A Gathering of Old Men (13 page)

Coot went on: “I was sitting here on the garry when he jumped that ditch with that gun. I told him—I said, ‘Hold it there, boy. Hold it there, now.’ But did he listen? It wasn’t nothing but a old nigger talking. Just another old nigger. Like them Germans thought. Them niggers won’t dare shoot us—we white. The 369th left lot of them laying in them trenches with stupid grins on they faces.”

Coot went on rocking another minute after he finished talking. He was proud of his little speech. He looked at us to see how we felt. I nodded to him. Couple other people nodded to him. He was proud the people had listened to him.

“Look down here, Jesus,” Jameson said, looking at us. “Look down here, please.”

“He’s probably on their side,” Mapes said.

“Don’t talk like that,” Jameson said to Mapes. “Don’t blaspheme Him at a time like this. Look like you ought to be doing your duty.”

“What do you want me to do?” Mapes asked Jameson. “Want me to take Mathu in? You think I want this whole bunch of Medicare patients in Bayonne? With that crowd out there already getting drunk for that big game tomorrow?”

“What you go’n do, just stay here and wait for Fix and his crowd?” Jameson asked Mapes.

“Maybe I’ll have some luck,” Mapes said.

“The only luck you might have is they don’t kill everybody,” Jameson said.

“Old bootlicker, shut up,” Beulah said to Jameson.

Jameson was a good ten, fifteen feet away from Beulah. Now he started toward her. But he wasn’t halfway before
Beulah had jumped up from the steps and was waiting for him. She had balled her fists, and now she was winding them over and over, waiting for him. Jameson stopped quicker than he had started.

“Come on, come on, you bootlicker,” Beulah said. She was winding her fists over and over. “I’ll whip you crazier than you already is, or I’ll put some sense in your head—one. Come on. You think Mapes knocked you down—you just come on here. Old possum-looking fool.”

“Take it easy, Reverend,” Mapes said.

“Can I shoot him, Dirty Red?” Rooster asked. “Or should I just let my wife beat him?”

“Neither one of y’all do him anything,” Dirty Red said. “Let Snookum beat him if he open his mouth again. You’ll take care that little business for us, Snookum?”

Snookum glanced at his grandmother to see how she felt, but from the way Glo looked back at him, he knowed he had better keep quiet.

Mapes went to Jameson and put his arm round his shoulders.

“Why don’t you go home, Reverend?” he said.

“This is my place,” Jameson said, still looking at Beulah. He said it so quiet you couldn’t hardly hear him. He looked up at Mapes. “This is my place, Sheriff.”

“Suit yourself,” Mapes said, and dropped his arm from Jameson’s shoulder.

“Anybody else got any more to say?” Clatoo asked.

Nobody answered. Mapes waited a second; then he started looking around.

“You mean y’all ran out of stories?” he asked. “And I thought you were just getting warmed up.”

“Nobody ain’t run out of nothing,” Beulah said. She went on looking at Jameson a while before she turned to Mapes. “You want me to start?” she asked Mapes. “You want any
woman here to start? I can tell you things done happened to women round here make the hair stand on your head. You want me to start? All you got to say is yes. All you got to do is nod.”

“No,” Mapes said. “I don’t care to listen to any more of these tall tales.” He looked around at all of us. “So this is payday, huh? And it’s all on Fix, huh? Whether he had anything to do with it or not, Fix must pay for everything ever happened to you, huh?”

“He did his share of dirt,” Beulah said.

“Fix didn’t rise up in the Senate to keep that boy out of Arlington,” Mapes said. “He never pulled the switch on that electric chair.” He turned to Bing and Ding, the two mulattoes standing close together. “And you, Ding,” he said. “That woman who poisoned your sister’s child was Sicilian, not Cajun. She had nothing to do with Fix.”

“She lived on that river,” Ding said. “And he lived on that river. What’s the difference?”

“That river, that river,” Corrine said.

Everybody looked around. Nobody expected to hear anything from her. She hadn’t said one word since she’d been there, just sitting in that rocker, gazing out in the yard. She hadn’t moved but just one time since she had been there—to bring that spread to cover up Beau. Most of us had forgot she was even there.

“That river,” she said again. “Where the people went all these years. Where they fished, where they washed they clothes, where they was baptized. St. Charles River. Done gived us food, done cleaned us clothes, done cleaned us soul. St. Charles River—no more, though. No more. They took it. Can’t go there no more.”

She stopped. Never raised her head. Still gazing out there in the yard.

“I can’t do what I used to do on that river myself,” Mapes
told her. But she wasn’t listening. Maybe she didn’t even know Mapes was there. “I can’t fish on that river like I used to,” Mapes said. “I can’t hunt on that river like I used to. You blaming Fix for that, too? Then you blaming the wrong person. He’s as much victim of these times as you are. That’s why he’s back on that bayou now, because they took that river from him, too.”

Corrine went on gazing out in the yard. I don’t think she even heard Mapes.

But Beulah heard him. “He was on that river at one time,” she said. “And he sure did his share of dirt while he was there. Like drowning them two little children up the road.”

“You’re talking about thirty-five, forty, fifty years ago, Beulah,” Mapes said. “And you got no proof Fix was mixed up in that.”

“Now, ain’t that just like white folks?” Beulah said to us, but still looking at Mapes. “Black people get lynched, get drowned, get shot, guts all hanging out—and here he come up with ain’t no proof who did it. The proof was them two little children laying there in them two coffins. That’s proof enough they was dead. Least to black folks it’s proof enough they was dead. And let’s don’t be getting off into that thirty-five, forty, fifty years ago stuff, either. Things ain’t changed that much round here. In them demonstrations, somebody was always coming up missing. So let’s don’t be putting it all on no thirty-five, forty, fifty years ago like everything is so nicey-nicey now. No, his seeds is still around. Even if he is old now, the rest of them had their hands in some of that dirt.”

“Then you know more than I do,” Mapes said.

“When it come to the kind of dirt been slung in this black woman’s face—yes, sir, Sheriff, I reckon I do know more than you do.”

“And you’ll do anything to make me take you to jail, is that it?”

“If you take Mathu, you taking me,” Beulah said.

“I’m taking Mathu, sooner or later,” Mapes said. “And I’ll make room for you.”

“I’ll be ready,” Beulah said. “Just let me go home and put on my clean dress.”

“I’ll find a dress you can wear,” Mapes said. “And I’ll find a bucket and a mop, too.”

“I ain’t no stranger to buckets and mops,” Beulah said. “Hoes, shovels, axes, cane knives, scythe blades, pickets, plows—and I can handle a gun, too, if I have to. I been in the pen before.”

“You keep it up,” Mapes said, “and you’ll damned sure be going back.” He turned to Glo sitting on the steps. “And you, Glo?” he said. “And them children?”

“I’m ready to go,” Glo said. “I’ll find somebody to look after them children.”

“I don’t know about Toddy, but I’m ready to go,” Snookum said. He cracked his knuckles. “Wish I was just a little older so I coulda shot him.”

“I thought you did,” Mapes said. “Or was it you who went up to the front and called everybody?”

“I ain’t got no more to say,” Snookum said. “You can beat me with a hose pipe if you want.”

He lowered his head. Mapes looked down at him awhile; then he nodded and turned to Candy. Candy was standing next to Mathu, who had sat down on the end of the step.

“That’s how you organized it, all or none, huh?”

“I shot him,” Candy said.

“You letting them all call you a liar right in front your face?”

“They’re doing it to protect me,” she said.

“Sure,” Mapes said. “But before this day is over, don’t be surprised, now, if you find your name on the same, list with Fix’s.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Candy asked him.

“I can’t think of anything I’d like better,” Mapes said. He turned to his deputy. “Go check with Russell.”

“Again?” the deputy said. “Why don’t we just throw that old coon in the back of the car and take off?”

Everybody looked at that little deputy, but Candy looked at him harder.

“Go check with Russell like I said,” Mapes told him.

That little deputy looked at Mapes, shook his head, and left the yard.

“You better warn that boy,” Beulah told Mapes. “That’s if you want him around much longer.”

“He’s sure got a big mouth for somebody with hardly any butt,” Yank said, from over by the garden. “Pardon me, ladies.”

“Forget it,” Mapes said. “We’re all one big happy family, aren’t we?” he said to Candy.

Candy didn’t answer him. She laid her hand on Mathu’s shoulder, soft like touching a flower. Mathu’s face never changed much, but he smiled when Candy touched him.

“Do you need to lie down?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

Candy looked at Mapes. “He hasn’t been feeling too well lately. Suffering from those dizzy spells.”

Mapes nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I suffer from dizzy spells, too, every time I shoot somebody.” He looked over his shoulder toward the road. “Well?” he called.

“All quiet,” the deputy called back.

“The quiet before the storm,” Mapes said to Lou. “He’ll be here when he get them all together.”

“We’ll be here, too,” Clatoo said, from the garry.

Gil and I
had just come out of Sci-210 when Cal caught up with us and told Gil that coach wanted him in the office right away.

“I thought we had gone over all that,” Gil said.

“I don’t think it’s football this time,” Cal said.

Gil asked me if I would walk back to the gym with him, and since Cal wasn’t doing anything that hour he walked back with us. Cal was Calvin “Pepper” Harrison, quite possibly the best halfback in the country that year, and already nominated for All-American. Gil was Gilbert “Salt” Boutan, definitely the best fullback in the Southeastern Conference, and many other conferences besides. Cal and Gil were known as Salt and Pepper at LSU. Gil being a Cajun, the publicity people had tried to think of a good Cajun nickname for him when he first came to the university, but after seeing how well he and Cal worked together, they finally settled on Salt and Pepper.

Gil was a football man all the way, and eventually he would
go pro, but what he wanted most while attending LSU was to be All-American along with Cal. It would be the first time this had ever happened, black and white in the same backfield—and in the Deep South, besides. LSU was fully aware of this, the black and white communities in Baton Rouge were aware of this, and so was the rest of the country. Wherever you went, people spoke of Salt and Pepper of LSU. Both were good powerful runners, and excellent blockers. Gil blocked for Cal on sweeps around end, and Cal returned the favor when Gil went up the middle. It drove the defense crazy, because both Gil and Cal carried the ball about the same number of times in a game and the defensive team didn’t know which to look out for. Besides that, you had “Sugar” Washington at quarterback, and he was no slouch, either.

Me? Well, I was no Sugar Washington. I was third-string quarterback. My name is Thomas Vincent Sullivan. My hair is red, my face is red, my eyes are green, and most people call me Sully. Others call me T.V.—especially the black guys on the team. Not for my initials necessarily, but for my avocation. I’m a television nut. A vidiot.

While Gil was in coach’s office, Cal and I stood outside talking about the game coming up the next day, LSU and Ole Miss. It would be the game of the year. We knew if we dumped her, nobody else could stop us, and we would host the Sugar Bowl game on New Year’s Day. Already the people had filled all the motels and hotels from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. The national press was covering the game. No matter where you went, that’s all the people were talking about. If you were pro-LSU—and you were crazy if you were not—they said there was no possible way to stop Salt and Pepper. If you were anti-LSU, or pro-Ole Miss—and there were thousands of people from Mississippi who had come down for the game—they said that all Ole Miss had to do was stop one or the other, Salt or Pepper, and victory would be theirs to take
back home. This kind of talk had been going on the past month, and now there was only a little more than twenty-four hours—thirty hours—before the whole thing would be settled. If you know anything about Louisiana weather, you know there’s a lot of lightning and thundering before the big storm comes. Well, the big storm was going to be tomorrow night at eight o’clock, but the lightning and thundering had been going on for a month already, and nobody expected it to let up till the last moment.

After being in coach’s office about ten minutes, Gil came back out, and went right by Cal and me like we weren’t even standing there. I thought he had forgotten where he had left us, and I called to him. But he kept on going. Cal and I looked at each other a second, and went after him. He was walking fast, and rubbing both his fists.

“Gil, wait up,” I said to him. “Hey, Gil.”

Cal was on one side, I was on the other.

“What’s the matter, man?” Cal asked him.

He had stopped. He was breathing sharp and hard, the way you do in the huddle after you’ve been tackled. He was staring down at the ground, rubbing his fists, rubbing his knuckles hard, like he was trying to rub off the skin.

Cal put his hand on one shoulder, and I took the other arm.

“What’s the matter, Gil?” I asked him.

He started shaking his head; he was still looking down at the ground.

“My brother, my brother. Killed.”

“In a wreck?” Cal asked him.