Do you think we did the right thing? You know, hidin’ it the way we did and not telling nobody about it,” Ben asked.

             
“You did the
only
thing you could do,” I answered. “The chances of you and Manuel getting a fair trial in this county full of ignorant rednecks would be slim and none. You said Rachel left with her daddy, so you didn’t have any witnesses to back up your story.”