The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (14 page)

“Goodness.”

“Cal said he’d just heard the rumor of the other. Cal gave me the name of the editor of the colored paper. I went over and talked to him, a fella named Max Greene. They did do a report on it. He gave me a back issue. The first one was killed January of last year, a little farther up than Mission Creek. They found her in the river too. Her private parts had been cut out and stuffed in her mouth.”

“My God. But those murders are some months apart. It wouldn’t be the same person, would it?”

“I hope so. Like I said, I don’t want to think there’s two or three just like this fella runnin’ around. Way the bodies are mistreated, sort of displayed, something terribly vulgar done to them. I think it’s the same man.

“Greene was of the opinion the murderer likes to finish ‘em by drowning ‘em. Even the one found in the drainpipe was in water. And the law over there is probably right about it being someone rides the rails. Every spot was near the tracks, close to some little jumping-off point with a juke joint and a working girl. But that don’t mean he’s a hobo or someone leaves the area much. He could just use the trains to go to the murder sites.”

“The body Harry found. What happened to it? Who took it?”

“No one. Honey, I paid 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.”

They grew quiet, and I rolled on my back and looked at the ceiling. When I closed my eyes I saw the woman’s body, ruined and swollen, fixed to the tree by vines and thorns. And I saw the bright eyes and white teeth in the dark face of the horned Goat Man. I remembered looking over my shoulder and seeing the Goat Man standing in shadow in the middle of the wooded trail, watching me.

Eventually, in my dream I reached the road, and then I fell asleep.

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. Eventually it was all a distant memory.

Daddy looked around for the Goat Man awhile, but except for some tracks along the bank, some signs of somebody scavenging around down there, he didn’t find anyone. But I heard him telling Mama how he felt he was being watched, and that he figured there was someone out there knew the woods as well as any animal.

But 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 they were colored, he picked them up without the justice of the peace. So, in time the murder and the Goat Man moved into our past.

By that fall, Toby had actually begun to walk again. His back wasn’t broken, but the limb had caused some kind of nerve damage. He never quite got back to normal, but he could get around with a bit of stiffness, and from time to time, for no reason we could see, his hips would go dead and he’d end up dragging his rear end. Most of the time, he was all right, and ran with a kind of limp, and not very fast. He was still the best squirrel dog in the county.

Late October, a week short of Halloween, when the air had turned cool and the nights were crisp and clear and the moon was like a pumpkin in the sky, Tom and me played late, chasing lightning bugs and each other. Daddy had gone off on a constable duty, and Mama was in the house sewing, and when we got good and played out, me and Tom sat out under the oak talking about this and that, and suddenly we stopped, and I had a kind of cold feeling. I don’t know if a person really has a sixth sense. Maybe it’s little things you notice unconsciously. Something seen out of the corner of the eye. Something heard at the back of a conversation. But I had that same feeling Daddy had spoken of, the feeling of being watched.

I stopped listening to Tom, who was chattering on about something or another, and slowly turned my head toward the woods, and there, between two trees, in the shadows, but clearly framed by the light, was a horned figure, watching us.

Tom, noticing I wasn’t listening to her, said, “Hey.”

“Tom,” I said, “be quiet a moment and look where I’m lookin’.”

“I don’t see any —” Then she went quiet, and after a moment, whispered: “It’s him… It’s the Goat Man.”

The shape abruptly turned, crunched a stick, rustled some leaves, and was gone. We didn’t tell Daddy or Mama what we saw. I don’t exactly know why, but we didn’t. It was between me and Tom, and the next day we hardly mentioned it.

A week later, Janice Jane Willman was dead.

We heard about it Halloween night. There was a little party in town for the kids and whoever wanted to come. There were no invitations. Each year it was understood the party would take place and you could show up. The women brought covered dishes and the men brought a little bit of hooch to slip into their drinks.

The party was at Mrs. Canerton’s. She was a widow, and kept books at her house as a kind of library. She let us borrow them from her, or we could come and sit in her house and read or even be read to, and she always had some cookies or lemonade, and she wasn’t adverse to listening to our stories or problems. She was a sweet-faced lady with large breasts and a lot of men in town liked her and thought she was pretty.

Every year she had a little Halloween party for the kids. Apples. Pumpkin pie and such. Everyone who could afford a spare pillowcase made a ghost costume. A few of the older boys would slip off to West Street to soap some windows, and that was about it for Halloween. But back then, it seemed pretty wonderful.

Daddy had taken us to the party. It was another fine, cool night with lots of lightning bugs and crickets chirping, and me and Tom got to playing hide and go seek with the rest of the kids, and while the person who was it was counting, we went to hide. I crawled up under Mrs. Canerton’s house, under the front porch. I hadn’t no more than got up under there good, than Tom crawled up beside me.

“Hey,” I whispered. “Go find your own place.”

“I didn’t know you was under here. It’s too late for me to go anywhere.”

“Then be quiet,” I said.

While we were sitting there, we saw shoes and pants legs moving toward the porch steps. It was the men who had been standing out in the yard smoking. They were gathering on the porch to talk. I recognized a pair of boots as Daddy’s, and after a bit of moving about on the porch above us, we heard the porch swing creak and some of the porch chairs scraping around, and then I heard Cecil speak.

“How long she been dead?”

“About a week I reckon,” Daddy said.

“She anyone we know?”

“A prostitute,” Daddy said. “Janice Jane Willman. She lives near all them juke joints outside of Mission Creek. She picked up the wrong man. Ended up in the river.”

“She drown?” someone else asked.

“Reckon so. But she suffered some before that.”

“You know who did it?” Cecil asked. “Any leads?”

“No. Not really.”

“Niggers.” I knew that voice. Old Man Nation. He showed up wherever there was food and possibly liquor, and he never brought a covered dish or liquor. “Niggers find a white woman down there in the bottoms, they’ll get her.”

“Yeah,” I heard a voice say. “And what would a white woman be doin’ wanderin’ around down there?”

“Maybe he brought her there,” Mr. Nation said. “A nigger’ll take a white woman he gets a chance. Hell, wouldn’t you if you was a nigger? Think about what you’d be gettin’ at home. Some nigger. A white woman, that’s prime business to ‘em. Then, if you’re a nigger and you’ve done it to her, you got to kill her so no one knows. Not that any self-respectin’ white woman would want to live after somethin’ like that.”

“That’s enough of that,” Daddy said.

“You threatenin’ me?” Mr. Nation said.

“I’m sayin’ we don’t need that kind of talk,” Daddy said. “The murderer could have been white or black.”

“It’ll turn out to be a nigger,” Mr. Nation said. “Mark my words.”

“I heard you had a suspect,” Cecil said.

“Not really,” Daddy said.

“Some colored fella, I heard,” Cecil said.

“I knew it,” Nation said. “Some goddamn nigger.”

“I picked a man up for questioning, that’s all.”

“Where is he?” Nation asked.

“You know,” Daddy said, “I think I’m gonna have me a piece of that pie.”

The porch creaked, the screen door opened, and we heard boot steps entering into the house.

“Nigger lover,” Nation said.

“That’s enough of that,” Cecil said.

“You talkin’ to me, fella?” Mr. Nation said.

“I am, and I said that’s enough.”

There was some scuttling movement on the porch, and suddenly there was a smacking sound and Mr. Nation hit the ground in front of us. We could see him through the steps. His face turned in our direction, but I don’t think he saw us. It was dark under the house, and he had his mind on other things. He got up quick like, leaving his hat on the ground, then we heard movement on the porch and Daddy’s voice. “Ethan, don’t come back on the porch. Go on home.”

“Who do you think you are to tell me anything?” Mr. Nation said.

“Right now, I’m the constable, and you come up on this porch, you do one little thing that annoys me, I will arrest you.”

“You and who else?”

“Just me.”

“What about him? He hit me. You’re on his side because he took up for you.”

“I’m on his side because you’re a loudmouth spoiling everyone else’s good time. You been drinkin’ too much. Go on home and sleep it off, Ethan. Let’s don’t let this get out of hand.”

Mr. Nation’s hand dropped down and picked up his hat. He said, “You’re awfully high and mighty, aren’t you?”

“There’s just no use fighting over something silly,” Daddy said.

“You watch yourself, nigger lover,” Mr. Nation said.

“Don’t come by the barbershop no more,” Daddy said.

“Wouldn’t think of it, nigger lover.”

Then Mr. Nation turned and we saw him walking away.

Daddy said, “Cecil. You talk too much.”

“Yeah, I know,” Cecil said.

“Now, I was gonna get some pie,” Daddy said. “I’m gonna go back inside and try it again. When I come back out, how’s about we talk about somethin’ altogether different?”

“Suits me,” someone said, and I heard the screen door open again. For a moment I thought they were all inside, then I realized Daddy and Cecil were still on the porch, and Daddy was talking to Cecil.

“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” Daddy said.

“It’s all right. You’re right. I talk too much.”

“Let’s forget it.”

“Sure… Jacob, this suspect. You think he did it?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Is he safe?”

“For now. I may just let him go and never let it be known who he is. Bill Smoote is helping me out with him right now.”

“Again, I’m sorry, Jacob.”

“No problem. Let’s get some of that pie.”

On the way home in the car our bellies were full of apples, pie, and lemonade. The windows were rolled down and the October wind was fresh and ripe with the smell of the woods. As we wound through those woods along the dirt road that led to our house, I began to feel sleepy.

Tom had already nodded off. I leaned against the side of the car and began to halfway doze. In time, I realized Mama and Daddy were talking.

“He had her purse?” Mama said.

“Yeah.” Daddy said. “He had it, and he’d taken money from it.”

“Could it be him?”

“He says he was fishing, saw the purse and her dress floating, snagged the purse with his fishing line. He saw there was money inside, and he took it. He said he figured a purse in the river wasn’t something anyone was going to find, and there wasn’t any name in it, and it was just five dollars going to waste. He said he didn’t even consider that someone had been murdered. It could have happened that way. Personally, I believe him. I’ve known old Mose all my life. He taught me how to fish. He practically lives on that river in that boat of his. He wouldn’t harm a fly. Besides, the man’s seventy years old and not in the best of health. He’s had a hell of a life. His wife ran off forty years ago and he’s never gotten over it. His son disappeared when he was a youngster. Whoever raped this woman had to be pretty strong. She was young enough, and from the way her body looked, she put up a pretty good fight. Man did this had to be strong enough to… Well, she was cut up pretty bad. Same as the other women. Slashes along the breasts. Her hand hacked off at the wrist. We didn’t find it.”

“Oh dear.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“How did you come by the purse?”

“I went by to see Mose. Like I always do when I’m down on the river. It was layin’ on the table in his shack. I had to arrest him. I don’t know I should have now. Maybe I should have just taken the purse and said I found it. I mean, I believe him. But I don’t have evidence one way or the other.”

“Hon, didn’t Mose have some trouble before?”

“When his wife ran off some thought he’d killed her. She was fairly loose. That was the rumor. Nothing ever came of it.”

“But he could have done it?”

“I suppose.”

“And wasn’t there something about his boy?”

“Telly was the boy’s name. He was addleheaded. Mose claimed that’s why his wife run off. She was embarrassed by that addleheaded boy. Kid disappeared four or five years later and Mose never talked about it. Some thought he killed him too. But that’s just rumor. White folks talkin’ about colored folks like they do. I believe his wife ran off. The boy wasn’t much of a thinker, and he may have run off too. He liked to roam the woods and river. He might have drowned, fallen in some hole somewhere and never got out.”

“But none of that makes it look good for Mose, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“What are you gonna do, Jacob?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid to lock him up over at the courthouse. It isn’t a real jail anyway, and word gets around a colored man was involved, there won’t be any real thinking on the matter. I talked Bill Smoote into letting me keep Mose over at his bait house.”