by holding up his tail and legs, in the deepest part of the night, we reached home.
It wasn’t entirely a happy homecoming. The sky had grown cloudy and the moon was no longer bright. You could hear the cicadas chirping and frogs bleating off somewhere in the bottoms. When we entered into the yard carrying Toby, Daddy spoke from the shadows, and an owl, startled, flew out of the oak and was temporarily outlined against the faintly brighter sky.
“I ought to whup y’all’s butts,” Daddy said.
“Yes sir,” I said.
Daddy was sitting in a chair under an oak in the yard. It was sort of our gathering tree, where we sat and talked and shelled peas in the summer. He was smoking a pipe, a habit that would kill him later in life. I could see its glow as he puffed flames from a match into the tobacco. The smell from the pipe was woody and sour to me.
We went over and stood beneath the oak, near his chair.
“Your mother’s been terrified,” he said. “Harry, you know better than to stay out like that, and with your sister. You’re supposed to take care of her.”
“Yes sir.”
“I see you still have Toby.”
“Yes sir. I think he’s doing better.”
“You don’t do better with a broken back.”
“He treed six squirrels,” I said. I took my pocketknife out and cut the string around my waist and presented him with the squirrels. He looked at them in the darkness, laid them beside his chair.
“You have an excuse?” he said.
“Yes sir,” I said.
“All right, then,” he said. “Tom, you go on up to the house and get the tub and start filling it with water. It’s warm enough you won’t need to heat it. Not tonight. You bathe, then you get after them bugs on you with the kerosene and such, then hit the bed.”
“Yes sir,” she said. “But Daddy…”
“Go to the house, Tom,” Daddy said.
Tom looked at me, laid the shotgun down on the ground and went on toward the house.
Daddy puffed his pipe. “You said you had an excuse.”
“Yes sir. I got to runnin’ squirrels, but there’s something else. There’s a body down by the river.”
He leaned forward in his chair. “What?”
I told him everything that had happened. About being followed, the brambles, the body, the Goat Man. When I was finished, he said, “There isn’t any Goat Man, Harry. But the person you saw, it’s possible he was the killer. You being out like that, it could have been you or Tom.”
“Yes sir.”
“Suppose I’ll have to take a look early morning. You think you can find her again?”
“Yes sir, but I don’t want to.”
“I know, but I’m gonna need your help. You go up to the house now, and when Tom gets through, you wash up and get the bugs off of you. I know you’re covered. Hand me the shotgun and I’ll take care of Toby.”
I started to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. Daddy got up, cradled Toby in his arms and I put the shotgun in his hand.
“Damn rotten thing to happen to a good dog,” he said.
Daddy started walking off toward the little barn we had out back of the house by the field.
“Daddy,” I said. “I couldn’t do it. Not Toby.”
“That’s all right, son,” he said, and went on out to the barn.
When I got up to the house, Tom was on the back porch in the tub and Mama was scrubbing her vigorously by the light of a lantern hanging on a porch beam. When I came up, Mama, who was on her knees, looked over her shoulder at me. Her blonde hair was gathered up in a fat bun and a tendril of it had come loose and was hanging across her forehead and eye. She pushed it aside with a soapy hand. “You ought to know better than to stay out this late. And scaring Tom with stories about seeing a body.”
“It ain’t a story, Mama,” I said.
I told her about it, making it brief.
When I finished, she was quiet for a long moment. “Where’s your daddy?”
“He took Toby out to the barn. Toby’s back is broken.”
“I heard. I’m real sorry.”
I listened for the blast of the shotgun, but after fifteen minutes it still hadn’t come. Then I heard Daddy coming down from the barn, and pretty soon he stepped out of the shadows and into the lantern light, carrying the shotgun.
“I don’t reckon he needs killin’,” Daddy said. I felt my heart lighten, and I looked at Tom, who was peeking under Mama’s arm as Mama scrubbed her head with lye soap. “He could move his back legs a little, lift his tail. You might be right, Harry. He might be better. Besides, I wasn’t any better doin’ what ought to be done than you, son. He takes a turn for the worse, stays the same, well… In the meantime, he’s yours and Tom’s responsibility. Feed and water him, and you’ll need to manage him to do his business somehow.”
“Yes sir,” I said. “Thanks, Daddy.”
Daddy sat down on the porch with the shotgun cradled in his lap. “You say the woman was colored?”
“Yes sir.”
Daddy sighed. “That’s gonna make it some difficult,” he said.
Next morning I led Daddy out there by means of the road and the trail up to the swinging bridge. I didn’t want to cross the bridge again. I pointed out from the bank the spot across and down the river where the body could be found.
“All right,” Daddy said. “I’ll manage from here. You go home. Better yet, get into town and open up the barbershop. Cecil will be wondering where I am.”
I went home, out to the barn to check on Toby. He was crawling around on his belly, wiggling his back legs some. I left Tom with the duty to look after Toby being fed and all, then I got the barbershop key, saddled up Sally Redback, rode her the five miles into town.
Marvel Creek wasn’t much of a town really, not that it’s anything now, but back then it was pretty much two streets. Main and West. West had a row of houses, Main had the General Store, a courthouse, post office, the doctor’s office, the barbershop my daddy owned, a couple other businesses, and sometimes a band of roving hogs that belonged to Old Man Crittendon.
The barbershop was a little, one-room white building built under a couple of oaks. It was big enough for one real barber chair and a regular chair with a cushion on the seat and a cushion fastened to the back. Daddy cut hair out of the barber chair, and Cecil used the other.
During the summer the door was open, and there was just a screen door between you and the flies. The flies liked to gather on the screen and cluster like grapes. The wind was often hot.
Cecil was sitting on the steps reading the Tyler newspaper when I arrived. I tied Sally to one of the oaks, went over to unlock the door, and as I did, I gave Cecil a bit of a rundown, letting him know what Daddy was doing.
Cecil listened, shook his head, made a clucking noise with his tongue, then we were inside.
I loved the aroma of the shop. It smelled of alcohol, disinfectants, and hair oils. The bottles were in a row on a shelf behind the barber chair, and the liquid in them was in different colors, red and yellow and a blue liquid that smelled faintly of coconut.
There was a long bench along the wall near the door and a table with a stack of magazines with bright covers. Most of the magazines were detective stories. I read them whenever I got a chance, and sometimes Daddy brought the worn ones home.
When there weren’t any customers, Cecil read them too, sitting on the bench with a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth, looking like one of the characters out of the magazines. Hard-boiled, carefree, efficient.
Cecil was a big man, and from what I heard around town and indirectly from Daddy, ladies found him good- looking. He had a well-tended shock of reddish hair, bright eyes, and a nice face with slightly hooded eyes. He had come to Marvel Creek about two months back, a barber looking for work. Daddy, realizing he might have
