This Bitter Earth (23 page)
Authors: Bernice McFadden
Chapter 28
Lappy thought about how still the night was. He looked at the blood that was smeared across his hands and marveled at how dark it looked against his skin.
He laughed out loud as he took the bend and noticed too late the skid marks that JJ’s truck had left in the middle of the road.
Lappy’s car spun around and then careened off the road, plowing into the same white ash JJ had slammed into moments earlier.
The tree shuddered at the impact and dropped a heavy limb down and onto the windshield of Lappy’s car.
“This is not good,” Lappy mumbled to himself as he slipped from the car and started down the road.
He was losing blood fast and he felt as if he were walking on water rather than road. The trees around him swayed and the moon let out a laugh that sounded like the flutter of a thousand wings.
He lurched along, swinging between the road and its grassy border. He tripped three times before he reached the white post that marked the beginning of the Hale land.
Lappy grabbed hold of the post to balance himself.
He felt tired, so tired.
There were black dots swirling in front of his eyes and he was sure that those dots would turn into circles and then finally walls. He looked at the blood that still pumped from his wound.
When the walls came he would be able to sleep; it would be a sleep so deep that they could nail him in a coffin and place him six feet under and it wouldn’t bother him at all.
He coughed up blood just as the rumbling sounds of the approaching northbound #2276 wrecked the perfect stillness of the night.
He would hop the train, that’s what he would do, Lappy told himself as he moved into the field. He would hop the train and be done with Bigelow for good.
The sick hot feeling was ebbing out of him and being replaced with thoughts of his mother. He hadn’t thought of her in years, but now he wanted her desperately.
He would go to her when he got back to Short Junction. He would go to her and fall into her arms and let her rock him the way she used to when he was a boy. They would not talk about his father or the things Lappy had done in his time away from her. They would just hold each other and he would promise not to misbehave ever again, just as long as she rocked him the way she used to when he was a boy.
That thought in mind, Lappy smiled and moved into the field, bound for the railroad tracks.
They would follow him on foot, roaming through the streets of Bigelow like pack dogs, stopping every so often to check behind a tree or inspect a noise coming from behind a house.
Sugar dragged Mercy by her hand. She’d fought the first hundred feet, yanked back on Sugar’s grip so hard that they both tumbled to the ground. Sugar had slapped her and raised her hand to do it again, but Seth caught her by the arm and shook his head no.
They moved through the night, sometimes together but most times apart. Pearl’s short legs worked hard at keeping up with the long strides of the others, while Mercy hobbled along on the balls of her feet to keep the sharp stones on the road from cutting into their soft middles.
Joe was at the lead, butcher knife clutched tightly in his hand as he paused every now and again to listen to any change in the timbre of the night.
At one point he’d knelt down on one knee and dipped his finger in a small red puddle. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed it and Sugar thought for one horrible moment that Joe would taste it too.
But he didn’t. He wiped his finger into the dust of the road, and then brushed his hands in disgust against his pants before moving on.
JJ took the back road that turned onto the bottom of Grove Street. The door to #9 was wide open and there was a puddle of blood as large as a doormat just over the threshold.
JJ turned and followed the trail the blood and footprints had left for him.
Lappy could see the train now: the soft yellow glow of light as it spilled from the front window of the locomotive. They looked like eyes to Lappy, evil yellow eyes.
He could hear the whistle announcing its arrival in Bigelow and he could feel the earth beneath his feet tremble at its approach.
Circles, large black circles, moved in and out of his vision now. Sometimes the circles grew wings, eyes and bright yellow beaks. But each time he stopped to catch his breath and to dab at his wound, they would just become circles again.
The train tracks were right there; he could see them glimmering beneath the moon. A few more feet was all he had to go; just a few more feet and he would be there.
Lappy laughed, a long careening chuckle that broke through the night and informed the pack that followed him to shift west.
Lappy walked now with his arms outstretched before him; he wanted to touch those rails, run his fingers along their sleekness.
So close, he thought to himself, so close.
Sugar saw Jude walking alongside her. Her head was lowered and her hands were clasped behind her back. She strolled, really, a gait that one took on at the end of a long and tiring journey.
Her eyes were focused straight ahead and were absent the revenge Sugar knew was present in her own eyes.
They walked alongside each other until Sugar realized she was walking through a part of the field that was dense with flowers. She looked down at where her feet stepped and knew for sure that that was the exact place Jude had taken her last breath.
Sugar’s heart dropped and she stopped dead in her tracks.
Jude stopped too, and turned toward Sugar and smiled.
In all of the years they had been together and in all the dreams Jude had walked through she’d never smiled at Sugar. Now she did smile, and it was as wide and as bright as the moon that hung above them.
And just like that the years of pain and hurt fell away from her and she knew that everything from then on would be all right.
JJ moved in closer; he was so close to the rest of them that he could smell the scent of his mother’s perfume and the sick sweat of Mercy’s yearning body.
He shifted the shotgun from the left side of his neck to the right and cut deeper into the woods so that he could move up and ahead of them without being noticed.
Seth spotted him first and tapped Joe on the shoulder. Father and son took in Lappy’s long arms stretched out ahead of him, the diamond ring on his pinky glistening in the black Arkansas night. Those hands so close to white that they glowed like the North Star, and the pack followed it as such.
Lappy let off another reel of laughter, reminding Seth that he had run away from him the first time. Tonight, Seth thought, tonight he would stay and fight.
Pearl knew what hate felt like. It had gnawed at her bones long enough for her to recognize the feeling immediately, and it had called on her like an unwelcomed visitor every time she looked at pictures of Jude or thought about Sugar lying half-dead and bleeding on the floor of #10.
Now it washed over her and she could taste it like bitters in the back of her throat. The small secret she clutched tightly in her hand felt as hard and as cold as the coffin lid Pearl had thrown herself on after they’d pulled it closed and she knew that Jude was truly dead and gone.
This man that stumbled ahead of her had taken her life away in one appalling act and she hated Lappy Clayton for that and would hate him even in death.
She supposed it wasn’t a Christian feeling, this loathing she had for him. God would probably not allow her in the house he’d prepared for her in Heaven. Oh well, she thought, she would continue to hate Lappy Clayton in hell.
Lappy could see the silver tracks, could see them even though the circles were getting larger, wider, stretching themselves into rectangles and squares.
All Lappy could think about was sleep, that and his mother.
The train came to a halt just ten feet in front of him, and the words “Home free” fell guttural and thick from his mouth.
They were closing in on him, walking in large circles like stalking cats. Lappy turned on them and grinned. He was safe now, he told himself, safe because the train was here and people would see.
These were good people, these people that hated him so. They were decent people too, well respected in the church and the community. They wouldn’t hurt him, not now, not there.
Lappy laughed at the thought and stumbled backward.
“I’ll have witnesses!” he screamed as his back touched the steel casing of the boxcar and he slid down to the ground. “Witnesses!” He coughed and a spray of blood sprinkled the night red.
All six looked at each other. The northbound #2276 was a freight train; there were no passengers aboard at all. There was just the motorman, and he was lit on moonshine and twelve cars away.
Lappy laughed and laughed, even when Joe stepped forward, grabbed him by his hair and pulled his head slowly back on his neck.
There was a body found out by the tracks, right off the Hale land. Jed Hale heard the news spoken in whispers around him as he sat in a booth at the town diner sipping his coffee and staring at the backs of the young black men and women that had filed quietly in one by one and taken a seat at the counter.
“Beaten so bad that his face looked like a piece of raw beef.”
The words rang in Jed’s ear.
“Shot in the head and cut clean across his throat.”
Jed placed his coffee cup down on its saucer.
“Second body found there in twenty-five years,” someone else interjected.
“White man?” a soft voice inquired.
Jed reached for his morning paper.
“Colored man. Yella, though.”
“Ohhhh,” the soft voice moaned.
“Any suspects?”
“None. Who cares, anyway, he was just a nigga and probably deserved it.”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell
them
that,” the soft voice said and from the corner of his eye, Jed could see a finger pointed at the backs of the blacks that sat at the counter.
Jed rolled up his newspaper and pushed himself from the table. He dug deep into his pocket and tossed a dollar down next to his plate.
He would put the Hale land up for sale today, he thought to himself as he pushed through the angry crowd of people that had formed around the counter.
The land wouldn’t be much good to him anymore. After the first murder, the earth seemed to pull back, allowing wildflowers but nothing else.
Now Jed supposed the land wouldn’t even permit that.
Too much blood had been spilled there, he thought, as he walked across the street and toward the building that housed the
Sun Flower County Gazette.
He’d farmed land long enough to know that the earth was fickle; too much blood spilled on it made it barren, barren and bitter.