The Old Mom

A STRANGE TALL TALE FROM 1925
THE OLD MOM
(c) Copyrighted 1997 by Franchot Lewis

"What do you know about shine?" I asked him.

"You asking me?" he grinned.

He was up. He was almost, completely healed. He looked nearly like he'd never been hurt. There were no more marks on his face and only one last bruise on his back. His bones mended fine, as far as I could tell. He got a little weak when he stood for too long. I thanked mercy for his progress, and felt good that the years I spent studying healing and herbs were paying off good time.

"Yeh, I ought to know as much as anyone does," he said, grinning, easy.

"You? More than me?" I shook my head, pretended to spit.

"Old mum ... " he said, grinning, like a baby kitten.

I liked when he called me 'Old Mum', the sound of it warmed, and made my heart shine. I'd been living right out, smack in the middle of a weed swamp and had gone for years and years without family or proper company.

"I've drank shine all my life, " the boy boasted. "I have drank more than a hundred men have, and more than a thousand old mums. "

"Liar!" I said it like I meant it, then I laughed like I didn't.

From what I'd seen of him, he was a sober, levelheaded boy. I took him for not having anything stronger pass his lips than his mama's milk. I told him so and he took my laughing as a challenge.

Well, he drank a jug, like I told him, I'd never seen. He downed a whole jug of shine in one minute. In all of my experience I'd never seen even water drank like that. I told him that he was something, more than some thing. I'd seen men gulp down my shine, but if they took more than a couple of mouthfuls at a time, they lost their legs and couldn't stand. My shine did a lot of fighting going down and it took a tough person with iron insides to take my shine like it was water.

I told him, "You ain't no boy drinking like that, I got to call you a man."

He liked that, he grinned and laughed.

We sat back in the chair in my house and talked. As I listened to him talk, I began to feel downright bitterness toward the people who put him in the condition he was in when I found him on the road half dead and dying. No bitterness was in him. He never showed any bitterness toward them and never spoke of any. He never spoke of how he was beaten and left for dead. To my mind, he never spoke about the incident at all. I wondered how he could have kept that in him. He was such a sweet boy that he was a man. He kept the bitterness away from him. I learned from him.

Colored people like him and me were always getting all the hard knocks. Young boys like him got it the worse. I'd seen the bitterness in my brother before he died. Bitterness piled up on top of bitterness, until it had to bust out. My brother died as bitter as hell. You know I knew how this boy came about being beaten. When you're colored, you don't have to spin your head around or even to ask, whites will tell you. They're glad to tell you about something like this. A black boy, they said, attacked a white girl and the mob got him, beat him to death in a roadhouse parking lot, and started to attack all the black boys that they seen nearby, until the sheriff showed and sent the mob home.

"Old mum?"

The boy, who I had stopped calling boy and now called man, asked me why did my face have such a horrible old frown. I told him that I was thinking about my brother who was dead. "You remind me of him," I said.

"How do I remind you of your brother, old mum?"

"You drank like him, though it would have taken him a whole hour to finish off a jug, and a day and a night to recover."

"Don't stare at me like that, I am not going to pass out. I am perfectly sober, old mum, " he told me.

I did stare a little too hard at him. I didn't want him to end up like my brother. There was nothing around me for him but a busted life. No real joy, no how. I wanted him to take what cash I had and get, and get as far as he could get. And I didn't want him to get, but I just knew he would get, that he would spend a couple more days with me and be gone. I smiled at him, I laughed with him until all of my insides were sore.

##

This white boy who has been coming around buying my shine to sell to the white folks in town laughed when he saw me. "Mammy, what you done to yourself?" I met him at the shack, where I kept my still, and I kept him away from the house. He gave me a funny look that had a whole mess of bird-do in it. He said, "You got a new dress on?"

I can remember this boy saying a whole lot of truck to me. A couple of times a month I spoke rough to him. I wasn't upset with him. I was feeling better than I had in a while, but I put this glazier look in my eyes to see what he might say. I spoke short to him. "This is an old dress," I told him.

"I never seen you wear it, " he said, taking no mind of my tone. I guess he thought that I was a hundred and twenty five year old colored woman, and there was no reason to hang a sign on anything that rushed out of my mouth.

I wasn't that old. I wasn't mad with him either. I was just trying to get his goat. "You are a young boy," I told him. "There are a lot of things you haven't seen me wear, that I wore before you were born."

He laughed. He really was a friendly white boy. "This shack, what have you done to it? Introduced it to a broom?"

I said to him, "Are you here for moonshine or to cut up the monkey shine?"

He really bust out laughing. "Mammy, you're a riot," he said. Then he started to look around the shack.

He went out side and looked around, and came back before a minute passed. "I just noticed something, the weeds been hacked down a little." His face got serious. "You ain't sick are you?"

I told him no.

"You getting yourself all spruced up and the place all spruced up, don't you go dying on me now."

"I am fit," I said

"I'm been coming here for years and --"

"You're afraid that you couldn't get no shine cheaper, if I were to hop on the other side and leave your customers dry?"

"Don't get me wrong, " he said. "I don't mean anything, but you're tidying up around here a little like you're getting ready for your funeral." He said, "I hope not."

This white boy was the first person who told me about what happened to the boy whom he thought was killed, and of what happened to the colored boys nearby by, well, the ones for miles around the roadhouse who got beaten up. The day after I found the boy, whom I nursed back to health, this white boy came by for his regular order of shine. I asked him about the disturbing news from town, which I then had only heard snippets of, and he said, "Mammy, it wasn't right that they beat the hell out of the coloreds who got in wrong's way, but dammit, it does make you sore as holy hell when a lady is threatened."

When I asked him what lady was threatened, he snapped, "Mammy, that is done with, and none of our business. Our business is shine. You get it to me, I get it to our customers." I dropped the conversation, and I rushed him out of the shack, and off my property that day. I didn't let him so much as to touch a drop of sample. He saw how hot I was and left. Usually, when he left, I would wish him a safe trip back to town. Instead of wishing him that, I told him to hurry his damn arse off my property.

Now he told me about the other news.

After he sat down, sampled a little of the product for quality sake, he started: "There've been plenty surprises in town lately," he said. "Bodies disappearing, churches being burned down. Began right after that horn player got killed."

The boy stomped to near death at the roadhouse was a horn player.

I said, "Maybe the horn player's ghost is seeking revenge."

"Sure, for starters, somebody swiped the horn player's body," he said, and he stared sly at me. "I guess he must have been one of your kin?"

"Why would you say that?" I asked him.

"Hell, everybody knows that your family holds the ghost monopoly around here. Hell, I'm surprised that the sheriff haven't come here looking for that body."

"Me stealing the body of a dead boy I don't know!" I shouted my outrage, continued, "Steal his wallet, not his body!" I huffed. "Maybe that boy's body got up on its own. If I see a dead body traipsing down the road, I'll be sure to give you a holler."

"Don't sweat it, mammy. The town don't care about a dead colored boy, it's the disappearance of the body of that priest, that was murdered, that has everybody all fired up."

"He was white?"

"When have you ever heard of a colored priest?"

I said, "If I sees a dead white priest body, I'll walk in town and fetch the sheriff, and I'll let you know too."

"Mammy, I wouldn't come to town too much," he said.

"Why not?"

"Church windows are been busted to hell every night, fires are being set in some of them. You don't get in town often. A lot of folks wouldn't recognize you, especially now that you're sprucing up. People are shooting at folks they don't know. Shots were fired at me. I was taking a delivery on a street that has three churches in one block, and I just missed seeing Jesus."

"What do you mean you just missed seeing Jesus?" I asked him to mess with him. I understood his meaning.

"A bullet swiped passed my ears," he said.

"And you imagined a chariot swinging down on that street with three churches? Humph!" I laughed. I asked him, "Do you think the sweet chariot is going to take somebody found on that street? You might as well as to throw yourself in a fire, because nothing but Hell and a whole mess of brimstone comes to a three church street. Three churches? Ha!"

You should have seen his eyes. He got them so big. I thought he was going to bust an eye-ball. Then, I stopped laughing, for he gave me a look that folks use on an enemy. I told him to stop looking so hard before his eyes pop out.

"You don't know nothing about those church burnings?" he asked.

I answered him, "Is this the white boy I've known for a hellva long time, sitting on my stool, drinking free shine? Has he porked his head? Has his brain turned to hog chitterlings?"

He stood, said, "Been sitting too long."

"Sure have, " I said, "On your brain."

"Sure," he said, staring hard at me.

I told him not to look at me like that, and I said, "To speak to what's porked you: I don't understand how anybody can burn down a church, doing such a thing is evil."

He blurted out, "But, folks think you're a witch!"

"A witch!" Sure enough, I screamed at him. "In what way am I a witch! I am a God fearing Christian woman!"

He smiled, picked-up two of my sample jugs under his arm and carried two more in his hands. I said to him, "Where are you taking all of my free samples?"

He grinned like he was chowing on a plate of pork chops, said, "Mammy, I love you."

##

The next morning, before daylight, the sheriff was banging on my back door.

"Tilly!"

I was about to be up anyway, so my head cleared in a minute. I jumped up and ran to the room, where the boy I was nursing slept, my brother's old room. I shook him awake.

"Get up, the sheriff's here. Go to the cellar. I'll see what he wants."

The boy was a light sleeper. He understood and quietly got up and went to the cellar to wait.

I let the sheriff into the kitchen. He was tired, very tired, and nothing like his fit self. He looked like he'd been sick. His body sagged, his shoulders drooped, his fingers shook nervously. I asked him, "What's happened to you?"

He said, "The flu."

I told him his missus should have him home in bed.

He looked at me, spoke wearily, like a man with little strength left, he said, "Can't," and he sat at the kitchen table.

I asked him if he wanted something to drink. He simply nodded.

"What?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Shine?"

He smiled slowly.

I got a jug, poured him a glass, left the jug on the table.

After taking a sip, he began, "How are you, Miss. Tilly?"

"Humph," I said.

"How are they treating you?"

"Humph," I said.

"They're treating me like hell." He coughed.

"You shouldn't be out. It is way too damp."

"Folks don't give a damn if I die, that's why I won't stay in a sick bed." He glanced at me, took his eyes off the jug for a second, and said, "They treat you all right? You look fine."

"Do I look fine, Sheriff?"

He smiled again, looking so weary, the smile was short. "They are going to take my job away, if I don't stop these outrages," he said.

I said, "They're fools. They would be losing a good sheriff."

He nodded, said, "What do you have to tell me, Tilly?"

"Huh?"

"You sent for me."

"No."

"Tilly, I saw you in my bedroom this morning, you, hagfish, old woman, looking as scary as Hell."

"I haven't left my place, Sheriff."

"You woke me up, screeching at me. I come out here to see what you want."

"You had a bad dream."

"You give me goose bumps and worse. I'm sure glad that you didn't wake my wife. When you do those things, it's hard for me to get back to sleep."

"Do what things? You talk like a man's who is out of his head with fever."

"You helped me in the past, why won't you help me now?" he said and looked at me very bitter.

I said, "What got into you, man?"

He said, "I know what you are, Miss. Tilly. I'm not faulting you. You are a good woman. I wouldn't still be sheriff, if it wasn't for you. You helped me solve the Bunter case. I am grateful for that. I need you to help now."

"The Bunter case, yes. That was obvious. I got around then, but now I spend all of my time here. I don't even know what goes on in town."

"You know about the outrages?"

"The church burnings?"

"Yes."

"All I know if what I heard from the few who come here."

"Cut it out, Miss. Tilly. I know you've got the power."

"Power, me? I tell you this. If I was to have any power, in the first place, I wouldn't be living in this dump, and in the first place, no body would have started burning down churches. I am no witch, good witch or what have you."

"You came to me this morning," he pointed his finger at me.

"If you ever want to enjoy any more of my hospitality, you will get your finger out of my face."

"You are going to help me," he said, still pointing his shaking finger.

"You better get that finger out of my face. I tells you as I am a lady, I will bar you from my table and my shine."

The sheriff lowered his finger, laid his hand flat on the table.

I said, "And it's no fun to be thought of as a witch either."

"But I know you can help me," he said.

I said, "I'll help you any way I can, but don't you go expecting too much, but first you better help yourself some. You better get some rest."

He said that he didn't have any time for rest. I told him to rest himself while I got dressed. A lady talking to the sheriff in her night clothes and a robe wasn't proper. I bathed and dressed and I sneaked down to the cellar to tell the boy who I was doctoring what was going on.

##

So I went to town with the sheriff. I wore a dress I hadn't worn for years. It was the dress I wore the last time I went to church. The sheriff coughed the whole way to town. I told him that if I caught what he had and died, I would come back and haunt him.

He said, "Miss. Tilly, you haunt me now."

We pulled up to the sheriff office. He got out the car, and before I could start out, he told me to be still, and he went around and opened the door for me.

"I open the door for ladies. You're a lady, Miss Tilly. "

I told him that sounded better than him calling me a witch.

The sheriff didn't get to comment on this, because just then he got accosted by three newspaper reporters, one of whom almost stuck a note book in the sheriff's face. I did not know he disliked reporters. He grabbed that reporter's note book, ripped it out of the man's hand and called him a son of a bitch. I could see that all three reporters wanted to ask him questions, but they saw how red the sheriff's eyes were.

One of the reporters said, "He's not talking to us this morning. We bests leave him be."

So he and the two others did.

The sheriff took me on into the station. But before we were half-way out of ear-shot of the reporters, he said, "Darn them dirty reporters, always printing lies about how I do my job."

I spent the day looking at pictures of the church fires and sitting in the sheriff's office, and in the back of his car listening, while he talked to people. He employed me to tell him the impressions I received, as he talked to people and went over the evidence. No body seemed to mind my presence, while I worked with the sheriff. But more people got the idea that I am a witch. I am not. If I were I would have long ago used the power to make the world better. For instant, I would have stopped white people from giving colored people so much hell.

When the evening came, the sheriff showed no sign of slowing down. I hinted twice that I wanted to go home to tend to a bit of business. He ignored these hints completely. I told him that he looked more tired than me, and I knew I had to take a rest. But I knew there was no time to rest. Really.

The sheriff got a call that another church had been busted into and set on fire.

When we arrived there, the church was blazing. Men and boys and women, and the volunteer firemen were fighting the fire. Every body was upset.

Someone yelled out at the sheriff, "He ain't no better than the dog who sets the fires!"

The sheriff bristled. He looked in the crowd for the man who yelled.

The man showed himself, he looked right at the sheriff, yelled, "You ain't getting no closer, are you, Sheriff?"

The sheriff mumbled a curse. Because there were women and children present, he kept his anger low to a mumble.

The man continued to taunt, "You been greasing in the gravy too long, folks need a real sheriff."

The sheriff looked like he was ready to go busting through the crowd to bust up on the man's head.

"Why don't you shut your mouth?" the sheriff finally yelled back.

The man was quick to answer, "Don't you take your frustrations out on me!"

"You are yelling at me, boy!" the sheriff said.

"You're the sheriff, you better expect people to yell at you!"

"You want my job, boy? I know you? One of Sam Flowers' little boys? Sam Flowers is not the big boss here. You are interfering with my time. This is an arson investigation, not a political meeting. Why don't you help these people save this church and keep your mouth shut?"

"There is an election in five months," the man taunted. "and after that you're going to be turned out in street like an old dog, and you are going to starve to death."

"Yeah," the sheriff said. That was all he said. He looked like he wanted to knock the man out.

The crowd sure didn't reassure the sheriff none. People were there to either help fight the fire or to watch the church burn. No body was there for him. No body spoke up for him, even his own deputies didn't look sympathetic.

Within an hour the fire was out. Most of the building was saved. The church burned down half-way in the front. The rear and the foundations suffered only smoke damage. An hour more and the building cooled enough for the fire chief to allow the sheriff to take me inside for my impressions. As I looked around, the deacon, who was on duty watching the church before the fire started, repeated to the sheriff what he'd already told the three deputies, that he saw a guy, with a hateful look in his eyes, yelling as he set the fire.

The deacon said, he heard a noise in the sanctuary and he went to investigate, with his gun out and ready. He said that he saw one of the windows move, like someone was forcing it open. He said, he at first just kept his hand on his gun, and because the window was so high up, he didn't see how a man could be up there without a crane. He waited until the window was pushed out, and he saw a man push his head through the hole, then he let loose. The deacon paused. The deacon was badly shaken and upset, like everybody was, but when he tried to continue, his shaking got out of hand. The sheriff asked him to stop and compose himself.

The sheriff waited a full two minutes before he asked the deacon to try again. The deacon spoke slowly, his voice trembling. "The guy started yelling," he said.

The sheriff asked, "What did he say?"

"No proper words to say in a church."

"What did he say?"

"I can't repeat the profanity here."

"I want you to come to the station and write down what he said."

"Yes, Sheriff."

The sheriff continued questioning the deacon. "You said you shot at him?"

"I shot him. If he wasn't the devil, I would have shot him dead. I got four shots off right in him. The thing is that he is from hell."

The deacon looked at me. If I wasn't employed by the sheriff, I think that deacon would have taken a shot at me too.

I returned a look that got almost as ugly as his. Only because I was in a church, I didn't take my hand and slap him, and knock him down to the floor. I told the sheriff, that I'd seen and heard all I needed to see, and I would wait for him outside. The sheriff said nothing, just went on asking the deacon questions. As I left, I heard the sheriff ask the deacon for a description of the man and the deacon answered, "The devil can fly."

I waited a full hour for the sheriff. If my feet weren't so tired, I would have left and walked back to my place. The first thing the sheriff said, when he got in the car, was, "Now, you see why I need you?"

I answered, "No."

He said, "You haven't cooled off a bit? Certainly you spook them, but they're glad I've got you helping me too. You are going to save my job."

"Your job?" I looked at him like my head was in a fit of puzzlement.

"My job! Or do you want Boss Flowers running the county completely?"

I didn't say anything to this. He said, "We're going to catch this nut, whether he flies in the air or not."

I said, "The deacon was drunk."

##

The Sheriff got me home a few hours before dawn. I walked from his car into my house, hobbling on my sore feet. My feet felt like my soles had been beaten with a stick. My legs hurt too. Just as I got inside and shut the door, I was met with a warm smile and the most pleasant face. The boy / rather man who I'd nursed back to health held a bucket of warm water and a cup of tea.

"For you, old mum," he said. "Come, soak your tired feet and drink this relaxing herb tea."

I hobbled up to him and hugged him. I almost knocked the tea cup out of his hand. He didn't mind. He set down the bucket and the cup, and he hugged me back.

##

The sheriff didn't return until late in the afternoon. He stayed in the car and honked his horn.

"Miss. Tilly! Hello, Tilly!"

He looked like a changed man, no sign of the flu was on him. He sat in his seat, confident, looked like his old self. He saw me and grinned. I'd expected him around nine or ten, he'd kept me waiting, despite this, when I saw him grinning, I grinned back.

"Sheriff, you're late, but I see you took my advice about resting."

"I'm sorry about being late," he said. He was all affability, but he made no move to get out of the car, to open the door for me. He motioned me to get in the car.

After I had, I said, not in an unpleasant way, "I guess I'm not a lady now?"

He looked frankly surprised, then he took a sheaf of papers and dropped them in my lap. He jabbed a finger at the papers and asked bluntly, "You did pray this morning?"

"Yes!"

"Lordy, don't bite my head off. I better rephrase the question."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I mean is, I have in my jail one very badly ill man, or I've spent the day talking to the devil."

"So you have the man who's been going about burning down folks churches?"

"Hell, I got him, Miss. Tilly!" he said evidently pleased. "That confession is enough to hang him two times over."

"If he is the one, it's enough to help you hang on to your job for another two terms," I said.

"Don't let that bother you, Miss. Tilly."

"It pleases me, Sheriff."

The sheriff's mood was such that when we pulled up in front of the station, this time, he looked amused. When one of the reporters, waiting on the curb, almost bumped him with a note pad, he spoke a little mild profanity, asked the reporter, if he knew the Hell where he was going.

The reporter apologized and asked about the suspect locked up in the jail. "Are you going to charge him with arson?" the reporter asked.

"Yes, sir, " the sheriff said to the reporter smiling, while leading me into the station.

The reporters wanted more information. The sheriff said, "Boys, I've said all I'm going to say right now."

The reporters complained, said that they needed more information.

The sheriff said, "The accused has a right to a fair trial. I'm not going to say anything to prejudiced the public against him."

The reporters said that the sheriff had a duty to give them more information and that withholding information from them was stupid and foolish.

The sheriff answered, "If you say so. I won't let it bother me none."

Once inside his office it was clear that the reporters bothered him a lot. They didn't take away his cheerfulness totally, but for a few minutes there, you had to look at him closely to detect any.

"I really am not so awful mean," he said. "Not like I let on. Of course I don't go around kissing babies, and I'm not willing to say what people expect. I'm bound to the law. I am no worse on the coloreds than the whites," he said. I didn't see how this related to his fight with the reporters. Maybe he mentioned that because he was talking to me and trying to hold my sympathy. "You see . . ." he said and broke off. He looked at me, then shook his head. "I'm too big a man to be beaten down by small boys," he said.

##

We went to the back of the jail to the prisoners cells to see the "fire-nut" prisoner, and I was shocked by what I saw. The "fire- nut" was on the floor, bruised and bleeding. He looked like he'd been kicked. He was mumbling and blood dripped from his mouth.

The sheriff called the deputy, who was a no-good fellow name Stone, who was known for beating prisoners.

The first thing out of Stone's mouth was, "Sheriff, see what I meant, he bust up his own head like he wants to end his life."

I knew Stone to be a mean deputy who ought to be in jail himself. I said nothing.

The sheriff growled at Stone, "When he turned himself in, I promised him that he wouldn't be hurt."

Stone laughed.

The sheriff growled again, "Stone!"

"I went along with what you said, Sheriff. Nobody bothered him, but when I got him back here to, to the cell, he hit his head on the bars, and when I helped him in, he butted his head on the wall."

"Helped the prisoner in the cell? Shoved him in! Went along with me?" the sheriff growled. "You think you're hot-shot? You think, Boss Flowers boy is going to take over and step you up some, that real soon you'll be the prick in charge? It won't happen."

"He's a goddamn piece of crud, but I didn't touch him. I swear!" Stone shouted at the sheriff.

"And you are a white, lying nigger!" the sheriff screamed.

He'd forgotten himself, forgotten that I was present. I saw a cold fury in his eyes. Deputy Stone glared, like he wanted to throw a punch.

"Damn you, Sheriff! Damn you! Nobody talks to me like that!"

"Like what, you, son of a bitch! I ought to put you in a cage just like his! Hand over your badge!"

"You'll be handing over yours soon," Stone said. And the sheriff smacked him in the face with his fist balled up hard. Stone drew his gun and said he was going to shoot the sheriff. He held the gun on the sheriff like he was going to, and the sheriff showed no fear. He cussed Stone out like he didn't care if Stone shot him. They both were so mad that neither seemed to care what happened next. Then, I shouted at both of them.

"This 'fire-nut' is affecting you in ways you don't know!"

I don't know why I put my words just that way. Anyway they both stopped and turned to me. Stone dropped the gun and started shaking.

"Miss, Mammy Tilly, what's happening to me?" He was scared, like he was fighting to control his own mind.

The sheriff looked like he had no explanation for what he'd just done, and it was necessary for him to find one.

The prisoner began to mumble and to bleed more blood from his mouth. He still lay with his head on the floor. He started mumbling louder.

"Father? I heard you say, you have begotten me. But you have forgotten me. Father, I am thou Son. I am thou priest forever."

The sheriff asked me, "What is he saying?"

I don't know," I said.

"This is weird," Deputy Stone mumbled.

The prisoner sat up on the floor. He was a sickly looking man with very pale skin. He stared at me.

The sheriff said, "What kind of man is he?"

The sheriff had told me, that church deacon identified the prisoner as the arsonist.

I asked, "Can he fly?"

Deputy Stone seemed to take my question to heart. It scared him and he left, still shaking. He left mostly on his feet. He was crawling almost as much as walking.

"I am brother to Christ. Brother to Francis of Assisi ..." the 'fire-nut' spoke in a weak voice: "A priest loves God and man. A priest is holy because he walks in the name of the most holy. It is out of love that I burn away the false temples. My heart is a vessel of love. I am like Christ crucified, determined to save the world from false gods. I am the gift of God to man. I am the Word of God made Flesh. The sword of God. I am brother to Christ."

"You burn churches, you're the devil," I told him.

The 'fire-nut' continued mumbling, not talking to anybody in particular.

"I can say a prayer over a piece of bread and transform the bread into the Body of God. I am blessed." He lifted his hands. "How pure and how clean are these hands! The burning of an unclean church is a holy sacrament. I offer up the Holy Mass. I am the priest of God."

"You're the devil," I told him again.

That's when he stood up and addressed himself to me by cussing me out. When he called me a goddamn black bitch, the sheriff told him to sit down and shut up. He laughed a crazy laugh and started talking more like a mad man than ever. He said that he came that morning to confess, but he had doubts about whether we were worthy to hear his confession, so he spent the afternoon in prayer, deciding if mankind was fit to judge him. Well, said he'd decided -- "Mankind is lacking, and I shall take my leave of you worthless, stinking balls of flesh this evening."

The sheriff told him to be still, a doctor would come shortly and examine him. He said, no man was pure enough to examine him. I told the sheriff that I thought he had his man and I wanted a ride home.

##

I unmistakably thought that 'fire-nut' was a man who deserved to be hanged. He showed no remorse for his terrible deeds. In fact, he was so wicked that he tried to justify his evil. The man deserved to be hanged, but not lynched, and lynched is what he nearly was. Lynching is a shameful crime.

I was leaving, when I was stopped by a vision that almost knocked me down on the spot. I saw a great number of turkey buzzards flying around over the town. The sheriff had to grabbed my arm to keep me from falling. He led me to the front of the station, and all of a sudden we heard the noise outside. The chief deputy-on-duty told the sheriff that a mob had formed in the street. The whole community wanted the prisoner.

"Well, they can't have him," the sheriff said. "You wait here, Miss. Tilly," he said to me. "I'll send these boys home in a minute."

The sheriff went outside with four or five deputies. The mob numbered well over five thousand men and boys.

As soon as the sheriff stepped out the door, somebody was yelling, "Give us that fiend! Give us that fiend! We'll string him up!"

The sheriff yelled back inside the station, "Lock the door!"

I was the only person left inside other than the prisoners locked-up in the back, in the cells. I was by the window, I ran from there and turned the lock on the door.

"You stubborn bastard," I heard a man say, "We'll fix you."

The sheriff said, "You'll have to wait until election day. For now I am the sheriff, and I am doing nothing but my job, when I defend this jail and my prisoners. The man is locked in my jail. I have evidence that will prove his guilt to a judge and jury. He will pay for all that he's done. But if anybody violates my jail to lay a hand on my prisoner, that person is going to be shot on the spot."

The mob had some of the men in it whom hoped to replace the sheriff and his deputies, and some men whom normally were among the sheriff's strongest supporters. The men who were the sheriff's friends also demanded the prisoner. The sheriff, with his deputies standing with him, with their rifles at the ready, warned again that he would meet force with force. The leader of the mob said, "Sheriff, I respect you, most of us here do, and nearly most like you, but we aren't leaving without that damn fiend. There is five thousand of us, some of us might get killed, but all of you will get killed."

Then I heard Stone behind me, him and five other men. Stone had let them in the back way. They had the prisoner. He was handcuffed, with his hands behind his back. They were dragging him. He looked so pitiful and weak, and was begging to be allowed to finish his prayers.

I screamed to warn the sheriff of the dirty double dealings of Deputy Stone. Deputy Stone grabbed me. He was a man, was bigger and a world younger than me, but I was seeing red, and I never paid a rat's attention to my age or to his size. I just hit him. I went a little crazy. I never liked Stone. I knew how much dirt he had done. I flat out and hit him. I didn't know my own strength. I think my fury added to my power. I hit him so hard that I surprised him. He was a little off his peak anyway. He'd been shaken by the encounter in the cell area with the sheriff. I hit him, beat him to the floor with my fists. The other men grabbed me and pulled me off the deputy. I was screaming. I knew the sheriff had his hands full and couldn't come to see what the trouble was, but I knew, he knew there was trouble behind him. The white men didn't know what to make of me. Here I was an old colored woman, who fought a white man to the floor, a white man who was a deputy sheriff, and who carried a very bad reputation for being a terror with his fists and a night stick. When Stone got to his feet, he had an idea what to do with me. He told the white men with him to " kill that black bitch." I think that was what he figured to do, for when he came at me again, he had out his night stick. The other men blocked him. He forgot himself for about a minute, because he started fighting the men, who were keeping him off me, then he stopped, because he saw the prisoner grin. He told the other men, that he was all right. He apologized to me and said, "Miss Tilly, now don't you see? We've got to kill him, now. We can't wait."

The prisoner said, "Nobody have died in any of the fires. I have only burned churches --"

"Only burned churches?! He burned churches! He's outraged people!" Stone shouted.

"I do not deserve lynching, not even a legal death, I need treatment in a mental health facility." The prisoner begged for mercy.

The men laughed at him. Stone unlocked the door and threw the prisoner out. The sheriff found that he had the mob in front of him and members of the mob with guns pointed at his back. The mob on the street let out a yell when they saw the prisoner. The sheriff and three of his loyal deputies formed a ring around the prisoner. The other deputies lost themselves in the mob.

The leader of the mob tried once more to get the sheriff to give in. He told the sheriff, the protection around the fiend wasn't much, and he figured it wouldn't be long before they had the fiend, and they would have him, even if they had to shoot the sheriff and every one of his remaining deputies.

The sheriff answered, "You are not getting my prisoner."

The leader of the mob said, "We are the community and the community is ---"

At that exact moment a whole series of strange things began. The prisoner completed the mob leader's sentence, "-- is the Voice of Heaven!" The prisoner spoke in a loud, strong voice. He stood up straight, looked strong. He was red face and red eyed, with the most hateful look. He shouted, "No more cowering to fools!" He changed completely. His tone frightened some of the men. It was getting late, the afternoon had gone into early evening, the sun had gone. It was dark. Some of the men in the back of the mob could hardly see the prisoner, but they heard his loud voice, clearly. This made him seem more of a menace.

The hateful prisoner said, "Mobs like the dark, mobs grow strength in the dark. It is dark, boys, but where is your strength?" He laughed. "You are up against the wall, it's time to show your balls, boys."

He grabbed the sheriff, picked him up and chunked him out of the way, like the sheriff was a small rock. The sheriff fell hard, yards away and was busted-up bad. He would spend months in the hospital and at home recovering. The deputies and men in the mob tried to grabbed the prisoner, to take him down. He knocked them out of the way like they were bowling pins on the fly. I had never seen a man as strong as him. He was stronger than ten men, stronger than a hundred men. It was his hate and his meanest that gave him so much power. Stone tried to bring him down, tried to tackle him from behind. The hateful prisoner, using one bare finger, punched a gash in the middle of Stone's temple, then spun him around like a top, and laughed at the blood spurting out... The deputy dropped to the street dead, more from shock than loss of blood. When the others saw this, many of them stopped cold in their tracks. Then the leader of the mob started firing at the prisoner and cussing. The hateful prisoner, dancing, laughing had the devil's luck, because all these shots fired at him missed, as he dodged about like he was having a hell of a good time. Others fired, they missed the prisoner, but struck some of their own and had to stop. Men and boys were on the ground bleeding and dying. Six people died in all, five from gunshots. It was a massacre.

I tried to comfort those who fell near me. I managed to help pull several, especially, the younger boys into the sheriff's office, and I went in myself. I looked out and I saw the crowd backing up. The prisoner was beating them back, bare-fist. It was getting so dark out that I couldn't see so well and nobody had turned on the street lamps. Then I saw him, the boy who I'd nursed, who I was keeping in hiding. He was right in the path of that wild man. My old heart started beating. I screamed at him. Why was he there? I feared he had come to see about me. I got up and out from behind the cover, and I ran out of the sheriff's office front door, running to defend my boy.

I could barely see him now, because, he was moving with the crowd, backing away from the man and going into the shadows. I screamed like an old fool for the boy to stay away from that fiend. I took off my shoe and I threw it. I don't know why I did that. The thought to do It came in my mind --- to throw my right shoe and to throw it hard. So, I threw it. I wanted to hit that fiend with something before he could do more harm. My shoe hit the fiend squarely in the back of his head and knocked him down. He fell down, hit his head on the street's hard cement -- the fall killed him.

I didn't mean for him to be killed. The men in that mob came running back to me, and you know what they did, they started clapping and cheering. Some of them wanted to hug me. They said: "You stopped him! You stopped him!"

I said to them: "Where is my boy? I've looked and I don't see him anywhere!"

I got hysterical, when I couldn't find the boy. He wasn't limping with the hurt men, or on the ground with those wounded so bad that they couldn't stand. The white men told me that there was no colored boy with them. The leader of the mob teased me, he said, "I reckon we have to make you, sheriff, mammy."

I asked him if he could get a car to give me a ride out to my place.

##

A sheriff deputy drove me out to my place. I ran into the house with my heart pounding, and it didn't relax much, when I saw "my boy" standing in the kitchen safe, unharmed and grinning easy like he did. He'd been there all day and was unaware of the events in town.

"Old mum, sit down," the boy, rather man, who I nursed to health, sat me down at my own table, a table I wouldn't have known. If I hadn't seen it from the outside, I wouldn't have known my own house. He had cleaned it, washed the floors and walls clean, during the time I was in town.

As I sat, I said, "You've got plenty food on this table. Ham and chicken and roast beef. Damn, if I ain't gone eat tomorrow!"

He grinned, a long wholesome grin that showed all of his milk white teeth, a happy grin that went down like grits. "Enjoy," he said.

I took much joy from his company, too much that I got scared as hell about missing him. I feared that I wouldn't be able to get back like I was, use to living alone.

"You're leaving?" I said.

He answered, "I hope you like this."

"The food, I do, but you shouldn't have spent your money."

"It's just money."

"What's your name? I don't know your name. You're leaving and I don't know the name to remember you by,"

I must have sounded to him like a foolish old woman. I was just an old woman to him. I had nothing to hold him. He was well and ready to go.

He grinned that white wholesome milk grin again. "Johnny," he said.

"Johnny?"

"I am Johnny."

"Johnny," I repeated his name again, and felt as if somebody was taking a swipe at my heart. "You're going to steal away, going away in the night?"

He smiled.

##
FDL (c)1997