When our paths crossed, Mike Tolen looked right past me. Even when I greeted him, he never spoke. Mike understood why others might have wished to kill his brother, and perhaps by now he had lost some of his lust for justice, but sooner or later, Cox’s big mouth would force him toward revenge. In this very dangerous situation, I warned Leslie to shut up. It was too late.
One day in Fort White, in the Terry store, Mike burst out, yes, he knew who had killed his brother, and no, he did not aim to let the matter die. But in truth, what could he do? He knew better than to challenge me in a fair fight and could not pick me off through those high windows of my house even if he got past my dogs. Mike’s only choice was to waylay his suspects, one at a time. And knowing how unlikely it was that those suspects would wait for that to happen, he would have to act as soon as possible, for his own safety, before someone repeated what he’d said in Terry’s store. But of course we had heard already and he knew that, too.
I felt sorry for Mike because he had no way out. He had no experience or skill with arms and was therefore no match for Cox and Watson, separately or together.
Leaving the commissary, I took Mike’s elbow. I had no quarrel with him, I murmured, but because he had made threats, I had to warn him of the consequences of talking dangerously. He said, “I am not talking dangerously. Who gave you that idea?” And I said, “Just about everybody, Mike. You are talking too much and you are painting us into a corner.” “Is that a threat?” he demanded. “You know exactly what it is,” I told him. But he had nowhere to turn, I didn’t either, we were trapped. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you’d best leave this county and go home to Georgia.”
He only thrashed like a hooked fish. “You leave, Watson!” he protested. I shook my head, he shook his, we turned away. That’s how we left it.
Frank Reese would not throw in with us. “No mo’, Mist’ Jack,” he said. “I done retired.” He flatly refused to work with Cox, who had nearly got him lynched. Anyway, he had his Jane, had his own cabin. He wasn’t a field hand anymore but a tenant farmer, as close as he had ever come in life to being his own man, so he didn’t want to know one thing about this business. He’d be out in his field tomorrow morning, same as always, turning over the Lord’s good ground and getting set to plant his corn and cotton. Said, “I finally come to rest in life, I found a little corner of the earth where I belong, so I’m puttin all them bad ol’ times behind me.” Frank was grateful to me for his new life. I could have coerced him but I didn’t want to.
Leslie bitched, “We got to get that fuckin Reese mixed up in this so’s he won’t talk.” I shook my head. “Unlike you, Frank keeps his mouth shut.” To save face, he challenged me: “Well, this time, Mister Ed, let’s you be first to shoot, case you’re fixin to hang back like you done last time.” I shrugged as if to say, All right, but it was not all right. I had nothing against Mike Tolen. I had assumed Cox would want to be the shooter.
Mike Tolen had his mailbox at the Junction. In the past year, with the slash pine lumbered off, the turpentine works and commissary had closed down and Will Cox, with his lease canceled by Tolens, had moved his family across the county line into Suwannee. The Junction was now an empty corner going back to woods. Near the huge live oak was a sagging shed bound up in vines and creepers. I hid inside while Leslie climbed into the oak and stretched along a heavy limb, ready to take Tolen from another angle. Mike having brought this on himself, I was resigned to it, but I did not like it; I had to draw breaths deep into my belly to stay calm.
Tolen came down the road a little late, his shotgun over his left arm and a letter in the other hand. Nearing the shack, he slowed his step and his eyes crisscrossed the lane, scanning the trees. I set myself, took a last deep breath, and drew a careful bead on his broad forehead; remembering Sam, I wanted to make sure Mike never knew what hit him.
Leslie claimed later that I held my fire too long, same way he did with Sam: in my belief, he fired first out of buck fever and greed, wanting the credit for this killing, too, maybe even wanting to be known as the most dangerous local desperado. Well before Mike Tolen reached his mailbox, Cox threw a double-ought slug into his chest, whacked his shirt red. Mike’s Sears mail-order flittered off as he spun backwards and the echo ricocheted away through the cold March trees. To this day I hear the ringing in my ears and the ugly thump of that man’s head as it struck the ground. I stepped onto the road and that same second I damn near had my head torn off, that’s how close Leslie’s second load rushed past my ear. Knocked to one knee, I hollered in a rage but there was no stopping him, he was already reloading. That kid put two more rounds into the body before he sprang down from his limb, gun barrel smoking.
In the silence, the screams of Sally Tolen at the cabin flew down that road from a quarter mile away, pierced by the shriek of jays and the cries of children.
Blood was welling in Mike Tolen’s mouth. The morning sun was still reflected in those eyes staring past my boots. I bent and closed them, mumbling something, but to pray seemed sickeningly insincere and I could not finish. “That’s one sumbitch ain’t goin to back-shoot us,” said Leslie’s voice, thick with strong feelings. He was wildly excited, trying not to show it. “Shoots pretty good,” he told me with his lip-curl grin, slapping his gun stock. In his own weird ceremony of triumph, he rose on his toes, up and down in a slow prance, circling the body.
“The Ichetucknee Kid,” I said, despising this awful pride in a point-blank shot.
Beyond Mike’s cabin, out toward the Banks place, light flashed and shimmered on the turning wheels of a farm wagon coming south down the white road. Under tall hardwoods of the forest edge, the flashing danced from sunlight into shade, sunlight again. Whoever drove that wagon-probably Calvin Banks-was not close enough to identify the killers, but he would be shortly, and Mills Winn, the mailman, might show up at any time.
“ ‘Leslie the Kid’-that what you said?” Cox was still grinning. “Go home,” I said. “Keep your damned mouth shut this time.” Taking back my shotgun, slipping the unused revolver back into my coat, I ran for the woodlot where my horse was tethered and jammed the shotgun back into its scabbard. Staying well clear of the roads, I galloped through the pine-woods: on the thick needle bed, the horse left scarcely a trace.
I felt weak as a runny egg, older than dirt. Knowing I had not pulled the trigger was no comfort. I had taken aim and intended to fire and was ready to finish him with the revolver, too, had that been necessary. There was no way to absolve myself of this one, not if I lived for another hundred years, and yet it was true: he had brought it on himself.
The revolver. Sensing the absence of its weight, I grabbed at my belt and pockets. My heart dropped to my guts, needles of fear raked at my temples. It was too late to hunt back along the trail. By now the postman would have come along and found Mike’s body. I left the woods, headed out across Reese’s field at a flat gallop.
That morning Jane had sent Frank out with a fresh shirt, sky blue against the dark brown of the loam. He had surely heard those shots over toward the Junction and he knew whose horse was pounding down on him right now. He never slowed or looked around but gazed fixedly at his mule’s bony rump as it shifted along between the traces. He refused to see me. Not until something thumped into the furrow right behind him did he stop the mule-Whoa up dar!
“Throw some dirt over that gun,” I called, cantering past. “Mark the place and keep on going.” Still he stared straight ahead. But over my shoulder, I saw him kick clods of earth over the weapon. Then he took up his reins and slapped the mule’s rump hard-Giddyap!-and kept on coming, man and beast, alone on the bare brown landscape. I even remember the spring robins drawing worms from his new furrows, and the chirrups the birds made as they took flight across the field toward the woods.
• • •
At my sister’s house, Julian and Willie and Jim Delaney Lowe were butchering a hog out by the smokehouse. I rode right up on ’em, scattering the dogs. “If anyone comes asking questions, boys,” I said, “I was right here in this yard since early morning, showing you the best way to dress that hog. I left for home just a short while ago, that clear?” I had been helping Billy Collins’s family since he died in the previous winter so this all made sense.
“We heard shots over yonder,” Julian said. My nephews were scared and unhappy, knowing I had come from that direction. Julian was looking at the empty scabbard. I pointed at his face. “Is that clear, Julian? I was here dressing that hog when you heard those shots. That is all you boys need to know or say to anybody.”
Sullen, they stood mute. Their friend Jim Delaney Lowe stared at his boots. Granny Ellen came to the kitchen door, then young May was in the window, waving, and Minnie’s pale face appeared over her shoulder. Seeing her brother talking with her sons, Minnie waved, too, but my bright-eyed little mother only watched me. “Tell them what I said,” I told the boys. I rode toward home.
Carrying fresh bread in a basket, Julian’s Laura left my house as I rode up. Her nervous glance in the direction of the Junction told me those shots had been heard here, too. Though surprised to see me at this time of day, Laura’s instinct told her not to inquire. Scarcely waving, she kept right on going.