The Murderer Vine (24 page)

I went to bed early. I spent a restless night. I was the first customer in the bank next morning. I changed the fifties into five five-thousand-dollar bills, and put them in my safe-deposit box. Later on they could be taken across the border. I could even wear them in my shoes. A four-inch-thick packet in a shoe would attract far more attention.

By 10:15 I was airborne. I almost resented paying extra for the Kim, but it was a business expense, after all.

I could take it off my income tax.

I made up a little play. Here I am, drifting in the green water of the Gulf Stream. I’m wearing a big, broad-brimmed straw sombrero and a pair of shorts and some sunglasses. Nothing else. I’m very tanned. Swimming out to the launch, with his attaché case clamped between his teeth, is a U.S. Income Tax investigator. I watch him paddling closer with all my delinquent tax records in his jaws. Just before his office-pale hand is about to come over the transom, I punch a button. My twin marine Chryslers start up with a roar, and I leave the poor Fed bobbing in my enormous wake.

It was a nice fantasy, and I fell asleep smiling somewhere over Virginia.

When I walked into the terminal waiting room, I saw Kirby waving at me. She gave me a passionate homecoming kiss that mixed her perfume and her hair and body smell in one swift shock. Then she took my small overnight bag from under my arm. It weighed much less now that all the camera equipment was in my closet. I let her carry it.

“Does everything work now, honey?”

“It does now.” Loud and unconcerned in case someone might be casually listening. “It was just a broken sprocket in the driving gear.”

“You mean, you poor baby, you had to travel all that way for just a lil ole wheel?”

“That’s it, baby. How was Jackson?”

She hugged me with her free arm as we walked to the car. “Ummm! Marvelous! I bought a new dress. Now you tell me if you like it, an’ don’t you dare fib. An’ I had my hair done. Do you like it?”

We were outside now. We could drop the
Ladies’ Home Journal
dialogue. All the time she had been talking I had been looking at her face. I tore my eyes away to look at her hair.

“It’s always beautiful.”

The trouble with that remark was that I downshifted from the light casualness we had been using since I met her.

She fell silent. I put the things in the car.

“Do you mind if I drive?” she asked. “I love driving.”

“Sure.” I sat beside her. I looked at her knees. Better find a distraction. The daily Jackson paper was on the seat beside her. I picked it up. Nothing special on the front page. Sunrise had been at 5:41 that morning.

There were times when I wanted to read a good simple book on astronomy and find out how the hell people could predict things like sunrises and high tides. I wanted to take a course in celestial navigation and find out how a man could take a sextant, a star or two, and a few books, and find out exactly where he was on an unmarked ocean. That was a bigger mystery than anything I had ever worked on.

When I went down to Central America, I decided to take a sextant and a good text on navigation with me. The chances of finding them down there would be pretty small. If I went through New Orleans, I probably could pick them up pretty easily.

I turned to page 3. Nothing special. But the fourth page had something interesting on it. In column four, near the bottom, a one-inch story.

OLDEST INHABITANT OF MILLIKEN COUNTY DIES IN FIRE

Moses Gardiner, negro, ninety-two, died yesterday in a fire that totally consumed his home. He was the oldest resident of Milliken County. The funeral will take place tomorrow. The body rests at Morgan’s Funeral Parlors, Okalusa.

I didn’t feel like talking. When we reached Okalusa, I left the Kim in the car and told Kirby I had to go out and do a little work.

I headed for Alexandria. I went up the river road, and then up the red-clay roads to Old Man Mose’s place.

I could see the stone chimney still standing. The iron bedstead still stood, but it was black and twisted from the heat. An old man was poking in the ashes with a stick. I got out and walked up to the house. I smelled gasoline. At the base of the chimney I found what I was looking for — several pieces of curved glass. I picked them up. One of the shards had epsi engraved on it. I smelled it. Gasoline. Pepsi Cola bottles filled with gasoline and with a rag wick make effective Molotov cocktails.

Oya’s shrine lay in the ashes. The jug had been smashed. The copper symbols had turned gray in the heat and fused together. The swamp shrine was burned except for the moccasin’s jawbones. They were shining in the ashes. I put them in my pocket.

The old man prodded at an old can in the ashes. Heat had expanded it and some bean gravy was leaking out of it. He put it in a sack. Then he saw me for the first time. Before he could arrange his face into the usual amiable deferential look, it flared up with hatred.

“Seems a shame,” I said.

“Yessuh, boss.”

The yessuh-boss routine.

“Accidental, I suppose.”

“Yessuh.”

I kicked the pieces of the Pepsi bottle. One of the pieces clunked against the chimney.

“How accidental?”

His eyes drifted down to the glass. He walked over to my car and looked inside. He came back.

“You de gemmun what give Mose money to talk into that machine?”

“Yes.”

“What sense in that? No sense in that at all. Better sense givin’ money to a youman.”

I took out a ten-dollar-bill and gave it to him.

He folded it carefully several times till it was the size of a postage stamp. His thickened yellow fingernails neatly creased the edges till they were knife-sharp.

“Don’t wants de ole woman to git it. She gits her hooks onto this, it is
gone.
Gone.” He took off his dirty gray hat and tucked the money into the sweatband. He put the hat on, smashed the crown flat with the palm of his hand.

“Las’ night, ’bout two, Ah hears cars comin’ up de road. That don’t happen ’round heah. Fo’ cars. One, two, three, fo’. Ah goes to my porch an’ Ah lissens. They stop heah. Ah heah de door crack open, pow! Lahk that!” He slapped his palms together hard.

“Mose don’t have no gun. Evvabody knows that. Ah has one, Ah has a twenty-two pistol. Ah flattens de bullets so they’ll open up when they goes in, an’ it’ll tear up a cracker jus’ as fas’ as it’ll tear up black folks, an’ Ah lets evvabody knows Ah has one.

“After they knocks down Mose’s door, they goes in. Ah takes mah gun an’ Ah goes out an’ hides in de co’n neah mah house. They comes to git me Ah gits me one or two fust. But they stayed at Mose. After maybe ten minutes they comes out. Then Ah sees de fire start up de sides of de house lahk lightnin’.”

“What did you do?”

“Ah didn’t move, Ah didn’t want to be caught lookin’. The cars go by an’ one stops at mah place an’ someone goes up and bangs on mah door. Ah keeps quiet an’ he opens de door, cause Ah neveh locks it, an’ he calls out mah name, an’ then he goes away.”

“Who was it?”

“Ah dunno, boss.”

“You don’t know.”

He figured he had already risked too much.

“You sure now?”

His face closed and became impassive.

“Yassuh, boss.”

“You planning to go to Mose’s funeral?”

“It’s neighborly.”

“Aren’t you getting tired of going to funerals of black men who’ve been killed by whites?”

His jaw trembled. He turned his face away and then began to walk. He walked a few feet and then turned toward me and said, “His name Vince. Now they ask you who tole you you say you dunno an’ they gonna know
Ah
tole you. An’ they come fo’ me you come to mah fun’ral?”

“No. You just flatten a couple more twenty-two’s.”

“You tryin’ to tell me sumpin’. You tryin’ to tell me — what you tryin’ to tell me?”

“I don’t ask anybody to do anything that they don’t want to do. You told me it was Vince who came up to your house. You own a twenty-two. Use it.”

He took his hat and turned it around a few times and put it on. He said, “Next mawnin’ de sheriff come over to Mose’s house. He say he ain’t gonna permit lootin’. He stood there till they wrapped up Mose in a blanket an’ took him to de fun’ral parlor.”

“Did you get a look at Mose?”

“No one got a look ’cept de sheriff and de undertaker.”

I thanked him. He stood there looking at my car. I kept seeing him in my rear-view mirror until I rounded a bend in the road. He would do well to take out that carefully folded ten-dollar bill and buy himself some cartridges. A shotgun would be even better. I would hesitate approaching someone with a shotgun. With a .22 I wouldn’t mind taking a chance once in a while. Shotgun holders get respectful attention from me.

I drove to the black part of Okalusa. There were a few well-kept houses and neat lawns, but the main business street was full of potholes. Morgan’s Funeral Parlors had a beautifully polished black hearse in front. There were no whites around.

I walked in. In the center of the room was a good oak coffin, well made and well varnished. It had gold-plated brass handles. The faceplate was screwed into place with nine large brass screws.

I took off my hat.

“Yes, sir?”

It was a voice that knew how to talk in funeral parlors. It blended with the thick brown wall-to-wall rug and the heavy brown drapes that were arranged in loops across the walls. Discreet lighting flowed down softly from concealed spots attached behind silk valances. There were bowls full of gladioli on the tables. I hate gladioli, but funeral directors adore them. Perhaps because they have a rigid, stiff look about them; perhaps because with so many blooms on one stalk the wilted ones can be discreetly removed day by day.

“May I see Mr. Mose.”

“He is in the coffin, sir.”

I looked at him. He was a pale brown color and blended with the rug and the drapes. His eyes were brown and hooded. He moved silently. He reminded me of an enormous, brown Siamese cat.

“I knew him. I admired him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m from Canada, I’m down here on a research project on speech patt — ”

“I know.”

In small towns everybody knows everything about everything.

“I was very sorry to read about this. I wonder if I could see him for the last time.”

“I think you had best remember him the way he was.”

I silently agreed.

But I was putting parts of a puzzle together. Everyone knew by now that Old Man Mose had helped me with my speech project. When word would get around that I had been to the funeral parlor, I’d get credit for being a good friend of his.

And there was always the chance that I might be able to provoke some interesting conversation out of some blacks along the line.

People in stressful situations talk when they sense a friendly ear. Morgan had been a good friend of the old man.

I took the arc of charred snake jaw out of my pocket.

“He would have liked this placed in the coffin with him.”

“Yes, thank you.” He held out his hand. I dropped it in. He set it on the coffin and folded his arms.

“He had a very impressive face,” I said.

“Yes.”

“If this were Africa, that’s the kind of a face I would associate with a king.”

“Yes. Some of us were kings. In Africa.”

He did not get any friendlier. My remarks seemed to make him more abrasive.

I thought it would be best to move on to another topic.

“I wonder how I can persuade — ”

“You can’t. I had a little talk last night with a gentleman of your color who called at my back door. He wore a white mask as well as three of his friends. They said it would be healthy for me to see that my client was buried with the coffin sealed.”

“Ummm.”

“You know something, Mr. Wilson? You remind me of a snapping turtle. Once when I was a boy I poked a stick at a snapping turtle. He caught it and held it in his jaws. I said to an old man — I believe you use the word ‘darky’ — I said, ‘He won’t let go till it thunders.’ And the old darky — ”

“Try using the words ‘old man.’ž”

He shot me a quick, inscrutable glance.

“And the old man said, ‘Ah kin so make ’im.’ He got an old lard can and put some rocks in it and shook it in front of the turtle. It made a hell of a racket.

“ž‘That’s thunder,’ he said to me.

“ž‘It don’t sound much like thunder to me.’

“ž‘At’s right. Hit sound lak thunder to him. Tu’tles can’t tell no diff’rence.’

“So he kept banging away at the can. I kept watching. And the old man turned to me and said, ‘Hit’ll take a little time. He got to think ’bout hit. Sooner or later he’ll let go.’ž”

“I’m the turtle?”

“And I’m banging away on the lard can.”

“I’ll still hang on for a while yet. That’s a beautiful box.”

He looked at me. “Box” is the trade word.

“Yes. It cost a lot of money. Most of our poorer people join burial societies. They pick out a nice coffin and then the number of cars they want. They think a dignified death a sort of a compensation for a humiliating life.”

“Understandable. I should think that a defiant death would be a better compensation.”

“Yes. You would. You don’t know what it means to live out there with the law like a lawn mower going back and forth chopping off anything that pokes its head a little higher than they like.”

He was becoming more and more icy. I knew he had slammed shut a door which was never open more than a crack.

“Would that be all?”

“For now. Thank you.”

“Not at all, sir. Good afternoon.” He paused a second and played it careful and added, “sir.”

Funeral parlors always have someone on night duty. And how can it be the owner when he has to save all his energy and be bright and sympathetic during the day?

I parked two blocks away. It was 2:30
A.M.
It was a Thursday night. I thanked God for that. Thursday nights are always slow nights everywhere. People have spent all their money by Thursday; payday is Friday, when they can begin to vomit and strike each other on the head again. So Thursday nights are always good nights to find a table in a good restaurant or an empty seat at a popular bar. Or park in Niggertown and walk to a funeral parlor.