Embracing Darkness (71 page)

Jessie, of course, was now living full-time with the Hartleys and so ate all her meals there. Their supper was more cordial than ours, although Mr. Hartley seemed distracted and preoccupied. This behavior had not gone unobserved by Jessie since the time of Sue Ellen’s assault.

“Is something wrong, Mr. Hartley?” asked Jessie. “You seem out of sorts tonight.”

Walt Hartley put his fork down and smiled weakly. “Oh, I suppose I’m just not that hungry,” he said.

Swell and Jessie went out to the porch to talk after washing the supper dishes. Their conversations were always restricted to certain subjects because Jessie was hesitant about sharing specific details of her attack, even though Sue Ellen knew more than anybody else about it. She’d been privy to so much because she had been the one to find Jessie shortly after it happened and also because the same thing had happened to her.

Swell was sure that it was the same man since during both rapes he’d worn a deformed pig mask. Neither girl knew why, in contrast to Swell’s experience, Jessie had been spared a savage beating, and they didn’t bother to speculate.

“I think the man who got me got you as well,” Swell said.

Jessie stirred uneasily in her chair. She took a sip of her lemonade, not bothering to ask her best friend again, as she had repeatedly done, to exonerate Billy Norwin.

“Jess,” continued Sue Ellen, “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but this guy is still out there. We could still be in danger.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jessie said.

Swell began playing with a bracelet Mr. Hartley had given his daughter for her seventh birthday. It reminded her of her father, and of the fact that he now knew a dreadful secret, which Sue Ellen was ready to tell Jessie.

“I’m pregnant,” Swell blurted out.

“How do you… ?” began Jessie.

“Know?” said Swell, finishing Jessie’s question for her. “Oh, let’s see. I’ve been nauseous every morning for the last four or five days; my nipples are sensitive; and I haven’t gotten my period since before it happened.”

“It could be nerves.”

“All I know, Jess, is that I haven’t been so scared in my life. This to me is more terrifying than what happened under the rectory. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I feel so lost and so alone. I’m going to be a mother, and I don’t want to be.”

Sue Ellen paused briefly before continuing, “Jess, did he go inside you?”

Jessie turned away again. She felt this question too terrible to answer. Not only because she wasn’t sure if her attacker had penetrated her, but because she was too ashamed to admit it to Sue Ellen. She walked over to one of the porch’s pillars, put her arm around it, and lay her head against the side.

“What did he do to you?” asked Swell.

“I was looking for my dog that afternoon.” began Jessie. He wasn’t in the house. First I went over to the rectory, where I saw Ziggy on the front step. I asked him whether he’d seen General Lee, and his response was, ‘Does your toilet go up?’ You know that’s how he described it when a toilet overflowed.”

She smiled at Swell, who smiled back faintly. Sue Ellen’s shattered front teeth were visible through her parted lips, and she became self-conscious about this almost immediately.

“Anyway I asked Ziggy to go inside the rectory and look for the dog. He did. In the meantime I was going to come over here to see whether maybe you’d let him inside. As I walked past the rectory stairs, I noticed that the lattice cover was missing and that the hole leading into the crawlspace was wide open. I figured that General Lee might have gone in there to… .”

Jessie stopped and thought for a moment. She remembered the man in the greasy overalls whom Jonas and Joey had buried years earlier. She also remembered what General Lee did after she had allowed him in there about a year ago. When she went to retrieve the dog a few hours later, she discovered that he’d dug up the man’s remains and carried the bones over to a far corner of the crawl space, as though they were his own private collection. She cried out in repulsion and shouted at General Lee to come out of there. He hung his head low and did as he was told. Unable to bear the thought of touching human remains, Jessie took a tablecloth from the dining-room hutch and tossed it on top of the bones. Then she shoved all the dug-up dirt back into the hole that General Lee had excavated.

Leaving these details out of her story to Sue Ellen, she continued. “I walked over to see what had happened to the lattice cover. Peeking into the hole, I saw it lying there. When I reached for it, a hand grabbed me and pulled me inside. The last thing I remember was a horrible mask of a mutilated pig. After that I blacked out.”

“If you blacked out, then he had no reason to beat you,” said Sue Ellen matter-of-factly. “You were lucky to be unconscious through the whole thing.”

“I don’t feel lucky.” Embarrassed at what she’d said, Jessie apologized and added, “It’s just that awful pig mask! I’ll never get it out of my head. We should tell the police about it. If they can find it, the mask may have fingerprints. God, how it scared me when I saw him wearing it!”

“I know,” said Swell. “It scared me too, but we don’t want the police to investigate. Daddy even says that he wants to keep it this way. And as long as I live, I won’t say a word about it.”

Jessie was reflecting on something. “Swell,” she began. “Jack White… .”

“Shhh,” cautioned Sue Ellen, inspecting the grounds on both sides. Jessie did the same a second later.

“He…,” continued Jessie in a lower voice. “Being how he is… . Don’t you think that it could have been… .”

Jessie couldn’t finish articulating her thought. As she had explained to Jack White by the maple, he was at the top of a very short list of suspects, but she still couldn’t prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was her rapist. Moreover, being uneasy when saying his name in the cool September air, Jessie didn’t press the matter with Sue Ellen.

“We’ll get each other through this,” said Swell. “We’ll help one another.”

“But what are
you
going to do?” replied Jessie. “You’re pregnant!”

It was now Swell’s turn to walk slightly off to the side and stare out onto Holly Hill as the last of the day’s sunlight slowly expired. “It’s his,” said Sue Ellen. “The man who… . I know it is.”

“You don’t know that for a fact,” remarked Jessie. “You’ve been with other boys. It could be Billy’s or… .”

“I never let them stay inside me. When they were ready, they pulled out. That was the deal. This man finished inside me more times than I care to remember.”

“You mean he did it more than once?”

Without answering directly, Swell said, “How long do you think you were out for?”

Jessie thought for a minute. “I woke up to General Lee’s barking. He and Ziggy were outside, and Ziggy was calling for me.”

“Yes,” said Sue Ellen. “I remember because that’s when I came out and saw the two of them before we heard you start to scream.”

“I came to at that point. I figure I was down there only a few minutes.”

“That’s where he got me too, and I was there for at least an hour.”

“You still haven’t answered my question, Swell. What are you going to do now?”

Sue Ellen motioned to the porch’s ceiling. “My father knows. I told him about the man in the pig mask, about what I was doing in the crawl space, and about the baby.” Swell began to cry.

Jessie played over in her mind the morning where she and Billy had overheard Jack White singing his piggy song. She had also heard him call the boys
piggies
before she threatened him with the rifle. Making a connection between
piggies
and their attacker having worn a pig mask, coupled with the fact that these attacks coincided with White’s arrival on the hill, Jessie was more convinced than ever that it was him. Still, she said nothing about any of this to Sue Ellen, as she was worried her friend still had feelings for Jack White. Perhaps if Jessie had shared this bit of information with her, Sue Ellen might have been convinced.

The fact of the matter was that since her attack Sue Ellen had avoided Jack White. As ardent as her feelings were for him, she wrote in her diary entry for August 22, 1942, that she believed he was the man who had raped her.

The two girls hugged and stayed outside a bit longer. When they began to tire, Swell put her rocking chair back against the wall, and Jessie did the same with hers. Shortly after they went inside the house, a figure emerged from its side. It was Zachary Black, and he had heard everything.

As Zachary lay in bed that night, infuriated by what he’d heard the girls discussing, he found a need to clear his mind and think about other things. He reflected back on the events of his life since leaving St. Andrew’s thirteen years earlier. His life had been anything but easy from the moment he left Holly Hill.

Certainly it could be said that Zachary Black deserved any kind of hardship he encountered. He had taken advantage of Father Poole and stolen from St. Andrew’s Church. Moreover, he was a misanthrope, a trait he had kept bottled up while roaming from town to town and working odd jobs such as sweeping floors in bars, arranging inventory for store owners, and cleaning stables for farmers. It was a miserable existence for a young boy with no family, but Zachary was satisfied with having precious little.

He wandered further south, his intention being to make it to Taloola, Mississippi, where his father’s roots were, in an effort to find some sort of family, and in 1931 came across a pig farm in the middle of Hinds County. He walked through the property and up to the house. He watched the pigs as they pushed past one another, grunting as they went. He smiled and thought how much fun it must be to slaughter them.

He knocked on the door of the farm house and waited for the owner to open the door, welcome him, and offer something to eat and employment. To Zachary Black’s astonishment the man who opened the door was a young black man.

“Yes?” said Marshall Howell. “Can I help you?”

Zachary bit down hard on his bottom lip and curled his mouth in disgust. “Is the owner of the farm in?” asked Zachary, sounding rude.

The man laughed heartily. “You’re lookin’ at him, son!”

Zachary was about ready to leave when the man asked him what he wanted. The boy kept his feet firmly planted and turned his upper torso around to see how far away the road was from where he was standing. When he turned back toward Marshall Howell, he held his stomach and swallowed.

“Oh, Lord! I know
that
look. You want some grub, boy?”

Zachary hated Negroes and wasn’t keen on eating their food, but he had no choice. It had been two and a half days since he’d last eaten, and he was exhausted from the journey.

“How far is Taloola?” asked Zachary.

“I’d say about ten miles south o’ here,” replied Marshall, “but you won’t be gettin’ there unless you get yourself in here, boy, and have some chitlins.”

Zachary was led into the house by the pig farmer and sat down at the table. He was immediately served a bowl of broth with meat that resembled thinly sliced chicken. He didn’t fuss but grabbed a spoon. He began shoveling the food into his mouth as fast as he could without choking on it.

“Easy, boy! You fixin’ to give yourself a spell o’ indigestion!”

As he finished the last spoonful, Zachary kept his eyes on Marshall Howell without saying a word.

“You still hungry, son?” asked Marshall.

Zachary still didn’t respond.

“Why, boy, you ain’t needin’ to be shy or embarrassed! I’m all alone here. I love the company. Hell, if you ain’t fixed on headin’ anywhere, you could even stay here with me. Help me run the pigs.”

“Run the pigs?” Zachary said disdainfully. “What are you talking about?”

“Son, this is a pig farm. I don’t know if you noticed my hogs as you was comin’ up the way.”

While Marshall Howell served Zachary another bowl of hot chitterlings in broth, he began to talk to his young visitor about the pig-farming business.

“You mean you slaughter them right here on the farm?” asked Zachary, his enthusiasm unable to be contained.

“Well, surely!” answered the farmer. “And I need all the help I can get when I be roundin’ them up for slaughterin’. These piggies know just how to squirm away from ya, and although I’m no ol’ fart I sure as hell ain’t no teenage boy!”

The boy agreed to work for the pig farmer for an indefinite amount of time in return for room and board. “On one condition,” said Zachary abruptly, taking Marshall by surprise. “Don’t call me boy.”

Marshall’s smile faded while he blinked twice. “Alright son,” replied Marshall.

“And don’t call me son either. My name is Black. Zachary Black.”

Marshall couldn’t contain himself, laughing again in a high-pitched cackle. This infuriated Zachary, who assumed that the Negro was mocking his name. “No offense Zachary, but a white boy named Black. You know just last week I met a Negro fella by the name of Solomon White. He-he-he.”

Zachary didn’t find any humor in what Marshall had said, and the Negro’s laugh antagonized him further. To contain his anger, he got up from the table and walked to the window. He peered out and saw the pig pen in the distance.

“When am I gonna get to slaughter me some pigs?” asked Zachary.

“Well,” Marshall Howell said, “we can go right now if you want. I can show you how it’s done and what I’ll be askin’ you to be doin’ for me.”

The two went outside, and Marshall explained the intricacies of pig slaughtering. Zachary just stood and listened as the farmer explained how a pig is bound and killed.

“It’s important to slit the throat as quick as possible,” Marshall explained, “’cause the animal be puttin’ up a fight real good if tied up long enough. But you want him good an’ excited so his heart be racin’. That way all the blood be comin’ outta him good an’ fast.”

Marshall continued with his graphic explanation of killing swine, and Zachary took it all in, fascinated by the art of it all. He loved the fact that there was a methodical system for doing it, and Zachary knew that he’d never look at another piece of bacon the same way again.