A Gathering of Old Men (20 page)

I set up the bar, and they dug in. I took a quick little peek into the ice bowl again. Yep, dirt and grit covered the bottom. Some of these boys hadn’t seen a washbasin in weeks.

“You down there,” Luke Will said to the teacher from USL. “Don’t you think you ought to get moving?”

“I was just thinking about it,” the fellow said.

“Don’t think,” Luke Will said. “Move it.”

The fellow knocked some ashes out of his pipe into the palm of his hand; then he dumped the ashes into the little tin ashtray I had on the bar.

“You boys think you’re doing the right thing, taking the law in your own hands?”

“You leaving, or you need some escorting?” Luke Will asked him.

“I’m leaving,” the teacher said. “But I will leave with these parting words. Don’t do it. For the sake of the South. For Salt and Pepper, don’t do it.”

“Sharp, you and Henry show that gentleman to his car,” Luke Will said. “If he don’t have one, start him walking toward Lafayette.”

“Luke, please,” I said. “He’s a white man. That can make trouble.”

“If he’s a white man, let him act like one,” Luke Will said. “Sharp, you and Henry.”

Sharp Thompson and Henry Tobias started toward the teacher from USL. That teacher raised his hands quick.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

“You better go straight to Lafayette, too,” Luke Will said. “I know how to find that schoolhouse. I cross that Atchafalaya Basin every day.”

The teacher looked at Robert, but Robert looked down at his bottle of beer. The teacher looked at me, but he could see I wasn’t on his side either. I wasn’t against him, but he was a stranger here, and these were my regular customers—and I wasn’t no fool either. I didn’t want to come in here one day and find a bunch of rattlesnakes and water moggassins crawling all over the place.

That poor fellow couldn’t find anybody to go along with
him, and he nodded to himself and went out. You never in all your born days seen a sadder-looking figure. Fellow acted like he carried the whole world on his shoulders all by himself.

“You ought to mind who you let come in your place, Tee Jack,” Luke Will said to me.

“How can you tell a book by the cover?” I said. “He looked all right when he first came in. A little on the weak, worrying side, but he looked all right.”

“Be more careful in the future,” Luke Will said.

“Sure,” I said. “You know me. Anything to please my regular customers.”

“One more, and I’m ready to kick me some ass,” Leroy said, fixing another drink. “Shit, I can’t wait. Let’s go kick some ass.”

“Take it easy, boy,” Luke Will said. “You’ll get your chance.”

“I close at ten on Fridays, boys,” I said. “The old lady, you know.”

“Tonight you’ll stay open long as we want you to,” Luke Will said.

“Sure, boys, sure,” I said. I thought about all them rattlesnakes and moggassins crawling all over the place. “Anything to please my regular customers.” I looked across the bar at Robert. He was just finishing his beer. He had already glanced over his shoulder toward the door. “Like another one?” I asked him. I wanted him to stay there with me. Lord, I
needed
him to stay there with me. “On the house this time,” I said. “On the house.”

“No, I’m going home,” Robert said. “I haven’t been here at all today. Good night.”

“It’s on the house,” I said. “Any kind you like. Two of any brand.”

He went out. I heard him get in his car and drive away. I didn’t look around at Luke Will and his boys. I faced the
empty end of the bar, scared and feeling all alone. Nobody said anything. I could feel they was enjoying my fear.

“Look at him, look at him,” I heard Leroy saying. “Shaking there like a scared old nigger. Now you know how a old nigger feel. Look at him, look at him.”

I wouldn’t look around, so he moved down the bar to face me. He started pointing his finger and laughing at me. He was drunk now, drunk as he could be, and his soft, girlish face and little red, girlish lips made him look like a freak I had once seen at a carnival show.

“Let’s finish this bottle and get out of here,” Luke Will said.

After Miss Merle
left with her two baskets, Lou went out in the road where Mapes was. They leaned back against Mapes’s car looking at us in the yard. Me, I was leaning back against the end of the garry where you went around the house to the toilet. Chimley had just come from the toilet, and before he got back to the front I seen him bending over and getting a shell out of the shoe box under the house. He got two. He put one in the gun, the other one in his pocket. You see, that’s what we had been doing all the time. Sure, we was going back to the toilet, but we was doing more than just going to the toilet. Clatoo had already told us where he had put that box of shells, and every time one of us went to the toilet, and didn’t catch the white folks watching us, we ducked down by the side of the house and got a couple shells out of that box. And nobody knowed the difference. Not my wife, Beulah, not none of the other women, and surely not that crazy Jameson. We was more scared of him talking than we was anybody else.

Not long after Chimley had come back to the front, we heard the noise on the car radio. Mapes opened the door and
started talking on the speaker. We could hear the static, then the other voice; the static, then Mapes. It went on like that couple minutes—static, other voice; static, then Mapes. Then he hung up the speaker, and him and Lou came back in the yard. Mapes was grinning. Oh, how he was grinning. Not grinning out, grinning in. You could tell he was grinning in, even if his mouth wasn’t moving.

“All right, gather round here,” he said.

The people moved in slowly. It had been a long day. The sun was just about down. Mosquitoes was already coming out of the weeds. Everybody was tired, but nobody was thinking about going home—not yet. Not till this was settled and over with.

“Look like you boys put on your brave hats just a little too late,” Mapes said. “Fix ain’t showing up.”

He grinned. His big old jaws was all puffed out. He looked all around, grinning. But nobody was grinning back, because nobody wanted to believe him. We had put in too much to have this day end like this.

Johnny Paul spoke first. “That’s a lie,” he said.

Johnny Paul wasn’t standing more than a arm reach from Mapes. But Mapes didn’t want to hit him. He felt grinning at Johnny Paul was good enough. He could arrest Johnny Paul and beat him anytime. Right now, grinning at Johnny Paul was good enough.

“I say that’s a lie,” Johnny Paul said to the rest of us. “Just trying to make us go home. Y’all know Fix. You know he got to show up.”

We all said we knowed Fix and Fix had to show up.

“Hah,” Mapes said, grinning.

“That’s just to throw us off,” Johnny Paul said. “Another white man trick. Look at the blood on that grass. That’s Fix boy’s blood. You think Fix ain’t go show up—his own blood on that grass?”

“He got to show up,” Mat said.

“You darn right he got to show up,” Johnny Paul said. “Look at the spot on that grass.”

We all looked at the spot where Beau had fell. The grass was mashed down, the blood still there.

“He still ain’t showing up,” Mapes said. “So y’all might’s well go on home.”

“The sheriff lying,” Johnny Paul said to the rest of us. He turned back to Mapes. “Come on, Sheriff, I called you a lie right in front of a bunch of niggers. Ain’t you go’n take me in?”

Mapes shook his head. He pointed his finger at Johnny Paul.

“You’re trying to be a hero today, Johnny Paul, and you want me to help you. Well, I ain’t.”

The rest of us stood there looking at Mapes. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t want to believe him even if he was telling the truth. We had cranked usself up for a fight, and we wanted usself a fight.

“That just don’t sound like Fix,” Clatoo said, from the garry. “Nothing could keep Fix from Marshall today.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Clatoo,” Mapes said, going up closer to the garry and looking up at Clatoo. “Now, that’s what I thought, too. Because, you see, me, you, and all the rest of them were thinking about Fix thirty years ago. Thirty years ago Fix woulda been here, woulda hanged Mathu on the nearest tree, and all the rest of you brave people woulda been still hiding under the bed. But something happened the last ten, fifteen years. Salt and Pepper got together. Now, it’s nobody’s fault but yours,” Mapes said, looking round at all of us. “Nobody’s fault but yours. Y’all did it. Y’all wasn’t satisfied Salt played at LSU on one side of town, and Pepper played for Southern on the other side of town—no, y’all wanted them to play together. Y’all prayed and prayed and prayed for them to play together. Well, they
did—and that’s what happened. Salt went back and talked to his daddy. Gil—that white boy who stopped by here—that’s Salt. Y’all know him, you seen him on television enough. Went back and told his daddy he needed Pepper and Pepper needed him. Told his daddy he wouldn’t go along with his daddy to lynch Mathu. Told his daddy, even, if the name Boutan got in the papers, he would never be All-American. But y’all the ones did it,” Mapes said. He was moving around the yard. He was looking us all in the face. Stop a second and look at one, then move, and stop and look at another one awhile. “Y’all the one—you cut your own throats. You told God you wanted Salt and Pepper to get together, and God did it for you. At the same time, you wanted God to keep Fix the way Fix was thirty years ago so one day you would get a chance to shoot him. Well, God couldn’t do both. Not that He likes Fix, but He thought the other idea was better—Salt and Pepper. Well? Which do you want? Salt and Pepper to play together, or you want God to keep Fix the way he was thirty years ago so you would have a chance to shoot him? Well, make up your mind. I’m sure God’s just sitting there waiting.”

We all thought Mapes had gone crazy. But it turned out he was just happy. I had never seen a happier white man in all my born days. Looked like he was ready to kiss the first person who come up.

“Well, ain’t somebody go’n say something?” he said, looking around.

We didn’t know what to say. We didn’t know where to turn. It was quiet. Quiet, quiet. You couldn’t hear a sound no matter how hard you listened. No moving. Nothing. Quiet.

Mapes turned to Mathu, sitting there on the end of the step.

“Ready, old sport?”

“I’m ready,” Mathu said.

Candy had been standing next to Mathu all this time. Even when Mapes passed right by her, talking, she never paid him any mind. I don’t know if she was even hearing him. She didn’t show it, until he mentioned Mathu’s name; then she went out to the walk. Easy like that, she just went out to the walk and stood there with her arms folded.

“What you think you doing?” Mapes asked her. “Don’t you know when the show is over?”

Candy didn’t answer him. Then my wife left the steps and joined Candy on the walk. I joined my wife. Then everybody started joining in. Glo and her three little grandchildren. Even Corrine managed to get down the steps and come out in the yard.

Mapes was looking at us. He had Mathu by the arm with one hand; he had his gun in the other hand.

“I said the show was over with,” he said. “Don’t make me hurt anybody.”

Nobody moved.

“Clear off that walk, Griffin,” Mapes said. “I’m not walking around anybody. Use that gun if you have to.”

Griffin had been standing over by the garden with the gun stuck in his belt. He took it out and started toward us. Mat, Cherry Bello, one of the Lejeune brothers raised their guns. Not high. Belt-level.

Griffin stopped.

“Hold it,” Clatoo said, from the garry. “Hold it. Sheriff, can we talk? Can me and the rest of the men talk to Mathu inside?”

Mapes was still looking at us. Griffin was looking at us too. He didn’t know if them guns was loaded or not, and he wasn’t taking any chance.

Mapes looked back at Clatoo. “Talk?” he said. “Talk about what? All I heard since I’ve been here was talk.”

“Give us a couple minutes,” Clatoo said. “You can spare us that.”

Mapes looked back at us on the walk. More of us had raised our guns belt-level.

“All right,” Mapes said to Clatoo. “You have a couple minutes. Make it quick. I’m tired now.”

“Y’all come on inside,” Clatoo said to us. “Not you, Candy,” he said to her.

“Nobody’s talking without me,” Candy said, coming back toward the garry.

“This time we have to, Candy,” Clatoo said. “Just the men with guns.”

“Like hell,” Candy said. “This is my place.”

“I know that, Candy,” Clatoo said. “But we don’t want you there this time.”

That stopped her. Nobody talked to Candy like that—black or white—and specially not black.

“What the hell did you say?” she asked Clatoo. “You know where you’re at? You know who you’re talking to? Get the hell off my place.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Candy,” Clatoo said.

“What?” she said.

“Not till this is cleared up,” Clatoo said to her. “I already told the sheriff I don’t mind going to jail, or even dying today. And that means I ain’t taking no orders either.”

Candy was mad now. She was so mad she was trembling. She tried to make Clatoo look down, but Clatoo wouldn’t look no farther down than her eyes. Now she turned to Mapes. Any other time, she wouldn’t need to turn to Mapes; Mapes woulda brought Clatoo off that garry even if he had to shoot him down. But this time he just grinned at Candy. He liked what was happening; one of us talking back to her. Candy turned to Lou. Lou reached out his hand and called her name for her to come to him. She turned back on us.

“Y’all can go on and listen to Clatoo if y’all want,” she said. “But remember this—Clatoo got a little piece of land to go back to. Y’all don’t have nothing but this. You listen to him now, and you won’t even have this.”

Mapes laughed out loud. Not in now—out. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Listen to the savior now. Do what she wants or you’re out in the cold. Did y’all hear that?”

Candy turned on him. “You’ve been trying to split us up all day,” she said.