“Outside of what I told you, I can’t say. Maybe someday someone will make a science of this. I’ve tried to learn what I can out of curiosity, but what I know ain’t much.”
“There was a warning about Mose being lynched,” Grandma said, and she gave Doc Tinn some of the details. “Figure whoever’s been doin’ this didn’t want an innocent man to die for what he done. His conscience got the best of him.”
“You’re a credit to Christian thinking,” Doc Tinn said. “But I think he didn’t want someone else to take credit for what he done. He’s right proud. Kind of signs all his work, so to speak. Same kind of ties and cuts. Does it all along the river, or takes them to the river. He feels comfortable there.”
I thought: Like the Goat Man.
“I don’t think this fella’s got a conscience. Least not the way we think of one. But he ain’t no monster in his ever-day life. He’s normal like. Not someone you’d expect.”
“Unless it’s Mr. Nation,” I said. “Or one of his boys. They’re monsters.”
Doc Tinn rubbed his chin, then nodded. “I know them. That young one, Joshua, he likes to set fires. And Esau, the older one, he’s hired couple of colored boys to take him out boat fishin’, and they say he’s took the fish he’s caught and thrown ’em out on the bank and just stomped them. Had a real delight in it. So, you could be right. It could be any one of them Nations, and I wouldn’t be surprised. People got that much hatred and meanness in ’em, it’s got to come out somehow.”
It had begun to rain. We could hear it pattering on the tin roof.
“And there’s another thing I been thinkin’,” I said. “Red Woodrow.”
“You’re thinkin’ on some harsh things for a boy,” Doc Tinn said.
“Yes sir,” I said. “Me and Tom found the first body, and I’ve been in touch with everything since. I feel I’m part of it.”
“Red’s the law,” Grandma said, “so he’s got access to information and people. He could get a woman off by herself easy. Say to her it’s law business. Coloreds, they’ve got no say against the law. And Red’s known as someone that isn’t too fond of women. And he hates colored.”
Doc Tinn studied the air for a moment, as if trying to decide if certain information should be revealed.
“Listen here,” he said. “I’m gonna tell you somethin’ I shouldn’t. And I got it on rumor, but it’s worthwhile knowin’, considerin’ we’re all meddlin’ here. And this ain’t even well known in the colored community, but once when Miss Maggie took ill she come to me, and she had to spend three days at our house, she come down with such a case of the pneumonia. She got to talkin’, and she told me somethin’ I maybe shouldn’t tell now, but considering what happened to Mose, and what’s goin’ on, it might be best you know. I got to have your word, though, that you ain’t goin’ to spread it around. I don’t need the reputation as a gossip.”
Grandma and I agreed.
“Red, he ain’t white. Least not totally.”
“What?” Grandma was leaning forward in her chair now, as if being closer to Doc Tinn might make everything clearer.
“Red’s Daddy thought he put three children in Miss Maggie’s belly,” Doc Tinn said. “Two girls and a boy. All three of them children turned out white-lookin’. Red’s two sisters was raised in the black community until they was four or so. Miss Maggie seen they could pass for white, and she had relatives help them girls. They went up North somewhere. Story is, and it might not be true, is them girls was adopted by white folks wantin’ babies, and they don’t even know them girls are colored.
“Red, bein’ a boy, well, old man Woodrow wanted him at first. He was raised as his son, and his wife had to claim she gave birth to him. They kept it hid somehow.”
“Red know he’s got colored in him?” Grandma asked.
“No. And I don’t know it for sure. I’m tellin’ things I’ve heard. But I believe ’em. Red, he loves Miss Maggie ’cause she darn near raised him. He just come up thinkin’ he was white and she was his nanny and wet nurse.”
“Wait a minute,” Grandma said. “You said Mr. Woodrow thought he put three children in Miss Maggie’s belly. Thought?”
“You’re a good listener and a smart lady,” Doc Tinn said. “The third child, the youngest, that was Red. But in this case, it wasn’t old man Woodrow who put him there. It was Mose.”
At that moment, it was as if the roof had fallen in on us. “Mose was part white,” Grandma said.
“Yes,” Doc Tinn said.
“And Red was a kickback to that part of Mose.”
Doc Tinn nodded.
“You look real close, ’cept for the size, Red and Mose were the spittin’ image of each other. Red hair, freckles, and them leaf-green eyes. And there’s another thing she told me. Mose, his Daddy was the old man Woodrow’s Daddy.”
“Any way Red could have known?” Grandma asked.
“Not unless Miss Maggie told him. I don’t think she’d have told me had she not been half delirious. She’s proud of him. He made somethin’ of himself. Then again, he don’t know he’s colored, don’t know Miss Maggie’s his mother. She ain’t totally happy about all that.”
“Why doesn’t she tell him?” I asked.
“She thinks way things are is best, I figure. He gets treated a lot better as a white man than a black.”
I knew then why Miss Maggie had not wanted to talk about Red the other day. Why she had become so upset.
“Once again, I mention this only because Red Woodrow is puttin’ the pressure on folks here in the community to keep what they know in the community. He don’t want colored business flowin’ into white business. But it ain’t all hatred on his part. He may not know he’s colored, but in spite of what he says, he’s got a good streak. He’s thinkin’ it gets out more, whites are gonna get upset more, and it’s the coloreds gonna suffer. Things ain’t always how they look.”
“And the killer?”
Doc Tinn shrugged. “I don’t know any more than I told you. But if it’s like some other murders, like the Jack the Ripper murders in England, he’s gonna grow bolder, and more violent. Right now he’s takin’ women he don’t think matter. But he may not stay doin’ that. He might decide any woman is fair game. Man like that, he’s playin’ games with the law and everyone else. He don’t think he can be caught. He don’t think he’s doin’ anything wrong.”
By the time Grandma said her goodbyes and her and Camilla poked and laughed at each other a bit, the rain was coming down hard, slamming on the tin roof like someone was beating it with a chain. The air was heavy but cool with the rain. Outside the store’s open door you could see it splattering in the mud street, running ruts across the road. It was growing darker by the moment.
“Y’all ought to wait it quits rainin’,” Camilla said.
“I don’t want my daughter to worry about us,” Grandma said. “Besides, we’ll take it easy.”
We rushed out to the car, and by the time we were inside we were soaking wet, and chilly. Grandma started off. I said, “Did we learn anything, Grandma?”
“I don’t know, Harry. In the detective books they just keep askin’ questions of people, and finally someone tells someone somethin’ that matters. We did hear some interestin’ stuff, but I don’t know it helps any. Time will tell.”
Just outside of town, something stumbled through the rain, out into the road and stopped.
It was a naked black man. He was holding his privates, shaking them at the car, as if it were something he might use to flail the hood. He had his mouth open and seemed to be making some kind of sound, but over the motor and the rain, it was impossible to hear him.
Although I had never seen him before, I knew immediately who it was by reputation.
“Root,” I said.
“What?” Grandma said.
“That’s his name. He’s harmless.”
“You mean Camilla’s boy William?”
“They call him Root now,” I said. “He ain’t right in the head.”
Root stumbled out of the road, releasing himself, throwing his hands to sky, talking to the heavens. He wandered into the woods with his hands up and disappeared.