All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (30 page)

"Well, Clipper went crazy. It was a lie and he knew I wasn't a thief, but he hated me so much in no time he got worked up to where he believed it. Because he wanted a good reason to do me real harm, you see. The other boy, by then he didn't want no part of what Clipper was up to. I swear to you Clipper was frothing at the mouth like a mad dog, and his face was scary-white like I never did see before. My tongue dried up to the roof of my mouth, I couldn't talk, let alone try to reason with him. What he did was fetch a bale of barbwire, rusty barbwire, and bind me to a tree with it. Out there in the middle of a big field, tall grass in every direction. Wasn't no way I could move without gettin' pricked bad.

"Now that should have been enough for him, might've been long after dark before somebody come out to look for me and hear me holler; my own daddy was so used to my bein' up at the big house he wouldn't have paid no mind I didn't get home for supper. I did holler for a while, but there wasn't another sound except the birds in the tree and the dry grass cracklin', and when I smelled smoke I knew what that was. On his way home Clipper had set fire to the field. I don't mean just tossed a match. He'd gone to the trouble to set a fire a hundred yards wide, and it was comin' up behind me mile a minute.

"I couldn't take my eyes off that fire. I think I went a little crazy, snortin' and rollin' my eyes like a horse in a burnin' stable. Just as well I didn't pay attention to what was happenin' to my poor hung-up body. Clipper had left just enough slack so that if I wanted to bad enough, I could get loose, but I had to pay the cost. I paid. I left hide and meat on those barbs, and I got the marks to this day."

"I'm sure Clipper had reason to regret his actions, when Boss found out."

Tyrone smiled, but his dilated eyes looked hard as ice. "I never told Boss that it was Clipper. I did have some privileges around here, but tellin' on the boys wasn't one of them. I could've got Clipper punished, but Boss would have thought a lot less of me. I knew that, so I kept my mouth shut. Anyhow, I wanted to prove to young Clipper"—Tyrone drank the last of his brandy and closed his eyes peacefully, leaning against the edge of the table—"prove to him I was better than he was, even if I didn't have all his—advantages."

Observing Tyrone in profile—the prideful chin, the look of the conqueror—Jackson was reminded of the Remington portrait of Boss as a young man. Tyrone's true paternity couldn't have been much of a secret at Dasharoons; but it was the sort of thing no man, out of respect for or fear of Boss, would ever have acknowledged. Fortunately Tyrone had inherited, in addition to his physical resemblance, Boss's sharp wits and bookishness. So Boss had casually accepted him, within well-defined limits. Tyrone had even won a cherished nickname: little Judge.

"Did Clipper realize you were his half-brother?" Jackson asked.

Tyrone didn't answer, and he looked so relaxed against the table Jackson thought he might have gone to sleep. Then Tyrone stirred, picking up the bottle of brandy. He looked at Jackson with a hint of admiration.

"You do keep a sharp eye out," he said. "The more I get to know you, the better I like you. Have another, Dr. Holley?"

Jackson nodded. Tyrone poured them each a dollop.

"It was never spoke of around here, but he knew. Picked it up from what wasn't said. Everybody understood Boss to be a lecher with a keen interest in poontang, and he joked about that too: There'd been two, three babies turned out lots darker than me. Well, those chillun just never had no significance for Boss. Never saw himself in them. But my mother, Boss really doted on her. She was light, not even high-yella, kind of smoky cream color. He set her up in business down in New Orleans a little time after I was born. She got run over by a brewery wagon one fine day, but that's another story. There never was a joke about her
or
me. Still, Clipper knew what—who I was, and so did Champ. Now, Champ was older, and never gave any trouble, but he always did have a lot on his mind. He wasn't Boss's favorite by a long shot; that made him anxious and eager to please and he had to work hard to get Boss to notice him at all. Clipper had
plenty
time for me. Clipper had all his great-granddaddy's hatred for black people stored up inside—and Sylvanus Bradwin the first was a slavemaster with a fearsome reputation. This house was built on the bodies and blood of Africans. Clipper was just naturally
bad
to niggers, but the fact that he was related to one—and had to look that nigger in the face almost every day—drove bun wild."

"Did he give you more trouble, after the fire in the field?"

"Dropped a rock off the roof that knocked me out for two days. Put a baby rattlesnake in my bed— What's the matter, doctor?"

Jackson had shuddered involuntarily, almost spilling some of the brandy from, his glass. He was able to smile. "Snakes. I don't like them."

"They don't bother me as much as Clipper thought. I just plucked that little rattler up by the hackles and tossed it out the window. Oh, I was glad to see Clipper go off to school, his thirteenth year. But from what Nhora tells me, his meanness didn't stop. He was bad with the little girls—and some grown-up women, too, who ought to know better. He was a devil, and that was never more plain to me than the day he died." Tyrone's head tilted forward moodily, and he sniffed deeply of the brandy fumes. "Because he didn't die, you see. Not like he should have."

"What do you mean? Nhora said he committed suicide by swallowing—"

"Swallowed his saber and crashed through a window to the ground. When I got to him, and I was the first one there, he was still alive, his gory teeth clenched on steel. But he was
grinnin'
at me; there was hell-light shining through his eyes. I'm a strongman, doctor, strong in my faith, but I couldn't bear that sight. My knees shook and I was cold to the roots of my heart. There was a pile of paving stones nearby covered with a tarpaulin. I pulled off the tarp and threw it over him. Last thing I saw was his eyes blazing, and I still dream about them. His eyes in my dreams are hotter than the fire he set, the fire that was meant to burn me black, blacker than all the other bastard babies Boss brought forth, black as the nigger I refused to be. Then I see him lyin' in his grave, eyes open, blazin', schemin' to get even with me. And I wake up like a little child in my bed, cryin' for the mama I never had."

Tyrone's hand, however, was steady as he lifted his glass to his lips. "Champ and Clipper and little Judge," he said. He seemed to be talking to himself. "And Beau—maybe we should think about Beau now. What if it's true, and he has come back?" Tyrone studied Jackson, trying to take this notion seriously. "Beau was the best of them, from what I hear, but that was a long time ago. What's left of old Beau now?"

"Not much, perhaps. He seems to be holding a grudge against everyone who lives at Dasharoons. That could be the result of some twisted ideas about patrimony."

"The only way to get at the truth is to run Early Boy to ground. Easier said than done." Tyrone gave a start, flinching from a movement in the doorway. Jackson turned too. Hackaliah stood there, nodding almost imperceptibly, his face without expression.

"Heard voices," he said to Tyrone. "Didn't know it was you."

"Who else, daddy?" Tyrone said, takin a deep breath. "No need for you to stay up."

"Somethin' happen to your hand?"

"Caught it 'tween two gears. Be okay. Long as you're here, maybe you could answer somethin's on my mind. I don't remember Beau, I just barely remember the night he left home, all the killin' that was goin' on across the Ridge. But you and Beau, you were real close, daddy."

"That's so."

"Spared your life, didn't he?"

Hackaliah appeared to draw himself more closely together, as if anticipating a hard knock or two. His yellowing eyes were decidedly unfriendly, but he looked at the floor and his tone didn't change.

"No tellin' what Boss would've done to me, didn't matter to him how I was in the right. His blood was up, he was a wild man. So I got horsewhup, and I could've been shot. Beau stopped him the only way he could: knocked his own father down with the butt of a rifle. Ruint his mouth for all time." Hackaliah's own mouth twitched in satisfaction; then he wearied of the emotion, held tight to his shaking head with one big hand.

"What chance Beau's alive today?"

"Ain't give much thought to Beau in a long while."

Hackaliah's voice had faded to a whisper. He also had the ability, Jackson noted, to fade into the background of a room so completely he was like a piece of battered furniture one is accustomed to having around and can't quite decide to throw out.

"Shit you ain't, daddy," Tyrone said, tense and angry not to have the old man's eye. Jackson glimpsed what it must have been like for so many years, the two men linked to each other in a sham of propriety that was humiliating to everyone but Boss, and possibly his mistress. "You do think about him. You think about how good it'd be here now if Beau never left. Don't you, daddy? Well, suppose he is alive."

"I don't know. It just can't be, that's all."

"
Suppose
. You wouldn't let him slip back without lettin' us know, would you?" He said this with a smile, but the implication of a threat brought the old man's eyes slowly back to him. Hackaliah seemed more perplexed than frightened.

"Crazy even to talk about such a thing," Hackaliah said at last. "Can I go now?" The obvious note of servility matched the deadness in his eyes, as if he had a blind spot where he was now looking.

"You 'could stay and have some of this brandy with us," Tyrone proposed, slipping into indifference.

"I don't believe so. I never have taken a drink in Boss's house. And I never will."

Tyrone yawned. "Times change, daddy. Want me to coax you, is that what you want?" His voice became almost a falsetto. "Have some of this delicious fifty-year-old brandy, daddy Hackaliah. I know you ain't never tasted nothin' like it in your whole life."

"It's not your place to invite me to drink in this house," Hackaliah said ruthlessly.

Tyrone turned and smacked the tabletop in annoyance. "Oh, get on out of here then, daddy! I don't want to fight with you. I knew my place better than you. I always known my, true place, and don't forget that."

Hackaliah went out the door without comment, leaving Tyrone rigid with tension. He busied himself clearing the leather chairs of books, flopped down in a chair, waved his hand for Jackson to sit. "Brings out the worst in me," he muttered. "Don't know why. He never treated me all that bad; no matter how much sass I gave him."

"Was he married to your mother?" Jackson asked, sitting on an arm of the vacant chair.

"Oh, sure. But nothing ever happened in bed, you understand. She was reserved for Boss. But I suppose daddy Hackaliah wasn't so old he didn't get a letch now and again for what he couldn't have."

"Perhaps his desire did get the best of him on occasion. After all, Boss horsewhipped him."

"I don't think that had to do with my mother. Happened the night of the Chisca County War."

"What was the Chisca County War?"

"A massacre; that was just the name they gave it afterward in the newspapers. Wasn't too many colored men shootin' back that night. I suppose you learned in school how slavery was abolished in this country after the Civil War, but don't you believe it. Oh, a colored man works for wages or shares now, but shares can't buy him nothin'. He's still always in debt to the big boss man, and all he's ever got is shacks and dirt and the, cold wind in February. Even with the war on, there's six, seven hundred men workin' this plantation, and twenty-live years ago there was over a thousand. Dasharoons was the biggest mule market in the South, maybe in the world. But it was the human mules who had all the grief. Thank God there's always been a colored man with gumption, willing to stand up and declare for the rest of us. In 1920 his name was Elias Pearman. And what he said was, 'If you don't get paid enough to eat right or wear shoes on your feet, don't work till you
do
get paid.' That's just a commonsense philosophy, but it didn't set well with the boss man, at Dasharoons or anywheres else. White trash tried to kill Elias Pearman, but he was cool and nimble under fire, as well as lucky. All the boss man did was stir up sentiment in favor of Elias, which probably wouldn't have happened if they'd just allowed him to speechify. No speech made in the history of the world has had the power of a single drop of shed blood, and coloreds hereabout were so sunk in misery very few recognized a savior in their midst. And, it's true, there were colored men dead set against Elias, because they feared the wrath of the boss. As you might know, Boss Bradwin was the most powerful boss of all."

"You mentioned a massacre; is that how he chose to exercise his authority?"

Tyrone shook his head. "From what I've been able to learn, talkin' to those that was there, readin' Boss's own journal, I don't believe he had a thing to do with the attempts on Elias Pearman's life. Boss was the biggest, but he was the smartest too. He had to realize that in the long run Elias couldn't do him much harm. Boss was rich, but times was poor, and when a poor man was reachin' for a dollar you didn't offer him two. I don't condemn Boss, because he was a man of his times. But he took pride in the fact he'd been a soldier, he thought he was a born general and only bad luck had held him back from a brilliant career. The truth is he wasn't good enough in the only real fight he ever had on his hands, and a lot of innocent blood got spilled because he lost control, of himself and the men he tried to lead."