A Gathering of Old Men (4 page)

“Clatoo still at Glenn?” I asked Janey.

She was still trying to get away from me, but I was known to have two of the strongest hands in St. Raphael Parish.

“Yes, Ma’am,” she said when she couldn’t break loose. “Still there, gardening.”

“Has he got a phone?”

“I, I, I—” she said.

I yanked on the collar of her dress. “Speak up, dammit.”

“He stay there with Emma,” she said, crying.

“What name Emma goes under?”

“Henderson,” she said. “I believe—yes, Ma’am. It’s Henderson.”

I turned her loose, and she started rubbing the side of her neck.

“I’m going in there and get that number out the phone book,” I told her. “You and Bea think up some more names. Think up a dozen of them. We might as well all go to jail—

or all go to the crazy house—one. Where’s that phone book?”

“On the table by the fireplace,” Janey said.

“When I get through with Clatoo, you all better have me some more names ready,” I said. “You hear me, don’t you?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” she said.

“First, get me another drink,” Bea said, handing Janey the glass.

“Lord, have mercy,” Janey said. “Don’t I have enough trouble already, Miss Bea?”

“You take this glass and get in there and get me another drink,” Bea said. “I’ll help you with your names when you come back.”

Janey took the glass, and I got my drink off the banister, and we went inside together. She went into the back to get Bea another drink, and I went to the phone to call Clatoo.

Me and Mat
was down there fishing. We goes fishing every Tuesday and every Thursday. We got just one little spot now. Ain’t like it used to be when you had the whole river to fish on. The white people, they done bought up the river now, and you got nowhere to go but that one little spot. Me and Mat goes there every Tuesday and Thursday. Other people uses it other days, but on Tuesday and Thursday they leaves it for us. We been going to that one little spot like that every Tuesday and Thursday the last ten, ’leven years. That one little spot. Just ain’t got nowhere else to go no more.

We had been down there—oh, ’bout a hour. Mat had caught eight or nine good-size perches, and me about six—throw in a couple of sackalays there with the bunch. Me and Mat was just sitting there taking life easy, talking low. Mat was sitting on his croker sack, I was sitting on my bucket. The fishes we had caught, we had them on a string in the water, keeping them fresh. We was just sitting there talking low, talking ’bout the old days.

Then that oldest boy of Berto, that sissy one they called Fue, come running down the riverbank and said Clatoo said Miss Merle said that young woman at Marshall, Candy, wanted us on the place right away. She wanted us to get twelve-gauge shotguns and number five shells and she wanted us to shoot, but keep the empty shells and get there right away.

Me and Mat looked at him standing there sweating—a great big old round-face, sissy-looking boy, in blue jeans and a blue gingham shirt, the shirt wet from him running.

Mat said, “All that for what?”

The boy looked like he was ready to run some more. Sweat just pouring down the side of his face. He was one of them great big old sissy-looking boys—round, smooth, sissy-looking face.

He said: “Something to do with Mathu, and something to do with Beau Boutan dead in his yard. That’s all I know, all I want to know. Up to y’all now, I done done my part. Y’all can go and do like she say or y’all can go home, lock y’all doors, and crawl under the bed like y’all used to. Me, I’m leaving.”

He turned.

“Where you going?” Mat called to him.

“You and no Boutan’ll ever know,” he called back.

“You better run out of Louisiana,” Mat said to himself.

The boy had already got out of hearing reach—one of them great big old sissy boys, running hard as he could go up the riverbank.

Me and Mat didn’t look at each other for a while. Pretending we was more interested in the fishing lines. But it wasn’t fishing we was thinking about now. We was thinking about what happened to us after something like this did happen. Not a killing like this. I had never knowed in all my life where a black man had killed a white man in this parish. I had
knowed about fights, about threats, but not killings. And now I was thinking about what happened after these fights, these threats, how the white folks rode. This what I was thinking, and I was sure Mat was doing the same. That’s why we didn’t look at each other for a while. We didn’t want to see what the other one was thinking. We didn’t want to see the fear in the other one’s face.

“He works in mysterious ways, don’t He?” Mat said. It wasn’t loud, more like he was talking to himself, not to me. But I knowed he was talking to me. He didn’t look at me when he said it, but I knowed he was talking to me. I went on looking at my line.

“That’s what they say,” I said.

Mat went on looking at his line awhile. I didn’t have to look and see if he was looking at his line. We had been together so much, me and him, I knowed what he was doing without looking at him.

“You don’t have to answer this ’less you want to, Chimley,” he said. He didn’t say that loud, neither. He had just jerked on the line, ’cause I could hear the line cut through the water.

“Yeah, Mat?” I said.

He jerked on the line again. Maybe it was a turtle trying to get at the bait. Maybe he just jerked on the line to do something ’stead of looking at me.

“Scared?” he asked. His voice was still low. And he still wasn’t looking at me.

“Yes,” I said.

He jerked on the line again. Then he pulled in a sackalay ’bout long and wide as my hand. He rebaited the hook and spit on the bait for luck and throwed the line back out in the water. He didn’t look at me all this time. I didn’t look at him, either. Just seen all this out the corner of my eyes.

“I’m seventy-one, Chimley,” he said after the line had settled
again. “Seventy-one and a half. I ain’t got too much strength left to go crawling under that bed like Fue said.”

“I’m seventy-two,” I said. But I didn’t look at him when I said it.

We sat there awhile looking out at the lines. The water was so clean and blue, peaceful and calm. I coulda sat there all day long looking out there at my line.

“Think he did it?” Mat asked.

I hunched my shoulders. “I don’t know, Mat.”

“If he did it, you know we ought to be there, Chimley,” Mat said.

I didn’t answer him, but I knowed what he was talking about. I remembered the fight Mathu and Fix had out there at Marshall store. It started over a Coke bottle. After Fix had drunk his Coke, he wanted Mathu to take the empty bottle back in the store. Mathu told him he wasn’t nobody’s servant. Fix told him he had to take the bottle back in the store or fight.

A bunch of us was out there, white and black, sitting on the garry eating gingerbread and drinking pop. The sheriff, Guidry, was there, too. Mathu told Guidry if Fix started anything, he was go’n protect himself. Guidry went on eating his gingerbread and drinking pop like he didn’t even hear him.

When Fix told Mathu to take the bottle back in the store again, and Mathu didn’t, Fix hit him—and the fight was on. Worst fight I ever seen in my life. For a hour it was toe to toe. But when it was over, Mathu was up, and Fix was down. The white folks wanted to lynch Mathu, but Guidry stopped them. Then he walked up to Mathu, cracked him ’side the jaw, and Mathu hit the ground. He turned to Fix, hit him in the mouth, and Fix went down again. Then Guidry came back to the garry to finish his gingerbread and pop. That was the end of that fight. But that wasn’t the last fight Mathu had on that river with them white people. And that’s what Mat
was talking about. That’s what he meant when he said if Mathu did it we ought to be there. Mathu was the only one we knowed had ever stood up.

I looked at Mat sitting on the croker sack. He was holding the fishing pole with both hands, gazing out at the line. We had been together so much I just about knowed what he was thinking. But I asked him anyhow.

“ ’Bout that bed,” he said. “I’m too old to go crawling under that bed. I just don’t have the strength for it no more. It’s too low, Chimley.”

“Mine ain’t no higher,” I said.

He looked at me now. A fine-featured, brown-skin man. I had knowed him all my life. Had been young men together. Had done our little running around together. Had been in a little trouble now and then, but nothing serious. Had never done what we was thinking about doing now. Maybe we had thought about it. Sure, we had thought about it. But we had never done it.

“What you say, Chimley?” he said.

I nodded to him.

We pulled in the lines and went up the bank. Mat had his fishes in the sack; mine was in the bucket.

“She want us to shoot first,” I said. “I wonder why.”

“I don’t know,” Mat said. “How’s that old gun of yours working?”

“Shot good last time,” I said. “That’s been a while, though.”

“You got any number five shells?” Mat asked.

“Might have a couple round there,” I said. “I ain’t looked in a long time.”

“Save me one or two if you got them,” Mat said. “Guess I’ll have to borrow a gun, too. Nothing round my house work but that twenty-gauge and that old rifle.”

“How you figuring on getting over there?” I asked him.

“Clatoo, I reckon,” Mat said. “Try to hitch a ride with him on the truck.”

“Have him pick me up, too,” I said.

When we came up to my gate, Mat looked at me again. He was quite a bit taller than me, and I had to kinda hold my head back to look at him.

“You sure now, Chimley?” he said.

“If you go, Mat.”

“I have to go, Chimley,” he said. “This can be my last chance.”

I looked him in the eyes. Lightish-brown eyes. They was saying much more than he had said. They was speaking for both of us, though, me and him.

“I’m going, too,” I said.

Mat still looked at me. His eyes was still saying more than he had said. His eyes was saying: We wait till now? Now, when we’re old men, we get to be brave?

I didn’t know how to answer him. All I knowed, I had to go if he went.

Mat started toward his house, and I went on in the yard. Now, I ain’t even stepped in the house good ’fore that old woman started fussing at me. What I’m doing home so early for? She don’t like to be cleaning fishes this time of day. She don’t like to clean fishes till evening when it’s cool. I didn’t answer that old woman. I set my bucket of fishes on the table in the kitchen; then I come back in the front room and got my old shotgun from against the wall. I looked through the shells I kept in a cigar box on top the armoire till I found me a number five. I blowed the dust off, loaded the old gun, stuck it out the window, turnt my head just in case the old gun decided to blow up, and I shot. Here come that old woman starting right back on me again.

“What’s the matter with you, old man? What you doing shooting out that window, raising all that racket for?”

“Right now, I don’t know what I’m doing all this for,” I told her. “But, see, if I come back from Marshall and them fishes ain’t done and ready for me to eat, I’m go’n do me some more shooting around this house. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

She tightened her mouth and rolled her eyes at me, but she had enough sense not to get too cute. I got me two or three more number five shells, blowed the dust off them, and went out to the road to wait for Clatoo.

When I got home
I handed my sack of fishes to Ella, and I went in the other room to phone Clatoo. Emma’s daughter Julie said Clatoo had just left the house, and asked me what was the matter. She said Miss Merle had called Clatoo on the phone and Clatoo had got his old shotgun and left in his truck, and she wanted me to tell her what was the matter. I told her if Clatoo didn’t tell her anything, I couldn’t tell her anything either, and I asked her if Clatoo told her where he was going. She said he didn’t tell her nothing, but she heard him over the phone telling Miss Merle something about Mr. Billy Washington and something about Mr. Jacob Aguillard. She told me I might be able to catch him either at Silo or the old Mulatto Place, and she asked me again what was the matter.

I hung up the phone and looked up Billy Washington’s number. His wife, Selina, told me Billy had just left in the truck with Clatoo. I asked her if Billy had his gun. She said yes, matter of fact he did, but how did I know? I asked her if
they said where they was going next. She said she believed they was headed toward the old Mulatto Place, because she heard them saying something about Jacob Aguillard. I asked her if Jacob had a number, and she said she didn’t know, but Leola Bovay had a phone. She told me if I hung on a minute she would get the number for me. When she came back on the phone, she gave me the number, and she asked me what was the matter. I hung up and called Leola’s house. She told me that Clatoo had just pulled up in front of Jacob’s house. She said looked like that was Billy Washington with him, and looked like both of them had shotguns. And Jacob was coming out of the house right now, and he had a shotgun, too. I told her to run out on the garry and tell Clatoo to wait a second. I heard her putting the phone down, then a little while later picking it up again. She said Clatoo was waiting. I asked her if she had a twelve-gauge shotgun that could shoot. She told me when her husband died he had left two or three old guns around there, but she couldn’t tell one gauge from another, and she asked me again what was the matter. I told her to take the guns out to Clatoo and ask Clatoo to check them, and if he found a twelve-gauge that could shoot, bring it. I asked her if she had any number five shells, and she said she didn’t know. I told her to get all the shells she had and take them out to Clatoo, and tell Clatoo to pick out some and bring them. She asked me what was the matter. I told her to tell Clatoo to tell her, because I didn’t know nothing. I hung up. When I looked around, I saw Ella standing in the door with her hands on her hips. So big she was filling up that whole door.