Callie said, “You think that was him that chased us that night?”
“Sure of it,” I said.
“Then I guess it’s good he’s dead, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “It’s good.”
———
LATER THAT DAY I went out on the veranda where Rosy had retreated. She sat there looking out at the projection booth. I sat down in a chair beside her. I said, “Rosy, I’m sorry.”
“Ain’t no need to be, Mr. Stanley. He wasn’t no good man. He had it comin’. I don’t know why I feel like I do.”
“I’m sorry you and him didn’t work out better. That he wasn’t a better man.”
“Me too, Mr. Stanley.”
“Just Stanley,” I said.
“You know what your daddy done say?”
“No,” I said.
“He told me now Bubba Joe dead, it don’t matter none about stayin’ here. I don’t got to go nowhere. He gonna fix that top floor up and get me a fan, and cut me out a window right there above them cowboys and Indians.”
“That’s good, Rosy.”
“He say I can stay on and work and he gonna give me a wage and I gonna have weekends off if I want ’em. Gal didn’t say that, and she didn’t put him up to it. He tell me that, and he pat me on the back.”
There were tears in my eyes. I looked away from her, out toward the projection booth.
Rosy reached over, took my hand. I gently squeezed it. She bent her head and cried more deeply than before. I pulled my chair closer to hers. She put her head on my shoulder and kept crying. We sat that way until she was out of tears.
———
ON MONDAY, near dark, me and Nub went out to greet Buster as he came to work. In the projection booth I told him about Bubba Joe being found.
“I know,” Buster said. “I heard it through the grapevine. Ain’t nothin’ happens in this town, or the Section, gets by them birds on that porch over by my house. Word gets to them fast as if it come by telephone . . . It was just a matter of time . . . You didn’t say nothin’, did you?”
“No, sir. ’Course not.”
We had a new picture to run. The Fly, starring Vincent Price. A year ago it would have frightened me to death, and that part where the fly with the little human head says “Help me!” would have given me a nightmare.
Not now. Not after seeing the ghost light, being chased at night by Bubba Joe, nearly being hit by a train, and then seeing Buster cut Bubba’s throat and throw him in the creek.
This night I wasn’t watching the movie. Buster and I were sitting in the projection booth with the little light on, sitting at the small table on which were spread a number of newspaper clippings and a manila folder.
“Yeah, I know you’ll be quiet about it, Stan. Ain’t that I’m ashamed of killin’ him, you want to know true. I ain’t lost one minute’s sleep. He had it comin’. But I don’t need no police.”
“You sure we shouldn’t tell them?”
“I’m sure. They might just let it go. Not give a damn. But they could decide to make sure I went upriver. That ain’t exactly what I had in mind for an old-age pension. Prison stripes and workin’ on a chain gang in the hot sun. I wouldn’t last six months at my age.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “These clippings, the folder? You have something to show me?”
“The folder’s got police reports in it. Told you Jukes would come through. Let me lay some of this on you, Stan. Now just listen. Put it together with what you know, but don’t hold to anything you know. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“Think around corners. Figure out what it could be, but don’t hold to that bein’ it till there’s nothing else to hold to but that.”
“All right.”
“These clippings, we got news that the oldest girl, she left town. You remember me telling you that before?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She went off to London, England. It’s right here in the society section. Ones that make up this town’s society is about three families. Stilwinds is one of the families. This Stilwind girl goin’ off was five years before the murder of either them other girls, Margret and Jewel. Now we got an old police report here. Jukes didn’t give this one to me right off, but when I read this in the paper about Susan, that was her name, goin’ off to London, it got me to thinkin’. She’s fifteen it says, and it’s a January when she goes. What’s that say to you?”
“It’s winter?”
“That ain’t got a damn thing to do with it. Think, boy. How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Yeah. And what you got to do when the summer’s over?”
“Go to school.”
“Give the little boy a candy cigar. That’s right. Go to school. Now, does what I told you come up different now?”
“She left during school . . . She had to leave.”
“There you go. So I’m thinkin’, she goes off during school-time, and she’s fifteen, and they send her to London, what’s the reason? I figured she was pregnant. That’s what them rich folks do if they got a girl gets knocked up. They send them away to have the baby or they send them away to get rid of it. I thought, well, maybe they just wanted her to be educated in England. It could be that way. Rich folks do that. But high school. All of a sudden, three years or so before she graduates . . . Didn’t sound right.
“So, I say to Jukes. Jukes. Go back to when this gal left and get me the police reports for then.”
“Wouldn’t you want hospital reports? To see if she was pregnant?”
“Good thinkin’, but can’t get ’em. May not even exist now.”
“But why police?”
“Nothin’ says this has anything to do with the police, but I got to go on my gut sometimes. I get to thinkin’, what if some event happened with Susan about then and they want to send her off.”
“But why would the cops care if she’s pregnant?”
“What if it isn’t that she’s pregnant?”
“I’m confused now.”
“That was just my guess, but I had to guess another way too. Maybe somethin’ happened with her that was in the police files. Anything. Like she got into some kind of robbin’, and her daddy wanted to send her off. Delinquent stuff.”
“I guess it could be that.”
“But it wasn’t. It’s like both ideas I had come together. See, Stan, the old police chief, he kept all his records just like you’re supposed to do. Figure I was him, I would too. Things can come back on you. My figure is the chief, Rowan was his name, his idea of justice was whatever he wanted to dole out. Colored usually got justice right then and there from him. Same with some cracker. It’s the rich folks get judges, when that’s even bothered with.”
“What are you buildin’ up to, Buster?”
Buster opened the folder, took out some pages.
“This here is written by the chief himself. Just his notes. Says: ‘Susan Ann Stilwind came in tonight and said someone had been messing with her. I asked her who, and she said it was her family. She said she didn’t want to say, but she wanted to be taken away from there. I said, who in your family, and she still didn’t say. She hadn’t been here more than a few minutes talking to me when her daddy, Mr. Stilwind, come in. He said she was going around spreading lies. What she was saying wasn’t true. She was saying it because he had run off the boy that did it to her and now she was ashamed and so mad she wanted him to look bad by saying what she was saying. I didn’t ask her anymore. I told them it might be a good idea if she didn’t stay home anymore. That she should go off somewhere for a time. Mr. Stilwind said he’d make arrangements. She broke down crying and wouldn’t let him touch her, but she went off with him after cussing me.’
“Then you read the society pages, and she’s goin’ off to study in England. This was in the paper a week after this chief dated his entry. She was probably already gone when that word hit the paper.”