“Son, let’s go.”
We walked over to Doc Tinn’s house, ahead of the Doc, got in our car, and drove over to the commissary. Uncle Pharaoh was around front, sitting in his cart in the shade of his willow and burlap sack cover, drinking a Dr Pepper. His hog, Jesse, was lying in the dirt with the cart posts and straps still on him. He had his head just under the porch in the shade and was grunting away, eating some old moldy bread.
“Now that’s a hog,” Daddy said to Uncle Pharaoh.
“Mr. Constable, how you doin’?”
Uncle Pharaoh knew my Daddy. My heart sank. Would he mention that me and Abraham and Richard had climbed on top of the icehouse?
“How the world treatin’ you, Mr. Constable?”
“Fair enough,” Daddy said. “And you?”
“I could complain, but it wouldn’t do no good.”
Daddy and Uncle Pharaoh exchanged a small laugh, and Daddy lifted his hand as if to wave Uncle Pharaoh away, like he couldn’t handle such powerful humor that time of day.
We went inside the commissary. I said, “You know him?”
“Son, wasn’t it obvious I did?”
“Yes sir.”
“He used to be the greatest hunter in all these bottoms until a wild hog tore up his leg. It’s a critter they call Old Satan. He wanders these here bottoms. Big old boar hog. And ain’t no one ever been able to kill him. He’s mainly over here on this side of the county. ’Round here and over toward Mud Creek.”
I started to ask if what Doc Stephenson had said about a wild hog tearing up that woman could be possible, when I caught myself.
“Sure are lots of towns named after creeks,” I said.
“Yeah,” Daddy said.
Abraham and Richard were inside getting groceries together for Uncle Pharaoh. They spoke to me and Daddy as we came in, then went on about their business.
Daddy bought us a slab of bologna, a box of crackers, some rat cheese, and a couple Co’-Colas. We sat on the front porch of the commissary where it was cooler and watched Jesse snooze with his nose in the shade and Uncle Pharaoh nurse his Dr Pepper. Daddy used his pocketknife to slice up the meat and cheese and he laid them out on the butcher paper they had come wrapped in. We ate the meat and cheese with the crackers and drank our pops. Wagons rattled by with fresh-cut lumber in them.
We sat quietly for a time, then Daddy said, “Son.”
“Yes sir.”
“I prefer you do as I ask. You get to be a grown man, you can do as you please. Long as it’s within the law and within God’s law, but as a boy, you do as I ask.”
So he had seen me. “Yes sir.”
We ate some more. I said, “You gonna give me a whippin’?”
“No. You’re gettin’ kind of old for that foolishness, don’t you think?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, you are. You act more your age, and I’ll treat you your age. That a deal?”
“Yes sir.”
“Being your age means listenin’ to what I tell you. Or your Mama tells you. You got to show some good sense. I didn’t want you to see all that.”
“I done seen her, Daddy.”
“I know, son. But that was an accident. This here, it wasn’t none of your business. It was in a different light. Hear what I’m sayin’?”
“Yes sir.”
“That poor woman was loved by someone somewhere, and it ain’t good to have a bunch a people gaping at her like she’s somethin’ in a circus. She ain’t got no control over what happens to her now, so we got to control it. Everything done there was to find out what we needed to know. And another thing, son, there’s things you don’t need in your head ’less you got to have ’em. You may not think that now, but believe me, there’s things you don’t need and they’ll come back to you and they won’t be pleasant. And by the way. I noticed you boys were up there soon as you climbed on the roof. Ain’t none of you quiet. Just to let you know, them boys are pretty good boys. Uncle Pharaoh’s the little one’s grandpa.”
“Abraham.”
“Yep, Abraham. And the other one is Mr. Dale’s boy. Mr. Dale is a pretty fair farmer. He wrestles at fairs for money. I hear he’s good at that too. His boy’s name is… let me see…”
“Richard.”
“Yep, Richard. They ain’t a bad couple to play with. And let me tell you something sad. Abraham, another few years, he and Richard won’t play together. They won’t even be together.”
“Why, Daddy?”
Daddy looked over at Uncle Pharaoh, as if to make sure he was out of earshot. “ ’Cause the world ain’t the way it’s supposed to be. You figure on that, and I think the answer will come to you.”
It already had. I said, “Daddy? Did you figure out who done that to that colored woman?”
“No. I don’t really know more than I did, ’cept it was horrible. I don’t know I’ll ever know any more than I know right now.”
“Why did Doc Stephenson come?”
“I don’t rightly know, but I figure he wanted to be in on something like that, and not have it hurt his business none.”
“He didn’t sound like he knew much.”
“I don’t think he cared one way or another. He just wanted to be the one making the statements, not a colored doctor. I’d come to Doc Tinn anytime before I’d go to that pill-pushin’ quack. Listen here. Whites and colored ain’t neither one better or worse than another. There’s just men and women of whatever color, and some of them are worse than others, and some are better. That’s the way to look at that matter. I’m an ignorant man, son, but I know that.”
“Daddy. Miss Maggie says it’s probably the Goat Man done it.”
“How’d she know anything was done?”
I blushed. “I guess I told her.”
“Well, I figure it’s no big secret by now, but you want to keep talk like that to yourself when you can.”
“Yes sir. She says the Goat Man might be the devil. Or one of the devil’s servants. Like Beezlebubba.”
“She means Beelzebub. But no. I done told you I don’t believe there’s no Goat Man,” Daddy said. “I’ve heard tell of such all my life, but ain’t never seen it. As for this fella done this being the devil’s servant, well, she might have somethin’ there. But I figure he’s flesh and blood all right.”
“Daddy, the one done that to that colored woman?”
“Miss Sykes, son. She had a name. We know it now.”
“Yes sir. One did that… He still around?”
Daddy had the bologna in his hand, and was cutting it with the pocketknife.
“I don’t know, son… I doubt it.”
It was then, for the first time, I thought my Daddy might have lied to me.
It was hotter on the way home than when we’d left, and a lot of the water had dried up or at least caked into mud. It was thick in the road and it caused us to go slow.
We hadn’t got more than a couple miles outside of Pearl Creek when a black Ford with dents all over it, sitting in the shade of a hickory nut tree, pulled onto the road and right up beside us, going fast enough to toss mud on us.
A red-faced man was sitting on the passenger side wearing a big white hat. He waved his arm out the open window at Daddy and pointed to the side of the road.
Daddy pulled over, said, “It’s all right, son. It’s the law over here. I know ’em. Wait on me, hear?”
As Daddy got out of the car, I slid over behind the steering wheel. Daddy went to the rear of our car, and the man on the passenger side of the dented Ford wearing the big white hat got out. He was big and solid. He was dressed in gray khakis and wore his sleeves rolled down and buttoned, as if it were the dead of winter. A badge was pinned on his shirt.
The driver, a fellow with a yellowish coloring to his features, wearing a tan hat with a near flat crown that made it look like the top to a butter churn, stayed behind the wheel chewing tobacco.
The man in the big hat shook hands with Daddy. I could hear them real good. The red-faced man said, “Good to see you, Jacob. I heard tell you was constable over there in your county.”
“I don’t expect you’re all that proud to see me, Woodrow,” Daddy said, “so don’t act like it.”
The man laughed a little. He took off his hat and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped sweat from the inside of it. His hair was even redder than his face.