Joe Lansdale - The Bottoms

A “nigger shooter” was a word for a slingshot made of shoe tongue, tire rubber, and a forked stick. The name was common, and Abraham had said it without shame or consideration.

“We hear they’s a body in there,” Abraham added. “A woman got murdered.”

I couldn’t contain myself. “I found the body.”

“Say you did,” Abraham said. “Naw. Naw you didn’t. You pullin’ our leg.”

“Did too. That’s my Daddy in there. He’s the constable over our parts.”

“This ain’t his constablin’ here,” the old man in the hog cart said. He could hear right good. I figured he’d heard us talking about those cards with naked women on them, and I was embarrassed.

Richard Dale said, “That’s Uncle Pharaoh. He got his legs torn up and cut off ’cause of a wild hog. Hog is Pig Jesse. That ain’t the wild hog. That’s a tame one.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to the old man.

He looked at me like I was some sort of strange vegetable he had never seen before. “Sorry ’bout what?” he said.

“Your legs.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, don’t be. Didn’t happen yesterd’y. I done got over it.”

“Where’d you find that body?” Abraham asked, and I told all three of them the story. I finished with: “I thought since I found it and done seen it, Daddy might let me look again and hear what the doctor’s got to say about it, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“That’s the way it always is,” Richard said. “Adults think they got to know everything and we ain’t supposed to know or see nothin’. Hey, you want to go off and play?”

“No,” I said. “I think I’ll wait here.”

Richard winked at me. “Let’s play.”

Abraham was smiling, and I wondered what it was they were after. I hoped they didn’t want to smoke grapevine, or even tobacco, ’cause I never liked either a bit. Times I had tried they had made my stomach sick.

Richard leaned over close and said, “Me and Abraham know somethin’ you might like to know about that body. Come with us.”

I thought on that, but only for a second. They told Uncle Pharaoh goodbye, and I went running with them, away from the crowd, toward the creek. They led me along the edge of the creek and up behind the icehouse to where the big chinaberry tree grew.

Richard whispered: “Me and Abraham we know everything there is to know about over here. There’s a big hole in the roof up there, right over the front room, where they bring the ice out. There’s a piece of tin over it, but it’ll twist aside and you can see in. If you don’t twist it too much, they won’t notice ’cause the tree shades that spot. Won’t be a bunch of sunlight slippin’ in. ’Sides, there’s all sorts of cracks in that roof anyway. Little sunlight here and there won’t be noticed none.”

“What if they ain’t in that room?” I said.

“Then they ain’t,” Abraham said. “But what if they is?”

Richard led the way up the chinaberry tree, Abraham after him, and me following up last. The chinaberry was a big one, and several of the limbs branched over the top of the icehouse. We climbed out on those and onto the roof. Richard moved along the roof to a spot in the shingles with a tin patch. He used his hand to push the patch back. Cold air came up from the icehouse and hit us in the face, and it felt good. Above us, the clouds had turned dark, as if filling up with shadow to aid our cause.

We looked out at the crowd. Most of them could see us. Some of them waved. I thought: Boy, am I gonna be in for it. But it was worth the gamble. These folks had no reason to tell my Daddy anything. They didn’t even know him. And like most colored, they pretty much minded their own business when it came to whites.

There wasn’t nothing to see at first, but we could hear men talking. I recognized Doc Stephenson’s voice. He sounded loud, and drunk. Just when I was getting cold feet, and thinking about climbing down, Richard put his hand on my shoulder, and into view came two colored men carrying a long, narrow, galvanized tub packed with ice and, of course, the body.

The corpse was covered with a big burlap sack, and soon as they set it down on the ice-cutting table, they removed the sack, and I got a good look.

Looking down on it, I felt strange. It was the same body I had found that night. But it had seemed ten feet tall and terrible then. Now it was small and bloated and sad-looking, and suddenly, a person. Someone’s spirit had inhabited that body and it had been alive and had eaten and laughed and had plans. Now it was a pathetic shell of wasting flesh, minus a soul. I either smelled, or imagined I could smell, the decaying odor of the body rising up with the cold from the icehouse’s interior.

In that moment, something else changed for me. I realized that a person could truly die. Daddy and Mama could die. I could die. We would all someday die. Something went hollow inside me, shifted, found a place to lie down and be still, if not entirely in comfort.

Her head was tilted back and slightly submerged in chunks of ice. The mouth was open, and missing teeth. Many of the remaining teeth were jagged or broken, and I immediately realized they had been knocked out. The woman’s breasts were split open and laid back and the blood had gone gray and was frozen.

For the first time I was seeing a woman’s privates, but there was really nothing to see. Just a triangle of darkness. The poor woman’s knees were slightly bent and she lay with her left hip down and her right hip up. Her hands were out to her sides and cupped into claws. Her face was hard to make out. Things had been done to it. There were rips in her body where the barbed wire had torn it. There were cuts all over.

Doc Stephenson, sucking from his flask, wobbled over to the body and looked down. He said, “Now that is one dead darkie.”

The colored men who had toted the body out in the galvanized tub looked at the floor. Doc Stephenson punched the one on his right with his elbow, said, “Ain’t it, boy?”

The man lifted his chin slightly, and without looking at Doc Stephenson directly, said, “Yas suh, she sho is.”

It embarrassed me to see that colored man have to act like that. He was big and strong and could have pulled Doc Stephenson’s head off. But if he had, he would have been swinging from a limb before nightfall, and maybe his entire family, and any other colored who just happened to be in sight when the Klan came riding.

Stephenson knew that. White folks knew that. It gave them a lot of room.

I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Abraham. The look on his face had gone from boyish excitement to one I couldn’t quite identify.

Daddy moved to look at the body then, and said to Doc Stephenson, “I thought you couldn’t look at the body? Wouldn’t.”

“Not in town. Wouldn’t a white person within a hundred miles have anything to do with me they knew I was hauling a colored into my place. A decent white woman sure wouldn’t want to be examined in no place like that. No offense, boys, but colored and white need their separation. Even the Bible tells us that. Hell, you boys are happier when you don’t have the worries we do. You’re lucky, is what you are

… Taylor here told me I ought to have a look. That we ought to come out and help you boys.”

Doc Taylor grinned shyly; the dampness on his teeth caught the lamplight and made them shine.

Doc Tinn had not stepped forward. He stood slightly back of Daddy and Doc Stephenson, his head down, not quite knowing what to do with his hands, though I had an idea what he’d like to do.

Doc Taylor stood at the end of the table, looking at the body calmly, taking it all in.

Doc Stephenson looked the body over, touched it, moved it slightly, said, “Looks to me a wild hog got her.”