Beautiful Dreamer (14 page)

His job was not to know about it until later. Not too difficult at that. No one was going to tell him until it was over and by then there was nothing to do but call in the coroner or more likely the mortician since there wasn't much point in stirring things up. This was the place he was and this was how this place was. If he had known, he'd have stopped it. He wasn't like them. The day he became like them was the day he would take off for anywhere and never mind if there were jobs to go to. He would have stopped it and they would have gone along with it. Sure, they would have hated him at the time, spoiling their fun and all, but when they sobered up and it went out of their blood, they would have seen the point. Or if they didn't, and perhaps they wouldn't, they would leave it at that since leaving things as they were was their special talent, which was how things got to be as they were. Crap.

He picked another piece of tobacco off his tongue and was tapping a cigarette out of the pack before he thought what he was doing, stopping himself at the last moment from lighting it from the other. That was what his days had been mostly about for a long time now, coffee on tasteless coffee, cigarette on tasteless cigarette. The filters were to stop him from dying. All they did was stop him from tasting. He lit it, not noticing he was doing so, and then, noticing, stubbed it out in the tray before thinking better of it. It was a new car and he liked to keep it clean. He swept it out with his finger, cupping his hand beneath it and then throwing it away. It had taken all his savings, but what were savings for, now she had up and left, now there were no plans worth the planning for? He stared ahead through the woods, wondering whether there was any point to this. He had already been to where they had strung the black man up, a man he had seen around and who never caused any trouble that he knew, except that he was his own man and around here that wasn't supposed to be. He had thought he would find him still swinging there, but instead found nothing but ashes. Even thought they had burnt him up in there, that he had got his information wrong, because if there was one thing they liked more than a rope, it was flames. But then he found the grave, a spade standing upright as if someone had meant it for a cross, and since there was no way that any of those that had done that would have thought to bury him this way, there had to be someone else. And his bet was the boy. There was a young kid, maybe fourteen or some, used to come in with him on the cart. Bright enough. That was who must have done it, him or some other black man drifting out of nowhere and going back as fast. Still, his bet was on the boy.

But did that mean he saw it? He knew what had happened, or thought he did. There were those that were happy to tell him when once it was done and there was nothing he could do to stop anything. They didn't make a mention of a boy. And since the one they lynched, and that was the word, was buried so neat, he had to know that they had not caught up with him, at least not then, though they were thorough enough when they tried. Didn't like to leave stones unturned, people alive who could be dead. No, he must have hid and then come out later, and if he had any sense at all, if he was as bright as he seemed when he and his father came into town, then he would have left out of here long since and been on his way to somewhere else, anywhere else at all.

Then there was the other, the other that had brought him up here, where he seldom came, having no reason to except when he went hunting sometimes, squeezing off at whatever moved as if it was the people he ought to have been shooting but couldn't. They had told him about this other, too. Gone directly on to him after they done hanging and burning the other, meaning, no doubt, to do much the same, only not doing so in the end, at least as he was told, but knocking him around some. There was talk of some fire, too, of marking him ‘so folks would know'. And which folks were these, he had to ask? Everyone here knew everything. Even him, though it was often a day or two before word got through. Odd thing was that they knew he would have to do something if he knew for sure, but once it was done, who would he get to swear to it? They would let him know, at least the one or two he had a lean on would, or those who couldn't hold it in, wanting to hear themselves talk about something as if doing it weren't enough and it was necessary to hear it over again even if it was their own voices they heard.

So he was here to check it out, see how bad hurt he was, see whether he wanted to bring charges, as would be a fool to do so since there were guns enough hereabouts to equip a division or two and then some. But he had to check. He found himself lighting another cigarette, as though he had no mind of his own and no will either. He rubbed it out in the ashtray and then blew so that the dust flew up. He brushed at his clothes and put the cigarette back in the pack, noting that there were fewer than he had expected. He opened the door and stepped outside. The heat was what it ever was and there was a dank smell, rich and loamy. A bird whirred through the trees, a flash of red. He felt better out here, better than in town where there was no way of getting away from the heat and nothing to look at but the road or the railroad tracks and nothing to look forward to except the next cup of coffee or the next cigarette.

He ran his hands along the shiny black paint of the Ford. There was something real about that, real enough to take all his savings. He took a deep breath. There was something sweet in the air, some flower he couldn't see but was blooming there in the soft light for no purpose but to seed another. No different from us, he thought, and struck a match, holding it for a second before realizing there was no cigarette to be lit. Bad, he thought, bad. He set off up the track. It was no more than half a mile further and there were worse things to be doing. What would he say when he got there? What was there to say? But it was his job to say it. Whatever it was. It would be easy enough when he started. But he would get nothing back. These people weren't talking people. They mostly worked like dogs and drank like pigs and slept in the sun and that was about it. Every now and then they would pull a knife or shoot off a gun, and then he would take them in, but mostly they would just live from day to day, if you could call what they did living, if you could call what he did living.

When he stepped into the clearing, nothing moved. He stood still for a second, taking it in. The shack was like a dozen others, hid away here, falling down, as it seemed to him, and placed where nobody would want to come. There would be a well and an outhouse and that would about do it. No real-estate man would ever come by. These places were never sold. If someone died or, less likely, moved on, they would simply leave it and either someone else of a like mind would come on by, maybe some relative living in worse, if you could imagine worse, or it would rot away until the woods took it and the clearing back again as if it had all been a mistake. And who was to say it hadn't been?

Yet he could see how someone might take a liking to this place. There was nowhere else hereabouts that you could say was so much better and at least here you were on your own, as this man was. He hardly knew him, to tell the truth, but he had asked around. Seems there had been a wife once, and even a kid for an hour or two, but that was long ago and he had been content since to be alone. Doubtless, like the other men, he would cat around a little, go to those towns nearby that catered for such as him. Well, from what he heard he wouldn't be doing that for a while.

He had thought to bring the doctor out but figured it was better to check things first. Billy had only seen things through the woods, out with his girl in the family car. It was that car that had made him want one himself. There was money in death, his father being a mortician. Anyway, Billy, being out with a girl, hadn't wanted people to know who told the sheriff and wouldn't have gone that way if he had known, looking to do his business with Linda Sue who, if he did but know it, had done her business with most of the town.

He stepped out into the light, noticing, as he did, that the door was stood wide. He looked around, half-expecting to see him standing there. People left doors open here. They were honest in some things and crooks and perverts and psychotics and simply dumb in others. ‘Can't be that bad,' he thought to himself, ‘not if he's out and about.' He slowed a little. It never paid to walk straight on into anywhere when you didn't know what might be waiting for you the other side. He could hear nothing, besides the birds and crickets. No one chopping wood or singing to himself, not that he would have been doing that if it was true.

He stopped by the door and then reached in and knocked. There was no reply. He knocked again, sure, now, that there was no one in. Then he stepped inside. Everything looked as you might expect. Nothing worth spit, in fact almost nothing at all. He stood in the kitchen, looking around. There was a rag in the corner had what looked a lot like blood. So there was something in it right enough. He stepped through into the bedroom and looked at the bed, red-black with blood. So, they had got their man all right, done whatever it was that they wanted done. And he had lain down here. The question was how bad he had been hurt. Then he looked across at where a piano was pushed up against the wall. Not a sight you saw much, and if at all, not in the bedroom, though there was nowhere else it could go, not in this pinched little house. He crossed over and lifted the lid, thick with dust except where someone had run their hand along it, drawing a bright black line. He played a note. It was silent. He tried another. It sounded like a bar-room honky-tonk left to ruin. He closed the lid and looked around. What kind of man would have a piano? Then another thought, right away. Not a man but a woman, of course, a woman long gone so that this was what remained. Not played, but kept. He nodded to himself and went back into the kitchen to give it a closer look.

He saw where there were two cups set out and two bowls beside. This didn't fit with what he had been told. Who was this other person? Who had come to call and looked after him, as it seemed? Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the shell cases, lying under a chair, red and gold. Seeing them did something to him. Until then he had been none too interested. He was just checking things out to see they were as he'd been told. He knew nothing would come of it. No one would talk, no one would want him around. But the sight of those shell cases changed things round. He bent down and picked them up. What were they doing there? People didn't shuck cases on to the floor and leave them there. If they were out hunting, they flipped them out where they were. If they came on back, they would put them somewhere. The place was pretty neat, bare but neat, and he couldn't see how the man would have just dropped them down. So what were they doing there? He smelt them, pressing them in turn to his nose. They were recent. The smell was still strong. Then where was the gun? He couldn't recall seeing one. He stepped back into the bedroom, bent down and looked under the bed. There was something under there but it wasn't a gun.

He pulled the bed away from the wall. There were two things. One was a shoebox, its top half off, the other was a piece of floorboard, lifted up. He pulled the bed further into the room. Something scuttled away and he put his hand to his gun, a reflex, nothing more. The floor was thick with dust except where someone had done what he had done and pulled the bed out, because he could see the marks.

He reached inside the space where the floorboard had been, turning his head aside as he reached his hand in, thinking, briefly, of the spider that could put him in hospital or the snake that could end things right there. But what he felt was the cool of a glass jar. He pulled it out. The top was missing, so he reached back inside and found it, bottom side up, lying just inside so that he was surprised he had missed it at first. And what could have been in there that was worth hiding, that you might store in a jar against the moment you might need it? What else but money, no one hereabouts trusting banks, as they were right not to, others having lost money when they went bust, as they did when times were hard, which was when you needed them most.

But why would this man have taken his money from under the floorboards? Why else but that he was on his way, running, knowing that those who cut him or whatever they did might think to finish the job.

He slid the shoebox toward him and ran his fingers through it. Nothing here. Some tissue paper, a piece of cloth and a book, a gospel, and nothing more that anyone would keep, let alone run off with, except that there were spaces where something else had been, one staining a circle on the brown cardboard, a jar of something perhaps. He raised the box and sniffed at it. There was a perfume there. But why would anyone running want to take perfume along with him, unless it reminded him of someone used to wear it maybe? Even then, if I was running, he thought, I wouldn't take anything such along with me, but then I wouldn't want anything reminded me of her. Something else had been there because there was a piece of tissue paper all balled up, but what that was there was no means of saying.

He went back into the kitchen and sat himself down again to think. Here was a man, then, lived all alone, if what they said were true. He got cut up or beaten so bad that he chose to leave where he had lived for all his life. He opened up the floor where he had stored such as he had, carried with him some perfume so he would carry with him a memory that otherwise was part of this place, and then took off. But there was something wrong with that. Two things wrong with that. First, he wasn't alone. There had been someone else, and it wasn't one of those who wanted to hurt him because this person had eaten and drunk with him. And then there were the two shell cases. And while perhaps they were from some other time, left there so he forgot them, it didn't seem likely, what with them smelling as fresh as they did. Now, what story could be made to fit all that?

He looked at the pot, left in the sink unwashed, and smelt that as he had smelt other things, smelling, in his experience, being as good as anything to find things out. It was rabbit, so maybe the shells were from that. But who did the shooting and who would come out here to a man fingered by those others who could do folks harm? Then a thought struck him, a thought so unlikely that he nearly dismissed it out of hand. But a phrase came back to him from what he had been told had happened down at the store, the thing that had justified all that happened afterwards. ‘Stood up for a nigger,' he had been told, unlikely as that sounded. But, then, everything he had been told seemed unlikely to him. He knew those that ran the store. They were old and bitter and she was as ugly as sin itself and nobody, but nobody, would ever make a move in her direction unless they had lost all of their wits. None the less, that was what he had been told. So, could it be that the other person who had eaten with him was maybe black, and if black, who else but the person who dug a grave for his father, knowing that they might be back for him, and not knowing, of course, what they had done to this man? But even as he tried the idea out, it seemed impossible. This wasn't a place where black sought out white or white sought out black. They got by never looking to each other for anything.