Joe Lansdale - The Bottoms

“He had her purse?” Mama said.

“Yeah,” Daddy said. “He had it, and he’d taken money from it.”

“Could it be him?”

“He says he was fishing, saw the purse and her dress floating, snagged the purse with his fishing line. The dress washed on by him. He saw there was money in the purse, and he took it. Figured a purse in the river wasn’t something anyone was going to find, and there wasn’t any name in it, and it was just five dollars going to waste. Said he didn’t even consider that someone had been murdered.”

“So you believe him?”

“I believe him. I’ve known Old Mose all my life. He practically lives on that river in that boat of his. He wouldn’t harm a fly. Besides, the man’s over seventy years old and not in the best of health. He’s had a hell of a life. His wife ran off forty years ago and he’s never gotten over it. His son disappeared when he was a youngster. Whoever raped this woman had to be pretty strong. She was young enough, and from the way her body looked, she put up a pretty good fight. Man did this had to be strong enough to… well, she was cut up pretty bad. Same as the other woman.”

“Oh dear.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“How did you come by the purse?”

“I went to see Mose. Like I always do when I’m down on the river. It was layin’ on the table in his shack. I had to arrest him. I don’t know I should have now. Maybe I should have taken the purse and said I found it. I believe him. But I don’t have evidence one way or the other.”

“Didn’t Mose have some trouble before?”

“When his wife ran off some thought he’d killed her. She was fairly loose. That was the rumor. Nothing ever came of it.”

“But he could have done it?”

“I suppose.”

“And what about his boy? What happened there?”

“Telly was the boy’s name. He was addle-headed. Mose claimed that’s why his wife run off. She was embarrassed by that addle-headed boy. Kid disappeared four or five years later and Mose never talked about it. Some thought he killed him too. But that’s just rumor. White folks talkin’ about colored folks like they do. I believe his wife ran off. The boy wasn’t much of a thinker, and he may have run off too. He liked to roam the woods and river. He might have drowned, fallen in some hole somewhere and never got out.”

“But none of that makes it look good for Mose, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“What are you gonna do, Jacob?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid to lock him up over at the courthouse. It isn’t a real jail anyway, and word gets around a colored man was involved, there won’t be any real thinking on the matter. I talked Bill Smoote into letting me keep Mose over at his bait house.”

“Couldn’t Mose just run away?”

“I suppose. But he’s not in that good a health, hon. And he trusts me to investigate, clear him. That’s what makes me nervous. I don’t know how. I thought about talking to the county boys that cover Pearl Creek. They have more experience, but they have a tendency to be a little emotional themselves.”

“You mean Red.”

“Yeah. He’s rumored to be in the Klan, or was.”

“You don’t know that for a fact,” Mama said.

“If he ain’t got an official hood in his drawer,” Daddy said, “you can bet he’s got one in spirit.”

“He ain’t always been that way.”

“No. But things change… things can happen.”

Mama quickly changed the subject. “But if it’s not Mose, who is it?”

“After I was told about Janice Willman, I went over and took a look at the body. Same sort of thing. She’s been cut on, and tied with one leg pulled up to her neck, rope around her head and ankle. That seems to be a thing he does to every one of ’em, some kind of tie-up.”

“Does that mean anything, tying them up like that?”

“I don’t know. Doc Tinn thinks so. When I showed him this body and talked to him about it, he said he believes these fellas have a pattern. He’d done some reading on it, and he thinks they do pretty much the same thing over and over. Little difference here and there, but the same thing. Jack the Ripper did his killings the same, ’cept each one got more vicious than the last. Doc Tinn told me about some others he’s read about, and now these. All cut up. All tied or bound up in some kind of way, and all of them in or near the river. Or they had been in the river. He calls them pattern killers. He said he hoped to write some kind of paper on it, but figures being colored he hasn’t got a chance in hell of doing anything important with it.”

“That doesn’t explain why,” Mama said.

“No. It doesn’t.”

I began to drift off again. I thought of Mose. He had white blood in him. Red in his hair. Eyes green as spring leaves. Skin dark as molasses. I had waved at him not so long ago. Sometimes, when Daddy had a good day hunting or fishing, he’d go by there and give Mose a squirrel or some fish. Mose was always glad to see us.

I thought of the Goat Man again. I recalled him standing below the Swinging Bridge, looking up through the shadows at me. I thought of him near our house, watching. The Goat Man had killed those women. Not Mose. I was certain of it.

It was there in the car, battered by the cool October wind, that I began to formulate a plan to find the Goat Man and free Mose. I thought on it for several days after, and I begun to come up with something that seemed like a good idea.

Looking back on it now, I realize just how foolish and wild it was. Inspired by one of Mrs. Canerton’s books, The Count of Monte Cristo.

But my plan, foolish as it was, never came to pass.

Next day Daddy went to the barbershop and Mama had me stay home with Tom to help her do the canning. We did that all morning and well after lunch. Late in the afternoon, Mama sent Tom and me out to play and she set about putting up the vegetables we had canned in the cabinets.

Although it’s called canning, we did it in jars. It was a lot of work, sterilizing jars, packing them with cooked vegetables, sealing them with paraffin and lids, setting them aside. I was glad to get away from it all. Tom and I played a game of chase at the edge of the woods, and finally took to resting under the oak. Tom fell asleep in the chair there right away, and I walked to the well to get a drink of water. I was still cooking on my plan to rescue Mose, although I was beginning to wonder what I was rescuing him from. Where would I take him?

I cranked up the bucket and used the dipper to drink, and as I was putting it aside, I heard a car roll up around front. I thought it was most likely Daddy, maybe coming home early if the shop wasn’t well attended, so I went around the edge of the house to see.

When I got there I saw the car was a black dented Ford. The man that got out was wearing a large gray cowboy hat and a holstered gun on his hip. He stood in front of the Ford with his right knee cocked forward and he was working the ground with the toe of his boot, way he had the day I first seen him. He wore a long-sleeve shirt with the sleeves buttoned down tight. There was a sweat ring around his neck. He was the same man Daddy had talked to outside of Pearl Creek. The one he had saved from a suck hole when they were both young. Red.

He saw me and smiled. “How’re you doin’, partner?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Your Daddy here?”

“My Mama,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “well, that’ll do. Tell her I’m here, will you?”

I went inside and told Mama. When she went to the front door and saw Red standing in the yard, I noticed a change in her expression. I can’t describe it to you. It was surprise, but something else too. She reached up and gently touched her hair, then her hands dropped to her sides and she smoothed her dress.