A Gathering of Old Men (9 page)

“I ain’t got nothing to say, Sheriff,” he said, without raising his head.

“You better think of something to say,” Mapes said. “What are you doing down here?”

Reverend Jameson shook his head, but never raised his eyes.

“I’ll ask you one more time, Reverend,” Mapes said. “What are you doing down here?”

The old man remained quiet. Beads of sweat covered his bald head.
Pow
went Mapes’s hand across his face. Sweat flew from his bald head. Unlike the two other old men, whose faces snapped to the side when Mapes hit them, Reverend Jameson staggered and fell flat on his back. The people looked at him, but no one said anything. After a while he raised his head and looked at Candy the way a little dog would look up at its mistress after it has been punished. But Candy showed him no sympathy. None of the others did either. And he slowly pushed himself up and stood before Mapes again.

“Well?” Mapes said.

He shook his head, which was still bowed. “I ain’t got nothing to say, Sheriff.” And down he went again.

He sat up just as he had done before, and stared down at the ground. Then, as he started pushing himself to his feet, suddenly every last person in the yard and on the porch, whether he was sitting, squatting, or standing, began forming a line up to Mapes. Candy was at the head of the line.

“I’m next, Mapes,” she said.

Mapes stared at her with those hard, ash-colored eyes, and
his flushed heavy jowls trembled even more violently. I thought he was going to hit her for sure now, and I was just about ready to step between them when he jerked his head and walked away, and I knew he wanted me to follow him out into the road. He leaned back against his car and crossed his legs and folded his arms across his chest. He was a big man—two sixty, two seventy—and he looked very tired. I leaned back against the car beside him, and both of us looked into the yard. The people had begun moving around again. Candy was attending to Uncle Billy, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. And I noticed for the first time that the only person who had not gotten into the line was Mathu. He still squatted against the wall with the gun cradled in his arms. He was smoking a cigarette and looking out at us.

“You know he did it, don’t you?” Mapes said. He had calmed down some.

“Who?” I said.

“You know who I’m talking about.” Yes, I knew who he was talking about. We were both looking at him squatting there.

“Why don’t you arrest him?” I said.

“On what charges?” Mapes asked.

“Killing Beau, I suppose.”

“How can you prove it?” Mapes said. “Because Beau was killed here in his yard? That’s no proof. Clinton would have that thrown out of court in two seconds flat. And she knows that, too.”

“What about the gun?”

“You didn’t look very close, did you?” Mapes asked me. “Every last one has the same make gun—twelve-gauge. Everyone probably has the same numbered shell in the gun right now. No, you can’t arrest him on that. But he killed him, all right. The only one with nuts enough to do it.”

He got a half roll of Life Savers out of his pocket and
reached it toward me. I shook my head. He put one of the Life Savers into his mouth, and the pack back into his pocket. He sucked on the Life Saver while he looked at Mathu squatting against the wall.

“You seen Charlie?” he asked me.

“No, I haven’t seen him.”

“He’s probably hiding somewhere back there in the field,” Mapes said. “We can pick him up anytime. But he didn’t do it. Mathu did. And
she
arranged this little get-together. Not him. He never would have. He’s a tough old goat just like you see him there. He probably would have turned himself in by now if she hadn’t got into it, but he doesn’t want to go against her. Where she got all these old men from, only God knows. Look at them. Look at those old guns.”

We both looked at the old men with their shotguns. Candy had finished attending to Uncle Billy and Gable, and she had gone back to the steps to stand beside Aunt Glo and the children. She and Aunt Glo were talking and looking out into the road at us.

“My God, man, can’t you talk to her?” Mapes said to me. “I don’t want any trouble on this place. That Baton Rouge crowd’s already getting drunk for that game tomorrow. Some of them wouldn’t want anything better than a necktie party tonight.”

“I tried talking. She wouldn’t listen,” I said.

“You tried throwing her butt into the back of that car?” Mapes asked.

“No, I didn’t try that, Mapes,” I told him. “I hear there’s a law against kidnapping people. Especially on their own place.”

“There’s a law against harboring a murderer, too,” Mapes said. “You ever heard of that law?”

I didn’t answer him. I looked at Candy standing beside the steps talking to Aunt Glo.

“You two are going to make a hell of a marriage,” Mapes said.

“Don’t get personal, Mapes,” I told him.

“When is the date?” he asked, and grinned.

“Just don’t get personal, all right, Mapes?”

He exhaled a deep breath while he looked at me. I wasn’t much of a man in his eyesight. He looked back at Candy.

“Maybe Beau was living in the past, and maybe he wasn’t, but she damned sure is,” he said. “She still thinks she can do as her paw and the rest of them did fifty years ago. Well, it’s not going to work. He isn’t getting out of this.”

“You seem to have something personal against him.”

Mapes grunted. “That’s where you’re wrong. I admire the nigger. He’s a better man than most I’ve met, black or white. But he killed a man—and she’s not getting him out of it. If she had any sense at all, she would have taken him to jail hours ago. Because if Fix doesn’t show up, others may. And they won’t be coming here to talk. But I don’t suppose she realizes that.”

He looked at me to see if I had any comments. I had nothing to say. He looked past me. “Well, here comes Herman,” he said.

The hearse drove slowly down the road. It went by us, then stopped in front of Mapes’s car, and the coroner and his assistant remained inside awhile looking out at the people. The people in the yard and on the porch looked back at the hearse.

The coroner got out and looked at the people again before coming toward Mapes. He was a small, clean-shaven man with steel-rim glasses. He could have been in his mid- or late sixties. He wore a seersucker suit, a panama hat, a white shirt, and a small polka-dotted bow tie. His well-shined black shoes were covered with dust.

“Herman,” Mapes said.

But Herman did not speak. Instead, he just looked up at
Mapes, and I could see his blue eyes through the thick lenses asking Mapes what it was all about. Mapes moved the Life Saver around with his tongue and nodded to the assistant, who had followed the coroner over to us. The assistant, who was named George, was a much younger and larger man. He was blond and balding.

“George,” Mapes said.

“Mapes,” George said.

Then George started looking at Mapes exactly the way that Herman was doing. They wanted Mapes to say something to them. They thought Mapes owed them some kind of explanation about what was going on. Mapes didn’t say anything. He looked into the yard where all the people were looking out at us. He moved the Life Saver around before turning back to Herman. Old Herman was still looking up at him.

“Don’t you think you ought to get started?” Mapes said.

Herman waited about ten more seconds before he said, “Sure, Mapes.” Then he looked up at Mapes another ten seconds before he said anything to George. “Bring that stretcher and a blanket,” he said. Then, while George was getting the stretcher and blanket out of the hearse, Herman looked up at Mapes another ten or fifteen seconds before going into the yard. After a while, Mapes and I followed him.

“How long you reckon he’s been dead?” Mapes asked.

Herman was on one knee looking down at Beau.

“Two, maybe three hours, I suppose,” he said.

“More like three,” Mapes said. “That would put it around noon, wouldn’t it?”

“Around that time, I suppose,” Herman said.

“I been here half an hour,” Mapes said. “Got here around two-thirty. That would have given them—her—a two-and-a-half-hour jump—”

“What?” Herman said.

“Just talking to myself,” Mapes said.

Herman couldn’t hold back any longer, and jumped to his feet. For an old man he could really get up fast. He got up right against Mapes’s chest. He was about half the size of Mapes.

“What the hell is going on around here, Mapes?” he said, pushing up against Mapes’s stomach. “You’re talking to yourself while a bunch of niggers stand around here with shotguns and a white man lays dead in the grass. I demand to know what the hell is going on around here!”

“You and George better get him into Bayonne,” Mapes said calmly.

George was standing there with the stretcher and the blanket. Herman was still staring at Mapes through those thick lenses which made his eyes look about the size of partridge eggs. You could not pass your hand slantwise between Herman’s chest and Mapes’s stomach.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” Mapes said, looking over Herman down at the corpse.

“Don’t you think you ought to hurry up and find out more than I know?” Herman asked, still looking up at Mapes.

“You take care your business, I’ll take care mine,” Mapes said.

“Sure,” the coroner said, and nodded. He turned to his assistant. “All right, George.”

George spread the blanket out on the grass, and he and Griffin picked up Beau by the arms and legs and laid him on the blanket. Then George wrapped the blanket well around and over Beau, and he and Griffin laid Beau on the stretcher and took him out to the hearse. Everyone in the yard and on the porch watched what was going on, but remained quiet.

“Don’t you think you ought to hurry, Mapes?” Herman asked him one more time. “Not only Fix—but what about his friends on the
lane?”
Behind the thick lenses his blue eyes got even bigger when he mentioned the friends on the lane. The
eyes, not the words, gave the meaning of what he had just said.

“Don’t spread this around,” Mapes said, and moved the candy about in his mouth.

The coroner shook his head. “Oh, no, Mapes,” he said. “I won’t tell a soul. I’ll just tell them Beau has a chill in all this hot weather—that’s why I got him wrapped up like this.”

“The rest of it, I mean,” Mapes said.

“The shotguns?”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t worry,” the coroner said. “Nobody would believe me anyhow. Would you, Mapes?”

Mapes didn’t answer him. The coroner looked around at the people, then back at Mapes again. But he could see that Mapes had no more to say to him, and after looking up at me helplessly he left the yard. George was already in the hearse waiting for him. After they had driven off, Mapes took off his hat and wiped the sweatband. He wiped his face and neck while he looked at the people on the porch.

“All right,” he said when he had put the hat back on. “The ones who don’t stay here get moving. The rest of you move back there on the porch. I mean right now.”

But nobody moved.

“What’s the matter with you all?” Mapes asked them. “Can’t you all hear, either? I said move.”

“I kilt him,” Uncle Billy said. Uncle Billy stood by the garden fence where Griffin had put him half an hour ago. His lips were swollen from where Mapes had hit him. He seemed as proud of his swollen lips as was Crane’s boy in
The Red Badge of Courage
.

Mapes stared at him a second, then went toward him. Everyone expected Mapes to pop him again. Instead, he jerked the gun out of Uncle Billy’s hand, ejected the shell and raised
it to his nose. Then he put the shell back, and slammed the gun into the waiting hands.

“Who told you to fire that gun, Uncle Billy?” Mapes asked him.

“Nobody,” Uncle Billy said.

“Candy, didn’t she?” Mapes asked.

“No, sir,” Uncle Billy said.

“You still go to church, Uncle Billy?” Mapes asked him.

“A deacon at Little Shadrack Baptist Church,” Uncle Billy said.

“If I got a Bible, would you still say you shot Beau, Uncle Billy?”

Uncle Billy licked his bottom lip, and he lowered his head as though he had to give this great consideration. Mapes waited. We all waited. Mapes got tired waiting.

“Well?” he said.

Uncle Billy raised his head and, looking Mapes straight in the eyes, he nodded.

“You didn’t shoot Beau, now, did you, Uncle Billy?” Mapes asked him again.

“Yes, sir, Sheriff.”

“Candy put you up to all this, now, didn’t she?” Mapes asked the old man. “Don’t worry, I won’t let her do you anything. I promise you.”

“No, sir, I did it all on my own,” Uncle Billy said, his head continually bobbing.

“Was Candy down here when you got here?” Mapes asked, using a different tactic now.

“I don’t rightly know,” Uncle Billy said.

“What you mean you don’t rightly know?” Mapes asked. “That’s her car out there. Was her car here?”

“I can’t rightly tell,” the old man said.

“You mean you can’t rightly see—that’s what you mean, don’t you, Uncle Billy?”

“Oh, I sees pretty well, Sheriff, pretty well indeed.”

Mapes looked at the old man with exasperation. He was getting awfully tired.

“When did you hear about the killing, Uncle Billy? One o’clock?”

“I didn’t have to hear about it, Sheriff. I was right here. I did it.”

“What were you doing when Candy called you? Taking a nap? Eating dinner? What, Uncle Billy?”

“Didn’t call me at all,” Uncle Billy said. “I was right here. And I shot him.”

Mapes’s big face had turned redder with exasperation. He wanted to hit the old man again, maybe even choke him.

“You ever seen anybody die in the electric chair, old man?” Mapes asked Uncle Billy.

Uncle Billy’s head went on bobbing. “No, sir,” he said.

“It’s not a pretty sight, Uncle Billy. Not when that juice hit you. That’s how you want to go?”

“No, sir. But if I have to.”

“Even if you have to, Uncle Billy, you don’t want to go that way,” Mapes told him. “When that juice hit you, I’ve seen that chair dance. You see, Uncle Billy, we don’t have a permanent chair in Bayonne. When we need one, we go to Angola to pick it up. And we don’t waste time screwing it down—not for just one killing. And when that juice hit you, I’ve seen that chair rattle, I’ve seen it dance. Not a pretty sight, old man. Is that how you want to go?”