“I didn’t see any, but we must assume the worst.”
We sit drinking in companionable silence, reflecting upon the extraordinary events of the day.
Presently the Colonel leans close and gives me a poke in the ribs. “I’ll tell you the damn truth, son.”
“What’s that, Colonel?”
“I wouldn’t take on those ladies in a month of Sundays. Whoo-ee,” says the Colonel and knocks back another inch of my Early Times. He laughs.
“Ha ha, neither would I, Colonel,” I say, laughing. “I feel sure they will be all right.”
Suddenly the Colonel catches sight of something through the crack. He leaps up, staggering to the doorway.
“Stop thief!” he cries hoarsely.
“What’s wrong, Colonel?”
“They’re back, the little boogers!” he cries scarlet-faced, lunging about and picking up helmet and revolver and riding crop. “I’ll fix the burrheads!”
“Wait, Colonel! The sniper!”
But he’s already past me. Looking out the window, I catch sight of a dozen or so picaninnies and a few bigger boys running from the stables with armfuls of molasses cakes. One big boy totes a sack of feed. It’s too late to stop the Colonel. He’s after them, lumbering up a bunker. With his steel helmet and revolver, he looks like a big-assed General Patton. The culprits, catching sight of the furious red-faced Colonel thundering down on them, drop their ill-gotten goods and flee for the woods — all but one, the boy with the feed sack. The Colonel collars him, gives him a few licks with the crop and, dragging him to the shack, hurls him past me into the corner. “You watch this one. I’m going after the others.”
“Wait, Colonel—!” I grab him. “You’ve forgotten the sniper.”
“No, by God! I have my orders and I’m carrying them out.”
“Orders? What orders?”
“To guard the molasses cakes and soybean meal.”
“Yes, but, Colonel—”
He wrenches loose. “Here I come, you commonist Bantu burrheads!” cries the Colonel, charging the bunker and firing his revolver. “Alabama has your ass.” Up he goes and—“Oof!”—as quickly comes reeling back. He stumbles and sits down hard on the doorsill. At the same moment there comes a slamming concussion, a rifle shot, very loud, from the direction of the clubhouse. The youth shrinks into his corner.
Gazing down at the Colonel, I try to figure out what hit him. He looks all in one piece.
“What happened, Colonel?” I ask, pulling him out of the line of fire.
“They got me in the privates,” groans the Colonel. “What am I going to do?”
“Let me see.”
“What am I going to tell Pearline?” he asks, swaying to and fro.
“Who is Pearline?” I ask in a standard medical tone to distract him while I examine him, and from curiosity because his wife is named Georgene.
“Oh, Lordy.”
At last I succeed in stretching him out on the floor. There is a bloodstain on his cream-colored trousers. I borrow the youth’s pocketknife and cut out a codpiece.
The Colonel is a lucky man. The bullet pierced a fold of scrotum, passed between his legs and went its way. I take out a clean handkerchief.
“You’re O.K., Colonel. A scratch. Son, hand me a cold Seven-Up.”
“Yes suh, Doc.”
“Colonel, hold this bottle here and close your legs on it tight as you can. You’ll be right as rain.”
There is time now to examine the black youth, who has been very helpful, uttering sympathetic noises and an exclamation of amazement at the nature of the Colonel’s wound: “Unonunh!”
“Aren’t you Elzee Acree?”
“Yes suh!”
I recognize him now, a slender brindle-brown youth with a cast in his eye, the son of Ellilou Acree, a midwife and a worthy woman.
We make the Colonel as comfortable as possible, propping his head on his helmet He lies stretched out the length of the tiny hut, the king-size Seven-Up in place between his legs.
“Elzee, what in hell are you doing here?”
“Nothing, Doc!”
“Nothing! What do you mean, nothing?”
“I heard they needed help unloading the barn.”
“So you were unloading a few sacks to help them out?”
“That’s right Doc. I was stacking them under that tree so the truck could pick them up.”
“Never mind. Listen, Elzee. I want you to do something.” I give him five dollars. “You stay here and tend to the Colonel until the patrol picks him up.”
“I’ll be right here! Don’t you worry, Doc. But what I’m gon’ tell the patrol?”
“The patrol won’t bother you. The Colonel here will tell them you helped him, won’t you, Colonel?”
“Sho. I been knowing Elzee, he’s a good boy. Bring me a Seven-Up, Elzee.”
“Yes suh!”
“Now pour out the neck and fill it up from Doc’s bottle there.”
Collecting the carbine — the flask is empty — I stand in the doorway a minute, gathering my wits when: thunk ka-POW! Splinters fly from the jamb three inches from my nose. I sit down beside the Colonel.
“Why, that son of a bitch is trying to kill us all!” I say.
“Like I told you!” cries the Colonel.
“Unh unh tch,” says Elzee, not unhappily. “Those some tumble folks over there.”
“That fellow’s been after me for three days,” I mutter.
“It sho looks like it Doc,” murmurs Elzee sympathetically and hands the Colonel the spiked Seven-Up.
“What do you know about them, Elzee?” I ask, looking at him sharply. “Who all’s down there?”
“I don’t know, Doc, but they some mean niggers, don’t you worry about that,” says Elzee proudly.
“You mean there’s more than one?”
“Bound to be.”
“Or is there just one?”
“I just seen one pass by and I didn’t know him.”
I look at him in disgust “Elzee, you don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”
“That Elzee’s a good boy, though,” says the Colonel, who feels a lot better after taking a drink. “Aren’t you, boy?”
“Yes suh! I been knowing the Colonel here!”
“Oh shut up,” I say disgustedly to both. Between the two of them they’ve struck up an ancient spurious friendship and I’ve had enough of both. Let me out of here. I look at the clubhouse through the crack. The sun is out. The fairways sparkle with raindrops. Pennants fly over the pavilions set up for the Pro-Am tournament, but not a soul is in sight. The legend of the banner, Jesus Christ Greatest Pro of Them All, can’t quite be read from this distance.
There must be a way of getting behind the sniper.
A drainage ditch runs from the higher ground behind the stable toward the clubhouse road and angles off across two fairways before it enters the strip of woods along the bayou.
“Elzee, how deep is that dredge ditch over by the tree there?”
“That grudge ditch at least ten feet deep, Doc!” cries Elzee.
Shouldering my carbine, I bid farewell to the drunk Colonel and the obliging Elzee.
The ditch crosses the road under a cattle guard directly in front of the guardhouse. The danger here is thirty feet of open ground between the door and the ditch. There’s a better way. The north window of the guardhouse lets into a grove of live oaks whose thick foliage droops at the margins, the heavy limbs propped like elbows on the ground. The ditch skirts the far perimeter of the grove. Though the distance is a good hundred feet, at least ninety feet of it is covered by the grove.
Drop from the window, three long steps and dive for the grove. No shot. Once inside the oak, the going is good. The ground is still dry. It is like walking across a circus tent, the dusty twilight space sparkling with chinks of sunlight in the shifting canopy.