Free A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines

been around a long time, and he had seen many other strange things, so it was possible that nothing surprised him anymore. The deputy followed him into the yard, sticking as close as a small frightened child would stick to his father.
    Mapes nodded, he didn’t speak. I nodded back, but Candy didn’t. Mapes stared at me with those ash-gray eyes another second; then he looked down at the spread. He nodded again. It was not to me this time; it was to his deputy. But the deputy was busy watching the old men with the shotguns.
    “Griffin,” Mapes said to him.
    The deputy didn’t answer.
    “Griffin,” Mapes said again.
    Griffin turned from the old men to look at Mapes, but he seemed uncertain that Mapes had called his name.
    “You said something, Sheriff?”
    Mapes nodded toward the ground. Griffin glanced back over his shoulder toward the old men before leaning over and pulling back the spread. He quickly turned his head when he saw the bloody shirt, dirty face, dirty brown hair of Beau Boutan. Mapes didn’t turn his head; he looked down at the body a good thirty seconds, and told Griffin to cover it up again. Griffin didn’t hear him. He was busy watching the old men with the shotguns.
    “Griffin,” Mapes repeated.
    Griffin glanced up at Mapes, but Mapes had already turnedaway. Griffin covered up the body without looking at it.
    “Go turn off that thing,” Mapes said.
    “Sir?” Griffin asked.
    “The tractor, Griffin,” Mapes said impatiently.
    Griffin started toward the road.
    “Griffin,” Mapes called. His voice remained level, without inflection, yet meaningful.
    “Yes, sir?” Griffin answered.
    Mapes didn’t turn around, so Griffin had to come back to face him.
    “Get on that radio. Tell Russ—no one else—Russell to go back on that bayou and keep Fix there. No one else but him—and keep Fix and that crowd back there until he hears from me. And tell Herman to come out here and pick this up. But don’t tell him who it is.”
    Griffin nodded, and started to leave again.
    “Griffin,” Mapes said, his voice still level.
    Griffin stopped.
    “First, turn off tractor,” Mapes said. He was looking at Griffin as though Griffin were not very bright. “Second, call Russ. Third, call Herman. Tell him to come out here and pick up a
dead
body. No name. Fourth, can you remember all that between here and the car?”
    “Of course, Sheriff.”
    Mapes stared down at Griffin until Griffin walked away. Then he turned his attention toward the old men with the guns.
    “I counted seventeen, eighteen of them,” he said. “Is that all of them?”
    “I didn’t count them,” I said.
    “And you?” he asked Candy. He did not look directly at her, he spoke to her from the side. Already he seemed to suspect that she had something to do with all these people being here.
    “I don’t know how many there are,” she said. “But I can tell you what happened. I killed him.”
    Mapes looked down at her from over his left shoulder. He still suspected that she had gathered all these people here, but you could see he didn’t believe that she had killed Beau Boutan.
    “Over what?” he asked her.
    “Beau Boutan still lived in the past,” she said. “He still thought he could beat people like his paw did thirty, forty years ago. He started beating Charlie back there in the field, and Charlie ran up here to Mathu’s house. I was standing there by the door talking to Mathu. We asked him what happened, and he said Beau hit him with a stalk of cane. A few minutes later Beau followed him on the tractor with the shotgun. When he stopped that tractor out there, I told him not to cross that ditch. I told him more than once, ‘Beau, don’t you cross that ditch.’ Did he listen? You just don’t beat people with a stalk of cane and hunt them like they’re some kind of wild animal. You don’t do that. I told him to stop, don’t cross that ditch. I hollered at him not to cross that ditch. When he didn’t stop, I reached and