green walnuts, killed all them perch and bass. Even some of them big ole catfish?”
“I do.”
“I remember how mad you was. You said, ‘’At ain’t no way to do no fishin’,’ and you walloped one of ’em. You ’member that?”
“Sure.”
“You and me, we never did go in for them green walnuts or dynamitin’, did we?”
“No, we didn’t, Mose. We just fished the way you’re supposed to. With a pole, line, hook, and patience.”
“Yessuh, we did.”
“Dem Davises you know they eventually turned they boat over and one of ’em drowned an other’n got snake-bit.”
“I heard that.”
“Now that’s somethin’, ain’t it, Missuh Jacob.”
“It is.”
“Now they ain’t no Davis brothers.”
We walked him to his shack. He was limping as he went. When we got there he pushed the unlocked door open. It didn’t look any better inside than Mr. Smoote’s barn, except there wasn’t the smell and as many flies. It was just one room with a window near the door, and a window on the opposite side. One window had glass in it, the other just a thin strip of yellow oilcloth.
Mose went inside and we stood in the doorway.
“You gonna be all right, Mose?” Daddy asked.
“Yessuh, Missuh Jacob.”
“You got somethin’ to eat?”
“I got couple cans a stuff. I’ll fish me up somethin’ too.”
Mose got a small can off a shelf and pulled the lid free. He stuck his fingers in the black mess inside, bent over and rubbed it on the spot where the chain had cut his ankle. It was axle grease. Lot of folks used it back then to lubricate sores or help stop bleeding from minor wounds.
When Mose was finished with that, he limped over to one of the two chairs he had and sat down at a small wood plank table. He looked even smaller than he had looked at Mr. Smoote’s place.
“All right, then,” Daddy said. “Well, you take care, Mose.”
“Yessuh. And you come to fish, bring the boy.”
“I will.”
As we were climbing into the car, Daddy said, “Ain’t no doubt, this hasn’t been my finest hour.”
12
As we bumped up the trail toward Preacher’s Road, I said, “What favor did you do Mr. Smoote? He didn’t sound like he was real grateful.”
“He don’t like to think about it, son. One of his girls, the oldest one. She’s about nineteen now… we didn’t see her today.”
“Mary Jean?”
“That’s the one. I caught her with a colored boy, son. If you know what I mean.”
I blushed. Daddy had never talked to me about such things.
“I ain’t never told nobody but you. Not even your Mama. And you ain’t never gonna say, ’cause I’m askin’ you to keep your word, and I know you will. I figure there’s some things a man ought to be able to tell his son he don’t have to tell no one else and can’t.”
“Yes sir. Is that why he chained Mose?”
“Part of it. He don’t let that girl out of the house hardly no more. He’s afraid she’ll get with the colored. He figures she’s got a fever for it. I figure she’s just a little slutty to begin with, and that probably wasn’t her first time to dally. Colored or white, I can’t say. I don’t think Mary Jean’s all that choosy.”
I filed that away.
Daddy added, as if reading my mind, “You stay away from that gal, hear? She might have some kind of disease.”
“Yes sir. I don’t want nothin’ to do with her… Daddy, what about the colored boy?”
“She didn’t even know him. She met him down by the river, fishin’. She’d gone down there to do the same. They got to talkin’ about things, and I guess she figured she could talk to him about stuff she couldn’t talk to a white boy about. People figure colored haven’t got the morals whites got. But it ain’t that way at all, son. There’s just as many good coloreds as white, and just as many sorry. Most, white or colored, ain’t quite on one side altogether. They’re a mix. A good person is one where the mix turns out mostly for the better. But she got to talkin’, and he got to talkin’, and well, pretty soon they was doin’ more than talkin’. I was out lookin’ for Mrs. Benton’s cow. Widow lives up on the hill behind Bill. She come to me askin’ for help, so I went to lookin’. What I found was Mary Jean and that colored boy. I run him on. Told him not to come back. Mary Jean didn’t know his name, so that wouldn’t gonna come up. I told her to dress, and I took her home.”
“And told her Daddy?”
“I wasn’t gonna say nothin’. She told her Daddy. Just to hurt him, I figure. She’s got a mean streak in her, but then again, so does her Daddy. He’s walloped her hide pretty often.”
“Daddy, you’ve walloped us some.”
Daddy was quiet for a moment. “You think so? I raised big welts on you, son?”
“No sir.”
“Have I whupped you just to make myself feel better?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I whupped you for things you didn’t do?”
“Once. I didn’t drop that cat down the outhouse. Tom done that.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“She was little. She didn’t know no better.”
“So you took the whuppin’ for her?”
“Yes sir.”
“I can admire that. But you’ve been corrected, boy. Not beat. Stung, but not injured. And I don’t spank as a matter of course. I think hard on any spankin’s I give you.”
“There was that time we put salt in your coffee, and you took a swig and we laughed and you jerked us up and got us both. You didn’t consider much on that one.”
Daddy laughed. “That one didn’t deserve considerin’. I knew darn well who done that.”
I turned back to the subject. “So Mary Jean told her Daddy what she did to hurt him?”
“Way I figure it. Bill wanted to kill the boy, but I told him I didn’t know who he was and didn’t remember how he looked. Far as he’s concerned they all look alike anyway, so he didn’t have no trouble buyin’ that.
“And she wasn’t raped. I told him I seen what was happenin’, and it sure wasn’t rape. Not the way she was laughin’.”
“So Mr. Smoote knows you know and he wants to make sure you don’t say ’cause he don’t want folks to know his daughter was with colored.”
“That’s about the size of it. I don’t intend to say no how. And I’ve told him that. I figured I asked a favor of him he’d do it ’cause he owed me. But Bill ain’t smart. Askin’ that boy to help him chain Ole Mose. He didn’t think that one through.”
That night I couldn’t sleep, got up carefully so as not to wake Tom, and still wearing my nightshirt slipped out onto the sleeping porch. I thought I might sleep there, but instead I ended up going out to the well in my bare feet and pulling up a bucket of water and using the dipper to get a drink. I took my time about it, listening to the crickets saw on their legs.
When I got back to the sleeping porch, Mama was there. She was sitting in the swing, wearing her quilted nightgown. I thought I might have awakened her, or that she was going to fuss at me for being up, but instead she
