Free The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale Page B

little older than me, I think. Thin of jaw, ripe of lips, with a nose that we used to call Roman. Some smart alecks used to say, “Yeah. It roams all over his face.”
    I told him I lived in the bottoms too, explained my part of the country. His part of the bottoms was on the other side from me. His section was called the Sandy Bottoms, because there was more white sand there than where we lived, which was rich with red clay and brown dirt.
    The colored boy with him introduced himself as Abraham. He looked very energetic, as if he had been drinking lots of coffee and was expecting something big to happen, like a tornado, a flood, or tripping over a boxful of money.
    Being all of the same general age, quick to bore, and a little tired of adults, we were immediate friends.
    Abraham said, “Me and Ricky got some cards with nekkid women on ’em.”
    “But we ain’t got ’em with us,” Richard hastened to add, lest I might ask for him to lay them out for examination.
    “Yeah,” Abraham said, disappointed. “They in the tree house, and it ain’t nowhere near here. We got nigger shooters too. I can shoot a tin can at maybe thirty feet.”
    A “nigger shooter” was a word for a slingshot made of shoe tongue, tire rubber, and a forked stick. The name was common, and Abraham had said it without shame or consideration.
    “We hear they’s a body in there,” Abraham added. “A woman got murdered.”
    I couldn’t contain myself. “I found the body.”
    “Say you did,” Abraham said. “Naw. Naw you didn’t. You pullin’ our leg.”
    “Did too. That’s my Daddy in there. He’s the constable over our parts.”
    “This ain’t his constablin’ here,” the old man in the hog cart said. He could hear right good. I figured he’d heard us talking about those cards with naked women on them, and I was embarrassed.
    Richard Dale said, “That’s Uncle Pharaoh. He got his legs torn up and cut off ’cause of a wild hog. Hog is Pig Jesse. That ain’t the wild hog. That’s a tame one.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said to the old man.
    He looked at me like I was some sort of strange vegetable he had never seen before. “Sorry ’bout what?” he said.
    “Your legs.”
    “Oh,” he said. “Well, don’t be. Didn’t happen yesterd’y. I done got over it.”
    “Where’d you find that body?” Abraham asked, and I told all three of them the story. I finished with: “I thought since I found it and done seen it, Daddy might let me look again and hear what the doctor’s got to say about it, but he wouldn’t do it.”
    “That’s the way it always is,” Richard said. “Adults think they got to know everything and we ain’t supposed to know or see nothin’. Hey, you want to go off and play?”
    “No,” I said. “I think I’ll wait here.”
    Richard winked at me. “Let’s play.”
    Abraham was smiling, and I wondered what it was they were after. I hoped they didn’t want to smoke grapevine, or even tobacco, ’cause I never liked either a bit. Times I had tried they had made my stomach sick.
    Richard leaned over close and said, “Me and Abraham know somethin’ you might like to know about that body. Come with us.”
    I thought on that, but only for a second. They told Uncle Pharaoh goodbye, and I went running with them, away from the crowd, toward the creek. They led me along the edge of thecreek and up behind the icehouse to where the big chinaberry tree grew.
    Richard whispered: “Me and Abraham we know everything there is to know about over here. There’s a big hole in the roof up there, right over the front room, where they bring the ice out. There’s a piece of tin over it, but it’ll twist aside and you can see in. If you don’t twist it too much, they won’t notice ’cause the tree shades that spot. Won’t be a bunch of sunlight slippin’ in. ’Sides, there’s all sorts of cracks in that roof anyway. Little sunlight here and there won’t be noticed none.”
    “What if they ain’t in that