A Fine Dark Line (30 page)

“It sure stinks,” Richard said.

“How are you going to haul it?”

“Drag it on the blanket.”

“Richard. I think you ought to just cover Butch up and let’s get your bike and go back to the house. All this is going to do is make him angry.”

“He will be mad, won’t he?” Richard grinned big and the moonlight danced off his teeth.

Richard slammed the shovel into the ground next to the dog’s grave, and there was the sound of dirt being parted, then something being cut.

“What was that?” I asked.

Richard pulled the shovel up, went to work digging. After a moment he lifted out something on the shovel. At first it looked like a mound of dirt, but when he dropped it onto the ground, most of the sticky wet dirt shook off of it, and we both knew what it was.

A human skull.

———

W
E LOOKED CLOSELY
at the skull. The shovel had split the top of it and gone deep. On the side of the skull was a hole, and the far side was shattered, bone poked out as if the brain had turned rabid and kicked its way free.

“That looks way a shotgun blast looks,” Richard said.

Richard dug more, soon uncovered a rib cage from which clung red clay. Then some other bones. And two skulls. He dug around and came up with a bone that he pulled free of some roots, said, “This here bone goes in the neck, the spine. See the way that bone is? That’s from a cut went into it.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“I’ve seen plenty of animals butchered. I don’t think people are all that different.”

“We’ve found an old graveyard,” I said.

Richard dug down again, came up with another skull. When he dropped it on the ground the dirt shook loose and I could see the teeth. One of the front teeth was silver.

I had a sinking feeling.

“My God,” I said.

“What?”

I told him about Rosy Mae telling me that Margret Wood had a silver tooth.

“We’ve found her head, Stanley. The one the ghost has been looking for.”

Richard poked around with the shovel some more, unearthed an arm. Meat was still on the bones.

“Jesus,” he said. “This’n is recent.”

Richard poked around some more, uncovered the rest of the body, and finally the head, which was cut free of it, tucked under the corpse’s right arm as if it were a joke. Though much of the flesh was gone, there was enough on the face and enough long black hair there to make out it had been a woman.

“That there is the Mexican woman Daddy hired to do some house- and fieldwork. I think her name was Normaleen. She didn’t speak much English. Daddy told me she run off. It was maybe a month before we seen him buryin’ Butch out here.”

Richard sat down as if someone had kicked his legs out
from under him. “I think these here are all people worked for my daddy. I think . . .”

“I think so too,” I said.

“He said they quit or run off or he fired ’em. God, Stanley, he was murderin’ them people.”

“I wasn’t murderin’.”

Richard jumped to his feet and I spun. Mr. Chapman was standing at the mouth of the trail, where the woods cleared, and he was holding the scythe I had seen on the rack. He had his overalls on with no shirt. He had his shoes on without socks. His hair was like an explosion of dark sprouts. The wind moved it like it was alive. His face was sallow and wrinkled; I couldn’t imagine the handsome man that had once been there, the one Rosy talked about.

I realized that Richard’s remarks about his father being able to hear a dog run across the yard had not been exaggerated. Mr. Chapman had heard us, gone out to the barn to get the scythe, and followed us.

“You ought not to have dug Butch up,” Chapman said. “I put him to rest.”

“Did you murder him too?” Richard said. “Did he bark when he shouldn’t have?”

“Butch never let me down. As for the others, God lets a righteous man make decisions about such things. Did you know God come to me and told me to do you like Abraham was told to do Isaac? I had to take you out and kill you. ’Cept God didn’t come to me and tell me to turn my hand. I just didn’t do it. Your mother didn’t think it was the thing to do. She thought people would come to us, and want to know where you was, and that you’d be a strong worker. You remember any of that, boy?”

Richard, trembling, said, “No, sir.”

“Naw, you wouldn’t. I took you on a little squirrel huntin’
trip when you was five. And I was gonna shoot you in the back of the head ’cause God told me to, have a little hunting accident, but I didn’t do it. I was supposed to. It would have made life easier. Raisin’ you, that didn’t do me and your mama no good. The world would have just thought it was a little huntin’ accident. God was testin’ me, seein’ what I was made of. He never told me to stay my hand. I just did. And I shouldn’t have. Only time I ever let God down. I didn’t let him down with these others. When he come to me and told me what I had to do, I did it. But you were my son, so I didn’t do it. Now it comes back on me. You’re gonna turn me over to the infidels, ain’t you?”

“For what?” Richard said.

Chapman laughed. “That was quick, boy. You’re quick like your mother. You know, from the time I took you out and didn’t kill you, ’cause I had your mama’s thinkin’ on the matter in the back of my mind, things have gone bad. Crops ain’t good. World is changin’. Niggers is wantin’ rights. All manner of evil. Can’t abide it. No, sir. I won’t. Your mama, I make her pay for it every day. Not because I want to, son, but because God expects it, and in spite of her mistake, she’s a righteous woman, she is, and she takes it. She know she ought to. I ain’t killed none of these people ’cause I wanted to, but because it was right. It was the will of God. You’re my only mistake.

“And you, son,” he said looking at me, “I reckon you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you are from a sinful family. I can see that. Your sister actin’ like she’s got the rights of a man. That daddy of yours whippin’ on me when I was seekin’ out my own son. Givin’ him refuge. Runnin’ that movie house. That’s wrong.”

“You killed these people to save money,” Richard said. “I think that’s why you killed them. Because you’re cheap.”

Chapman snorted. “You think that? Well, you would. Some
of them people were drinkers, and fornicators . . . That silver-toothed one there. She was a whore, and ran with that Stilwind girl in a manner a girl ain’t supposed to go. I tried to witness to her. She wouldn’t have any of it.”

“You witnessed to her by the railroad tracks?” I said.

“You witness where you find the need.”

“I think you wanted her,” I said. “You didn’t want anyone else to have her. So one night you followed her . . . with that scythe, and killed her. Brought the head back here.”

“You ain’t no man of God,” Richard said. “You ain’t better than me. You ain’t as good as me.”

Chapman’s face turned sad. He looked at Richard like the last morsel on a plate.

“You killed Margret, and you burned up the Stilwind girl, didn’t you?” I said.

“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Chapman said. “And I ain’t gonna talk no more.”

That’s when Richard flicked a shovelful of dirt into Chapman’s face.

Richard bolted. “Run!”

I didn’t have to be told twice. I went after Richard. We started back in the direction of the sawmill.

We zigzagged through trees and finally broke out to where we could see the old mill and the road beyond. I glanced over my shoulder, saw that Chapman was catching up. Spit was trailing out of his mouth in a way that made it look like foam.

I realized we weren’t going to make it to the road before he caught up.

Nub chose that moment to burst out of the woods, and when he saw me running, and Mr. Chapman after me, he broke straight away for my pursuer, barking.

I shouldn’t have stopped, but I turned and yelled for Nub. It was too late. Nub hit Chapman’s ankle hard, and though he
didn’t get in a good bite, Chapman’s legs got tangled and he went down, the scythe flying out in front of him.

While he was getting up, I yelled for Nub in as hard and as insistent a voice as I could. Nub barked at Chapman, and chose to obey me for a change. He came running toward me happily, as if it were all a game.

I bent down, held out my arms, and Nub jumped into them. I turned and started running, sneaked a look over my shoulder, saw Chapman was up now with his scythe, and he was picking up speed.

Ahead of me, Richard was almost to the sawmill. I was coming up on his tail, panting with the weight of Nub and the weight of fear.

When I reached the sawmill, Richard was at the base of the old ladder that lay fastened alongside the building and led to the upper platform. “Go up,” he said.

Going up didn’t seem smart to me. We would be trapped like a rat in a matchbox, but I couldn’t run anymore. My sides felt as if they were about to split.

Richard pounded up the ladder before me. I tossed Nub over my shoulder with one hand, then started climbing, nearly losing my grip on the ladder and my grip on Nub, who was squirming like a snake.

“Come on! Come on!” Richard said.

The ladder was about eighteen feet high and I felt as if I were slower than a ground sloth, but I made the platform ahead of Chapman, set Nub on it, and looked over.

Chapman had laid the scythe across the back of his neck, balancing it, and he was climbing up. Nub stood on the edge of the platform and barked furiously.

Richard disappeared through the open door that led into the second-floor room, came back with an old busted two-by-four.

“Daddy. Go down now.”

Chapman looked up. “I’m not your daddy. You have no daddy.”

Chapman continued to climb. Richard launched the two-by-four forward with all his might. It caught Chapman in the top of the head, knocked him backwards to the ground, sent the scythe skittering over the leaves, the blade winking in the moonlight like death’s smile.

Chapman shook his head, put a hand to it. I could see something dark oozing between his fingers.

“You child of the devil,” Chapman yelled. “You wicked boy. I will chastise you.”

Richard sat on the edge of the platform, kicked at the top board. It creaked. He kicked again and it came loose and fell.

“Hang on to me,” he said. I grabbed his arm and he swung down and tried to kick loose the next board, but it was too late, Chapman was screaming. He grabbed the scythe and swung it high and the blade passed just beneath Richard’s foot.

“Pull me up,” Richard said.

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I tugged him up.

Chapman was coming up again, and I knew that one missing board wasn’t going to stop him.

“Come on,” Richard said.

I grabbed Nub and we went into the old sawmill room, the moonlight cutting through rotted spots and slashing beams across the floor.

“That there in the middle is rotten,” Richard said. “Stay close to the wall over here.”

We eased along the wall and the whole structure wobbled. Richard said, “Worse comes to worst, we can slide down into that sawdust. But that’s the worst. I don’t know we’d come up out of it.”

“We’re trapped, Richard.”

“Stay away from the middle. Stay right here.”

We had reached the far side of the building, near the mouth of the sawdust chute. Chapman’s shadow filled the doorway, then he was moving forward.

“You have just given yourselves to God’s mercy.”

“God can kiss my ass,” Richard said.

Chapman roared, came across the floor. The entire building shook and the floor screamed and rose up and buckled and there was a crack, and Chapman’s right leg went through. It went through so fast his left leg, which stayed on the flooring, bent under him and went backwards and twisted in a way that it hurt to see. A piece of bone had torn through his flesh, ripped through his overalls, and it stuck out like a muddy stick. I could see too where the floor had broken up and made a barbed piece of wood and it had gone into Chapman’s lower abdomen. He had dropped the scythe.

Chapman screamed so loud I thought the building would collapse from the noise. “You beast,” Chapman said. “You devil. God curse you for the bastard of Satan you are. O, merciful God, deliver me from this pain and this boy.”

I glanced at Richard. A spear of moonlight lay across his eyes and nose. I could see tears in his eyes. He eased forward. The floor creaked.

“Careful, Richard,” I said. “Be careful.”

Richard picked up the scythe. He said, “Stand to the side and give me room, Stanley.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t do it.”

“Move aside.”

“Don’t do it, Richard.”

“Then you better watch the blade as she comes, Stanley. Daddy, God is gonna grant you one last wish. You ain’t gonna have pain no more, and you ain’t gonna have to worry on me none.”

I leaped back against the wall and there was a whisper and a glint of silver and the sound of Nub barking insanely.

The blade appeared to have passed in front of Chapman, and for an instant, I thought Richard had missed. Then Chapman’s head rolled to the side and fell through the hole his fall had made. There was a burst of darkness from his neck and it splashed warm across me and Nub and Richard. Chapman’s body bent forward, the boards creaked, cracked, and he fell on through, leaving a great gap in the center of the room.

Richard dropped the scythe and it went through the hole. He turned, looked at me, sat down on the floor next to the wall. Sat down so hard I thought the whole rotten building would fall. It shook and sagged and squeaked and creaked, finally went still and silent.

Nub stopped barking. He lay passive in my arms, his ears raised. Outside, gradually, I began to hear what had been going on all along.

Crickets.

An owl in the distance.

Somewhere, the howling of dogs.

T
HERE
’
S NO WAY
I can tell you the type of commotion all of this created. You have some idea, of course. But in 1958 a crime like this was a sensation. Or should have been. It got little play outside of Dewmont, however. It didn’t get picked up all over like you would expect. That was due to the town fathers, and Mr. Stilwind, who owned the newspaper.