it like one word, Boneface, but that’s because, bein’ black, he didn’t know no better. ’Course, he owned a lot of land and a whole buncha “cafes” all around the county and especially in the back alley behind the stores in St. Leo. And because of that, he pretty much controlled the rest of the niggas, and that’s why, when he died not too long ago, he had the biggest funeral there ever was in St. Leo, and half the people at it was white, the gotdamn sumbiches. If you didn’t know better, you’d think all them planters was a buncha Yankee-ass nigga lovers. But they are a strange crew—probably because so many of ’em goes up North to college. If it ain’t that, I don’t know what it is. All I know is they ain’t like good Christian folks like it is back in Clay City. Hell, a planter don’t think he’s alive unless he’s drivin forty miles to go eat’n or dancin’, and he sho don’t think it’s Sunday unless he’s got a house full of niggas and a pitcher of martinis set’n beside his ass.
Let me just clarifiy one other thing—them black muthafukkas weren’t no minority. Not in that little Delta county, no-fukkin-sir. When I was deputy, back then, they was twenty thousand people in the town and county combined, but less than two thousand was white. And that’s the way it was in most of them Delta counties. That was back in the time when the Fourth of July was still considered a day of mournin’. One nem planters explained that to me one time. He said it was the Fall of Vicksburg. I could see it. Although, if you want to know the truth, that war didn’t have nothin’ to do with the likes of me and my kind. I know I wouldna fought for them rich, slave-ownin’ muthafukkas. Plus, I sure as hell wouldna wanted no slaves. Fuk that. The real slaves was the assholes who owned ’em, if you want my opinion.
Anyway, I guess because of my background it was hard for me to ever really fit in down here in the Delta. But then, them other white sumbiches wouldna fit in back where my people come from in Clay City, over in the hills. And, actually, that has a lot to do with what happened, once you know how to look at it.
It really could turn out that Voyd was the only one of ’em who truly saw my side of the thing. But, he’s such a dumb sumbich, that don’t say a lot for me. And I needed somebody to say somethin’ for me, gotdamn it, even if I was on the wrong side. Here’s what happened.
One day, about ten in the morning, Leland Shaw come into the office at the lumber company and told Miss Willy that he was goin’ home. She said he didn’t wait for no answer; he just turned around and walked out the door. Then, for several days nobody seen nothin’ of him. But finally the neighbors realized he was inside his mama’s house, and they got worried that he wasn’t able to take care of hissef, whatever in the fuk that means, so they called Miss Helena Ferry, who was getting on up in years even then, and she called Dr. Austin, who was her cousin from Rosedale but who had set up practice in St. Leo back in the twenties, and he said leave it to him. So, the first thing he done was to call up Lawyer Montgomery, and him and Lawyer Montgomery went down to the bank and talked to the president, Mr. Humes. And since they was all three—or four, including Miss Helena—pretty much the same thing as family, they whipped up an idea that took care of the problem. For a moment.
They got Sheriff Holston and me to come over to the house and help ’em take Leland to the “Rest Wing” of the new hospital where they more or less fixed him up his own little apartment, which had a big pitcha-window lookin’ east out across Highway 61 and an iron wreckin’ bar across the door that opened into the main hall. For the time being, they said, they didn’t want to send him up to Meffis to the Army hospital, nor did they want to ship him off to the insane asylum down at Whitfield. Lord, they said, that woulda been the end of him. Personally, I wished it hadda been. They said they believed Leland would be fine if he could just stay among people who knew him and that he would be happy, they believed, and comfortable there in the “Rest Wing” of the Mhoon County Hospital, right there in St. Leo, on the side of Highway 61. Truth is, they was all afraid he was gonna start runnin’ around nekkid.
Well, boy, did those assholes have another thing comin’. They failed to realize that Leland Shaw didn’t know who the fuk they was or give a shit about who cared about him or that he was suppose–ably in St. Leo “among people who knew him.” As far as that crazy sumbich was concerned, he wuddn nowheres near St. Leo, and, in his warped-ass mind, all them kin and connections out there was probably the enemy. And, in my opinion, he wuddn about to be happy about nothin’ until he could get back home—wherever in the fuk he may have thought that was.
Another thing I forgot to mention: he was real goosey. If you’d point your finger at him, he’d th’ow hissef on the floor and scramble around to get up under something. See, I figure that’s because he believed them German soldiers was about to nail him. Same thing if anybody shined a light at him, he’d dive up under something. He was the craziest sumbich I ever saw. And how anybody could’ve wasted any time lookin’ after him, I will never understand. I’da throwed his ass in the river a long time ago. People thought I was hard, but I say you had to be there. I know: they was there, too, but fukkum.
One night, the nurse shined a flashlight on him just to make sure he was in his bed asleep, and he leapt up like some kinda gotdamn animal and zipped off into a corner where she couldn’t see him no more, but she knew he was in there and couldn’t get out so she went on back down the hall and didn’t say nothin’ about it. But he musta been going through one of them real intense spells of believin’ them German soldiers was comin’ up on him, because the next day, which was the day after Christmas, 1958, he jumped through that pitcha-window at the cracker-dawn and run like a muthafukka. The nurse said she heard a crash, but had thought it was something out on the highway. The truth is she was asleep and didn’t want that to come out.
Now, there it was, colder than the I-R-S, and that dicklicker skips off in nothin’ but a pair of cotton khakis, some wool socks, brogan shoes, a flannel shirt from the Golden Rule, an olivedrab GI sweater, the kind that has buttons runnin’ from the breastbone to the neck, one nem knit caps from the army surplus, and his daddy’s old wine-colored heavy wool bathrobe, which was damn near too big for him but, I grant you, woulda provided him with a good deal of warmth. Oh, yeah, and a pair of blue mittens that had “Joy to the World” wrote all over ’em, which somebody from the Episcopal church had made and sent over to him for a Christmas present. And except for them mittens, that’s what he wore every year when the weather turned cool. I guess it was his uniform.
The ground was so frozen he didn’t leave no tracks, although somebody found a couple of PayDay candy–bar wrappers behind the Boll and Bloom Cafe out on the highway across from the lot that had all them scaly-bark trees, where the old Boy Sprout hut used to be.
Naturally, at first, the talk was that he hitched a ride to Meffis. But I said then, and I say now, no fool in his right mind woulda given a lift to a crazy lookin’ sumbich like Leland Shaw was, dressed up in that big-ass bathrobe. So I never did believe he left the area. It turned out I was right, too, but all that come out little by little as time went by.
Well, I never saw such a gotdamn commotion in all my life. The Boll and Bloom became the headquarters for the volunteers who wanted to help search for that crazy muthafukka. It was a good place to have a headquarters because that’s where most of them volunteers was ever’day anyhow, even when they wuddn searchin’ for nothin’.
I enjoyed the whole thing. Shoot, the highway patrol got in on it, and a group or two from out of town came up to help—well, after a while they was reports of a wild-ass lookin’ sumbich showin’ up here and there in about four or five counties around the Delta. That, in itself, didn’t mean a whole lot because, if you ast me, the Delta had more wild-actin’, weird-looking coksukkas than it could keep track of anyhow. Most of the reports turned out to be something else or nothin’ at all, but one or two had some truth in ’em. Like the one from out there in the eastern part of the county around Dooley Spur, and another from over ’cross the levee in the bar’ pits south of Mhoon’s Landing. There were others that Voyd and I and sometimes some of the volunteers investigated, but we couldn’t turn up nothin’. And the strange thing about it was that he was right up under our nose the whole fukkin time.
As I say, at first I wanted to save him and make ever’body happy; then, later, I wanted to kill him—and also make ever’body happy . . . but, as the