We looked out at the crowd. Most of them could see us. Some of them waved. I thought: Boy, am I gonna be in for it. But it was worth the gamble. These folks had no reason to tell my Daddy anything. They didn’t even know him. And like most colored, they pretty much minded their own business when it came to whites.
There wasn’t nothing to see at first, but we could hear men talking. I recognized Doc Stephenson’s voice. He sounded loud, and drunk. Just when I was getting cold feet, and thinking about climbing down, Richard put his hand on my shoulder, and into view came two colored men carrying a long, narrow, galvanized tub packed with ice and, of course, the body.
The corpse was covered with a big burlap sack, and soon as they set it down on the ice-cutting table, they removed the sack, and I got a good look.
Looking down on it, I felt strange. It was the same body I had found that night. But it had seemed ten feet tall and terrible then. Now it was small and bloated and sad-looking, and suddenly, a person. Someone’s spirit had inhabited that body and it had been alive and had eaten and laughed and had plans. Now it was a pathetic shell of wasting flesh, minus a soul. I either smelled, or imagined I could smell, the decaying odor of the body rising up with the cold from the icehouse’s interior.
In that moment, something else changed for me. I realized that a person could truly die. Daddy and Mama could die. I could die. We would all someday die. Something went hollow inside me, shifted, found a place to lie down and be still, if not entirely in comfort.
Her head was tilted back and slightly submerged in chunks of ice. The mouth was open, and missing teeth. Many of the remaining teeth were jagged or broken, and I immediately realized they had been knocked out. The woman’s breasts were split open and laid back and the blood had gone gray and was frozen.
For the first time I was seeing a woman’s privates, but there was really nothing to see. Just a triangle of darkness. The poor woman’s knees were slightly bent and she lay with her left hip down and her right hip up. Her hands were out to her sides and cupped into claws. Her face was hard to make out. Things had been done to it. There were rips in her body where the barbed wire had torn it. There were cuts all over.
Doc Stephenson, sucking from his flask, wobbled over to the body and looked down. He said, “Now that is one dead darkie.”
The colored men who had toted the body out in the galvanized tub looked at the floor. Doc Stephenson punched the one on his right with his elbow, said, “Ain’t it, boy?”
The man lifted his chin slightly, and without looking at Doc Stephenson directly, said, “Yas suh, she sho is.”
It embarrassed me to see that colored man have to act like that. He was big and strong and could have pulled Doc Stephenson’s head off. But if he had, he would have been swinging from a limb before nightfall, and maybe his entire family, and any other colored who just happened to be in sight when the Klan came riding.
Stephenson knew that. White folks knew that. It gave them a lot of room.
I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Abraham. The look on his face had gone from boyish excitement to one I couldn’t quite identify.
Daddy moved to look at the body then, and said to Doc Stephenson, “I thought you couldn’t look at the body? Wouldn’t.”
“Not in town. Wouldn’t a white person within a hundred miles have anything to do with me they knew I was hauling a colored into my place. A decent white woman sure wouldn’t want to be examined in no place like that. No offense, boys, but colored and white need their separation. Even the Bible tells us that. Hell, you boys are happier when you don’t have the worries we do. You’re lucky, is what you are
… Taylor here told me I ought to have a look. That we ought to come out and help you boys.”
Doc Taylor grinned shyly; the dampness on his teeth caught the lamplight and made them shine.
Doc Tinn had not stepped forward. He stood slightly back of Daddy and Doc Stephenson, his head down, not quite knowing what to do with his hands, though I had an idea what he’d like to do.
Doc Taylor stood at the end of the table, looking at the body calmly, taking it all in.
Doc Stephenson looked the body over, touched it, moved it slightly, said, “Looks to me a wild hog got her.”
“Then tied her with barbed wire to a tree?” Daddy said.
Doc Stephenson looked at Daddy as if he were an idiot. “I mean before she was tied to the tree.”
“You saying a hog killed her?”
“I’m saying it could be like that. They got tusks like knives. I’ve seen them do some bad things to flesh.”
“Doctor Tinn,” Daddy said. “Do you know this woman?”
Doc Tinn came forward, looked the body over. “I don’t think so. I’ve sent for the Reverend Bail, though. He’s supposed to be here already.”
“What’d you do that for?” Doc Stephenson said.
“He knows most everybody in these parts,” Doc Tinn said. “I thought he might could identify her.”
“Hell, how you tell one colored woman from another is hard for me to figure,” Doc Stephenson said. “I wouldn’t think you boys could keep up with your wives. ’Course, maybe you don’t try to.”
Stephenson laughed as if everyone were in on the joke. He had no idea he was being rude. He believed so strongly that colored and white were truly different at the core, he thought it was evident to everyone.
I could see Doc Tinn’s shoulders shaking. Doc Taylor’s expression changed slightly. He glanced at the floor briefly, then looked up again, focusing on the body.
Doc Stephenson said, “Now that I look at her better, I think a panther did it.”
“A panther ain’t any more prone to tying bodies to trees with barbed wire than a hog,” Daddy said. I saw Doc Tinn’s face change slightly. He had liked that.
“I know that,” Doc Stephenson said, and his tone was sharper than before. “What I’m suggestin’ is she was killed by a panther, then someone else came along, some colored boys, and tied her to a tree.”
“What for?” Daddy asked.
“For fun. Why not? You was a boy once. You ever done somethin’ foolish, Constable?”
“Lots of times. But I wouldn’t have done nothing like that, and I don’t know any boys would.”
“Maybe not white boys. And listen here now, Tinn, I don’t mean nothin’ by it. I know you. You’re all right. But colored and whites is different. You know that. Down deep you do. Hell, there’s things that a colored can’t help, and I think folks are wrong to hold every little thing you coloreds do against you. Boys wouldn’t have meant nothing by it. It’d just be somethin’ to do. You know, like finding a dead fish and draggin’ it around.”
“A dead fish ain’t a woman,” Daddy said.
“Yeah, but don’t you think a couple little colored boys would have a pretty good time playin’ with a naked colored gal?”
“Doc,” Daddy said. “You been drinkin’. Why don’t you go somewhere and get sober.”
“I’m all right.”
Doc Taylor, who had been silent, said, “Doctor, maybe you have had a bit too much to drink. I ought to get you home.”
“What for,” Doc Stephenson said. “Nothin’ there.”
I had heard how his wife had up and ran off from him, and since he always seemed mean as a snake to me, I couldn’t say I blamed her.
“You could rest,” Doc Taylor said.
“I can rest fine right here, anywhere I want to.”
I saw Doc Taylor look at Daddy and shake his head, as if to indicate he was sorry.
“I don’t want you here,” Daddy said. “Go somewhere and get sober.”
“What’d you say?”
“I don’t stutter. Go somewhere and get sober.”
“You talkin’ to me like that in front of these colored boys?”
“These men haven’t been boys in years. And I’m just talkin’ to you, period.”
“This ain’t your jurisdiction no how.”
“Did I say anything about arresting you? Now get on your horse and ride.”
“I got a car.”
“It’s an expression, you jackass.”