The King of Colored Town Page 4

  “You got kin here?”

  “Hatchers”, he replied. “Lester Hatcher.”

  “That’s Mr. Raymond’s brother.”

  “Half-brother,” Joe Billy corrected, which was good because it gave me confidence he really was connected, in some miraculous way, to Colored Town.

  I stopped pulling my water.

  “My name Cilla Handsom. My mama’s Corrie Jean and before you hear stories my daddy got killed in one o’ them wars. Now, I’m gon’ be nice to you. See how long it take you to make fun of me.”

  “I ain’ made no fun, sister.”

  “I ain’ you sister. Now, Mr. Raymond, he’s real nice. Lester is a bad man. A whorehoppin’, straight-razor totin’ son of a bitch. You can tell him I said so.”

  “I find his house I will.”

  “Good. Maybe keep his hands off my behind.”

  “How I find it?”

  “My behind?”

  “The house. Mr. Lester’s house.”

  “House don’ belong to Lester. Belong to Mr. Raymond, who let his half-ass brother live there out of the kindness of his large heart and let us get his water, too, and listen to his radio. You come here to harm Mr. Raymond?”

  “No, ma’am,” he declared, suddenly formal.

  “Thass good. Cause they ain’t but about two nice people in Colored Town and if somethin’ happen to Mr. Raymond, ’bout half of them be gone.”

  “I endeavor to be careful. Now, please, ma’am? Where he live?”

  “Go past the station,” I pointed unnecessarily. “First road to the right, you take it, down three, four houses. Don’ count Mr. Leon’s smokehouse as a house. Only houses with porches count as houses—”

  “Houses with porches.”

  “Thass right. Or either count Mr. Leon’s smokehouse, which ain’ no house, really, but count it anyway, you go down five houses and right there on the right hand side is Mr. Raymond’s.”

  “What makes his house different than any of these others?”

  “Got a pump by the front porch. You hurry they be a radio there, too. But don’ go tell Mr. Raymond what to play on his radio. He nice, but he particular.”

  “’Preciate that warning.”

  “You welcome.”

  With that I leaned back into my chore, the wagon’s hard, narrow tires pulling sand from the unlighted street.

  “Whass your name again?”

  He called to my back.

  “Cilla.” Even though my heart fluttered I did not turn my head. “Priscilla, really. Priscilla Handsom.”

  “You are definitely handsome, Miss Priscilla. And nice to boot.”

  My ears burned. My heart started jumpin’. The load I lugged seemed suddenly lighter in my hand. I worked up the courage to risk a reply. I stopped hauling my load and actually turned around with all intention to graciously respond to the first complement I could ever remember receiving in my life—

  He was gone. Vanished.

  “All aboard!”

  Did he get back on the train? Lord, did I say something to drive that boy away?!

  “All aboooooard!”

  Then I saw him, beneath that wanton moon, angling across the street in the direction of Mr. Raymond’s home. So it was true. He was here. He was staying here! I sloshed water all the way home that night. Lay straight as a ruler in my cot for I don’t know how long. Mama there beside me on her mattress on the floor. I used to wonder what Mama dreamed, but that night I had better things to do. I had dreams of my own. Wonderful railroad dreams. I dreamed of a foreign traveler, a man of mystery who pauses on a dangerous journey, taken with a handsome princess who remains hidden, waiting for him to claim her from her mansion deep in the heart of Colored Town. I dreamed deeply, wafted to Neverland on a concatenation of honeysuckle and magnolia. And dogwood.

  Chapter three

  “Town Gives Up Plans to Enlarge Limits.”

  — The Clarion

  I f you were a white man in the sixties, in Laureate, you chewed your fat at Monk Folsom’s Auto Repair. Pretending concern over a brake job or the adjustment of your carburetor, you’d sink into a bench-seat salvaged from some Plymouth or Studebaker, and in time you’d know everything going on in the county.

  Who was favored. Who wasn’t. What it was going to cost.

  The Lord only can divine how Monk’s became the ground for nutcutting in Lafayette County. His was certainly not a comfortable place. The shop itself was an open bay facing the world and Highway 27. No air-conditioning, just a couple of industrial fans droning inside an unshaded metal shed that rusted in a pasture bordering the white folks’ school.

  Personality could not have been the draw; Monk Folsom had the charisma of celery. About the same build as celery, too, long and slender and translucent. There was room for at least three fingers between his jeans and his waist. Charles Putnal used to say Monk was so skinny you could shine a light on his back and watch his heart beat. That exaggeration was about the norm for the discussions that pattered back and forth in Folsom’s shop.

  But Monk had two talents not common anywhere. First of all, even Charles declared that Monk was truly a genius with anything mechanical. Mr. Raymond said if you gave Monk a pair of pliers he’d fix Cape Canaveral. I did not at the time know what Cape Canaveral was, but I gathered it must be a challenge for pliers.

  The second, rare quality that Monk possessed was that he never repeated anything that he heard. Never. You could tell the man you’d thrown a rod, lost a transmission and by the way you’d just killed your wife and fed her to the hogs and Monk would carry it all to the grave. He was like those eunuchs who watched over Persian satraps, their tongues cut out along with their balls.

  However originated, a small court gathered virtually every morning in Folsom’s steamy shop. You’d see farmers and tradesmen. Ben Wilburn, the high-strung principal of Laureate’s thoroughly segregated school, was a regular at Monk’s. And so was State Representative Latrelle Putnal. Mr. Latrelle was Mr. Charles Putnal’s uncle, but you never saw Latrelle in his nephew’s place. Not even to buy gas. But Latrelle Putnal was an habitué at Monk’s, the archetype of a pussel-gutted and completely unreliable politician, that forehead bulging out from his face like an overhang on some fleshy cliff. Always had himself a Rotary pin stuck into a tie stained with gravy. Across from Representative Putnal you’d frequently see Sheriff Jackson, rawboned and hard and, unlike nearly anybody else in Monk’s shop, gainfully employed. That shock of white hair templing along his head. But even with his badge and revolver Collard was not the majordomo in attendance.

  There is always a pecking order in any community and in Lafayette County even the sheriff could not top Garner Hewitt.

  Garner was a wealthy man, properly diversified. He’d got a half-million dollars from the government not to milk his cows. He got fifty or sixty thousand dollars in federal subsidies every year for tobacco. And the county had just given him, cost-free, enough seedlings to plant three hundred acres of slash pine on pastureland that the government was already paying him not to use. ’Course, Garner would be the first to tell you he hated welfare.

  He was a large man, but not hard, not like the sheriff. He dressed in seersucker slacks that flapped around wingtip shoes. A florid complexion. Receding hairline. A strawberry-sized birthmark below one eye gave the constant impression that Garner had just emerged from a fistfight, but anybody knowing the man understood that fists were not among Mr. Hewitt’s chosen weapons. Not his own, that is.

  He had two sons. Cody, a junior at Laureate High School and Garner’s youngest boy, could have hailed from Southern California. Cody was a teenager blessed with unblemished skin and a wonderful, well-toned physique. Blue eyes. Mop of hair that was white without the tease of peroxide. J.T. Hewitt was Cody’s older brother, at twenty-six Garner’s eldest son. J.T. was six feet six inches tall and had himself a reputation separate from the basketball court. Folks said that Garner Hewitt’s oldest boy was beating on grown men before he’d even turned
seventeen. For sure J.T. was a wifebeater. That is, before she left him. J.T. beat his help, too. Beat his damn dog. He wore cowboy shirts with the sleeves rolled up, an outsized Jimmy Dean. And J.T. had a trademark belt he was fond of wearing, ordered it from a catalog, a cowhide girdle adorned with the silver-embossed likeness of a rattlesnake. The buckle’s tongue was also the serpent’s.

  About the only man in the county J.T. Hewitt didn’t intimidate was Sheriff Jackson.

  The alliance between the Hewitt family and the sheriff was well known and mutually beneficial. Garner Hewitt made it clear that Sheriff Jackson was his choice for Sheriff of Lafayette County. More than one man who had voiced interest in running against Collard found his tires sliced or his birddog poisoned. J.T. Hewitt was his daddy’s enforcer. The quid pro quo, naturally, was that Sheriff Jackson looked out for Garner and his boys. There were thirteen complaints of assault directed at Garner’s oldest son in one four-year period and not one of ’em got past Collard’s desk.

  ’Course when it comes to politics muscle isn’t much good without money. Fortunately for Garner Hewitt and for Sheriff Jackson, Lafayette County was a place where a modest investment could take you a long way. Mr. Hewitt used to brag that he’d got a man’s vote for as little as a fifth of whiskey. Other times you might have to pick up a house payment, or buy a farmer his fertilizer. Garner bankrolled Collard in each of his three successful campaigns, sometimes buying off whole families. We are speaking of white families, of course. Negroes could not vote.

  Garner Hewitt gave freely to his freckled electorate, yes, he did, but what he gave with one hand he could take with the other. A man might get a badly needed loan from Miss Pearl at the bank only to have it canceled when he made the mistake of telling his neighbors he was considering a change in his vote.

  Garner owned Sheriff Collard Jackson just as surely as he owned his truck, his farm, and, before the government paid him off, his dairy. Mr. Hewitt also owned the Clerk of Court, the Supervisor of Elections, half the School Board, and the Tax Assessor. Everybody knew this, of course. However, alliances based on avarice and intimidation are never stable. A strain inconsequential to an even-handed relationship can become intolerable when raised between a lord and his vassal and Garner Hewitt had of late been pretty heavy-handed in reminding whoever was listening that he was the kingmaker in Lafayette County.

  “No man comes to lasting prosperity except by me.” Garner loved to bastardize Scripture. And then he added, “That includes Sheriff ‘Collard Greens’ Jackson.”

  It didn’t matter that Garner was drunk in deer camp with his entourage when he made that statement, and it did not help that the sheriff found a fresh hind of venison waiting for him in the Safe-Way locker afterwards. The damage was done. Garner had slighted his servant publicly.

  In 1963, Collard Jackson was only a year away from re-election. Those years there’d be a primary in the spring and, if need be, a runoff in November. Sheriff Jackson was already gearing up for the run in ’64 that would give him his fourth term in office. He had no illusions about how he’d won his first three elections. He knew that his tenure in office had not been gained because of the electorate’s affection. Collard Jackson was a practical man; he knew which side of his bread was buttered and he knew who buttered it. But Garner Hewitt had jammed a spear into the sheriff’s side. Garner had tossed his insult spitefully, unnecessarily, and before some of the very men loitering now in Monk Folsom’s shop, and Sheriff Jackson was not about to let it stand.

  The sheriff bided his time, but when the opportunity came, he took advantage, and I was there to see it. I was with Mama in the back of Mr. Frank Thistle’s truck. Mr. Frank owned the nursery where Mama and I worked. He was stopping by Monk’s for the ostensible purpose of settling a debt over a brake job or change of oil or some other weighty matter. As we pulled up to the shop I saw, I don’t know, at least twenty men, all seated on the rigged lounges of car seats or stools of one kind or another. There were cars and trucks stacked at odd angles in various states of disrepair. Monk was working on an engine slung like a slaughtered hog in a system of hoists and pulleys.

  Mama and I naturally remained on the hard bed of Mr. Frank’s pickup, as invisible as bartenders to the white men gathered in the open bay of Monk’s shop. We were huddled there, knees to our chests, when Sheriff Collard Jackson came rolling up in that Dodge cruiser, the big hoop antenna waving back and forth like a fishing pole. The cop-car shifted weight as Collard got out; Mama kind of stiffened up as he strolled past.

  “Fug me, fug me!”

  “Mama, hush.”

  Sheriff didn’t act like he noticed. Just passed a hand along the rim of his Stetson and stepped into the open bay of Monk’s shop. This was in May, a good six months since Garner Hewitt had shot his mouth off to his hunting buddies regarding Collard’s subordinate status. What gave Collard his opportunity was that Cody Hewitt, Garner’s unblemished seventeen-year old son, had got himself pulled over by the sheriff in Taylor County. Seems the bright-yellow road signs posted along the S-curves leading to Perry were just too much temptation for the young marksman. Cody got through half a box of birdshot before the county sheriff pulled him over.

  But, after all, Collard Jackson got along famously with Taylor County’s sheriff. Rumor was that the two men shared a run to Lake City twice a year for whores and whiskey. Hard to see how you could get much closer than that. So Garner Hewitt had every reason to expect that Sheriff Jackson would make sure the charges filed against his son Cody would be dropped.

  Collard wouldn’t do it. And not only did the sheriff refuse to use any influence in Taylor County for Cody’s benefit, Collard also made damn sure that he informed the boy’s daddy of that fact right in front of God and everybody attending the morning roll call at Monk Folsom’s Auto Repair.

  “What’s that you sayin’?” At first Mr. Hewitt could not comprehend, or did not want to comprehend, what everybody else who was present understood perfectly.

  “Cain’t help with that business with Cody, Garner. Just out of my hands is all.”

  “Out of your hands? The hell you mean?”

  “About what I said, I reckon.”

  All of a sudden there wasn’t a wrench being turned. Every man in the shop was looking at his feet. Mr. Hewitt kept a pleasant smile plastered across his dampened face. “Maybe we need to talk in private.”

  “Private, public. Won’t change anything.”

  I saw the sheriff rest a gnarly hand on the knob of his nightstick. Garner Hewitt saw it, too.

  “You eat some beans or somethin’ this mawning, Collard?”

  “Greens more likely,” somebody quipped, but there was nobody laughing.

  “Best advice I can give you, Garner, is tell your boy he wants to shoot signs, go down to Hatch Bend or someplace I can keep an eye on him.”

  “Big difference between ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’, sheriff. We need to be clear.”

  “Fair enough,” Collard allowed. “How ’bout this? I wouldn’t do it even if I could.”

  J.T. Hewitt shuffled past his daddy like a mannequin jerked on a stiff string. Six and a half feet of mean.

  “You don’t wanta come over here, son,” and there was not a tremor in Collard’s voice.

  “Gentlemen, let’s settle down, now. ’Fore somebody gets their feelings hurt.” State Representative Putnal twisting his Rotary pin in his tie.

  “Monk,” Mr. Hewitt’s voice was flat. “You ’bout finished with my truck?”

  “She’s ready to roll.”

  “I ’spect I better move along.” Garner Hewitt hauled his loose weight up from the rude couch. “Come on, J.T. Let’s see how them pines is going in.”

  “Judge Blackmond’ll be hearing the case,” Collard remarked as Mr. Hewitt and his tree-sized son stalked off. “You get Cody a good lawyer, first offense, he oughta do all right.”

  “I won’t forget your help, Sheriff,” Garner snarled, and shoved his firstborn aside as he waddled out t
he shop’s chain-raised door.

  Collard would have been within his rights to ticket Garner the way he squalled his vehicle out onto the street. Brand new Goodyears burning rubber all the way through the town’s one red light.

  Principal Wilburn cleared his throat. “Nice looking truck.”

  “It is, it is.” Latrelle Putnal tried to encourage the educator’s attempt to diffuse the recent tension.

  “What did Garner bring it in for, Monk?”

  “Air condition. Bad compressor.”

  “I swear,” Wilburn offered lamely. “Man’s better off raising down a window.”

  “He is, he is.” Latrelle would second any motion. “Still. It’s a good-looking vehicle.”

  I turned from my own vantage point to look down the street. It was an awful nice vehicle, a Ford F -100 waxed up and red. A rebel flag displayed prominently from the cab’s rear window, right in front of the gun rack.