Tom Hauck was completely no good, and the community was well shet of him. But they'd still lynch Uncle John. It would sort of be their civic duty, the way they'd see it; part of the process of keeping the colored folks in hand.
Well, so poor old Uncle John had got himself in a pickle. He couldn't take Tom's body into town, or even be seen with it. And Tom being a white man, he couldn't bring himself to just dump the body off in a ditch somewhere. There was only one thing he could do, as he saw it; only one thing that would be acceptable to Tom's white ghost and the All-Knowing God that he had been taught to believe in. He'd just take the dead man back to his own home and leave him there.
"Now, don't that seem fittin', Mistah Nick? You see how I figgered, suh? I reckon now, it sho' wasn't the right thing to do, seem' as how Miz Rose carry on so bad, an'-"
"Well, now, don't you worry none about that at all," I said. "Miss Rose was just upset seeing her husband dead, and pretty ugly-dead, at that. It's probably goin' to take her quite a while to get over it, so maybe we'd better move the body somewheres else until then."
"But-b-but you say I could leave, Mistah Nick. You say I jus' tell you the truth, an'-"
"Yes, sir, that's what we'd better do," I said. "So just you hurry up, and turn your wagon back around."
He stood there, head bowed; his mouth working like he was trying to say something. There was a long roll of thunder, and then a jagged flash of lightning, lighting his face for a moment. And somehow I had to look the other way.
"You hear me, Uncle John?" I said. "You hear what I tell you to do?"
He hesitated, then sighed and climbed up on the wagon. "Yes, sub, I hear you, Mistah Nick."
We drove back to the house. It began to rain while we were loading Tom's body, and I told Uncle John to stand on the porch until I was dressed so that he wouldn't get no wetter than he had to.
"You're probably kind of hungry," I said. "You want I should bring you a cup of hot chicory? Maybe a little pone or somethin'?"
"I reckon not, thank you, suh." He shook his head. "Miz Rose probably got no fire this time o' night."
"Well, we'll just build one up," I said. "No trouble at all."
"Thank you, suh, I guess not, Mistah Nick. I-I ain't real hongry."
I went on in the house and dried off with a towel Rose gave me, and it sure felt good getting back into my clothes. She was pestering me with questions while I dressed: what were we going to do and what was I going to do, and so on. I asked her what she thought; did she reckon she'd ever feel safe with someone knowing what Uncle John knew.
"Well-" She wet her lips, her eyes turned away from mine. "We can give him some money, can't we? Both of us will. That should, uh, well, he wouldn't want to say anything then, would he?"
"He takes a drink now and then," I said. "No tellin' what a fella will do when he gets enough booze in him."
"But he-"
"And he's a very religious fella. Wouldn't be at all surprised if he figured he ought to pray for us."
"You can send him away somewhere," Rose said. "Put him on a train and send him up north."
"He can't talk up there? He wouldn't feel more free to do it away from us than he would here?"
I laughed and chucked her under the chin, asking her what she was so squeamish about. "Here I thought you was a real tough woman. It didn't bother you at all about what happened to Tom."
"Because I hated the son-of-a-bitch! It's not the same with Uncle John, a poor nigger man who was just trying to do the best he could!"
"Maybe Tom was doing the best he could, too. I wonder if we did any better."
"But-but, Nick! You, why you know what the bastard was like."
I said, yeah, I knew, but I'd never heard of anyone killing Tom's wife, and Tom sleeping before and after with the party that did it. Then, I laughed, cutting her off before she could butt in. "But this is different all right, honey," I said. "This you know about before it happens. It ain't something you learn about afterwards, so you can say, well, what can I do about it, and it ain't really my doin'."
"Nick-" She touched my arm, sort of frightened. "I'm sorry I lost my head tonight, honey. I guess I can't blame you for trying to hurt me."
"It ain't really that," I said. "I reckon I'm just kind of tired of doing things that everybody knows I'm doing, things they really want and expect me to do, and having to take all the blame for it."
She understood; she said she did, anyway. She put her arms around me and held me for a little while, and we talked a couple of minutes about what would have to be done. Then I left because I had a pretty full night's work ahead of me.
I had Uncle John drive up in the back country, about three miles behind the farm. We unloaded Tom's body there, in the edge of some trees, and Uncle John and I took such shelter as we could a few feet away.
He sat down at the base of a tree, his legs being too wobbly to hold him up any longer. I hunkered down a few feet away from him, and broke open the barrel of the shotgun. It looked fairly clean, clean enough to be safe, anyways. I blew through it a couple of times to make sure, and then I loaded it with the shells I'd taken from Tom's pockets.
Uncle John watched me, all the begging and praying in the world in his eyes. I relatched the barrel, and sighted along it, and he began to cry again. I frowned at him, feeling pretty fretted.
"Now, what you want to carry on like that for?" I said. "You knew what I was goin' to have to do right along."
"No, s-suh, I believe you, Mistah Nick. You different f'm other white folks. I believe every word you say."
"Well, now, I think you're lyin', Uncle John," I said, "an' I'm sorry to hear you. Because it's right in the Bible that lyin's a sin."
"It's a sin to kill folks, too, Mistah Nick. Worse sin than lyin'. Y-You-you-"
"I'll tell you somethin' Uncle John," I said. "I'll tell you something, and I hope it'll be a comfort to you. Each man kills the thing he loves."
"Y-You don't love me, Mistah Nick…"
I told him he was god-danged right about that, a thousand per cent right. What I loved was myself, and I was willing to do anything I god-dang had to to go on lying and cheating and drinking whiskey and screwing women and going to church on Sunday with all the other respectable people.
"I'll tell you something else," I said, "and it makes a shit-pot-ful more sense than most of the goddam scripture I've read. Better the blind man, Uncle John; better the blind man who pisses through a window than the prankster who leads him thereto. You know who the prankster is, Uncle John? Why, it's goddam near everybody, every son-of-a-bitch who turns his head when the crap flies, every bastard who sits on his dong with one thumb in his ass and the other in his mouth and hopes that nothing will happen to him, every whoremonger who thinks that piss will turn into lemonade, every mother-lover supposedly made in God's image, which makes me think I'd hate like hell to meet him on a dark night. Even you, particularly you, Uncle John; people who go around sniffing crap with their mouth open, and acting surprised as hell when someone kicks a turd in it. Yeah, you can't help bein' what you are, jus' a pore ol' black man. That's what you say, Uncle John, and do you know what I say? I say screw you. I say you can't help being what you are, and I can't help being what I am, and you goddam well know what I am and have to be. You goddam well know you've got no friends among the whites. You goddam well ought to know that you're not going to have any because you stink Uncle John, and you go around begging to get screwed and how the hell can anyone have a friend like that?"