by Jerry eBooks
Even the sheriff seemed to feel it a little, though Claybaugh is scarcely what anyone would call an edgy sort. He was working away at a crossword puzzle. His coat and vest and shirt were thrown across the back of his chair.
“Chigger,” said Sheriff Claybaugh. “Eight-letter word beginning with H and ending with E and meaning ‘capital offense.’ Any ideas?”
I said no; then added: “I brought Charlie some funny books, Clay. Animal Antics—they’re the only ones that don’t make him cry.”
“That’s thoughtful. Strange about Charlie going berserk on us, ain’t it? Everybody knew he was a little turned, but nobody thought he’d ever turn completely berserkwards.”
“Claybaugh, that ain’t funny!”
“I know it ain’t, Chig.” The sheriff turned his blue eyes up to me and they were soft. “I’m fond of Charlie my own-self, and I just can’t hardly see him taking the wrong side of an axe to a gentle old soul like Miss Eubanks. Nope. I can’t hardly see it happen.”
“Well,” I said, “he likes sharp things, Clay. No getting around it, Charlie always appreciated a good cutting piece. And there’s weather.”
Claybaugh huffed out his cheeks. “Tell a man there’s weather. She’s a sirocco for fair.”
“Come twice?”
“You ought to do some word puzzles your own-self. Sirocco is what they call it in the tropical places when a wind blows in from the south this way. Makes people jumpy as cats, somehow, and now and then one of ’em goes on the hunt like Charlie. It’s like the same chord of music played over and over till it runs through your bones like a scream.”
“Say, don’t it?”
Claybaugh said, “But it don’t come often here. Last bad spell was six years ago. I remember the time because that was the year somebody boiled up crow meat and ate it to pay off a mid-term election bet. And that was the year—”
He unhooked the star from his uppers and began to pick away at a little spot of egg-yellow that had hardened into the groove.
“Well, I can talk about it now,” I said. “That was the year Tookie packed up her duds and left me.”
Claybaugh shook his head. “Pretty little thing. Cute as a cardinal with all that red hair—but, Chig, she’d been a flirting girl from the first.” He put his key-ring on the desk. “Guess I can trust you with these, boy, but you watch Charlie real close.”
“Tell a man I will.”
Claybaugh came clear out of his chair and slapped the roll-top like someone killing bugs. “Homicide!” he yelled. “Homicide! Dam’ it, Chigger, all this time it’s been plain as the nose on your face!”
I edged away from him a little and ran one finger up to the nerve that sometimes draws at my lip. “Come twice?” I said.
Claybaugh dipped his pen in the bottle of red ink. He sat down and began to scratch letters across the word puzzle. “Begins with H and ends with E, don’t it? You watch Charlie, boy—never can tell what may be in a man’s mind.”
I went in there to Charlie’s cell and Charlie said through his balled hands, “I just couldn’t seem to eat ‘er, sheriff. You can warm ‘er up for my supper, though, can’t you?”
I said, “It’s me.”
He took his knuckles out of his eyes and they were tender. “I said all the time you might come and see me, Mr. Deems. I told the sheriff so.”
“Well, and why not, Charlie? I brought you a slight something, too.”
He brightened his eyes at the funnypaper books. “Cub bear ones?
“Miss Eubanks thought maybe I could learn to puzzle out the short words. She said so, Mr. Deems. But they wouldn’t let me go to the service—oh, no, not them! Wasn’t usual, the sheriff said.”
“Charlie,” I said, “it really ain’t. Claybaugh tries to be fair.”
“But I didn’t chop her!” said Charlie. “Not one lick, I didn’t. Mr. Deems. I need some new clothes awful bad, but you just couldn’t have hired me to chop Miss Eubanks.”
I sat down on the edge of Charlie’s bunk and loosened my collar some so I could breathe better. “Seems like you were up there on the Hill, though,” I said.
“On’y because Miss Eubanks likes flowers.”
“Come twice?”
Charlie said, “She was gonna put in a big rock garden there, people talked. She was gonna stump out that old crabble orchard she taken over from the bank. So I says I’ll go up there and offer to chop for Miss Eubanks. I figured she’d leave me chop, Mr. Deems, because everyone knows how handy I am with—”
His face bleached tow and I thought for a minute he was going to yell. “But not that way, Mr. Deems,” he whispered.
“Maybe we better talk about the cub bear books.”
“The wind was on the back of my neck,” said Charlie. He was shaking a little and hunting a place for his hands. “It was like someone breathing on me, Mr. Deems, and it was dretful up there and I wanted to turn at the gate. But that was when I heard the scream. Jim sang his’n purty!” it screamed. Jim sang his’n purty!”
“Come twice?”
He said it again.
“Charlie,” I told him, “that’s wild. Miss Eubank never owned a talking crow in her life.”
“Wasn’t no crow that screamed it, Mr. Deems. It was pore Miss Eubanks her own-self.”
“Charlie,” I said, “that story would be plain poison in court. Miss Eubanks had taught school all her life, and everyone knows she made a chore of her grammar.”
He clenched his big face and went on talking. “I wanted to go the other way, but Miss Eubanks had been my dear friend. I run and I run towards the house, and direc’ly I got to the door it was bad, Mr. Deems. She set there with her head up against the door and I thought right away something might be out of whack because the axe was in her—The axe was in—The axe, Mr. Deems.”
“Charlie.”
“And I was crying a little, I guess, and I says, ‘Miss Eubanks,’ I says to her, ‘how come anyone would want to chop you?’ ” Charlie put his mouth too close to my ear. “And then there was The Sign,” he whispered.
“The Sign?” I asked.
“It was dretful,” whispered Charlie. “Dead as she is, up jumps her arm like this, Mr. Deems; and she points Out There! She points Out There to that old crabble orchard—and then down goes her arm like this. It on’y made a soft little spank on the step, though.”
It was the way he told it, somehow. I said, “Charlie!”
“And I took up the axe and I mogged for the trees, but the wind could mog faster than me. It was dretful when I got to the orchard. There was a shadow sixty-five miles long that run through the grass like a snake, but I could have stood that, maybe.” He put his mouth to my ear again. “On’y thing I couldn’t stand was The Women.”
“Women?”
Charlie whispered, “It don’t get in the books, I guess, but maybe the millionaires have got some reason for keeping it from us. When that south wind shook the leaves, I knew. It blew the moon all silver and green through the crabble trees; and the trees kep’ saying at me, kep’ saying: ‘Oo-h-h, Charlie! Ah-h-h, Charlie! Tell the boys hello-o-o, Charlie, and don’t do a thing I wouldn’t do.”
He pecked at my knee with his forefinger then, but I don’t suppose I jumped more than two or three feet at the outside. “You tell Colonel Murfree and maybe he’ll put it in the Democratsaid Charlie. “Them crabble trees up on the Hill, Mr. Deems, they’re dead women lifting their pore lean arms to fluff out their hair and try to look purty again.”
“Charlie,” I said, “not another word! A man can stand so much and no more.”
“That’s what I know,” said Charlie. “I couldn’t have gone on into them trees if I’d been bare-naked and Pop behind me with the gad. I yapped like a pup and I made for the road, and there I was swinging that dretful axe and running off at the head when the Allisons come uphill in their car.” His mouth reached for his earlobes again. “How’s Mrs. Allison today? Hate to think of her being down sick.”
“Now, Charlie, y
ou don’t want to be a cry-baby all the time, do you? Look, Charlie,” I told him, “you haven’t even opened up your funnypaper book.”
He unrolled the funnypaper books and out rolled that old Navy Colt of mine—the one I got from Copeland Powers when he bet on the wrong sheriff.
CHAPTER TWO
LYNCH TALK
Charlie cooled off his fingers on the leg of his cords. His mouth opened wide then closed very slowly. He leaned close to me, whispered: “Gun?”
“Gun,” I agreed.
“No,” whispered Charlie.
I rattled the key-ring at him and said, “The Allison boys are taking their mother up north awhile—they think maybe she’ll get over her breakdown sooner there. Well, Charlie, they’ve got a nice cool cyclone-cellar where you could hole up for weeks. Would be a nice cozy place.”
He turned his face to the window and whuffed like a dog. “But maybe you’d get in bad with—”
“I’ll have a yarn for Claybaugh—don’t you fret about that. Charlie, maybe you’re guilty as sin, but other-hand maybe you’re not. One way or the other, I wouldn’t keep a cannibal shoat cooped up in weather like this. Not when the south wind is blowing.”
Charlie moved his feet. “The sheriff give me a big cavalry sword oncet.”
It was muggy as a swamp in that little cell, and the nape of my neck began to draw at the hairline. “Damn it,” I said, “you don’t think I’m telling you to shoot at him, do you? All you’ve got to do is pour enough lead around the place to keep him interested in his word-puzzle. And then you mog, understand? Man comes in here offering you a chance and you stand around thinking up crazy things instead of mogging.”
Charlie coaxed, “Don’t lay ‘er on my old sore back, Mr. Deems.” He took the gun and he took the key-ring and he opened up the door and he went.
I lay down on the floor near the cub bear books and looked up at the long crack that ran across the ceiling. The funnybooks had the root-beerish smell of Bigler’s Pharmacy.
I guess ordinarily the Colt would have made a terrific boom, but in all that soft heat the shots had a lazy, rolling sound like a cowbell heard at dusk. I lay where I was and listened to Claybaugh’s chair lean hard against the wall and something heavy turn over once to scratch at the floor like a Badger. Then things were quiet.
Claybaugh came in sweating a little and dragging Charlie along by the scruff of his shirt. “Dam’ it, Chigger,” he scolded. “I told you to watch him. Remember I warned you.”
Charlie had never been much to look at, of course, but he was worse than ever with his shirt front stained red clear down to the old trunk strap he used for a belt. I came up onto my hands and knees and shook my head a little to put things back where they belonged.
“I was watching him like a hawk,” I said, “but even a hawk can’t see backwards. And who’d ever have thought he knew the rabbit punch?”
Claybaugh threw Charlie onto the bunk and wiped off his fingers with the cub bear books. “You didn’t even say you were toting a gun,” he complained.
“Tell a man I was. Think I’d call on Charlie without side-arms of some kind?”
“Well,” said Claybaugh, “all I wish is he hadn’t made me do it. What’d the poor stiff want with a gun, anyhow? He threw every one of his shots straight at the floor.”
Charlie’s feet looked only a little bigger than gravestones with his toes turned up.
I shut my eyes and said, “Well, there’d have been a lot of loose talk if Charlie had broke out of jail. I hate having this happen, Clay, but I guess you handled ‘er the only way you could.”
“The only merciful way, after all,” said Claybaugh. He blew his nose and heaved a great sigh. “Dam’ it, though, I’m going to give Charlie particular hell when he comes out of this! That bottle of red ink I slapped him with went all over my word-puzzle, Chigger.”
Well, I’ll say this for the shots: they warmed up trade a little. People usually come to my shop for the fresh news, and it made things even better that I’d been right there in the thick of the fray when Charlie put on his jailbreak. By first-coke time that afternoon I had a better than fair crowd.
“Oh, Charlie’s not really a bad sort,” I told them. “Another sheriff might have played ‘er different, but I’m kind of glad old Claybaugh is the easy-going type. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Charlie. I’d hate to think of Charlie stopping a bullet from Clay’s gun.”
Cotton Maxey made the noise he makes with his lips. That’s the blonde Maxey boy—the one that wears the green suit and the old Settler’s Day button reading: I Love My Wife, but Oh, You Kid.
“Charlie can’t help from liking sharp things,” said Cotton Maxey. “They tell me his mother once jumped on his head because he forgot to dig up a fresh batch of eating-clay.”
“Well,” I said to the stuffed raccoon up on the setback, “you can’t hardly blame her for that. I understand she’d been planning a big charity supper for the Maxey family.”
There was a sort of embarrassed silence after I said it. Neither the ‘coon nor anybody else wanted to break out a smile, because Cotton packs around a barlow knife only a little less wicked than the razor I was holding. He decided to let it ride. But the look he gave me wasn’t friendly at all.
We were most of us somewhat on the peck, I guess. The southerly wind had blown in all day, shaking the dry catalpas along Main so that they danced like fingers on a piano. I’d closed up my shop tight against the sound; and as Les Turnidge came in, the air in that place was scarcely a day deader than Adam.
“She’s thinning out on top, Les,” I told him.
“I’m paying you to cut it, not wear it.” He looked up at the ‘coon in the setback as if he would like to shoot it again. “So Charlie goes faunching in there with a couple of big guns and Claybaugh slaps him with a book. Wears a gun his own-self, don’t he?”
“Oh, it wasn’t quite like that, Les. Anyhow, Claybaugh hates to shoot at people he knows.”
I oiled up the clippers a little; they had a baby-chick sound that wore on my nerves. “It’s not that I’m saying anything against Miss Eubanks,” I said. “There wasn’t a better woman or a finer teacher in the world. I’ll leave that to Cotton Maxey, there—he must’ve got to know her pretty well those five or six years he spent in the Fourth B. She taught your little ones, most of you, and I guess she’d have taught mine if Tookie and I—Well, she was a fine woman.”
“Set up with my wife once,” said Les. His strawberry mark had a hot, chafed look under the clippers.
“Set up with everybody’s wife. Fed hungry bellies and clothed naked Maxeys—whether they wanted to be or not. Asked nothing more of life than the right to raise a few little flowers. But like I say, she’s gone now—couldn’t even smell the beautiful floral offerings at her own service—while poor old Charlie sits up there healthy enough to tear the neck off a horse. And it’s the living we’ve got to think of boys. Remember that.”
Cotton Maxey bent over to stare at the sleepy June bug that had blown in from the street. There was a sound of breathing in the room, thick and slow like the wind. Crabby old G.D. Harvison Murrow balled his hand on Cotton’s new issue of Ginger Snaps and peered at me out of eyes that were only a little more glassy than the stuffed raccoon’s.
“You’d have to take up for Charlie! Sure—you hired him in the first place. Well, it ain’t gonna do you a lick of good, Chigger! He’ll get his next Court Week, the axe-murdering—”
“That so, G.D.?”
“Ain’t it?”
I blew on the clippers. “Few months from now,” I told them all, “we’ll look out there and see old Charlie swinging downstreet with a grin on his face from here to the Hollow. Yes, and his big old cavalry sword clunking along at his side. Well, that’s all right. Charlie ain’t a bad man at heart, you know.”
Les Turnidge’s neck twitched under the lather. “How do you mean, Chigger?”
“Why, man alive,” I said, “there ain’t a single one of those
big-upstate-millionaire-lawyers who won’t be fighting for the chance to take Charlie’s case! Just for the fame of it, I mean. And then what happens? With the exception of Cotton Maxey, there, every man-jack of you would have to tell the truth on the stand.”
Cotton opened up his barlow knife and began to strop it softly on the sole of his shoe.
Les Turnidge said, “What truth? Or maybe we ain’t got the right to know. We’re only taxpayers! It’s root-hog-or-die for the poor man, but some big-fat-upstate millionaire-lawyer—Ouch!”
“You leaned on the blade your own-self, Les. Why, Charlie’s a little different, that’s all, and you’d have to say so, wouldn’t you? They’ll send him away to a place for a while, and in three-four months—oh, maybe six—back comes Charlie to his grindstone and his tools. Well, hell, I like Charlie. I’d hate to think of him being cooped up for the rest of his days.”
The June bug tottered over to the fallen Ginger Snaps and looked at a row of letters reading: Babes in the Woodshed, by Dodo Dare. Cotton’s knife went whickety-whack on the quiet. G.D. Harvison Murrow bawled:
“Released as cured, you mean? You mean a bunch of big-fat-bloated-upstate millionaire-lawyers can come down here and—”
“It’s how things are done, G.D. Right or wrong, it’s legal, and we’ve got to stand by the law. I’ll always say the crowd done the wrong thing in that beast-man case up north.
“What beast-man case?” said Les. “Ouch, damn it!”
“Criminy, don’t jump around so! Well, some of the papers called it the Frenzied Frankenstein case. Seems this poor stiff had just been released from a place—been there three-four months. He thinks, ‘Well. Nothing like having a license to kill, is there?’ So they were having a sort of Settler’s Day like the one we have in October, and—Oh, I hate to talk about it.”
The June bug had turned west and crawled along a crack in the floor. He was trying to find air, I guess. “Tell it!” screamed G.D. Harvison Murrow. “Tell it, Chigger!”