Mississippi Cotton (23 page)

We decided we would go over to BB’s after church tomorrow. Maybe we could ask him some questions without letting him know we were listening at the jail.

After Taylor and Casey fell asleep, I lay awake thinking about the straw-haired woman. I sat up and looked out the window. I thought about how simple she had acted. Simple of mental capacity, my daddy would say. She reminded me of Looty and his ways and habits. I remembered how she was on the bus, and the way she talked about things. She said things that were funny; but now that I thought about her, it seemed like maybe she wasn’t trying to be funny. I wondered if other people on the bus were laughing at her without her knowing it, because she was different.

The skies had cleared and the full moon lighted the cotton field; a dimmer light than the sun but with a kind of a glow that seemed to rest the cotton. It was cool from the rain. As I stared across the field there was music in my head. The words of Dixie were coming from the field, like what they called background music in a picture show.

“I wish I was in the land o’ cotton…

Old times there are not forgotten,”

Old times there… It wasn’t a song only for some people any more than cotton was just for some people. Then my thoughts of her got mixed in with Looty and mixed in with a lot of people, like a long parade of them.

It sort of came to me—the cotton didn’t get in that field by itself. People planted it. And other people tended it and took it off the stalks. And others bought it, and ginned it, and sold it, and got oil from it, and traded it, and sold and resold it for clothes and blankets and quilts and stuff.

The moonlit field made me think of Mississippi people, because this was my home and these were people like me. No matter if you lived in the city or on a farm, or ran a store or a filling station, or played football like Johnny Vaught’s Mississippi boys or were a soldier like BB who wanted to go to war for his people; or were just a lady on a bus, or a simple man who might be mixed up in the head. My thoughts seemed so strange that I thought I was dreaming. But when you dream you don’t think you’re dreaming, you just think things are strange.

It was like all those folks were here on the same land I was hoeing cotton on, because they were all Southern people—Mississippi people and land people. Southerners were people of the land. They didn’t all have farms here like Big Trek, but they had roots here.

I thought about the blind students my grandmother had taught at the Mississippi School for the Blind. They couldn’t play football, or hoe cotton or go to war either, but were part of the land because they had roots. And there was an old colored man who had no legs and scooted around the streets in Jackson on a little wooden board with metal wheels, selling peanuts and newspapers. I never knew his name, but he had roots here. All of the people were different, but their roots had made them the same. I recalled my daddy’s phrase, ‘Mississippi sinew.’ He told me sinew was like a muscular strength that each man has or doesn’t have, and groups of people have as a group. Southerners, agrarians, farmers had it. And Mississippi’s was as tough and strong as anybody’s, he said.

That’s what I thought about Looty and the straw-haired woman—they were as different from Big Trek and Trek and Mr. Hightower, and even BB and Ben—as different as the light of the moon was from the power of the sun. And they were the same. They had roots here. Tough roots. I hoped they had done no wrong—and BB neither.

I fell asleep; and I awakened, as usual, early.

CHAPTER 18

All slicked down and pretty handsome, according to Cousin Carol, we climbed into the brown Ford. The grownups weren’t as talkative as they usually were on Sunday morning. We weren’t either. For one thing we were sleepy, and two, the only thing we wanted to talk about was what went on at the jail last night. We were soon to learn what went on.

We passed the New Glory Baptist Church, its gravel parking lot filled with puddles of muddy water. The colored people were carefully side-stepping the puddles in their Sunday shoes. We didn’t see Ben or BB, but maybe they were already inside. I kept looking back to see if I could see them, until we were too far for me to see anything. About the time I had turned around, Cousin Carol turned and smacked Casey on top of the head.

“Stop that!” He was pickin’ his nose. “Don’t do that in public.”

“This isn’t public,” he protested. “This is just regular people.”

“Don’t talk back.”

I noticed Cousin Trek’s eyes in the rearview mirror, probably lined right at Casey. Casey must have noticed too, because he didn’t say anything else. He just pushed his hair back in place where he had gotten whacked then he wiped the Wildroot Cream Oil off his hand with his necktie. We pulled into the church parking lot.

Young boys weren’t to know about things that were strictly for adults, like murder and crime investigations. But if you got enough boys together, there was always some information just by putting rumors and talk together, some by overhearing your parents when they didn’t know you were listening.

Marshal O’Grady’s son Eddie was in the Sunday School class, and he was the head knower. Whatever your daddy’s job was, you knew more about that subject than everybody else your age.

“My daddy said they were gettin’ close to solving the murder of that guy they found in the river.”

Eddie was an okay guy, but he got a little snotty when he started telling you things about the police and all. Nobody could dispute him out loud because no one really knew what his daddy might have told him. But we were pretty sure he made a lot up.

“Oh, yeah,” Casey challenged, “how come you weren’t at the jail last night?”

“I coulda been if I’d wanted to.”

“Yeah, sure,” Casey said. Everybody in the class laughed.

“Well, maybe I could have if it weren’t so late. And y’all better watch out sneaking around the jail like that. If my daddy catches y’all, he’ll throw y’all in jail. I mean it. He will.”

“No he wouldn’t,” Taylor challenged him this time. “He’d just call our parents, and we’d get a whippin’, not jail.”

“I’d rather be in jail,” another boy said. Everybody laughed again.

Humphrey Turnipseed was also in the class. Since he had been held back in third grade, I wondered why he was still in this Sunday School class. Casey always came to the same class as Taylor because he was with his older brother. But it seemed like to me Humphrey should have been set back in Sunday School class, too. I guess they didn’t want to fail a guy in Sunday School. Farley told me once that if you failed Sunday School, you probably went to hell.

Anyway, Humphrey’s theory was that the dead man had committed suicide. One shot to the head. One shot to the heart. Taylor said that was the kind of thinking that would get him held back in the fifth grade.

Another boy, Benny, who was probably the smartest boy in fifth grade and always wore a bowtie to Sunday School—a clear sissy choice—said that Looty was not all there and had gone off the deep end and killed somebody. He said Looty had started by shooting chickens, and that’s the way murderers did. They started with little things like chickens or yard dogs and worked their way up to people.

When he said that I thought about Casey squashing roaches for bait. I wondered if he was slowly developing into a small-town psychopath.

Benny also said he had made a study of Raymond Chandler characters on the radio programs, and that it was pretty easy to see their development from small killings to important ones. I didn’t want to think about Looty being guilty. I didn’t want him to be guilty because mostly, I felt sorry for him.

I didn’t want to think about BB being guilty either. But what was he doing in Looty’s that night if that was him in his poncho? I was hoping it was just somebody we didn’t know. And I kept feeling sorry for the straw-haired lady, though I wasn’t sure why.

Just then Eddie said something that got everyone’s attention. “Well, I can tell you this. I heard my daddy tell my mother that they went to Looty’s last night, and he wasn’t there. And they couldn’t find his rifle either.”

I glanced at Casey and Taylor. I suspected they were thinking the same thing I was.

“Well, boys, how are y’all this morning?” The teacher walked in and we mummed-up on the crime talk. “Did y’all get plenty of rain at your houses last night?”

Various positive answers followed, and he sat down. He was a nice old man, about eighty I imagine. He wore a red tie and blue suit and had liver spots. He opened his Bible to the first couple of pages and announced, “We’ll have a word of prayer and then read about Cain and Abel.”

In church we sang loud and long, as usual. When we sang Blessed Assurance, I thought it would have been nice if my mother were there this weekend because that was her favorite. Farley and I were more partial to Onward Christian Soldiers since it had more action. My daddy preferred Christmas carols.

When the pastor got to going, Taylor and Casey and I squirmed and tried to look like we were paying attention to him. But our attention was on Mr. O’Grady who was two rows in front of us. I thought Casey was going to pass him a note and ask him what he found at Looty’s last night. You never could tell about Casey.

I wondered where Looty was now. He hadn’t gone back home, or at least the police hadn’t found him there last night. That is, if Eddie O’Grady knew what he was talking about. And when I thought about Looty, I kept reminding myself of BB and what did he have to do with all this. Why would he have been in the house that night?

I didn’t hear much of what the pastor said. I just stared at the back of Mr. O’Grady’s head. I thought he might jump up any minute and run out on some emergency. Maybe all of a sudden he might get one of those great ideas like Phillip Marlowe did, and in a flash he would realize who the murderer was. Course it didn’t happen and finally after about an hour the service was over. We all flocked to the doors.

When grownups crowd together, it’s hard to get them un-crowded. Church was no different. After the service is over, most people funnel themselves out the front door so they can congratulate the pastor and shake his hand. Once outside, everyone stands around and shakes hands and some of the ladies hug and then re-hug, and the men tell either weather stories, especially those affecting the cotton crop, or baseball stories. Sometimes they talk about the upcoming football season and what the Rebels or the Bulldogs might do. And which one would win the season ending battle for the Golden Egg.

Today the crowd had dispersed into clumps of people. No one wanted to step in the puddles or mud, so they stood on the sidewalk and in the dry spots of the parking area. Occasionally someone’s mother would scream at her son. “Get out of that water! You’ll ruin your shoes!”

Several men, including Cousin Trek and Big Trek, were talking out of earshot with Mr. O’Grady. I was pretty sure what they were talking about today, and it wasn’t about any ball games or the weather. But if you got too close they would clam up or change the subject.

Taylor and Casey and I were waiting by the car. Casey had picked up a rain frog and was sizing him up for his leg power. In his efforts to wiggle free, the frog would kick his legs kind of like a bird trying to flap his wings. Casey said this was a decent gauge of how far he could jump.

He started sneaking up on a girl about his age named Patty. He was just about to put the frog on her shoulder when Cousin Carol screamed across the lot, “Casey Mayfield! Don’t you dare! I will kill you!”

Patty almost jumped into a puddle. I think Cousin Carol’s scream frightened her more than the frog had.

Just then Mr. Hightower walked over, and Casey chunked the frog in the grass. “Well, you boys workin’ tomorrow or going fishin’? Ground’ll be a little soft, but the sun’ll dry it out pretty quick. That is if we don’t get any more rain.” He lit a Chesterfield cigarette and exhaled columns of smoke through his nose and mouth.

“We’ll be workin’, Mr. Hightower,” I said. I looked at Casey and Taylor.

“Yessir,” Taylor followed.

“Yessir,” Casey said. There wasn’t anything else he could say. He had no choice either.

We all knew that sometimes if you caught a grownup off by himself and maybe off guard, you could get the answer to a question that usually he wouldn’t answer. I think that was what Taylor was after when he said, “Mr. Hightower, you got any notion where Looty is? Do you think he killed that man they found in the river?”

Mr. Hightower took another draw on his cigarette. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of Cousin Trek and Cousin Carol, embedded in one of the grownup clumps. For a minute I thought we might get some real information. But I guess Mr. Hightower caught himself in time. Or maybe he just didn’t know that much.

“Well, boys, I don’t know any more than y’all know, prob’ly. Looty ran off from the jail and they haven’t found him yet, I understand. It‘s kinda suspicious though.”

“Why is it suspicious?” Casey almost interrupted. “The only thing they know was a man was shot. Lots of people can shoot.”

“Well, the man was shot with a .22, and Looty has done some shooting with a .22 and for some reason his rifle can’t be found. Sounds a little suspicious to them.”

“That’s still not much, it doesn’t seem like to me,” I insisted.

“Like I said—” He flipped his cigarette into a puddle. “I really don’t know that much about what the sheriff and Mr. O’Grady know. Maybe he’s got more. Anyway, I got to be goin’. See y’all tomorrow.” He walked toward a line of cars on the road.