“That don’t make sense, if he didn’t do nothin’ but help.”
“It’s what Willie Lee thinks. After what happened to July last year, he won’t say a word.”
“Who?”
“July. Lives over in the Bio community. He’s Willie Lee’s cousin. They caught him last year for all that stealin’ and for tryin’ to set up a shotgun trap for some man.”
I did not remember anyone named July and I had never heard of a shotgun trap.
Wesley explained. “July had it rigged to go off when the man opened his front door. Would’ve killed him for sure.”
“Did it?”
“What?”
“Kill him?”
“No, it didn’t kill him,” Wesley answered, puzzled because I had to ask such ridiculous questions. “He came in the back door just as July was goin’ out a window.”
“He was lucky.”
“Luck didn’t have all that much to do with it. The man never used his front door, but July didn’t know that. I reckon he thought all white people use front doors and all colored people use back doors.”
I was fascinated by the story, and I could understand why Willie Lee would be silent. The law believed in bad blood as readily as it believed in fact, and the law would not hesitate to point out that bad blood flowed in cousins as well as in brothers and sisters.
“What’re we gonna do?” I asked.
Wesley tossed the braided pine needle aside and began to work on another. Finally he answered, “We’re gonna stay around here, just wandering around, until sundown. Then we’ll slip up to Willie Lee’s house and see if we can see anything.”
“What if Willie Lee takes a shot at us?”
“We’ll yell out, that’s what. Willie Lee’s not about to go shootin’ at us.”
The plan seemed workable. There would be enough cover, behind trees and Willie Lee’s barn, to hide, and if we could coax Willie Lee’s dog, Big Boy, to us, we would have no fret of warning. Big Boy knew us as well as he knew Willie Lee’s own children.
*
Willie Lee lived with his wife, Little Annie, and their children in a tenant farm house owned by Hugh Shivers. The house had once been a sharecropper’s place and a white family named Pennefeather had lived there, portioning out their meager living in an unwritten agreement with Hugh Shivers. But the land had become anemic and had been planted in pine seedlings. The Pennefeathers moved to another sharecropper’s house and another unwritten agreement, and Willie Lee moved into the Shivers’ place (tenant houses were always called someone’s place). Since he did not farm, Willie Lee paid rent and did occasional odd jobs for the Shivers family.
Wesley and I loved Willie Lee’s home. It was open and warm and there was always the gaiety of small, brown babies, wallowing in play and in aggravation. Little Annie kept the red-sand yard swept clean of leaves and chicken droppings with her dogwood-brush brooms, and she had decorated the windows of the house with hand-me-down curtains that she had dyed bright red. Often, after fishing with Willie Lee and Baptist, we would return to the house and parch peanuts or eat watermelon that had been put in a bucket and cooled in the deep water of the well, and we would listen in wonder to the musical tales and arguments of those strangely funny brothers.
We wandered aimlessly, talking, deciding that Freeman was not badly hurt, or he would have stayed in his cave. We were sure Willie Lee and Baptist had aided him and we were convinced that we would find Freeman that night, at Willie Lee’s house.
By late afternoon, we were below our home, and Wesley decided to tell Mother we would be out at night. Mother fretted. If something had happened to Freeman, if someone had caught him and sliced him out of meanness, then that same someone could surprise us. “We won’t go far,” Wesley promised. “We won’t even go in the swamp.” Mother reluctantly agreed. She knew Wesley would not break his promise.
We did not need to go into the swamp. Willie Lee’s house was across Beaverjam Creek. It was near the swamp, but not in it.
The moon was at quarter, a suspended cradle rocking gracefully in a garden of stars. It was bright enough for light, dark enough for hiding. We did not use the flashlight Mother had insisted we carry. We did not need it. Wesley and I knew the road to Willie Lee’s by memory, by step-count, and by feel.
Wesley decided to circle Willie Lee’s house, to slip through his pasture and approach from behind the barn. “It’ll take a little longer,” he judged, “but if Big Boy starts barkin’, Willie Lee may think its nothin’ more’n a fox, or something.”
Big Boy did bark. Once. We stopped and froze. We were in the pasture, very near the barn.
Wesley whistled softly and we heard Big Boy thumping across the yard, wagging his tail and panting. He slipped under the barbed wire fence and trotted toward us, whining his dog’s hello. “Good boy,” Wesley whispered, patting Big Boy and hugging him close. “Good boy. C’mon, now, keep quiet.”
We slipped noiselessly to the dark side of the barn, behind the house. Wesley had plotted beautifully. From the corner of the barn, we could see directly into the kitchen window of the house.
Willie Lee was stripped to his waist. In the shadowy orange of a kerosene lamp, his blackness deepened and his muscles expanded. Willie Lee was a statue of black marble, hard and noble. He moved across the room and lifted a small, laughing child from below the windowsill. The child was naked and curled his tiny, baby legs underneath as Willie Lee held him in one giant palm. Then he reached below the window sill with his free hand and lifted another laughing, naked baby into the air. He held them both up, like two toys. Even from our distance, we could see the uncontrolled laughter spilling out of bright baby eyes.
“Freeman’s not there,” I whispered.
“Maybe not,” answered Wesley. “Shhhhhhhhhh.”
Little Annie appeared, framed in the window. She was carrying something in her hand. Willie Lee dropped one of the babies onto her shoulder and she shuddered in put-on anger. Willie Lee laughed heartily enough to be heard across the yard. He gathered his two children to his shoulders, like small, weightless bundles, and walked out of the window frame.
Suddenly, the house seemed soundless and diminutive. Willie Lee’s hugeness had been replaced in the kitchen by the delicate frailty of Little Annie, who circled the kitchen table, gathering dishes.
“Wesley, he’s not there.”
Wesley did not answer. He studied the yard, estimating the distance between the barn and the house. “Maybe we can get closer,” he whispered. “If Big Boy don’t start goin’ crazy.”
“Willie Lee could shoot us before we know what happened,” I argued. “Wesley, I don’t care the first thing about bein’ shot.”
“Hush. Let’s wait a minute.”
Little Annie moved in and out of the window frame. We could see her wood stove through the window, a wood stove almost identical to my mother’s, with top warmers that had white enamel doors. Little Annie opened one of the doors and slipped a plate of leftovers into the warmer. Then she disappeared through a door leading to their bedroom, leaving the kitchen empty.
We waited, two lumps pinned to the dark pine slats of Willie Lee’s barn. The merriment of night began in Black Pool Swamp. Millions of insects declared their insect existence, caroling for recognition and losing all recognition because their voices were larger than their bodies. The sweet perfume of honeysuckle and fern and wild, unnamed swamp flowers expired like smoke from the cooling day-furnace of the bottomlands and floated in a gas ribbon, face-high, across the yard. Big Boy sprawled before us, at the corner of the barn, resting his head on his out-stretched front paws, watching us with his brown, play-expectant eyes. Big Boy thought we were retarded, standing there, two lumps pinned to the dark pine slats.
Wesley slipped to his knees and crawled forward. I prepared to follow him, but I saw Willie Lee entering the kitchen and I pushed back into the wall.
“Wesley,” I called.
“I see him,” replied Wesley.
Big
Boy whimpered and barked. Willie Lee moved to the kitchen window and looked out, his great body snuffing the light. Big Boy barked again.
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. C’mon, Big Boy,” Wesley pleaded.
Big Boy thought Wesley wanted to play. He barked again and jumped around in a circle. “Quiet, Big Boy. Quiet.”
I looked again toward the house. Willie Lee was no longer at the window. I heard a door open.
“Big Boy. What’s goin’ on? Hey, Big Boy,” Willie Lee called boldly.
I pulled at Wesley’s shirt. “That’s Willie Lee, Wesley. Let’s get outa here.”
“Shuttup,” Wesley retorted.
“But, Wesley…”
“Hey, Big Boy. What’d you see, fella? Somethin’ there, Big Boy?”
Willie Lee was approaching from across the yard, moving cautiously like a soldier stalking a machine gun nest in a World War II movie.
“Wesley,” I whispered.
“Shuttup.”
“Hey, Big Boy,” called Willie Lee.
Big Boy was confused by his master and by Wesley’s frantic motions to keep him quiet. The barking became louder. “Not but one thing to do,” Wesley whispered. He stepped out from behind the barn and into the dim light of the quarter moon. “Hey, Willie Lee,” he called.
I slipped to the edge of the barn, still in cover of darkness. Willie Lee was in the middle of the yard, his body coiled in a half-crouch, his giant’s arms poised before him.
“Willie Lee. It’s me. Wesley.”
“Who is?” demanded Willie Lee.
“Me. Wesley Wynn. Me and Colin are out here.”
Willie Lee did not move. His face was disfigured by a savage wildness. His fingers were curled like steel hooks, his feet spread and firmly staked. His chest heaved. In that moment, Willie Lee could have killed us, or anyone. It was the first time I had ever seen a black man ready to fight.
“Hey, Willie Lee. It’s just me and Colin,” Wesley called. I could hear his body weaken in his voice.
“C’mon out,” Willie Lee growled. “Out here where’s I can see you.”
There was no groveling in his command, no sound of inferiority, no apology, nothing passive or submissive. Willie Lee—that Willie Lee—was someone we had never known, a power unimaginable.
“We’re comin’,” Wesley announced meekly. “C’mon, Colin.”
I stepped quickly beside Wesley and we walked forward two steps. Wesley caught my arm and held tightly to it. I could feel fright in the desperation of his grasp, yet I was comforted by his touch. We stood very still, staring at Willie Lee. Big Boy jumped around us, barking gleefully.
Slowly, the warrior in Willie Lee calmed. His chest relaxed, then his legs, then his arms and fingers. But he did not smile.
Willie Lee said, very deliberately, “Wesley, if you ever come up to my house after dark, you come up by the road and knock on my door. You hear me?” His voice was a weapon, cutting us.
“Uh—yessir,” answered Wesley.
Willie Lee turned his face to me. “You understand, Colin?”
“Uh—yessir.”
“You could get killed sneakin’ into a man’s yard,” Willie Lee added. “Easy killed. Now, what y’all doin’ out here beside my barn?” His voice was calmer, but he was still direct and in command.
“We—we come lookin’ for Freeman,” Wesley told him.
“Freeman ain’t here,” answered Willie Lee, quickly, bluntly.
There was a pause. Night poured between us and Willie Lee like a waterfall. Wesley kneeled to play with Big Boy, who panted for attention.
Wesley spoke evenly, quietly. “But you’ve seen him, Willie Lee. You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”
“Why’d you say that?”
“Because me and Colin heard you and Baptist in the swamp earlier.”
Willie Lee stood erect. His head turned slowly to his left, but his eyes did not leave us. He spoke hesitantly. “Me? Me and Baptist? No. No. Must’ve been somebody else.”
Wesley did not look up from Big Boy. “It was you, Willie Lee. You and Baptist. That’s why me and Colin come over tonight. To ask you. Nobody knows about you and Baptist, nobody but me and Colin. If we’d of told, there’d be an army over here, and you know it.”
Something clicked in the darkness to our right. Wesley and I froze. We knew the sound: the hammer of a gun snapping into place.
“Put it down,” Willie Lee ordered.
We looked into the midnight pit, the canopied blackness of a chinaberry tree with massive limbs. Baptist stepped from the heart of the pit, lowering the shotgun he held in trembling hands.
“Wesley?” I muttered. “Wes…”
Willie Lee interrupted. “He’s not gonna hurt you.” Then he laughed easily. “You know Baptist not gonna hurt you. Put that gun down, Baptist.”
Baptist eased the hammer back into its safety position. He thumbed the barrel lock and the breech broke, snapping a .12-gauge shell into the air. Baptist caught the shell like snatching a fly out of the air. He clucked his tongue, winked, and smiled, exposing a rail of yellowing teeth. “Oh, Lord, no, I’m not gon’ hurt them boys,” he said. “Not my fishing buddies. We thought y’all was a booger man sneakin’ around here.”
It was incredible. Baptist changed personalities in thirty seconds—from a man who could have blown us apart, to a smiling, jesting caricature who had often amused us with his foolishness and half-wit ramblings about the Soldier Ghost.
“Didn’t see me, did you?” Baptist clowned, stepping in and out of the midnight pit, exaggerating a shuffle dance step.
“Sure didn’t,” Wesley said solemnly.
“Sometimes I don’t make as much noise as a shadow,” Baptist bragged. “Sometimes I’m so quiet I scare myself. Yessir, one of these nights I’m gonna catch me a ghost.”
“Yeah, and someday I’m gonna make me a million dollars,” Willie Lee replied dryly. “C’mon in the house, boys. We’ll talk.”
*
Wesley had exercised a mild bluff with Willie Lee, but it was enough. Willie Lee knew it would be senseless to deny that he and Baptist had been in the swamp, though it did not occur to him to press Wesley for stronger evidence.
Freeman had been at Willie Lee’s house, earlier that day. But now he was gone, and Willie Lee swore he did not know why he left, or where he went.
“He come here hurt, cut bad on his leg,” Willie Lee explained. “Lost a lot of blood, and Little Annie patched him up some. Then he told me and Baptist about this cave of his down in the swamp and talked us into goin’ back down there and hidin’ his bloody clothes. When we come back, he was gone. Little Annie said she couldn’t stop him.”
“We found them clothes,” Wesley confessed. “That’s why we got worried.”
“You know about that cave?” Baptist asked, amazed.
“We found it a long time ago,” I explained. “But we never said anything to Freeman about it.”
“That’s boy’s somethin’,” Baptist mumbled. “Crazy, that’s what.”
“Where’d he get a change of clothes?” I wanted to know, forgetting what Rachel Boyd had told us about the theft from her clothesline.
“Sneaked them off his mama’s line, couple of nights ago, is what he told us,” answered Willie Lee. “Said he didn’t want to cause his mama any grief by seein’ her.”
We sat quietly for a moment, all of us shaking our heads as though we were bewildered in unison, and awed in unison.
“That boy’s somethin’,” Baptist said again. “Crazy.”
“You guess he’ll be all right?” Wesley asked Willie Lee.
“He was cut bad, Wesley. Bad. And weak. He was awful weak.”
“How’d he do it?” I asked.
“Said his knife slipped when he was whittlin’ some pine shavin’s for a fire,” Willie Lee replied. “Just plain slipped.”
“We took them clothes to Daddy and he took them to Odell Boyd,” Wesley said. “They’ve been around gettin’ people together. We’ll lo
ok in the swamp some more tomorrow.”
Willie Lee stopped his slow rocking. “You didn’t tell about me and Baptist? You didn’t say nothin’, did you?”
“Nothin’,” Wesley assured him. “And we not goin’ to.”
“I appreciate that,” Willie Lee said quietly.
“Me, too,” Baptist added.
“Maybe we can find him quick,” I said. “I hope so.”
“We’ll look around here,” Willie Lee suggested.
“If you see him, just knock him over the head and get him over to the house if he won’t come no other way,” advised Wesley.
“That’s what it’s liable to take,” Baptist said. “That boy’s somethin’. Crazy.”
Baptist left with us, pledging to protect us from the evils of night, at least as far as the turn-off to his house.
As we walked, Baptist began to talk. Alone, away from Willie Lee, he was different. Serious. Profound in the way people who do not mean to be profound, are.
“You boys know why Freeman up and took off?” he said—not as a question, but as a prelude to a statement. “Well, it was because of what folks would’ve been sayin’ if they’d of found Freeman over there to Willie Lee’s house.”
“What’d you mean, Baptist?” I asked.
“Well, now, Colin, you think about it. If they’d of found Freeman, all them folks that don’t like him would’ve been teasin’ him about bein’ a nigger-lover, and them that does like him would’ve been wonderin’ why he took up at a colored house, and that would’ve made ’em think they’d been wrong about Freeman all the time.
“And—” Baptist paused to breathe and hammer the night with his fist “—it would’ve been worser for Willie Lee. They’d of called him a white-trash lover…”
“Who would?” I demanded. I could not believe anyone would dare Willie Lee’s anger by senseless remarks. Besides, Freeman was not white trash, and Willie Lee was not a nigger; Willie Lee was colored.
“Who would? Lord, child, don’t you know nothin’? Everybody. White and colored both. Everybody.”
Even Wesley was amazed by the interpretation Baptist had applied to Freeman’s disappearance.
“That don’t make sense, Baptist,” Wesley argued. “People are not that way.”