New Novel Chapter Ten

Here's chapter ten. Remember the earlier disclaimer. Enjoy.

MEMORIES

AND OTHER AFFLICTIONS

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF

WILLIAM NATHAN MCCASKILL

A Novel by Chris Sherrill

Copyright 2012 by Chris Sherrill

 

BRUCE AND CRAZY JANE

 

CHAPTER TEN

 

            Two days later dad told me he had talked to the Sheriff who had promised to look into the matter. Three days after that they came for Jane. I didn’t know, but why should I?
            It was late afternoon; I had just gotten home from work. As I got out of the car I saw that dad was staring across the lake. Just then I heard a horrible commotion: screaming and crying and shouting. One voice was Jane’s. I didn’t recognize the others, but it was coming from Cyrus’ yard. I took off at a dead run. Dad took off after me.
            The Sheriff and a Deputy, guns drawn, were slowly closing in on Jane. Thirty feet from them, butcher knife at his throat, Jane had Cyrus against a large oak. Her eyes were wild and unseeing, or seeing something none of the rest of us could.
            “He kilt my mammy and my pappy!” she screamed. “What y’all gonna do ‘bout that?”
            “Put the knife down, miss,” the Sheriff ordered.
            The Sheriff heard me run up, turned a quick look at me.
            “Stay back, son. Stay back.”
            “He kilt my mammy and my pappy and y’all ain’t done nothing! Y’all ain’t gonna do nothing when he kills Jane, neither.”
            “Put the knife down and we can talk about it. We can’t talk with you holding that knife.”
            Jane squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head hard, like she was shaking something off, then she screamed.
            “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”
            “We can’t do that, miss.”
            But she wasn’t talking to the Sheriff.
            “I think I have a shot,” the deputy said.
            “Hold off. Don’t shoot yet.”
            “Jane,” I called gently.
            “Stay out of this, son! Y’all need to get on outta here. Go on. McCaskill, get your boy outta here.”
            “Jane?”
            I took two slow steps forward. Sheriff Hooper put his hand roughly on my arm.
            “Get outta here, boy! I ain’t gonna say it again! McCaskill, get your boy!”
            “Come on, Billy,” dad said.
            I pulled free of both their hands and took three steps forward.
            “Jane, it’s me. It’s your friend, Billy.”
            She looked hard at me and started shaking her head, slowly at first then more rapidly.
            “No. He done kilt my Billy. He done kilt my onliest friend in the world.”
            She turned her face to Cyrus and leaned slightly into him.
            “No, Jane! Jane! Listen to the music. There’s still music, Jane.”
            Her body relaxed slightly. I took two more steps. She was looking at Cyrus as her head shook slowly.
            “They ain’t no music no more.”
            “McCaskill,” Hooper said softly, “get your boy outta the line of fire.”
            “Give him a chance, Sheriff,” dad said, uncertainty in his voice.
            “They ain’t no music no more,” Jane repeated. “They don’t let me hear no music.”
            “I’ll help you hear it, okay?”
            She shook her head slowly but there was a struggle inside her. I moved slowly forward.
            “Dance with me, Jane. Dance with your friend, Billy.”
            “Billy dead. Ole Gil done kilt him.”
            “I’m not dead. I’m right here.”
            She let me get to within arm’s length. Her eyes narrowed threateningly and her head canted to the side as the knife went more firmly against Cyrus’ neck.
            “Who gave you the stone to whet that knife?”
            She thought for a moment.
            “Billy.”
            “Who brought you tangerines for Christmas?”
            “Billy.”
            She blinked several times, like she’d come suddenly out of a dark place into the sun.
            “It Billy, ain’t it?”
            “Yes, ma’am. Billy McCaskill.”
            Her bottom lip quivered.
            “He a good boy.”
            “Will you dance with Billy? Maybe you can hear the music.”
            She looked at me with misgiving but didn’t pull away when I took her wrist gently. She let me turn her to me. Cyrus slid down the tree to the ground. The knife was still in her fist and I took that hand at the wrist. I started to sway. She was stiff but tried to join me. After a minute she looked up at me, her eyes moist.
            “I can’t hear the music no more, Billy.”
            Her frightened, childlike voice touched me deeply. I pulled her close to me and held her. She held me tightly; her body was trembling.
            “They so loud, I can’t hear my own self no more. I scared, Billy. I scared all the time. I scared when I goes to bed an’ I scared when I wakes up. What I gonna do, Billy? I never be free of them.”
            “Listen for the music.”
            I didn’t know what else to say. She was still for a moment then nodded against my chest. She gave me one squeeze and started to pull away.
            “You a good friend. Now Jane be free.”
            What did that mean? She turned her back to me and plunged the knife deep into her chest. I caught her as she collapsed.
            “Jane! No! NO!”
            “Hold my hand while I flies away.”
            I took her hand. She squeezed mine weakly. Then there was nothing.
            I held her and cried. The deputy helped Cyrus away. The Sheriff squatted and put his fingers to Jane’s neck.
            “She’s gone,” he said quietly.
            Dad squatted beside me, his hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t stop sobbing.
            “Let her go, Billy. She’s free now.”
            “Dad. Dad, I don’t understand.”
            “I don’t either, son. I don’t either.”
            I didn’t want to let go of her, didn’t want to leave her lying there, alone, on the cold, hard ground. Dad finally helped me up and started walking me away. I stopped and started to turn. He took my shoulder firmly.
            “Don’t look back, Billy. Don’t remember her like that.”
            I sobbed into my bloody hands as he led me home.
            Mom and Gwen nearly swooned when they saw my state and the blood all over me. Dad assured them I wasn’t injured and brushed off their questions, getting a little brusque at mom’s persistence, and he took me to the bath where I washed the blood off with shaking hands. He took away the bloody clothes, brought clean clothes and I sat on the edge of the tub for a few minutes but couldn’t stay there. I had to get out. In the kitchen mom looked at me doubtfully. Gwen put her hands to her eyes and left the room. Dad was sitting on the steps.
            “Don’t go back over there, son.”
            “No, sir. I wasn’t. I just can’t sit.”
            I went to the wood pile and started splitting wood. Dad watched from a distance. I was so angry. It made no sense to me. I slammed that axe into wood until it was too dark to see.
            Sheriff Hooper came by a couple of hours later. Mom sat him at the kitchen table and he asked how I knew Jane, what I knew about her. I gave him a brief accounting.
            “We were friends,” I said, wrapping up.
            “I see,” he replied.
            “If that tone means what I think it means,” I said, “then you don’t see at all.”
            “Billy,” mama cautioned.
            “Mama, I don’t give a sick rat’s ass if this man believes me,”
            “Son,…” dad said.
            “but I want you to believe that I never did anything with Jane that would shame you, unless being a friend to another human being is a shameful thing.”
            I started crying again. Mama came to my side, hugged me and kissed my head.
            “I believe you, Billy. You did a good thing, being a friend to that poor girl.”
            “But it wasn’t enough. She was so…tortured.”
            She kissed my head again and rocked me gently.
            The Sheriff thanked us for our help and stood to take his leave. He was in the doorway.
            “What about Cyrus McGilroy?” I asked.
            “What about him?”
            “Jane said he killed her daddy. She said he raped her and her mama, and that he wanted to kill her.”
            He considered me for a moment.
            “He was pretty shook up so we sent him to the hospital, didn’t want him having a heart attack. I’ll be going by in the morning to get his story.”
            He turned away then turned back.
            “It ain’t strictly procedure, but you seem to have a personal stake in this so, if your daddy has no objection, you can sit in tomorrow morning, about 9:00. I’ll be the only one asking questions, you understand.”
            I didn’t sleep much. I cried some. Gwen, God love her, came to my room and held me and cried with me. Mama came, too, sat on the edge of the bed with us and they listened as I talked about Jane and our talks and dancing and tangerines.
            The next morning dad and I were at the hospital. Mr. McGilroy hadn’t had a heart attack but he looked more gaunt and haunted than before. He told the story as if he were glad to get it off his chest.
            “Jane was a sweet little girl, hard headed but a good child. But she was different. When she was just a little thing, she talked about voices talking to her. Well, children often have imaginary friends and Jane didn’t have no real friends since none of the other coloreds would have nothing to do with her mama after Sam duped them and took off with their money.”
            “You spend a lot of time around Jane, when she was little?” Hooper asked.
            Cyrus looked at Hooper, a guilty look in his face, then back at his hands.
            “White folks blamed me for what Sam did and they shunned me. Even at church they shunned me and my missus. My Mildred was sick at the time, cancer, and that hurried her to her grave. There wasn’t but one person who would speak kindly to me, and I was the only person who would speak kindly to her. A soul needs the company of another soul. I’d take a load of wood or a few tomatoes to Mamie, that was her name; I’d take some little something to her, and we’d chat a spell. And one day she brought me a piece of pie, apple pie, she’d just made, and we chatted. There wasn’t no plan on either of our parts; it just happened.”
            “What ‘just happened’?”
            “We, uh, we came to have…feelings for each other. I know it’s wrong for a white man to have feelings for a colored woman, but I couldn’t help it.”
            “Well, a man does need female companionship, on occasion. That would explain it.”
            Cyrus stared at his hands for a long moment.
            “Yes. I suppose it would.”
            Cyrus didn’t look up from his hands. He sighed deeply.
            “When she was thirteen, fourteen, Jane came in on us. She was supposed to be at the store, but…well, that doesn’t matter. She came in and she just exploded. I guess she’d heard about how white men had used colored women; I don’t know. She kept saying over and over, ‘They told me he was evil. They told me he was evil’. Well, I got out quick as I could, but every time I went near that little house after that, she exploded, screaming and hollering. We, uh, stopped spending time together but that didn’t stop Jane. When she was fifteen or so, she ran off with some man and was gone for a year or so and when she came back she was more difficult than before. She would fight her mama, hit her, slap her and call her all manner of filthy things. Mamie put up with it as long as she could, then she had her put in the mental hospital.”
            “Did you kill Mamie Good?” Hooper asked.
            Cyrus shook his head slowly.
            “I took ill that January, flu, and it put me down hard. I thought, hoped, Mamie might come check on me, but we’d agreed not to see each other, and I was too sick to wonder about it. After I got some strength back, I was outside and saw there was no smoke coming from Mamie’s chimney, so I walked back and found her.”
            “Why did you get Jane out of the hospital? Why did you bring her back? Did you bring her back to use her like you used her mama?”
            The Sheriff’s accusatory tone surprised me and jerked my eyes to him. Cyrus’ wet sniff brought them back to him. His shoulders heaved.
            “I never lay with Jane, not before nor after. Mamie came to see me once, the day after y’all took Jane. She said she didn’t have nobody and said if anything ever happened to her, would I take care of her girl. I figured she was just upset at having to send her child away; Mamie was young and healthy and wouldn’t nothing happen to her, so I said I would. I brought Jane back because I thought that’s what her mama would want.”

---*---

            Dad went with me to Jane’s graveside service. She was laid beside her mother. There was no family, no friends, so there was no funeral. In attendance were the minister, three of his deacons, two men from the funeral home and a white boy and his dad.

            They read her body into the ground. The minister read a lot of Scripture verses but had no words to say about a poor, lonely, tortured soul cast adrift by circumstances which overpowered her, which hammered relentlessly against her spirit until the music in her soul died. He had no words to say about the poor soul who had passed through this world unloved by her fellow man and, it seemed to me, unloved by God.
            I didn’t air my thoughts with anyone. I didn’t know how to question the love of God, wondered if by questioning it in my mind I had slipped off that narrow path Rev. Stockton’s sermons had constructed for me. I was just so damned angry at the injustice of it all.
            I went to work every day, worked hard, twelve hours or more, tiring myself out and saying little to others. I came home every evening, ate a late supper and did my chores with little to say to my family. Gwen asked me a couple of times if I was alright. I shrugged her off. I caught little looks between mom and dad, but they didn’t say anything to me.
            I came home at my usual late hour three weeks or so after Jane’s death. Mom busied herself around the kitchen while I ate. When I was done, she took my plate and put a piece of blackberry cobbler in front of me then sat down beside me. As I stared at it I was suddenly taken back to an earlier day.
            “Bruce loved cobbler.”
            Her eyes pinched then she nodded.
            “That boy did love his sweets.”
            She wiped her eyes with her apron.
            “Whatever brought that to your mind?”
            My lip started to tremble. I hate to cry. Men aren’t supposed to cry. I bit it hard. I couldn’t reply; I just shook my head. I lifted a spoonful of cobbler but couldn’t put it in my mouth. I bit my lip again but it didn’t help.
            “It’s not fair, mama.”
            “What’s not fair, Billy.”
            I shook my head. A tear fell on the cobbler. She got up and hugged my head to her.
            “Talk to me, son. Tell me what’s weighing so heavily on you.”
            I shook my head.
            “You can talk to me. I don’t care what you tell me. I love you, Billy, and that’s all that matters, and I don’t care what you might have done.”
            “I never lay with her, mama.”
            “I believe you, son. I just don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
            “Because it’s not fair. It’s just not fair. She had to go through her entire life hearing voices that told her crazy things. She pushed back against them, mama; I know she did, but she had to do it alone. Where was God, mama? That’s what I want to know. Where was the Good Shepherd when one of his lambs was lost and afraid and alone? Where was he? She had to go through her entire life alone, without anyone who cared, and I want to know what kind of God would do that to his children.”
            Tears were flowing freely and I had to get away. Mama caught me at the door, put her arms around my waist and held me.
            “Billy. Billy, turn around here. Now, you’ll have to struggle with God about your bigger question, but it’s not true that she never had anyone who cared. She had you. You obviously cared about her and she cared about you. It’s important to have someone who loves us, but it’s more important that we have someone who we can love, and she had you.”
            “But I couldn’t save her from killing herself.”
            “No, son. That part lies with God. Lay that on his doorstep and leave it there.”

New Novel Chapter Nine

   MEMORIES

AND OTHER AFFLICTIONS

 

The Life and Times of William Nathan McCaskill

 

A Novel by Chris Sherrill

Copyright 2012 by Chris Sherrill

 

BOOK ONE

 

BRUCE AND CRAZY JANE

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

 

 

        Jane’s story was like a briar in my mind and the only way to get it out was to get to the bottom of it. Was it possible that Cyrus McGilroy was a double murderer? It’s easy to believe negative things about someone you already feel negatively about. Jane’s words had carried conviction, but how much confidence could you put in the words of someone who got her information from voices in her head?

            “Dad, tell me about Crazy Jane’s mama and daddy.”
            We were splitting wood. He leaned on the maul and looked at me critically.
            “Why do you want to know about Jane’s family?”
            “Homer and Horace heard some stuff about her killing her daddy and mama.”
            He released a little snort of a laugh.
            “Rumors about her and her family crop up every so often, then they die down.”
            I waited patiently for more, but there was no more.
            “Is there anything to any of the rumors?”
            “Not so far as I can tell.”
            He was silent. We split wood for several minutes.
            “How old was she when her father left?”
            He looked at me closely. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
            I shrugged.
            “Jane was just a baby when her daddy left.”
            “Did you know him?”
            He nodded and seemed to let go of something.
            “It was said that Sam Good was a rounder, walking all over the countryside to visit his far-flung lady friends. It leaked out through a white acquaintance that on one of his excursions, Sam had found a gold nugget in a stream. Since this region was the location of the first American gold rush in the early 1800s, a lot of people took it seriously and the thing began to grow.
            “I went to one meeting to hear what Sam had to say. He struck me as an honest man. He was well spoken for a colored man, and he spoke with a controlled excitement that made him persuasive. He was tapping into that deep well of human greed and a lot of people, white and colored, put up money to buy the land and equipment for a mining operation. He insisted that he wouldn’t tell where he found the nugget unless coloreds were allowed to invest in the enterprise, which made him that much more believable.
            “A lot of folk started putting up money, and some of the more knowledgeable men started working on setting up a stock company. Nobody wanted outsiders to get wind of what was going on and buy the land out from under them so while the legalities were being worked out, it was decided that instead of putting the money in the bank, Tom Tilton would hold it.”
            “Tom Tilton?”
            Dad nodded. “Tom was an honest, God-fearing man, one of the most respected men in the county, which was why he was elected eighteen times as the State Representative from this district. Tom held the money and kept a log book of everyone’s contribution. Sam went by Tom’s one night, assaulted him, stole the money and took off for parts unknown.”
            I stood there with my mouth open.
            “Someone found Tom wandering around in his back yard the next morning. He was dazed, bruised, blood all over his shirt, scratches all over his arms and face; said Sam had attacked him in the house, chased him out into the woods and beat him until he told where the money was hidden. Even though it wasn’t Tom’s fault, he was ruined by it. About a year later he was getting ready to move to Florida when he had a heart attack and died.”
            “Was there really gold?”
            Dad pursed his lips. “Sam carried his ‘proof’ around in an old, heart-shaped locket with a little photo of a colored gal he said was his mama. It was a little rough stone not much bigger than a mustard seed that had a yellow glint. He’d let you look but not touch. It could’ve been gold. My guess is the locket was the only thing worth anything.”
            “How much money was raised?”
            “I heard different figures, but I guess it might have been ten, twelve thousand dollars.”
            “Wow!”
            “Yeah. That’s a lot of money.”
            “Who was the white acquaintance?”
            Dad studied me briefly. “Cyrus McGilroy. I’m sure he was just taken in by Sam like everyone else, but it ruined him, too, in the community.”
            “Did you put up any money?”
            He laughed dryly. “Ten dollars and fifty cents, all the cash money we had at the time. Your mama was dead set against it and after Sam absconded with it, it was a source of friction between us for a number of years. I’d just as soon you didn’t talk about this in her hearing.”
            “Yes, sir.”
            Dad handed me the axe and I split for a few minutes.
            “Where is Tom Tilton’s land?”
            “Let me guess what you’re thinking. Sam didn’t rob Tom. Tom got rid of Sam, buried Sam and the money somewhere on the property and died before he could retire with it to Florida. That was one of the theories at the time; you heard it mostly from Republicans who would’ve done anything to defeat Tom in a general election. Lots of people have dug on Tom’s land over the years. All they got for it was dirt.”
            I shrugged and grinned.
            “Tom never married and soon after his death his heirs sold the land to a timber company who clear cut it and planted it in pines, 200 acres of pines.”
            He was trying to discourage me. I just nodded and held his eyes.
            “It’s about six miles west of here on highway 65, past the Antioch community. Go north on 65. I hear there’s a new diner out there; it would be another mile past that, on the left.”
            “Thanks, dad.”
            “If you’re going to play the fool with this, don’t mention it to your mother.”
            “No, sir.”

---*---

            I let the story play around in my head for a few days. I knew dad was right; he was almost always right, but I had to go by the Tilton place. I’m like a dog with a bone, except sometimes I don’t know if I’m the dog or the bone.

            Two hundred acres is a lot of land, so I enlisted Homer and Horace. What fifteen year old boy could pass up the chance to look for buried treasure and a body in an abandoned well? Homer even proposed that the stream with the gold might be on Tom Tilton’s land. He generally stretched everything beyond its breaking point. One Saturday afternoon we jumped on our bikes and rode over.
            We spent the entire afternoon walking the land. The house and barn had begun to show definite signs of impending collapse so we avoided them. We fanned out, twenty yards between us, and began through the pines. There were lots and lots of pine trees, lots and lots of pine trees. The timber company had thinned them a few years before so the walking wasn’t difficult but it was monotonous: pines and not much else. Oh, there were a few little streams here and there where you’d find a few hardwood trees, and there were a few blackberry thickets, but mostly it was pine trees. We didn’t find anything that looked like an abandoned well.
            The twins were discouraged. I was, too, honestly. I let the idea slip into the back of my mind. It wasn’t hard. The weather didn’t cooperate and I had school and a girl friend. In the afternoons I had basketball, then baseball in the spring and always chores and occasional sparing with Bob Smith. Gwen got her driver’s license and took me to school socials. She even let me double date when she was dating someone for the first time or wasn’t really interested in the boy. When summer came, I got a job with Garvin Williams, a big time truck farmer up near the city of Overton. It required long days and hard work, but he paid well and by the end of the summer I was overseeing a small part of his operation. It was easy to let the buried treasure get buried in my own mind. I did sneak by to see Jane a few times. Each time she seemed more and more distant. I never mentioned going to Tom Tilton’s place. Maybe I should have.
            Years sweep by in short paragraphs.
            In September I returned to school, turned sixteen and got my driver’s license. I’d saved my money from the summer job because I had to buy most of my own school clothes, but I had enough left over to buy a 1938 Dodge. I’m a sucker for a deal, or just a sucker. It needed ever so much work, but I took on the challenge. When it was running, I drove that thing all over creation.
            In October, which seems to me a fatal month, I came home from school to find dad waiting for me in the yard. His demeanor was unpromising.
            “I’ve got sad news for you, Billy. Young Bob Smith is dead.”
            “Bob? How?”
            “Word is, Big Bob was drunk and took his stick to his missus and when young Bob stepped in, he used it on him. Cracked his scull. He was in the hospital for a day before he died.”
            I couldn’t believe it. Bob and I had never become bosom buddies, but we had come to respect each other. To the world, Bob was a bully, but I’d seen that he was just a guy, something he hid from the world. Dad went with me to Bob’s funeral. There were so few people there that dad and I were asked to help as pall bearers. Bob’s mama, her face bruised, sat like an oak, a hollow-eyed, lifeless oak with not even one more tear to shed, even for her only child. An empty sadness came over me. Dad respected my silence. We were back home before I spoke.
            “Was Big Bob mean because he was poor, or was he poor because he was mean?”
            “I don’t know just how those things go together, son. Poverty has a way of etching itself into the grain of families. Making no effort to escape it only etches it deeper. The only way to polish it out is for generations to try and fail until a generation loses its memory of the blight and can free itself from poverty’s fist.”

---*---

            When I went by after Christmas, Jane was more upbeat than I’d seen her in some time. When I showed her the tangerines, she laughed and hugged me. She’d made cookies hoping I’d come by. We had a wonderful visit. She didn’t mention the voices once. We laughed and kidded like brother and sister. I stayed for a long time and was sad when I had to leave. She didn’t want me to leave, either, and kept asking questions about basketball and school and my girlfriend. Finally I was at the door.

            “You a good friend, Billy McCaskill,” she said.
            “I like being your friend.”
            She smiled wistfully and gave me a hug then pulled back and kissed me on the cheek.
            “I gotta say thank you for loving a crazy colored gal.”
            It felt wrong at first. But it was true.
            “I…I do love you, Jane.”
            She smiled brightly and took my cheeks in her hands.
            “I glad you never went with me to my bed, ‘cause I know when you come, you coming for me and not for what I give you.”
            I gave her a tight hug and a kiss on the head.
            I felt so good about Jane. It felt like she had reached some milestone in her life. It also spurred me to make another trek out to the Tilton place. It was an impulsive decision so I didn’t mention it to the twins. I drove out, of course. What teenage boy will take his bike when he has a car? Alone, the place felt creepy. The leaning old house seemed to stare at me grumpily. I was surprised and annoyed at myself for letting my imagination get to me. I walked parts of the pine forest that the twins and I hadn’t walked before, but I got the same result.

---*---

            Winter and spring followed their prescribed courses. Sally Murphy broke up with me to date an older boy with a job and a nicer car that usually ran, but who stepped into her position but Amy Gooden, the prettiest girl in school. I was still at the top of the social ladder.

            In May Garvin Williams called to see if I was ready to go work. It was time to plant. In late May I went by to see if I could help Jane with her early garden. She let me in but grudgingly. She seemed jumpy and kept eying me closely.
            “Don’t know as I be putting in a garden this year,” she said.
            “Why not?”
            “What the use? Ole Gil just come down and cut it all down, like he done last year.”
            I was at a loss. I’d not seen any evidence of that.
            “Why would he do that?” I asked.
            Her eyes pinched like she was trying to pick up some distant voice. She leaned close. “They saying he gonna kill Jane. Most all of ‘em saying that now.”
            “How many are there?”
            She looked at me blankly for a moment like I’d asked how many angels could dance on the head of a pin then her eyes got fearful. She leaned toward me and in a scared whisper said,
            “Legion.”
            I was a simple country boy. I’d barely heard of mental illness let alone had experience with it. Yes, Jane had said some strange things and done some unsettling things, like holding that butcher knife out of sight once before, but I liked her; I don’t know why, I just did. And for the most part I’d thought of her quirks simply as an interesting oddity, and frankly it had made me feel special to be the only friend of the local outcast. A part of me still fantasized about her supple body pressed against mine in a carnal embrace. I knew it could never be, but that didn’t prevent the fantasies. And I thought that as her friend I had some influence over her; I’d pulled her out of her sad moods before and helped her hear the music, but I suddenly realized that Jane was not an oddity and, more than that, she was far outside the pale of my puny opinion. She was deeply disturbed and needed help.
            How could I let anyone know she needed help without revealing that I’d spent time with her, alone? My mom would go through the roof. I struggled with it in my mind. Maybe she was just having one of her sad times. No, whatever it was, it wasn’t just a sad time. There was something else going on, something that needed to be addressed. I got dad alone.
            “Dad, I…I need your help.”
            He heard the tone and looked hard into my face.
            “What is it, son.”
            “It’s…it’s Jane. Dad, Jane needs help.”
            He just looked at me for the longest time. I answered his unspoken question.
            “I’ve been visiting Jane off and on for a couple of years.”
            His eyebrows went up.
            “Not like that, honest. We didn’t do anything but talk. She was just so sad and lonely and didn’t have any friends or family, so I’d go over once in awhile and we’d just talk.”
            “This is going to hurt your mama.”
            “Yes, sir, I know. I wasn’t going to say anything, but when I went by a few days ago she was just so scared.”
            “What’s she scared of, Billy?”
            “She hears voices in her head that tell her that people are out to hurt her. She’s certain that Mr. McGilroy is out to kill her. She’s terrified, dad. She’s terrified and has no one who cares about her or who can help her.”
            I don’t know why the tears began to burn my eyes. Dad, one hand on my arm, took me in.
            “I’m going to ask this one time, Billy, and I need an absolutely honest answer. Did you ever lay with that girl?”
            “No, sir.”
            He sighed deeply. “Okay. I think your mama will be able to deal with the disobedience. I don’t know how she would’ve dealt with that other.”
            “Is laying with a colored really a sin?”
            “I should’ve had this conversation with you a long time ago. Coloreds and whites have some different physical characteristics, but we share the same hopes and dreams. We’re all children of the same God, all washed by the blood of the same Jesus. The issue isn’t color. The issue is having and keeping your position in society. Your mama would be upset about you lying with any woman, white or colored, who was beneath you on the social ladder.”
            I was about to ask why social status was so important, but I didn’t; I already knew the answer, though I hadn’t known I knew it. All my life, I’d challenged those above me in the pecking order and looked down on those beneath me. I’d done it in response to some unspoken internal need to lift myself. Social status is important simply because it is.
            “Can someone do something for Jane?”
            “I’ll ask around,” he said. “She’s an adult and can’t be forced to take treatment she doesn’t want. Keep this under your hat until I can see if anything can be done for her.”

New Novel Chapter Eight

Here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy.

 

MEMORIES

AND OTHER AFFLICTIONS

 A novel by Chris Sherrill

Copyright 2012 by Chris Sherrill

 

BOOK ONE

BRUCE AND CRAZY JANE

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

            It was a long time before I visited Jane again. Cyrus McGilroy’s threat to see my dad had a powerful effect, but there were other reasons, too. Homer, Horace and I spent time exploring and playing. We cut away the brush beside the pool down at the sawmill, making our own private swimming hole. Winter turned into spring and it was time to plant again. Basketball season ended and baseball season began. When there weren’t games there was practice. Bob Smith and I continued to spar. I’d learned all he had to teach so we boxed for the sport and the practice.

            When summer came, Jake got a job working for the town of Pinckney and Charlotte got a job in a bank there and rode with Jake in the 1944 Chevy he’d gotten. Dad got Gwen and me jobs at Tucker’s peach shed eight miles south of us. He drove us down each morning and picked us up each afternoon. The pickers went out at first light and by 9:30 the tractors were bringing in wagons piled high with bushel baskets of peaches. That’s when we had to be there. The girls culled the peaches, picking out the one that were badly formed or bruised. I worked loading the boxes onto waiting tractor-trailers that carried the peaches to cities in the north. Gwen made twenty-five cents an hour. I made thirty-five cents an hour and thought I had found the golden goose. We argued about the pay differential. I had the more physically demanding job. Besides boys believe they’re superior to girls. We can’t help it. I think it’s genetic. Males get criticized for it, but I’m sure females believe they’re superior, too.
            In the afternoons and on Saturdays we had our regular chores. Kids and adults gathered most weekends at the school ball field for pickup games, and I went when I could. I rode my bicycle every chance, with or without Homer and Horace who were helping their dad on the Hudson’s farm.
            I had a growth spurt over the spring and summer, grew five inches and got slimmer, not a lot slimmer; I was a hefty boy. I saw Jane from a distance, fishing at the lake and once at Demby’s, and saw Mr. McGilroy two or three times from a distance.
            First thing you know, Jake was packing to go back to college and Charlotte was preparing for her freshman year. Gwen and I started school again, and I turned fifteen. I went out for the football team and soon found that I liked football better than basketball or baseball because in football you’re supposed to be rough. And my first school romance blossomed. Sally Murphy, one of the cheerleaders, and I started hanging out together at school and sitting together on the bus on game days. Though I’d been driving vehicles as far back as I could remember, I was only fifteen and couldn’t drive legally, so those were our dates.
            A pretty woman elevates a man’s standing with other men. I had fought and hustled my way to a higher rank among my peers, but Sally Murphy on my arm lifted it even higher. I liked it. I liked Sally for herself, but I liked even more the effect she had on my rank.

---*---

            In early October, Rev. Stockton died of a heart attack. He’d been the minister at Ebenezer for twenty-seven years. Sudden unexpected deaths will stun a community. He’d barely been laid to rest when Gus Hudson died. He wasn’t but thirty-five. He’d been out bush-hogging, got off the tractor to check something and, well, nobody knew what happened. The tractor had surged forward, knocked him down and run over him. Miss Emma found him.

            Everything comes in threes.
            In the middle of October, Bruce got sick. He’d been sick off and on for most of his life, but he’d always bounced back. I guess he’d used up his last bounce. Day by day you could see him getting weaker and weaker, and one night he just eased away. Nearly to the end he kept that innocent smile.
            It tore a big piece out of my parents’ hearts. They called on that old stoic fortitude that had served them so well for so long, but it wasn’t there. Gwen and Charlotte tried to take over the household duties for mom, but she wouldn’t let herself be alone with her broken heart. Jake and I tried to take over some of dad’s chores. He would sit and stare out across the lake then sigh deeply and go back to work for awhile before he sat again and stared out across the lake.
            Bruce’s death hit me hard. I’m not sure why. I didn’t see it coming and it hit me like a battering ram. I was able to find some stoic fortitude for myself when others were around, but at night in my bed, I wept. Gwen heard me and came to my room. We held each other and cried.
            It was hard, really hard the day we laid Bruce to rest. As we made our way to the graveside, I looked around. Nearly the entire congregation was there as well as many other members of the community. Bob Smith was there. Elam Simpkins, a black man who sometimes helped on the farm, was on the periphery of the crowd with his wife. Several feet behind them was Crazy Jane.
            It takes an awful lot of time for a deep wound in your heart to heal, but you have to keep on. Jake and Charlotte went back to college. Gwen and I went back to school. I practiced football in the afternoons. About a month after Bruce’s death, the coach had something to attend to and football practice was cancelled. I rode past the church on my way home, stopped at the cemetery and sat on the ground beside my brother’s grave. I couldn’t help but cry. I felt so guilty about being ashamed and embarrassed by Bruce. I heard a car door close. I dried my tears and didn’t look around but heard footsteps as they came up behind me.
            “Hello, Billy.”
            “Hello, Miss Emma.”
            “I’m so sorry about Bruce.”
            “Yes, ma’am. Thank you. And I’m sorry about Mr. Gus.”
            “Thank you.”
            We were silent. I expected to hear Miss Emma walk away but didn’t.
            “I’d be obliged if you’d sit with an old lady for a little spell,” she said.
            “You’re not old, Miss Emma.”
            She smiled indulgently. I stood and we walked to a cement bench she’d had put beside Gus’ grave.
            “This is where I want to be laid when I’m gone,” she said, “right here where I put this bench. Will you remember that for me, Billy, in case I go suddenly and no one knows to get rid of this bench? Will you?”
            “I sure don’t want to be out of line, Miss Emma,” I said, “but you could marry again and have children. You’re a handsome woman.”
            She blushed and looked at the ground.
            “Thank you, Billy. That’s not out of line. A woman likes to feel attractive. Gus always made me feel like I was attractive. But I can’t have children, and I don’t know as I’ll be looking to get married again.”
            “I’m sorry, Miss Emma.”
            She bowed her head and brought a dainty handkerchief to her eyes. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I scooted over until our legs touched and put my arm around her shoulders. She leaned her head against me and cried briefly then she patted my leg and sat up. I moved my arm. She daubed the corners of her eyes.
            “I thought that particular well was dry,” she said, “and I certainly didn’t mean to impose on you, but I appreciate your kindness. There’s something comforting about physical contact with a…a kindred spirit.”
            I thought about holding Gwen and crying with her.
            “Yes, ma’am, there is.”
            We sat there quietly for another minute.
            “It doesn’t seem to make sense, does it?” she said.
            I thought to try to dodge that question, but I didn’t.
            “No, ma’am. I’ve been thinking how many things don’t make sense.”
            “You want to talk about it?”
            “No, ma’am.”
            She nodded. “I know you miss Bruce.”
            I looked away when my eyes moistened.
            “I was mean to him. I was embarrassed by him.”
            She put her arm around my shoulders.
            “Why couldn’t he have been normal, like other kids?”
            “He was always happy, always smiling, and that makes me think that he didn’t have to endure the conflicts you and I experience as life tugs us in contrary directions. Personally, I think that children like Bruce are God’s gift. While all the rest of us are fighting to find and keep our place in the world, there are these special children who love everyone for no reason except that they do. If they notice the wrongs we do them, they forgive them. I think God gives us children like Bruce to remind us that there is such a thing as unconditional love.”

---*---

            Holidays are particularly difficult after the death of a loved one. We tried to create a sense of normalcy during Thanksgiving and Christmas, but one of the voices in the song of our family was forever silent.

            I sneaked over to Jane’s after Christmas. I took her an orange and a tangerine. Fresh fruit, especially citrus fruit, in the wintertime was a treat back then, so there was always an orange in our stockings along with the nuts and hard candy. That year there had been three oranges and three tangerines for each of us.
            Jane was tentative, her eyes haunted, when she answered the door. She stood for a brief moment then opened the door for me.
            “Sorry I haven’t been by.”
            She just nodded. I sat and she sat opposite me, her left arm on the table and her right down beside her.
            “I brought these for you.”
            “What they is? I know that an orange. That an orange, too?”
            “It’s a tangerine. It’s like an orange, but sweeter. Try it.”
            She didn’t show much interest and didn’t take the fruit, so I started pealing it. She looked from my hands to my face.
            “You ‘bout all growed up,” she said wistfully.
            I halved the fruit and pulled a wedge off, handing it to her. She just looked at it.
            “You eat it first,” she said suspiciously.
            “I already know what it tastes like. This is for you.”
            “Ole Gil send you down here with that?”
            “Gil?”
            “He trying to poison Jane, you know. He ain’t sent you to poison Jane?”
            “Jane, I wouldn’t hurt you for anything. You’re my friend.”
            Her eyes showed a skirmish going on inside her. I didn’t understand it but I saw it. It frightened me and made me sad at the same time. I put the wedge in my mouth and chewed, spitting the seeds in my hand.
            “They’re real sweet, but they have a lot of seeds,” I said.
            The skirmish in her eyes continued. I held a wedge out to her. She just stared at it as if there was nothing else in the world. I was at a loss.
            “Jane…”
            I spoke softly, but her eyes snapped up to mine. She looked through me then focused on my eyes. She seemed afraid.
            “I don’t hear it no more. They so loud, I don’t hear the music no more.”
            “Who’s so loud?”
            “The voices. The voices so loud I can’t hear the music.”
            I stood up and went to her side.
            “Dance with me.”
            I held out my hand. She was indecisive.
            “You come to hurt me? That what they saying.”
            I had a chill.
            “No, Jane. I would never hurt you.”
            “It Billy, ain’t it?”
            “Yes, ma’am. Billy McCaskill.”
            “He a good boy. He dance with me.”
            I put my fingertips on her forearm.
            “You ain’t gonna hurt Jane?”
            “No. I want her to hear the music.”
            As she let me take her hand she brought her right arm up and set the butcher knife on the table. That gave me another chill. She stood and brought her body up close to mine and we began to sway. We swayed slowly for three or four minutes.
            “I hear it,” she whispered. “I hear the music.”
            I could tell that she was hearing the music; I could tell from the sway of her body. She put her head against my shoulder, her mouth near my neck.
            “Why you nice to Jane? Why you nice to a crazy colored gal?”
            “I like Jane. She helps me hear the music, and I like to hear the music.”
            We danced slowly for a long time, five minutes maybe.
            “Why they so loud, Billy?” she whispered. “Why them voices so loud?”
            “What do they say?”
            “Crazy things sometimes.”
            “They talk to you?”
            She hesitated then nodded. “Sometimes they talk to me. Sometimes they talk among they selves. They doing that now. They saying you gonna hurt Jane.”
            I shook my head slowly. I don’t know if I was more scared or sad. I turned my face slightly and gave her a little kiss on the ear. Jane’s hand went up and touched the spot.
            “You kiss a colored gal.”
            “I kissed my friend.”
            “They saying it a poison kiss.”
            “Jane…”
            “I don’t care.” She snuggled up against me. “You my friend, and I hear the music.”
            “Don’t listen to them. Listen to the music.”
            “They say ole Gil gonna kill me, sooner or later.”
            “If you’re afraid of him, why do you stay here? Why don’t you move?”
            She pulled back slightly. “Where I gonna go? I ain’t got nobody. Where I gonna go?”
            “I’m sorry.”
            She nestled up against me.
            “I couldn’t run away, even if I had somewhere to go. He done told everybody how crazy I be, how I done all manner of wicked things when I was a youngun. The Sheriff just pick me up and haul me back. Then I be sorry. I learnt that lesson.”
            “What do you mean?”
            “He had the Sheriff come take me to that mental hospital. He done it ‘cause I started screaming and hollering ever’ time he come to do his business with me. The more he slapped me around, the more I screamed and hollered. He finally got fed up and made my mama say it was her idea and swear to all sorts of lies. Then after my mama died, he come down and laid down the law, said he’d get me out but I had to do what he wanted, when he wanted it.”
            She looked up at me as if for understanding.
            “That hospital a horrible place. All the men be using Jane, so I come back. He don’t bother me much, just now ‘n again. I can grow my flowers and dance in the sunshine, and I’m glad I come back ‘cause I found a friend.”
            She nestled back against me and we swayed gently for another few minutes.
            “He kilt my mama,” she said softly.
            I stopped dead still. “What?”
            She tilted her head back, held my eyes and nodded. “They told me he done it.”
            That gave me the creeps. I didn’t know what to say. “Somebody ought to tell the Sheriff.”
            She smiled indulgently.
            “You? Or me?
            She laughed humorlessly.
            “Can’t nobody do nothing. For certain can’t no young white boy nor some crazy nigger whore do nothing.”
            Could nothing be done?
            “Long as I remember, ole Gil been coming down here. He used my mama and when I got big enough, used me, too. Got me in the family way and sent me off to have the baby. Made up some lie I’d run off to whore with some rambunctious crowd. I was in the mental hospital with a belly full of youngun. After the baby born, they give it away and a doctor fix me so I couldn’t have no more babies.
            “That’s terrible.”
            “They still a lot of doctors fix poor colored women like that.”
            “Jane…”
            “They say he kilt my daddy, too. Mama wouldn’t never talk ‘bout it, just said he went off one day and never come back. One time when she been in the muscadine wine she said he probably at the bottom of some dry well on Ole Tom Tilton land.”
            “Who’s that?”
            “Don’t know. Anyhow Ole Gil told everybody he a no account scoundrel, and maybe he was, but he didn’t deserve to get kilt just so some white man could have his wife and little girl.”
            I hugged her tightly.
            “That man evil, Billy. Don’t let him never get wind of you coming around here. Ain’t no telling what he might do, and he can lie so good, he get away with it. Course, he ever hurt you, I cut his throat.”
            She looked up at me with a gentle smile and caressed my cheek.
            “You my friend.”