The Sharecropper Prodigy (32 page)

*****

              We had been moved into another room, which I could only assume was a basement since we had been led down a flight of stairs. The place had a damp feel to it and a musty smell. We were seated roughly on a wooden bench and true to his word, Feldman removed our blindfolds. The outside walls were concrete block and there were four bare light bulbs hanging from naked wires. Over in one corner, a shower spigot was sticking out of the wall. There were no partitions around it, but there was a drain in the concrete floor. Some of the larger houses had been built with basements, so I figured this was one of them. To my surprise, the two men had found nothing in my truck, which I figured was probably torn all to pieces. The truck was the least of my worries now, however. I was just hoping me and Ben got out of this alive. Right now the odds didn’t seem to be in our favor.

             
The biggest of the three men grabbed Ben by his arm roughly and pulled him over to the shower spigot. He ripped his shirt off his body and pushed him down in a metal chair, tying him to the chair and binding his feet. Another man came out of the dark corner of the room carrying a hand crank telephone with long wires attached to it. At the end of the wires were small copper clamps which resembled the clamps on the ends of jumper cables, only much smaller. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they were about to do. He walked over to Ben with a look on his face like he was doing some daily, benign task. He held the copper clamps up in the air, then nodded to the other man who had his hand on the crank of the phone. The man turned the crank slowly at first and the man with the clamps held them close together. A small electrical arc jumped from one clamp to the other. Then the man started turning the crank faster and the arc got bigger and bigger.

             
“Okay, Ben,” Feldman said. “One more chance. Tell me where the film is. Don’t be a damned fool.”

             
“Ain’t got it,” Ben responded defiantly.

             
Feldman reached over and turned the cold water on just enough for it to spray a fine mist on Ben who had been placed directly under it. The man with the clamps placed one on each of Ben’s earlobes. Feldman nodded to the man holding the crank. He turned the crank slowly and Ben immediately started shaking like he was having some sort of convulsion. He shook so violently that the chair tipped over and the cables came loose from his earlobes. The man who was turning the crank stopped long enough for the other one to stand the chair back up. Ben hadn’t uttered a sound, but I had a feeling that would change soon.

             
When the man got Ben’s chair turned upright, he reached down and untied his feet. Then he unbuckled Ben’s belt and unbuttoned his pants, pulling them completely off, along with his underwear. I couldn’t imagine what horrible thing the man was going to do next. I started to yell, but thought better of it. The man then bent down slowly, holding the clamps up so Ben could see them. Then, slowly, he put one of the clamps on Ben’s testicles. Ben couldn’t help letting out a painful grown. The man turned around and looked at me, an evil grin had his face askew. He looked like some sort of hellish demon. Then he attached the other clamp on Ben’s limp sex organ.

             
“Stop it, you son-of-a-bitches!” I yelled. “Ben, just tell them where the damn film is if you know!”

             
Ben didn’t say a word. The man turning the crank hesitated for a minute, seeing if Ben would come to his senses and say something. Ben just sat there, squirming from the pain of the clamps on the most tender part of his anatomy. The man shook his head and turned the crank again, faster this time. I thought Ben was going to shake completely out of his skin. A buzzing sound was coming from his mouth that sounded like a hive full of honey bees. His head was thrashing back and forth so violently, I was afraid he was going to snap his neck. After a few seconds of the worst kind of pain I could imagine anyone going through, the man stopped. Ben’s head slumped over, his chin resting on his chest. Feldman walked over to him and held his head up. He gave him a couple of gentle slaps on his cheeks. No response.

             
“Ben. Ben, can you hear me?” Feldman asked in a loud voice.

             
“Probably just passed out,” the crank turning bastard said.

             
Feldman put his hand on Ben’s neck, checking for a pulse.

             
“Well, he’s still alive. Maybe he’ll come around in a minute,” he said.

             
“Maybe he don’t have the film,” one of the men said. “Hell, we couldn’t find it on him or in the truck. As much pain as he just experienced, if he knew anything he would have talked.”

             
Feldman turned around with his back toward Ben, facing the man at the phone. “You don’t understand, Carl. Ben is a patriotic little nigger. He goes around reciting Jefferson and Washington and James Madison all the time. He buys into this “greatest country in the history of the world” shit, even though the people he praises brought his ancestors over on ships……”

             
Before I had time to blink, I saw Feldman stumble forward. The gun he was holding in his hand was suddenly pointing at Carl and I heard a deafening bang that echoed through the cinder block walls. Carl fell backwards, letting out a loud grunt. Then I saw the black skin of Ben’s hand around Feldman’s as he wrestled the gun from his grip. Harold, the other man, sprung into action. He ran for his pistol that he had laid on a shelf in the corner to keep it from getting wet from the shower. Ben pointed Feldman’s pistol at him.

             
“Stop, or you’re a dead man!” Ben yelled.

             
Harold didn’t heed his warning. Ben squeezed the trigger hitting Harold in the left shoulder. Harold spun around and hit the floor, writhing from the burning gunshot wound. Feldman was paralyzed from utter surprise and fear. He lay there motionless. Ben pushed himself away from Feldman a couple of feet, then gave him a hard blow across the side of his head with the barrel of the pistol. Then he got up slowly, walking like a drunk man toward the gun Harold had gone for. He grabbed it and walked over to where I sat, tied up. His legs looked like they were made of rubber. How he had moved so quickly when he jumped Feldman, I don’t know. Apparently, he had just enough adrenalin coursing through his body for that one mighty burst. Ben only weighed about a hundred and forty pounds, but had always had tremendous strength for his size. He stopped for a minute as if he were confused and didn’t know what to do. Then he turned around and staggered back to the chair he had been tied to. He picked up the ropes and took them over to where Feldman was laying. He worked slowly, trying to tie Feldman’s hands behind his back. His coordination was altered considerably from the electrical current that had passed through his body, and he was having a difficult time.

             
“Come untie me first, Ben,” I said. “I’ll tie both of them up. Your shakin’ so bad you’ll never get a knot tied.”

             
Ben looked at me as if it took what I had said a minute to comprehend. Then he got up and stumbled over to the bench where I was sitting, almost falling down. He turned around so he could get to the rope. He leaned his head against my back and started untying the ropes, his hands trembling badly. I was beginning to wonder if he was going to be successful, but then I felt the ropes loosen. I twisted my hands around a few times and the ropes fell off. I took the gun from Ben’s hand just as I saw a flash out the corner of my eye. It was Feldman. I pulled the pistol up, reacting to what I’d seen. Ben had seen it too, and somehow found one more burst of adrenalin. Just as Feldman fired the gun that he had hidden in his waistband, Ben dove in front of me. I pulled the trigger at the same time and got off a lucky shot, hitting Feldman right between the eyes.

             
Ben lay at my feet, blood flowing from an ugly wound in his chest. I turned him on his back and looked into his open eyes. His mouth was quivering and he was trying desperately to raise his head. I thought I heard a faint noise come from his bleeding mouth. A horrible, gurgling sound. I turned and leaned my head down until my ear was touching his lips. “A…auto……autop..sy,” I thought I heard him say.

“Did you say….. autopsy, Ben?”

              He feebly shook his head, yes. Then his body stiffened, and the brilliant light that had been in his eyes from the first time I’d seen him was extinguished. His eyes remained open, but it was as if a shade had been drawn over an open window.

             
I sat there for a moment in disbelief. My chin started quivering as I spoke. “Ben…Ben! don’t you die on me, you hear? We’ve still got a lot to do. B..Ben, you’ve got to finish your degree. Y…you ain’t even got started good yet, Ben!”

             
I knew my words were in vain, but they just seemed to come out involuntarily. I sat down flat on the floor and put Ben’s head in my lap. Tears were running unabated down my cheeks and I didn’t care. Harold was sitting on the floor holding his wounded shoulder and moaning, but I paid no attention to him. I had never felt so lost in my life. It took a long, surreal moment to see the reality. Ben was gone. The one who had always solved the problems I couldn’t solve. He was responsible for me having a good job, because I had used his brain like it was my own. At times we had almost been like one body and one mind. Two people conjoined by an invisible force, making each other whole. He was the brilliant mind and I was the body that was fortunate enough to have been born with white skin, that could allow his mind access to the bigoted world we lived in. Without him, I would probably have remained in the place where I grew up, pounding out a living in the cotton fields and getting old before my time. I might never have married Rachel, thinking I had nothing to offer her but a hand-to-mouth life filled with everyday, back breaking work. My mind and ambitions would probably have never expanded much beyond that of my ancestors, who had lived in the same place and done the same thing for over a hundred years.

             
Then I thought of my role and what I had contributed to Ben’s success. Without me, he may have never left his family and moved to Atlanta where he found a good job that paid wages he couldn’t even dream of where we came from. Then he met Abby, and with her influence was able to get enrolled in Morehouse College and then to Harvard. I had brought him with me and Rachel to Oak Ridge, where his genius was discovered by some of the brightest and most important minds who ever lived.

             
Strangely, as if it were a scene from a movie, all of this was running through my mind as I held Ben’s head and wept out loud.
My
life was flashing before
my
eyes, as if
I
were about to die. I had always needed Ben and he had always needed me. I had Rachel now, but as much as I loved her, I felt like she could never fill the void Ben would leave. And I would never be able to fill the void Ben would leave in Rachel’s life. They had always been confidants who shared the same interests and had the same insatiable curiosities.

             
I don’t know how long I sat there, rocking Ben back and forth like a baby that needed comforting, but when I finally came back from the state I was in to cruel reality, I took my coat off and gently laid Ben’s head on it. I picked up the pistol and pointed it at Harold, who looked at me with pleading eyes, hoping there was mercy in me. I decided I would be merciful, because I knew that’s what Ben would have done.

             
“Put your hands behind your back,” I said.

             
“I can’t….I can’t move my left arm,” he responded in a painful voice.

             
I grabbed him under the arms and dragged him over to one of the steel columns. I wound the rope around his torso and the column several times and tied it in so many knots that Houdini couldn’t escape from it. Then I walked up the stairs and out of the house. I decided to take Feldman’s car since I didn’t know what shape they had left my truck in. I cranked the engine and drove to the military police post. 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

              They wouldn’t let me ride in the ambulance with Ben to the hospital, so I called Rachel and made sure she met them there. I told her not to let them do anything with his body until I got a chance to talk to Dr. Anderson and some of the other men in charge. Rachel was grieved to the point that I was concerned for her sanity, and I hoped she had comprehended what I told her. I was almost certain Ben’s last word had been
autopsy.
I assumed that had some kind of meaning and thought the men he worked with might know.

             
I was kept at the MP station until well after the sun came up answering questions, until I finally convinced them that Ben was indeed a physicist and Dr. Anderson could straighten everything out if they would call him. They reluctantly let me go after they gave all the guards at the checkpoints a good description of me and told them not to let me leave the compound.