But a catfish doesn’t have legs.
Mr. Sumption said even when he saw the legs it didn’t register with him that it was a human being. It looked too swollen, too strange to be a person. But it was, and it was a woman. Her legs were crossed and tied at the ankles. One of her arms was pulled behind the back, stretched out and tied so tight to her feet it had caused the back to bow slightly. The other arm was tied in such a manner it looked as if she were reaching over the shoulder to scratch the small of the back, but the hand, from the wrist on, was gone. The cord was bound around the forearm, and was tied off to the other arm.
Mr. Sumption eased carefully down the side of the hill, mindful not to step in what his family had been dropping along the bank all summer. He saw the woman’s bloated body lying face down in the moist blackness, and the flies were as delighted with the corpse as they were with the waste.
Mr. Sumption saddled up a horse and arrived in our yard a short time after that. I was out trying to knock some splashed mud off of some tomato plants so they might stand up and not rot, when he showed up.
Mr. Sumption rode right up to the edge of the field, jumped off his horse, and started calling to me. Toby barked at him a few times, but it was a friendly bark. He knew Mr. Sumption.
I hurried through the field to where he stood, and he started in on how he had to see Daddy. Even though Daddy had taken to drinking, folks thereabouts didn’t know about it, least most didn’t. He kept it pretty much at home. I hated that Mr. Sumption might see Daddy that way; we had done a pretty good job of hiding it.
But there was nothing for it but Daddy had to be told. I asked Mr. Sumption to wait, and I went to the barn to get him. He was lying on a bed he had made with an old blanket and some hay, and he had his head propped up with Sally Redback’s saddle. He was awake, and he turned his head as I came in. I thought I saw something pass along his face that might have been shame or embarrassment or both. Then again, it could have just been a bellyache.
I suspected he wouldn’t even bother, but when I told him Mr. Sumption had found a body, and it was tied up, he got up quick, knocking over his whiskey bottle, not bothering to pick it up. I didn’t bother either. Daddy went out ahead of me. I watched the whiskey run out of the bottle and into the dirt.
To this day, I’ve never so much as taken a drink.
Daddy was a little sick-looking, like a man coming off a long bout with the flu, but he hurried ahead of me, through the field, and met Mr. Sumption at the far end.
When he told Daddy what he had found, Mr. Sumption rode back and Daddy followed in the car. I wanted to come, but Daddy insisted that I stay. There was a part of me that felt I was no longer subject to what Daddy wanted. He had given up the respect I had for him long ago, but I waited. Maybe I just didn’t want to be with him.
Later I learned Daddy and Mr. Sumption pulled the body out of the pile using a hoe and a rake, dipped it in the river for a rinse. Something a modern forensic-trained officer of the law would avoid these days. But back then, Daddy had never heard of forensics. I don’t even know if the word existed.
After fishing the body out, they were shocked to see the face of Louise Canerton buried in a mass of swollen flesh, one cold dead eye open, the other half closed, as if she were winking.
On closer examination, they discovered the body was very cut up, and one of the breasts had been sliced open and sewn back together with fishing cord. Something was visible between the stitches. Daddy used his knife to cut the cord free and to poke out what was inside. It was a wad of paper. Like was found in the others. And like the others, it was too far gone for him to figure what it was. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket.
The body arrived at our house wrapped in a tarp. Daddy and Mr. Sumption hauled it out of the car and toted it up to the barn. Me and Tom were out under the big tree, waiting, and as they walked by carrying their burden, we could smell that terrible reek of death and defecation through the tarp.
Daddy and Mr. Sumption were in the barn for a short time, and when they came out, Daddy had an axe handle in his hand. He also had a straighter back and a more determined stride. His eyes, though not clear, looked hard and brittle like dark beads of glass. He walked briskly to the car. I could hear Mr. Sumption arguing at him. “Don’t do it, Jacob. It ain’t worth it.”
We ran over to the car as Mama came out of the house, calling Daddy’s name. But Daddy wasn’t listening. Nothing seemed to register. It was as we always said about a determined mule. He had his nose forward and his ears back.
Daddy calmly laid the axe handle in the front seat, and Mr. Sumption stood shaking his head. Mama climbed into the car and started on Daddy. “Jacob. I know what you’re thinkin’. You can’t.”
Toby had sidled up to Mr. Sumption, and Mr. Sumption, knowing he was defeated as far as influence with Daddy went, bent down to scratch him behind the ears.
He hollered out once more, but like he didn’t really mean it. “Don’t do it, Jacob.”
Daddy started up the car. Mama called, “Children. Get in. You’re not stayin’ here.”
Maybe she thought our presence would slow Daddy down, I don’t know. But we jumped in just as Grandma came out of the house. She took in the situation, immediately pushed her way into the car, and Daddy, hardly mindful of our presence, roared off, leaving Mr. Sumption standing in the yard either bewildered or resigned.
Mama fussed and yelled and pleaded all the way over to Mr. Nation’s house. Daddy never said a word. When he pulled up in Nation’s yard, Mr. Nation’s wife was outside hoeing at a pathetic little garden, most of which had been washed downhill by the recent rain.
Mr. Nation and his two boys were sitting in rickety chairs under a tree, cracking pecans and eating them.
Grandma, who had begun to put it together, said, “Oh hell.”
Before Daddy could get out of the car, Mama grabbed the axe handle, but he carefully took it from her hands and got out of the car with it, started walking toward Mr. Nation. Mama was hanging on his arm, but he pulled free. He walked right past Mrs. Nation, who paused and looked up in surprise.
Mama started after Daddy again, but Grandma grabbed her, said, “Might as well let things be. He gets like this, he’s like Achilles after Hector. You know that.”
Mr. Nation and his boys spotted Daddy coming. Mr. Nation slowly rose from his chair, pecans falling out of his lap. The expression on his face was akin to discovering you hadn’t buttoned your fly and were standing in a room full of church women.
“What the hell you doin’ with that axe handle?” Nation asked.
The next moment what Daddy was doing with that axe handle became abundantly clear. It whistled through the hot morning air like a flaming arrow and caught Mr. Nation alongside the head about where the jaw meets the ear, and the sound it made was, to put it mildly, akin to a rifle shot.
Mr. Nation went down like a wind-blown scarecrow. Daddy stood over him swinging the axe handle. Mr. Nation was yelping and putting up his arms in a pathetic way. The two boys came at Daddy. Daddy turned, swatted the older one down. The younger one tackled him.
Instinctively, I started kicking at that boy, and he came off Daddy and climbed me. But Daddy was up now. The axe handle sang. The boy went out like a light, and the other one, who was still conscious, started scuttling along the ground on all fours like a crippled centipede. He finally managed himself upright and ran for the house.
Mr. Nation tried to get up several times, but every time he did that axe handle would cut the air, and down he’d go. Daddy whapped on Mr. Nation’s sides, back, and legs, until he was worn out and had to back off and lean on the somewhat splintered handle.
When Daddy got his wind back, he was at it again. Some of his sense had returned however, and he began to use the flat of the handle, banging it against Nation.