Copyright (c) 1997

                         A TALL TALE OF 1925
                          by Franchot Lewis


     "What do you know about shine?" I asked him.
     "You asking me?" he said. 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 this and felt good that the years I spent studying
healing and herbs was paying off good time.

     "Yeh, I ought to know as much as anyone does," he said, grinning.
     "You? More than me?" I said.
     "Old mum ... " he said, grinning.
      I liked when he called me that, made my heart shined. I'd been
living right 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. I have drank more than a hundred men
have and more than a thousand old mums have, " he said.
     "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 level head boy I took for not having
anything stronger passed his lips than his mother's milk. I told him so
and he took my laughing at him 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 my experience I'd never seen
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, the shine did a lot of fighting going
down. 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 worst. 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, whom 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 rusty life.
No real joy, no how. I wanted him to take that cash he 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 meet him at the shack where I keep my still and I
keep 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 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 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. "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 who was killed and of what happened to colored boys nearby who
got beaten up. The day after I found the boy who I nursed back to health,
this white boy came by for his regular order of shine. I asked him about
the disturbing news 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 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 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? Steal his wallet,
not his body. 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 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."
     "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? Humf!" 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 church burnings?" he asked.
     I answered him, "Is this the white boy I've known for a helluva long
time, sitting on my stool, drinking free shine? Has he porked his head?
Has his brain turned to 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.
     "Hello!"
     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?"
     "Humf," I said.
     "How are they treating you?"
     "Humf," I said.
     "They're treating me like hell." He coughed.
     "You shouldn't be out; it's damp."
     "Folks don't give a damn if I die, that's why I won't stay in a sick
bed. 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 haggish 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 goosebumps 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 them, 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 I was nursing 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.  "You're a lady, Miss Tilly. I open the door for
ladies."  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 reporters 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, more people got the
idea that I was a witch. I wasn't. If I were I would have 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 I want to go home and 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 there was no time to rest,
really.  The sheriff got a call that another church and been busted into
and set a 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. "He ain't no better than the dog
who set 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 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? Sam Flowers' boy? Sam Flowers
is not the boss here. You are interfering with my time. This is an
arson case, 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 and after that you're going to
be turned out in streets starving 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. They were there to
either help fight the fire or to watch the church burn. 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 to 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 with
his gun. 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 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 a man pushed 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, 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."
     "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. 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 send him down to the floor. I told the sheriff, 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 said no.
     He said, "You haven't cooled off a bit? Certainly you spook them, but
they're glad I 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."
________________________________________________________________________

     When the sheriff dropped me off, it was very late, a couple of hours
before dawn. I walked from his car to 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 whom 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 ten or eleven, 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 smiling, 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. 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 by small boys," he said.
_______________________________________________________________________

     We went back to the cell to see the prisoner and I was shocked by
what I saw. The prisoner 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, 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 a prick in charge? It won't happen."
     "He's a goddamn piece of crud but I didn't touch him, I swear!"
     "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 him
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 guy 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. "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 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, because
he left, still shaking. He was mostly on his feet, but was crawling more
than walking.
     "I am brother to Christ. Brother to Francis of Assisi ..." the
prisoner 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. I am the gift of God to man. I am the Word of God
made Flesh. The sword of God."
     "You burn churches, you're the devil," I told him.
     The prisoner said, "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, cussed 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
man was worthy to hear his confession, so he spent the afternoon in
prayer deciding if man was fit to judge him, well, he said he'd decided
man was lacking and that he would take his leave of us in the 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 prisoner 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 hundred 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. 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 killed on the spot."
     The mob had some of the men in it who hoped to replace the sheriff
and his deputies, and some men who normally were among the sheriff's
strongest supporters. The men who were the sheriff's friends 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 hundred 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. He 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, and I knew how much dirt he had done, so 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. There I was an old
colored woman who had fought a white man, who was a deputy sheriff and
whom had a very bad reputation for being a terror with his fist 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 tried to keep
him off me, then he stopped, because he saw the prisoner grin. He told
the other men, 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 deserved 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 God!" 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 could hardly see him; they heard his loud
voice, this made him seem more of a menace.
     The hateful prisoner said, "Mobs like the dark, mobs grow strength in
the dark; it's dark, boys but where's your strength?" 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 spent months in the hospital and at home recovering. The
deputies and men in the mob tried to grab the prisoner to take him
down. He knocked them out of the way like they were bowling balls on
the fly. I never saw a man as strong as him. He was stronger than ten
men, stronger than a hundred men. It was his hate and his meanness that
gave him so much power. Stone tried to bring him down, tried to tackle
him from the back. The hateful prisoner using one bare finger, punched a
gash n the middle of Stone's head, then spun him around like a top, with
blood squirting out of his head. 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 had the devil's
luck because all these shots fired at him missed. 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-handed. 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, 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 hiding in the sheriff's office and I run
out 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. It came in
my mind to throw my shoe and 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 concrete that 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 killed him! You killed him! I told 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 walk. 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 him 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, whom I nursed to health,
sat me down at my own table, a table I wouldn't have known. I wouldn't
have known my own house if I hadn't seen it from the outside. He had
cleaned it, washed the floors and walls clean, in time while 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 gonna 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, that I wouldn't be able to get back like I was, used
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. "Jacko," he said.
"I am Jacko."
     "Jacko," I repeated his name and felt as if somebody took a swipe at
 my heart. "You're going to steal away, going away in the night."

                                 END