IV. What’s Goin’ On?
1.
Sheriff Jim Joyce was a kindly looking and rotund black man of about seventy. His rheumy eyes gave one the impression that they had seen a lot, and had felt compelled to ignore much of it. Having taken a look around the dining room and examined the dead body, he left it to his deputy to photograph the scene, and joined Claude and Gertie in the living room.
“So tell me what happened.”
“Well me and Gertie was sittin’ here in the livin’ room, havin’ a nightcap, when we heard a crash out in the dinin’ room.” Claude paused, a little cloud passing over his face, as though the memory of the events he was describing was hard to bear.
Joyce told him “Go on.”
“Well, you know there been these robberies around town these past few weeks. And you know how Miss Eveline done got shot when she confronted the burglar.”
Joyce nodded. “An encounter she ain’t gonna forget. Lucky she still alive: if the sisters who live next door wasn’t home and heard the shot, she wouldna made it.”
“So I was in no mood to take a chance that the same thing gonna happen to me or my Gertie here. I grabbed the gun, the one I knew Gertie kept in that there side table, and crept ‘cross the foyer to the dining room. The lights was out, and the moon was comin’ in the window, so all I could see was a dark silhouette. And I figured I better shoot before he shoot me. And that’s about all there is to it.”
“Claude, that all seems straightforward enough. I know Winthrop was your boy, and you wouldn’t have no reason to kill him. But what the hell was he doin’ climbing in the window here at night?”
“That I couldn’t rightly tell ya. I been puzzlin’ over it myself.”
“Well, we gonna have to have an investigation, like with any shooting death. But I imagine in this instance it just gonna be a formality. But I’d for sure call it a painful case.”
Claude said, “I know you’ll take care of this, Jim.”
The two of them shook hands at the door. Claude added, “Don’t forget to stop by the farm and pick up some greens: we got collards and mustard and turnip.”
“Thank you… in fact, I think Imma send my son Clay out there tomorrow. You know we do appreciate how kindly you and your family always treated us.”
With that Sheriff Joyce walked across the porch and out into the cool and breezy night.
Claude close the door behind him, took out his cell phone, and called Thaddeus. “You and Alastair meet me at Elsie’s. Vite, vite.” (Claude, a Clemson man, liked to show off what little he remembered of his four semesters of French.)
He walked over to Gertie and gave her a hug. “Don’t you worry none now baby, I’m taking care of everything.” Then he followed Joyce out into the darkness.
2.
As it was Saturday night, two women were working the bar at Elsie’s. Agnes Day was bartending, while Donna Nobis bussed the tables and washed glasses. Both were zaftig, cheerful black women in their early 40s. And both greeted Claude, their new boss, effusively when he walked in.
At the bar, he asked Agnes for a double whiskey on the rocks. Once he was served his drink, he went to the back of the bar, where the crowd was thin, and sat at an empty table.
A few minutes later, Thaddeus and Alastair walked in together. Claude had been watching the door, and waved them over as soon as they entered. He rose and shook their hands, and indicated that they should sit. Then he called out, “Donna love, get us three more of these here whiskeys.”
After the drinks arrived, and Thaddeus and Alastair had time to take a couple of sips, Claude, after first looking around the table, addressed them in a low voice.
“Boys, Hampton, he outta control. Tonight, he done shot ole Winthrop dead.”
Thaddeus and Alastair stared at him in disbelief.
After a moment of silence, Thaddeus asked, “Why’d he do that?”
Claude looked grim. “This can’t leave this room, but I’m thinkin’ he was gunnin’ for me.”
Alastair shook his head like he was trying to shoo away a horse fly. “OK, but why would he do that?”
“Why? Why the boy be jealous that I’m gonna run the family businesses. He think that since Will was his daddy, it’s only natural that he be put in charge. But the boy, he too young, too inexperienced, and way too reckless. Him being in charge would be the ruin of us all.”
Claude paused, and looked meaningfully at Thaddeus and Alastair. Once he judged that they had absorbed the first part of his pitch, he continued.
“And now he running around recklessly killin’ folk, and actin’ crazy out in public. He be bringin’ police attention and dishonor to the whole family, and you know, when I say that, I include the two of you as bein’ as good as kin.”
Thaddeus and Alastair nodded to indicate their appreciation of what Claude was saying.
“Y’all know, I love the boy like he were my own son, but comes a time when a body gotta cut off a cancer to save the rest of the body.”
Thadeus asked, “So what you want us to do?”
“Imma take the rap for shooting Winthrop. I already told the sheriff it was me who done it, cause I thought he was that burglar who been operating round here of late. But I told Hampton since he’s known to have been disputing with Winthrop, he better get out of town. I told him you two would put him up at Clemson for a spell, until the investigation finished.”
Alastair said, “Yeah, we could do that.”
Claude shook his head. “But that ain’t gonna solve our problem. Unfortunately, behavin’ the way he is, the boy gotta go.”
Thaddeus’s eyes shot open wide, and he said, “But he’s our brother!”
“I know, and he’s my nephew, and we all love him. But like I said, sometimes a part gotta be sacrificed for the good of the whole. And this here one of those times. Now, is you boys part of this team, or ain’t you?”
Both of his interlocutors mumbled that of course they were part of the team.
“So here’s what you gonna do. You gonna pick up Hampton from his apartment first thing in the morning. He already expectin’ you to be drivin’ him up to Clemson. But along the way, you’ll be passin’ Sumter Forest. One a you gonna tell him that you got a school biology project or some such nonsense, and you gotta do somethin’ for that project. And it’s just gonna be a quick detour.”
“Once y’all in the park, head over to Lick Fork Lake. They have a park map at the entrance, so it be easy to find out where that is. You tell Hampton you gotta do yo’ experiment or whatever there. I got a gun for each of you. You do what you gotta do, and once it done, you lose both the guns and Hampton into that lake. If you weigh him down properly, nobody never gonna find a body in there unless they decide to drain the whole thing. And then y’all go on up to Clemson, and go about your studies.”
Alastair asked, “And you sure there ain’t no alternative?”
“Boys, he already done killed one man. And he likely to take another shot at me. How many more dead you wanna see? Better that one man dead than a whole bunch of us goin’ to our graves.”
Thaddeus and Alastair both nodded.
“Thank you boys. Believe me, I ain’t gonna forget your service. Now let’s go on in the back, and I get you what you need.”
3.
At around seven o’clock the next morning, Thaddeus and Alastair pulled up to the curb below Hampton’s apartment, which was on the second floor of the brick building housing the Neeley Appliance Company. Thaddeus, who was driving, put his hand on the horn as if he were about to honk.
Alastair said, “Whachoo doin’? It’s seven Sunday mornin’; you can’t be honkin’ your horn. Jes lemme call him.”
Hampton sounded sleepy when he answered, and said he would be down in a few minutes. When he arrived at the car, he was bearing a backpack stuffed to the bursting point.
Thaddeus asked him, “Brother, what you got there?”
Alastair added, “Yeah, it look like you movin’ out.”
Hampton laughed. “On a trip like this, you never know what you might need, or where you might end up. Be prepared!”
As Thaddeus started the car up, Hampton leaned forward, and in a confidential tone, said, “I just gotta say how much I do appreciate all you fellas, and my uncle Claude, doin’ for me. Why, if a brother didn’t know any better, I might start to think y’all cared about me.”
Hampton laughed heartily, to indicate he was just joking around. Thaddeus and Alastair also laughed, but less heartily.
As Thaddeus drove the two blocks north on Carolina Highway, Alastair explained that he had to get some lake samples for his biology class, so they’d be making a short detour on the way north. Thaddeus turned left on Heritage Highway. They passed the Amtrak station and were soon out in open countryside. The fields that would host cotton and corn and soybeans in the summer were now lying fallow, but occasionally they would pass a green field of collards or turnips or onions. Other fields held grazing cows, and every once in a while, behind a high white fence, they saw horses traversing a stately southern plantation.
Hampton had been drowsy, staring out the window, but he suddenly became animated. “I ever tell you two about the three-legged pig I saw up this way?”
Thaddeus looked at Alastair and rolled his eyes a little. “I think we about to hear another of Hampton’s tall tales.”
“No boys, I’m serious: you ever seen a three-legged pig?”
Alastair replied, “I gotta admit I ain’t.”
“I ain’t neither, at least not till that day I was drivin’ out this way in my Mustang and I see a farmer standin’ in his field next to this pig that only got three legs. Y’all remember my Mustang?”
Alastair said, “Yeah, a real sweet car, until you wrecked it.”
Hampton laughed. “We ain’t gonna mention that. Anyway, back to the pig. Naturally, I wanna find out what up with it. So I pull my car over to the side of the road, and get out. I asked the farmer how he doin’, and he tells me he havin’ a blessed day.”
“I says, ‘You mind if I ask you about your pig there?’”
“‘Son, you can ask whatever you wanna ask.’”
“‘So why it only got three legs?’”
“‘This here pig is one special animal. For instance, one day me and my missus was workin’ in one of the upper fields. Junior somehow got out of the house, and he went and fell down that well over yonder. We had no idea, and the boy might’ve died down there, but this here pig run up to us where we was workin’, squealin’ like he was bein’ barbecued, until we followed him down to the well. So he mighta saved junior’s life.’”
“‘OK,’ I says to him, ‘but what about…’ He ignores me, and goes on about more of his pig’s remarkable accomplishments.”
“‘Another time we was all sleepin’ up in the house, when some bad wirin’ caught the place on fire. Well, we mighta all burned up in there, but this pig came runnin’ up the house and threw hisself again and again ‘gainst the door till we woke up and made it out just in time. So that time he probably saved the life of the whole family.’”
“‘OK, but what about his missin’ leg?’”
“Then that ole man look at me like I’m nuts. ‘An animal this special… Why, you can’t eat him all at once!’”
Thaddeus and Alastair both groaned. Alastair said, “Hampton, you one messed up dude.”
“If I’m messed up, at least I with the right fellows.”
Thaddeus glanced back at Hampton with a puzzled expression, and said, “Whachoo you mean?”
Hampton laughed. “You two is like vacuum cleaners, right?”
“How we like vacuum cleaners?”
“Whatever garbage come outta Claude’s mouth, you two just suck it up, right?”
Alastair stared back at him with a look of distaste. “I have no idea what you talkin’ about.”
“Boys, I just kiddin’ with y’all. I know my words too wicked for yo’ innocent ears.”
Soon Hampton fell fully asleep, his head resting on his backpack. He slept until they had entered the forest, and Alastair shook his knee to wake him.
“Brother, time to wakey wake. We almost there.”
Hampton yawned and stretched in the back. Thaddeus found an isolated spot on the lake shore, amidst a grove of live oaks hung with Spanish moss, where he could pull the car off the road and park it at the top of a small rise overlooking the lake.
Thaddeus turned off the ignition, and said, “If y’all help me get these samples, we can be out of here real quick.”
Hampton spoke quietly from the back, saying “OK, but first I gotta say goodbye, my brothers,” as he rummaged through his backpack.
Alastair asked, “Why you be sayin’ goodbye now?”
“Cause I sendin’ you two on a trip to visit Winthrop.” With that he lifted his pistol out of his backpack, and shot both of his friends in the head, sending their brains splattering over the windshield.
He slumped back for a moment in his seat, wiping away a couple of tears. He then got out of the car, bringing his backpack with him, and placed it on the ground against the trunk of one of the live oaks. He moved around to the driver’s side and opened the front door. Gingerly avoiding as much gore as he could, he shifted the car into neutral.
He walked around to the back of the car, and pushed it towards the lake. It took off down the slope, and sank away with a satisfying gulp into the lake’s dark waters.
He stripped off his blood-splattered clothes and tied them into a bundle, which he weighed down with some rocks, and then threw into the lake. He washed any remaining blood off his face and hands, and then pulled clean clothes out of his backpack and put them on.
He pulled his backpack up onto his shoulders, and, through the dappled light dancing through the loblollies and sweetgums and hickories and maples, he walked out of the park and back to the main highway.
4.
Claude was sitting at his desk in the real estate office on Sunday afternoon. He had grown increasingly agitated, as each of his attempts to contact Thaddeus and Alastair had failed. He selected Thaddeus’s number on his phone one more time, only to hear it go immediately to voicemail once again.
He got up and began to pace the floor. As he did so the door to the office flew open like a hurricane had blown up from the coast. Claude backed towards his desk, hoping to reach the drawer that held his gun. Ambrose, the cause of the hurricane, yelled “Don’t even think about it!” while pointing a pistol at Claude.
Claude sat down in his chair and waited. When Ambrose spoke again, he said, “You killed my daddy?”
“Son, sit down.”
“Why I wanna sit down? Instead, why I don’t just shoot you?” Ambrose waved his pistol around for emphasis.
“Son, sit down,” Claude repeated, more firmly this time. “What happened ain’t what you think happened.” He held out his hand to indicate where Ambrose might sit, should he choose not to shoot him.
Reluctantly, Ambrose sat down, but still kept his pistol pointed at Claude. “So tell me what really happened.”
Claude reclined his chair back. His hands were folded together over his rotund stomach, and he rhythmically tapped his index fingers together. He sat like this for some dozen seconds before speaking.
“It weren’t me son. Hampton done it.”
“So why I’m hearing it was you?”
“We didn’t want no family scandal. The police was likely to conclude that, given how yo’ daddy was objectin’ to Hampton bein’ with your sister, he done killed him on purpose.”
“And so you just gonna let him get away with it?”
“No son, pas du tout.”
“Paw do too? What the hell that supposed to mean?”
“It means ‘Not at all.’ Hampton was a growin’ danger to us all. The boy was completely out of control. But I thought it best we jes kept it within the family, and take care of things private like. I got a couple of my boys takin’ him for a ride this mornin’. Lemme just say he won’t be troublin’ us no more.”
Ambrose lowered his pistol at Claude, and then let it drop onto his lap. “Aright then, so long as you takin’ care of it, I guess we straight. Otherwise idda hadda go after him myself.”
Claude rose from his seat, and held out his hand to Ambrose. Ambrose got up as well, and took Claude’s hand and shook it, saying “I do appreciate you settin’ things right.”
Claude said, “I always try to do right by my people. I think you better go see to your sister, ’cause she probably need you right about now.”
Ambrose nodded, released Claude’s hand, turned, and left the office.
5.
Once Hampton had walked out of the forest, he began hitchhiking, towards Columbia. His final ride was from a fellow delivering a fiddle to Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor in West Columbia, and since that was only a few blocks from his destination, he walked from there across the Gervais Street bridge into Columbia itself.
After he crossed the bridge, he took out his cell phone and called Hiram. After a couple of rings, Hiram picked up, and said, “Hampton, what up?”
“I really need your help. I’m in some deep shit. Where you at?”
“At my apartment. Where are you?”
“I’m on Gervais Street. At the corner with Huger.”
“You in Columbia?”
“Yeah, I jes got here.”
“I’m in Five Points, pretty close to where you at. You walk away from the river up Gervais until you get to Harden. I’ll meet you at the corner there.”
Hampton did as he was instructed, and found Hiram waiting for him as planned. They hugged in greeting, then Hiram asked him, “What’s goin’ on?”
“Well, I killed a handful of people of late.”
“You done what?”
“The first one was kinda an accident. I thought I was killin’ Claude, which woulda been fine, but instead, it was Winthrop.”
“So how the hell you mistake a skinny ole black man for a fat white man?”
“It was dark, and he was creepin’ through the window at Gertie’s house. I thought it was Claude comin’ to spy on me and I figure this is my chance: I could revenge my daddy and say I believed I was jes killin’ an intruder.”
“Let’s walk down to my place, and you can tell me who else you done killed on the way.”
They turned south on Harden and headed towards Five Points.
Hampton continued his tale: “Claude come over, and told me he would take the rap for the shootin’, and I had to get out of town. And all out of the kindness of his heart, cause he afraid the cops would think I shot Winthrop on purpose.”
Hiram shook his head. “Claude don’t do nothin’ out the kindness of his heart, cause his heart ain’t got no kindness.”
“My thinkin’ exactly.”
“So why he do it then?”
“He tells me he’s gonna have Thad and Al bring me up to Clemson. To be on the safe side, before they pick me up in the mornin’, I made sure to stash a pistol in my backpack. Well, when they come to get me, they’s all shifty and what not. Can’t look their brother in the eye. So it obvious to me Claude asked them to get rid of me.”
“Didn’t Claude or Thad or Al think you might figure out their plan?”
“I been acting all crazy, so they probably thought I’s too out of it to guess what they was up to.”
“My friend, you do realize you killed three people in the last two days? A lot of folk would regard that as a little bit crazy.”
“Well, as I mentioned, one was kinda an accident, and two was self-defense.”
“Look, I ain’t putting you on trial. Jes pointin’ out some inconvenient facts, should somebody else put you on trial.”
They had reached the corner of Harden and College Street. Hiram pointed ahead, and said, “See that wall with the giant painting of Bob Marley having a starin’ contest with a lion on it? My apartment is just past that.”
They walked for a moment in silence, and then Hiram asked, “So what you gonna do?”
“Can I lay low at your place for a couple of days?”
“Sure. Then what?”
“Maybe Wednesday afternoon, you can bring me back down to Denmark?”
“And then you kill a few more folk?”
“No, I just wanna confront Claude at the fellowship dinner, in front of the whole congregation, and get him to admit he killed my daddy. At least I can save my mama from marryin’ him. Then, I don’t care what’s gonna happen to me.”
Hiram felt silent until they reached the door to his building. He unlocked it, and then turn to Hampton and said, “I gonna do what I can to help you, but I wonder if you really thought this through?”
Hampton replied, “Yeah, I wonder the exact same thing.”
6.
Ambrose was in Elsie’s, drinking with his friends Homer and Isaiah. His anger and his desire to avenge his father’s death had dissipated when Claude assured him that Hampton was already dead. So now he drank to stop feeling the sorrow of his loss.
And the drinking was working, until Camellia entered the bar. He had never seen his sister out in public looking anything but her best: made up, her braided hair all in place, her clothes, not always expensive, but at least attractive and stylish.
But she now looked like the sibling he knew had been through a decade of dissipation. Her hair was a mess, her eyes glassy, and she wore an unevenly buttoned jacket, covering a stained T-shirt, and some slovenly sweatpants. As she entered the bar she carried with her an herbal penumbra of skunk weed.
There were only a dozen or so patrons in the bar, but every one of them stopped what they were doing and stared at her. Agnes came out from behind the bar and put her hands on Camellia’s shoulders. “Honey, you don’t look so good. Why you don’t come sit down in the corner?”
Camilla pushed her away and staggered up to the bar. “I think I need a whiskey.”
Ambrose got up from his table and walked over to where his sister stood. “Hey sis, what up?”
Camellia, realizing for the first time that Ambrose was in the bar, said “Bro… What you doin’ here? Ain’t you supposed to be in Louisiana?”
“I flew home as soon as I heard what happened to daddy.”
“Daddy! Daddy!” she said, throwing her hands up over her head. She began singing while performing a half-hearted dance.
“Papa was a rollin’ stone
He got shot not far from home
And when he died
All I needed was a bone”
“Camellia, I all broke up that daddy gone too. But you ain’t right. You oughta go home and sleep it off.”
Camellia again launched into song.
“I’m comin’ home
I’m comin’ home
Tell the world
I’m comin’ home
Let the rain wash away
All the pains of yesterday”
Ambrose put his arm around her shoulder. “Sis, don’t home sound like a great idea? I get someone to give you a ride, and you can go get some rest.”
“Hey Ambrose, now that daddy gone, you like Patches, ain’t you?”
She pulled away from her brother, and, pretending she had a microphone, sang, with exaggerated pathos:
“Patches I’m depending on you son
To pull the family through
I’m sorry son
It’s left up to you”
“Yeah, you puttin’ on a great show, sis. What would daddy say if he could see you now?”
“He can’t see me now, can he? You know why? Cause he dead, and he can’t see nothin’.”
Now Camellia began rapping:
“Every step I take
Every move I make
Every single day, every time I pray I’ll be missing you
Thinkin’ of the day
When you went away
What a life to take,
what a bond to break
I’ll be missing you”
When she finished, she turned and ran out of the bar. Ambrose began to follow her, but Homer got up from his seat and cut him off. “Ambrose, just let her go. She grievin’ in her own way. She get over it soon enough.”
So Ambrose stayed at the bar with his friends for another couple of hours, and then he walked back to his father’s house on Cypress Avenue and went to sleep. When he awoke, the sun was already high in the sky. He washed his face in the bathroom, and changed into fresh clothes. He decided to he had better go check up on his sister, and so he left the house and walked to her apartment on Carolina Highway.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked on her door, and knocked again. Then he tried the door handle, and found it was unlocked.
Upon entering, he immediately felt sick from the foul smell of the air, which reeked of weed, and tobacco, and vomit, and decay. He passed through the living room and into the bedroom. There he found his sister’s body stretched out on her bed. Without even checking for a pulse, he knew that she was gone. He fell to his knees, sobbing.
After a few minutes, he got up, and looked around the room. On the floor was a half-empty bottle of whiskey. The nightstand beside her bed held several lines of white powder, and an ashtray containing half a dozen cigarette butts and a couple of roaches.
On autopilot, he took his phone out of his pocket, dialled 911, and said, “I gotta report a death.”
Then he slumped back down to the floor, and buried his head in his arms, and resumed sobbing.