Lying here makes me think of it.
Thirty-three years ago if it was a day.
Mama was shaking me, the way she always had to when she wanted me to get up. They put it up against me in the papers that I was a light sleeper and even a carriage going by down on Shepard Street could of woke me. That I was a light sleeper pretending to be in a deep slumber when they came, pretending on account of I was scared bout what I'd done--or what they said I'd done.
They said I carried off Nell Cropsey from the start.
--Jim, son, wake up!
Mama was shaking me and the lamp was swinging in her other hand. I got that upset feeling from waking up too fast, till I realized it was Mama trying to get me up without disturbing my cousin that I was sharing the back bedroom with. But she was talking in a screech whisper like there was something wrong.
Fact was, I was a sound sleeper. Mama had to come after me several times every morning because when she'd call, I'd tell her I was getting up and then roll over back to sleep. But that night she shook me till I woke and there were dizzy-making shadows and her screech whisper.
--Jim, son, wake up! William Cropsey and his brother all down there with your daddy. They want to know where you left Nell.
--On the front porch of her house, I said. And I fell to sleep again when she left and closed the door. Or maybe not right to sleep. Maybe I heard some talk from downstairs or some noise when old man Cropsey and his brother went down off the porch and out to the street, scuffing on that hard frozen ground.
Lying here reminds me.
Then there was Chief Dawson with my daddy right behind him. I'd been sleeping faced away from the door, but when I woke again I turned and saw it weren't Mama this time but God now the law in there shaking me and saying,
--I want you to go over to Cropsey's with me, Jim.
I knew the Chief, course I did. He'd come into office in the election of '98. He was a Democrat and we were all Republicans and the Democrats cleaned up that year and my daddy got voted out of being county sheriff.
--All right, I said.
Hell, what was a little guy like me going to do? Go disagreeing with Chief Dawson, a big man and him the law? I got up and started dressing by the electric flashlight Chief carried. And I saw him take a good look at my blue steel pistol on the shelf.
Downstairs we met Officer Scarborough, who came along I guess in case I turned out to be some business. Two of em. What'd they think I'd done that they needed two of em to come get me?
It must of been an hour since old man Cropsey had come bothering me, and now Chief Dawson led me out into the cold and the bright moonlight. My jaw got tight and I forgot I'd been halfway warm for a bit up there in the bedroom, where my cousin was sleeping alone now and didn't know a damn thing about what all was happening.
He didn't know about Nell crying on her front porch, and he didn't know about the Cropsey men coming after me, or the law carting me over to where the same men were waiting to stare me down and blame me for things I never done.
The policemen rolled their bicycles and I walked between em, down Shepard Street to Charles Creek right where it flowed into the river. There was a wood bridge there then, a bridge that sat on a post and swiveled like a playing card with a pin through it to let the boats go by. A bridge keeper worked it, but if he was there that night he was asleep.
I was wide awake by then, and fast realizing I might be in some pretty deep trouble. When we got up near Pat Ives's house across the bridge I said,
--Here's where I met Len Owens earlier on, bout 11:30.
The Chief seemed to take in what I said, but he kept a stern face. Like that was his job what with Nell missing like this. It was past three in the morning.
--Jim, what do you make of this? Chief Dawson asked me, and I watched the words coming out of his mouth on the little breath clouds, because it was that cold and that bright from the November moon.
I didn't know what to think and I sure didn't know what to say, and I told em so.
--Where'd you last see Miss Cropsey?
We were going along the rivershore road, them rolling the cycles that rattled every so often on bumps and ruts, and if there was water standing in a place it was froze by then and maybe it crunched underfoot or if one of the cycles rolled over the ice just right.
--I left her standing on her porch, I said.
--Did she seem to be in any trouble? the Chief asked.
--She was crying when I left her.
--What about?
--I gave her back her picture and she said, I know what this means. We were a little on the outs.
--A little lovers' quarrel? Chief asked.
--She laughed at me, I said.
And she had laughed at me the night before, Tuesday night, after I'd brought her cousin Carrie back home from the roller skating rink. I stopped in the front hall on my way out to light a smoke and I overheard Carrie and Nellie and her sister Ollie laughing about how short I was. Why don't you call him Squatty? I'd heard Nellie say, and they all three laughed. I got out of the house before they knew I'd overheard.
She hadn't even spoken a word to me for two weeks--not a word.
--Why'd she laugh? asked the Chief.
I thought about earlier that same Tuesday night when I came to pick Carrie up for the skating date and I'd asked Nellie how the corn on her foot was. But she wouldn't speak straight to me. She laughed then, too, and turned to her sister Ollie and said, All right. Nell Cropsey had been my girl for three-and-a-half years, almost since the day the Cropseys moved to Elizabeth City from Brooklyn, and now she wouldn't have anything to do with me or even talk to me, so I took Carrie out to spite her.
--Well, Chief, last night when I went in and asked her how her corn was she laughed at me. I told her the laugh would be on the other side.
We passed the shipyards on the river, where I'd been working back then. Up to the right and set back away from the river was Mr. John Fearing's big place where the Cropseys first stayed when they moved south in '98. They still stabled their horses there. I'd been in the stable with Carrie and Nell's sister Lettie the afternoon before, and I remembered thinking how much easier it was to breathe the stable air when it was cold like it was that November than in summer when it was either ripe or manure dusty in the air.
The first courting I did with Nell was out riding. Maybe I got the horse and rig from one of the downtown liveries or borrowed it--I don't know.
The sick old sandy-haired man Jim Wilcox, lying on his dirty bunk in the back room of Tuttle's garage, lying with a double-barrel twelve-gauge beside him, looked back through thirty-odd years of outlaw whiskey and prison and trials and couldn't recall just where he'd gotten the horse and buggy the first time he took Nell Cropsey out riding. But other things he did remember.
--Jim, did she ever speak of suicide?
I told the Chief it was mentioned tonight or last night one.
--How'd it come up?
--It come up, that's all. I don't know who brought it up.
We walked toward Cropsey's house all this while and I can hear those policemen's bicycles rattling still.
--Did Nell say anything about it? Chief Dawson asked.
--Yes, she said if she ever committed suicide she'd rather do it by freezing than any other way.
I saw the Chief was getting at the idea of Nellie killing herself cause I'd give back her pictures and left her crying on the porch. How could that of been my fault? She hadn't even been speaking to me. And she was planning to go to New York with her cousin Carrie on the next Saturday.
--Did she ever talk about suicide any other time?
--Yes, I said, a long time ago, when there was a crowd of us in the Cropsey summerhouse down by the river. She said if she was ever going to commit suicide she'd put a stone round her neck and do it well.
Chief Dawson and Officer Scarborough and I were almost to the Cropsey house then, and I looked down to where the summerhouse gazebo was, off to the left by the little beach where we'd used to go swimming or take the sailboat out from. The Cropsey house was easy to see across the old man's turnip patch, all lit up with oil lights inside and the bright moon outside.
How could I of known then how sorry I'd be, or how long it would all last? The policemen laid their bicycles up by the fence and went up that front walk just like I had for three years and more and then up the steps where I told em I left her crying. I never looked out on that river with her again.
Then Chief Dawson was knocking on the front door and it was opening and he was motioning me in. There was no way but to do it.
I was walking through the gates of hell thirty-three years ago if it was a day.