A Cry of Angels (46 page)

I felt my heart stop.

It was Tio, standing on the knoll before the Daniels house. He cupped a hand to his mouth. "You heard the man, crawl back in that hole like a bunch of rats! Desert Jayell like you done Mr. Teague. Go on, git in them shacks till the big man comes for some more of your blood!"

Most everyone, including Doc Bobo, was in a state of shock. People had stopped and stood staring, as though having difficulty believing what they had heard.

Doc Bobo stepped up to the boy, who stood defiantly, his chin jutted out. "Why ain't you at the store where you belong?" he said.

"Because there ain't nothin' to do at the store, thanks to you!" Doc Bobo turned and signaled with his finger. The car door opened and Clyde Fay slid out.

"Why you god—" Jayell's move was cut short by Carlos, who grabbed him and pinned him against the truck. "No, Jayell, please," he said, terrified.

The people fell back as Fay came quickly up the slope, stepping gracefully, almost delicately over the dew-soaked grass, wrapping his wide belt around one hand.

Tio stood where he was, watching him come.

"Stop him!" I screamed. Doc Bobo, who stood only a few yards away, turned around. "Stop him!" And then with the weight in my shaking hand, I remembered I was holding a hammer, and while the undertaker stood looking at me, annoyed at the outburst, I slung the hammer into his face.

He lurched away, grabbing at his nose, and in the next instant I was swatted to the ground like a fly. An iron hand closed on my arm and I was jerked up again so hard my feet cleared the ground. I bumped into somebody who was yelling, and through the soft, cottony throbbings I became aware that Fay was holding both me and Tio.

"
Put 'em down
!"

The voice was a roll of thunder. Tio stopped struggling, Fay stood watching, alert, heads were turning around to Em Jojohn, who was coming around the corner of the Daniels house. He shuffled heavily down the yard and confronted Doc Bobo and Fay.

"
Let 'em go
."

"You stay out of this, Jojohn," said Doc Bobo, clutching a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

"I'll get out of it when you turn loose them boys."

"I have no quarrel with you," said Doc Bobo.

"I got one with you," said Jojohn. "I pulled six months at your sawmill. Your man bought me for fifty cents a day. I've let it go till now, but you move ag'in them boys and I'm gonna start collectin' back wages."

"I got one too!" roared a voice from the rear, and Horace Burroughs was stiffly negotiating the slope. "Count me in there," said Mr. Rampey, hefting a rock, and Jurgen and Woodall were pushing their way through the crowd. Jayell's fist landed beside Carlos' head, staggering him, and he leaped away. Phaedra sprang over the side of the truck.

"Hold on—no!" cried Doc Bobo. He shook Fay's arm to turn us loose and shouldered the giant away. He backed off from the approaching white people. It was obvious this new development had taken him by surprise, and this confrontation was not what he wanted. "Get in the car, Fay, get in the car. Please," he said, holding up his hands, "please, I want no trouble."

The others followed them to the edge of the yard and stopped as he and Fay got in the limousine. "I want no trouble," Doc Bobo repeated anxiously, and slammed the door. Clyde Fay cranked the engine and the people in the trees watched in a trance as the car circled the lumber piles and drove away down the mountain.

Jayell stepped down to Carlos. He was sweating, his eyes wild. "Go get every piece of lumber at the shop, all of it, every scrap you can find! We need salvage crews!" he shouted at the crowd. "Anybody that's got a vehicle, scour the Ape Yard, spread out around town, along the river, anybody that's got a piece of board he'll part with, an outhouse he ain't using, any piece of lumber you can find along the road, bring it up here! Tio, get in my truck and go find Mr. I. V. Tagg and tell him to come up here, we got a lot of figuring to do." He raised his voice again to the crowd. "I don't know how many we'll be able to build, but we'll do what we can. Come on, fall in here!"

The next morning Em refused to budge from the loft. "Stay away from there, boy! We're through with that place, you hear me!"

"Speak for yourself," I said, pulling on my clothes.

"We done crossed Bobo now, can't you get that through your head? We crossed Bobo!"

"And he backed down, didn't he?" I said, still feeling extra good about having busted him one.

"He backed down 'cause he's too smart to tangle with white people! But that jus' means he'll start workin'
through
white people to get what he wants. You don't know the power that man's got!"

I stomped into my shoes and headed for the door. Em grabbed me and spun me around. "Is the damned place worth gettin' killed for?"

"Em, all I know is there's sump'n fine happenin' on that mountain. Jayell feels it, the boarders feel it—the whole Ape Yard is alive with it now. And I'm part of it. I'm helping to make it happen! I got a place there. For the first time I got a place! And there ain't nobody, Doc Bobo nor anybody else, goin' to take it away from me. Tio had the guts to stand up to him; he sure ain't throwin' a scare into me!"

"You ain't got a place, boy—come back here—you ain't got a place," he shouted after me, but I was already taking the steps, "any more than me!"

When I got down to the shop I saw that part of what Em had predicted was already happening. The sheriff's car was there, and a truck from the city electric company. The man had disconnected power from the shop. Jayell was arguing violently with the sheriff.

"Jayell, you might as well calm down," Sheriff Carter Middleton was saying. "Doc Bobo owns the place, and he wants the power off, and you out of here—today. What can I say?"

"You can say you're the spineless son of a bitch I've always said you were!"

"Jayell . . ."

"I'll build 'em," Jayell shouted, "without power tools! With hand tools—with my goddamned
pocketknife
—I'm gonna build them houses!"

Sheriff Middleton sighed. He took off his hat and mopped away sweat that came early in the baking slopes of the hollow. "Jayell, I've known you all your life. I knowed your daddy. Hell, how many times have I carried him home when he was drunk to keep from lockin' him up—used to stand there while your mama cried and prayed over him, and helped her put him to bed. You remember that, don't you? Who was it got you off the time you busted in the furniture store, all set to whip Bud Calloway's ass for sayin' sump'n nasty to your mama for bein' behind on her account? I ain't your enemy, Jayell. But you got to understand, we got a touchy situation here. This centennial thing's comin' to a head pretty soon. We're gonna have the big boys here, from Atlanta, from Washington, and everybody's real anxious that everything goes right. I got my orders, loud and clear. We're gonna show 'em a model community. Now, there's folks worried about what's goin' on down here. Old man Teague's bucked up over sellin' that little scrap of land so Bobo can start him a quarry, which the granite people had planned to make a big whoop-de-do over, and right in the middle of uneasiness over the school thing, you're gettin' the niggers stirred up down here and movin' 'em out of the hollow. Now, I'd like to know just what the hell you're doin' up on that mountain."

"I'll tell you what I'm doin', Carter, I'm buildin' houses. That's all I'm doin'. Buildin' houses, for me, and as many people as I can move out of this stinkin' hollow."

"You're gonna live up there, with the niggers?"

"I've lived down here with 'em all my life, ain't I! But that was all right wasn't it, as long as we stayed in niggertown, and under Bobo's heel. Well, I got news for you and the city fathers, Carter, me and the niggers are movin' out of niggertown! I'm gonna cover that hillside with houses—Jayell Crooms crazy houses, good, solid little houses that even black people can afford. Gonna make it a showplace of Crooms originals. And when the people passin' that highway see what can be done with scraps and a little imagination, I'm gonna run thieves like Smithbilt out of business! And when those birds from Washington come to talk about building a project for those people gettin' washed out by the dam, I'm gonna show 'em sump'n, I'm gonna have a bunch of 'em already in their own houses, not a damned project, and not at the taxpayers' expense!"

"Christ, Jayell!" said the sheriff. "You really are gonna stir up a hornet's nest. Man, if you go messin' with that deal there
is
gonna be hell to pay!"

"They want a model community," said Jayell, "well, we're gonna show 'em the model community of all time. A community of young, old, black, white and even red if I can get Jojohn to move in. A place for all races, all ages, put together with scraps and sweat and ignorance and hope. A dream village, Carter, think about it!"

The sheriff thought about it. He puffed his cheeks and blew and shook his head. "Jayell, you're a born fool, there's no doubt about it. It's hard to fault you, 'cause I know you mean well, but boy, you're sure headed for trouble. You've always been a wild hair, and folks have put up with that, but they ain't gonna put up with this. There's too much at stake."

Jayell stared at him intently, his fierce blue eyes fixed on the sheriff's face. "You going to close me down, Carter? You going to come in with some kind of injunction and stop me?"

"No, I ain't going to touch you, Jayell, and I'll stand on that. Legally, you're all right. But you know and I know there's other ways, and Bobo knows 'em all, and I warn you, there ain't nobody going to stop him. He's got his own cutthroats, and there's a lot of white people on edge about niggers doin' anything peculiar just now, and he's got influence with them, too. He kept a Klan from startin' up out at Flat Creek, did you know that? He's a devious son of a bitch, and he's smart, and he stands to lose a lot here, and if you cause the boys uptown embarrassment while this centennial thing's goin' on, and keep 'em from settin' Bobo up as their number-one shine boy, they're liable to turn him loose on you." The sheriff got in his car and closed the door. "If that happens, Jayell, you're on your own. My hands are tied. I want you to know that."

"I'll be ready," said Jayell, "and thanks."

"For what?" muttered Phaedra, as the sheriff drove away. "The spineless son of a bitch."

"Aw, honey, Carter's just performing a sheriff's number-one duty—gettin' reelected. Come on, we gotta get moved. We can put up with a couple of rooms until the rest of the house is finished. Skeeter, Jackie, tell the boys to start loadin' the power tools in the truck."

"The tools first, naturally," said Phaedra.

At first only the shop boys and the boarders reappeared at Wolf Mountain. Frightened by the run-in with Bobo, the others, like Em, stayed away. "They'll come around," Jayell said, and went on with the construction as though nothing had happened. After a couple of days without incident, spirits picked up again. Jayell and Phaedra moved into the two enclosed rooms of the strange creation he was building for them, he continued work on the Daniels house, and the boarders began to speculate what final shape their house would take.

On the third day Willie Daniels showed up. He stood silent, watching. "Willie, give Carlos a hand sawing those joists," Jayell said, and kept walking. Willie looked after him. Jayell turned around, walking backward. "And if you lay out drunk again, I'll fire you." Willie grinned, he tugged at his cap and went to work.

Gradually a trickle of onlookers returned. Mostly children at first, then a few mothers who came to get them, and stayed for a few minutes to watch. At the end of the day a worker or two from the mill would come and stand at the edge of the slope and discuss the job among themselves, then drift away to supper. Whenever we had to go down into the hollow, people would turn from their clotheslines, they would stop talking in the picket-fenced yards and watch us pass. They waited. Business went on as usual at the other stores on the Ape Yard main street, but no one came to Teague's grocery. They watched the activity going on at Wolf Mountain, and at Mr. Teague brushing the steps in front of his store, and waited for Doc Bobo's next move.

They didn't have long to wait. The following Monday morning, a beginning workday, there was a disturbance at the edge of the job-site. Jackie James threw down his board and ran for Jayell. The shop boys were crowding on the other side of the fire where they were boiling coffee, pointing toward an apparition standing in the woods.

"Who is it?" demanded Jayell. "Who's there?"

The tall figure strode down through the tree trunks, dark and dripping from the rain. Lilly Waugh walked straight to the fire and leveled her pistol in Jayell's face.

"Get these niggers off my property!"

"This is not your property, Miss Lilly. We made a trade, remember?"

"I never bargained for niggers on my land!"

"It's my land they're on, and who I bring on my land is my business. There's a mile of woods between here and your house; you won't even know we're here. And I give you my solemn word, nobody will set foot on your property."

She whirled on the shop boys. "Off! Get off or I'll kill ever' one of you." She waved the pistol menacingly and the boys broke and scattered, running for the trees. She stopped beside Tio. "What are you waitin' for, boy?"

"I got hired to do a job, and ain't nobody runnin' me off but the man that hired me."

"Is that so?" she cried, backing away. "Is that so?" She aimed the pistol at him, but Tio didn't budge. Seeing that he would not be frightened, she suddenly turned and pointed the pistol at Jayell. "Then tell him, mister. Two seconds, I'll give you, and then so help me I'll blow your head off!"

His jaw set, Jayell walked around the fire. They stood facing each other, the county's notorious wild ones, staring each other down. "Lilly, you ain't crazy, you're just a scared old woman. But you've been playing that crazy act too long. Now folks believe it. Now, if you was considered sane and shot me, you might be out of jail in a year—Judge Strickland might even shake your hand and call it self defense. But they couldn't do that for crazy Lilly Waugh. Crazy folks ain't allowed to kill, only the sane ones. They'd put you away, Lilly, you'd spend the rest of your life with the screaming people. Now, I got nothing but respect for a person that's figured a way to keep her pride and privacy and keep folks at a distance, but at this late date don't ruin it. Don't you go gettin' sane, like them. You're too far above that. Put up your gun and go home." Jayell turned and walked toward the house. "All right, I don't pay folks to stand around!"