On the River Styx (18 page)

The frightened guide was muttering to himself, and Burkett thought, I don’t know how to help him. Not until they arrived at the main channel, and the royal palms and roofs came into view, did he turn to confront Dickie a last time. Before he could speak, Dickie howled in anguish, “Why you come roun’ here causin trouble! Everythin goin
good
befo’ you come!”

At opposite ends of the boat, they averted their faces and were silent. The last recourse was to threaten Dickie with a public accusation, but he doubted his own will to carry it through. At the expense of a small tape deck and some minor irritation, how much easier it would have been to forget the goddamned “principle of the thing.” He was defeated. Alice is right, he thought, we’ll go on home.

Judge Jim Whidden awaited them on shore. With the wide-eyed calm of a prey creature, the guide observed the line of white people as he eased the skiff up to the dock. And the people, too, were calm, their collective visage withdrawn, noncommittal.

“Git that boat on in here, Dickie,” the Judge ordered, although the prow already nudged the pilings. Dickie flipped the snook onto the dock, and Burkett followed.

The Judge laid a heavy arm across his shoulders. “Tape toy, ain’t it? Well, you don’t wanta worry, Lawyer, I already got a purty good idea about it, a purty damn good idea. I got goin on it soon’s they told me your missus was
huntin around the premises for somethin. But you oughta had reported it this mornin.”

Burkett nodded submissively, and later he remembered this with shame. He longed to dismiss this big man coldly, but the man and the throng behind the man were overpowering. And after all, what harm had this “judge” done? Hadn’t he been friendly and solicitous? And wasn’t he sincere in his outrage now?

Judge Jim told Dickie to go straight to his office, then led Burkett toward his cabin as if he were taking him behind the woodshed, a big bad boy in shorts caught with a snook. “I got a purty good idea,” he muttered, sucking his teeth by way of savoring his own deductive powers. “Not in
my
town! Not in
my
motel they don’t rob the tourists, no sir!”

“They?” Burkett’s voice sounded too high to him. His red nose and forehead, the red knees and shins, were swollen dry, and he felt a little dizzy, and he heard the nervousness in his own laugh.

Judge Jim laughed with him, very briefly. “That’s a hot one, ain’t it?” He chuckled without pleasure. “You’re keeping up your sense of humor, boy.” The voice had a new quality, as if the stranger had stumbled and exposed a weakness. There was no mistaking a proprietary tightening of the fingers above Burkett’s elbow.

“There’s something we have to get straight—” Burkett stopped short, twisting his arm free. “I don’t want anyone accused of theft, it’s just not worth it!”

“Now hold on, Lawyer!” Whidden reared back a little, squinted. “Nobody’s gonna accuse nobody, just ask ’em a few questions. That’s my bounden duty, ain’t it? I just can’t let ’em think, not for one damn minute—”

“Let
who
think?”

“There you go again, Lawyer!” Judge Jim shook his head and smiled. “I got my eye on the white trash, too, and we got our share of it, believe you me. Nobody’s sayin a man’s okay just cause he’s white, you know. I ain’t sayin that.” He paused for emphasis. “Now Johnny, that’s the yard man, and Aunt Tattie, that tidies up the cabins, and Dickie there, they all good niggers far as I know, and I knowed ’em all my life. But hell, boy, it just stands to reason! I mean, how many
white
people you seen around your room?”

“I’d just rather forget the whole business, if it’s all right with you.”

For a moment, Judge Whidden considered Burkett’s pale legs, the baggy shorts, red shins, the torn wet sneakers.

“It ain’t,” he said.

Judge Jim took Burkett’s arm again, concerned, cajoling. “I mean, you’re down here to try out our fishin, ain’t that right, you and the missus, you want to have yourself a dandy time? And how can I show folks a dandy time when their personal propitty ain’t safe, even?” He patted the other’s shoulder, then swung away along the white shell path toward his office.

“But you have no
authority
to make arrests—”

Judge Jim turned to look him over. “Don’t think so, Lawyer? Sheriff ain’t no further than my phone, and he don’t ask questions. Not here he don’t.” He came back and thrust out a big hand, taking the fish away as Burkett flinched.

“I’ll take care of that for you,” he said. “Just go on in and chew the fat with your little lady. You all just enjoy yourselves, y’hear? Got a vespers and bingo over to the church this evenin, everyone welcome. First Baptist
Church.” He was smiling again, but the smile had jelled. “Bet you people never knowed today was Sunday.”

Burkett watched him go. He told himself he was too old for shorts, he would never wear these stupid shorts again.

Alice was watching through the window. “I went over to the café,” she whispered, close to tears. “I thought about what you said about not accusing people, and I wondered if maybe he left it there last night, when he was drunk. I didn’t mention him!” she added hastily, seeing his expression. “I asked if maybe
you
had left it there.”

He said nothing. Going inside, he saw that she had packed their bags.

B
ECAUSE HE WOULD NOT
leave that afternoon (“You got your damned snipe, didn’t you!?”), they fought. At first she said she admired his attitude and was ashamed that she had lost her nerve, but when she realized he meant to see it through, she jeered at his stupid principles and stupid inability to mind his own business that had caused all the trouble in the first place. He got angry, too, dismissing her as the usual fair-weather liberal, the kind that always quit when the going got rough.

In the dead aftermath, he had drunk most of the whiskey, and later, an indefinite time later, he lay sweating in bed, heart pounding from a dream about night creatures from the open sea drifting over the white flats like moon shadows. A frightened voice tore at the dream—
Get out of here, goddamn you! Go away!
He turned on his back and saw his wife’s silhouette against the window. A big voice came from across the yard:

“Goddamnit, nigger, you sit tight till I git my pants on!”

She leaned across and clenched his arm. “I heard someone
outside fooling around, right by our porch! I yelled at him!” Outside the window, a few yards from the porch door, a black man stood still as a rabbit against the hot white moonlight of the yard, and a screen door banged.

Burkett lay silent a long moment, listening. Then he sat up. “Goddamnit, Alice.” He brushed away her plea. His palms were wet. He got out of bed, stumbling a little. “Goddamnit, Alice.” He repeated it under his breath, then said it aloud again, stupidly, wiping his palms on his pajama legs, trying in vain to concentrate on his wife, who was weeping quietly. He thought, Now why can’t she shut up? He longed to strike away her voice, all the damned voices.

The last shreds of the dream had blown away and still there was that moaning in the yard. He groped after his clothes, shaking her off. “Oh Christ!” she cried. “Let
them
fight it out! You just stay out of it!” When he stepped onto the screened porch, the moaning stopped.

Demanding something, Whidden was cuffing the small black man, who was on his knees. The Judge still had him by the collar and was yanking him back and forth with short piston strokes of his thick arm, both bodies black against the sand.

“Ain’t your business,” Whidden told Burkett without looking at him. “Go on back to bed.”

Voices from the street drifted quietly into the yard.

“Sound like a stuck hawg, don’t it? Hear him all the way down to the dock.”

“What’s that nigger doin here, middle of the night?”

“Better find out, ain’t we?”

“That’s what I’m doin,” Whidden said. “You boys go home.”

“Who’s that standin in the shadders? That the federal?”

Burkett stepped into the yard.

“That there’s my tourist, Speck. The one got stole off of.”

No one moved. Burkett listened to the frightened moaning of the black man, who lay crumpled where Whidden had shoved him away, and the rasp of Whidden, breathing hard from his exertions, and the crazy ring of crickets, louder and louder.

“Heard you was interested in shrimp boats, mister.” The voice was quiet. “Take you out night fishin in the Gulf, you so damn interested. Take your wife, too.”

This slow hard voice spoke straight into his ear. On the soft sand, as silent as a ray, the man had eased up to a point just behind his shoulder.

Burkett stood still. He did not turn to look. He said, “Thanks.” He said, “We have to leave tomorrow.” Later he recalled having glanced at Whidden, as if seeking protection from the law. Hands on hips, the Judge studied the ground, like a man thinking something through.

Then Alice’s hand was tugging at his pajama top, and Burkett backed into the cabin as that slow voice said, “Gonna miss the lynchin, then,” and the others laughed. Alice clutched at him, and he put his hand over her mouth.

Through thin curtains, he watched thin men convene around the Judge. Hands in hip pockets, all but Whidden were looking at the door where he had gone. They were laughing so quietly he could scarcely hear them. He saw the moon glint on a tooth and thought about a ring of panting dogs.

Then someone spat on the white sand, and the crickets started up again, one by one around the moonlit yard. The Judge spat, too, and turned toward the café. “Lock him in
the shed, there, Speck. I’ll get onto it first thing in the mornin.”

The man in the white Sunday shirt prodded the yard man with his boot.

“Let’s move it, Johnny.”

Burkett could not sleep. Going over the sequence of events, he realized it could have been Johnny after all.

At first light he got up and dressed, ignoring Alice, and crossed the dirty footprints in the sand to the rear door of the café. When nobody answered his soft knock, he sat on the porch steps in the dawn grayness, trying to clear his head.

An ancient bus came down the street and several black people got out, Dickie among them. Dickie unlocked the café door, and Burkett entered behind him. Shoulders high, eyes glaring, Dickie looked puffed up with threat like a huge bird. “Judge Jim ain’ b’lievin
nobody
who go ’cusin Dickie! Jes’ cause de man
white
? You crazy, mistuh!”

Burkett heard the Judge’s voice. He trailed it into a back room, where Whidden was drinking coffee with the man Speck. The Judge waved his guest to an empty seat, shouting at Dickie to hurry it up with the Lawyer’s coffee, then turned in his wood swivel chair and leaned back, grinning.

“Rode my tourist here kinda hard last night, now di’nt you, Speck?”

Speck returned Burkett’s gaze without expression. “Made him homesick, ah guess.”

“Ol’ Speck never meant no harm, no harm at all!” Laughing, Judge Whidden slapped Burkett’s arm with the back of his hand. “See, Speck don’t rightly come from around here. Come up on them night fishin boats from Frigate Key. To hear ol’ Speck let on sometimes, they’s got
better fishin down to Frigate Key than we do here!” Judge Jim leaned over and took a noisy swallow from his coffee.

“Mr. Whidden, we’re not pressing any charges!”

“Why, that’s all right. We’ll press ’em by ourselves.”

When Whidden put his hands behind his head, still chuckling, Burkett struggled to control his voice. “Look,” he said, “you have no authority. I’m not leaving here without talking to the Sheriff—”

“Why, sure you are!” In sudden anger, Judge Jim shouted, banging his chair down hard. “
Sure
you are, boy! That’s
just
what you’re going to do!” He folded his arms across his chest, nodding his head. Then he smiled again. “Soon’s you pay up, of course.” Burkett was still staring at him, and he said comfortably, “You told us last night you was leavin, so I give up your room.”

“Between midnight and this morning?”

“Yessir, between midnight and this mornin.” Whidden was trying not to laugh. “Yessir, I give that room up to ol’ Speck here. Speck been needin a room in the worst way, ain’t that right, Speck?”

Dickie’s head appeared out of the corridor. Looking at the wall, he said, “How he want dat coffee?”

“Lawyer likes it integrated, ain’t that right, Lawyer?” Judge Jim sighed. “Dickie, c’mere a minute.” Contemplating the Lawyer, the Judge placed his fingertips with light restraint on Dickie’s forearm.

Dickie was staring blindly in the general direction of the splayed white woman on the girlie calendar over Whidden’s head, and noticing this, Speck sat up slowly, stiff as a bird dog. “Hey nigger,” he said in a flat voice. Dickie jerked his head so that it stared sideways, out the window, and Whidden’s grip tightened.

“Lawyer Burkett don’t care none for no ‘Hey nigger,’ Speck. Round here, we’re integrated good. We say, ‘Hey
Nigra
!’ ”

The Judge sighed, squinting up at his guest.

“While back I told you I was gettin goin on this, right? So what I done, I got Dickie in here, and I told him I di’nt much care who done it, him or Johnny, but less I find out quick, it was gonna be hard time for both, and that’s the road gang. So Dickie been tellin me that Johnny got hisself some kind of a Injun woman out in the cypress, that right, Dickie?” The Judge cocked his head back, speaking to Dickie over his shoulder. “Been hard up for money, that right, Dickie?” Chuckling, he let Dickie go, and the black man fled the room.

“So he says Johnny did it.”

“Well, he di’nt exactly
say
that, Lawyer, cause he don’t exactly know, but after last night we can sure as hell agree that Johnny knows something about
somethin
. I’m gonna get that son’bitch in here in a minute, and he’s gonna tell ol’ Speck and me just what he done with your little tape toy.”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Burkett said.

Dickie, coming with his coffee, backed up into the kitchen. He seemed astonished by the anger in Burkett’s face.

“Goddamnit, you go get that tape deck.”

“Johnny took it! Took it home dat night! Got scairt, dass all, he was bringin it back, den Miz Alice hollers out and Judge Jim caught’m!” Seeing Burkett’s doubt, he went on furiously, “Tellin you God’s truth! Maybe Johnny slung it into de bush someplace! Doan know
where
he got it!”