Justice

by Larry Watson

  As soon as the package was out of his hands Wesley backed away, and he got off the porch quickly so he would not have to hear the laughter of Martha and her friend.

  He trudged home, soaking his boots in the water and slush that filled the gutters and streets of Bentrock on Christmas of 1921.

  He thought that day that he would never again experience a Christmas like those of his childhood—stealing his mother’s cookies, opening the expensive gifts from his father, pushing through the crowd of friends and neighbors who often filled the house, listening to his mother play the piano and sing carols, sledding and skating with his brother—all that innocence and joy seemed to vanish with the melting snow.

  But maybe those Christmases could come back if only the snow would return.... Since that day, snow never fell without Wesley thinking, at least for a moment, that it was a fulfillment of his wish.

  Yet tonight Wesley and his brother and their friends sat in the McCoy jail because snow filled up the fields and sloughs, the hills and ravines, the highways and trails of Montana and North Dakota.

  The jail’s floor was not much warmer than the frozen ground the building sat upon, and the cold worked its way up Wesley’s spine until his entire body was wired tight. Nevertheless, he stayed where he was; he was too tired to stand up and move around, and he’d be damned if he’d go into one of the cells, even if it did have a bunk to sit on.

  “Anybody got a watch?” asked Lester. “How long we been in here?”

  Wesley reached for the pocket where he usually kept his watch. Then he remembered Frank’s instruction: on a hunting trip you leave your watch at home.

  “I don’t know. A couple hours,” Frank said.

  “Maybe this is it,” suggested Tommy. “Maybe he’s going to keep us here a while then let us go.”

  “Maybe,” Frank replied.

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But do you,” Tommy pressed, “do you think he’ll just let us go? I mean, we been here a while.”

  “I don’t have an opinion,” answered Frank. “Why the hell you keep asking me?”

  “Because your old man’s a sheriff!”

  “Not here he ain’t.” Frank’s face was flushed with anger, and Tommy let the subject drop. Instead, he raised a new issue.

  “I don’t get it,” Tommy said. “So she’s the daughter of this old Sioux warrior. What the hell does that mean? This sheriff has to protect her or something? I never heard of such.”

  “Wonder who her boyfriend is,” Lester mused.

  “White, do you think?” Tommy asked.

  Frank was bent over, studying the door latch. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “It ain’t even got a lock,” Wesley told his brother.

  “I can see that.”

  “‘I shoot my last arrow,’” said Tommy. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

  Frank and Lester both laughed. “Indian bullshit,” Frank said.

  “He didn’t say he shot his last bullet,” added Lester. “Or stoled his last horse. Or rustled his last cow. Or took his last scalp. Or slit his last throat.”

  “Or drank his last whiskey,” Tommy said.

  Wesley couldn’t join in. Iron Hail’s words were still running around his mind, and Wesley found them thrillingly poetic. He knew he would remember them to the end of his days. He wished the day would come when he could repeat it himself. Perhaps he’d be a soldier someday and perform an act of heroism. Lying gravely wounded on the battlefield, Wesley would look up at the comrades whom he’d just rescued and say, “Friends, like old Iron Hail once said, ‘I’ve shot my last arrow.’” If he could have walked Beverly Tuttle home through the snow, he would have shaken her father’s hand and said, “Sir, I’m proud to know you.” Then Wesley’s thoughts cleared: If he would have walked Beverly home, he never would have landed in jail. And he wouldn’t know of the ceremony honoring Iron Hail.

  “Well, I guess the old Indian’s somebody around these parts,” Wesley said to his friends.

  “Oh hell yes,” said Lester. “He’s a citizen.”

  “You never know,” Frank said. “Maybe they got a shortage of citizens.”

  Sheriff Cooke swung open the door with such force that the heavy door banged against the wall and woke Lester, who had fallen asleep sitting on the floor. “Up and at ’em, boys,” the sheriff said. “Rise and shine.”

  Sheriff Cooke had his gloves and overcoat back on, buttoned to the throat. Behind him in the office was Deputy Rawlins, his gun once again cradled in his arms. Now, however, it was out of its scabbard, and Wesley and the others could see what kind of a weapon it was. Winchester .30-.30, lever action Model 94, just like the rifle Frank had brought on this hunting trip. Wesley couldn’t be sure—was his heart beating faster from jumping to his feet after Sheriff Cooke threw open the door or from the sight of the gun unsheathed?

  “Follow me, boys,” Sheriff Cooke said and led them from the cell area, through the office, and toward the jail’s front door. Just as he had done when they left the hotel, the deputy fell in behind the four boys.

  They walked past the bench where they had sat earlier, and Wesley saw something that frightened him more than the deputy’s rifle. There, lined up on the bench, was all their gear from the hotel—their hats and coats, their duffels and packs, sleeping bags, rifles, shotguns, and ammunition, everything they had brought in from the car. On top of the pile was the bright red and green box of La Playa cigars with the picture of the beautiful senorita smiling out from under her mantilla. Wesley guessed their whiskey was sitting in a drawer of Sheriff Cooke’s desk. Wesley was the last in line, and his brother was right in front of him. As they filed past their belongings, Frank turned around to Wesley and said, “You stay close.”

  Outside the wind had died and now the night was so still you could hear a dog barking far off—asking, no doubt, to be let in. Much closer was the rhythmic scrape of someone shoveling snow.

  Wesley knew why none of them asked where they were going. Because as long as they didn’t know, they could pretend that everything would be all right once they arrived.

  The little troupe turned into a narrow alley between the jail and a brick building next door. As they entered the alley Wesley could see the sign painted on the side of the building, its black letters stenciled on a white background and lit by a single light hanging over the sign. “CHOICE LIQUORS. Beeler’s Liquor Store. Pool Hall in Connection. McCoy, No. Dak.” Wesley wondered how thickly the snow would have to fall, how hard the wind blow, before those words would be obscured. Could a blizzard be so strong that you could stand in this alley and be unable to read that sign?

  The shoveling came from halfway down the alley, where Cooke’s other deputy was clearing the snow from an area the size of a small room. As he shoveled, he stacked the snow into a large bank against the wall of the liquor store. A lantern sat on the ground nearby, and the light coming from below made it look as though the shoveler had uncovered something, under the first layers of snow, that gave off a strange glow.

  Sheriff Cooke called out, “That’s sufficient, Clarence.”

  The sheriff marched the boys down the alley until they came to the cleared area. “Right here,” he said, indicating that they should line up facing the snowbank. “This’ll do fine.”

  Wesley peered down to the other end of the alley. It looked like a car was parked there, blocking the space between the buildings. Was that their car? He glanced back in the direction from which they had just come, to the opening in the alley. Now that too seemed further away. Sometimes snow could trick you about distances. Blowing, it could make even close objects look far away. Stacked up deep, snow could make walking even a hundred yards seem as tiring as a mile.

  If he ran—no, no, when he ran—Wesley wondered which way he would go: toward the light or toward the car.

  “Who’s going first here?” Sheriff Cooke asked as cheerfully as a schoolteacher searching for vo
lunteers in the classroom.

  The man who followed them out of the jail now faced them, a man with a gun and a man with a shovel each standing to one side of the snowbank.

  A firing squad, Wesley thought. That’s what this is. They’re going to line us up and shoot us one by one and let our bodies fall back onto the snow. And with that thought a strange calm came over him. He hadn’t done anything to deserve being shot. None of them had. Not today in McCoy. Not ever. That didn’t lessen his conviction that they were going to be shot, but it made it easier to bear. Sheriff Cooke was going to have them executed, and he was wrong for doing it. They weren’t wholly innocent, but in death they would be redeemed, victims of this great injustice.

  “Looks like you’re the one,” Sheriff Cooke said, pointing to Tommy for no other reason than that he was at the end of the line and closest to the sheriff. Tommy, Lester, Frank, Wesley.... Wesley counted off as if he were in Sunday School trying to determine how many others would have to recite the Bible verse before Mrs. McDougall called on him.

  “What for?” asked Tommy.

  “What for? That’s the wrong question, young man. We’re out here now, and we’re going to proceed. You can get us started here by pulling down your pants. Both your trousers and your drawers.”

  Whether from cold or fear or both, Wesley began to shiver. Once the shaking began it would soon take him over completely, and Wesley was afraid he would have no control over any part of his being—not his voice, his breath, his bowels. He tried something else. He relaxed his jaw and set his teeth chattering as fast as they would go. If his body wanted to tremble, he would allow it this much. And as long as his teeth kept up this machine-gun clatter echoing inside his skull, he still had some control.

  “I ain’t dropping my drawers out here,” Tommy said. “Not in this cold.”

  “That’s exactly what you’re going to do. And then we’ll proceed from there.”

  “No sir.”

  “Or we can cut them off you. And I can’t promise you we can see any too well where the knife’s going in out here in the dark.”

  “What’re you going to do?” Tommy asked as he reached for his belt.

  Wesley heard the clink of Tommy’s heavy metal belt buckle. Wesley didn’t have any idea what Sheriff Cooke had in mind either, but he knew he’d rather be shot than have something done to him with his pants down.

  “I told you,” the sheriff said. “Drawers too.”

  “Jesus,” Tommy said, and now his voice was trembling.

  “All right,” the sheriff said, as if someone had finally come up with the right answer. “You came to town looking to stick your pecker somewhere, you can stick it in that snowbank.”

  “The hell.”

  “Go on. Jump in there. There’s no getting away from this. You don’t jump in there yourself Mr. Rawlins and Mr. Rozinski are going to push you down, and you might not like the way they do it.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Wesley saw Tommy hobble, his pants around his knees, right up to the pile of snow.

  “Let’s go,” Sheriff Cooke said. “Your friends are getting cold out here.”

  “Shit!” Tommy said, and more than leap toward the snow, he simply let himself lean and fall forward into it. He kept his arms folded in front of him; the instant his body hit he let out a shout that was half-laugh, half-cry.

  Sheriff Cooke commanded, “You get up when I tell you,” and at the same time the deputy with the rifle moved over and pinned Tommy down by putting his foot on his back.

  “All right, Clarence,” the sheriff said.

  The man with the shovel braced his feet, brought his shovel back like a baseball bat, and swung. The flat back of the shovel’s blade hit Tommy square on the ass, and in the cold air the metal rang like a bell, as if the shovel had met not flesh but iron. Tommy yelped like a dog, as much in surprise as in pain.

  Clarence delivered four more blows, and with each one Wesley could see Tommy’s body arch and spasm with the indecision of whether to press further into the snow or to rise up and meet the shovel.

  “Let him up,” the sheriff said.

  Tommy crawled backward out of the snowbank before getting to his feet. As soon as he stood he began frantically brushing snow from his bare skin, concentrating first on the clumps stuck in his pubic hair. He sniffled a bit, but Wesley couldn’t be sure if Tommy was crying or if his nose was running from being facedown in the snow. I won’t cry, Wesley resolved. They can split me open with that shovel but I won’t cry.

  Tommy clumsily pulled up his trousers, but his hands and fingers had too little feeling to enable him to work the belt and buckle.

  Sheriff Cooke nodded at Lester. “Next.”

  Staring straight ahead, Lester took a long stride forward.

  “I believe you know how this is proceeding. You can keep things moving by getting those trousers down right quick.”

  Lester’s heavy wool hunting trousers were held up by suspenders and he shrugged them off his shoulders with a deft flip of his thumbs. Without looking down he began to unbutton his fly.

  Lester muttered, “A spanking. A goddamn spanking. I ain’t been spanked since I was six years old.”

  Under the snow in the alley was dirt—Wesley could see black patches of it showing through in places where the deputy had shoveled or where the wind had swept the ground clear. Nevertheless, the footing where they stood was poor—either packed snow or frozen, rutted ground—so when Lester decided to run there was a moment when his boots could find no purchase, and that slowed his sliding, skidding first step just long enough for the deputy to get his shovel up and into Lester’s face.

  The deputy had swung his shovel—of course he had—yet it seemed to Wesley as though all the deputy did was place the shovel in the air and Lester ran right into that square of steel.

  Lester stumbled backward, his hands to his face, and then he fell, one leg bent awkwardly under him.

  “Goddamn it,” cursed Sheriff Cooke. Then to Rawlins and Rozinski: “Go ahead. Finish it for him.”

  Rawlins, with his rifle in one hand, grabbed Lester by the back of the shirt and pulled him partially to his feet. Lester’s boots were moving under him but to no effect, just kicking and scrabbling uselessly on the snow. Clarence Rozinski put his shovel aside so he could work on pulling Lester’s pants down.

  Once his trousers were bunched around his knees, they could all see: Lester was wearing his union suit, buttoned tight throat to crotch.

  “Reach in there,” the sheriff said to his deputy, “and pull his pecker out for him.”

  “I ain’t putting my hand in his drawers. No sir,” Rozinski said.

  Sheriff Cooke didn’t ask Rawlins. He said, “Just get his face in there then. Get him cold first.”

  Rozinski picked up his shovel again. As if he were working a lever, Rawlins pitched Lester face forward into the snowbank. As soon as Lester’s body hit, Rozinski had his shovel drawn back and began to administer the ringing blows, these harder, faster, and more numerous than Tommy received, perhaps to make up for the layer of cloth covering Lester’s backside.

  Lester lay perfectly still under the beating. Wesley wondered if he was unconscious, if something in his head had been knocked loose when he collided face first with the shovel.

  Rozinski swung even harder, and Wesley hoped the deputy could keep control of his shovel. If the blade angled at all and an edge came down onto Lester it could cut into his flesh like an axe.

  “That’ll do,” the sheriff said.

  As Tommy had done, Lester crawled backwards off the snow pile, but he just kept crawling backward until he came to his place among his friends.

  With Lester this close, Wesley could see the black drops in the snow from Lester’s bleeding nose. Wesley traced Lester’s path back to the snowdrift; yes, a trail of blood marked Lester’s progress. Wesley remembered the look of Beverly Tuttle’s blood staining the floor of the Buffalo Cafe. Blood for blood, Wesley thought. Was that in the Bible?
No, there it was an eye for an eye.... Blood for blood. Where had he heard that before? He couldn’t place it, yet it seemed as though he had been hearing it all his life, a saying as old as any Bible verse. Or perhaps it was not a phrase that had ever fallen on his ears. Perhaps he simply breathed it in, an attitude that was as much a part of the Montana air as the smell of sage, the feel of wind.

  Lester was still on his hands and knees when he coughed twice, then vomited. He bucked hard with the force of his retching.

  Wesley turned away until he could be sure Lester was finished. When he looked down he saw steam rising from the fetid pool, like a campfire just extinguished.

  Sheriff Cooke put his mitten to his nose. “Whew! Throw a little snow on that, Clarence.”

  Clarence scooped two shovelsful of snow on top of Lester’s vomit. He packed the snow down with the back of the shovel.

  As he stood up, Lester staggered backward, reeling with the effort of getting his weakened body upright and his suspenders looped back over his shoulders. He kept his head tilted back to try to stanch the blood flowing from his nose.

  Wesley felt something brush the front of his leg, but before he could look down to see what it was, he knew: Frank had stepped in front of him, putting his body between Sheriff Cooke and his younger brother.

  The sheriff clapped his mittened hands together and let out a long cloudy breath, as if he were exhaling smoke from a cigar. “When you boys tell your daddy what went on here in McCoy, make sure you tell it right. And tell it all. He’s already heard me tell the story, so you want to be damn sure your version matches up with mine. You don’t want to add lying to your troubles.”

  Wesley realized he had been drawing such shallow breaths that he was winded from simply standing in place. Nothing was going to happen to them. Somehow Sheriff Cooke knew—or had found out—that their father was a sheriff, another peace officer, and Cooke was letting them go. Wesley inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with air so cold it felt as though something inside him would crack.