by A B Guthrie
When Brother Sam ran out of steam, he borrowed some from the Bible. His words slurred and ran together. He was an auctioneer, auctioning salvation with an auctioneer’s jabber.
There was a sway to the voice, and people swayed to it. They nodded, a good many did, and they listened, their faces intent, put under a spell, I had to remind myself, of hypnotic nonsense.
More music. This time it was “The Old-Time Religion,” played as it never had been played in our Methodist church. It was fast. It had a beat to it, a boogie beat, or ragtime or jazz, that made feet and hands move. Brother Sam sang, his voice big and true, and then nearly everyone joined in. The old-time religion. It was good enough for father, you betcha. I told myself I was a deputy, not a vocalist.
Afterwards Brother Sam made an embracing gesture. Come forward, you who repent, he was saying. Come, bend your heads, confess in prayer, and sweet Jesus, son of God, will forgive you. Come forward ere the last curtain falls. Come. Come. Know peace. Know glory. Know life everlasting.
A dozen or so of the audience did go forward and knelt before the stage, and Brother Sam prayed for them. The two chronic drunks were among them. It had been quite a while between drinks.
The plate was being passed. The orchestra played softly, as befit a sober moment. I contributed half a dollar, thinking the evening worth it.
To my astonishment then, to my first-blush disbelief, I saw a red head among the kneeling sinners, the head of Red Fall.
In conclusion Brother Sam blessed us all, saved and unsaved alike, and the people began to move out.
For no reason I could name I hung around while the crowd thinned. I saw Red Fall talking to Brother Sam. I saw Brother Sam put a kindly hand on his shoulder.
No disorder. No need for a town marshal. I went out a tent flap and breathed God’s air. Dark had fallen. As I took the path to the footbridge, I heard steps behind me and turned and made out the face of Red Fall. “A good meeting,” he said as we walked along.
“Yeah. Quite a performance,” I answered.
“Is that what you call it?” he asked.
What did he call it?
He had his reply on his tongue. “An inspiration.”
Maybe I would have said more, but there was a slight rustling in the bushes beside the path, and by looking sharp I could make out a couple lying there.
Fall must have seen them, too, for after a few steps he said, “Disgusting. An abomination in the sight of God.”
I answered, “Maybe so, but it’s been going on for quite a while now.”
“A stop should be put to behavior like that,” he told me.
We had come to the footbridge and crossed it. “Better start with the preacher,” I said.
“What do you mean?” There was an edge in his voice. “He is a man of God.”
I let myself be sarcastic. “And doesn’t know what his kind of excitement does to people?”
“That’s enough,” he said and angled away.
I went to the Commercial Cafe and asked Jessie Lou to bring me a hamburger. There were just three other customers, strangers to me. Revival meetings didn’t seem to spur appetites, not for food, anyway.
“I’ll be off in ten minutes, Jase,” Jessie Lou said as she served me.
I said, “So?”
“I have something to tell you, if you can wait.” Her eyes asked me to wait.
“Who wouldn’t?” I answered, meaning to be just polite.
Later, after she had shucked her waitress outfit and we were on the street, she said, “I have a little house, Jase, a house all to myself. Why don’t we go there? I’ll fix you a drink.”
I asked, “Is it far? I have a car.”
She took a quick hold on my arm. “No. Not in the police car. Please come on. Walk.”
Her house, a little white thing on the south edge of town, looked neat. There was a flower garden in front of it, but the season was a little too early for blooms. She let us in with her key.
You couldn’t call the inside elaborate, but it seemed comfortable enough. There were a lounge and small table and a couple of chairs in the living room, which had an old but clean carpet on it. Through an open door I could see a kitchen. A closed door must lead to her bedroom and bath.
The first thing Jessie Lou did after we entered was to pull down the blinds. Then she asked, “Bourbon and water? Sit down. Make yourself at home.”
I said, “Thanks. Easy on the whiskey.”
She went to the kitchen and brought back two drinks on a tray. I took mine, and, holding hers, she sat on a chair and faced me. “You have something to tell me?” I said.
She answered softly, “I guess you’ve heard, Jase?”
It struck me that she looked small and alone and sadder than a funeral flower. Pretty, though. Small-pretty and nicely built.
“How could I hear when you haven’t told me?”
“I wasn’t talking about that, but skip it for now.” She took a slow sip from her glass and lifted her eyes to me. They appeared stricken. “I’ve always liked you, Jase.”
“That’s something. That’s good,” I said. “But I don’t know why. Two years ago you were too much of a kid for me. Sorry. You’re not now. A couple of years make a difference. But we hardly knew each other except by name.”
“I always looked up to you. That’s why you’re here now. Maybe I can help you, in your work, I mean.”
“I hope so.”
“There’s that, and, besides, there’s nobody else I can talk to. Nobody. About myself and my reasons. Oh, you’ll hear about me soon enough, and that doesn’t matter. But I’m a little afraid, Jase. It’s foolish, maybe, and probably is. But squealing on somebody?”
“We don’t go blabbing around, Jessie Lou. Nothing will come out that doesn’t have to.” I tried to smile. “Sheriff’s orders.”
She didn’t continue. She sat, glass in hand, and looked at the walls as if, somehow, though they imprisoned her, she could see far beyond them, far beyond the walls and beyond hamburgers and French fries and fallen arches, could see a world dreamed about. I wanted to comfort her.
She left me to get two more drinks and sat silent again. I didn’t speak. Whatever was on her mind would come out in time.
Finally and abruptly she said, “F. Y. Grimsley was laying Rosa Charlie.”
I took a breath and asked, “Who says so? You can hear anything.”
When she answered, I thought she was off the target. “I’m on the market, Jase.” Her gaze went down as she spoke.
“In the market for what?”
Her face came up and seemed to implore me to understand. “I said on the market. I’m for sale.”
“You don’t—”
“Just what you think.” As if I might suspect she was propositioning me—which was possible—she added, “But not to you, Jase. Not to you.”
I still couldn’t believe. I said, “You don’t mean you’re selling it!”
“I have been. That’s how I know about Grimsley and Rosa. In bed a man tells things to a girl, especially if he’s half drunk.”
I got up, my drink sloshing in my hand, and took a couple of paces away, not seeing her now. She was a kid even yet, barely of legal age if that, and she had been putting out for money, lying with old bastards like Grimsley—and my world turned ugly on me.
“Good God!” I said. Out of the jumble of my mind a stray thought turned up. “A man doesn’t brag about fooling around with another man’s wife.”
“It was a deal, Jase. Eagle Charlie knew.”
I turned to face her, half-imagining she was somebody else, some baggy old thing with pop eyes who had just one thing to sell and it undesired. But she was still Jessie Lou, young, pretty, forlorn—and, I thought, defiled.
It must have been my expression that brought a note of defiance into her voice. She lifted her head, chin out, and looked steadily at me. “Put yourself in my place if you can, which I doubt. You’re somebody. Your family is something. I’m nothing, and my famil
y’s not worth a damn. The Whippett family. Just common trash.”
I knew. Her father was a seasonal worker and sponger, generally broke and drunk when he wasn’t. Her mother was a dreary woman who had given up long ago, that is if she had anything to give up. Her two brothers were louts.
“You don’t have to be the same way,” I said.
“I’m not going to be. That’s the point. I’m one Whippett who’s going to be able to hold her head up. I’m going to a secretarial school, probably in Spokane, and get away from my family and all.”
My first astonishment, my first disbelief were gone now. In their place I felt only heaviness. “On money you make in bed?” I asked.
“On that and my pay and the tips I get. I have better than three hundred dollars saved up. I’ll manage, and I’ll say good-bye to the cafe and the town and my no-good family and my soiled reputation.”
I stepped away from her again and then back. My father had fixed ideas about means and ends. I could hear him saying, “Don’t expect good to come from bad, Jase. That’s how politicians think, justifying bad actions in the name of noble ends that never turn out noble.”
But now was no time for lectures, not to a girl who sat sad and defiant with far hope in her eyes. I said, “There must be another way, Jessie Lou, a better way.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But you’re a good girl, too good for what you’re doing.”
“Sure. I’m a Whippett. Don’t you forget.”
“You’re yourself, and it’s yourself I’m thinking of.”
“Me, too. All the time.” Her tone, like her words, had turned sharp. “You tell me no, but where’s the yes to my life? Yes to the goddamn cafe. That’s all you can say.”
“I’m sorry.”
She rose stiffly from her chair. “Good night.”
She stepped to the door with me, and it wasn’t until we reached there that I realized she was crying. I put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her without heat and said, “Remember, you’re Jessie Lou, no one else, and you’re a fine girl.”
Chapter Five
“Well, if it ain’t Hawkshaw himself,” Halvor Amussen said the next morning. He had risen to greet me. He was big enough to eat hay.
“Hi, Mr. Town Marshal. Still the ladies’ man, unless you’ve changed stripes, huh?” I answered. Over or through our talk I could hear voices in the inner office.
He held up the hand he had shaken mine with. It was the size of a college dictionary. “Cut it out, kid. I’m as good as married.”
“Unlucky girl,” I told him. “Back early, aren’t you?”
“One day, more or less. What’s the diff?”
“None, to a married man, I guess. High sheriff busy?”
“He said you could go in, favorite son.”
“Your hinges squeak,” I said.
I went into the inner office. Charleston sat at his desk. Seated opposite him was Dave Becker, who had his hat on, not in defiance but according to habit. His back was straight. I figured he was as promising of juice as a stone.
“You say that’s all you know,” Charleston was saying.
Becker replied, “Every bit.”
I had brought pad and pencil with me and sat in a corner.
Charleston came forward in his chair, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”
“If you wasn’t sheriff, you wouldn’t dast call me a liar.” I couldn’t see Becker’s face but knew it was closed and harder than ever.
Charleston said, “You are, and I would, and I’ll get the facts out of you.”
One of Becker’s hands made a little gesture, as if saying, “Just try it.” Aloud, he answered, “Beat me to a frazzle and wash out the frazzle, and you won’t get what ain’t there.”
Charleston got up, saying, “We’ll see. And for your own sake you’d better stay where I can get hold of you.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Sheriff,” Becker answered, rising. “I’m just a humble man and always go along with the law.” His bowlegs took him to the door. He let himself out.
Charleston sat down again. I went to the seat Becker had left. “Tough citizen, out of tough country,” he told me. “Tonto Basin. Pleasant Valley. Heard about them?”
I answered I didn’t.
“I dug it out of my mind last night, helped by a book,” he said. “Range wars over sheep and cattle, they had there. A long-lasting feud, too, the Graham-Tewksbury feud. Both sides killed off, all but one. Zane Grey—you know him?”
“Yes.”
“He got the stuff for a book there. To the Last Man. The ill wind blew him good, but nobody else.”
“That wasn’t in our time?” I asked. “Not in Becker’s?”
“No. No close connection.” He stopped for the right words, which he could use when he wanted to. “But remembered violence, a way of violence that gets celebrated by mouth or book—it colors a country for a long time. Kids grow up with it in their bones. Anyhow, that’s the country Becker came from.”
Charleston took one of his small daily quota of cigars and put a match to it. Through a puff of smoke he said, “Change of subject, Jase. Are your sins wiped clean?”
“No fault of Brother Sam’s if they aren’t. Ask Red Fall.”
I told him about Fall then, and he said, “Hmm. Anything else to report?”
I had something all right, but I hesitated. Damn it, Jessie Lou was a good girl. Still, I had to say, “Grimsley was laying Rosa Charlie, Eagle’s wife.”
“You seem to speak with considerable authority. How come you know, Jase?”
There was nothing else for it then. I gave him what I had learned.
He sighed, his face showing concern and regret. He said, “That seems authentic enough.” He paused and added quietly, “I knew about Jessie Lou.”
“I feel sorry for her. I like her regardless.”
His eyes rose to mine. “I can tell that you do.” He looked down at his desk. “She’s not the first girl who has thought to elevate herself by her tail. Sorry doings, boy.”
“She said she was a little afraid to tell me. She talked about what happened to squealers.”
“No grounds for fear. Hell, who cares? Grimsley’s dead, and Eagle Charlie was in on the deal for Rosa. No trouble for Jessie Lou. Reassure her.”
I said that I would, knowing the truth when I heard it.
“All right. To business,” Charleston said, leaning forward. “Would you recommend seeing Rosa Charlie? You want to quiz her yourself?”
The question brought me up in my chair. “Good Lord, Mr. Charleston, I couldn’t do that!”
Charleston removed his cigar. A small smile touched his mouth. “Of course not, Jase. I wouldn’t suggest it seriously. You’ve been acting so down in the spirit, I wanted to see if there was any life left. I see there is.”
He snubbed out his half-smoked cigar, got up and put on his silver-gray hat. “I said, to business. Bring your pad, Jase.”
I said, “Sure, but could I ask where?”
He ushered me toward the door. “We’re going to see Eagle Charlie, who else?”
The land lay greening and peaceful, young land, I thought, in the young season. Later, wheat would ripen and the grasses stand ready for the cutter bar, but now was the time of growth, of soil and seed hope. The road dipped and curved and climbed toward the foothills that would climb into mountains. The picket pin gophers were out, some mere babies, and Charleston, silent, tried to keep from running them over. He couldn’t avoid all of them. When, in spite of his efforts, he flattened one, he shook his head. Another rider would have thought he was too softhearted for the office of sheriff.
Short of Grimsley’s place, he turned right into a road less traveled. He asked, “Ever been to Breedtown, Jase?”
“Not since I was a boy,” I told him. “I was kind of scared of the place then. All those Indians.”
“Yep, but no need to be. I don’t guess it’s Indians so much as the sight of poverty that people shy awa
y from. Poverty has an ugly face, and so we tend to think it’s the face of the red man because it lives with him. But whoa, boy, on this sociology talk. We’re officers of the law.”
“Yes, sir.”
We topped a rise, and in the near distance I saw a scatter of buildings. You could call them buildings, that is, if you counted sagging log cabins and slab-built shacks. They sat out from a double log cabin which had a garden by it. We forded a trickle of stream from what must be Eagle Charlie’s spring and pulled up by a door.
There were mothers and kids around some of the shacks and more lean curs than I took time to count. The dogs loped to the car, barking tenor and bass. I like dogs all right, but don’t like to get bitten. Charleston left the car, paying no heed, and I got out, too, paying heed.
Charleston knocked at what seemed to be the main door. I wasn’t prepared for what came to answer it. Good Lord, she was beautiful, beautiful as only young part-blood girls get, and then only rarely. Her hair was black, her eyes big, her features fine, her skin tinged with copper. Over her shoulders she wore a piece of red blanket. She had on worn jeans and a man’s old shirt. The body they clothed must have been born in the wild, she seemed that fine-boned and graceful.
Charleston asked, “Mrs. Charlie?”
She nodded. Behind the delicate curve of her lips her teeth showed white in a half-smile.
“I’d like to speak to Eagle Charlie, if he’s around.”
I think it was then that she noticed Charleston’s badge, for the smile left her face, and she said, “Policemen?”
“Sheriff,” Charleston answered. “But don’t be alarmed. I thought maybe Charlie could help me.”
Without answering, she stepped back and withdrew, on her face as she turned an expression of troubled wonder.
She had left the door open for us while she disappeared through an entrance. The room we walked into was habitable but no more than that. An old Majestic range occupied most of one end. Out from it were a table and three chairs of sorts, standing on worn linoleum. A couple of sawed wooden blocks apparently served as chairs, too. Some cast-iron cooking utensils hung from the wall near the range. A water bucket with dipper sat on a rough bench. The place was clean. We waited.