AN EVIL MAN'S ROOTS

By Clayton Davis

Dufield Mead was skinny and not taller than many people. He was slump shouldered, not bent over. His pale blue eyes were accentuated every time he pulled his greasy, jet-black hair away from them with his calloused fingers. Those eyes looked at you strange as if he already knew something about you.

Dufield was called Duffy by those who knew him.

He grew up in northeast Alabama way back in the hills. The nearest city of any size was Chattanooga, Tennessee. Those hills were filled with people who didn’t know the Civil War was over.

Duffy was imbued with bitterness partly because of what his folks had talked about when he was young, but mostly because he was just that way. Most of the time he suppressed his anger and exercised patience. Duffy did his mean things in the secret places of his heart.

Duffy always shuffled along the dusty roads. None were paved. He liked how it felt as his bare feet transmitted pleasurable sensations up through his twelve-year-old legs and groin. The pleasure settled in the pit of his stomach.

To Duffy’s left as he shuffled along the road one day was a woods-covered cliff that twisted sharply downward. He was walking on the east side of the hill where his grandfather clawed a meager living out of the soil.

Thick woods and undergrowth to Duffy's left covered the hillside. From the cliff down to the valley below, extending

into the valley floor where it met cotton fields lay a carpet of lush foliage. It looked to Duffy like a tinderbox waiting for a match.

The fields and woods belonged to a man Duffy despised and feared. He sold illegal whiskey and was known as the local bootlegger.

Duffy once accidentally came upon him as he was hiding his whiskey supply near the cliff. The man was bigger than Duffy and had gray hair. His face was contorted into a picture of total hatred; the kind people have when you catch them doing something wrong. The man threw a rock at Duffy and pulled a pistol out of his pocket. Duffy ran home and told his grandfather.

"Don't worry about it, son," was all the advice his grandfather had to offer.

Duffy strolled another day near the place where he been made to fear for his life. The encounter had been innocent. Duffy didn't care what the man was hiding. Right now seemed like a good day to even the score.

At first Duffy got only a spark out of the match. It wouldn't catch. He dropped it amongst the leaves and reached for another. This one caught. The small tongue of flame playfully invaded leaves and dry twigs. A curl of smoke reached Duffy's nose. It smelled like the time he and his grandfather had been cleaning the garden. The aroma of burning leaves always brought back good memories to Duffy. After today the smell brought excitement to his soul.

After he was certain the fire would become a general conflagration and be able to march past the cliff into the valley, Duffy shuffled his bare feet along the road toward home.

Later that evening a neighbor was riding his horse on the same road. He spied the fire and fled to warn the bootlegger. You could hear popping sounds and loud explosions as the whiskey supply was consumed in the forest fire.

It was a few years before nature reestablished the bushes and undergrowth. The hillside seemed refreshed by the cleansing. It seemed to smile at Duffy, glad to be rid of the bootlegger's stash.

News about the Whiskey Man's bad luck spread throughout the neighborhood, starting as talk around the country store and barbershop in the small village. Neighbors were divided over the morality issue, until the Baptist minister rendered his opinion. The preacher's words were a final verdict. "Serves that bootlegger right. God moves in mysterious ways."

Duffy was introduced one day to a device called a Slingshot. The people around Duffy called it a Flip because they could flip small stones with it. It was a primitive and deadly weapon, not unlike that used by David to slay Goliath.

"Not bad company to be in," thought Duffy.

Duffy had made his weapon from a forked stick. There was a leather pocket to hold the projectile and rubber for energy. Long red strips of rubber had been cut from an inner tube, sliced into narrow, half-inch strands of vicious springy energy. The leather pocket was supple and formed a shape to cradle small round stones. The best leather was found in an old shoe tongue.

Duffy learned how to make a Flip at the country store. An older boy who always carried one taught him.

The older boy was well fed and had red hair. He was not a bad person. One day the boy said,"Duffy, tell you what."

"What?" Duffy tried to sound like it was nothing.

"You get us two Royal Crowns," he pronounced the name of the popular bottled soda with great respect. "And I'll show you how to do something. Useful too."

Duffy's hand thrust instinctively deep into his right front pocket. Therein rested a dime and one nickel. He had often admired the buffalo's image on that nickel and dreamed of western adventures.

"How you know I got money?" Duffy growled.

"You always do. And what I'm aiming to show you is worth it. Was time you learned something anyhow."

Last fall when his grandfather had taken a bale of cotton to town in the wagon, Duffy had been invited along. Grandfather gave him a quarter and freedom to explore the town's main street.

Duffy bought a Captain Marvel comic book in the corner drug store. It cost a dime. He probably would have treasured the fifteen-cents change until cotton picking time. Then he would have expected to earn a little more picking cotton for a neighbor.

Duffy addressed the storekeeper in the most important sounding tone of voice he could muster, "Uh . . . say. Let's have two bottles of Royal Crown. Out of your box there. Please."

"You boys got any money?" The storekeeper's inquiry was not without justification. These two were usually broke. "It's a nickel apiece."

Duffy laid the dime on the counter as if he did that every day. The cold bottles felt gloriously chilling in his hands.

"Here," Duffy said. "Now, what's I'm 'bout to learn?"

They went outside and walked a small distance from the store toward some underbrush on the other side of the dirt road.

The older boy showed Duffy a Slingshot made from a tree branch that used rubber bands to hurl stones. He explained, "We call it a Flip."

He glanced casually at a chicken pecking aimlessly at spilled grain near the gristmill. "Watch this," the older boy said. A stone flew swiftly toward the innocent chicken and hit it dead center.

The chicken jumped eight feet straight up and flapped its wings wildly. The poor bird glared at the boys and screamed angrily, "Awk!"

Duffy gave an exultant yelp, "Dang!"

They walked on into the woods where the older boy looked for a likely tree of strong growth.

"Here, let me show you how to build one," the older boy said.

He selected a fork where two limbs departed into separate directions on a hickory tree. They were the diameter of a finger and formed a perfect letter-Y. Bark was removed and notches cut at the tops of each prong. Then he sliced two lengths of rubber from an old inner tube. Each was a half-inch wide and eighteen inches in length. That gave the catapult its deadly force.

The older boy continued, "Now we take the tongue out of this old shoe."

A piece of leather was cut into the size and shape of a Band-Aid, three inches long and an inch wide. Holes were cut in the ends of the leather. The rubber strips were tied securely in the holes.

"Your holes have to be perfectly round."

The older boy showed Duffy how leather will tear if you make a jagged gash in it. Three feet of string was used to connect the two strips of rubber to the leather pocket and Y-shaped wooden stock. Stretching the rubber over the notches, they wound the string round and round to fill the groves. The loose end was slipped beneath the final two windings. The same was done at the leather pocket, leaving the folded end-flaps of the rubber strips facing inward.

When it was finished the older boy said, "Now hunt some smooth rocks about the size of marbles. Marbles are better. You got any marbles?"

Duffy had no marbles and began looking for something else to use. He found six or seven stones about the right size and shape.

All summer long Duffy practiced, taking aim at everything in sight. He was careful to spare human beings and domestic animals. The technique for hitting any target was to look directly at it. After several weeks of practice all the muscles of Duffy's hands and arms were coordinated with his eyes. Within arm's reach he could look at something and touch it with his finger. Stone throwing simply extended his reach. Enough practice eventually made the stone go where Duffy’s eye was looking. He was able to propel a stone as an extension of his arm.

His aim was deadly. If it could be seen it could be touched with his hurled stones. Pity the bird, or rabbit, or the poor squirrel that stood still within Duffy's eyesight. It was in great danger.

Duffy liked plodding along the dusty roads barefoot and marching behind two big mules on his grandfather's farm. Fresh soil soothed his naked feet. The young man plowed nothing but straight and accurate furrows. This was indeed a great skill for a farmer’s grandson to have. But farming was such a drag on a lad with imagination. How to escape?

Migration north to cities with industry was the only available dream for a boy in Duffy’s circumstances, down south on a sharecropper’s farm.

As World War Two got worse the defense industries and factories from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard needed working hands. During that period of history some men of eligible draft age were too infirm or cunning for the military to capture them. They sought employment up north in the factories.

Duffy grew in stature and kept his lanky posture. His wisdom contained festering self-pity. It was brooding leavened by a strong bias against anyone or anything that would ever presume to dominate him. In due course he killed a man or caused his death nonetheless. It was not, however, without premeditation. Duffy's conscience later accepted it as his own intent.

It came about when the bootlegger was riding down the road frequently strolled by Duffy. The boy quickly secreted himself in some bushes and listened to the sounds of that innocent horse’s hooves on the road that fateful day. The rider would pass between Duffy and the cliff. He was on the horse’s right side. The cliff was on the left of horse and rider.

This was a delightful chance to get even. Duffy made an evil grimace. His eyes shone with the light of a savage killer.

As horse and rider drew near Duffy stretched the two strips of rubber on his trusty Flip to their fullest length. He was determined to hurl a stone upon that horse's buttocks. Duffy let go. He never missed.

"Whoa! Hold on, boy," the bootlegger begged the horse. Away from the offending, hiding Duffy was the direction the terrified horse had leapt in terror. On the left was that cliff.

The horse danced closer and closer to the edge.

As he crouched lower behind the bush Duffy enjoyed immensely the rider's predicament. Swiftly the horse had bucked. Then it kicked its heels gracefully as it jumped very high in the air. What fun this seemed to Duffy. How magnificently the horse performed its dance as the bootlegger gripped the saddle horn. Duffy covered a grin behind the hand holding his Slingshot.

Tragedy struck the scene like a thunderclap. Oh No! Duffy didn't really mean for this to happen. It could not be, but it was. Duffy had only wanted to torment the rider. He felt helpless. The bootlegger could do nothing either. The stricken horse tried its best to regain some balance. Then as the poor animal came to ground its two left legs skidded over the cliff.

Down went horse and rider. Both fell as one with the poor horse's screams drowning the bootleggers sobbing, pitiful cry. The sickening sound of their landing below suddenly brought satisfaction to Duffy's ears.

Duffy whistled softly as he walked home afterwards. Some days later the news spread around the country store that the bootlegger had suffered an awful death.

The Baptist minister gave an opinion that seemed to settle the matter. "Probably horse and man were both drunk on bad moonshine."

Duffy didn't feel much like a killer, but he knew the act could be performed with very little remorse. It was like a greater power enveloped him and could only be exercised by people with his own special temperament. All it took was a strong will and steady determination.

Duffy held only scorn for anyone less ready than he was to defend a point of honor. From the dreadful day of that bootlegger's end, Duffy would avenge every insult to himself, no matter how long it took him. Some offenses smoldered for many years just below the surface of his innocent face.

Neighbors were starting to grow suspicious of this young man named Duffy, fearful of his dark motives. Girls avoided him. And only the more unrefined boys befriended him.

The Baptist minister decided it was time some helpful advice should be aimed at Duffy. They met by chance at the country store one day.

The preacher began to talk. "Duffy, you have bad ways."

"What you mean, preacher man?"

"Let's step outside. Want to say a few words with you."

The Baptist minister himself would never participate in violence, but expected someday soon, very soon indeed, someone would harm Duffy. Talk had reached the preacher's ears.

He asked Duffy, "You know it's a sin to kill?"

"Yeah . . . sure. But I never outright killed nobody."

"I know, Duffy. But I heard, 'roundabout, that you'll be absent from these hills someday soon. One day very soon . . . one way or another. I heard talk. And it’s about you, Duffy."

Duffy felt the world crushing against him. Somehow he felt like this preacher man was a good friend, someone whose word could be trusted.

Duffy asked, "You any ideas for me? What’n th’world can I do?"

"I'se you I’d go up north. And look for work. If’n I’se you. Yes, I would. Yes. I'd surely leave these parts. Something bad will happen to you. It will if you stay around here, Duffy."

"Thanks, preacher. Mebbe I'll try joining the military first. They might want a man like me."

"Might be a good way," the preacher agreed.

Long ago Duffy had decided sharecropping and subsistence farming was at the starvation level. It seemed to be just about like being in prison.

Each and every morning a rooster’s crowing awakened Duffy. That was a beast with only one important duty, to service a free-range herd of willing young hens, to pounce upon and love them whenever and wherever he pleased. Why did that rooster have to be so loud in its celebration of the act?

When the crowing awakened Duffy he had to harness his grandfather’s pair of big mules and drive them amongst the precious plants in the fields. He had to plow all day, dawn to dark.

Scratching and scraping the dirt, annoying the soil, killing grass and weeds, Duffy was doing it all just to make a living. Old Mister Rooster knew how to do business but wouldn’t let the rest of creation sleep while he made love to his flock.

The preacher's advice finally helped Duffy make up his mind. He would offer himself for military service. Duffy walked the seven miles down the mountain to a town that had a military recruiting office. It was open only one day a week.

The Sergeant was satisfied with Duffy's initial enthusiasm and appearance. This strong young man was old enough at age eighteen. That was the youngest one could responsibly enlist himself without parental permission.

Duffy was eagerly accepted, quickly interviewed and put on a Greyhound bus to Fort Benning, Georgia for medical examination.

Alas, the doctor discovered Duffy had a heart murmur. He was promptly and unceremoniously issued a bus ticket back to his home in the hills.

It was a miserable bus ride back to the town where the Sergeant had started him on his journey full of hope. Then he began that long, sad walk back to his grandfather's farm.

Duffy felt the weight of many troubles as he made that disappointing trek. It was the along the same old dusty road where he had set fire to the bootlegger's woods six years before. Right about there was where Duffy had tortured the horse into falling off that cliff. It had been a splendid day indeed.

Duffy's spirit and mood began to grow oppressive and heavy as he recalled the horse's accident when the bootlegger had met his fate.

Without knowing exactly when it began Duffy was acutely aware of someone, or some being, walking about two steps behind him. His face was ashen white when he stole a furtive glance over his shoulder. Strolling along behind Duffy was an old man keeping pace. His feet made no sound in the dust.

He jumped with fright when a very hoarse voice called his name, "Duffy."

"Huh? What?" Duffy croaked.

"You have been warned," the horrible voiced continued

Extremely shaken, Duffy again demanded, "What?"

"That military doctor said you have a weak heart. Unless you stop hating people and mend your ways your heart will stop beating."

Duffy took one more step while he thought about the stranger's advice. He whirled abruptly to offer a reply. No one was there. He felt cold. With a sense of impending doom Duffy raced home and collapsed on the front porch.

Freight trains ran regularly through that small town where Duffy had tried to join the military. The railroad ran north and south. That is the general direction the hills lay in northeast Alabama.

It would be easiest near midnight to jump a ride on a freight car as it left the siding where goods were loaded.

The moon was set when Duffy slid open the door on a freight car one night. Earlier that evening, not long after dark, he had broken into the country store and emptied its cash register. He felt like a traveling man needed spending money. That community owed him something anyhow.

For several weeks Duffy hid out and caught trains. Many nights when he could not find sleep in a bumpy freight car he would listen to the train's noise. The boiler and its huffing made him wonder if Hell would be like that. He had never seen anything as powerful as a locomotive engine. When suddenly the whistle let out its scream Duffy thought it sounded like evil spirits calling him to justice.

He finally tired of riding trains and found a city that looked big enough for his ambitions. The decision made, he alighted from a bumpy freight car one early morning in Baltimore, Maryland.

It was a short few blocks into the factory district. The first person Duffy saw was a man sweeping dirt into the street from a storeroom.

Very hungry, Duffy asked, "Could I get a job here?"

"Push a broom?"

"Anything. Used to hard work."

Thus began Duffy's tenure at a chemical company where the person he had met was a trained scientist. He had been more than glad to surrender the broom that morning. Hired help was in very short supply.

The military was beginning to draft more men, many more. Soon the scientist himself went off to war. He left all the warehouse responsibilities to Duffy.

The job required Duffy to keep track of everything in the stockroom, as well as doing janitorial work. He possessed a good imagination and learned well how to keep books, but Duffy did it his way.

Taking a walk down to the docks and having a cold beer in bars frequented by sailors, this was almost all Duffy did for recreation. On one of his daily walks he felt edgy, more than usual. The knife in his trousers would surely bite a victim this day, anyone that dared to cross Duffy.

The knife did its deadly work before sundown. Because a fly had landed in Duffy’s beer glass purely by accident he became deranged with fury. It seemed to be exactly the excuse Duffy needed.

In a whispered hiss filled with poison Duffy accused a man on the barstool next to him, "You put a fly in my beer."

"No, sir. I did not."

It had been a rich man’s chauffeur sitting there under the hateful glare of Duffy's eyes. The chauffeur denied the charge. Of course it was an absurd allegation. Nonetheless, it was the excuse Duffy was seeking as an outlet for his rage. He whipped the knife out of his pocket in a swift, blinding motion.

Duffy had done it that way many times getting ready for a day just like this. The poor chauffeur fell dead across the bar and crossed his arms to lean forward like someone asleep in his beer.

After sinking the blade into his fancy-dressed victim, Duffy retired down the street a few doors. There was a limousine parked at the curb. Duffy hung about, then slipped away when an important-looking man entered the bar. He figured it was no use waiting around to answer questions. Now he had killed up close and personal.

--END--

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