Part 43 (2/2)

”Just do it, Toomer. None of these boys are going to hurt you. Every one of 'em like you better than they do Red Pettus.” And the crowd erupted in laughter.

So Toomer rose, limped to the other side of the wagon, mounted, shook the reins, and climbed the causeway leading to the bridge.

”I'll see you later tonight, you f.u.c.kin' gimp n.i.g.g.e.r,” Red screamed at him.

”You make me sick, Pettus,” Ed Mills said, walking down toward Hobie's, pausing once to watch Toomer's wagon as it crossed the bridge.

They came for him as the sun was falling behind a red-fringed line of clouds that had banked against the horizon. They came as the river had its moment of deepest gold. Two Pettus brothers and two Pettus cousins walked boldly down the dirt road that led to Toomer's bus. A bottle of Rebel Yell was pa.s.sed back and forth between the four men until Red drained the last swallow and flung the empty bottle into the bushes along the road.

”I hear ol' Toomer whipped you good, baby brother,” Mac Pettus giggled.

”He fought dirty, Mac. So how 'bout shuttin' up,” Red said.

”Where them f.u.c.kin' dogs?” one of the cousins said.

”I thought they'd be all over us by now,” Red said.

”You just remember that Daddy said just to put a good scare into Toomer,” Mac said to Red.

”I'm gonna scare the black s.h.i.+t out of him,” Red said.

Toomer had gathered all the dogs, the largest to the smallest, and secured them inside the bus. The barking became deafening as the four men neared the clearing. Toomer saw the big Gray standing on his hind legs at the rear of the bus wailing at the invisible strangers in a half-human bark that hung in the air, a lower octave that endured through its particular quality of menace. But all of the dogs, the great and the small, the powerful and the weak, locked in the bus with their nostrils filling with the presence of malevolence on their urine-anointed land, bayed together as Toomer sat holding the end of a long rope on the bottom step of the bus. The door of the bus was opened just enough to give the rope free play. He knew if he released the dogs the Pettus brothers would slaughter them with salvos from their repeating shotguns. But he also knew that he was seeing something instinctual and primal taking hold of his penned dogs. The twenty-six dogs were throwing themselves at the windows of the bus and their barking became like a single feral note, except for the whine of the big Gray whose voice was taking on a new dimension of wildness with each step the Pettuses took. Toomer's dogs in the deepening decline of the sun were becoming a pack.

Red was holding a .38 revolver in his hand as he emerged from the shadows of the huge oaks that masked the beginning of the clearing. The light was poor but Toomer interpreted the gaits of the other three men and could tell the gauge of each shotgun as they pa.s.sed between the hives.

The men were laughing as they caught sight of the dogs in the bus. Toomer heard their laughter, thick with the bravura of men deep into the bottle, and though he was crouched on that bottom step, his eyes dark and appraising, his eyes steady through their fear, he saw that Red was not laughing. His two hands tightened on the rope.

When the light caught the Pettus boys between the eight deep humming boxes of bees, when they walked across a pre-determined point, a zone of violation and trespa.s.s from which he knew there would be no turning back, Toomer yanked the rope. Two of the hives crashed off their bases and fell into the road, one of them striking Mac Pettus on the leg. In an instant, the bees were on them. Red sprinted toward the river slapping at the first wave of bees that stung his arms and face. Then, as he ran, there was a single moment when he felt as though his whole body was on fire and he protected his eyes with his free hand and fled toward water, dropping his revolver on the edge of the bank just before he plunged into the creek and clawed his way to its soft mud bottom where he felt the salt.w.a.ter ignite each sting like a match in his flesh. For as long as his breath allowed, he stayed submerged in the kind and beeless creek, his eyes exploding with light whose source came from the fiercely honed and polished stingers that moved and contracted deeper into his body. When he surfaced, one of his eyes was closed and the other filled with the delicate silver of a moon small as a nail clipping. He began pulling stingers out of his face, working down, and taking his time looking back up the bluff at Toomer's bus.

The other three men had run in a panic down the dirt road they had come in on. Toomer chuckled, hearing their screams grow dimmer as they headed back toward the highway.

”I ain't gonna let no white boys hurt my chillun,” he said to his dogs as he limped among his pets trying to calm them. They had s.h.i.+fted to the other side of the bus now, still in a frenzy, still bound in a strangely ineluctable bondage of something rooted deep in all of them, in the subliminal frontiers of the species. Toomer rubbed his hands along the shoulders of the big dogs who had commandeered positions by the windows facing the river side of the bus. He felt the stiff, arched withers of two German police dogs who ran together and often teamed to fight and get licked by the Gray. Staring out into the night, he saw nothing but he knew the bees had a.s.sured his safety that night. He lit a kerosene lamp.

Red Pettus, his face and body swollen, came dripping out of the creek, nauseated and feverish after the attack. He saw the light go on in the bus. Searching on his hands and knees along the bank, he retrieved his .38. Then, he began to walk toward Toomer.

The phone rang at the Meecham house. Ben and Mary Anne were talking at the kitchen table. Lillian was making a novena at the Catholic church and Bull had the duty at the air station. Ben answered the phone and heard the voice of Arrabelle Smalls frayed with hysteria and almost unintelligible as she wept and tried to speak at the same time. Her dialect deepened as she spoke, abandoning the smooth lyrics she had been trained to use when she worked in the houses of white men. Here on the phone, she screamed at Ben in the voice of the sea islands. The Gullah-fleshed cry of her girlhood.

”Go get Toomer, Ben, and make that boy come on over to my house tonight. Make him come on over. He got a stiffy side to him, Ben, but I be so scared about the Pettus boys. I hear just now that he grab hold to Red today and make that boy holler and it just not a good time to be colored in this town. So you got to fly and take hold to Toomer and make him come to my house tonight. I just hear the Pettus boys been runnin' their mouths about scarin' Toomer for what he done to Red. He's a stiffy boy, so you just go drag him out of that bus and tell him his mama say for you to do it. Go on, now. Get on gone, Ben. Please. Please.”

”I will, Arrabelle,” Ben said. ”I'll have to call Dad. Then I'll go get Toomer. I promise.”

”What did Arrabelle want?” Mary Anne asked.

”Where's Dad's number?”

”How do I know? He's on duty.”

”He leaves it near the phone in case Mama wants to get in touch with him.”

”Yeah, he also threatens her with death if she calls him for anything besides a death in the family.”

Ben found the number scribbled on the cover of the small thin Ravenel telephone book. He dialed the number quickly.

”Why are you shaking, Ben?” he heard Mary Anne ask strangely.

”I'm not shaking,” Ben answered.

”Yes, you are. You're shaking all over. Your hands are trembling.”

”h.e.l.lo. h.e.l.lo. May I speak to Colonel Meecham, please.”

”What's wrong? What did Arrabelle say?”

”h.e.l.lo, Dad,” Ben said.

”What do you want, sportsfans. I can't just shoot the s.h.i.+t. I've got the duty.”

”Yes, sir. I know. Arrabelle just called and thinks that Toomer might be in trouble. Red and his brothers are going over there to get him. I'm going to take Mama's car and go pick him up and take him over to Arrabelle's. Is that all right?”

”Negative,” Bull answered. ”You stay right in that house. You hear me? Keep out of that n.i.g.g.e.r s.h.i.+t. You don't want to get between the n.i.g.g.e.rs and the grits when they go for each other's throats. Consider yourself locked up in your quarters.”

”But it's Toomer, Dad. He might be in trouble.”

”I don't care if Toomer is being attacked by the whole Mediterranean fleet. You are not leaving that house. You got it? You read me?”

”Yes, sir.”

”Toomer can take care of himself, hog. Over and out. And don't you leave that G.o.ddam house.”

Hanging up the phone, Ben walked to the kitchen table and sat down. His hands were trembling out of control and adrenaline flowed through his body in giant, unseen torrents. He tried to hide his hands from his sister.

”Why did you call Dad? Why didn't you just take the station wagon and go get Toomer?”

”I don't know.”

”Were you afraid to go to Toomer's?”

”No.”

”Were you hoping Dad would tell you not to go?” Mary Anne said.

Ben looked up at his sister, looked into her eyes, felt the fear in his stomach, half sea, half fire and said, ”Yes.”

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