Justice

by Larry Watson

  He walked to the bar where the coffee and tea pots and heavy china cups and saucers were lined up on white linen towels. He poured himself a cup of coffee, dropped a nickel in a wooden bowl (all the morning customers at the hotel were on the honor system), then turned and left the dining room without even tipping his hat to the woman who signaled to him. The woman he loved.

  She was Gail Hayden, wife to Wesley and daughter-in-law to Julian. She worked in the Mercer County courthouse, and the sheriff’s office was in the basement of the same building. Len saw her there. He saw her in the Northern Pacific Hotel dining room. He saw her playing shuffleboard with her husband in Vic’s Bar on Main Street. He saw her out at the ranch at Hayden family gatherings. Finally, as if to emphasize the futility of trying to avoid this woman with whom he had foolishly allowed himself to fall in love, Len saw her in his own kitchen, his own living room. Wesley and his bride moved into a house right next to Len and Daisy’s, and Daisy and Gail became good friends. Daisy introduced Gail around town, showed her where to buy her bread (Cox’s Bakery, if she was not going to bake her own) and meat (Frechette’s Butcher Shop), where to have her hair done, and where her husband was likely to be when he was neither at work nor at home (the High Line Billiard Parlor or McRae’s Mobil Station).

  Whenever Len walked into his house and saw Gail Hayden drinking coffee at the kitchen table, he was filled instantly with equal measures of joy and sadness. He was pleased to see her, even if it was only for the few minutes it took him to fill his cup, exchange a word or two about the weather, and retire to the living room, where, from his chair, he could hear every word of the conversation. But perhaps it was better if he did not see her so often, for he had no hope of purging himself of his feeling for her if it was constantly renewed by her smile, her voice. Her wave.

  After Gail Hayden came to town, Len McAuley’s consumption of alcohol during the day dropped almost to nothing. He didn’t want to take a chance that she would see him drunk.

  Late at night, however, after he finished his patrol, when Daisy was asleep, Len sat in the living room and drank whiskey until he could close his eyes and not see Gail Hayden’s shy smile or her blue eyes or her small, straight teeth or her ankles that looked so thin Len was surprised they could support any weight at all. Those ankles that she often reached down to massage, but Len knew she was actually tugging her stockings, trying to pull the seams straight. When Len saw her do this, something in him caught and pulled tight, as if a cord ran from his throat to his groin. When she walked away, it was with just a little bobble in her gait, and Len wondered if it was those ankles again, or her high-heeled shoes.

  Then, just when Len thought the whiskey oblivion was total, when he thought he could close his eyes to nothing but red shadows and smoke, there her arm would be, beckoning to him from the billowing darkness.

  But Len hadn’t been drinking whiskey all those years without learning something about its uses and its power. He had one more drink, as quick and raw as he could take it. Then he put two fingers to his closed eyes and pressed hard, harder. In another moment both thought and inner sight served this new pain. If his swirling head and stomach seemed up to making the trip, he would head for the bedroom. Many nights he didn’t try and fell asleep in his chair.

  Yet no matter how much whiskey he drank, no matter where he slept, he was always awake in time to watch Gail Hayden walk across the street from her house to the courthouse.

  Len McAuley was not the only man who found Wesley Hayden’s wife attractive. In the late spring an oilman came to Bentrock, up from Missouri or Mississippi, Len couldn’t remember which. One of those southern states where people talked too much, and then made it worse by drawling out their words as if their mouths were for nothing but making noise.

  This oil speculator, Gilbert Bennett, was a cocky little man who wore two-tone shoes and suits the color of Montana rock——pale gray granite or sandstone. He was supposed to be in the area to buy mineral rights, but as far as Len could see, the man didn’t do much more than shake dice at the Silver Dollar Bar and flirt with the secretaries and the waitresses at the hotel dining room.

  And of those women he singled out Gail Hayden to receive most of his attention. “Sunshine,” he called her, saying that her smile was the only ray of sunshine in that Godforsaken part of the country. Gail blushed at the remark, and Len wondered if he should tell her he heard Bennett say the same damn thing to Mary Morrissey.

  At first, Bennett was content to compliment Gail, and even then his flattery was directed at her character more than her appearance. Gradually, he became more personal. “Can you cook too? My God, what more could a man ask for—not only is she a beauty but she brings home a paycheck and puts food on the table.” When Bennett saw Gail eating a piece of apple cake one morning, he rushed over to her table and pretended to pull the cake away from her. “Let’s have none of this now. I don’t want you eating anything that’s going to ruin that pretty little figure.” When he caught her staring out the window, he said, “I know, I know—there’s not much to interest someone like you up in this corner of the world, is there? What say you leave that husband of yours and you and me will go off and find some excitement. God! there’s no sadder sight than a beautiful woman bored.”

  After Bennett made a remark like this, he laughed his highpitched little laugh. Gail Hayden blushed and managed a tight smile, but Len thought there was more discomfort than mirth in her eyes.

  Len finally decided he should speak to the sheriff about Bennett.

  “What do you think of that southerner?” Len asked Wesley one afternoon in the office while they were catching up on paperwork. Len had long known that the best way to give Wesley advice about his work was by circling around and coming in the back door. “He sure don’t fit in around here, if you ask me.”

  “He’s a character all right.”

  “I noticed he’s mighty familiar around the women.”

  “For a little fellow he’s got a lot of strut in him. I don’t know where he gets it.”

  “Wherever. He’s got his share and then some.”

  Wesley turned to his typewriter, rolled in a sheet of paper, and began to type, his index fingers tapping out words in sudden little bursts of speed. Len waited until Wesley paused. “Gail too.”

  Wesley kept his fingers on the keys. “What about Gail?”

  “Like I say. The way he gets familiar.”

  “Is he bothering her, would you say?”

  “Embarrassing her, more like.”

  Wesley nodded. “It’s no secret when that happens. I don’t know anybody gets as red.” He resumed typing.

  Len stood and walked around the office, staying close to the walls like a dog that has been scolded but still wants its master’s attention. He stopped directly behind Wesley. “Maybe I should say something to him.”

  “About what?”

  “His behavior around the ladies.”

  Wesley backed up the paper in the typewriter and leaned toward the sheet as if the answer to Len’s question was printed there. “They’re grown-up Montana women. They can take care of themselves. Gail too. Besides, what are you going to say to him? He hasn’t broken any law.”

  Len stared at Wesley for a moment as he concentrated on aligning the paper in the machine. Neither Len nor Wesley smoked, but the basement office still smelled of the cigars Wesley’s father smoked. Wesley’s father—Len couldn’t imagine that Julian Hayden would be hunched over a typewriter while Bennett—or anyone—was flirting with Bentrock’s married women, much less his own daugher-in-law. He’d take that fellow aside and explain how things worked around here, how he’d best watch what he said to women who weren’t free for his picking. If you’re looking for that, you don’t look in the direction of women who were already spoken for. Try that with some of the squaws from the reservation. Or some of the Russian farm girls. Or drive across the border to North Dakota and see if they like that kind of talk over there. Wesley’s father wouldn’t threat
en Bennett. He wouldn’t say, you stop this or else. He’d just explain. And Bennett would understand.

  But Weslev wasn’t his father.

  As Len walked out of the office he heard the zzzst of a sheet of paper being pulled violently from the typewriter. He wasn’t much of a typist either.

  Then Len heard something, and he decided, no matter what Wesley said, no matter what the law read, Bennett had to be dealt with.

  It happened on a Tuesday afternoon, again in the hotel coffee shop. Gail Hayden was there, sitting at a table with two other women who worked in the courthouse. The women finished their lunches, rose from the table, and began to walk toward the stairs. Gail stayed a moment longer at the table, drinking the last of her coffee and counting out a few coins for the waitress.

  When she walked out, with that wobbling gait of hers, she went past Bennett and three other men who stood at the bar looking at a topographical map of their corner of Montana. The map was weighted down at each corner with a coffee cup. Bennett was explaining what the rises, dips, hills, and folds in the region might mean in terms of possible oil deposits. Then Gail passed, and Bennett stopped talking and watched her. He even leaned back from the bar so he could keep his eyes attached to her until she was completely out of sight. Then he turned to the other men and said, “But I can tell you where I’d like to drill.”

  Len was also standing at the bar, close enough to see and hear everything. After Bennett made this remark, Len paid very close attention to how the three men reacted. They all laughed, and Len silently recited their names to himself—Lyle Branch, Ray Hollister, Carl McCarty—committing them to memory and vowing that these men would meet with trouble at some future date.

  Punishment in some indefinite future, however, would not do for Bennett. That man needed to be stopped, before he said one more word, made one more gesture that would degrade a Bentrock woman.

  Len considered walking over to Bennett right at that moment, accusing him of being the kind of trash that was not wanted in the community, and knocking him to the floor.

  But that wouldn’t do much more than make Len look like a bully, an unreasonable man abusing a stranger—and a man who could bring some economic good to their region at that. More likely, people would say—Len, drunk at noon and striking that oilman. And he’s a law enforcement officer?

  Len waited two days, until Thursday, the night when the weekly poker game was played in the garage of Sam Hench’s Studebaker dealership. The game was not secret; in fact, on warm nights they left the heavy wooden garage doors open, and anyone who walked by the establishment late at night could look in and see six or seven men sitting under a wirecovered work light, the fog of tobacco smoke keeping the mosquitoes away. The garage had become the regular site for the game because it was always available, because the players could dump their ashes and crush out their smokes right on the oil-stained concrete floor, and because it was right across the street from Staples’ Bar——On and Off Sale. Sam Hench threw a heavy canvas tarp over a table brought out from the showroom, the players pulled up mismatched chairs and stools, the chips, stamped with the letters B.P.O.E. because they once belonged to an Elks Club in another city, were allotted, and the cards were dealt.

  Len himself played a few years back, but he soon quit. If he drank during the game he lost money; he couldn’t keep track of the cards or the betting. If he didn’t drink, the frustration of being in the presence of liquor but not imbibing made it difficult for him to concentrate and he lost anyway. Nevertheless Len knew who was in the game, and from the first week Bennett came to town, he had been sitting in.

  Shortly after eleven o’clock, the hour when Bentrock’s streets were generally empty and its houses dark, but when the poker game was still in its early stages, Len entered the Northern Pacific Hotel. He did not go in through the heavy glass door that opened on the lobby. He climbed the fire escape and crawled through an unlatched window at the south end of the second floor.

  Len remained right by the window, at the darkened end of the hall, close to a set of floor-length curtains he could step behind if it became necessary. From there Len could see the length of the hall, all the way to Room 202, the room that Bennett occupied. The night was warm, and no air moved in the hallway, but Len did not remove his coat. The pistol rested heavily in the coat’s right-hand pocket, and he did not want to separate himself from it.

  While he waited, Len let his thoughts rest on Gail Hayden. He was a realistic man; he knew that such a clear-eyed, lovely young woman was not likely to regard him as anything but what he was—a hawk-faced, stoop-shouldered drunk, old enough to be her father. That was all right. Even in his untethered dreams he came no closer than a father. He liked to imagine her walking down a street, day or night, and he kept pace with her, staying just a yard or two behind. Occasionally she would look back and smile, content that he was there to protect her. He was not well traveled; he had never been further from Montana’s borders than North Dakota, but he played out his little scene in different locations. He knew San Francisco was famous for its hilly streets, so he imagined the two of them walking up and down those steep grades. Daisy had once visited a cousin in Salt Lake City, and she brought back a postcard of the Great Salt Lake, which she had waded in. Len thought of Gail walking along that beach, with his footsteps denting the sand right behind hers. He wanted to travel even farther with this fantasy—to England or France perhaps—but he didn’t know what their streets or countryside looked like, so he couldn’t allow Gail to go there.

  He wished he could walk right now. His lower back and legs ached from standing in one place for so long, but he bore the pain by telling himself that he was doing his duty, a job that struck him as so necessary he wondered why the hall was not lined with men willing to do it.

  It was close to 2:00 A.M. when Bennett returned to his room, and even after he unlocked his door and went in, Len remained in place, according to his plan.

  Within five minutes, Bennett came out again, wearing only an undershirt and trousers and carrying a towel. He was barefoot, but he stepped down with such force that Len could hear the muffled thump of Bennett’s heels striking the carpet.

  Only after Bennett went into the bathroom and closed the door behind him did Len McAuley leave his station. He walked quickly down the hall to Bennett’s room, opened the door just wide enough to slip through, and went in.

  A light was on beside the bed, a lamp with a white globe shade painted with pink flowers. Its soft light, combined with the fact that the bed’s white chenille spread was carefully turned down on a precise diagonal, made Len wonder for a moment if he was in the right room. No, Bennett’s scent was in the air—his hair oil, his cigar smoke, his beery breath. Len stepped into the closet and pulled the door shut.

  As he stood in that black airless space he caught another odor that at first he could not place. Then it came to him: it was the smell of sweat and shoe leather—Bennett’s feet stank, and his shoes were in the closet. Len almost pitied the man: all that cockiness and then feet that smelled like that....

  When he returned to his room, Bennett was whistling, a succession of notes that sounded more like a musician practicing his scales than any attempt to reproduce a tune. Then the whistles stopped and the notes were replaced by the high whining notes of the bedsprings.

  Len heard the soft click of the lamp switch, and the thin strip of yellow light at his feet vanished. The total darkness made it seem to Len that his own breathing became more audible, and he drew shallower breaths.

  Len counted slowly to one hundred. When he reached that number and realized he wasn’t quite ready, he started over, this time pausing long enough between each number to let his fingers rise and fall at his sides. Finally he could put it off no longer, and he stepped from the closet.

  From the unshaded window and the open transom came enough light for him to see that Bennett’s sleeping head was turned in Len’s direction.

  He had waited all that time, yet Bennett’s b
eing asleep was something Len had not accounted for. He had only planned this far: He would step from the closet and....

  Bennett would say something, and Len would answer. Or Bennett would act, and Len would react. Now, however, it was all up to Len, and he didn’t know what to do.

  He brought the pistol out of his jacket pocket, the sight on the long barrel catching for a moment on a loose thread. Once the gun was in his hand, Len knew—as if the knowledge could not have come from thought but only from touch, from the pistol’s weight, the handle’s smooth wood—he would not use it. He let it hang at his side as though it was nothing but a piece of rusting iron he was carrying until he could find a suitable scrap heap.

  Although he had no intention of using it, Len still pulled the hammer back. He hoped that cocking the old .44—a noise as loud as a hen’s cluck—would wake Bennett and his eyes would open to an armed man in his room.

  But Bennett did not stir. Len noticed how, in sleep, Bennett’s features bunched and softened. It was hard to believe that this sleeper with his lips hanging open in a thick dumb pout was the same man who swaggered the streets of Bentrock.

  Len cleared his throat. Bennett did not move. With as much voice as he could muster, Len said, “Mister. You, mister.” Still nothing.

  He lowered the hammer, and as he did he wondered if the hammer came down on an empty chamber. He had never even checked to see if the gun was loaded. Not that it mattered now. He slipped the revolver back into the pocket where it had rested so long its weight had a familiar feel.

  Before he left Bennett’s room, Len took a last look around. On the top of the bureau were some of the man’s possessions and toiletries—a brush and comb, a bottle of hair tonic, a jackknife, a fountain pen, a tie clip, a wallet, and a few coins. Len pulled the stopper from the hair tonic and laid the bottle on its side, letting the oily liquid pour out and soak the lace runner covering the top of the dresser.