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It is the first week in August. The air is hot with the dust of
brick and tar and pine straw and grass. There has been no rain
for days, weeks, though in the absence of reliable memory, the
weeks might just as well be years. And from out of this haze of
heat and memory, a sandy-haired young man, everyone calls him
Blue Henry, or just Blue, on account of the deep deep blue of
his eyes, and a seriousness there which they mistake for sadness,
he walks slowly, steadily, even purposefully down a dust-red road
towards a small town, a sunken, washed-out kind of town, like
footprints at the beach. His only thoughts concern the buying
and wearing of a suit, though they aren't his thoughts exactly,
they come from Mr. Dobbs, from before, Blue stumbling out of his
bunk in the early early morning then into the kitchen, firing
up the stove, a pot of coffee working to a boil, then Mr. Dobbs
coming in, sitting down, stiffly, the two of them talking, then
not talking, then talking some more, then Mr. Dobbs working his
own mouth to a boil, the red of his face about to bust from the
pressure of a too-tight collar, the words then tumbling out like
steam,
"What do you mean you don't have a suit? You been working my place
close to five years now and you saying you don't have a suit of
your own? Christ Almighty, boy! Why you wouldn't have a pot to
piss in if it weren't for me, now would you? Christ Almighty!
You can't go to a funeral less you're wearing a good Sunday suit.
You take this twenty dollars now and you go and buy yourself one.
Don't take all day now. And don't go thinking this here's a gift,
cause it aint. I'm taking it out of your wages. Now go on. Get
moving."
So he had pocketed the twenty dollars, his features as calm and
natural as unsifted earth in spite of the unexpected urgency of
Mr. Dobbs' voice. It is only a suit for a funeral, after all,
and for a man he never knew. He almost laughs at the thought.
Then he crosses the old railroad tracks and turns down Dancy Street,
past the red brick and the white awnings of the U.S. Post Office,
past the unpainted clapboard austerity of Waldroop's Feed Mill,
some men in short-sleeved shirts loading their wagons with cornmeal
and flour and oats and lard, and when he nears the blackgreen
porch of Laughlin's General Store, he stops. A couple of men in
brown or beige hats are squatting down near the edge of the porch,
a couple more are sitting on a hardwood bench set up against the
wall, another is standing in the doorway, half-in, half-out, the
screen door resting against his shoulder. The men seem content
to pass the morning talking, older men they are, though not older
than Mr. Dobbs, some chewing on dry stalks of grass, some not.
They are talking about the murder of one Thomas Christian Cavanaugh,
whose funeral is the reason Blue Henry needs a suit.
"Who do you s'pose done it?" says one with big red ears and bald
and his scalp patchy with sunburn. His name is Jake.
"Could've been anyone in this here town," says a second voice.
"That's the way I see it. Why most anyone in this here town would
of been proud to pull that trigger."
"Well it don't matter to me who done the shooting or why he done
it," says the one in the doorway. "Done is done. That's what I
always say."
The other men mumble in stubborn agreement, their pebbly-colored
eyes narrowing fiercely, their collective pride hurt, it seems,
because they had been left out of the shooting. Then a few words
of inveterate speculation from one of the men on the bench, not
the one with the big red ears, this one is packing the bowl of
a pipe with tobacco as he talks, the smell of stale smoke imbedded
in his skin, an emptied pack of Granger Rough Cut in his shirt
pocket.
"Well you'd have to say the fellow who done it had a pretty sharp
eye whatever the reason. I've been down to where they pulled him
out of the ditch and there wasn't any cover for had to been two
hundred yards back on either side of the road. I figure whoever
pulled the trigger he had to been waiting up in one of them live
oaks on the Dobbs place. Had to had eyes like a goddamn panther
too."
"Aint no one alive coulda done the kinda shooting you talking
about, Earl," says Jake.
"Someone did it," says the second voice. The others nodding in
unison, as if the unpretentious and somewhat vacantly expressed
opinion that someone had done something was unequivocal proof
of the doing. Then Earl continues.
"I figure how he had to been waiting up in them trees most of
the day, and maybe he was getting stiff from sitting so long,
and then again maybe he wasn't, but when he heard the steady hum
of that black I-talian two-seater coming up the road, and when
he saw how it was Mr. Thomas Christian Cavanaugh sitting sweet
and pretty all by hisself, a goddamn clay pigeon sitting there,
why he took up his Winchester, the kind with a silver breech,
and whoever it was he just opened up and fired."
And with that the five men on the porch sink into a profound,
if not astonished silence and contemplate the improbable death
of Mr. Thomas Christian Cavanaugh. Blue Henry almost laughs at
the mixture of awe and confusion spreading across their faces,
but he too wonders who in the world could have shot at and killed
someone from so a great distance, and at night too. Then he wonders
how the five men could know all about the gun which had killed
the unfortunate Mr. Cavanaugh and at the same time not know whose
it was, how many Winchesters were there had a silver breech, and
he is about to ask them outright when a black Model T truck with
some pinewood side panels pulls up and the gravel crunching under
the tires, but the driver he doesn't exactly get out, he cracks
open the black door and stands up in the wedge of space between
the door and the cab, him standing there on the greased side-step
in a grease-stained fedora and waving at the men on the porch
and his voice squawking away, say what you boys doing sitting
there like lumps, hadn't you heard, there was some question about
whether Mr. Cavanaugh was really dead or not, Farley Atkins said
he saw him last night, he was coming home with his wife from her
brother's house and the next thing he knew that blasted I-talian
two-seater came blowing the dust off his front fender and there
was Cavanaugh laughing like the devil to beat all, his wife didn't
see it, she was asleep, but Farley swears by it, they all gathering
down at Cooper's Funeral Parlor right now, they want to see the
body but the Sheriff he aint letting them in, I don't know what's
going to happen, but everybody's got a shotgun or a Winchester
or something, I guess maybe they gonna see Cavanaugh in the ground
one way or another. And with that the fellow in the truck slammed
shut the door and his wheels spinning and the dust kicking up
and off he went.
Cooper's Funeral Parlor was a one-story, brick building shaped like an
el, and the bricks were painted a shiny, slick white. Out back
there were dead azaleas up under the windows, and a hearse parked
in the alley, and in the front there was a small, four-column
porch and a scattering of white stone flower pots up around each
column, though the pots were empty now except for the dust of
a few unwatered chrysanthemums. There was also a narrow walk made
from brick that wasn't painted white, the walk running from the
steps to the street, the brick crumbling in places from the heat.
Half-a-dozen cars were parked along the curb and the Model T truck
and a couple more cars had gone over onto the grass. A dozen rough-and-readies
in work shirts and felt hats stood in front of the porch, their
shirts stained with sweat and liquor and tobacco juice, the stains
all up and down their backs and half-crescent moons under their
arms, and them glaring at the white of the funeral parlor and
the sun glinting off their shotguns. In the shade of the funeral
parlor porch stood Sheriff D. W. Griggs, a skinny old bag of a
man about sixty with a few strands of greasy white hair combed
from one ear to the other and a few age spots or warts which had
broken out on his neck, but with him in the shade and the others
in the glare of the sun, it was impossible to see if he had a
gun or not. |
