The Bottoms (26 page)

T
wo afternoons later Mose was buried on our place, between the barn and the field. Daddy made him a wooden cross and carved
MOSE
on it, swore when he got money he’d get him a stone.

A couple black folks Daddy knew who knew Mose came out, but the only whites there were our family. There was some didn’t have no truck with what was done to Mose, but they didn’t want it known they’d show up at a colored man’s funeral.

At night, when I closed my eyes, I saw Mose hanging, his pants down, cut, bleeding, his eyes and tongue bulged, that rope around his neck. It would be some time before I could lay down and not have that image jump immediately to mind, and some years before it didn’t come back to me on a regular basis. Funny things would set it off. Just seeing a rope, or a certain kind of limb on an oak, or even the way sunlight might be falling through limbs and leaves.

Even now, from time to time, it comes back to me clear, as if it happened day before yesterday.

Part Four

F
rom my window is a view of a great oak tree. One evening, in early spring, propped in a wheelchair, looking out, just as evening shadows fell like tangles of black and blue cloth, as the birds gathered in the boughs of the oak like Christmas ornaments, preparing for sleep, I thought I saw Old Mose hanging there.

His body seemed very real in that moment, a twisting shadow amongst other shadows, but it was clearly his shape, and there was the dark line of the rope. But when I blinked, he and the rope were gone.

There were now only the shadows beneath the tree filled with birds, and there was the night descending, and another day of spring was slowly draining away.

No shadows now, not even beneath the trees.

Daddy wanted to quit being a constable, but the little money the job brought in was needed too badly, so he stayed at it, swearing anything like this came up again he was gonna quit.

But for the most part he
had
quit. He was constable in name only. It was as if he were fading right before our eyes. He had been washed out to some dark and infernal sea, and there he floundered, then ceased to flounder, merely drifted on a single crumbling plank left from the wreck of his life. His life having crashed and shattered upon a reef named Mose.

Many of those at the lynching had been Daddy’s barbershop customers, and we didn’t see them anymore at the shop. As for the rest, Cecil cut most of the hair, and Daddy was doing so little of it, he finally gave Cecil a bigger slice of the money and only came around now and then. He turned his attention to working around the farm, fishing and hunting, and not doing much of any of those.

Mama and Grandma tried everything to bring him around. Patience. Anger. Encouraging words. Right out mean remarks. They could have been talking to a duck. Only the duck would have startled at least.

When spring came, Daddy showed minor improvement. He went to planting, just like always, but he didn’t talk about the crops, and I didn’t hear him and Mama talking much, but sometimes late at night, through the wall, I could hear him cry. There’s no way to explain how bad it hurts to hear your father cry.

Daddy stayed in the bedroom a lot. He mostly ate his meals alone, when he ate. He spoke, but the words were dry and crinkled, like dead leaves. If he sat outside, and saw us coming, he got up and moved away, as if we had caught him doing something embarrassing.

The house changed. It had never occurred to me before that, but a house is a shell like a body, and like a body, it’s the spirit inside it that makes it whole. And if we, the family, were the spirit, part of us, a great and powerful part of us, was ailing.

Grass actually began to grow up through the porch, and the hard ground around the house began to fall off and wash away and turn to sand. The well water tasted less sweet. Wild dogs killed our chickens.

Only Grandma was a light in the dark. She was ever energetic, tried to be fun, but Daddy’s darkness hung over the house like a tree about to fall. One day, as we put flowers on Mose’s grave, Toby limping along beside us, I asked Grandma if Daddy would soon be better.

She thought about it before she answered. That was unusual for her. She was usually quick to respond, and knew exactly what she thought about a matter, exactly what she wanted to say.

She put her arm around me. “I believe he will, Harry. But your Daddy’s received a blow. It’s not all that different than a fellow I knew named Boris Smith out there in North Texas. He was kicked in the head by a mule. He didn’t change right out, but he got sort of strange and stayed that way a long time. One day, he brightened and came out of it.”

“What made him better?”

“Well, for one thing, the mule died. That cheered him up. But I don’t think it was that simple.”

“You think Daddy got hit too hard by them folks?”

“You were both hit too hard. But no, that’s not what I mean. Your Daddy got kicked in the soul, sweetheart. So did you. But you’re young enough to see daylight. Jacob ought to be, but I think the kick to him was a little harder. He felt he saw it coming and stepped right into it.”

“But he’ll be all right?”

“I’m gonna tell you I think so. But I ain’t gonna lie to you, Harry. I don’t know. Boris, he got all right in time. But it took a long time. His was a physical injury, so you might say it’s harder to recover from that. I’m not so sure. A kick in the soul can take it all out of you forever. Lot of them Dust Bowl folks
just pretty much laid down and quit. Most of them took a chance, went somewhere to try again. They had hope. Some of ’em will find out their hope ain’t hope, just a lie, and they’ll lay down and quit. Some of them will get up and try again. Your Daddy’s like that. If he can get up, he will. I just don’t know when.”

“It’s like everything’s fallin’ apart,” I said.

“I know,” Grandma said. “But we’ve got to be strong. Not only for your Daddy, but for the family. You and me, we can pull this through.”

“Think so?”

“I do.”

“How?”

Grandma was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know exactly, but these murders, all this business with Mose, they’re connected in more ways than one. I know your Daddy gave you a trust, Harry, but now might be the time to break that. Mose is gone. I know about the murders. Is there anything you can tell me? Maybe I can help. And if we can help, that sure won’t hurt your Daddy.”

She was right. I had kept my word, and now it seemed to me it was no longer necessary. I told her all that I knew. I did choose, however, to leave out the part about Mr. Smoote’s daughter.

When I finished telling her the story, Grandma said, “This Nation. He seems to pop up at all this business. And his two boys. You say they’re just like him?”

“Except even more snivelin’.”

“Miss Maggie, I bet she knows a little somethin’ on everybody in town. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Come on then.”

Grandma drove her car over to Miss Maggie’s place. Miss Maggie was sitting on the back porch fanning herself with a church fan. When she saw us come up, she grinned around the teeth she had left.

“Well now, if it ain’t Miss June.”

“Howdy, Maggie,” Grandma said. “You got any coffee on?”

“No, I ain’t, but I can sure git it on.”

Grandma and Miss Maggie had theirs black. Miss Maggie poured me a half cup, put cream in it out of a can, and a lot of sugar. She placed it on a cracked saucer. We took our coffee out on Miss Maggie’s porch.

Grandma talked about some general things, then skillfully turned the conversation to the Nations.

“Them Nations,” Miss Maggie said. “They’s a bad lot. But mostly cowards. They throwed Old Man Nation out of the Klan ’cause he too stupid.”

“That tells us somethin’,” Grandma said. “It ain’t like you’re dealin’ with a bunch of Edisons there in the first place.”

“Oh, they’s people in ole Klan you wouldn’t believe. I use’ta work for a white man was Klan, and he was right smart and jest as nice to me as could be. But he in the Klan. Cleanin’ his house, I fount his robes. He go on to make a judge.”

“Another kind of robe,” Grandma said.

“Uh huh,” Miss Maggie said.

“Maggie,” Grandma said, “I’m gonna tell you somethin’ that’s supposed to just be family business. But I’m gonna tell you about it, ’cause I think I can trust you, and maybe you can help me and Harry here out. His Daddy, this thing with Mose—”

“Po ole Mose.”

“Yeah,” Grandma said. “Well, Jacob, he’s a good man—”

“Oh, Lord yes. I know Missuh Jacob done all he could. He ain’t a bit like his Daddy.”

“You knew his father?” Grandma said.

“Yes’m, I knew him. Real well. No disrespect to the boy, it bein’ his grandfather and all. But I don’t miss him none.”

“No one else is missin’ him much either,” Grandma said.

“There’s peckerwoods right proud of themselves, goin’ out and gettin’ ’em an old nigger can hardly stand up and hangin’ him. No disrespect to you and Missuh Harry.”

“None taken. Wasn’t any way Mose did any of this. I knew him too. Many years ago. Me and my husband used to fish with him. He taught Jacob and Harry both to fish.”