Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

“It was,” Daddy said.

“Very well. I’m prepared to apologize for him, and present you with some compensation for the anguish and so the story will not get spread.”

“Compensation?” Daddy said.

“Money.”

“You want to pay Callie off to not say anything?”

“The police will not get involved in this matter,” Stilwind said. “I can assure you of that. I know them quite well. The chief, the old chief, and the young man who will most likely take over the job, are all good friends of mine. I’ve always had good relations with the police.”

“You give them money, they’re your friends,” Daddy said. “That what you’re saying?”

“You could say that. But the money I’m offering is substantial.” Stilwind looked around. “You could do a lot with this place with that money.”

“There’s nothing wrong with this place that a good fumigation won’t cure when you leave,” Daddy said.

“I need not pay you a dime, sir. The police hardly see the flirtations of one little girl worth the trouble of bothering my son. I’m sure of this. But I don’t need the word spread. It’s not good for me. It’s not good for my son. It certainly wouldn’t be good for your daughter.”

“Why isn’t he here to speak for himself?” Mom asked.

“I felt this was the better way to go about it.”

“Come in, pay us off, go to the house, forget it,” Daddy said.

“If you want to break it down to a crude summation, I suppose you are right. It doesn’t do us any good to do otherwise. Your family or mine.”

“I think your son is a coward,” Daddy said. “Uh uh, don’t speak, Stilwind. You listen to me. I think you are a coward. I think you think your money gets you out of everything. You’re fortunate the worst that happened was he tore my daughter’s blouse. Otherwise, I’d kill him.”

“You’d go to prison for the rest of your life,” Stilwind said. “I’d see to that.”

“That could be. Let me tell you this, and I’ll deny it if asked. I’m not going to bother your son. My daughter is all right. She took up for herself quite well. But, someday, he’ll get his. I can promise you that.”

“Don’t lay a hand on him,” Stilwind said. “Never. I promise you. I’m going to make things rough for you in this town. Ordinances may not be being obeyed here. Police might need to pull you over from time to time, just to check and see if you’re driving right.”

“You know,” Daddy said. “I don’t think you care about James at all. I think you care about you. How this hurts you, or your name. I bet this boy has been in plenty of trouble, that you’ve bought him out of all manner of it. He doesn’t feel he has to be responsible. Just like I bet you’ve never been responsible.”

“I earned all that I have,” Stilwind said. “All of it.”

“So have I. It may be less than you have, but I earned it. I think it gave me character. I think it gave you money and a shoeshine.”

“Very well,” Stilwind said, picking his hat from his knee and rising. “You had your chance. It was not meant as a bribe. Just a token of apology.”

“Your apology is nothing to me. And I wouldn’t give me too much trouble about ordinances either. I’m a fighter.”

“Good day, sir,” Stilwind said.

“I won’t wish you that,” Daddy said. “I wouldn’t give a damn if you flipped your car and it killed you.”

“Stanley,” Mom said.

“You tell your son to stay away from my daughter. Forever.”

Stilwind put on his hat and made his own way to the door. I went to the window and looked out. There was a colored man in a black suit with a black cap waiting beside a long black car. The colored man smiled and opened the back door for Stilwind. Stilwind got in without saying a word. The colored man drove the car away.

Rosy picked up Stilwind’s coffee cup and dumped his coffee in the sink. “He didn’t even drink a drop,” she said. “And me goin’ to all that trouble.”

Callie took hold of Daddy’s hand and squeezed it. “Thanks, Daddy.”

Daddy squeezed her hand back.

“You did good,” Mom said. “Except for that car wreck part.”

“Meant it,” Daddy said.

“Uh oh,” Rosy said. “Think I smell our cake a burnin’.”

———

HE WAS HERE in your house?” Buster said, wiping the projector lens clean with a soft rag.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that something? He old, ain’t he?”

“Yes. Not real, real old. But older than Daddy.”

“Old as me?”

“No, sir. I don’t think so.”

“Not many people are. And I’ll tell you, I’m starting to feel it. That walk to work is catching up with me. I have to start about twenty minutes earlier these days, just so I can stop along the way and rest a little.”

“Buster?”

“Yeah, Stan.”

“What if it wasn’t the father?”

“Do what?”

“What if it’s James that did it? Not Mr. Stilwind?”

“You been thinking again, ain’t you?”

“Remember what you showed me about Margret’s letters?”

Buster put the rag in his back pocket and perched on the stool behind the projector.

“How do you mean?” he said.

“I assumed Margret was seeing James. I thought J was James and it was Jewel.”

“That was a normal thing to think, Stan. More them that like the opposite than like the same.”

“That report you read to me. The chief’s report. Did the daughter actually say it was her father?”

“I said it could be other ways, didn’t I, Stan?”

“You did.”

Buster scratched his chin, stepped on a bug running across the floor. He said, “You’re sayin’ the report didn’t say it was the father, so it could have been James . . . You know, it could. It could have been James knocked up the first sister, then the second. He was old enough. He maybe near forty now and still actin’ like some kind of teenager, trickin’ your sister like that . . . Older sister, Susan, she could have meant her brother. The old man just went down to the police station to smooth it over, way he tried to do today with your family. Sometimes a man thinks a son is more important than a daughter. It could be like that.”

“Daddy thinks Stilwind doesn’t really care for his James. Just didn’t want to be embarrassed.”

“Think your daddy’s right on that one, Stan. So now you think it’s James instead of the daddy?”

“Maybe.”

“Ever think it might have been the daddy on one, the brother on the other? Lot of times, you learn how you act from how your family acts. You can’t tell me Old Man Stilwind is all that good at how he acts. Evidence don’t show that. James may have found out his father was havin’ him a time with the older sister, and he done the same with the younger one. Now, mind you, I ain’t sayin’ it’s that way. Just tryin’ to teach you you can’t think somethin’ one way. That’s why you supposed to have trials, not lynchin’s. Most of the time things are just the way they look, but sometimes they ain’t.”

“What’s a lynchin’?”

“Most people mean a hangin’. But we colored, we’re talkin’ about burnin’, castratin’, torturin’. Way the law likes to work is they can’t find who done somethin’, they just go out and get a nigger. Sometimes the nigger done it. Sometimes not. That’s what I mean about a jury, and not just speculation. You see, you can think a thing all kinds of ways, even if you got bits of evidence. But evidence is in the way you look at it. ’Less you catch the sucker redhanded or they’re tryin’ to hurt you. Like Bubba Joe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I seen a lynchin’ once.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh. Over in Nacogdoches. Nineteen and two it was. A nigger named Jim Buchannon. He was picked up for murderin’ a man and his wife I think. Stole a rifle from them, they said. And he had the rifle, which he claimed he traded a white man for. And he might have done it too. Or he might have killed them white folks. Can’t say.