After Eli Read online

  “I can’t go back home,” Owen said, breaking the silence. “I know what’d happen. He don’t mean it, but he won’t never believe I didn’t do what he sees in his mind.”

  “Then you’ll not go. I’ll see to it.”

  “But there’s the others.”

  “Your brother and sisters?” guessed Michael. “You’re worried about them?”

  Owen nodded.

  “I can’t help them,” he mumbled. “I can’t do it no more. Somebody else’ll have to do it.”

  “They will,” Michael assured him. “You know the people here. They’ll step in and do what’s to be done. You’ll see.”

  Again they were quiet. And the music began inside Michael, a delicate, reedy melody. There were lights on an empty stage and the floor of the stage glistened under the lights in an oily brilliance. The audience waited.

  “I won’t say nothin’ to the sheriff, or the doctor, or nobody,” Owen promised.

  “Not a word?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “You’re a trustin’ man, Owen. I’ll tell them we spoke of your innocence. That’s all. That’ll be enough.”

  Owen looked at Michael. His eyes, which were small blue buttons in his face, were dull and lifeless. He said in a whine, “I didn’t do nothin’. What my daddy said was wrong.”

  “I know it, Owen. I know it.”

  Michael’s eyes narrowed and he lifted his head to the window of the cell. The mumbling audience quietened.

  “I know it,” he repeated absently.

  13

  MICHAEL CROSSED THE street from the jail to the men huddled beneath an awning hanging from Fred Deal’s Merchandise Store. He was relaxed. On another morning, he would have been jovial and called the men into a standing circle around him to play them for their smiles. There, around him, in their sideway postures, they would have listened to his impish stories and begged with their mumbling for his favor. On another morning, he would have juggled them as nimbly as brightly colored balls.

  The doctor was with them, and the sheriff and George. They watched him cross the street, wondering what he had been told, what he knew that would add to their curiosity.

  “Gentlemen,” Michael said somberly as he approached them.

  A few voices muttered a return greeting.

  “The boy all right?” Garnett asked.

  “Upset some, but he’s all right,” answered Michael.

  “Me’n George’ll go back over,” Curtis remarked. He stepped away from the crowd of men and walked briskly across the street. George followed, his head bowed.

  “I hate to confess it, but I was sleepin’ like a baby when George drove up for me,” Michael said idly, “and I’ve not had so much as a cup of coffee the whole mornin’. Anybody wants to get out of the heat, I’d like the company for breakfast at the café.”

  Garnett and the men followed Michael into Pullen’s Café. They sat at tables surrounding Michael and Garnett and drank coffee as Michael ate. No one spoke. They sat and watched Michael as they would watch the movement of a storm. All of them knew Michael would tell them. And Michael knew they were waiting.

  He did not speak until he had finished his breakfast and pushed the plate away from him. Then he said, “I know you’re wonderin’ about the boy. And it’s right that you do. He grew up here and he’s been accused of a harsh thing by his own father. That’s enough to make anybody take notice.”

  He sipped from his coffee and let his eyes circle the faces of the men sitting around him. They were eager but their eagerness did not show. It was as though some discipline of caution had been born in them. They yearned to know what he would tell them, but none of them could ask for him to say it.

  “Well, I know it’s not my place,” he continued, “but there’s times when a man speaks his mind, no matter where he is or who he is. Far as I’m concerned, now’s such a time.” He pulled close to the table and propped his elbows and brushed at his face with his hands.

  “I tried to tell them the boy didn’t do anything,” Garnett said. “Maybe they’d believe you, if you said it.”

  The men remained silent, waiting.

  “Well, now, maybe the boy did do it,” Michael replied casually. “Maybe it happened like his daddy said he saw it.”

  “God Almighty,” whispered Garnett in surprise. “What’re you saying?”

  Michael looked over his hands at Garnett.

  “Maybe Owen did it,” he repeated. “The mind’s a funny thing, Doc. The mind can see things that eyes couldn’t see in a million years.”

  “He’s right,” exclaimed someone in a deep bass voice. “I heard tell of such things.”

  Michael turned to the voice. He dropped his hands on the table and leaned forward.

  “I said maybe, friend,” he replied evenly. “And maybe I could jump off that mountain out there and fly. Or maybe I could lift the doc’s car and carry it down the street on my back. Maybe a lot of things, and maybe that boy’s a murderer. But you’ll not have me sayin’ it. Far as I’m concerned that boy’s done nothin’. Only wrong he ever did was bein’ born to a man what ‘sees’ things and then takes it out on his own flesh. Fact is, it’s not as good a tale to say he did nothin’, now is it? Here we’re sittin’, a group of good men, and we’re willin’ to believe the worst because it makes us feel better, and damned be to him that’s to suffer from it. No, friend, Owen Benton didn’t kill anybody. He’s not yet a man and what fight he’s had in him, his own father’s taken out with the whip.”

  He stared at the man who had broken the silence of the onlookers, who had heard of the power of visions and believed in them. The man was old, with old, tanned skin that folded like scars into the eroded furrows of his cheeks. He breathed through dry lips and his front teeth were missing. His eyes were wide and puffed and covered with a watery film that pooled in the corners like thick tears. He had the face of a man with a child’s mind who is the fool of tricks played for amusement.

  “I don’t mean it harsh, friend,” Michael added quietly. “It’s just that I’ve seen many a man jump on a shadow and not know where his feet would be landin’. It’d be a sad thing to believe in the boy’s guilt without knowin’ the truth of the matter, and I’m not one to put stock in what a man tells me about some dream he’s had.”

  “I—I never said Owen done it,” the man stammered. “But I heard tell of them—them things. Man told me about it.” He paused and looked frantically about him. He leaned back in his chair and dropped his head. “I never said—” he mumbled.

  “Nobody said you did, Azel,” interrupted Garnett. “What the Irishman’s telling you and everybody else is what I’ve been trying to say: That boy needs help, not doubting.”

  “What’d the boy say about it?” asked another man.

  Michael’s eyes stayed on the man Garnett had called Azel as he answered the question: “He denied doin’ it. Only thing he’s worried about is the younger ones, if his father gets it in his mind to start beatin’ on them.”

  “Kin’ll take ’em,” the man said simply. “I heard tell Frank’s brother over in Chattanooga offered as much a year or so ago. Frank ain’t been right since his wife passed on and he couldn’t raise her up.”

  Michael broke his locked stare on Azel. He toyed with the coffee cup before him. The feel of the audience around him had slipped away and he waited for someone to speak.

  “You want, I’ll take you back to the farm,” Garnett said at last. He sounded tired.

  “No,” replied Michael. “I’ll wait. I want to see a man who’d do what he’s done to his own son. If he’s comin’ back, I want to see him.”

  “He’ll be back. He said he will, he will. I know Frank.” It was another voice from another man.

  * * *

  Frank Benton returned to Yale before noon. He was driving a model A Ford with a rusting roof. He carried a shotgun in his lap, with its barrel protruding through the opened window. A girl, perhaps fifteen, was with him, sitting low in the car.
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  He drove to the jail and parked and sat in the car holding the shotgun. Across the street the crowd of men had again clustered under the awning of Fred Deal’s Merchandise Store, like wasps on a nest. They watched as the girl slipped from the car and walked in small, frightened steps to the jail. The girl was thin. She held her shoulders high and pinched and her elbows were tight by her sides. Her hair was uncombed. Her face was turned to Frank, to her father, as she walked, and she begged with her eyes to be called back.

  “Goddamnit,” one of the men at Fred Deal’s store muttered angrily.

  Curtis was alone inside the jail. He watched at the window as the girl inched across the distance separating the jail from the car. He saw Frank, holding the shotgun, sitting erect in the car, staring stoically at the jail. It was Frank’s show of war, he thought; the girl first, like a dove of peace, and then the raised gun of violence.

  “Damn,” Curtis whispered.

  The girl stopped in front of the screen door leading into the jail. Her hands were clasped at her sides to the worn cotton dress. She breathed in short, shallow gulps. Curtis walked to the door and pushed it open.

  “Come on in,” he said. “Shirley. That’s your name? Shirley?”

  The girl mumbled, “Yessir.” She looked quickly to her father and stepped inside the jail.

  “No reason to be afraid of nothin’,” Curtis assured her. “Nothin’ in here’s gonna hurt you. You here to see Owen?”

  “Yes—yessir.”

  “He’s right over here,” replied Curtis. He walked to the cell and unlocked the door and swung it open. “Go on in,” he added. “I ain’t goin’ to lock it.” He walked away to the window and stood with his back turned to the cell.

  Owen sat forward on the side of the cot and watched his sister. Her eyes darted like a confused bird over the box space of the cell, over the thick steel bars and the high, small window, and the fear of its inescapable weight made her suddenly gasp. She was like his mother had been, thought Owen. She was timid and quiet and obedient, and she would suffer whatever she must.

  “It’s all right,” Owen said gently. “They ain’t gonna lock you up.”

  Shirley looked at her brother. He seemed changed. Older. Someone different.

  “Daddy said to come on,” she said.

  “He whip you?” asked Owen.

  She shook her head.

  “He will,” Owen said.

  “He said to come on,” she repeated.

  “I ain’t never goin’ with him,” Owen said quietly. “He ain’t never goin’ to beat on me no more.”

  Shirley stepped backward to the door of the cell.

  “He’s got the gun,” she said. “He said he’d take you, you don’t come on.”

  There was no change of emotion in Owen’s face. He shook his head slowly. “Don’t matter,” he mumbled. “Don’t matter none.”

  “I got to go,” Shirley said. “He told me to come on back.”

  “He whip anybody?”

  “Ray, some. Not much.”

  Owen nodded.

  “He said you done somethin’ bad,” she blurted.

  “I didn’t do nothin’,” Owen replied patiently. “He’s seein’ things, like it was a dream. Like he’s done before. Like he done when he thought he was talkin’ to Mama all them nights after she died.”

  “I got to go, Owen.” She stepped cautiously out of the cell.

  “Shirley.”

  She stopped and looked back at him. She was beginning to cry.

  “Nothin’,” he said. “Watch after Ray. He hurts easy.”

  She turned and walked quickly across the jail and through the screen door. At the window, Curtis watched as she pulled herself into the car with her father. Frank spoke to her and she shook her head and Frank opened the door of the car and stepped onto the pavement.

  “Dammit,” Curtis hissed. He automatically touched the pistol holstered at his side. “Owen,” he called, “get in the storeroom. Now.”

  He did not turn from the window but he heard Owen’s movement and the door of the storeroom open and close. He stepped to the side of the front door, in the room’s shadow, and watched Frank beside the car, cradling the shotgun. He could see the men across the street breaking from their bundled group and spreading along the sidewalk. Someone—he did not know who—bolted in a half-run toward Pullen’s Café, where Garnett waited with Michael. He thought about his decision to send George home; it was a mistake. Frank moved a step away from his car and faced the door of the jail.

  “I come for my boy,” Frank called. “Let him out.”

  “Go home, Frank,” answered Curtis. “Owen’s stayin’ here.”

  “I have to, I’ll take him and God be on my side,” Frank replied, raising his voice.

  Curtis stepped to the door and pushed it slightly open. He pulled his pistol from its holster and let it dangle in his hand by his side.

  “Frank,” he said in a low, hard voice, “you point that shotgun and you could get yourself killed. Now, you put it up and get in your car and go on home. I’m holdin’ the boy.”

  “He’s my flesh. I’ll do what’s to be done,” Frank stormed. “Don’t need no law of man to do it for me. God’s law’s enough.” He shifted the shotgun in his hand.

  “Frank, I mean it,” warned Curtis. “It ain’t God’s law to do what you done to that boy.” He thumbed the hammer of his pistol and the sharp metal click stopped Frank abruptly.

  “I ain’t never killed but one man,” Curtis said quietly, “and he made me do it. I didn’t like it, but I done it.” He paused and raised the pistol to his waist. “I have to do it again, by God, I will, Frank,” he added.

  “You got no cause to hold him,” Frank replied angrily.

  “For God’s sake, Frank, you never even thought about Owen killin’ the Caufields until he mentioned goin’ away to work,” Curtis snapped. “It’s that that’s botherin’ you. You’re seein’ things that ain’t so.”

  “Let him out,” Frank replied. “I mean it. I know what I got to do.”

  Curtis did not answer. Beyond Frank, he saw Garnett and Michael crossing the street from Pullen’s Café, and a light flush of relief ran through him.

  “He’s got a gun, Doc,” someone yelled from the line of men in front of Deal’s Merchandise Store.

  Frank whirled and raised the barrel of the shotgun in the air. He stood with his back against his car.

  “Stay where you are, Doc,” he growled. “It ain’t got nothin’ to do with you.”

  Garnett and Michael stopped in the middle of the street. Garnett tugged at the tip of his hat and glared at Frank.

  “I come for my boy and I aim to take him with me,” Frank thundered.

  “You’re going to get killed if you don’t put away that gun,” Garnett answered calmly. “You know damn well you can’t come in here in front of a whole town and take somebody out of jail.”

  “He’s got one of the girls with him,” Curtis called from the jail. “She’s in the car.”

  Garnett removed his hat and rolled his forearm across his face in a nervous, aggravated motion. He cursed Frank Benton silently.

  “For God’s sake, Frank,” he pleaded. “What do you want?”

  “The boy’s got to be punished for what he done,” Frank intoned.

  “Done? What’s he done?” It was Michael. He took one step forward in the street. His hands were pressed against his hips. His voice was relaxed and pleasant and a smile rested easily in his face. He could see the surprise of his unexpected presence trip in Frank Benton’s body like a hidden trap.

  Frank shifted the gun in his hand and lowered its barrel to the ground.

  “He’s done what I said,” he insisted coldly.

  “Well, now, I’ve heard about that,” Michael said, nonchalantly toeing the pavement with the point of his shoe. “Even talked to Owen about it.” He turned his eyes to Frank. “Seems he disagrees,” he added.

  Frank stared suspiciously at Michael. His f
ingers curled around the ridged handgrip of the shotgun and his thumb circled nervously over the smooth steel crown of the hammer. He had never met Michael, but he knew instantly that Michael was the man Owen had insisted on seeing earlier. A stranger, Curtis Hill had explained. Hired to stay nights at the jail. Kin to Eli Pettit.

  “Tell you the truth, Mr. Benton, that’s a fine boy you’ve got,” Michael continued. “Hard to believe he could’ve done what you’re sayin’.”

  “He done it,” Frank said. “I know my own flesh.”

  “Is there proof of it?” asked Michael. “More’n just your own sure word?”

  “Ain’t no proof needed,” Frank answered defiantly. “I know it. That’s enough.”

  Michael nodded thoughtfully. He looked over his shoulder to the doctor and then turned back to Frank. He rubbed his hand over the stubble of whiskers on his face.

  “Well, seems like there’s a little problem here,” he said. “Unless I’m wrong, the sheriff’s decided to keep Owen for a while longer. At least until he heals up. Is that right, Sheriff?”

  Curtis stepped through the door of the jail onto the sidewalk. The pistol was still raised in his hand, cocked for firing.

  “The boy stays,” he replied. “We’ll find out if he’s done what you say.”

  “You got no right to hold him,” Frank shouted. “Not against his will, and stayin’s not his will, ’less you got him scared.”

  “Frank, you damn fool, ain’t nobody got that boy scared but you,” Curtis growled. “Now you leave him alone and go on home.”

  “It ain’t right keepin’ him,” bellowed Frank. He moved angrily away from the car into the middle of the street, facing the line of onlookers standing in front of Deal’s store. “Hear what I’m sayin,” he shouted. “My boy’s bein’ kept in jail against his will. I know. I talked to him this mornin’. He said he’d come home. It ain’t right, keepin’ him.”