Mr. Woodson Tolen of Andersonville, Georgia, as administrator of Sam’s estate, gave power of attorney to his son James. Apparently Woodson did not think that our county commissioner was bright enough to take over the looting of the plantation, and knowing Mike, I’d have to say that this judgment was correct.
Jim Tolen hustled back from Georgia and moved into the manor house like he was born to it. After the funeral, he stayed on for the fight to keep the Myers Plantation in the Tolen name, wearing his rented funeral suit in court. Of the three brothers, including the deceased, I liked this one least. I treated Jim Tolen like a shard of slag, too base and worthless to be noticed, yet too mean and sharp-edged not to keep an eye on.
Being less greedy than his brothers, our county commissioner had no ilsssssslusions about the moral worth of the Tolen claim on other people’s property but he was loyal to Sam and that was that. After the burial I went up to Mike and offered my hand, saying I was sorry. Tolen flushed under his beard and refused my hand with everybody watching. He said loud enough for folks to hear, “I know who killed my brother, Watson. They will pay.”
He knew no such thing, not for a fact. But by spurning my hand for all to see, the dead man’s brother had accused me publicly without evidence, flouting the most cherished principle of justice. I said to him in a low voice, “I’ll make allowance for your grief but you’d better be more careful who you threaten.”
Jim Tolen was a fox-eared feller, born to overhear. “You’re takin his words personal, ain’t that it, Watson?” Indeed I was, and for good reason. Yet in showing my anger, I had made a bad mistake. I had helped Mike set in motion something that could not be stopped. This business could only finish badly.
Mike Tolen went to Sheriff Purvis in Lake City and filed a complaint against William Leslie Cox and both his parents. The evidence was entirely circumstantial-the public dispute at the Junction between Leslie and the deceased and the faint boot prints of two men, also a woman’s prints, that Mike had discovered in the fence jamb near Sam’s body. However, those prints had been rained away and Will Cox had beaten Mike to his friend Purvis. The sheriff reminded Commissioner Tolen that he too had visited the scene and that he had found no evidence against the Cox boy. No offense, he added, but from what he had been told about Mr. Tolen’s brother, almost any man in the south county might have lent a hand, so the sensible thing for you to do, Commissioner, would be to go on home, get a bite to eat and a good night’s sleep, and forget the whole damn business. From the look of him, Sheriff Dick Will Purvis had resorted to his own remedy on numerous occasions, in the simplehearted faith that food and a lot of it would cure anything.
The commissioner protested with some heat that the whole south county knew that Dick Will Purvis was a crony of Will Cox from old Lake City days, besides being a jackass and a kiss-ass. Dick Will promptly kissed Mike’s ass, saying, “Well, since you feel that way, Commissioner, I will get that Cox boy in here, ask a few questions.” Leslie came in and informed the sheriff that he was otherwise engaged on the day in question. That being the case, the sheriff had no choice but to let him go.
Before leaving the sheriff ’s office, Leslie mentioned that while in High Springs on the day following the murder, he had heard that a nigger known as Frank was attempting to peddle the dead man’s gun and boots. Whether he said that to avenge the way Frank Reese had spoken to him or simply in some fool attempt to deflect suspicion from himself, Leslie must have known that any black man implicated in the killing of a white might very well get lynched before his trial. But implicating was a very stupid move on Leslie’s part, since Frank could give plenty of firsthand testimony that might get Cox hung.
Reese was arrested two weeks later although Mike knew he was not the man he wanted. And yet he went along with Purvis, hoping “the nigger” might be made to talk, so I went up there and informed Purvis that my hired man had spent that day with me. “That make him innocent or guilty?” one deputy sang out, and the lawmen laughed and I did, too, to show I knew a good joke when I heard one. Frank was jailed while awaiting his June trial, which was very fortunate for his own safety.
As a tough ex-convict, Reese kept his head when the deputies kicked him black and blue or rather black and purple, in poor Frank’s case. They pissed and spat on him, reviled him, told him they aimed to cut his balls off, hang him slow, but if he confessed, they might not torch him first. And Frank just hunkered down and took it like he was too ignorant and scared to understand, rolled his eyes back like a minstrel darkie, hollered yassuh, nosuh, nevuh knowed nuffin about nuffin, nosuh, yassuh. He plain wore ’em out. When it came to nerve as well as brains, Black Frank had a big jump on Leslie Cox.
Les was drinking too much, shooting his mouth off, though he always claimed he never knew why Frank had been arrested. He was too excited for his own damned good, not to mention ours. Still unable to believe what he had done, he would come over to my place and hoot and crow in glee, somersaulting in the dirt behind the barn just to remind me how that big bay horse came crashing down with the red buggy humping up over its haunches, the iron shoes racketing against the buckboards, and Tolen staring, on his knees in that white dust. “Looked like a fuckin woodchuck!” Leslie whooped-one of the few times I ever heard him laugh out loud.
Next day, he acted out Sam’s death for May Collins and her brothers and young Jim Delaney Lowe, telling them he’d got the story from “that nigger was mixed up in it.” The Collins boys, though not mourning Sam Tolen, were horrified by the queer pleasure Leslie took in every detail and realized at once that he must have been involved. Their testimony would help get him indicted a year later.
Naturally Les claimed I had put him up to the bad deed he was so proud of. When it came to killing, he confided in his cousin Oscar Sanford, Les Cox sure went to the right teacher. “Mister Ed, you damn near got me hung!”-he’d shout that at me as a joke. But Leslie wasn’t good at jokes and his eyes never fit his smile. If a June bug flew into his eye, you would hear the smack of it; those eyes were hard as shiny stones.
Will and Cornelia spoiled their oldest boy because he had good looks and stood up for his family; the community overlooked his arrogance and spite because of his exploits on the baseball diamond. All his life he had gone un-punished for his fits of meanness-killed by kindness, as my mother used to say-and maybe his friend Mister Ed had indulged him, too. True, the killing could be seen as self-defense, for he’d been threatened, and it was a public service, too: Sam had pissed on everybody. But by agreeing to stand by this boy, I might have let him think that his act was justified, and I guess I knew better even if he didn’t.
“Double-crossing Frank wasn’t too smart,” I told him. “What if he talks? Better tell the sheriff it was a case of mistaken identity. Maybe remind him that most nigras look alike.”
I warned Reese, too, in the course of a jail visit. “Frank, you can’t implicate him without implicating yourself. You will get lynched.” He only grunted cynically, looking away. Frank assumed he had no chance whatever. “Instead of being hung lawfully,” I added, sad to see such bitterness in a negro person. However, he was in no mood for my jokes.
I made Cox back off his Reese story for his own good. Manfully, he told Sheriff Purvis, “I might could been mistook there, Shurf Dick. I been thinkin I would surely hate to see a innocent man hung, nor a nigger neither.” Although Purvis had been quite content to make Frank Reese the scapegoat, he had nothing to show to a grand jury, not even a lynch mob in the street demanding justice, since most folks figured that, with Sam’s death, justice had been served about as well as anyone could reasonably expect. To hell with it, said the judge, and sent Reese home, doubtless assuming that the Tolens and the Russ boys would attend to him.
Frank and I sat back against my barn and celebrated his triumph over bigotry with a jug of moonshine. Impressed by how sensibly and well my old partner had behaved, I sent for Jane Straughter and reminded her that she owed me a big favor, having caused me so much unjust aggravation over John Russ’s death. Winking, I said I would not hold it against her anymore if she let Frank Reese hold it there instead. Marry him common-law or any way she wanted.
Jane Straughter did not smile. She liked Frank well enough, I guess, but moving in with him was quite another matter. The Robarts-Collins clan would not like it either, she reminded me, and anyway I had no right to coerce her. By the end of it, she was spitting mad. “You’re done with me so you’re handin me along to your coal-black nigger!”
Meanwhile, Kate Edna, scared by her own persistence, was plaguing me for my opinion on who killed Sam Tolen.
“I did not kill Sam Tolen, Kate. How often must I tell you that?”
“Not often,” she said, ambiguous. “Just reassure me.” She crept over in the bed. “Tell me you love me.” “Love!” I exclaimed, pretending astonishment that she would speak of such a thing when discussing murder. “You suspect your husband of coldblooded murder, and then you say, ‘Tell me you love me’?” Frightened, she burst into tears, and I relented and took her in my arms. I have never figured out how women work but I do know that their skin color has no significance. Black or white, every last one is pretty pink on the inside and they are all impossible.
Jane Straughter still helped around the house but would scarcely look at me. Seeing Jane and Frank together, I wondered if she ever thought about Henry Short, and one day, drinking in my corner, I asked just for the fun of it if she still missed him. Jane came around on me so fast that I threw my hand up, thinking she might fly straight for my eyes. In her distress, she had gone so pale that the tiny freckles in that delicate skin beneath her eyes stood out in points.
When I give in to that urge to stir up trouble, there comes an even stronger urge to drink more and behave worse. Jane’s fiery ways, so different from Kate Edna’s, hit me almost as hard as in the past, and before I knew it, I had grasped her wrist and told her fervently how pretty she looked and how very much I needed her. Still in my grasp, she gazed out the window at my wife, sailing across the sunshined yard, pinning up washing. “Supposin I was to tell Mis Kate what was done to a young virgin girl at Chatham Bend?” she whispered. “Supposin I told your black man what his boss was up to?”
Releasing her, I banged my chair down hard. “Missy,” I said, “I don’t like threats, remember?”
Jane retreated into nigger talk as quick as our house lizard changes from leaf green to dry stick brown. “I’se sorry, Mist’ Edguh, I sho’ doan mean to go threatnin nothin, nosuh.” And she ran out, sobbing. After that, she stayed mostly out of sight.
A few weeks later, I was cleaning up for supper when Kate Edna sent Jane out to the well with some hot water and a towel. When I asked how she was enjoying married life, she splashed hot water roughly into my blue basin. “Long time ago, back yonder in the Islands, you ast me how a light-skinned gal might feel, passin for white. You kin ast me now how that same gal feels, passin for black.”