Guardian (4 page)

1.

It is evening. The sun has exited from the sky but forgotten to take the stifling heat of the day with it. On the unpaved, dusty streets, the heat settles into every corner and every crack of the houses.

In these days before air conditioners, the heat inside the houses is greater than that outside.

Everyone knows it will be at least midnight before it is cool enough to go to bed. So people sit on their porches, waiting with the patience that comes from knowing that it does no good to complain about what one cannot control.

Around the town square, white men sit on benches beneath the ancient oak tree.

Clouds are gathering in the southern sky, and
there are flashes of lightning and an occasional distant rumble of thunder. Even if the storm comes that way, and the old men around the square are sure it won't, it wouldn't necessarily cool things off. More often than not, a rain in August didn't do much good for the crops and only made the air hotter.

Bert and Ansel are closing the store. Bert locks the door, and father and son start walking slowly to the car, which is parked off the square, next to the church cemetery.

“Thanks for helping me fill out the orders,” Bert says. “I started learning things like that from my papa when I was around your age. Before I know it, you'll be ready to take over from me.”

Ansel does not know what to say. He liked helping his father, but when he tries to imagine working in the store for the rest of his life, he can't.

If only he knew what he wanted. Until he does, he doesn't see any point in saying anything to his father.

As father and son cross the street to the car, they see Big Willie hurrying out the front door of the church. He looks quickly to his right and left, and seeing Bert and Ansel, he runs to them.

“Mistah Bert, suh! I'm glad it's you. Yes, suh!” Willie is a tall and rather ungainly young man. His face looks as if it absorbed every death he witnessed, those he was agent of and those he was not. He is wearing a khaki military shirt with a private's stripe on the sleeve. But the shirt is dirty and torn, as if he has not taken it off since his discharge.

“Wasn't me, Mistah Bert. No, suh! I didn't have nothing to do with it, but I know I'm gon' get blamed for it. Something like this happen, nigger gets blamed every time. Yes, suh. Sho' do. But I ain't done it.”

“What are you talking about, Willie?”

Willie points toward the church. “I seen him. I seen him just as sho' as I'm seeing you and Mistah Ansel. Yes, suh. The young Mistah Zeph.”

Bert hurries to the church and goes inside. In the dim light at the front, he sees and does not want to believe what he sees.

“Ansel! Go outside!”

Instead of doing what his father tells him, Ansel says, “Papa? What's he doing?”

Zeph Davis the Third turns at the sounds of the voices. In his right hand is a knife. It is slick with
blood. On the floor in front of the altar lies a body, the skirt raised to reveal her nakedness.

Ansel does not wait for an answer from his father, who is still trying to understand what he is seeing. Ansel screams, “Mary Susan! Mary Susan!” and runs to the front of the church. He stops and stares at her nakedness. Then, realizing what he is doing, he pulls down the skirt to cover her.

In doing so, he sees a ripped blouse and severed bra. The exposed breasts are red and slick with blood.

He wants to stare, but feels that he shouldn't, that Mary Susan would not want him to.

He takes the blood-soaked blouse and pulls both sides over her bared breasts, careful not to touch them.

Zeph looks rapidly from Ansel to Bert, back and forth, back and forth, breathing heavily, not knowing what to do, what to say.

Then he sees Big Willie in the shadows at the back of the church.

“He did it!” Zeph shouts, pointing at Big Willie. “He did it!”

“Mistah Bert? Suh, look at me. Ain't no blood
nowhere on me. Look at him. He covered with blood, her blood.”

“You know niggers, Bert!” Zeph breaks in. “They do all kinds of stuff with roots. That nigger probably got a mojo that can take blood off his hands.”

“I seen him, Mistah Bert. I seen him. I was up in the balcony. I likes to sit up there when no one's around. It's real peaceful.

“That's where I was when the preacher's girl, Miz Mary, come in. I wanted to leave right then 'cause I knowed it wouldn't look good if I was alone in the same place with a white woman. But wasn't no way I could get out without her hearing. Seein' me, she might get the wrong idea and start screaming. So I just stayed right still.

“She went to the altar and knelt down to pray. I wondered what could be weighing so heavy on the heart of someone as young as she was. If she'd been a nigger gal, I could understand. Us niggers need all the prayer we can get. Yes, suh.

“Miz Mary hadn't been there long when I heard the door of the church open and he come in. I thought maybe the two of them had decided to meet up together at the church, but when she turned around
to see who it was had come in and seen it was him, she say, ‘What do you want? You get on outta here and leave me alone. I'm praying.'

“He don't pay no mind to what she say. He go up to her and grab her and try to kiss her. She push him away. She say, ‘Get away from me or I'll kick you so hard you won't be able to move for a month.'

“That's when he whipped out his knife and before she could do anything, he was on her, stabbing her over and over. Then I seen him raise up her skirt, and I didn't want to see no more. Mistah Zeph was so caught up in what he was doing that he didn't see me, and I hurried out and that's when I seen you and your boy. That's the God's truth, Mistah Bert. You believe me, don't you? You'll tell the white folks it wasn't me. Won't you, Mistah Bert?”

“Who you going to believe, Bert? A nigger or a white man?”

Zeph notices that Bert is hesitating, that Bert is thinking about what the right thing to do is, and Zeph drops the knife on the floor next to Mary Susan's body, runs up the aisle and out of the church.

“Rape! Rape! Pastor's daughter been raped by a nigger!” Zeph is running and yelling at the same
time. Over and over he shouts and the only words that are clear are “rape” and “nigger.”

The men sitting on benches around the square, who, a mere instant before had not wanted to move against the heat, spring up and hurry to meet Zeph.

“That crazy, shell-shocked nigger who works around the church done raped and killed the preacher's daughter!” Zeph tells his eager listeners.

The men see the blood on his shirt, the blood on his hands, and they know. They know Zeph Davis. They had seen him just the other day walking toward the back of Anderson's store with the preacher's girl, and they had seen him come back by himself, and a little later, seen her come out. They know what didn't happen then, and they know what happened this evening. But they tell themselves Zeph got covered with blood because he was trying to save the pastor's daughter from that crazy nigger. Yes, that's how it was.

Some of the men hurry off into the night to spread the news to all those sitting on their porches. Soon people are rushing to the church, some walking, some running, some in cars. They get there in time to hear a loud scream, and rush inside to see Polly,
Reverend Dennis's wife, lying across the body of her only child.

Reverend Dennis hovers behind his wife and takes her gently by the shoulders, pulls her away from the body, and enfolds her in his arms.

Big Willie still stands at the back of the church, tears flowing down his face. He wants to run, but that would be like saying he did it.

But Mistah Bert knows the truth, him and the boy. They know the truth of the matter. Everything's gon' be all right.

Zeph rushes back into the church, a crowd following him. He sees Willie. “There the nigger is! Grab him!”

“Well, I be damned,” someone says. “This is one brazen nigger! Instead of running, he stays around to admire what he done to a white girl!”

Big Willie is seized by several men, their eyes lust-blind with violence.

Willie's eyes plead with Bert Anderson. When those blue eyes turn quickly away from Willie's, he calls out, “Mistah Bert, suh. Please tell these gentlemen I had nothing to do with what happened to that girl. You know that's the God's truth, suh. Please tell 'em!”

Suddenly, everyone stops. All eyes are now on Bert.

Ansel had left Mary Susan's side when her parents came in. Now he stands next to his father, looking up at him, waiting for him to tell everyone who did it, who killed Mary Susan, his Mary Susan.

Bert does not have a smile for this occasion. His head turns toward Big Willie, but his eyes are looking past him, but are not focused on anyone or anything. Sweat glistens on his forehead and above his upper lip.

“What about it, Bert? Is that nigger telling the truth?”

Bert recognizes Zeph's voice. “Well, Willie claims Zeph done this,” he says in a hoarse voice, as if he has swallowed his tears. “But—but no white man would do that to a white girl just entering the flower of southern womanhood.”

Though Bert spoke so softly that only those next to him could hear, the crowd does not need to hear his words. They know what Bert had to say if he was going to continue living in Davis.

“Anybody gon' over to Shireville to get the sheriff?” someone asks.

“He's gon' fishing with his brother-in-law.”

“Shouldn't we wait for him?”

“For what? We know who done it, and we know what needs to be done.”

“And the sheriff would be mighty angry if we brought him back from his fishing trip to deal with a nigger.”

“That's the God's truth!”

And the crowd moves Willie toward the square, toward the large oak tree.

Ansel does not understand. “Big Willie didn't do it, Papa,” he says to his father in a quiet voice, mindful of Reverend and Mrs. Dennis at the front of the church, looking down at their daughter's body.

“Well, we don't actually know that,” Bert responds to his son.

“Yes, we do,” Ansel insists. “That's Zeph's knife. Everybody knows that's his knife. And Zeph is all bloody.”

“This is grown-ups' business,” Bert responds, angry now. “You hear me? We didn't see a damn thing. You understand me?”

Just then Reverend Dennis walks up.

“Bert? I believe the boys could probably use some of that good stout rope from your store. My daughter
would be alive if I hadn't let you talk me into hiring that nigger. We all knew he was crazy. What in God's name were you thinking wanting that nigger to work here where he could do what he did to my daughter?”

“Reverend, I—”

“The boys could use some rope, Bert.”

“Yes, Reverend. Let's go, Ansel.”

“Get the rope by yourself!” Ansel says.

Bert grabs Ansel's upper arm and squeezes it tightly as he hurries him outside. “You listen to me,” his voice quiet but hard. “I don't like this any more than you do. Don't you think I know it's wrong? Well, I do, but what I think is right and wrong is different from what they say is right and wrong. And at this moment, what I think is right and wrong ain't worth pig slop. You're going to come with me to get the rope, and we're going to stay around and watch whatever happens, whether we want to or not.”

2.

When Bert and Ansel return to the square with the rope, a large bonfire is blazing beneath the tree. The crowd has swelled in size, and it looks like everybody in town is there. Though the fire only intensifies the stultifying heat of the night, the fire also makes it easy to see, and everyone's eyes are on Big Willie.

Two men hold him tightly by the arms while another ties his hands behind his back. Willie is bare chested because someone has ripped off his khaki shirt with its military stripe. His face is bloody, and blood pours from his mouth because anyone who wants to hit him does, using an ax handle someone took from Anderson's Store because everybody knows you'll break your hand if you hit a nigger's hard head with your fist.

Willie would have been beaten into unconsciousness if someone hadn't realized it would be better to keep him conscious so he would know, so he would feel what was happening to him.

Ansel looks around for his mother but doesn't see her. He didn't expect to. He sees her parents, though, his grandparents. He scarcely knows them because
his mother does not let him visit them nor invite them to the house. They have big grins on their faces.

Everybody else's parents and grandparents are there, because he sees every kid from school. There are always bonfires under that tree every November before the homecoming football game, and this almost feels like that. Only thing missing are the cheerleaders, but they are there, just not in uniforms.

He sees the choir director from church, all the choir members, the Junior Choir, and the ushers.

Ansel's eyes wander away from the crowd to the road leading into Davis. He is not sure, but way up the street he thinks he sees Miz Davis, Little Willie, and Little Willie's mother standing next to a car.

 

Now that death is at hand, Big Willie is surprised that all the confusion that ordinarily occupies his mind has disappeared. He does not want to die, and yet, considering his life, he hopes death will free him from the evil he witnessed, the evil that robbed him of his mind, the evil that will soon take his life.

 

The people staring at Willie are uneasy because he is not begging them for his life, not crying tears of
remorse, not acting like a nigger is supposed to act who raped a white girl, the pastor's daughter.

“You proud of what you did, nigger?” someone calls out.

“I ain't done nothing,” Willie yells back. His voice has never been stronger, his words never more clear. “It was young Mistah Zeph done this. And y'all know it.”