A Gathering of Old Men (12 page)

He stopped again. He looked at all of us. But none of us looked back at him. We had all done the same thing sometime or another; we had all seen our brother, sister, mama, daddy insulted once and didn’t do a thing about it.

Tucker had been standing near the steps all the time he was talking. Now he went to the far end of the garry and looked toward the graveyard. You couldn’t see a thing from here for the weeds. But we all knowed where his eyes was; we all knowed who he was talking to. All of us had stood here—in one of these old yards—and we had all hollered toward that graveyard.

“Forgive me!” He had both hands over his head, the gun in one hand, the other hand clenched to a fist. “Forgive this nothing!” he called. “Can you hear me, Silas? Tell me, can you hear me, Silas?”

Beulah got up from the steps and went to get him, and led him back. They sat down, and she put her arm around his shoulders, holding him like you do a little child.

“Where was the law?” he said, looking up at Mapes. He was crying now. “Where was the law? Law said he cut in on the tractor, and he was the one who started the fight. That’s law for a nigger. That’s law.” He looked at Mapes. He wanted Mapes to face him. Mapes wouldn’t. Mapes sucked on his candy. “How can a man on a wagon with mules—made of flesh and blood—cut in on a tractor, a machine? Ain’t no way. No way. But that’s what they said. And in my fear,” Tucker
said, looking at the rest of us, “in my fear, even after I had seen what happened—in my fear, I went along with the white folks. Out of fear of a little pain to my own body, I beat my own brother with a stalk of cane as much as the white folks did.”

He looked at all of us, one after another. He wanted us to pass judgment over him for what he had done. Us judge him? How could any of us judge him? Who hadn’t done the same thing, sometime or another?

We stayed quiet. Mapes was quiet. His little deputy was quiet. No air was stirring, so the trees, the bushes, everything was quiet.

Then Yank spoke. Mapes jerked his head around to look at Yank. He had thought the talking was over. He started to say something to Yank, maybe even wanted to cuss him. But he didn’t, just looked at him, long and hard. Yank didn’t pay him any mind.

“That’s right,” he said. “Anybody needed a horse broke, they called on Yank. In the parish, out the parish, they called on Yank. Anytime they needed a horse broke for a lady they called Yank, ’cause they knowed I knowed my stuff. Lot of these rich white folks you see riding these fine horses in Mardi Gras parades, prancing all over the place, I broke them horses. I, Sylvester J. Battley—me. Mathu, Rufe, Tucker, Gable, Glo there, they can ’count for that.” He turned to Mathu. Mathu was nearly a foot taller than Yank; Mathu, tall and straight; Yank, short, stocky, and bowlegged. He looked up at Mathu, his brownish weak eyes pleading with Mathu to go along with what he was saying. Mathu nodded. Didn’t say a thing, didn’t even look down at him, just nodded. But that was good enough for Yank. “I broke all the horses, all the mules,” he said. He wasn’t talking to us now. He was thinking back, back when he was a younger man, when he used to do all this. “I broke ’em all. I broke Snook and Chip for Candy. Chip almost
killed me when he throwed me ’gainst that fence. But I got back up. It had to be me or him. He’s up in that pasture right now, too old to do nothing but eat grass. But you go up there and ask him who broke him—go on.”

He stopped again. He nodded his head thoughtfully. He was still thinking back back.

“They ain’t got no more horses to break no more. The tractors, the cane cutters—and I ain’t been nothing ever since. They look at you today and they call you trifling, ’cause they see you sitting there all the time not doing nothing. They can’t remember when you used to break all the horses and break all the mules. Snook, Chip, Diamond, Job. I broke Tiger, Tony, Sally, Dot, Lucky, Cora, John Strutter, Lottie, Hattie, Bird, Red, Bessie, Mut, Lena, Mr. Bascom. For Dr. Morgan, I broke Slipper, Skeeter, Roland. I broke ’em all. But the ones around here now don’t remember that. Well, I remember. I remember. And I know who took it from me, too.”

“You ever heard of progress?” Mapes asked him. Mapes had been wiping his face and neck again.

“I ain’t thinking ’bout no progress. I’m thinking ’bout breaking horses,” Yank said.

“You couldn’t break a horse now if your life depended on it,” Mapes said. He put the handkerchief back in his pocket. The handkerchief wasn’t white anymore; it was gray now, and dirty.

“Maybe I can’t break no more horses,” Yank said. “Maybe that’s why I shot the man who took the horse from me.”

“Remember that for the record, Griffin,” Mapes said, over his shoulder.

“I got it,” Griffin said. “Yank. Y-a-n—”

“Sylvester J. Battley,” Yank said. “Be sure and spell Sylvester and Battley right, if you can. When my folks read about me up North, I want them to be proud.”

“How much more of this you going to take, Sheriff?” Griffin asked.

“Go on, tell him, Sheriff,” Jacob said to Mapes. “I don’t think that little fellow knows what’s going on yet.”

Mapes looked at Jacob a second; then he turned to Griffin. “Go check on Russell,” he said. “See if he made it back there. Tell him to stay there. This might take a while.”

That little spare-butt, slack-pants deputy left the yard, walking all tough like he was ready to take somebody in. He probably couldn’t take Snookum to jail, if Snookum wanted to give him a fight.

After he was on the radio a few minutes, he came on back in the yard and told Mapes that Russell had made it back there and Russell said everything was all right for now. Mapes told him to go back, get on the radio, and tell Hilly to patrol the highway along Marshall and don’t let anything suspicious come down here. That little deputy took in a deep breath and went back to the road talking to himself.

I had been watching that little deputy so much I didn’t hear Gable when he first started speaking. He spoke so softly you had to be right on him to hear him. It was Glo I heard first. I heard her saying: “Careful, Gable. You know your heart. Careful, now.”

Gable was standing on the other side of the steps, near Glo. He didn’t stay at Marshall; he stayed at Morgan. Near Big Man Bayou, in a little shotgun house, behind the willows there at Morgan. He had been staying there by himself some fifteen, twenty years. He went to church twice a month—Determination Sunday and Sacrament Sunday. You hardly seen him any other time. Just staying there behind them trees there at Morgan. Had his little garden, a few chickens—staying behind them trees. Last person in the world any of us woulda expected to see today was Gable.

“He wasn’t but sixteen years old, half out his mind, still
they put him in the ’lectric chair on the word of a poor white trash. They knowed what kind of gal she was. Knowed she had messed around with every man, black or white, on that river. But they put him in that chair ’cause she said he raped her. Even if he did, he was still no more than sixteen years old, and they knowed he was half out his mind.”

“Be careful, Gable,” Glo told him. She reached out her hand to touch his arm, but he was too far away from her.

“Called us and told us we could have him at ’leven, ’cause they was go’n kill him at ten. Told us we could have a undertaker waiting at the back door if we wanted him soon as it was over with. Is that something to say to a mother? Something to say to a father? ‘Come get him at ’leven, ’cause we go’n kill him at ten’—that’s something to say to—”

His voice choked, and he stopped. I wouldn’t look at him. I was thinking back. It was ’31 or ’32—I believe ’32. Huey Long was in Washington at that time.

I heard Glo again: “Be careful, Gable. Be careful, now.”

“Saying how they hit that switch and hit that switch, but it didn’t work. And how when they unstrapped him and took him back to his cell, how he thought he was already dead and in Heaven. Monk Jack was a colored trustee, and Monk Jack said the boy said: ‘This here Heaven I’m in? Hanh? This Heaven? Y’all, this Heaven?’ Said the boy said: ‘Hi, Mr. So-and-So. Hi, Mr. So-and-So. Y’all made Heaven, too?’ Said he said: ‘Thank the Lord it’s over with. And it didn’t do no more than tickle me some. Didn’t hurt at all.’ Monk Jack said they told him: ‘No, nigger, you ain’t dead yet. But give us time.’

“Monk Jack told us how they throwed the boy back in the cell, and how they started hitting and kicking and cussing that ’lectric chair to make it work. Two of them doing this while another one come outside and told me and the undertaker we could go back of town if we wanted to, ’cause it was go’n take a while yet. Saying that to me, his paw, while two
more was in there hitting and kicking and cussing that thing to make it work.”

“Gable, your heart,” Glo said, trying to reach him. But he was still too far away from her.

“Monk said you could hear one, then the other one, cussing that chair all over the courthouse. Not one of them round there knowed what to do, and they had to send get somebody from Baton Rouge to come fix it. Then they brought the boy out, strapped him in, and pulled the switch. Monk said after it was all over with, them white folks walked out of that room like they was leaving a card game. They wasn’t even talking about it. It wasn’t worth talking about.

“And what did I do about them killing my boy like that? What could a poor old nigger do but go up to the white folks and fall down on his knees? But, no, no pity coming there. Some went so far to say my boy shoulda been glad he died in the ’lectric chair ’stead at the end of a rope. They said at least he was treated like a white man. And it was best we just forgot all about it and him.

“But I never forgot, I never forgot. It’s been over forty years now, but every day of my life, every night of my life, I go through that rainy day again.

“And that’s why I kilt Beau, Mr. Sheriff,” Gable said to Mapes. “He was just like that trashy white gal. He was just like them who throwed my boy in that ’lectric chair and pulled that switch. No, he wasn’t born yet, but the same blood run in all their vein.”

It was quiet after Gable got through talking. Even the children on the steps didn’t move. You couldn’t hear a bird, any kind of sound on the whole place. Mapes even kept the candy in his mouth still. The only thing that moved was the shadow from the house. It covered the yard now.

The deputy came back in the yard and told Mapes that Hilly was go’n keep a close lookout at the front. Mapes didn’t
look at him; he started moving the candy around in his mouth again. He was waiting for somebody else to say something.

“Can I speak?” Jameson asked Mapes.

Jameson was standing all by himself over by the far end of the garry. He wanted Mapes to know he wanted no part of us. Still Mapes looked at him like he hated him, too. Them ashes-color gray eyes looked hard as steel.

“I didn’t know I was still in control here,” he said.

“Ain’t you the sheriff?” Jameson said.

“What’s that got to do with it?” Mapes asked him.

“Get a gun if you want to talk, Jameson,” Clatoo said, from where he was sitting on the garry.

“No, Mr. Clatoo,” Jameson said. “I won’t get a gun.”

“Then you better shut up,” Clatoo said. “People with guns speak first here today.”

“So she made you the leader?” Mapes asked Clatoo.

Clatoo didn’t even look at him. And there ain’t nothing a white man hate more than for a nigger not to look at him when he speak to him.

Clatoo looked at Coot. “Coot, look like you was getting ready to say something?”

Coot was there in his old First World War Army uniform. The uniform was all wrinkled and full of holes, but Coot wore it like it was something brand new. He even had on the cap, and the medal. Any other time the people woulda been laughing at Coot dressed up like that.

“I shot him,” Coot said.

“So did my grandmon,” Mapes said.

“I was the only man from this parish ever fit with the 369th,” Coot said. He didn’t even look at Mapes. He was over by the garden fence, looking down the quarters toward the fields. “The 369th was a all-colored outfit. You couldn’t fight side by side with these here white folks then. You had to get
your training in France, take orders from French officers. They trained us good, and we helt our ground. Boy Houser, Minnycourt, Champagne—we helt our ground. We got decorated, kissed on the jaw—all that. And I was proud as I could be, till I got back home. The first white man I met, the very first one, one of them no-English-speaking things off that river, told me I better not ever wear that uniform or that medal again no matter how long I lived. He told me I was back home now, and they didn’t cotton to no nigger wearing medals for killing white folks. That was back in World War One. And they ain’t change yet—not a bit. Look what happened to Curt’s boy when he come home from World War Two. Because they seen him with that German girl’s picture, they caught him—and all y’all remember what they did to him with that knife. Korea—the same thing. That colored boy had throwed his body on that grenade to protect his platoon. Still the politicians here wouldn’t let them bury him in Arlington like the rest of them was buried there. Vietnam, the same thing. It ain’t changed. Not at all.”

When Coot was talking to you, he had this habit of rocking back and forth. Sitting or standing, he rocked back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes he would stop talking awhile, but he would never stop his rocking.

“I used to put on my old uniform and look at myself in the chifforobe glass. I knowed I couldn’t wear it outside, but I could wear it round the house. Today I told myself I was go’n put it on and I was go’n sit out on my garry with my old shotgun, and I was go’n shoot the first person who laughed at me or told me I had to take it off. I sat there and sat there; nobody passed the house. After a while I told myself I felt like having me a rabbit for supper tonight, and I started out for the swamps. But after I hit that Poland Road, looked like something just started pulling me this way. Didn’t know what it was, but I couldn’t make my old feets go no other way but toward Marshall.”

Coot was looking at Mapes now, but Mapes would not look back at him. Mapes was looking across Mathu’s garden, up the quarters. Maybe Coot had been telling the truth a second ago when he said he had put on his old uniform and went out on the garry, but Mapes knowed he was lying about the rest of it.