Wild Pitch

by A. B. Guthrie Jr.

  “No sale, huh?”

  “None. He seemed to think the proposal ridiculous. I thought he was, and so both of us had a laugh.” The doctor tapped a little ash off his cigar, being careful to see that it hit an ashtray.

  “Even so, afterward he came to you about Simon?”

  “Yes. Afterward. But why these questions, Sheriff?”

  Charleston waved one hand, indicating the questions were pointless. “Just trying to get a line on Hogue. You haven’t told me just what kind of a man he seemed to you.”

  “I tend away from surface opinions. He was never a patient of mine.”

  “But I didn’t suggest a professional judgment. Make it lay, clerical, secular, whatever.”

  Dr. Pierpont weighed his answer. “I suppose I could say he struck me as rather arrogant. I can well imagine he made enemies. But men of means often assume the mantle of superiority.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Charleston said.

  “Unhappily I encounter a good many of them in my practice. Any psychiatrist does.”

  “And any man without money who runs up against money.”

  “Yes.” The doctor sipped and continued gravely, “Wealth. The arrogance it creates, and the power it bestows.” He blew out a brief breath at the thought.

  Charleston put in mildly, “In the wrong hands, you mean, Doctor?”

  “Where so much of it is. Wealth, and consequently position and influence. Consequently a circle of toadies, too. Power misplaced.”

  “Direct cause and effect?” Charleston added.

  “You answer your own question, Sheriff.” Of a sudden Dr. Pierpont, who had looked dead serious an instant before, relaxed and smiled for the first time. “I’ve been talking pointlessly, maundering really, far from my field of competence. Forgive me.”

  “I was agreeing.”

  And so, I thought, was I. Wealth in the wrong hands, in the hands of the solely greedy, and with it the influence that money exerted. I could cite a few samples myself and felt like saying thanks to the doctor for enforcing my young and hesitant judgments.

  Charleston pointed toward the glasses, not speaking, and I got up for more drinks.

  “Professor Powell Hawthorne seems quite different,” Charleston was saying. “You’ve met him, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, yes. I tried to buy land from him, too, unsuccessfully.”

  “And what, if you’ll tell me, was your impression of him?”

  While Dr. Pierpont formulated his answer, I brought in the drinks and sat down.

  “First impressions are so often wrong, but, frankly, I found him a little too lofty, too precious, for my taste. Not arrogant, though, unless a certain affectation is arrogance.”

  So, it dodged in my head, the doctor felt as I did, though his language was better. Professor Hawthorne was too fine-haired even if he was the father of Geet.

  I gathered the interview was closing when Charleston asked, “Are you going on up to your place tonight?”

  “Heavens, no,” Dr. Pierpont replied. “Today is, let me see, Wednesday. I have a full day at the office tomorrow and even today had to crowd myself to drive up to see you now.”

  “I appreciate it. I don’t imagine you have leisure enough to enjoy your place to the full?”

  “Not nearly. Only about once a month. Oh, occasionally I sneak an afternoon and evening off, as I did the day of the picnic, though I had no advance notice of it, being more or less an outsider.”

  Now that he was off the professional reservation, now that whiskey had warmed him, the doctor was being more fluent. “Later, soon I vow, I’ll make more time for myself. I have plans, Sheriff, plans for something considerably more than a mere cabin. And somehow I’ll add to my acreage. You must come to see me then.”

  “I’ll be happy to,” Charleston replied. “Will you have another drink, Doctor?”

  Dr. Pierpont looked at his wrist watch. “Thanks, no. Time’s up. I must get back to the city.”

  He rose from his chair, as we did from ours, and shook hands with both of us. He had a good grip and looked a man in the eye—which recommended him to me. As he closed the door, he said, “I’m sorry the profession seems to be useless to you.”

  The sheriff came back to his chair, slumped in it and asked, “Well, Jase?”

  I had gone to the front window and was looking out and down. “He struck me as all right. Scrupulous about Simon Hogue. And about wealth, I was with him.”

  “Smart man,” Charleston said.

  “Hey,” I told him, still with my face to the window, “he’s sure got a flashy car. Foreign job, I bet.”

  “So?”

  I turned toward him. “You didn’t tell him about the three-oh-three casing.”

  “Sometimes damn if I don’t seem to forget—which is just as well, I reckon. Anyhow, doesn’t matter.” Charleston grinned a tired grin. “See you tomorrow, Jase.”

  I took the hint.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Thursday, a week since Buster Hogue had been potted, and no arrests yet and no likely ones without evidence we didn’t have.

  The sheriff was busy with paperwork when I entered the office. He hated it, as I knew, and he looked out of place at a desk with a clutter of pages to be read, signed and answered. A man like him, with a face written on by wind and sun and a body shaped by the outdoors, belonged in the open.

  Later on, he said, he would give some dictation to Jody Lester, a stenographer the office shared with that of the county clerk. And he’d better stick around, he told me, to deliver a fugitive to an officer from the eastern part of the state. The prisoner, collared by Halvor Amussen, was wanted for storehouse breaking, check forging, car theft and a few other little things abhorred by the law and was to be returned to the scene of his crimes.

  Still later, Charleston went on, he was going to Buster Hogue’s funeral, set for two o’clock at the Methodist church.

  So there was no work for me. Before I dragged away, though, the sheriff pushed the papers aside and leaned back. Jimmy Conner came in from the jail at about the same time.

  “Well, boys,” Charleston asked, “any answers today?”

  “About who killed Buster Hogue?”

  “About anything. People want answers, Jase, certain-sure answers, of which there ain’t so many in stock.”

  Jimmy said, “There’s a lot of questions never been answered. Like why roses smell sweetest when well fed with shit.”

  “Don’t strain yourself, Jimmy. That’s what the little hen said to the big hen when the big hen bragged that her eggs brought a nickel more on the dozen. Wasn’t worth the wear and tear.”

  “The wear and tear in the Hogue case is getting the evidence,” I put in. “What we know all points one way.”

  Charleston lighted a cigar and leaned farther back. “Does it, Jase? Maybe. I don’t know. But answers? Let me tell you. There’s a town close to my old home down south of here, and a drummer, making his first visit, came to the place on a train. When he got off at the station, he saw the settlement was a half-mile away, and no means of getting there but by walkin’.”

  The sheriff drew on his cigar as if giving us time to get the picture. “Well, the drummer looked at the long hike he’d have to take, and he looked at his heavy sample case, and he looked at his feet.

  “It happened old Gary Watkins was loafin’ on the platform, which was his habit, and the drummer asked him, ‘Why did they build the station so far from the town?’

  “’I dunno,’ Gary says, taking his pipe out of his mouth. ‘I dunno, unless they wanted it close to the tracks.’”

  Jimmy laughed, along with me, and said, “I don’t see where that takes us.”

  “Nowhere, I reckon,” Charleston told us, and blew out a thoughtful plume of smoke. “Nowhere, maybe, except away from wrong-put questions and smart-ass answers.”

  I felt perhaps he had gigged me for being sure Simp Hogue had knocked off his father, but I didn’t say anything. I took my baseball and wander
ed downtown, wishing Terry was on hand to play catch with. He was with a crew fighting a forest fire that laid a low haze over the mountains.

  Felix Underwood came out of his parlors, powdered and dressed for the Hogue ceremony. He was the coroner and had spoken against the idea of an inquest, saying, “Hell, he got shot, didn’t he? By a person or persons unknown? How you going to improve on what’s plain on its face?”

  I went home and made a few throws at the barn door, not putting much heart into them. Anyway, my arm felt good, good enough for the home game on Sunday. My father came to the house for lunch and later dressed for the funeral. I begged off from going to it, not because I didn’t like Hogue but because the preacher sure as hell would commend his soul to heaven and take a long time in presenting credentials. Reverend Hauser, having the ear of God, believed in chewing it to a frazzle.

  I wandered down to Main Street. There wasn’t many people about, and those that were were mostly dressed sober, as was fitting when a good citizen was to be laid down for good. But Dippy Ferguson hadn’t heard about the funeral and wore his shirt open under a jacket that would have stampeded a blind horse. Under his arm he carried an old, crush-type folder that held order blanks or samples or exhibits of whatever he chanced to be selling.

  Dippy was a wandering salesman who visited our town only once in a while. I had known him to sell, or try to sell, door to door, combination glass cutters and knife sharpeners, extracts, custom suits, off-beat vacuum cleaners and thousand-proof vitamins not available in any drugstore. Right now his line was magazines and newspapers or, rather, subscriptions to them.

  He didn’t do badly, not with the low-priced stuff, for people believed that hard work deserved a reward, no matter the worker’s mental equipment. Say what you would, that Dippy was a sure-enough hustler.

  What they didn’t know—the older ones who bought his glass cutters and extracts—was that Dippy’s stock included pictures and picture magazines that he drooled over as he showed them secretly to drooling teen-agers. Dippy didn’t smoke, drink, gamble or even swear, people said, ignorant of Dippy’s devotion to the remaining pursuit.

  “A man’s got to keep up with the times, kid,” he told me when I met him in front of the bank, which, like most places in town, had closed down for the funeral. Because he spit a fine spray when making his spiel, I took a step back. “Christ, yes, he does,” Dippy went on. “Things changin’ everywhere every day.”

  I allowed that was true.

  “Any magazine you want, I can subscribe you to it. Cheap, too. And papers, big-city papers, from Chicago to Spokane. Yes, sir, a man’s got to keep up with the times.”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “So why didn’t you hear about Buster Hogue’s funeral?”

  Dippy scratched his head and looked up and down the empty street. “So that’s it,” he said. “He bought some stuff from me onct. And they’re layin’ him away, eh?”

  “It seemed best. He’s dead.”

  “Sure, I see,” Dippy answered. “Bad day for me, then. But there’ll be some folks stayin’ home. Now, kid, maybe you ain’t interested yet in current events, but you sure God will perk up when I show you some pictures I got and some samples of magazines. Pictures like you never seen. Women and men, havin’ their fun. Me’n’ you will go off somewheres private and have a look.”

  Somehow Geet Hawthorne came to my mind, and I felt unworthy, and I answered, “No, dammit! Keep your damn dirty pictures.”

  I left him looking puzzled but undefeated. After all, everybody had to keep up with the times, public and private.

  I kept up with the times by going to the post office, looking in our empty box and lazing on home. I worked then on my Buster Hogue murder report, which I had sneaked out of the office, and had a fidgety go at The Moonstone, which the sheriff had lent me.

  It struck me, after I had read twenty-five pages or so, that maybe old Mrs. Jenkins wanted another chicken dispatched for the pot. Probably she hadn’t gone to the funeral, and it wouldn’t hurt to ask the old girl.

  Dippy Ferguson was there before me, and I paused outside the picket fence, seeing that Mrs. Jenkins already had opened the door. I couldn’t quite hear what was being said until Mrs. Jenkins lifted her cracked voice in song. Then I could hear all right. So could anybody if he’d happened to be within crow call.

  What she sang was her answer, off-key to some tune that had popped into her head. “No, I don’t want your paper.”

  Dippy was equal to the occasion. To a melody of his own, faster in beat than her bit, he sang back, “Oh, yes, you want to know the news.” He sang a pretty fair tenor, though, I imagined, quite spitty.

  That opened the ball, or should I say opera?

  Delighted at the presence of a fellow singer, Mrs. Jenkins put more spirit into her next selection.

  Pass the good, pass the good,

  With a will, with a will,

  Just a word or smile or song.

  Be it ever so small

  Don’t keep it all.

  Just pass the good along.

  I could guess what construction Dippy would put on that sentiment, and he didn’t disappoint me. In stronger voice, to the tune of “In the Good Old Summertime,” he answered, gesturing appropriately:

  The boy he climbed the fire escape

  And got there just in time

  To see her tootsie-wootsie

  In the good old summertime.

  Mrs. Jenkins disappeared inside. When she came back, she had an old horse pistol in her hand, which shook with the weight of it. The pistol went off, and so did Dippy. He cleared the gate near me by about five feet and was gone like an antelope, leaving as spoor a scattering of papers.

  I gave Mrs. Jenkins what I thought was time enough to cool off, but when I knocked at the door and it opened, she still held the pistol.

  “Mrs. Jenkins,” I said. “It’s just me. Jase. You know. Jason Beard.”

  There wasn’t a flicker of recognition in the old face. She appeared ready to fire that cannon again. She said, “Lay not wait, O wicked man, against the dwelling of the righteous.”

  In its wanderings the cannon kept picking me up, and I ducked and ran.

  The sheriff had returned from the graveyard. I told him my story, all of it, as fast as I could. He had to laugh, but his laugh was rueful, and he got right to business. “Jimmy,” he called, and Jimmy appeared. “Your wife working?”

  “Not now. Last patient got well.”

  “Tell her I’ll need her, beginning tonight.”

  Charleston and I got in the Special and drove to Mrs. Jenkins’ house. He knocked at the door.

  Mrs. Jenkins answered the knock, all smiles. “Well, Sheriff Charleston and Jase. Come in, both of you.”

  As soon as we entered, I smelled something burning and without asking leave hurried to the kitchen. A pot had boiled dry. Whatever had been in it was crust now, and the pot was ready to melt. I found a hot pad, put the pot in the sink and turned off the gas.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Mrs. Jenkins,” I said on returning. “A pot had burned dry. I turned off the gas.”

  “Oh, did you?” she answered.

  Charleston spoke in his blandest voice. “I understand, Mrs. Jenkins, that a man has been molesting you.”

  “Was he?” The old eyes looked at Charleston for confirmation. “I guess so, then.”

  “So tonight—and I hope you agree—I want Mrs. Jimmy Conner to be here. She knows how to deal with bad actors.”

  “I see,” she answered. “I suppose there’s no one in the spare room, last I heard, anyway.”

  “You can put Mrs. Conner up, then?”

  “Why, I imagine. Mr. Jenkins is away, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Thank you. I’ll be back later with Mrs. Conner.”

  I spotted the pistol at the same time the sheriff did. It lay, plain enough, on a chest in the hall. The sheriff was ahead of me on the way out, and Mrs. Jenkins behind, and I screened him from her sight for the moment it
took him to push the thing in his pocket.

  There were no laughs in either of us as we drove back to the office. All Charleston said was, “Jase, old age is a cruel thing. It lays waste body and mind, one or the other or both. ‘The last of life for which the first was made.’ Shit!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Except that the time was morning and the date nine days later, the scene was something like the opener, for charging into the office came Loose Lip Lancaster, mouth open, to report a murder.

  I had been sitting in the sheriff’s office, listening to him on the phone as he made arrangements for an incompetency hearing for old Mrs. Jenkins. District Judge Hiram Todd wasn’t holding court at the time, either in our town or elsewhere in his jurisdiction and was reluctant, I gathered, to schedule a hearing.

  “I’m damn sorry, too, Judge,” Charleston was saying, “but the county can’t act or afford to act as permanent custodian.”

  Judge Todd, I knew, wasn’t balking from laziness. He just hated the prospect. A soft-spoken man, not so lately from Kentucky, he had too much tolerance to be on the bench. Which accounted for his poor record on reversals by the Court of Appeals and his long popularity with the voters.

  “I know, Judge,” Charleston answered to another objection. “I know she’s a fine woman—or was. But the fact is she can’t be left to live alone any longer. What? You don’t have to ask me that. Of course she doesn’t have enough money to employ someone to watch out for her, even were someone available.” After a pause, the sheriff said, “Thank you, Judge Todd. Four o’clock today,” and it was right then that Lancaster barged in.

  “Be goddam, Sheriff!” he was crying as he opened the door. “Be goddam, another killin’ on top of one you ain’t solved!”

  “Slow down, Loose. Who?”

  “Ben Day. That’s who. Shot dead. I seen him.” Lancaster perched on the edge of a chair like a bird about to take off. “We got a crime wave.”

  “Where? When?” The sheriff, now standing, rapped out the questions.

  “On his own place, maybe two hundred yards from his mailbox. When? I seen him when I was comin’ in. There was kind of a low-lyin’ fog, and me, on my way to town, thought it was a downed critter at first. So I pulled up and went for a look. Deader’n hell. Ask anybody.”