Joe Lansdale - The Bottoms

“Then tied her with barbed wire to a tree?” Daddy said.

Doc Stephenson looked at Daddy as if he were an idiot. “I mean before she was tied to the tree.”

“You saying a hog killed her?”

“I’m saying it could be like that. They got tusks like knives. I’ve seen them do some bad things to flesh.”

“Doctor Tinn,” Daddy said. “Do you know this woman?”

Doc Tinn came forward, looked the body over. “I don’t think so. I’ve sent for the Reverend Bail, though. He’s supposed to be here already.”

“What’d you do that for?” Doc Stephenson said.

“He knows most everybody in these parts,” Doc Tinn said. “I thought he might could identify her.”

“Hell, how you tell one colored woman from another is hard for me to figure,” Doc Stephenson said. “I wouldn’t think you boys could keep up with your wives. ’Course, maybe you don’t try to.”

Stephenson laughed as if everyone were in on the joke. He had no idea he was being rude. He believed so strongly that colored and white were truly different at the core, he thought it was evident to everyone.

I could see Doc Tinn’s shoulders shaking. Doc Taylor’s expression changed slightly. He glanced at the floor briefly, then looked up again, focusing on the body.

Doc Stephenson said, “Now that I look at her better, I think a panther did it.”

“A panther ain’t any more prone to tying bodies to trees with barbed wire than a hog,” Daddy said. I saw Doc Tinn’s face change slightly. He had liked that.

“I know that,” Doc Stephenson said, and his tone was sharper than before. “What I’m suggestin’ is she was killed by a panther, then someone else came along, some colored boys, and tied her to a tree.”

“What for?” Daddy asked.

“For fun. Why not? You was a boy once. You ever done somethin’ foolish, Constable?”

“Lots of times. But I wouldn’t have done nothing like that, and I don’t know any boys would.”

“Maybe not white boys. And listen here now, Tinn, I don’t mean nothin’ by it. I know you. You’re all right. But colored and whites is different. You know that. Down deep you do. Hell, there’s things that a colored can’t help, and I think folks are wrong to hold every little thing you coloreds do against you. Boys wouldn’t have meant nothing by it. It’d just be somethin’ to do. You know, like finding a dead fish and draggin’ it around.”

“A dead fish ain’t a woman,” Daddy said.

“Yeah, but don’t you think a couple little colored boys would have a pretty good time playin’ with a naked colored gal?”

“Doc,” Daddy said. “You been drinkin’. Why don’t you go somewhere and get sober.”

“I’m all right.”

Doc Taylor, who had been silent, said, “Doctor, maybe you have had a bit too much to drink. I ought to get you home.”

“What for,” Doc Stephenson said. “Nothin’ there.”

I had heard how his wife had up and ran off from him, and since he always seemed mean as a snake to me, I couldn’t say I blamed her.

“You could rest,” Doc Taylor said.

“I can rest fine right here, anywhere I want to.”

I saw Doc Taylor look at Daddy and shake his head, as if to indicate he was sorry.

“I don’t want you here,” Daddy said. “Go somewhere and get sober.”

“What’d you say?”

“I don’t stutter. Go somewhere and get sober.”

“You talkin’ to me like that in front of these colored boys?”

“These men haven’t been boys in years. And I’m just talkin’ to you, period.”

“This ain’t your jurisdiction no how.”

“Did I say anything about arresting you? Now get on your horse and ride.”

“I got a car.”

“It’s an expression, you jackass.”

“Jackass. You callin’ me a jackass?”

Daddy turned and moved close to Doc Stephenson. “I am. I’m callin’ you a jackass. Straight to your face. Right now. Here. Ain’t it bad enough we got a woman’s been murdered, and not by no goddamn panther neither. Ain’t that bad enough? We ain’t supposed to be quarrelin’ over her poor dead body. Get out before I put you out on the end of my shoe.”

“Well, I never…”

“Right now. Go. Taylor, get him out of here.”

Doc Taylor touched Doc Stephenson’s arm, and Stephenson jerked it away. “I don’t need no damn seein’ eye dog.”

Doc Stephenson, perhaps trying to show some defiance, took a big swig of his whiskey and wobbled off toward the door. Just before goin’ out he turned and said, “I ain’t forgettin’ you, Constable.”

“Well, I almost done forgot you, and will, quick as you go out that door.”

Doc Stephenson hesitated, then said, “I’ll just leave you then. See what you can learn from that boy. I can’t believe they even give the title Doctor to a colored. You ain’t no doctor to me, nigger. You hear me?”

“Come on,” Doc Taylor said.

“You leave me alone,” Doc Stephenson said.

And out the door he went.

I looked at Richard, then Abraham. They both had big grins on their faces. We looked back down through the split in the roof.

“Sorry about him,” Doc Taylor said. “His wife run off from him. He ain’t got over it yet.”

“He’s not the kind that will.”

“I talked him into coming,” Doc Taylor said. “I thought he could help. And I guess I was curious.”

“I appreciate you,” Daddy said. “You better take care of him.”

It was polite, but it was clear Daddy wanted Doc Taylor out of the icehouse too.

“Yeah,” Doc Taylor said, and left.

Daddy said, “Doctor, would you like to examine and give me your opinion on the patient?”

“Yes, I would,” Dr. Tinn said.

He set his bag on the edge of the table and opened it. He said, “Billy Ray, light me up a lantern, would you?”

Billy Ray, one of the colored men who had carried the body in, lit a lantern and brought it over to the table, as it was pretty dark inside the icehouse. The only other light was light from cracks in the roof and from a few breaks in the board siding.

The lantern made the room glow orange. Doc Tinn draped the lantern handle on a hook that hung from a rafter over the table. When he did that we moved back from our place at the hole, waited, then slid our faces back. I was afraid we’d make a shadow that would cause them to look up and see us, but with chinaberry limbs hanging over us, and that cloud across the sun, there wasn’t a noticeable change. Least I wasn’t aware of one. And the bottom line was curiosity ate up caution.

Doc Tinn pulled on a pair of big rubber gloves and poked the body with his big fingers. He took off the gloves, lit a match, held it close to her mouth and looked inside. He waved the match out, slipped on the gloves again, stuck a finger down her throat and worked it. He came up with a little something on his finger, wiped that on a cloth he took out of his bag. He stuck a finger up her nostrils, worked it around, wiped what he found on the same rag, then folded it.

He said, “I’m gonna have to cut on her to see the inside of her stomach.”

“The inside of her stomach?” Daddy said.

Doc Tinn nodded. “I ain’t maybe had the schoolin’ Doc Stephenson’s had, but I got my hunches.”

“Well,” Daddy said, “I know for a fact Doc Stephenson learned his doctor’n out of a book and he did his first doctor’n on horses and cows.”

Doc Tinn grinned. “So did I.”

Daddy grinned back, said, “Go on and do what you got to do.”

“This won’t be pretty.”

Daddy, less humored now, nodded. “I know.”

Doc Tinn took a tool from his bag, a scalpel, began cutting at the woman’s chest and down to her navel. I thought at first I was gonna lose my breakfast, but I was just too mesmerized to turn away. Doc Stephenson wasn’t entirely wrong. Boys were fascinated by a dead body, but not in the way he had suggested.