The Bottoms Read Online Free Page B

you can find her again?”
    “Yes sir, but I don’t want to.”
    “I know, but I’m gonna need your help.”
    Daddy took his pipe and knocked out the ash on the bottom of his shoe and put the pipe in his pocket. “You go up tothe house now, and when Tom gets through, you get the bugs off of you and wash up. I know you’re covered. Hand me the shotgun and I’ll take care of Toby.”
    I started to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. Daddy got up, cradled Toby in his arms, and I put the shotgun in his hand.
    “Damn rotten thing to happen to a good dog,” he said.
    Daddy started walking off toward the little barn we had out back of the house by the field.
    “Daddy,” I said. “I couldn’t do it. Not Toby.”
    “That’s all right, son,” he said, and went on out to the barn.
    When I got up to the house, Tom was on the back screened porch, what we called a sleeping porch. It wasn’t real big, but it was comfortable in the summer. There was a swinging seat held by chains to the beams, and there were two pallet beds and a tin tub that hung on the wall till it was needed.
    Like right then. Tom was in the tin tub and Mama was scrubbing her hard and fast by the light of a lantern hanging on a porch beam directly above them.
    When I came up, Mama, who was in an old green dress, barefoot, her sleeves rolled up, was on her knees. As I came through the screen from the outside, she looked over her shoulder at me. Her raven black hair was gathered up in a fat bun and a tendril of it had come loose and was hanging across her forehead and eye. She pushed it aside with a soapy hand, looked at me.
    I didn’t understand it then, her being my mother and all, but any time I looked at her I found myself staring. There was something about her that made you want to keep your eyes on her face. I had just begun to have a hint of what it was. Mother was pretty. Years later I was to learn that many thought her the most beautiful woman in the county, and looking back on the handful of photos I have of her then, and even into her sixties, I would have to say that such an evaluation was most likely true.
    “You ought to know better than to stay out this late. And scaring Tom with stories about seeing a body.”
    “I wasn’t all that scared,” Tom said.
    “Hush, Tom,” Mama said.
    “I wasn’t.”
    “I said hush.”
    “It ain’t a story, Mama,” I said.
    I told her about it, making it brief.
    When I finished, she asked, “Where’s your Daddy?”
    “He took Toby out to the barn. Toby’s back is broken.”
    “I heard. I’m real sorry.”
    I listened for the blast of the shotgun, but after fifteen minutes it still hadn’t come. Then I heard Daddy coming down from the barn, and pretty soon he stepped out of the shadows, onto the porch and into the lantern light. He was carrying the shotgun, smoking his pipe.
    “I don’t figure he needs killin’,” Daddy said. I felt my heart lighten, and I looked at Tom, who was peeking under Mama’s arm as Mama scrubbed her head with lye soap. “He could move his back legs a little, lift his tail. You might be right, Harry. He might be better. Besides, I wasn’t any better doin’ what ought to be done than you, son. He takes a turn for the worse, stays the same, well … In the meantime, he’s yours and Tom’s responsibility. Feed and water him, and you’ll need to manage him to do his business somehow.”
    “Yes sir,” I said. “Thanks, Daddy.”
    “I fixed him up a place in the barn.”
    Daddy sat down on the porch swing with the shotgun cradled in his lap. “You say the woman was colored?”
    “Yes sir.”
    Daddy sighed. “That’s gonna make it some difficult,” he said.

    Next morning just as it grew light, I led Daddy to the Swinging Bridge. I didn’t want to cross the bridge again. I pointed out from the bank the spot across and down the river where the body could be found.
    “All right,” Daddy said. “I’ll manage from here. You go home. Better yet,