The whiskey having shrunk any distinction between a white housewife’s melancholy and the woes of a dozen colored convicts, Hazel had hollered with them, with the boys joining in.
Uptomemphis,
Uptomemphis.
These colored people by the riverbank weren’t singing, yet they did appear very solemn about their fishing, so Hazel hoped for a good show. Maybe, she thought, if they caught something they would burst out into an old gospel song.
Hazel led the children to a shady place closer to the river where they all could sit and observe without being noticed. She then spread out a pallet she kept in the car trunk for such occasions as this. While she busied herself, smoothing out the lumps in the quilt, Johnny called out urgently. Hazel turned to see Davie scurrying up toward the road, no doubt returning to the altitude of the bridge.
Johnny saw the bewildered look on his mother’s face and broke after Davie. Just as he reached the bridge Davie stumbled in the road, and before he could right himself Johnny had him by the ankle. As Hazel stood there paralyzed, her heart pounding, she watched as Johnny led Davie back to safety, on the way inventing for his brother cautionary tales about drowning.
Like a brilliant flare, a single thought shone through the fog that had enveloped Hazel, the thought that all this she was witnessing, the way things were playing out before her that very minute, was how it had to be. The three of them were trains barreling down separate tracks, and none of them had a voice about direction. They might could slow, and they might could speed up. But they could not choose what it was they were bearing down on. Or what was bearing down on them. God had fixed it.
She knelt down and clutched her boys to her chest. She told them she loved them, over and over again. Still in a state of wonder, she distributed the moon pies and soft drinks as solemnly as if it were the Last Supper. She tenderly kissed each child on the cheek, and with her mind clouded with whiskey and shadowy revelation, Hazel leaned against a hickory tree with her half-pint firmly clasped to her chest.
Her attention returned to the spectacle unfolding in the river. Down below them, the man standing in the water and doing the fishing had moved a little farther upstream, like he was trying to find the perfect spot. Hazel was a little disappointed in him. A real fisherman would have more patience.
The water was the color of strong tea and very deep by the bridge, and Hazel was unable to see what was tied to the massive fishing line that, now that she studied it, resembled a rope. As she watched, the fisherman carefully pulled in the line and hauled a shapeless, dark mass up on the bank. A couple of other men gathered around and snatched away what had been grabbed from the river bottom—leaves and branches and snag roots and such. That’s when Hazel saw what they were using for a hook. Attached to the rope was what appeared to be a lead pipe with spurs on the end. No wonder they hadn’t caught anything! All they would catch with that contraption was more bottom trash. Amateurs!
Without even bothering to bait his line, the man doing the casting waded to yet another spot in the river and once more threw his rope into the water. This time when the man pulled on the rope he yelled something to the others on the bank. Two more men joined the fisherman in the water and began tugging at what looked like a big haul.
“Look, boys,” Hazel said, rising up wobbly to her feet to get a better view, “they done caught them something. Must be a big ’un.”
Lifting Davie in her arms, Hazel moved closer to watch as they dragged a giant black catfish onto the shore. She heard one of the women on the bank scream.
Johnny bounced on his tiptoes to see the fish. “Momma, what’s that woman yelling for? Did she get bit by the fishie?”
Hazel’s eyes tried to focus in on the catch. It was about four or five feet long and was wrapped in barbed wire. There was a big piece of machinery tied around its neck. My God, she thought, the thing’s got a neck! She made out the bloated face, with one eye beaten closed and one hanging from its socket. She heard the woman call the fish by name.
“Emmett! Lawd, lawd!” the woman screamed. “My baby, Emmett!”
Then Hazel heard herself scream.
The Lincoln was all over the road, from ditch to ditch, all three crying their hearts out. Hazel didn’t know where she was heading, nor did she care. Speed and distance were all she wanted from the car now.
An hour later, when the black-and-white cruiser with the big star on the door happened upon Hazel and her boys, she had sunk the two left tires deep into a sandy ditch and was hunched over the wheel sobbing. Johnny was patting his mother gently on the arm. Then she heard a man’s voice at her ear. “That you, Missus Graham? You all right in there?”
Hazel raised her eyes to see the sheriff. He was watching her with a kind of detached, wary look, as if she might be a stray dog with a touch of foam around the mouth. “Oh, Sheriff!” she cried. “I’m so glad you come along. Back there. . .in the river. . .they’s a dead boy.”
His eyes narrowed. For a moment the sheriff seemed concerned. “A white one?”
“No, a colored one. I watched them pull him off the river bottom. He was all bound up and weighted down. Somebody killed him for sure.”
The sheriff’s eyes warmed a little. He took off his hat and bent down to the window. “Now, don’t you worry none. I’ll check into it, Miss Hazel.” His voice was reassuring. “You know how they always knifing one another. Come Saturday night ever creek in Hopalachie County’ll have coloreds floating in it.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m only sorry you had to see it, is all.”
Hazel thought he really did look sorry. What a kind, thoughtful man. He was treating her with so much politeness. More than she could say for that wife of his. Right then Hazel’s heart went out to the sheriff for being saddled with a horse like Hertha. He was such a nice-looking man, too.
“Let’s see if we can’t get you out of this ditch,” he said. “I got a chain in the turtle hull.”
When he motioned to his cruiser, Hazel was surprised to see somebody waving at her from the backseat. Why, it was that whore-for-a-maid, Sweet Pea, grinning to beat the band, her gold teeth gleaming in the afternoon light through the sheriff’s back window.
The sheriff saw the curious look on Hazel’s face. “Got me a prisoner,” he said quickly. “Just hauling her in for questioning.”
Nodding back at Sweet Pea, Hazel couldn’t help but think she seemed mighty happy to be a prisoner.
Chapter Twelve
LATE NIGHT VISITATION
Vida Snow had heard about the boy they fished out of the river. Everybody had. It’s all anybody talked about when the white folks weren’t listening. Vida had seen the boy once, walking to the store with his Uncle Mose. Down from Chicago and only fourteen, they say. Mississippi was dangerous enough for the colored brought up to know the nasty unpredictability of white folks. That boy’s momma should have never sent her son down to Mississippi by himself.
Vida laughed darkly at the thought. Who was she to talk about mommas keeping their children safe?
She wished she could forget. Of course, she couldn’t. She remembered too well the night after her father preached on the Baby Moses, how she was unable to sleep. She had been lying awake with her own child nestled to her side, fretting over her father’s meaning, when her room exploded in light. Outside her window, a truck revved its engine.
Her father’s feet hit the floor and Vida saw him flee past her room in his nightshirt and