A Short History of a Small Place (19 page)

So they all lit out along the Danville road on foot and by horseback and cartload and ultimately, Daddy said, in the company of the banker Dunford Hicks’s specially appointed T model Ford with the revolutionary planetary transmission, personalized brass headlamps, and silver-plated winged horse radiator cap, and driven of course, Daddy said, by Mr. Dunford Hicks himself who carried along with him Pinky and little Evelyn Maynard in the front seat and, in the back seat, the former Miss Fuller who had collapsed in a swoon and so reclined with a damp rag on her forehead. Needless to say Mr. Lemont Graham and his talking produce had already put an appreciable stretch of road between themselves and the Throckmorton posse, but Daddy said with Mr. Graham showing himself for the regular chatterbox he was inclined to be and what with the team of draft horses before him and the heap of Irish potatoes behind him, he saw considerably more of where he had been than where he was going which pretty much left the horses to forge ahead when they chose to and dawdle when they chose to and leave the road entirely whenever they felt the urge to wander. So Mr. Graham and Mr. Throckmorton and Mrs. Graham’s block of ice, which Daddy said was steadily becoming mostly puddle, were not making a very direct route of it to Mr. Graham’s Oregon Hill farm, and presently as Mr. Graham eyed the horizon at his backside by way of readying himself to strike in on the advantages of Rhode Island hens, he caught sight of a tremendous, billowy cloud of dust churning and swelling above the treeline behind him just where the road angled off to the east and bent out of view, and he automatically opened his mouth and said, “Well what in the hell is that?”

According to Daddy, Poppa didn’t stir right off but rolled his eyes towards Mr. Graham and asked him, “What?”

“That there,” Mr. Graham told him.

“Where?” Poppa said and lifted his head out from the hole he’d made for it.

“Yonder behind us,” and Mr. Graham pointed.

And Daddy said Poppa shed himself of a half bushel of potatoes as he raised up at the waist and sat on his elbows from where he could see the dust on his own but not the cause of it since it had yet to clear the treeline.

“Maybe it’s a hurrican,” Mr. Graham said, “one a those little hurricans.”

And Daddy said Poppa brought his legs free and fetched out Mrs. Ware’s shotgun just as the first wave of the posse outstripped the trees and rounded the bend in the road.

“No,” Mr. Graham said, “can’t be no hurrican cause it’s got legs.”

And Daddy said Poppa leapt down off the wagon bed and lingered momentarily in the road while he decided between the blueberry brambles off to his left and the combination mimosa forest and honeysuckle thicket off to his right.

“Maybe it’s a cattle stampede,” Mr. Graham said. “Maybe Hockaday’s cows got loose and come through town wrecking and rampaging everything.”

And Daddy said Poppa beat it down the bank, through the mimosas, and bored straight into a tiny gap in the honeysuckles.

“But don’t appear to be cows,” Mr. Graham said. “Looks more like people. Maybe it’s the Independence parade.”

And Daddy said Mr. Graham now hollered a little and divided his attention between the road and the honeysuckle thicket where he could hear Poppa swearing and thrashing around in an attempt to make a way for himself.

“No, no,” and Daddy said Mr. Graham had begun to shout, “it’s August, ain’t it, and anyway no parade gets it like these folks. They in the goddammed awfulest hurry I ever seen.” And Daddy said pretty soon Poppa had thrashed himself on out of earshot which called for Mr. Graham to stand full up on the wagon seat, fill himself with air, and more or less bellow, “Wild looking bunch a people, I tell you that, and nary a rope between them like maybe they gonna gnaw somebody to death, just chew him right in half. Now wouldn’t that be a thing to see, huh? Huh? I suppose so. Yes sir, I guess it would be.”

Daddy said Mr. Graham was still hollering into the thicket when the front edge of the Throckmorton rescue battalion arrived at his wagon where they all grabbed hold of their knees for the best part of a minute before any of them could manage a breath to speak with, but finally Deputy Doyle was able to bring himself erect long enough to say, “Where is he?”

“Who?” Mr. Graham asked him.

“Throckmorton,” the deputy said.

“What’s he done?” Mr. Graham wanted to know.

“Just where is he?” the deputy asked him again.

“Throckmorton?” Mr. Graham said.

“Yes, Throckmorton,” the deputy told him. “Where’d he go?”

“What’s he done?” Mr. Graham wanted to know.

“Nothing,” the deputy said. “Where’d he go?”

“What’re you after him for?” Mr. Graham asked him.

“He’s a sick man,” the deputy said. “Now where’d he get off to.”

“He looked alright to me,” Mr. Graham said.

“He ain’t regular sick,” the deputy told him. “He’s been devastated.”

“Oh,” Mr. Graham said. “Well he went off into that thicket yonder,” and Daddy said before Mr. Graham could bring his arm back down the deputy had taken the forefront and commenced to lead the entire crowd through the mimosas and on into the seam in the honeysuckle hedgerow that had swallowed up Mr. Throckmorton, and Daddy said it was such a tiny opening and such a ponderous crowd that by the time everybody got beyond the honeysuckles most of the thicket was still thicket except for the part where the seam had been which was brushpile. And Daddy said after Mr. Graham had watched the tailend of the posse disappear behind the mimosas and into the hedgerow he sat down on the wagon seat and propped his head up on his knuckles. “Devastated,” he said, “Hmm.” And Daddy said Mr. Graham held silent council with himself for some considerable minutes before he eventually climbed over the seatback onto the wagonbed, kicked the block of ice off into the road, and raked all the produce out behind it.

Daddy said once the posse had cleared the hedgerow they spread themselves thin across Mr. Harland Lynch’s pasture and swept on through his upper tobacco field calling out for Poppa at regular intervals, while Mr. Dunford Hicks in his finely appointed automobile led a squad of carts and wagons an additional half mile along the highway to Mr. Harland Lynch’s access road which the deputy’s plan called for them to search and secure before rendezvousing with the foottroops at, what the deputy called, Mr. Lynch’s westernmost watering pond, which Daddy said was not then and has never been anything but a mudhole. But Daddy said the mobile unit had hardly gained the access road and only half the foottroops had left the tobacco field when the gun went off, and Daddy said fortunately for Mrs. Throckmorton she was still somewhat delirious, partially berserk, and riding in a Ford, the combination of which caused her to take the gunshot for a backfire. But he said three other women who were not married to Poppa and who did not know him except to call his name fainted outright and had to be hauled up onto the road, where they revived in time to run along behind everybody else and help search for the corpse.

Deputy Doyle, being expert in this sort of thing, figured the shot to have come from behind a cluster of tenant houses due southeast, he guessed, and maybe a touch west too from the watering pond, or what amounted to straight down the road, Daddy said, where two sets of Jeffersons, three sets of Broadnaxes, and one set of Carothers shared four shacks, one shallow well, and a common outhouse. Daddy said all but for Lester Broadnax the negroes were off taking first pullings in the bottom acreage and Lester himself had seen the posse early enough to clear out for the woods undetected, which left the foottroops free to crawl over and through and under the tenant houses and just generally infest them for as long as it took to become plain to everybody that there were no negroes there and no Throckmorton either. So Daddy said most of the posse milled around outside on the packed dirt except for some few of the more adventuresome members, who struck out through the woods beating the undergrowth with sticks, which Daddy said the majority considered a frivolous and unnecessary undertaking up to the very second one of the men in the woods yipped and gave tongue like a hound and so set the entire posse stomping and crashing through the trees and the groundcover all the way down to a shale ledge by a creek where one of the brushbeaters had discovered Lester Broadnax who crouched on a rock, Daddy said, and appeared visibly shaken and agitated by the sight of a whole herd of whitefolks bearing down on him at a full gallop.

The same man who found Lester had found along with him Mr. Buddy Ware’s double-aught-six shotgun, which Daddy said he had broken open at the breech and sort of wore over his arm like a velvet overcoat, and once the posse had become a little less thunderous he opened his mouth and intoned, Daddy called it, “Look here, deputy, what I found,” and then he held the gun over his head so everybody could see it. And Daddy said Deputy Doyle stepped up onto the rock with Lester Broadnax and that brushbeater and he edged on out towards the creek until he stood right overtop of Lester and then he put one hand on his hunk of wood and the other on the butt of his pistol and he set his feet apart and fixed himself to talk but before he could even separate his lips Lester said, “I ain’t done nothing. I ain’t!” in a wild, high voice and then temporarily lost his senses which caused him to tumble off the ledge into the creek bed. Daddy said once Lester had been fished out of the creek and had calmed himself down enough to get his throat to make noise again he spun out the whole horrible tale, which was very disturbing and dismaying for most everybody right off, but Daddy said after a few minutes it all began to sink in and the entire posse, almost without exception, agreed that Poppa had taken Mr. Buddy Ware’s gun and done the only thing he could do with it: he sold it. Lester Broadnax had fired it into the air, had buffed the barrel with his sleeve, and then had owned himself a shotgun for two dollars and twenty-five cents. And Daddy said while most everybody stood around and looked at each other, Mrs. Ware edged and squeezed and pushed her way up to that brushbeater and snapped, “Gimme that,” as she snatched Mr. Ware’s weapon out of his hands. Then Deputy Doyle exhaled most profoundly, said, “Well hell,” and led the troops up out of the forest.

Daddy said Mr. Dunford Hicks and his mobile battalion had only just reached the stretch of road before the tenant houses when thick clumps of posse commenced to issue from the woods. And he said Mr. Hicks found out the deputy and took him by the elbow so as to lead him to some private place away from the road and the Ford in particular. But Daddy said Deputy Doyle wasn’t looking to be steered around by the elbow and so right away shucked himself of Mr. Hicks who decided to take what information he could get where he could get it and asked the deputy, “Is it over?” And Daddy said the deputy shot back at him. “Shit yes, it’s over.” And Mr. Hicks said, “He’s gone then?” in a most sorrowful voice. And Daddy said the deputy told him, “He’s gone alright.” And Mr. Hicks looked at the ground and said, “Delivered from his torments, delivered and redeemed. We shall miss him.” And again the deputy said, “Well hell,” and left Mr. Hicks by himself on the apron of the road where he launched into a soaring eulogy and had already carried on at some length before anybody bothered to tell him that Poppa was still as miserable and tormented as everybody else, which Mrs. Throckmorton herself learned about the same time and so managed to clear her head enough to climb out of the back of Mr. Hicks’ Ford and haul little Evelyn Maynard and Pinky along with her down to the edge of the woods. Daddy said the tail end of the posse was still coming up from the creek bank and out from the trees but nobody could tell Mrs. Throckmorton anything she didn’t already know, and he said after everybody had come out of the woods, except for Lester Broadnax, who did not intend to come out right yet, Mrs. Throckmorton peered in among the trees and called out, “Braxton Braxton Braxton Braxton!” then leaned in with her ear and waited for a reply. And Daddy said what part of the posse couldn’t fit in the carts and wagons struck back out across Harland Lynch’s tobacco field towards the honeysuckle thicket and the Danville road while Mrs. Throckmorton continued to pace up and down the treeline with little Evelyn Maynard on her hip and Pinky flailing and moaning behind her, and Daddy said she called out Poppa’s name at ever increasing intervals until she stopped calling it out altogether and finally came away from the trees and out from the tenant shacks when Mr. Hicks got her attention with his brass carhorn and hollered to her from the driver’s seat, “You coming or what?”

Daddy said Poppa showed up around noon of the following day, or got as far as the porch anyway after having slept at the front gatepost until the mailman came along to deliver him with the mail, and Daddy said Mrs. Throckmorton let it out all over town that Poppa had suffered a serious illness but was on the mend now and would be his regular self soon enough. But before the week was out Poppa had sold off four pieces of stemware and skipped out again with nobody to chase him this time except for Mrs. Throckmorton who could not tote Evelyn Maynard and drag Pinky so far as the end of the street before she gave out. And Daddy said he didn’t get back to the porch this time or even to the gatepost but collapsed along about the icehouse, where the deputy found him and brought him on home, and again Mrs. Throckmorton tended to him and nursed him and gave it out all over town that Poppa was ill and would recover, and Daddy said he spent several days convalescing in his hammock before he disappeared again and with nobody at all to chase him. But Daddy said this time Poppa brought himself back home carrying with him his illness in one jug and two jarfuls, and Daddy said Poppa lowered the jug and one of the jars down into his well on a rope and took the other jar with him to his hammock, where in the course of the afternoon he drank the entire undiluted contents of it from a galvanized coffee cup and then banged the cup on the porch floor most savagely until Mrs. Throckmorton herself drew in the rope and fetched him the other jarful. And Daddy said now it was the former Miss Fuller who asked for and received a fair price for her grandma’s cedar chest, and who sold the last Throckmorton silver service to a dealer in Greensboro, and who let it be known around Neely that she was available to take in laundry and piecework. And Daddy said about once a week while Poppa lay near senseless in his hammock, Mrs. Throckmorton would leave little Evelyn Maynard and Pinky with her momma and would walk north along the boulevard past the square and the icehouse and on out of town to the break in the honeysuckle thicket where she would cut up through Mr. Harland Lynch’s tobacco field and skirt on by his tenant shacks and into the trees down to the creekbed which she would follow to the deepest part of the woods. Daddy said Mrs. Throckmorton always came back through town carrying the jars in a flour sack where they rattled and clanged together as she walked.