The dogs wanted to cross the river.
It’s easy to imagine Lester holding the dogs while the other men boarded the raft and then settling them on it. Perhaps he spoke to the hounds, handsome reddish things with slightly looser skin on their faces than most dogs had, and called them by their names. He would have told them how well they were doing, how brave and good they were, and he would have let them take water from the river. Some, like his father, would have said Lester was the kind of man to spoil a dog, but Lester never saw dogs as property. They were friends of his, friends that liked to work and were grateful for instruction. Lester would talk sweetly to the dogs after his father whipped them. Lester would sneak a shirt-full of food to them and get whipped himself. If Lester had been a saint, his statue would have featured him kneeling, getting his hand licked through the slats of a fence, with one eye out for his father.
It took two trips to get all the dogs and men across. Estel said the men from Morgan never stopped “funnin.” On the other side of the river one of them slapped at a deerfly on the back of his friend, but it was too fast.
“What the hell was that for?”
“Deerfly. Would a bit you.”
“Well, it wouldn’t a slapped me.”
The dogs picked up the scent again and pulled them deeper into the forest, baying constantly. Lester had never seen them so disturbed.
They pressed on past the gouged pine trees and kept going for nearly an hour before they saw him.
The dogs went right to him.
He was picking blackberries.
It was a big, muscular black man with a closely shaven head. He had a bucket half full of blackberries and his mouth and fingers were stained from eating them. His shirt was stained, too. He saw their guns and dogs and, because he felt he was expected to, he raised his hands.
The dogs were barking and howling now. They had their man. Gordeau trusted the dogs so much that their reaction to the blackberry eater was tantamount to a conviction in state court.
“That’s him,” he said.
The boys from Morgan started in immediately, asking him the questions that fit the circumstances. His name. His whereabouts last night. He would not speak. They cuffed his hands. One of them carried his bucket of blackberries and ate from it as they walked.
“Why don’t you talk, boy?”
“Maybe he’s a deaf-an-dumb.”
“Hey, are you a deaf-mute? If you are, say somethin.”
“Well if he is, how can he say somethin?”
“I was makin a joke, a funny joke. He couldn’t hear my question, neither, if’n he was a deaf-mute, see? That’s funny.”
“Oh, he can hear us okay. He hears every word we’s sayin.”
Lester Gordeau would later say he knew the man was no mute, and no idiot either. He thought that he had seen him in town before, though maybe not since he was a little boy. He remembered that in school he had learned about old-time sailing ships and how much work it was to pull those ropes and climb up all over the sails. When he saw the black man those ten or twelve years ago he thought he looked strong enough to be an old-time sailor. Walking behind him now, far behind him because the dogs still bayed after him, Lester thought that he still looked strong enough to pull sailor’s ropes. He remembered being glad for the guns the lawmen wore.
Estel walked next to the man, looking at him intently. He was trying to look straight through the man’s skull and into his brain to see if it contained the memory of the Falmouth boy. Tyson Falmouth looking up into this man’s eyes. He’s going to hurt me. I’m too small. Did it happen that way?
“Look at me,” Estel said.
He did. Eyes so brown they were almost black. Intelligent eyes. He knew what was going to happen to him. The Negro looked forward again. Did he recognize him? Yes. He had sold something from the hardware store to a bald colored a few weeks ago. What was it?
He couldn’t recollect.
But he remembered that face.
It was him.
“Why did you kill that kid?”
But it was over. The man had no words for any of them, and the next time Estel tried to meet his gaze by moving in front of him, the man looked right through him.
“Answer the man,” the sheriff from Morgan said. When the captive did not answer, but only marched forward and looked ahead with that passive look like paintings of Jesus, the sheriff from Morgan poked him stiffly in the ribs with the barrel of his shotgun. The man winced but said nothing. That was how the abuse began.
When they got to the river, three lawmen went across. Then Gordeau and the dogs with Estel pulling the rope. Then two lawmen transported the prisoner, one of them pulling while the other kept his revolver cocked under the black man’s chin. They mistrusted his silence and felt that he would surprise them if he could.
They were right about that, of course, but they could not guess how.
“IT WAS LONG about five in the evening when we got to Cranmer’s place the second time,” Estel said.
“I beat on his door, but he didn’t come out til I yelled, Goddamnit, I know you’re in there and I ain’t goin away. He opened the door buttonin up his shirt, with a big yawn on his face, and said you caught me nappin. Said he was dreamin of Mexican señoritas and we was a rude subsitute. I said I was just wonderin if this was a friend of your’n. Dogs seem to think he was here last night. He and the nigger looked at each other and he said, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. I paid good money for this specimen, he said specimen, an it up an run away on me first chance it got. And then some more bullshit about thanks for returnin my rightful property and would we be good enough to help him tie it to a tree for a proper whippin, but I’d had enough.
“I grabbed hold of his greasy ass beard and yanked him out into the yard, just meanin to shake him up, but that’s not how the Morgan boys saw it. They thought I rung the soup triangle on Cranmer’s ass. The meanest one, Alfred, he kicked Martin in the leg real hard, and the others moved in. But it wasn’t gonna be easy. Martin yanked my thumb to get me off ’n his beard, and damn near broke it. Quick as a snake he jumped over and socked Alfred so hard in the guts he went down on all fours and hacked like a dog. One of them slow moments happened then, where you see everythin at once. The rest of them was movin at him, and I seen his eyes cut at a axe in a treestump. My hand started movin towards my holster an he saw that, too, an didn’t go for it. In that split second, the boys was on him, and they tangled his arms up from behind so all he could do was kick. But he did kick.
“His feet was bare, but he stomped his heel down on the foot a the fella behind him and then kicked up with both feet. Big Joe caught a toe in his eye and his hat come off his head. Then the man with Cranmer’s arms and him both fell. All the rest come on him then, kicked the shit out of him, kicked him so bad the dogs was whimperin. The nigger was watchin it all like it had nothing to do with him. He could a run, but didn’t. I do believe they would a kicked that man to death if I hadn’t a jumped in sayin easy, easy, he ain’t the one done it, you’re gonna kill him. When they backed off, I looked down at him where he was still holdin his arms around his ribs and grindin his teeth, and I said I told you your smart-ass mouth was gonna get you in Dutch. I will be back.
“Big Joe asked Alfred if he wanted one last lick, but he was wheezing too hard, so Joe took the lick. As we left, I saw Martin look at the axe again, and I wondered if he was sorry he didn’t use it.