A Fine Dark Line (18 page)

Back on the front porch, I knocked again. Still he didn’t answer.

I called Buster’s name a few times, but I got the same lack of results.

I took hold of the doorknob, turned it, found it was unlocked.

I told Nub to stay, slipped inside.

Except for light coming through the back window, falling in a rectangle across the table, showing dust motes floating in it like gnats, the house was dark.

I called Buster’s name again, then went looking. There were few places to look and I found him lying on the narrow bed pushed up against the wall.

He was lying with one hand under his head, the other thrown across his hip with the palm up. I touched him and called his name, but he didn’t move. I listened for snoring, but didn’t hear any. I didn’t hear any breathing either. I noted a foul smell. I thought maybe the worst had happened.

Suddenly, he snorted, and began to snore. From that snoring came more of the foul odor, and though I had had little experience with it, I knew what the smell was.

Liquor.

Buster was stone dead drunk.

I shook him several times, but he didn’t rise. I decided to give him time and try later. I went over to the table, turned on the light, began looking at what Buster had been reading.

More newspapers.

He had a pad on the table, and written on it were notes. One of the notes said: “Girl’s mother.”

I looked at it without understanding anything, went over and tried to wake him again. Still, no luck.

The room grew darker and the little slice of light from the window went away and left only the lantern light. The rain began to pound on the tin roof of Buster’s shack like someone beating it with a chain. There was a lightning flash visible
through the window, followed by darkness, roaring wind and pounding rain. I looked out the window, up at the billboard. It was nothing more than a sheet of rain.

I opened the door and checked on Nub. He was lying on the front porch close to the wall. He looked up at me, but seemed content enough. I went back inside.

I sat in a chair and listened to the rain beating Buster’s home, waited for Buster to wake up.

I don’t know how long I waited, but finally Buster did awake. I heard him snort like a hog, then make a kind of grumble noise. When I looked, he was throwing his feet over the side of the bed, sitting up. He had both hands holding his head, as if he wanted to keep it from falling off. When he looked up and saw me, he paused for a moment. “What in hell are you doing here?” he said.

“I come to check on you.”

“Check on me? You think I need someone checkin’ on me. Some little white boy to lead me around by the hand.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it, Buster.”

“Didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, his voice a singsong mock of mine. “Just thought you’d come check on your nigger, didn’t you?”

“No. I mean. We’re friends, and I . . .”

“Friends? Who you kiddin’, white boy? You and me ain’t never been friends, and ain’t never gonna be.”

“I thought . . .”

“You thought too damn much, you little skeeter. Get on out of my house now.”

“It’s just Daddy said if you miss work again, you’re fired. I lied for you. I told him you were sick—”

“Did I ask you to lie for me?”

“No. I—”

“I don’t need nobody lying for me. Not to no white man or
any man. I don’t show for work, that’s my own business. And all this detective shit, forget it. You and me are through with this.”

“I don’t understand, Buster. What did I do—”

“Just go.”

“Buster—”

He snatched up a book lying beside the bed and tossed it at me. It struck the far wall, fell to the floor in a flutter of pages.

I jerked open the door and went out. Rain was blasting hard against the porch and it was as dark as a night without moonlight. Nub was still lying where I had left him. He beat his tail on the porch when I called his name.

I closed the door, stood looking into the wet, wind-swept darkness. I could see the road, but not well. Too much rain, too many tears.

I waited until there was a lightning flash, and in that flash I saw where the road was. And I saw something else. Nub stiffened by my side and growled.

What I saw was someone standing on the other side of the road. In that flash I couldn’t tell if who I saw was black or white, only that they wore a hat and the hat was washed down from the pressure of the rain, fell over their face and drained water from the brim.

I was caught between a hammer and an anvil. I couldn’t stay with Buster, and I didn’t want to find out who it was on the other side of the road. Someone willing to stand in the storm and wait.

When the lightning lit up the world again, there was no one there. All right, I thought. He’s moved on. Maybe he thinks I’m going to go back inside the house. Maybe he doesn’t think anything. Maybe it isn’t Bubba Joe, just some passerby.

That was a good thing for me to think. The idea gave me a moment of courage.

When the flash was gone and darkness settled over everything like a hood, I took a deep breath, steeled myself, stepped off the porch, into the wind and rain. The wind was hard to walk against. The rain was cold and ran down my collar. Instantly my clothes were sticking to me as if they had been coated on the inside with Elmer’s Glue-All. I could feel Nub pushed up against my leg.

I managed to stick to the side road and make it to the main brick street, then I turned toward town. About all I had to guide me then was an occasional flash of lightning and the feel of those bricks beneath my feet.

I knew if I could reach the white part of town, Mr. Phillips would let Nub and me into his store. Nub was allowed because he had good manners.

I hadn’t gone far, thinking this, when I realized to my horror that the bricks that were my guide were no longer under me. I was on the grass that led alongside the street on the creek side. I knew it was the creek side because the rain was causing the water to run fast and I could hear it as loud as if it were running and splashing inside my brain.

I got under a big oak tree, or rather I walked into one and stopped, put my back against it, and shivered in the cold rain. I thought about what I had been taught about trees and storms. Worst place to be was under a tree, as lightning tended to seek the tallest object. But the oak was big and thick. The leaves were large and close together and blocked out some of the rain, and because of that, I could see around me. Not very far, but farther than with it coming down in sheets against my face.

I thought maybe I might be better off to chance the protection of the tree, wait until the storm slacked or passed, but when the lightning flashed again, I had to change my mind.

Standing no less than a dozen feet away, a hat slouched
over his face, was a huge colored man, his hands hanging limp at his sides like hams on twisted strands of thick dark rope.

In that flash, he lifted his head and his eyes latched on me. I have never seen such hatred in a face; those eyes were as black as peepholes into hell. Nub growled, pressed up against me. Then the mean face was gone and I was inside my little umbrella of vision. The rain beyond the thick, leafy boughs of the oak was as compact as the black curtains on a hearse.

I thought: What kind of man is he?

How could he see to follow me?

The brim of his hat? Did that give him an edge?

Or was he just a man of the outdoors? Maybe he had adjusted his eyes longer and better to the rain-swept darkness?

It didn’t matter.

It was a mystery beyond me, and not one I was going to solve. The final answer was simple. He could get around and see out here better than I could because he was not afraid of the forces of nature; he was one of them.

I rushed around the oak, to the other side, leaned there, trying to consider what to do. Any moment I expected to see his head nod around to my side of the tree. Then he would grab me.

It was too much to think about.

I started running, all true planning out the window.

I ran hard until I hit a tree and was knocked back, dazed. I tried to get a knee under me, but I kept falling down, partly because the grass was slick, and partly because I was addled.

Nub was leaping up against me in encouragement, and he had begun to bark.

I was almost to my feet when I was grabbed by the shirt collar and spun around. There was a shape close to me, and I could feel heavy breathing against my face and smell tobacco and whiskey. Then there was a voice, like something coming
up to me from the depths of a cave, carried on the wings of a bat. The hand gripped and twisted my collar so tight it was cutting off the blood flow to the side of my neck. I was starting to get woozy.

“You peckerwoods took away my Rosy Mae. Now I’m gonna take you away, all your little goddamn white ass family.”

Any doubt that Bubba Joe might not hold a grudge against us for Rosy Mae leaving, or that he wouldn’t hurt white people, was tossed out the window of the world in that moment.

Then I heard a growl and a snap. Bubba Joe let out a yell, and I knew Nub had him by the leg.

The lightning flashed again, and I could see Bubba Joe clearly. His face was covered in scars and his nose was slightly off center from some old break, his mouth was wide open and he was letting forth a stream of profanity.

Nub was clamped down, going for the bone.

Bubba Joe shook his leg, yelled, cursed, tried to kick Nub free and not let go of me. But it wasn’t working. Bubba Joe shot a hand under his coat, brought out a knife big enough to use in the Trojan War, and at the same time let go of my shirt.

“You little bastard,” Bubba Joe said, and I realized he was talking to Nub, not me.

I screamed, “Run away, Nub. Run.”

But Nub didn’t run. He kept biting.

I heard Nub yip and I tried to lash out with my hands, hoping to take Bubba Joe down. But it was like striking a bag full of sand. I could feel my hands being scratched on his thick stubble of beard. Bubba Joe clutched my shirt again.

I waited for the plunge of the knife, but it didn’t come.

There was a jerk. Bubba Joe’s hand came loose of my shirt, and the next thing I knew, two dark figures were wrestling in the rain. One of them the stout and wide Bubba Joe. The other
tall and lanky. I couldn’t really see him, but I knew that one was Buster Abbot Lighthorse Smith.

My eyes were better adjusted to the darkness now. I could make out Buster sliding up against Bubba Joe. Bubba Joe’s feet went up in the air, and over went Bubba Joe, Nub still hanging on to his leg. Bubba Joe smacked the ground hard. Nub came loose and went spiraling.

The lightning flashed again and I saw Buster better. He had a clasp knife in his hand, one knee on Bubba Joe’s left arm, his other leg stretched out, holding Bubba Joe’s right wrist with his foot. I could see Bubba Joe’s big knife in that hand, but of course, being held down like that, he couldn’t use it.

Nub had lost his grip on Bubba Joe’s leg, but now he had Bubba Joe by the ear and was biting and pulling for all he was worth, growling so loud it sounded like a car engine running. Bubba Joe, pinned or not, had not stopped his string of profanity.

I saw Buster’s hand and clasp knife move. I heard a yell. Then a gurgle. Some moans. I stood there for what seemed like the turning of the century.

Slowly my eyes adjusted. Buster was still in the position I had last seen him, holding his clasp knife, but his head was turned toward me. Nub was sitting by Bubba Joe’s head, panting, looking as contented as if he had just caught a rabbit.

Bubba Joe lay still. I went over, loomed above them, and when the lightning came again, I saw clearly that Bubba Joe’s throat was cut. The wound looked like the mouth I had cut in last year’s Halloween pumpkin, only bloody; the blood ran along his throat, mixed with the rain and was carried away. Bubba Joe’s head was turned toward me. His eyes were open. He was shivering.

Then his eyes changed. They were no longer peepholes
into hell. Those holes had been boarded up, and that left him down there in the pit, no way out.

Buster grabbed me, pulled me over to a tree, pushed me up against it. “Damn you, boy. Damn you . . . Are you okay, boy? You cut anywhere?”

“No . . . no, sir.”

“Damn you, don’t you listen to me I get like that. I got the moods. It’s the whiskey. It gives me the moods. Shit, boy. You okay? You ought not have run off like that.”

“I thought it was better than being hit with a book.”

“Ah, Jesus. Damn, boy.”

“What about Bubba Joe?”

“Strong sonofabitch.”

“Not for you.”

“Jujitsu, boy.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it, son. He’s dead . . . Goddamn, that is some dog you got there. He’s not big enough to climb up on a step without a grunt, and did you see the way he took after that Bubba Joe? You see that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Some dog, he is. Keep that dog.”

“I was going to.”

“That there is a dog, boy. Ain’t big, but he’s got the fight in him. Balls like a brass elephant . . . Damn. Let me think. Right now we got to get rid of Bubba Joe. Creek there is good enough. Ain’t no one gonna miss this fella. He turns up, ain’t no one gonna be sad. Tell you what. You stay where you are.”

Buster took hold of Bubba Joe, dragged him off. In the distance I heard a splash. Buster came back.

“Water will carry him along, I reckon,” Buster said. “It’s runnin’ good and hard . . . You can’t say nothin’. Nothin’ at all.
Maybe I’m wrong and someone will miss him. You understand me? Don’t say nothin’.”

“No, sir. I won’t.”

Buster bent over and threw up. He did this for several minutes. I was glad for the pounding rain, or the smell would have been overwhelming.

“You sick?” I asked.

“Drunk,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get back to the house and get you dry. And make me some coffee. Damn, boy. I didn’t mean to send you out in the rain.”

“Yes you did.”

“It’s the moods. You understand, don’t you? I knew what I had done and shouldn’t have done right after I done it. You’d already gone out then. Can’t blame you. Decided to come get you . . . See the way that dog lit into him? Some dog you got there, boy. You know about moods, don’t you? Understand, don’t you?”