prostitutes. One happened in Pearl Creek. Her body was found stuffed in a big drainpipe down near the river by the sawmill. Her legs had been broken and pulled up and tied to her head and her body had been cut on. Like the one I seen today. Turned out nobody really knew this woman, though. She had sort of drifted in and got a job in one of the cribs over there.”
“Cribs?”
“That’s where the prostitutes work, dear. It’s a kind of house
… You know?”
“Oh. I’m certainly gettin’ an education. I didn’t know you knew all this.”
“I find out a lot doin’ my little constablin’. Anyway, she was found and buried by some Christians wanted her to have a burial, and after a time no one thought much about it. It’s the same old story. A colored murder isn’t something the colored say much about, ’cept amongst themselves. They take care of their own when they can, ’cause the white law sure ain’t gonna do much. In this case, wasn’t no one really knew the woman and wasn’t anyone suspected. Same thing was thought then that’s thought about Jelda May Sykes. It was figured a tramp done her in, caught the train out.”
“You said there were three.”
“Other was found in the river. Thought to be a drown victim at first. Cal said rumor was she was cut on, but he can’t say for sure if it’s true. Might not be any kind of connection.”
“When did these murders happen?”
“Best I can tell, the first one was killed January of last year. The other one, I don’t know. Don’t even know if it did happen. People could have been talking about something happened years ago and Cal caught wind of it. Or whoever told him might have misheard it. Or been yarn’n him. It’s hard to tell when it comes to the colored community.”
“Did Mr. Fields know about Jelda May Sykes?”
“He did.”
They were silent for a while. Through our thin walls I could hear the crickets outside, and somewhere in the bottoms, the sound of a big bullfrog bleating.
“Jelda May’s body,” Mama asked. “What happened to it? Who took it?”
“No one. Honey, I paid a little down payment to have her buried in the colored cemetery over there. I know we don’t have the money, but-”
“Shush. That’s all right. You did good.”
“I told the preacher over there I’d give him a bit more when I got it.”
“That’s good, Jacob. That’s real good.”
“By the way, the constable over there. You know who it is?”
“No.”
“Red Woodrow.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that. Did you know that?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“You didn’t mention it.”
“Didn’t see any reason to. I never thought about it much until today when I seen him. I didn’t want to mention it now-”
“Oh, don’t be silly.”
“ – but I felt I ought to. I don’t like to hide behind something bothers me. He told me to tell you hello.”
“He did.”
“I didn’t plan to tell you. I don’t know why I did.”
“Honey, you can quit being silly. You know there wasn’t nothing to any of that.”
Their tone had changed. Had become almost formal. I wasn’t sure what was different, but something was, and it had to do with Red Woodrow.
“He wanted me to stay out of things.”
“It is his jurisdiction, isn’t it?”
“Like I said, murder took place here. The only reason they have the body is I needed help from Doc Tinn.”
“Red can be… well, testy.”
“Wasn’t the word I had in mind for him,” Daddy said.
“Jacob, just forget him.”
“I want to.”
“His shirtsleeves?” Mama asked.
“He still keeps them rolled down.”
They grew silent. I turned on my back and looked at the ceiling. When I closed my eyes I saw Jelda May Sykes again, ruined and swollen, fixed to that tree with barbed wire. And then she was gone, just faded away, leaving only her dark eyes, and then the dark eyes turned bright and I saw white teeth in the dark face of the horned Goat Man.
Suddenly, I was standing in shadow in the middle of the trail looking at him. He started coming toward me.
I ran, and I could hear him running right behind me. I was breathing hard, and he was breathing even harder, but not like he was tired. It was more the fast-paced breathing of someone planning something they would enjoy.
The shadows from the trees grabbed at me and tried to hold me, but I broke loose. Just as the Goat Man was gaining on me, about to put his hand on my shoulder, I reached the Preacher’s Road ahead of him, and when I looked over my shoulder, he was gone. I was sitting up in bed, wide awake, staring at the wall.
It took me a long time to fall back asleep, and in the morning I awoke exhausted, as if I had been pursued all night by the devil himself.
8
After a while, things drifted back to normal for Tom and me. Time is like that. Especially when you’re young. It can fix a lot of things, and what it doesn’t fix, you forget, or at least push back and only bring out at certain times, which is what I did, now and then, late at night, just before sleep claimed me.
Daddy looked around for the killer awhile, but except for some tracks along the bank, signs of somebody scavenging around down there, he didn’t find anyone. I heard him telling Mama how he felt he was being watched when he was in the bottoms, and that he figured there was someone out there knew the woods and river well as any animal and was keeping an eye on him.
But that’s about all he said. There was nothing about it that led me to believe he thought those tracks were actually of the Goat Man or that the tracks belonged to the murderer. They could have been anyone fishing, hunting, or just fooling around. I didn’t get the impression his sensation of being watched meant much either.
In time Daddy no longer pursued it. I don’t think it was because he didn’t care, or that he was concerned with what Red Woodrow thought, but more like there was nothing to find, and therefore, nothing to do.
Making a living took the lead over any kind of investigation, and my Daddy was no investigator anyway. He was just a small-town constable who mainly delivered legal summonses, and picked up dead bodies with the justice of the peace. And if the bodies were colored, he picked them up without the justice of the peace.
So, with no real leads, in time the murder and the Goat Man moved into our past.
The thing I was interested in was what had interested me before. Hunting and fishing and reading books loaned me by Mrs. Canerton, who was a kind of librarian, though it wasn’t anything official. There wasn’t an official library in Marvel Creek until some years later. Mrs. Canerton was just a nice widow lady that kept a lot of books and loaned them out and kept records on them to make sure you gave them back. She would even let you come to her house and sit and read. She nearly always had cookies or lemonade on hand, and she wasn’t adverse to listening to our stories or problems.
I continued to read pulp magazines down at the barbershop and talked with Daddy and Cecil, though as
