Joe Lansdale - The Bottoms

“I can. We got a graveyard that’ll let anyone in.”

“Yep. Dirt ain’t particular.”

“Nor the worms,” Doc Tinn said. “And one other thing.” He pulled a long pair of tweezer things out of his bag and picked something up lying between the woman’s legs. “Soon as I went to work down there, this fell out. It was pushed up in her.”

“What is it?”

“It looks like paper. It’s so bloody and wet, there’s no telling now, but that’s what it looks like.”

“He stuck paper up her?”

“Rolled up a small piece and put it there,” Doc Tinn said.

“Why?”

Doc Tinn shook his head. “It means something to him. I couldn’t begin to tell you what.”

We heard someone else come in, speak, and I realized it was the Reverend arriving. After greetings, I heard the Reverend say in a high voice, “Uh huh. Oh, my God. That be Jelda May. Jelda May Sykes. She was a harlot, but she come around now and then to talk to me. She was always wantin’ to do different and get salvation, but couldn’t. She worked them juke joints way down yonder on the river. Take in both black and white trade I hear. She did some conjurin’.”

“Conjurin’?” Daddy asked.

“She worked the juju. Magic spells and such.”

“You don’t believe that?” Daddy said. “You, a man of God?”

“Wasn’t all bad spells she worked,” Reverend said. “Poor, poor thing. Good Lord! Who cut her up like that?”

“Some of it was done by whoever killed her,” Doc Tinn said, “and some I did as way of examination. Checkin’ the cause of death.”

“Ain’t nothing like that need to be done after someone done had the indignities of death. Good Lord, what a mess. You ought not have done that.”

“You know what kind of animal you’re huntin’,” Daddy said. “How it lives, how it kills, you got a better chance of catchin’ him.”

“Lord, poor Jelda May,” the Reverend said. “She better off now. She in a better place.”

“I hope you’re right,” I heard Doc Tinn say. Then me and my newfound pals eased toward the chinaberry tree and started down.

By the time we hit the ground and got around front, the crowd was starting to break up. Folks were mumbling back and forth, mad ’cause they hadn’t learned anything, and the old colored man, Uncle Pharaoh, was moving his pig cart toward the commissary with, “Now get on, Pig Jesse.”

“I got to go catch up,” Abraham said when he saw Uncle Pharaoh. “He gonna need some help with some groceries and such.”

“I’m with them,” Richard said. “It was nice meetin’ you, Harry,” and they went away.

I felt abandoned and full of guilt. Daddy had told me to do a certain thing, and that was wait. I told myself that I had waited, but I knew I was splitting hairs. I had waited on the roof of the icehouse and seen what I wasn’t supposed to see; heard what I wasn’t supposed to hear. I didn’t always do as told, but somehow, this time, I felt as if I had transgressed beyond forgiveness.

I tried to look innocent as Daddy, Doc Tinn, and the Reverend came out. I had not seen the Reverend enter, but it had to be him. He was a tall, very lean colored man with a flat nose and a look like someone waiting on something bad to happen so he could talk salvation. He wore black pants and shoes and a white shirt with yellow sweat stains under the arms. He had on a thin black tie that looked to be fraying about the edges and he was putting on a soft brown felt hat as he came out of the icehouse. The hat had a little bright red and green feather in the brim on the left side.

As they came down the steps, Daddy, slipping on his hat, looked over at me, and though he didn’t say anything, his gaze made me nervous. At the bottom of the icehouse steps Daddy gave the Reverend something, turned to Doc Tinn and extended his hand. Doc Tinn, still unaccustomed to such, stuck out his hand quickly and they shook.

“I want to thank you for your help,” Daddy said. “I may be talkin’ to you again.”

“It’s all just opinion, Constable,” Doc Tinn said.

“It sounded like reasonable opinion to me,” Daddy said.

“Thank you, kindly, Constable.”

They talked a little more with the Reverend. I saw Daddy reach in his pocket and hand the preacher something, but I couldn’t make it out. Then he shook hands with him, turned around, and called to me.

“Son, let’s go.”

We walked over to Doc Tinn’s house, ahead of the Doc, got in our car, and drove over to the commissary. Uncle Pharaoh was around front, sitting in his cart in the shade of his willow and burlap sack cover, drinking a Dr Pepper. His hog, Jesse, was lying in the dirt with the cart posts and straps still on him. He had his head just under the porch in the shade and was grunting away, eating some old moldy bread.

“Now that’s a hog,” Daddy said to Uncle Pharaoh.

“Mr. Constable, how you doin’?”

Uncle Pharaoh knew my Daddy. My heart sank. Would he mention that me and Abraham and Richard had climbed on top of the icehouse?

“How the world treatin’ you, Mr. Constable?”

“Fair enough,” Daddy said. “And you?”

“I could complain, but it wouldn’t do no good.”

Daddy and Uncle Pharaoh exchanged a small laugh, and Daddy lifted his hand as if to wave Uncle Pharaoh away, like he couldn’t handle such powerful humor that time of day.

We went inside the commissary. I said, “You know him?”

“Son, wasn’t it obvious I did?”

“Yes sir.”

“He used to be the greatest hunter in all these bottoms until a wild hog tore up his leg. It’s a critter they call Old Satan. He wanders these here bottoms. Big old boar hog. And ain’t no one ever been able to kill him. He’s mainly over here on this side of the county. ’Round here and over toward Mud Creek.”

I started to ask if what Doc Stephenson had said about a wild hog tearing up that woman could be possible, when I caught myself.

“Sure are lots of towns named after creeks,” I said.

“Yeah,” Daddy said.

Abraham and Richard were inside getting groceries together for Uncle Pharaoh. They spoke to me and Daddy as we came in, then went on about their business.

Daddy bought us a slab of bologna, a box of crackers, some rat cheese, and a couple Co’-Colas. We sat on the front porch of the commissary where it was cooler and watched Jesse snooze with his nose in the shade and Uncle Pharaoh nurse his Dr Pepper. Daddy used his pocketknife to slice up the meat and cheese and he laid them out on the butcher paper they had come wrapped in. We ate the meat and cheese with the crackers and drank our pops. Wagons rattled by with fresh-cut lumber in them.

We sat quietly for a time, then Daddy said, “Son.”

“Yes sir.”

“I prefer you do as I ask. You get to be a grown man, you can do as you please. Long as it’s within the law and within God’s law, but as a boy, you do as I ask.”

So he had seen me. “Yes sir.”

We ate some more. I said, “You gonna give me a whippin’?”

“No. You’re gettin’ kind of old for that foolishness, don’t you think?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, you are. You act more your age, and I’ll treat you your age. That a deal?”

“Yes sir.”

“Being your age means listenin’ to what I tell you. Or your Mama tells you. You got to show some good sense. I didn’t want you to see all that.”

“I done seen her, Daddy.”

“I know, son. But that was an accident. This here, it wasn’t none of your business. It was in a different light. Hear what I’m sayin’?”

“Yes sir.”

“That poor woman was loved by someone somewhere, and it ain’t good to have a bunch a people gaping at her like she’s somethin’ in a circus. She ain’t got no control over what happens to her now, so we got to control it. Everything done there was to find out what we needed to know. And another thing, son, there’s things you don’t need in your head ’less you got to have ’em. You may not think that now, but believe me, there’s things you don’t need and they’ll come back to you and they won’t be pleasant. And by the way. I noticed you boys were up there soon as you climbed on the roof. Ain’t none of you quiet. Just to let you know, them boys are pretty good boys. Uncle Pharaoh’s the little one’s grandpa.”