When they were young, Juke and String had played the games farm boys play. One game they called jailhouse. The jailhouse was the chicken coop. One of them was the jailbird and one was the guard. The guard brought the jailbird bread and water on a tray. The jailbird threw it at the guard and tried to escape. The guard shot at the jailbird with his stick gun. “He’s fleeing the coop!” The chickens scattered and pecked. The jailbird was clever and low-down, but most times you wanted to be the guard. The jailbird got chicken shit on the knees of his dungarees and stunk to Heaven till he was made to scrub in the creek.
What Juke felt in the jailhouse now was bored. For two days, other than the few hours Wolfie Brunswick was there to dry out, he was the only one in the cell. Second day they’d given him prison striped pants and a denim work shirt. They fed him all right, the same cook who cooked for Sheriff and his woman downstairs, fatback and cracklin’ bread and black-eyed peas. He had peace and quiet to piss and shit as he pleased, and when the deputy left to piss and shit himself, Juke would sit on the porcelain toilet just to have something to busy himself with, just to sit and to listen to the flush. Regular meals and a toilet that flushed. It was more than George Wilson would have for him.
He hadn’t had a drink since Friday. That was part of it. Public intoxication, Sheriff said, but he’d been sober the day of his daughter’s wedding—he didn’t drink before church—and he was sober now, so sober he could see out the corners of his eyes the hairs growing on his own cheeks, rusty gold in the light that came through the bars of the window. He needed a shave. A shave and a drink. He scratched at his jaw.
His hands were sore where he’d slammed them against the bars and still there was blood dried in his knuckles and he wondered had he broken some bones. He had already cycled through a good deal of his rage on Saturday afternoon, and then on Saturday evening Sheriff had come up and told him the county was charging him for what happened on the farm in July, and then came panic, followed by disbelief, followed by pleading, and then Sheriff, though he’d retired downstairs by then, had gotten what was left of his rage, the low-down Judas chickenshit he was, and a yellow scoundrel as well. Then he was tired and he slept for a long time, and Wolfie Brunswick came in and out of his dreams. They kicked Wolfie out when he was dried out. And then Juke woke up, the sweat dried all over his skin, like a new skin, like a snake skin, and he realized that was what he’d done too. He’d dried out.
Friday was what he was waiting for. Friday he could post bail. But the only man who could post bail for him, the only man who once would, was the man who’d put him in jail in the first place.
Late Monday night, footsteps came up the stairs. They were struggling footsteps. There were two cells that Juke could see, the one he was in and the empty one next to him, which was for white women, the deputy told him. There were three cots in his cell, along the three walls that weren’t the door. The front and the left side of the cell were bars, and the one on the right was concrete block with a window, and the one behind him was another concrete wall, and from behind this wall he could hear another cell door opening and closing. He could hear a woman crying. He suspected it was a colored woman and it was, he could hear her crying a drunk, muffled, protesting cry.
“What’s that woman here for?” he asked the deputy quietly when he saw him next.
“What you think? Hustling.”
“Where at?”
“Where you think? Down along the tracks. Front a Young’s.”
The deputy was plump as a groundhog, with a groundhog’s wide neck and upturned snout and long yellow teeth. His head was large but his hat too large still. It was a police officer’s hat. Juke supposed that was what he was. The deputy returned to the wooden chair where he sat by the door and removed the hat. Under it, sitting on top of the man’s bald head, was a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. Juke laughed. “Got you a sandwich?”
The deputy picked it up, returned his hat to his head, and unwrapped the sandwich. “Barbecue. Can’t go down to Young’s without getting me some.”
“Smell good,” Juke said. He had eaten that barbecue. He could taste it now.
He watched the man eat. The woman’s crying had quieted.
“What’s your name?” Juke thought to ask. He was lonely and he was bored.
“Flood. Herman Flood.”
“You enjoying that barbecue.”
Herman Flood’s mouth was full of it. He grunted.
Juke could taste it. He could taste the barbecue and the corn liquor and the girls. He wondered if the woman on the other side of the wall was one of them. If he knew her, if she knew him.
Eventually Juke slept. He dreamt of Clarence and Mamie, Archie and Jo, shipped off on a truck for dog food. Elma was helping load them in the truck. The man driving was George Wilson, but George Wilson when Juke was a child. He dreamt of Lefty buried in the cold ground, and Castor buried in the cold ground. He dreamt of String the Indian chief with a crown of chicken feathers. He dreamt of String the Negro painted in tar. They were different dreams or all one dream. He had been drunk a long time and now he was not. He felt the memories float up to the surface like bloated, wide-eyed fish.
He sat up on his cot, awake. Lefty was buried, Castor was buried, and his money was buried. Mason jars of it, dollars and coins, ten years of money paid to him by George Wilson. It was all buried on the farm. How much was there?
Slowly he came to recognize the sound of someone singing. It was night still, or early morning. The streetlamp outside the window laid yellow light across the floor of the dark cell. Herman Flood was not in his chair by the door. The voice was coming from the other side of the wall. It sang Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. That was what his mind, half sleeping, told him. The voice sounded like it was made of paper and cloth, that it was stitching together bits of rag and wiregrass and bark.
His mind told him to lie down again, to return to his dreams, which was the closest he could get to being drunk. But another piece of his mind was keeping him upright in the cold dark cell, listening. His ears waited for the next part of the song. From the murky place of his dreams, he felt each word float up to the surface, and he remembered each one just as she gave it breath.
Sometimes I wish I could fly
Like a bird up in the sky
Closer to my home.
He was singing under his breath, and then he was singing more loudly.
The voice on the other side of the wall stopped. Her name was Lorraine.
“Don’t stop.”
His wet nurse must have sung it to him as she rocked him to sleep. He didn’t remember her name (it was Abigail) but he could almost remember her face, the voice that was something like a mother’s.
“Please don’t stop,” he said.
* * *
Tuesday he slept the day away. He tried not to eat because he didn’t want to shit, not with the woman listening on the other side of the wall. But he was hungry, so he had supper and then slept some more. He dreamt of Sterling appearing like a ghost on the chain gang, and Freddie’s eye swallowing itself. Was that part a dream? He dreamt of Wilson. Wilson was filthy, his body tarry with mud, his hands and knees red with ant bites. There were government men coming for him because he’d been let loose on the farm, roaming around in his diaper, his diaper full of shit. Juke woke and sat on the toilet and let the black-eyed peas run through him. He was grateful now that the woman wasn’t singing, or crying. He hoped she was sleeping. He sat on the toilet and he cried without making a sound.
It was just Nan left on the farm now. For all he knew she’d let the babies loose just like her momma had done.
Or was she in the doctor’s house by now? And if she was at the doctor’s house, who was feeding the animals? Who was milking the cows? Were they let loose to pasture with the twins?
When Herman Flood returned to collect Juke’s empty plate, Juke stood and made to talk to him.
“Can’t I get word to my kin?”
“I done told you. You can see your kin Friday.”
“But can’t I get word before the hearing. It’s about the bail money.”
The deputy laughed. “You ain’t got enough kin to make no bail.”
“What you know of it? How much is it?”
“I ain’t the judge, Mr. Juke, but I reckon it’s a pretty penny.”
Juke sat down on his cot. He pictured Elma shoveling up the jars. He wouldn’t be able to tell her where they were. The only map he had was in his mind. Maybe there was no one left on the farm to dig them up. Then a terrible question came to him. He wondered would Elma dig up the money for him if she could. Would she want him home, or would she leave him there to rot.
“I been thinking. You saying kin can’t come to see no prisoners, or is it my kin ain’t been to see me.”
“Ain’t no one allowed to see you. Sheriff don’t want it that way. Sure enough not no reporter from no city rag.”
Juke stood again. “Who’s that.”
“Macon man. Sheriff showed him the door.”
“He come to talk to me?”
“Sure enough. Yestidy.”
“Hell! What if I got something to say?”
“You can say it on Friday.”
Juke tongued the empty ditch along his gums. His teeth were so dry they ached. “That’s all right.”
The deputy turned to go, taking the tray with him.
“I need me something to chew, Herman Flood.”
Herman Flood grunted.
“Some tobacca. I know you got some. I seen you chew it.” The deputy was halfway across the room and fading with the evening light. “I know you drinking with the sheriff, Herman Flood. That’s my Cotton Gin, you know. That’s my gin you drinking while I rot in this cell.”
The deputy’s key chain jangled from his belt.
“Even Sheriff ain’t come up but once. Why ain’t he come? I’ll tell you. He’s a Judas like the rest. Ain’t got the guts to look me in the eye.”
The deputy turned as he reached the door.
“I know you got you some barbecue under that hat, you yellow belly!”
Herman Flood lifted his hat, as though to say good night. There was nothing under it but his bald head.
* * *
Wednesday—or was it Thursday already?—it was Wilson still fixed in his mind. Wilson was still painted in tar but now he had no ears. Castor had chewed them off. In their place were chicken feathers. The chicken feathers were on fire. Juke woke slapping at the scar on his arm, putting out the flame of his dream.
“Herman Flood. Mr. Flood!” He stood and rattled the bars of the cell. “I weren’t never hurt no baby.”
Herman Flood was not in his chair. Juke could feel the woman’s silence on the other side of the wall, a silence built of paper and cloth.
“That scoundrel Freddie Wilson say I was set to hurt a baby. Winna Jean. Ain’t never put a hand on her. Neither a them babies.”
Then the silence was gone and in its place was a sound close to crying or singing, but it wasn’t crying or singing. Juke hushed. He hushed, hoping the woman might take up her singing again. He hushed a good while, listening. It was dark in the cell and the streetlight came in the window and fell over the deputy’s empty chair.
Then he heard the sound of coins jangling, or keys. Was he hearing things? He could hear the hairs growing on his face. He clawed at it.
“Mr. Flood? You there?”
* * *
The white cotton dust on Jessa’s feet, and the white snow on the pregnant whore’s feet, and him, Juke, swimming through a creek of chicken feathers, their quills in his nostrils, in his eyes and ears. Waking up coughing them up. He slid from the cot to the concrete floor and he crawled to the bars and he beat his head on them until all that his mind contained was the pain.
“Quit that bulling around,” Herman Flood said. A man was with him, short, muscled, in dungarees and handcuffs. Flood let him into the cell and uncuffed him.
Juke rose up to his knees. A white band pressed over his vision. Through it he could see the man flex his bare arms. The hair on his arms was dusted with white lint. Cotton.
Flood was already gone, his key chain jangling behind him.
“Bob Pruitt,” the man said, and held his right hand out to Juke. The hand looked strangely small, a rough little hoof of a hand, and it took Juke a moment to count a finger missing, the pinky.
“Jesup.” Juke took the hand and Bob Pruitt helped him to his feet. Juke’s head swam with pain. “Juke Jesup. Like for the juke in town.”
“I know who you is. You and George Wilson run the blind tiger.”
Juke winced. “Ain’t no one left blind to it, I reckon.”
Bob Pruitt had been a carder at the mill until that morning, when he’d been discharged by George Wilson. “We got us in a quarrel, you could say. Didn’t want it that way. Newspaperman came yestidy. Asking what happened to my boy. That’s Denny. My son. Ain’t but twenty-two. Young man, strong. I worked in that mill since the year he was born. I know what them machines can do.” He held up his right hand. “But I never seen nothing like what happened to Denny. You hear what happened Monday?”
“What’s today?”
“Thursday.”
Juke shook his head and the pain rose to his eyes.
“You been in the mill? You seen how high them ceilings is in the card room?” Pruitt raised an arm in the air.
Juke nodded. “My woman was a spinner.”
“Denny was running one a the card machines. Like any old day. That machine been acting up for weeks. I know ’cause I’m the one fixes em. I oiled it and oiled it within an inch of its life. I told the new foreman, Mr. Richard, it got no more life left in it. Finicky, is what I told him. Liable to eat it a whole hand. Mr. Richard told Mr. Wilson, but Mr. Wilson don’t do nothing. And first thing Monday morning, me and Denny go in and turn on all the machines. You know what it’s like on a Monday morning in the mill? Your lungs has had all weekend to clear out. You go in Monday morning and you can’t hardly breathe, all the wet hot cotton in the air about to choke you. Denny’s lungs ain’t been good as it was. He was having him a coughing fit. He weren’t paying good enough attention. He turns on his machine and I’m over acrost the room. Alls I see is Denny get throwed up to the ceiling. He would have gone clear up to Heaven but them rafters busted his head and spit him down to the floor.”
“Holy Lord. It kill him?”
“Just about. Busted his head. Broke his arm and his pelvis and most a his ribs and smashed up his face. Mr. Wilson say he’ll pay his hospital. Ain’t that big? He’ll pay his hospital. Boy’s in a body cast.”
“Well, holy Lord.”
“How my to feed my family? My woman had to leave her machine to tend to him. Then I got two kin ain’t getting no pay. And now I ain’t gone get no pay neither, ’cause I’m here in this cell with you.”
“Of all the lousy, low-down, scoundrel—”
“Mr. Richard I ain’t got a quarrel with. He done what he could.”
“He’s foreman now?”
“For now he is. But ain’t no telling how fast Granddaddy will put Freddie boy back in it, now he’s home.”
Juke was sitting on the cot and Bob Pruitt was standing. The band of light over Juke’s eyes was loosening. He had the sense that nothing had changed and everything had changed. Freddie was back. He’d be off the chain gang and back in the mill by Monday. And Juke was in this cell, and no one would come and get him out.
“I ain’t even tell the paper half of it,” said Bob Pruitt.
“What paper?”
“Testament. Fella named Boothby, with a smoking pipe, come into the village yestidy. I told him all about Denny. You bet I did. I showed him his pictures. Denny liked to draw pictures. He had a man take a picture of Denny’s pictures. And they went back to Macon and took more a Denny in his hospital bed. They put it in the paper and Mr. Wilson see it this morning, and that was it. He wouldn’t have no one talk against him in no big-city paper.”
Juke was thinking of the way Bob Pruitt was talking about his son, the way he could take up for him in the papers, and he was thinking about Wilson, the way he could sit up tall on his shoulders now and hold on to Juke’s forehead, right there where that band of light was cooling, and Juke would hold his small socked feet, but no one knew he was his daddy, not even Wilson himself.
“Why you telling me all this, Bob Pruitt? Don’t you know I been in deep with George Wilson? How you know I ain’t one a his scouts?”
Bob Pruitt sat down on the cot opposite Juke’s. “Everyone know Mr. Wilson cut ties with you, Mr. Juke.” He said it kindly, like he didn’t want to disappoint him. “Way I figure it, it’s been coming a long time. Seem like half the hands aspire to be Klansmen. Other half love your gin too much. Aspire to be drunkards. No offense intended.”
Juke shook his head.
“He got a new man making whiskey for him out west a town.”
Juke opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. “Whiskey,” was all he could get out.
“Out in them piney woods. Why you think they paving the Straight?”
Juke focused his eyes on the man’s right hand, the severed finger. The finger was lost and the hand went on being a hand.
Cut ties. You and George Wilson run the blind tiger. They’d run it in the past, is what he’d meant. His time had come and gone.
“I know it,” Juke said. “But I’m the one cut ties. I give up the moonshining. I told George Wilson I’m through.”
Maybe he was through, he thought. Maybe he would give it up. Making it, drinking it. Look how it had poisoned him. Look what it had gone and done.
“Well, I reckon his ties is cut with both of us. Reckon he put us both here.”
Pruitt was looking down at him. He could see it in his face. What this linthead must think of him, banging his head against the wall like a madman. All Juke had wanted was a body to talk to, and now there was one in front of him, thinking he knew him up and down.
“Tell you what,” Bob Pruitt said. “Someone ought to kill George Wilson dead.”
Juke grunted. He didn’t know if the man was trying to trick him or cheer him up.
“You the one to do it, Juke Jesup. Ain’t you the one who killed that darky boy on his farm?”
Juke looked to the concrete wall. It was early afternoon and the gray paint was silver in the light from the window. He thought he heard a sound from the other side, the sound of flat shoes on the concrete floor.
“What you know of it?” Juke said quietly.
“I seen him come into the village.” Bob Pruitt lowered his voice. “I was too late to get me any good parts. But I got me a piece a his union suit. Carry it with me when I can.”
Before Juke could tell him not to, the man drew a square of cloth from the pocket of his dungarees. It was the size of a handkerchief and stained red with blood.
“Lord’s sake! Put that away!”
Pruitt smiled. “It’s right ugly, ain’t it?”
“Put that trash away.”
“Ain’t you keep nothing from him? Bring back that killing feeling?”
“Shut up, fool. You ain’t know nothing about it.”
“You saying you ain’t did it?”
“I don’t like the way killing feels,” Juke said.
Pruitt smiled, pocketing the cloth. “Then you saying you did.”
“Freddie Wilson done it,” Juke said softly.
“Low-down dog,” said Bob Pruitt. “It’s Freddie Wilson ought to hang, then. Freddie and his granddaddy. Doubleheader. That’s a sight I’d like to see.”
“Hush, if you don’t mind. I got a headache,” Juke said.
“How long you been here?”
“Five days.” He lay down on his side and closed his eyes. “Feel like five years.”
Bob Pruitt lay down on the cot across from Juke. Juke slept but Bob didn’t. Around six o’clock, end of the day shift, Mr. Beau Richard came to bail him out for fifteen dollars. No hearing, just fifteen dollars paid in Sheriff’s parlor. Sheriff gave five of it to Herman Flood and sent him to Young’s to fetch them corn liquor and barbecue. When Juke awoke, Bob Pruitt was gone.
“Bob Pruitt?” he asked the room.
Night had fallen and he could feel the woman breathing on the other side of the wall. He could feel her silence made of newspaper and ragged bits of apron.
“Herman Flood?”
He could feel rather than hear the woman’s voice rise up against her silence, and then he heard a jangling of keys. Then he heard a sound like the slam of a screen door. She cried out.
“Herman Flood! What you up to?”
They were struggling sounds. There was nothing to drink to drown out the sound. “Herman Flood! I hear you, Herman Flood!” There was no pillow to put over his head. He kicked the bars of the cell. He slipped and fell. He crept to the toilet. He put his head inside and flushed it, and for a moment the sound flushed out all other sound.
When he pulled his head out of the bowl Sheriff was standing before his cell. Juke’s face was dripping wet. He slicked back his hair. “Sheriff.”
“You crazier than I thought, Juke Jesup.” Sheriff’s shirttails were undone and his face was flushed.
“Where’s Flood?”
“Ain’t no one here but me.”
“That woman. You been in her cell.”
“You know that nigger gal? You want some a her?”
Juke wanted to spit. His face was wet but his mouth was still dry. He wanted a drink and he wanted a fight. He wanted to pound the sheriff to the ground. He thought he’d been on their side, but now he was sober as a baby and he saw the truth: he was on the other side. They were all against him.
He’s fleein’ the coop!
“You crooked, Sheriff. You crooked as George Wilson.”
“I’m crooked? You a straight shooter now, Jesup?”
“Suppose I am.”
Sheriff chuckled. “Well, that’s good. ’Cause I got a surprise for you, Mr. Juke. I been out to the crossroads farm today. Got a look around.”
Juke stood and gripped the bars. “That right?”
“Had some friends with me. George Wilson. We had a look-see.”
“Had you a look-see. That right.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ain’t seen nothing you didn’t know about already.”
“You’ll hear all about it in time. Tomorrow, reckon.”
“You crooked, Sheriff. You the most low-down of us all.”
“That right? More low-down than you, Mr. Juke?”
“Go to Easter’s. You want a nigger gal, go to Easter’s and pay.”
“That what you do? Before you kill a nigger, you like to pay him first?”
Sheriff came a step closer and his face came into the light. His mustache was dark with tobacco and spit.
“Nigger lover don’t like it when he’s locked up and can’t have none of the fun.”
* * *
With the sheriff gone the woman’s silence was in the room with him, thin and dry, like a rag stiff with blood.
He wanted her to sing. She didn’t sing. So he sat down on the cot and closed his eyes and he sang it himself, loud and full, the notes filling his lungs. He pretended they were singing it together, stranger to stranger, through the concrete wall. And as the words appeared on his tongue, he heard not his nurse’s voice singing them but Ketty. Ketty at the creek, Ketty at the stove, Ketty in his bed, singing,
Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone
Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone
Sometimes I feel like I’m all alone
A long ways from home.