Those Bones Are Not My Child (21 page)

Spence tried to walk the way his uncle had, slow, gunfighter style, nothing-up-my-sleeves Mississippi gambler. He tried hard not to stumble over the corn husks or let the stink rising up from turds make him lose his place as the favorite nephew, the cool one with smarts, merit badges, big future, bragged on when taken round back of Mr. Norton’s rib joint and presented to the men: bestest kin to come down the pike, my nephew himself, Nathaniel Lee Spencer. But the cabbage leaves, brown as the dirt but slippery, proved worse than the turds, which he could at least look out for. It was just like his mama said, he thought, slipping and sliding, them people living out there with not a clue as to how you do it. He’d heard her say in the dining room that them people were just like them po’ white trash still picking lice on themselves in the wildman caves.

Uncle Rayfield grabbed hold of the side joists and hauled himself up into the house. But Spence couldn’t get past the baby tugging at him with a strength that was scary. He let himself be dragged around the side past the bench toward a ditch where the three boys were jiggling. Spence wondered if the still was in the ditch. He could see a
shadowy movement. Hearing the clang of a cooking spoon against a kettle gave him the courage to lift his hand in preparation for saying hi. Maybe they’d understand “Hi” and let him look at the still. But he never got the word out, because a monster rose up from the ditch and scattered everything in his head.

He remembered running from the shaggy beast, remembered the boys cackling and slapping each other on the back when he peed on himself, remembered the baby hollering and clapping her hands. Remembered the matted hair and the yellowed teeth. But didn’t remember being grabbed by the woman in the apron, though in nightmares he did recall her face peering into his, a sad face, wet, her features jumping out toward him. Didn’t remember shoving her into the old folks or the bench collapsing, or his uncle shouting and wheeling him around. Did remember the thud against the side of his head and the woman saying, “Don’t, Ray.” And the second thud that went all through him when he hit the ground.

“I thought you’d know how to act, boy, and would thank me,” his uncle said in the truck. “Don’t you know who they are?”

Animals, he wanted to say, but his uncle was driving with one free hand, so he said, “Sharecroppers?” It was a while before Uncle Rayfield’s mutterings became words again, but Spence wasn’t listening. Part of him was flashing ahead, wondering if his mama would call down thunder when she saw the welt on his face, wondering if his daddy would punch Rayfield out. That part of him knowing already that he’d be found at fault somehow and would get a whipping, so that part teamed up with the other part, ’cause a whipping was nothing compared to being disowned, called “boy,” having “favorite” taken away and maybe the bragging too and the visits behind the rib joint. So all of him gathered together to remember himself behind the rib joint in the circle of men. All of his young self pulled together to recollect the men the way he had his baby tooth from his mama’s jewelry box, the three vertebrae bones from the garbage where his sister threw them, the bright blue-and-yellow feather from under the well bucket where he’d first put it for safekeeping, the seashell from Savannah he’d traded for an aviator decal, then won back in a mumblety-peg game, and the suede drawstring bag of marbles his father had played with as a boy. On dismal days, little Nathaniel Spencer would pull his special box of magic stuff from under
his bed to look at. At thumb-sucking times he’d line up the bones and shells and feathers and other sacred things on his pillow to ward off evils, like loneliness and being teased.

“I thought you knew something. I thought you was ready to know something further. Guess not,” his uncle said.

No smarts, merit badges a fraud, no future after all, Uncle Rayfield would now try to take the men from him. So Spence sent all the smells, sights, and sounds he could summon into his special box. The sting of the barbecue sauce, the smoke from the wet mesquite tossed on the charcoal for extra tastiness. The men’s voices as they ’lowed as how Norton would never marry ’cause it might get good to him one night and he’d blurt out the secret recipe. The men’s laughter. The men’s singing. Always hearing a cue in the talk, two or three men would start singing the same snatch of the same tune at the same time like magic. The music. One of them blow-spitting across his fist to get a bottleneck sound, another strumming his belly for the guitar, another sticking his face way out and thumping his Adam’s apple up and down for the bass. The men talking of other men. Blues men with crazy names—Tub, Stubbs, Pinetop, Furry, Cleanhead, Gatemouth, Iron Jaw, Howlin’, Lightnin’, Muddy. Then the hat. The feel of the warm, damp hat. Uncle Rayfield would clap his very own hat on his favorite nephew’s head. One of the men would fit it, snapping down the brim and rearing back to admire. Another saying he’d drive the women wild. Then all the men talking at once and somehow hearing each other, pointing fingers to show who they were answering, and Spence dizzy trying to follow. Women they’d loved, fights they’d fought, ports they’d visited, promises they’d kept to those passed on. Eyes hot-pepper wet, they’d haul out huge handkerchiefs that snapped like ship sails. Men pinching his shoulders or poking his belly to call his attention to the places he had to visit for good times, good women, good brew, good music: Memphis, Greensboro, Chicago, New Orleans. Then more names—Tampa Red, Mississippi John, Sunland Slim. And it way past his bedtime and the hat slipping down over his brows and him feeling real small as the talk turned to Big Walter, Big Maybelle, Queen Ida, King B.B. But always someone would notice and sling an arm around his shoulder and turn the talk to the Sonny Boys, the Pee Wees, the Tinys and Juniors, and make him feel at home, late as it was, dark as it was, small as he was.

By the time they went past the main store that was locked up tight,
overalls, fishing poles, and all, he had the men safely tucked away in his magic box. Uncle Rayfield could keep his hat and keep his bragging in his mouth.

“You nobody’s Spencer, that’s for true. I never knowed you to act like that, boy. You listening? Do you know what demoralized means?”

He could afford to listen now, and knew who his uncle was talking about, so he said, “Means they don’t have no money?”

“Worse. Don’t have much hope. Near ’bout give up. Know why?”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause they don’t remember how it can be in the good days ahead.”

Which sounded like his uncle had been tippling a jar of raw in that house. ’Cause how could you remember ahead? And remembering behind wasn’t so good. His mama said wasn’t nothing back there but slavery and the jungle, so he stopped listening again. And instead he thought about his own memories.

There was a picture feeling the boy had often strained after; it was the earliest memory of himself, maybe. He was standing in a dry, shuttered room with dust cloths on the furniture. People were whisper-praying around him, and a woman was in a chair with a lapful of folded money. She would take up a bill and smooth it flat across her kneecap while he looked at the shiny floor, outlining the shadow of the shutters with his big toe. Then he stopped, because of a hum outside, the sound of a kite string singing; he held his hand out, because he wanted to feel the string wrapped round his hand thrumming against his palm. The woman looked up and frowned at his hand till he let it fall. When he asked his mama about it, she called it a dream and cut him a piece of pie she’d just got through saying he couldn’t have so close to supper. And his daddy would listen letting the rinse water slip through his hands, then would say to forget about it and reach for the soap again. All Dee would say was that he was one stupid boy and get out of her room. So when Uncle Rayfield parked the truck at the house and said to listen up good, that Negroes with no memory were up for grabs and pretty nigh hopeless, Spence leaned his ear against the past one more time and it swung away from him worse than the dining-room door the night he got caught when he thought the grown-ups were discussing his memory dream.

“Kennahepya?”

Greenish-yellow spots swam away from in front of Spence’s eyes. He
was staring at a caged light hooked onto the Olds’s grill. The man in the pit, his elbows on the ground, was slapping a funnel back and forth between his hands and regarding Spence with an expression devoid of anything in particular and yet not blank. A heavy crescent wrench was dragging down the breast pocket of his baggy blue-gray uniform.

Spence swallowed and moved cautiously forward. “You Tyrone Gaston?”

“Need a tow?” He set the wrench down by the funnel and looked past Spence’s legs toward the sledgehammer. He beckoned Spence forward with his chin. “Hope not. Winch broke.” His eyes guided Spence through the danger course.

“I want to talk to you if you’ve got a minute.”

“ ’Bout all I got,” the voice empty of irritation and haste and sounding decades older than he looked.

Spence hiked his pants up and hunkered down but could not get eye-level with the man. His eyes were hooded under a cotton cap that had been washed to a raggedy shapelessness. He seemed no more than twenty-five or so, but he talked and moved like an old-timer.

“I wanted to talk to you about the Dewey Baugus case. You remember? Young white boy over on Primrose Circle who was beaten to death back in April. They said Black youths did it.” Something in the dark, greasy face rearranged itself. Spence cautioned himself not to crowd the man. You don’t crowd a man in a pit with an Olds on his head and a wrench in his grip. He should have started with the Missing handbill, his calling card, the object of his quest, the subject of his sentence. Spence reached into his chest pocket, conscious that the man was wary now.

“You remember the case?”

“Got somebody doing time.”

“Yeah, I know.”

The man’s hand was resting on the wrench, not reaching for the flyer. A bill, a summons, some other troublesome piece of paper; his hand continued to rest. His nails were thick and split with black injury spots like half-moons. A scar ran from the middle-finger knuckle to his wrist, disappearing up under his dingy cuff.

“Then whatcha want, man? I got these cars to get after.” He picked up the funnel and leaned back toward the siphon hose.

“My boy’s been missing since July. Maybe you’ve heard about all these children getting kidnapped. Some of them have been murdered.”

“So whatchu want with me?” He picked up the wrench, then crooked his neck a little to look at the flyer.

“Some people say a white vigilante group’s been taking revenge for the Baugus boy. A friend of mine thinks you might know something.”

The man reached up and loosened a bolt in the Olds’s underside, then bent down out of sight with the funnel. The hose danced to the left, then the right, then was straight. Spence slid the missing handbill to the edge of the pit just as the man was setting a nut down on that spot. They looked at each other. Spence wondered what the other saw—a father in trouble, a brother needing help, or a boy who threw rocks at niggers who didn’t own spoon nor fork nor comb?

“They picked you up for questioning, didn’t they, Mr. Gaston?”

“Didn’t pick me up—bust me up.” He bent down again and tin knocked against hard leather.

“Who? Was it the cops that took you in for questioning, or was it some neighborhood thugs that beat you up?” While Spence waited for Gaston to reappear, he reviewed the multiple choice and congratulated himself on its simplicity. Gaston yanked the hose free and wrapped it around his knuckles and set it down by the flyer.

“This ain’t the boy they got locked up.”

“No, that’s my son. Somebody’s got him. I’m thinking that maybe the same guys that roughed you up might have taken him.” Spence watched Gaston’s eyes carefully, and when they looked past him toward Memorial Drive, Spence swiveled around and looked too.

“Jumped me right out there. Three of them. Split my lip. Broke two teeth out. Had my legs cross that curb tromping it like kindling.”

“Who?” Spence swung around. Gaston was ironing the handbill out with his fist. Grease bled through. “When was that, Mr. Gaston?”

“Told me a beating was too good for my Black ass. Gonna torch my place one night they catch me in here. And it ain’t even my place,” he laughed, looking up at the windows and walls.

“Three men? You can identify them? How’d they pick you out to beat up on?”

“How come?” Gaston lifted himself up, scraping his hard work boots against the wall of the pit. He swung one baggy leg onto the
ground and climbed out. Spence followed him to the hydraulic lift and waited while Gaston pumped the car down two feet. Spence felt the sound as congestion in his chest.

“ ’Cause one of the boys they tried to make say done it is my uncle. He thirteen, I’m thirty-one.” Gaston laughed again. His broken teeth looked filed, as though he had weaponed himself after the attack. Spence followed him to the table, where he rummaged around for a tool, then took up a shoebox with rags and lengths of pipe in it.

“Can you help me find them? If you’ve got the license-plate number or a name or something, we can burn ’em, man. Get those bastards.” He followed the loping, slow-moving man back toward the Olds. “Put their asses in jail for what they did to you. Burn ’em good.”

“Fullashit,” Gaston said. He sat down and dangled his legs in the pit and worked on the car.

“What?”

“Say you fullashit.”

“I ain’t fullashit, Gaston. I’m hurtin’, man. I’m hurtin’ cause somebody’s got my boy, so maybe I’m a little crazy and ain’t comin’ on like I should, but please, look, I’m not tryin’ to cause you no grief, but you’re the only lead I got. So please. The cops don’t know shit. Would you help me?”

“I don’t talk to no po-lice,” Gaston said, wrenching free a rusted piece of pipe near the gas line.

“I’m not a cop. I’m a father. Aw, hell.” Spence paced back and forth, conscious that Gaston was eyeing him sideways. Spence unhooked the light from the Olds’s grill and shone it on the area where Gaston was scrubbing with a scrap of sandpaper. “I don’t know what else to say to you.” He felt helpless. “My boy. Someone’s got my boy, man.”