A Gathering of Old Men Read Free Page A

ditch on the right. But I didn’t see any of the people as I drove past the old houses. Just like little bedbugs, I told myself. Just like frightened little bedbugs now. But when I stopped before Mathu’s house, I could see they were not bedbugs after all. They were all there, in the yard, and on the porch. Three of them had shotguns—Mathu, Johnny Paul, and Rufe. None of the women had guns; they and the children just sat there watching me. Candy was in the road by the time I got out of the car.
    “I killed Beau,” she said.
    I was still looking past her at Mathu and Rufe and Johnny Paul with those old shotguns. Mathu squatted against the wall by the door, the gun cradled in his arms. Squatting, not sitting or standing, was his favorite position when he was out on the porch. And by the door, against the wall, was his favorite place to be. Johnny Paul sat on the steps with his gun, and Rufe leaned back against the end of the porch with his. I had never seen anything like this in all my life before, and I wasn’t too sure I was seeing it now.
    “What?” I said, still watching the porch.
    “I shot Beau,” Candy said.
    I looked back at her. I didn’t jerk my head around, I looked at her slowly. I had known Candy over twenty-five years. She was no more than five or six when her mother and father were killed in a car wreck, and I had helped raise her. Surely, Mathu here in the quarters, and I at the main house had done asmuch to raise her as had her uncle and aunt. Maybe even more than they. Yes, he and I had done more than they. So I knew when she was lying to me, and I knew she was lying to me now.
    “Candy, what’s going on down here?” I asked her.
    “Listen,” she said. She was small, not more than five two, and thin as a dime. She wore the wrong clothes, and that hair was cropped too short for a young woman interested in catching a man. But Candy was not. A young man came around, but I had no idea what kind of relationship they had. Probably the same kind Jack and I had. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “I wanted you or Lou here before Mapes got here. I don’t—”
    “What are they doing with those guns?” I asked her.
    “I don’t know, Miss Merle,” she said. “I shot him. But all of a sudden Mathu said he shot him. Then all of a sudden Rufe said he shot him. Johnny Paul was nowhere around here. But after he came here and saw what had happened, he said he had as much reason to shoot Beau as anybody, so he ran home and got his old gun. But I shot him.”
    I looked at him lying over there in the weeds. The weeds were so high I could hardly see anything more than just the tip of his cowboy boots. And I sure wasn’t going any closer to get a better look at the rest of him.
    “Don’t they know who that is?” I said to Candy.
    “They know,” she said. “They just want the credit for shooting him. But I shot him.”
    “Here in Mathu’s yard, Candy? Mapes is no fool, you know.”
    “I shot him,” she said. “You got to believe me. I don’t care if Mapes does or not. I need you to believe me. Clinton can handle Mapes in court.”
    “And who’s going to handle Fix, Candy?” I asked her. “Before you even get to court? Fix?”
    “I shot him,” she said. “You must believe that.”
    “No,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “No,” I said, shaking my head. I looked past her at Mathu squatting against that wall with that gun cradled in his arms. He was smoking a cigarette now. He knew I was looking at him, but he was looking past me at the tractor out there in the road. The rest of the people watched quietly from the porch and the steps.
    “I won’t let them touch my people,” she said. “I did it.”
    I looked back at her. She knew that I had been looking at him.
    “That’s how it’s going to be,” she said. She knew that I knew better, though.
    “Candy?” I said.
    “Now, I want you to do something for me,” she said quickly.
    “The best thing I can do for you