It was a Monday, and Daddy was off from the barbershop. He had already gotten up and fed the livestock, and as daybreak was running like a broken egg yolk through the trees and the birds were calling out that they were in search of breakfast, he got me up to help tote water from the well to the house. Mama was in the kitchen tending the wood stove, cooking grits, biscuits, and fatback for breakfast.
When we came in she smiled and he kissed her on the cheek and ran his hand down her back. She gave him a quick peck on the mouth and a wink.
We left out then for another bucket of water, and about halfway to the well, I said, “Daddy. You ever figure out what you’re gonna do with ole Mose?”
He paused a moment. “How’d you know about that?”
“I heard you and Mama talkin’.”
He nodded, and we started walking again. We got water and started back to the house. He said, “You ain’t mentioned you know anything about that, have you?”
“No sir.”
“Good boy.”
“So what have you decided to do with Mose?”
“I haven’t decided. I can’t leave him where he is for good. Someone will get on to it. I’m gonna have to take him to the courthouse, or let him go. There’s no real evidence against him, just some circumstantial stuff. But a colored man, a white woman, he’ll never get a fair trial. I guess I’d done let him go, but I got to be sure myself he didn’t do it.”
“I thought you said the woman was colored. Or part white.”
“You was listenin’ from somewhere at Mrs. Canerton’s house, wasn’t you?”
I admitted it.
“Well, let me tell you somethin’. That woman was white. She didn’t have a drop of colored blood that anyone knowed of. She was dark-lookin’ ’cause she was bloated and dead and up there in that tree for the wind and rain to hammer on. Folks that found her just thought she was colored, way her skin had turned. Around here, someone gets a good burn in the sun and it turns brown, there’s someone whisperin’ there’s colored blood in ’em. Hell. I thought she was colored too. Body gets like that, you can’t tell much about skin or race or nothin’. Death puts us all even, boy.”
“Mr. Chandler said she was colored.”
“She’s dark-skinned, son. Just like I said.”
“But you said-”
“I threw that in to keep from stirrin’ people up. You put white and colored in the same sentence, folks start to stir.”
“You did put white and colored in the same sentence. You said she was part white.”
“You’re right.” Daddy paused to take his pipe out of his pocket, stuff it with tobacco, and light it. “I’m not sure that was smart, son, but I was playing the odds. I said she was colored, no one cares. Had I said she was white, there’d have been lynchin’s all over this county. But she’s got white blood, it gives most folks pause, makes some folks see her as a human being. On the other hand, she’s not so white they’d get worked up over it. It’s a sad state of affairs, but that’s how it is.”
“How’d you find out she was a white lady?”
“Thinking she was colored, I drove her body over to Pearl Creek to see if Doc Tinn or Reverend Bail knew who she was. They did, but not because she was colored. She was white and had a bad reputation and mostly worked the colored section over Pearl Creek. That gave her a worse reputation. A white woman that’ll lie down with coloreds don’t get the respect of one will lie down with her own kind. And a woman like that don’t get much to begin with. She hoboed to get to Pearl Creek from Tyler, rode the train back when she could catch it. Did most of her work at the dance joints and about. But, word gets out – and it will eventually – that she was white, well, it won’t matter she was a woman none of the so-called self-respectin’ men over here would have given the time of day, even if they might have given her a dollar. Them same men are gonna be up in arms, ravin’ about how a colored killed her and how all white womanhood is in danger.”
“Ain’t it in danger?”
“Womanhood in general is in danger, son. Anyone could be in danger with a killer like this. But I think it’s mostly women he’s after. I’m just sayin’ she’d gotten killed by a train or drowned by accident, wouldn’t have been no mournin’. But folks like Nation think maybe a colored had his way with her, well, Mose and every colored boy over twelve might end up bein’ lynched.”
We carried the buckets toward the house.
“You said you got to be sure Mose didn’t do it, but you don’t think he did, do you, Daddy?”
We were on the back porch now. Daddy set his bucket down. I set mine down too. “It’s like I’ve opened this box and I don’t know how to close it. Mistake I made was mentioning it. That was pride talking.”
“You were proud of arresting Mose?”
“I was proud of the fact I was doin’ somethin’. So far in this whole business all I’ve done is look at a couple dead bodies, talk to a few folks, and that’s it. I don’t know no more than I did when I started. ’Cept these women got names, and I figure they got loved ones. Worse thing about it, I don’t even know for sure. I didn’t try to find any of the families or go see ’em. I was gonna do any real investigatin’, that’s what I should have done. It’s what I ought to do. Mistake I made was arrestin’ Mose in the first place, then tellin’ I’d arrested someone. And I did that on account of Doc Stephenson.”
“How’s that?”
“He was in the shop. He came in to get Cecil to cut his hair. He used to come in now and then for me to do it, but after that little event over in Pearl Creek, he only has Cecil do it. I guess my pride got to me, him thinkin’ I didn’t know what I was doin’, and Cecil gettin’ the bulk of the customers, so I shot my mouth off like I was talkin’ to Cecil.”
“But you was talkin’ to Doc Stephenson?”
“Afraid so. And it come back to haunt me at Mrs. Canerton’s.”
We took the water inside, poured it up in the pitchers and one of the washtubs where Mama kept extra water throughout the day, then started back.
We came to the well and Daddy rested his bucket on the curbing for a moment. He turned to me and said, “You know why I haven’t seen any of the folks of these women got murdered?”
I shook my head.
“ ’Cause one’s colored, Harry, and the other is a prostitute. I don’t really know no colored people, ’cept Mose. I talk to a bunch of ’em, and like ’em okay, and I think a bunch like me okay, but I don’t know ’em, and they don’t really know me. Hell, I don’t really know Mose. All me and him ever talked about was fishing and the river and now and then tobacco. I guess I don’t want to know no prostitute’s mother or Daddy. Down deep, I think I may be just like everyone else. And you know what, Harry?”
“No sir.”
“That bothers me.”
Daddy dropped the bucket into the well. When it splashed, he began cranking it up.
“You ain’t like everybody else, Daddy. You don’t hate colored.”
“Down deep, like I said, I ain’t so sure. I have my feelings.”
“But you and Mama, you’re different than the others.”
“There’s lots of folks feel like we do. It’s just the ones feel the other way got bigger mouths and they’re meaner. Let me tell you somethin’, son. When I was a boy every word out of my mouth about the coloreds was nigger this and nigger that. I fished on the river as a boy a lot, and there was this colored boy down there, and he was catching big ole catfish. I was jealous of him. The idea of a colored catchin’ those big ole fish, and me not able to catch anything. I’m ashamed to tell it, but I was gonna beat him up one day. I was down there, and there he was near my spot, pullin’ them fish out like they was trained to jump on his line.
“He looked over at me, and said, ‘Sir, I got some good bait I done made myself, you want some?’
“I took some, and I still didn’t have any luck. But we sat there on the bank and we talked, and by the end of the day I knew somethin’ I’d never known before.”
“What was that?”
“He was just like me. He had a mean old Daddy too. Old man had killed half a dozen folks, all colored, so not
