Fiction Friday: We've heard two voices describe a strange farm worker, living in the Depression-era Arkansas Delta. Here is the third and final.

The Last Cotton Boll

III

My official report on Ferd Starling has been public record for years now so the basic facts are known. I neither hid anything nor added to it, not a thing. Perhaps the information seems cold and dry but that’s what a Sheriff’s report is for, to report the facts and never to praise or condemn. Any other information I can add has faded with time, but I will state, and it may come as a surprise, that I knew him before it happened. Why, you might ask, do I remember him? I would answer that because he could be a hard-headed fool when he wanted to be.

The report is dated the 21st of October, 1940, just before the year that the war started and it hardly rained all summer. But the two years before had been good ones, cotton as tall as a man’s shoulder and everyone had made some money. The depression was over and people were standing up straight again for the first time in years. We even dared to hope that we might make it through after all. I still say thank the Lord for Franklin Roosevelt, and I don’t care who hears me say it.

Things looked so good that I decided we could add that section on to the jail that we had needed so long. Saturday nights got pretty wild in the juke joints around Armistead County back then and some of the boys always ended up spending Sunday with us, sometimes longer depending on how much the devil had begun to move in their lives. I never was one of those Sheriffs who derived a lot of pleasure from mistreating those boys. If they hadn’t stolen anything and had only cut one another up, why I would release them to their farms on Monday morning.

I had to be there early because right after sunup you would see the wagons pulling into town to pick up the misbehavers, each heading back to his own place of employment. We called it “Emancipation Day” and would even have a little fun with it if the weekend hadn’t been too bloody. There was always a simple-minded one or two in the crowd and sometimes we would tell them their boss didn’t want them anymore so they would just stay in jail. They would generally fail to see the benefits of a free room and meals without chopping or picking cotton and begin to wail pitiful-like until we would tell them that we would try to intercede on their behalf if they would take the pledge to re-dedicate their lives to Jesus, which they would always do with many tears and supplications. It usually lasted a couple of weeks but one time it took and the fellow ended up preaching all over the county for years until he died a highly respected man, among white and black alike. They say he saved enough souls to populate a black Armistead County in Heaven. You just never know.

It was during these times that I knew Ferd, not that he ever stayed over as a guest. No, not Ferd, but he would bring a wagon in to fetch a hand or two that belonged to Mr. Thomas Easter if he heard we had them. I would always ask about Mr. Easter’s health and make sure that Ferd knew to tell him I asked. A vote is a vote but the good will of the richest man in the county is worth a whole lot more.

So, we needed some extra room and Charlie Baswell had started framing it up. We just needed one great big holding cell which amounted to a long, narrow room and a place to load and unload prisoners. One Emancipation Day, Ferd had been leaning against the wagon waiting for his boys and watching the work on the roof when I brought Mr. Easter’s hands out to the wagon. He was watching the work with more than a passing amount of interest. He had a match in his hand, working it up and down against his teeth. He wore some ancient hat that had lost its shape years ago. I noticed he had a pencil in his shirt pocket and thought that was odd. Otherwise, he was dressed like any other field hand you would have seen in those days. Except for one thing: I would swear someone had pressed his pants. There wasn’t a wrinkle in them.

I said to him: “Here you go Ferd, two boys with a sorrowful tale but not the worse for wear.”

He didn’t even look at us. He just kept working that match stick up and down and watched Charlie framing that new cell. “Hit ain’t gonna hold,” he said. “She’ll sag for sure.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. I motioned the boys to get in the wagon and turned around. I didn’t see anything wrong.

“The span is too long,” he said. “Those timbers won’t hold it.”

“Are you a carpenter?” I asked.

“Don’t know for sure,” he said. “But I do know that span is too long for that much wood.”

I called Charlie over. “Ferd here said that section may sag.” I pointed to the long, center section.

Charlie looked at me. Then he looked at Ferd. Then he looked at the section.

“Bullshit.”

“Nawsir,” Ferd said. “That beam ain’t deep enough to go that far.”

“How the hell would you know?” Charlie asked. He wasn’t a man to be questioned about his judgment on building.

“Just do, sir. That ain’t enough wood.”

“Hell, it’s eight inches acrost,” Charlie said. “That would hold up a fat lady and her two sisters.”

“Nawsir,” Ferd said. “Hit ain’t the width. Hit’s the depth give it the strength to span. That one sure ain’t deep enough.

“I’ll tell you what,” Charlie said. “You haul them winos and I’ll do carpentry.” I saw his neck turning red under the collar.

“Yes sir.” Ferd said. Then he turned toward the wagon.

“Goddamn it Sheriff,” Charlie said. “Am I gonna have to put up with shit like this from ever field hand comes by?”

“Go on back to work, Charlie,” I said. He did and I stood there watching for a spell. It was a long span but hell, Charlie was a white man. I couldn’t get into this. Not with election coming up. I had asked him to leave an opening in the section so I could have a place to unload prisoners out of sight and out of the rain. That’s why we needed such a long span. I figured Charlie knew what he was doing.

It turns out I might should have listened. We could have corrected it fairly easily then. It was two weeks before I saw Ferd again. The Easter boys were quiet for a weekend and by that time the walls and roof were framed and guess what? The sagging was noticeable and getting worse all the time.

I called Ferd over and had him look at it. “You obviously know something about carpentry,” I said. “Do you have any idea what we can do about it?”

“Will he allow me?” He nodded at Charlie who had just joined us.

I looked at Charlie. He wasn’t as cocky as before. “I’m open to idears,” he said.

“Get in the wagon and stay there,” Ferd said to two young hands that had found themselves engaged to the same woman Saturday night. They climbed into the wagon with a great deal of politeness to one another, still cut up from their scuffle just two nights before.

Ferd walked over and looked at the sagging structure. He stepped over a floor beam and looked up at the sagging portion from the interior. He squatted and remained there for a long time, just staring up at the structure. Almost absentmindedly, he reached into a pocket and produced a match. He began to work it slowly up and down. Finally, he stood up.

“Would you have a piece of paper, Sheriff? He asked.

“Just a minute,” I said. I yelled at my deputy to bring a tablet out here. He did and I handed it to Ferd. He took a pencil from his pocket. Sitting on a floor joist, he began to make notes and a little drawing. I was amazed. So was Charlie, but he pretended not to be. He would look down Main Street like he was waiting for his best friend. Then he would sneak a look at what Ferd was doing. The boys in the wagon had both gone to sleep sitting up. I watched Ferd and wondered a dozen things to myself.

Finally, he stood up and walked over. He showed me and Charlie the drawing. It looked like something out of a book.

“First you have to jack her up,” he said. “Do that quick before you put anymore weight on it. Jack it up a little extry – ‘bout two inches over straight ought to do it. Then -you build this and nail her to the top of the beam. That way you won’t even see it from the outside.”

He tore the sheet from the drawing. It added a built-up contraption that looked like a ladder made of two-by-fours on the top of the beam.

“I don’t know, Charlie began, “It don’t look like much to me.”

“Do you have a better idea without tearing anything down?” I asked and he admitted that he didn’t.

“Give it a try then.” I said taking the tablet from Ferd. I looked at him and said: “If it works, you might be a hero, Ferd.”

“Oh no sir,” he said. “Hit was most pleasurable.” He turned and climbed aboard the wagon.

Next Monday I was waiting for him when he drove up. “Come in my office for a minute,” I said. He climbed down from the wagon and looked at the new section. I noticed a slight smile when he saw the straight line of the clear span but he didn’t linger on it. He just turned and followed me in.

He stood in front of my desk with his hat in his hand. I sat down. I studied for a minute and said, “I don’t like to get involved in things like this, Ferd.”

“Sir?’ he asked.

“I think Mr. Easter puts a lot of trust in you.”

“I hope so, Sir. I truly do.”

“So it really isn’t my place to get involved, but I appreciate the favor you did us last week.”

He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me in that way they have of knowing it’s best to let someone else do the talking.

“Goddamn it, Ferd,” I said. “Charlie wants to hire you.”

“Sir?” he looked at me like I was speaking Chinese.

“Wants to offer you a job helping him build, but he’s too damn proud to ask you himself.”

He didn’t say anything. I felt a little uncomfortable and so I broke the silence. “It would be a good opportunity for you, a real job in a real trade. No more cotton chopping. No more cotton picking. Real wages, Ferd. And Charlie has a storage shed back of his place that you could make into a place to stay right here in town. It’s a real opportunity.”

“No,” he finally said. “I appreciate it. But no. I will stay where I am.”

“I appreciate your loyalty to Mr. Easter,” I told him. “But I think that even he would tell you go. You need to look out for yourself.”

“Hit ain’t Mr. Easter,” he said. “I looks out for myself and I’ll stay where I is.”

“You hard headed…” I began.

“Kin I go now, Mistah Sheriff suh?” he interrupted.

“Sure,” I said. “Go on.”

Just as he got to the door, something made me blurt out: “Are you just going to get old and rot out there in that shotgun shack?”

He turned and looked back at me. “They’s wuss places.” Then he left.

I continued to see him after that but we never talked much. Maybe he thought I was mad, but I didn’t care one way or another. I had more to worry about than one crazy colored boy who could have had a nice life in town just for the asking. Activity picked up as the Depression seemed to be about over. There wasn’t as much stealing now, but there seemed to be a lot more mischief. It seemed that when people didn’t have to worry about the next meal, they started thinking about things to get into, especially the kids.

When it happened, I wasn’t surprised at the act as much as I was at the intensity of it. It was a Monday and I was in my office having my morning coffee when I heard Mr. Thomas Easter come in yelling where was the Sheriff? Before I could set my coffee cup down, he burst in and said, “You got to get out to Ferd Starling’s house. Something terrible has happened.”

I had jumped up so fast that I spilled my coffee all over me and the desk and I asked him what it was.

“You got to see yourself,” he yelled. “Come on!”

I brushed the coffee off me as best I could and started for the door. I stopped there and took my pistol belt off the peg where I keep it and followed Mr. Easter outside.

“I’ll take my own car,” I said. “It has a siren.”

“I’ll meet you there,” he said.

I left Mr. Easter behind so I had some time to view the scene alone before he got there. I almost wished I hadn’t.

The details are in the official report but it doesn’t do the mess justice. What I found was the place pretty much demolished. When I pushed the door open, I saw Ferd right away. He was lying on the floor in a drawn-up position. It appeared he had been sitting on a chair and he had fallen onto a rifle. One odd fact was that there was so very little blood. Our investigation concluded that he had placed the end of the barrel under his chin and then reached down and pulled the trigger himself. But there was only one little spot of blood. I’ve seen many crime scenes in my life and the amount of blood is usually the sickening thing for there is always so much of it. But not this time.

I first ascertained that he was truly dead and had some time to look around before Mr. Easter got there. I couldn’t do it justice in the official report and I can’t do it justice now. There were drawings and books scattered all over. They had been pushed into a pile and repeatedly soiled. Most had been torn and twisted to the point you couldn’t even tell what they had been. But they were mostly drawings of buildings, fancy, elaborate drawings. They were beautiful drawings if you ask me. I would like to have looked at them all, but they were too nasty to touch. It was the same with the books. I determined later that they were castoffs from the school library, another one of the many things that most people didn’t know about Ferd. But from what I could tell without having to touch them, they were stuffed with bookmarks and covered with notes in every margin. Even lying there in that filth, you could tell they had been loved.

I don’t normally get sick at the scene of a crime or an accident. But I almost did that time. I was glad, in fact, to hear Mr. Easter drive up. I needed another person in that room with me.

He had lost his sense of urgency by then and walked in rather slowly. “Did you have any idea about this?” I asked him.

“None,” he said. “He kept so much to himself and was so dependable that I never had reason to come here. That’s why I came over so soon after he didn’t show up this morning. I just knew something was wrong.” Then I looked over and saw that he was beginning to cry.

“Do you have any idea who it was?” I asked him.

He wiped a sleeve across his eyes. “Pretty much,” he said. “There’s been a gang of boys hunting around here. I guess they broke in while Ferd was working at my place,  and it got out of control. I guess it broke poor Ferd’s heart when he saw it. You know who they are, don’t you?”

“I have a pretty good idea. Why don’t you go on home and let me take care of this?”

“Would you?” he asked.

“Go on home,” I said.

After he left, I walked through the rest of the house. The kitchen was well stocked, and hadn’t been disturbed. I wanted to get my mind off the mess in the other room, to give my head time to clear. Truth be told, I was hurting a little bit over the whole thing.

I walked slowly around the room, repeating the names of the dry goods: Pet Milk, Rex Imitation Jelly, Humco Lard, bags of Martha White Flour, Brere Rabbit Syrup, and Clabber Girl baking powder. Lots of other canned goods, lots of them. He could have lived off this for some time. There were also several jars of Sunny Brook Coffee. As I looked at it, I remarked the slogan for the first time, “Every Swallow Brings You Joy,” flanked by two birds enjoying the full freedom of flight. In the far corner of the room was a five-gallon kerosene can. For a moment I wondered why the perpetrators just didn’t burn the place. Then it came to me. They wanted people to see what their hands had done.

Finally, I had to go back into the other room. I took one more look around. The destruction had been complete, vicious and complete. I stood wondering how one person, or even a group of people, could do this to one another. There were still pieces of drawings tacked to the wall, amidst patches of faded wallpaper and sheets of newspaper. Then I noticed a plank that had been removed from the flooring. A shallow box had been attached and there were several items there: some sort of drawing instrument, several pencils and a Garrett Snuff bottle containing some rifle shells. Subsequent investigations caused us to conclude that Ferd had stored—hidden—the rifle here as well. It turned out to be a remarkable weapon, a classic Remington in pure condition. While we were holding it and trying to find any relatives of Ferd’s, it disappeared and has never been found.

The stench was beginning to be unbearable as the morning sun rose. There wasn’t anything else I could do, so I walked outside to radio for help.

There wasn’t any doubt about who did it. There were five of them but one apparently left before it happened. The others really didn’t deny doing it. They just never would talk about it much, like they had made a pact. Three of them did say the Hinson boy left before it started. Mr. Easter raised considerable commotion for me to do something. So did that old-maid at the library. Most folks around town were more intrigued than incensed. In the end, I let the matter drop. You can say I counted votes. I don’t blame you. But you have to understand that they were white boys.

After they moved Ferd out, I had one of the deputies take the dry goods to old Mrs. Courtney. Then we talked Mr. Easter into letting us just burn the shack. He resisted at first and said he was going to leave it as a shrine to what kind of county it was we lived in. Finally, he said we could burn it but to get someone to bury Ferd in the front yard, under the oak tree.

We did, and Mr. Easter had a tombstone made. All it had was his name and the year he died, since nobody knew when he was born. We never found any relatives or anyone who knew anything about him except that he was from somewhere north of Conway, in Faulkner County. Until now, there wasn’t anybody who thought Ferd Starling’s life was worth going all that way for.

Mr. Easter died that following year and the tombstone disappeared after that. Nobody knows where to. His oldest boy cut the oak tree down the next spring on account of it was shading too much cotton, he said. For a time, they plowed around Ferd’s grave but then they got closer and closer to it and one day it was gone.

I have, on more than one occasion, driven by there and stopped for a few minutes. I can’t tell you why. I’ll take you out there. If you know right where to look, you can make out a rectangle where the house stood, from the burning of it. I look out over those cotton fields and think about Ferd and about the note I found under him but never told anyone about but just put in my pocket and kept. It didn’t make any sense anyhow. I still have it at my office if you want to see it. It doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. Maybe it would to you.

He had written it out in that beautiful handwriting of his. I can recite it from memory if you like.

He had written this:

“Broken by your fears, the warm winter’s place grows cold.”

Sure. Just remind me. I’ll be glad to show it to you. And by the way, that roof span? It never did sag again.