Unraveled (20 page)
Authors: Reavis Z. Wortham
The Wraith got still
another
ass-chewing from his boss for being gone so much, but he didn't care. He let a job slip his mind because he'd been arguing with his girlfriend when it got out of hand. He couldn't remember how many times he hit her, but it was enough to shut her up for a while. The fury at his girlfriend and boss was so intense he saw red once again. He picked up a two-pound pipe wrench and headed back to work. He'd show them what a man of his talents and intellect could do.
***
“I ain't never seen no white woman deputy.”
Anna laced her fingers and leaned across the rough wooden table in the rear of Saperstein's grocery. The small store barely forty feet wide and twice that deep was closed, but the back door remained unlocked until Rubye finished cleaning up the rough dining area that two generations earlier was a storeroom. Six scarred picnic tables formed two lines along one side away from a pair of stark, open-burner stoves.
Anna took it all in. “It's about time, isn't it?”
“For what?” The black woman lit a cigarette and dropped the half-full pack into her apron pocket. She blew smoke from her nose, settled on the bench opposite Anna, and rested her elbows on the table. Behind her, a brick oven reaching to the ceiling radiated heat as it smoked strings of thumb-size hot links. “Time to try these hot links, or the truth about them Mayfields?”
“Both. Tell me what you know about the car wreck that took Maggie.”
“You hungry?”
“It's late and I haven't had anything but coffee since lunch.”
Rubye carefully placed her burning cigarette on the table with the cherry hanging off the edge. She stood and opened the oven's cast iron doors. Strings of hot links hung from the walls in greasy brown strands. She cut half a dozen off with a pair of scissors and caught them with a paper plate.
The storeroom-cum-restaurant in the back of the small grocery store on Main Street served hot links, fried chicken, and chicken fried steak to anyone, as long as colored folks used the back door. The No Colored sign hanging in the front window only applied to the grocery store itself.
“I didn't see the wreck.” Rubye put the plate on the table along with a stick of saltine crackers and a recycled RC bottle full of thin red hot sauce.
Anna smiled. “You know what I'm talking about.”
“Why you got any interest in us Mayfields?” Rubye talked while she opened a fresh stick of saltines. “Why don't you just chalk it up to Mayor Frank Clay's death by the poor colored woman who drove him off the dam?”
“This is all one big tangle and I'm trying to get it unraveled.” Anna poked at the links with a fork.
Rubye shook her head, picked up a knife, and cut the hot links into pieces. She drowned them with the hot sauce. “There. Now, get you some ketchup on that plate and drag a bite through and eat it with one of them crackers.”
“I think that if I find out what happened that morning we can put an end to this trouble between y'all's families.” Anna shook a dollop of ketchup onto the plate. “That's how us girls work, you know. The men go thrashing around and we look a little more carefully.”
She took her first bite and chewed carefully. Her mouth exploded with a burst of flavor she'd never experienced. Then came the aftershock of heat from the Tabasco-like sauce. Sweat immediately broke out on her forehead.
Rubye took a long drag and blew smoke from both nostrils. She watched Anna swallow. “I do believe you care.”
“I do. Can I get something to drink?”
Rubye laughed and got up. She crossed to a metal cooler and plucked an RC Cola from the ice and water. She pulled the cap and put the bottle on the table. “Don't grab the wrong one later.” She laughed again. “So why you here with me? There's others know more.”
“Maybe, but I can't get anyone to talk with me.”
“How come you to be
here
? Who gave you my name?”
Anna shrugged. “That doesn't matter. From what I hear, you worked for Frank, but I just found out that you and Maggie were close growing up. You know her better than anyone.”
“That don't tote no water.” Her eyes narrowed. “Somebody called my name.”
“Does it matter who?”
“Maybe. I don't want my name spread around.”
“It's someone who wants this all to end.”
Rubye thought for a moment. “You been talkin' to Cheryl Lynn.”
Anna stopped chewing and Rubye laughed out loud. “Honey chil', you oughta stay away from the poker tables.”
“She called you.”
“Sure did!” Rubye laughed again. “Don't worry. I know you wasn't gonna say.”
“I didn't want to.”
“You done good, but Cheryl Lynn done tol' me I can trust you before you got here. What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about Maggie and Tylee.”
Rubye snorted. “That sorry son of a bitch. She took up with him 'cause he promised her the moon.”
“And she didn't get it. That's the same promise all men make.”
“Ain't it the truth?” Rubye picked up Anna's fork and took a bite of the hot link. Anna took the opportunity to draw two big swallows from the chilly bottle. Rubye chewed for a moment and laid the fork down. “She believed him, though. They married and the next night he was at Sugar Bear's juke joint, messin' round with any tramp that looked at his raggedy ass. The last one might near got him killed.”
“You know that how?” Anna took the fork back and speared another bite. They might have been sisters eating together, and Rubye loosened even more. Anna had passed her tests.
“Why, I's there and saw it. Everbody know what happen then. That sorry gal's husband came in with a butcher knife and told Tylee he'd run it into his heart if he ever saw them together again. Maggie heard about it. That ain't no way to start a marriage.
“Maggie, she's a good gal. Always wanting to make sumpin' of herself. She had a better chance than most of us, 'cause she's half white. She had no intention to being a field hand, or a house nigger neither. She told me she wasn't gonna clean houses for a living. She wanted more. I told her she had to leave Chisum for that, but she said she didn't need to.
“She wanted to make changes here. Said it was her duty to our people. So she got a job right here for a while, stocking shelves at night when there weren't no white folks around, and doing the books for Mr. Saperstein.
“She was good at numbers. It wasn't long 'fore she started keeping books for other stores here in town. Then she got a job at the bank.”
“Sounds like she was successful.”
“She was. Said she'd work her way up to a real position at the bank, but that's where it stopped. See, nobody's gonna put a colored gal up front these days, no matter if she's light. She told me one day after she heard a man say he thought she was pretty 'til he saw her eyes. Said, âNo nigger gal with yaller eyes was gonna wait on
him
.' See what I mean?” Rubye took another bite.
Without her fork, Anna used a fingertip to absently trace a name carved in the tabletop. He'd been meticulous about his letters. “So she decided to look somewhere else?”
“She did. See, Frank Clay was on his way up, and Frank was colorblind, if you know what I mean. He made a good mayor and hired her about six months or so ago. Then when he said he was going to Austin, Maggie thought it was the perfect way to make a difference. She said she'd move up there to the capital and come back here once she made her bones.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Oh, last week. She came by here for dinner, but she didn't stay long as she usually does. Said she wasn't feelin' good.”
“Did she say anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. She didn't have time. I had a few minutes to talk and all of a sudden she said the smell of them links was turning her stomach, so she left.”
It was Anna's turn to chew. “They're good, all right.”
“They's nothing but greaseballs made mostly out of hog cheek and tongue, but they're a little piece of heaven.”
“They're not the most healthy things I've ever eaten.”
Rubye threw back her head and laughed. “You gonna crave 'em now, honey chil'.”
“I'm perfectly healthy and all that grease should turn my stomach⦔ Anna paused.
Rubye tilted her head, watching. She lit another cigarette with a wooden kitchen match. “Maggie loved 'em 'til then.”
Their eyes met. Rubye's eyebrow twitched.
Anna figured it out.
“That's why she and Frank were together that night. She told me she was going over there and they were gonna run off to be together.” Rubye blew smoke through her nose. “You might need to talk to Miss Sweet, but I 'magine you know enough now.
“Oh, and one more thing. I'm tired of all this trouble and worry.” Though the doors were locked, she spoke so softly Anna could barely hear. “Go pick up Willie and Bryce Mayfield.”
“For what?”
“They was delivering firewood the other night and I heard Willie tell Bryce to run by the bowling alley where Matt Clay was ever Friday night and cut him low, then hurry over to the carnival and meet him there so's he'd have an alibi.”
Anna thought back to Cheryl Lynn's reluctance to get her name involved. “I'd need a sworn statement, and eventually you'd have to testify.”
Rubye blew two more streams of smoke from her nostrils and stubbed out her cigarette. “Honey chil'. I already knew that the minute I opened my mouth. It's time for all this foolishness to be over.”
“Willie might come after you if I can't make it stick.”
“I ain't afraid of my sorry-ass brother. Never was.”
The three of us were in the yard Saturday evening when Grandpa pulled up. Jim Morrison was singing about getting his fire lit and it felt like we were right beside it with the sun going down and the air thick and hot.
My foot ached some and still seeped a little blood, but I was getting around just fine.
Grandpa killed the engine and got out. “What are you outlaws up to?”
“Nothing.” Pepper held up her radio and turned down the volume before he could tell her to do it. “Just listening to music.”
“Miss Becky run y'all out with that longhair crap?”
“Yessir.”
He studied Pepper for a long minute. “What?”
“How do you know I wanted something?”
“You have that look in your eye, and y'all are out here waiting on me.”
I wondered how he knew, but before I could say anything Pepper piped up. “Can we ask you a favor?”
He sighed. “What?”
“We want to go back to the carnival one more time before they're gone.”
“No.” He started up the steps. “Top probably can't hardly walk nohow.”
“My foot's fine.” I stood up from the shellback chair so he could see. I knew better than to walk, though, because it hurt like the devil if I came down on it wrong. “The coal oil did its job.” I saw an opening and figured I'd better make my argument before Pepper threw in again and made him mad. “We didn't get to do everything the other night after y'all found that dead guy.”
He frowned for a minute, then looked at Mark. “How come y'all want to go back so bad?”
“We didn't get to go through the Funhouse, or the carousel, or⦔
Pepper cut in. “The Scrambler.”
“I'm not riding that.”
“Me and Mark will.”
Grandpa ignored Pepper. “Which one did you want to ride?”
Mark started to pull the hair out of his eyes, but stopped, probably to keep from drawing attention to it. “I don't know. I've never been to a big carnival like that one, so I barely had time to look around. We rode the Ferris wheel, and that was all.”
That's all it took. I saw Grandpa's face soften. “You've never been to a fair?”
“Nossir.”
“Ever had cotton candy, or one of them candy apples?”
“Nossir. Never had any money for those things. Went to that powwow where I saw Cody and Aunt Norma Faye, remember, Top? I had some grease-bread with sugar on it. Like I said, we didn't get to do any of them things the other night.”
Grandpa looked toward the dam and thought for a minute. “Y'all get in here and get cleaned up before we go.”
I tried not to limp too bad on the way into the house and made a note to ask Mark what else he'd never done. It looked like for a while, we'd get free admission to a lot of places.
It was time to let folks know what was what. The Wraith paused, thinking. There were a lot of things he'd like to do that last night. Things he'd dreamed about over and over. His hands itched at the thought of touching those that passed so close he could smell them. He went inside his trailer and while the baby cried itself to sleep, shaved his face and thought of those girls who made his skin prickle in the darkness.
***
John Washington caught up with Willie Mayfield cutting firewood in the bottoms. Willie sold the wood to folks in Chisum who didn't have any land or way to cut their own.
Willie and his son, Bryce, were working both ends of a crosscut saw on the county road, cutting a fallen pin oak to length. Both were soaked with sweat, their shirts dark and sticking to them when John pulled up and stopped.
“We ain't stealin' this wood, Mr. John.”
John slammed the car door. “I'm not here about y'all cuttin' wood, Willie, but you sure it's all right to take this one?”
“Yessir.” Willie wiped sweat from his face with a pale blue bandanna. “It was growin' up in Mr. Dan Jacob's fence here and he was afraid it'd fall and take the fence down with it. He told me it was all right.”
“Well, you be careful. It's liable to be on county property, and somebody might call in.”
Willie studied the fresh stump. “Didn't think of that.”
“It don't matter none.”
“You need me for anything?”
Bryce remained silent while he opened their pickup door and took a quart fruit jar from the floorboard. He leaned against the fender, unscrewed the cap, and took several long gulps.
John watched his Adam's apple bob. “Well, not particularly. “I'm looking into the car wreck that killed Maggie, and this fight between your family and the Clays.”
“God love her, John.” Willie picked at the saw blade with a thumbnail. “We didn't start no fight with the Clays.”
“Wes Clay had one with Olan Mayfield.”
“That's a fact, but it wasn't full family business. Him and Olan got into it with each other half a dozen times over the years. They just never liked one another and it was bound to come sometime. The rest of us, we just wanna be left alone.”
Sweat trickled down John's cheek. He drew a handkerchief from his back pocket and took his straw hat off to dry his face and neck. “And you're sayin' y'all ain't fighting?”
Willie shrugged. “I'm saying we ain't
fighting
, it's a reckoning. Some of them Clays is after something, but it ain't nothin'
we
done. There's lots of us in these two families, but the trouble's only between a few. If somebody'd get Royal or Wes Clay out of the way, we could rest easy.”
“You ain't afraid?”
Willie patted the right front pocket of his overalls. “I got six reasons in here not to be.”
John replaced his hat. “You think this trouble is because the Clays blame Maggie for the accident?”
“Could be. But see here, she married in, so it ain't like she was blood kin. Here's something I bet you don't know.”
“What's that?”
“Maggie's white grandma was a Clay.”
John paused. “I never heard that. You sure?”
“Yep, I heard tell of that before my mama died. It was one of them family secrets nobody liked to talk about. They weren't married and it was covered up where they came from. I doubt anybody wrote it in a Bible anywhere.”
Bryce set the Mason jar on the shady running board to keep the water cool. “That's where Maggie got her wild side, but she was a good gal, too, if you know what I mean.”
John wasn't sure how he meant that, or the earlier reference of a reckoning, but he nodded just the same. “She didn't like to be tied down.”
“Well, the fact is, I believe she wanted to be.” Willie glanced up at a buzzard circling overhead. “You know, Tylee didn't draw the knot too tight between 'em. He was always off chasing poon, and when he wasn't with Maggie, he was with his woods children in Dallas.”
“I don't imagine she liked that too much. It's the reason she worked all the time. Only problem was she got all high and mighty and wanted to be white and worked herself into that job with Frank Clay. She was making money hand over fist, but look where it got her.”
“She ever say that?”
“What?” Bryce's brow went up.
“That she was moving up and wanted to be white?”
“Naw, acted like it, though.”
“Well, since she didn't have kids, I guess a career didn't hold her back.”
“She kept kids sometimes, even after she started making money with Frank Clay. She was always partial to 'em. When me and her was runnin' together in high school, we talked about having a
passel
of kids.”
John felt a little niggle in the back of his mind, but he couldn't nail it down. He wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “You know how come her to be with Frank Clay that day?”
“Naw. Ain't got no idee.” A crease formed in Willie's forehead and Bryce shut up. “None of this makes any sense, John. They're folks dyin' and getting' burned out, and we're all wondering who's gonna get hurt next. We're bein' careful, and watchin' out for one another, best we can, but there's still things happening to them Clays that we ain't responsible fer.”
“You know that for the truth?”
“I do.”
Bryce looked at the ground. “I ain't saying it's the truth, but more'n one person's told me Maggie's been seen in places she shouldn't be.”
“Tell me.”
“You know that joint up in Frogtown?”
John nodded. Most of the honky-tonks they dealt with were on Highway 271 across the river from Arthur City. But County Road 109 intersected the highway about five miles further north in Oklahoma. The narrow blacktop road stretched eastward for ten miles before turning north just before it hit a northern bend in the Red River called Frogtown.
A cinderblock joint called Ed's Place backed into the deep woods there. It was what local folks called a gun and knife club, one so rough that if you didn't have a weapon when you arrived, someone handed you one to equal things up. Dilapidated shacks were scattered behind like abandoned shoeboxes. Gap-tooth girls earned a living in a couple of them, and rough poor folks barely survived in the others, doing whatever jobs came by, no matter how unspeakable.
Bryce continued, even though Willie's expression said he didn't want him to talk. “Well, Sofie Bolton saw her car out front. Sounds like she was sneakin' off over there because that kind of place didn't care if she was high-yeller. All they care about's the color of money. I bet the white in her was drawed to that honky-tonk music they play. I saw her here while back and told her it wasn't a good idea to be messin' with them kind of folks. I told her she either belongs to us, or them.”
“She said she was done with clubs in general, 'cause she couldn't stand all that smoke and drinkin' anymore. Said she was done honky-tonkin' now that she was working for Frank Clay. Said things were about to change. Not sure I believed her, though.”
“Why's that?” John's eyes flicked between the two men, trying to read their expressions.
“A friend of mine he told me he saw Maggie in the car last week with Ralston, coming back from Oklahoma. It was on the road from Frogtown and he thought they was runnin' around.”
“What'd he see 'em do?”
“Nothin', just ridin' back. He was on his way out to Ed's Place and was disappointed that Maggie was leavin'. What aggravated him the most was Maggie in the car with Ralston.”
“There ain't no law about two folks riding together, married or not.” John drew a deep breath as the dominos in his mind began to fall. “Pass the word for me. It's gonna stop now, Bryce. This feud between all-y'all and the Clays is over.”
“Say it is?”
The smirk on his face flew all over John and made him want to shake the young man until his eyeballs rattled. “I'm not gonna stop 'til this is over. Y'all pass the word to all them you know.”
The creases in Bryce's forehead deepened. “I can't stop other folks.”
“You know the words. Tell 'em I'll shoot the first one I find killing white folks. There won't be no arrests.”
Willie's mouth opened in shock. “Mr. John, you cain't say that.”
“I did. Some of your folks is bringing trouble down on the rest of our people, and we don't need that right now.”
“You oughta be out over to the Clays and arrest them that's doin' it.”
“You tell me who they are and I will.”
“I don't know for sure. I just want to stay out of it.”
They stood in silence for a long moment. The shrill call of a blue jay echoed through the woods. A pickup rattled down the dirt road and slowed. Ike Reader didn't stop, but he took a good, long look. John waved. Ike waved back and sped up once he was past, making sure to put enough distance between them so as not to dust the men standing beside the road.
John studied his black boots. “Well, then. I'll let y'all get back to your sawin'. Whatever you do, be careful and let me know if you hear anything. Don't let me catch y'all trying to pay anyone back for anything.”
“Yessir.” Willie checked the set of his saw's teeth and returned to their job.
“Fine, then.” John left them to their wood-cutting, and drove to town.