Excerpt
From Bedford Forrest Rides Again
Ch. 1. March 1984 - Found
A squirming mound of maggots stops the boys short as they walk the cow path at the edge of the Navasota River. They grab deadfall sticks and begin to probe beneath the hardened mud.
“Prob’ly a dead calf, the one that went missing this winter,” says Jadon.
“Nah,” Jesse replies, “Whatever’s dead here is too far down in the mud to be a calf.”
“Hell no. Look at all the dirt the rain sloughed off from that high bank. Calf coulda’ got trapped down here by the water and hit with the mud and covered up.”
“I suppose.”
“Sure.”
“Let’s find out.”
“Be great if we could use these big ole maggots for bait.”
“They’re big enough. Go ahead, pick up a few.”
“No way, man. Haven’t got a jar to put them in.”
“Just kidding.”
“Here, gimme a bigger stick; that deadfall branch there’ll do.”
“Don’t get them suckers in your shoes.”
Jesse takes the deadfall branch and begins to probe, pushing the maggots aside.
“Damn mud’s hard, all caked.”
“Sun will do that.”
Jesse jumps back. “Holy shit!” he yells.
“Moccasin?” Jadon asks.
“Ain’t no snake. Look.” A small hand covered with maggots popped up from the mud. Some flesh is gone from the hand.
Jadon looks, then retches and throws up.
“We got to get Pa,” Jesse says.
Ch. 12 September 1962, Oxford, Mississippi. Nathan Bedford Forrest VI is “Born.”
Nathan Purvis, just turned fifteen, lived outside Oxford proper but was in the town’s high school district. He was in it, but he was not of it. He did not belong, and he knew it. Townies, especially the girls who shopped for their clothes at the venerable Neilson’s department store on the Square, snickered at him, to his face. Nathan was countrified and he was a lowly high school freshman. His daddy called his situation ‘double doom’.
Triple doom is how Nathan thought about his life, for he had to suffer his father, Cole, and his stepmother, Belle, as well as being an outsider and poor. Belle was 20 years younger than Cole, maybe younger. She never said. But she was old enough to have a daughter, Nelda, the same age as Nathan.
Nelda hit puberty early and began to develop dramatically, abundantly. Cole watched her growing. As Nelda’s breasts filled out, so did Cole’s libido. His interest in Belle shifted to Nelda. As it did, Belle’s interest in Cole shifted to Nathan, but so far it just sat there in the trailer house, simmering.
“Hell, no, you ain’t gonna play no football with that crowd,” Cole yelled, and half spat at Nathan.
“Football is football, Daddy,” Nathan retorted, deluding himself that he might have an argument.
“Not with that crowd, it ain’t. Don’t matter how good you are, they just make fun of you and blame you for everything that goes wrong, even when it ain’t your fault. No son of mine is going to play that kind of football. Around here it’s just a game to take people like us down even lower than we already are. Next you know, your sis will be wanting to become a goddamn cheerleader. Won’t that be a sight. Here comes Nelda. Here come the ‘Neldas’. Look at Nelda’s ‘Neldas’. The parade of the ‘Neldas. Best ‘Neldas’ in Lafayette County.’ Godamighty. Ain’t gonna happen.”
Cole had his own agenda. He was protecting Nelda’s ‘Neldas’ from being the objects of lustful attention from the boys at the high school. Her ‘Neldas’ belonged to him, he justified, because she wasn’t even kin. No blood kin, anyway, not that such a distinction always made a difference in Cole’s family, or in Cole’s world. Not in Belle’s, either.
Cole was damaged goods, all right, and he settled all his mess on his son, like his daddy had done to him when he was growing up in the county, outside Abbeville, a rural hamlet north of Oxford.
Nathan heard the story told and retold over and over again whenever Cole was drunk, which was often, and Cole’s drunkenness was a companion to melancholy, remorse, regret, envy, hate, and other demons.
“My daddy hated me,” Cole would begin his wind up. “He was always whipping me, fierce, with belts, electric cords, rope, firewood, spraying his tobacco juice and sour whiskey spit in my face, yelling at me, ‘Quit squirming, you little shit!. Take it like a man.’ My mama didn’t love me neither. She didn’t do nothing to stop him, just turned and went back to the cook shed or outdoors to the privy. “Whippings stopped when I was sent away to live with Uncle Jim and cousin Jerrod. Uncle Jim, he had no legs, cut off just below his butt. Uncle Jim laid up in bed all day watching his boy, Jerrod, hook up the bitch dog to a harness and poke his pecker in her till she was bloody; till they was both bloody.
“The county sent home care ladies to the house. They washed Uncle Jim’s ass and rubbed his dimpled stumps with ointments. ‘Feel some sorry for a wounded vet,’ he cried. ‘Rub my privates, too, or they’ll shrivel and atrophize.’ “Word got back to the home care’s big fat nigra boss. ‘Jimbo’, she say, ‘no more funny stuff with my girls or you be cut off. And no more of that poor maimed veteran shit. I checked. You a penitentiary vet, lose your legs to diabetes and gangrene. You keep on with my girls; we let your sorry ass drip and drain.’
“Big boss turned to go, sucked a .22 slug into her tootsie roll. Uncle Jim’s back in Parchman. Jerrod’s in ‘rehab’ for sex deviants. My sorry ass is headed to foster care. Before the police came, I killed the dog.”
“That’s it? You ain’t going to let me play?”
“Sir! You say ‘sir’ when you talk to me! Hell, you cain’t say ‘sir’ when you’re talking to your Pa, how the hell you going to survive in that town school with all its high falutin’ airs, and them dandies the likes of that no account wee fucking Willie Faulkner. The man’s a traitor to his own kind before the whole world, and those foreigners went and give him some noble prize. Shameful. He ain’t been dead two months and already trouble is brewing.”
Cole had been drinking whiskey most of the day and reeking breath from his exhalations hung in the air in the front room like a toxic cloud. Nathan and Belle stood in place, silently, knowing Cole’s diatribe had reached its nadir. Other than diatribe, Cole didn’t have much to say, or much with which to conjure it.
Cole paced from room to room in the trailer until he found his hat. “I’m going to go meet Vern and the boys, spend some time with normal people,” Cole declared as he crashed through the front door and tumbled down the steps to the yard. Then, turning back to the door, he shouted, “Watch yourselves now. Vern says trouble is coming. That bastard Kennedy is fixing to let that nigger enroll at Ole Miss.”
After Cole left the trailer, Belle moved to Nathan.
“Your daddy has a point about your playing football, son,” Belle consoled. He doesn’t want you to get hurt.”
“I ain’t going to get hurt. I’m big and strong and tough. I can play the game. And I am smart enough. Maybe he don’t think so. Thinks I’ll just embarrass him.”
“Son, what I mean by ‘hurt’ is the hurt you feel in your heart from disappointment and humiliation. Your Daddy knows all about that, and so do I. We both have lived it.”
“Belle, I get more hurting around here than I ever would on the field.”
“Son, your Daddy feels that he needs to protect you.”
“Then who’s going to protect me from him?”
“I will,” Belle replied, as she placed a hand on his shoulder, and then on his cheek.
Two hours later Cole returned, drunker than when he left. His eyes glowed.
“Never thought I’d live to see the day, and now my family has to see it too!”
Nathan had never seen his father so agitated. Cole’s raised arms were twitching, as if he were in the throes of a rapture.
Nathan knew better than to interrupt Cole, to ask what he was talking about.
“I been downtown with Vern and his boys. Damn federals pouring in, marshals, troops. Never been an invasion like this since the war. Violated, that’s what it is, a violation. Won’t be tolerated. Can’t be tolerated!”
Nathan stayed silent. Belle spoke. “Cole, I know this means trouble, but I don’t want my family involved and I don’t want you hurt. Just let Vern and his bunch deal with it.”
“Hell, woman, it’s more than just Vern and his bunch. People are coming in from all over the state, people coming from all over the South, people that can still call themselves Southerners.”
“Then, Cole, that’s more reason why you don’t need to be there.”
Cole’s arms lowered slowly to his sides. His legs wobbled, then straightened. Cole’s whole body, even while drunk, radiated a resolve never seen by his family. This was new. It was fearsome. It was scary.
“You’re all cowards,” he began softly. “You should feel shame. This here thing is not about you and me, not about our own children, not about our own stinking poor little farm. It’s bigger than all of that. What’s happening here is against God’s will, against God’s plan for his people. We, our people, are merely instruments of His will and He is testing us to see if we are worthy to be His warriors in this holy war against the anti-Christ. If y’all cain’t see what I’m saying, and cain’t heed the call of our Lord in this holy crusade, then y’all sit home here on your asses, but know ye this, ye all shall perish! Ye shall perish, if not today or tomorrow, then later in a hell of your own making if this pestilence is not stopped here and now!”
Cole wobbled and sank to the ground. A moment later, he rose and stumbled back into the trailer.
“Cole, what are you going to do?” Belle asked.
“God’s will,” Cole answered, looking wide-eyed at the ceiling of the trailer, as if the heavens had opened. He fell down inside the front door and lay on the floor for an hour, lost in a reverie, eyes opening and closing. When he woke, he went to the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Belle and Nelda and Nathan finally sat down together.
“I never seen him this bad,” Belle said. I fear he could be dangerous. To us.”
Nelda began to quake. Suddenly, Cole called out from the bedroom. “Nelda, get in here!”
Nelda stared at Belle. “Honey, I knew this day was coming, I just didn’t know when. Now there’s a crisis upon our home, and Cole is set on taking his part in stopping the evil that threatens our way of life. It has to be stopped, but I don’t want it to touch our home, or my child. Cole is going to go out soon with Vern and his bunch, and all the others coming into town to do their part for their families and all our people all over our country. Daddy Cole is an angel of deliverance doing God’s holy work. He has to prepare for this fight, and he ain’t scared to give his life. Like the Christian soldier before going to battle, he must have some succor.”
“Git in here, girl!”
“Come, honey.” Belle said, leading Nelda to the bedroom door and beyond into the darkened room.
Nathan got up to move to the bedroom door. Belle stepped in front of him.
“Nathan, it happens to all of us, sooner or later,” Belle said.
“You said that you would protect me from him.”
“And I have done that, Nathan. You are not going out in this war, only Cole and the others.”
“But you’re not protecting Nelda, your own flesh and none of his!” Nathan screamed.
“That’s why Cole thinks it’s all right. It’s incest that’s against the Bible.”
Nathan moved towards the bedroom. Belle blocked him, more with will than with force.
“Child,” Belle said, “you can have me. Right now.”
Nathan’s head lit up. He pushed Belle down onto the floor and stood over her for a moment, hyperventilating.
“No! No, Cole, don’t. Please, no! You’ll …. make me pregnant. Stop!” Then a choking sound from Nelda.
Nathan ripped himself away from Belle and crashed through the flimsy bedroom door.
“Get off her!”
Cole struggled to rise but his pants were down around his ankles. He rolled off the bed and onto the floor. Nelda lay half naked on the bed, her clothes torn. Cole hitched his pants up and tried to rise.
“Never!” Nathan yelled. Cole lunged at Nathan, missed, and fell. Belle came through the door and grabbed at Nathan, trying to keep him from kicking Cole. Nathan moved to the nearby chest of drawers Belle still clung to his back and Cole rose from the floor.
There it was. Cole’s pistol. Nathan pulled it out, not even thinking whether it was loaded. It was an article of faith that Cole’s pistol was loaded.
Nathan pressed the muzzle of the .44 against Cole’s head and pulled the trigger. The room exploded.
Belle fell back onto the floor, dazed, hands against her ears. Nathan stared at Nelda, then at Belle. “She was going to let Cole, like he had a right to you.”
“Mama, no!” Nelda screamed.
“It’s our fate, honey.”
“She told me I could have her!” Nathan yelled.
Nelda rose from the bed, jerked the pistol from Nathan’s hand, placed it against Belle’s head and fired.
Three days later, after Kennedy’s federal troops quelled the uprising in Oxford, a stink leaked from the trailer.
Vern and his bunch had not seen Cole during the fracas at Ole Miss, where Cole was expected to join with his brothers. They had almost succeeded, or so they told themselves. Two outsiders dead and scores wounded. No one, they assured themselves, would have any more illusions about whether white southerners would resist desegregation, violently if need be.
“Ole Miss was a victory!” Vern shouted to the men and women gathered at the cross burning in the woods out on Highway 7 north of Oxford. “We sent them anti-Christs a powerful message. You, pointing towards the north, “come down here to our land to promote race mixing at your peril. We will take care of our own problems in our own way without any interference from foreigners, Jews, Communists and Catholics. We will defy you and we will resist you. Take heed.” Someone lit the gas soaked cross. The crowd shrieked.
Driving back towards town, Vern stopped to check on Cole. The house was dark. Cattle stirred in the corral, restless and lowing, unfed. Vern stepped from the car. The stink of death. He knew it well, from the war in the Pacific. Back home he knew it from burning troublemakers alive.
Vern drove on into town, to the Sheriff, and reported what he had smelled and seen. The Sheriff said he had his hands full in the aftermath of the riot but decided that the federals could clean up their own mess and that he and his deputies could better spend their time dealing with their own people’s problems. “Lemme go get the coroner,” the Sheriff said.
“Might as well burn the whole place down with them in it,” Vern said, after the coroner had reported what he’d seen inside the trailer.
“I just might do that Vern,” the Sheriff said, “if I knew for sure it was a murder-suicide.”
“What do you know about the kids, Sheriff,” Vern asked.
“I know they were picked up by the federals after the riot. Still in detention as far as I know. Have to go break the news to them. And, Vern, get someone out there to feed those cows.”
Later, after the bodies had been removed from the trailer and routine autopsies confirmed a probable murder-suicide, Vern rounded up an Assembly of God preacher to pray over the graves at what was charitably called the family cemetery in Abbeville. A few fellows from Vern’s klavern attended. Nathan and Nelda attended the funeral, then asked the preacher to marry them.
