When I got home I handed my sack of fishes to Ella, and I went in the other room to phone Clatoo. Emma’s daughter Julie said Clatoo had just left the house, and asked me what was the matter. She said Miss Merle had called Clatoo on the phone and Clatoo had got his old shotgun and left in his truck, and she wanted me to tell her what was the matter. I told her if Clatoo didn’t tell her anything, I couldn’t tell her anything either, and I asked her if Clatoo told her where he was going. She said he didn’t tell her nothing, but she heard him over the phone telling Miss Merle something about Mr. Billy Washington and something about Mr. Jacob Aguillard. She told me I might be able to catch him either at Silo or the old Mulatto Place, and she asked me again what was the matter.
I hung up the phone and looked up Billy Washington’s number. His wife, Selina, told me Billy had just left in the truck with Clatoo. I asked her if Billy had his gun. She said yes, matter of fact he did, but how did I know? I asked her if they said where they was going next. She said she believed they was headed toward the old Mulatto Place, because she heard them saying something about Jacob Aguillard. I asked her if Jacob had a number, and she said she didn’t know, but Leola Bovay had a phone. She told me if I hung on a minute she would get the number for me. When she came back on the phone, she gave me the number, and she asked me what was the matter. I hung up and called Leola’s house. She told me that Clatoo had just pulled up in front of Jacob’s house. She said looked like that was Billy Washington with him, and looked like both of them had shotguns. And Jacob was coming out of the house right now, and he had a shotgun, too. I told her to run out on the garry and tell Clatoo to wait a second. I heard her putting the phone down, then a little while later picking it up again. She said Clatoo was waiting. I asked her if she had a twelve-gauge shotgun that could shoot. She told me when her husband died he had left two or three old guns around there, but she couldn’t tell one gauge from another, and she asked me again what was the matter. I told her to take the guns out to Clatoo and ask Clatoo to check them, and if he found a twelve-gauge that could shoot, bring it. I asked her if she had any number five shells, and she said she didn’t know. I told her to get all the shells she had and take them out to Clatoo, and tell Clatoo to pick out some and bring them. She asked me what was the matter. I told her to tell Clatoo to tell her, because I didn’t know nothing. I hung up. When I looked around, I saw Ella standing in the door with her hands on her hips. So big she was filling up that whole door.
“What’s all this about shotguns?” she asked.
“We going hunting,” I said.
“Going hunting what this time of day?”
“Just hunting,” I said.
“Matthew, I’m talking to you,” she said. “Hunting what?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back,” I said.
“You telling me ’fore you leave from here,” she said.
“Go somewhere and sit down, woman,” I said. “This men business.”
“I’m making it my business,” she said, coming up to me. “Hunting what?”
“Get out of my face, woman,” I said. “For once in my life ’fore I die, I’m go’n—” I stopped. “Just don’t be asking me no questions,” I said, and went out on the garry.
I heard her in there on the phone; then she hung up, and I could hear her dialing somebody else. Then I heard her screaming, “What? What? Uncle Billy? What?” I heard her slamming the phone down and coming out on the garry.
“What’s Uncle Billy doing with a shotgun old as he is?”
“How do I know?” I said. “I don’t keep Billy Washington in my pocket.”
“You know, all right,” she said, her hands on her hips again. “You know, all right. And you go’n tell me ’fore you leave from here.”
I turned on her. “You want to know, huh?” I said. “You want to know, huh?”
Now she started backing way from me, like she thought I was go’n hit her.
“I’ll tell you,” I said. “A Cajun’s dead over there at Marshall. Laying on his back in Mathu’s yard. Now you know.”
“And what’s that got to do with you?” she said. She was safe enough away so she could talk big again. “And what’s that got to do with Uncle Billy?”
“You mean you still don’t know?” I asked her.
I turned from her and looked up the road. But Clatoo still wasn’t coming yet.
“You old fool,” she said. “You old fool. Y’all gone crazy?”
“That’s right,” I said, looking up the road, not at her. “Anytime we say we go’n stand up for something, they say we crazy. You right, we all gone crazy.”
“You old fool,” she said. “You old fool. If I can’t stop you, I bet you I’ll call your brother. He’ll stop you.”
“You and Jesse both better stay out of my way if you know what’s good for you,” I said, looking up the road. Clatoo still wasn’t coming.
“If you think I’m go’n let you go to Marshall and get yourself kilt—”
“You can’t stop me, that’s for sure,” I said, looking up the road.
“I’ll call the law,” she said. “You won’t listen to me or your brother, I bet you the law’ll make you listen.”
I turned back on her, pointing my finger at her.
“You touch that phone, woman, somebody’ll be patching your head.”
“Just wait,” she said, going back inside.
I caught up with her and pushed on her, but she was too big for me to push her clean out of the way. But I beat her to the phone, and I jerked it out of the wall and throwed it down on the floor.
“Now call with that,” I said.
“You old fool,” she said. “You old fool. What’s the matter with you, you old fool?”
My chest started heaving, heaving, just heaving. Like I had been running up a hill, a steep hill, and now I had reached the top. I looked at that woman I had been living with all these years like I didn’t even know who she was. My chest heaving, and me just looking at her like I didn’t know who she was. Something in my face made her back back from me. She kept backing back, backing back, till she had touched the wall. I kept looking at her like I didn’t know who she was. My chest heaving, just heaving.
“What’s the matter with me? Woman, what’s the matter with me? All these years we been living together, woman, you still don’t know what’s the matter with me? The; years we done struggled in George Medlow’s field, making him richer and richer and us getting poorer and poorer—and you still don’t know what’s the matter with me? The years I done stood out in that back yard and cussed at God, the years I done stood out on that front garry and cussed the world, the times I done come home drunk and beat you for no reason at all—and, woman, you still don’t know what’s the matter with me? Oliver, woman!” I screamed at her. “Oliver. How they let him die in the hospital just ’cause he was black. No doctor to serve him, let him bleed to death, ’cause he was black. And you ask me what’s the matter with me?”
I stopped now and looked at her. I could feel the hot tears running down my face. I pressed my lips, I could feel my mouth trembling, but the tears kept on running down my face. It had been a long time since I had talked to her like this. A longer time since she had seen me crying. I didn’t turn my head. I didn’t wipe my face. I just stood there looking at her. At first she looked scared. Then it turned to hate—hate ’cause she was so scared.
“He works in mysterious ways,” I told her. “Give a old nigger like me one more chance to do something with his life. He gived me that chance, and I’m taking it, I’m going to Marshall. Even if I have to die at Marshall. I know I’m old, maybe even crazy, but I’m going anyhow. And it ain’t nothing you can do about it. Pray if you want to. Pray for all us old fools. But don’t try to stop me. So help me, God, woman, don’t try to stop me.”
I heard Clatoo out there blowing, and I wiped my face and went out on the garry. Clatoo was in that old green pickup truck he used for peddling his garden. He had on that little narrow-brim straw, a white shirt, and a bow tie. Clatoo always let you know he was a businessman.
In the front with him was Billy Washington and Jacob Aguillard. Billy was from Silo, Jacob from the old Mulatto Place. Jacob and his kind didn’t have too much to do with darker people, but he was here today.
In the back of the truck was Chimley and Cherry Bello. Cherry was between red and yellow, with a lot of brown curly hair. I got in the back there with him and Chimley. While Clatoo turned the truck around, Ella came out on the garry to watch us.
“Y’all had a round, huh?” Cherry asked me.
“She didn’t want me to go,” I said.
“I was at the store when I got the call,” Cherry said. “Mine don’t know a thing about it. And I sure wasn’t go’n call and tell her.”
Cherry Bello owned a liquor-and-grocery store on the highway between Silo and Baton Rouge.
“I just told mine my food better be ready when I got back home,” Chimley said. “She don’t know where I’m going. I don’t think she even care.”
We was sitting on the floor, backs against the cab, and feet toward the tailgate. Cherry Bello had two twelve-gauge shotguns on the floor ’side him, and he handed me one of them. He handed me couple of shells, too.
“Leola sent that,” he said.
“Y’all shot?” I asked.
“I shot,” Chimley said.
“I’m saving mine till we hit the field,” Cherry said. “Might see me a rabbit. No use wasting a good bullet on nothing.”
“What we go’n do in the field?” I asked him.
“Clatoo go’n drop us off just before he reach Marshall,” Cherry said. “We go’n walk across the field, and come in from the back. Clatoo got another load he got to go pick up. Look like a lot of people want to gather at Marshall today.”
“Sure do,” Chimley said quietly.
Chimley was sitting in the middle. He was smaller than me and Cherry Bello. Blacker than me and Cherry, too, that’s why we all called him Chimley. He didn’t mind his friends calling him Chimley, ’cause he knowed we didn’t mean nothing. But he sure didn’t like them white folks calling him Chimley. He was always telling them that his daddy had named him Robert Louis Stevenson Banks, not Chimley. But all they did was laugh at him, and they went on calling him Chimley anyhow.
I looked at him sitting there between me and Cherry. He was my old partner, my old fishing partner. Had knowed Chimley for years and years. My closest friend now, with all the others dead and gone.
“How you feel there, old buddy?” I said to him.
He looked at me and grinned. “Scared,” he said. He had on that old Dodgers’ baseball cap that he had had since the Dodgers was in Brooklyn. It had faded to a light light blue, and it was too big for his head. But old Chimley was a Dodgers’ fan down to his heart. “I’m scared, but I’m here,” he said.
I nodded and grinned back at him. I was scared, too. But at the same time I felt kinda good, knowing me and Chimley and Cherry, and all the rest of us, was doing something different, for the first time.