That’s what it all adds up to, he thinks. Nothing! Well now, you can’t take nothing away from nothing. I went far enough in school to know that much.
“You’re kinda like God in this county, ain’t you, Sheriff? You say, let this one go, he don’t interest me. And you say, lock that one up cause I don’t like his ugly face.”
“I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t much like your looks.”
“It don’t matter, Sheriff. I never did want to be a movie star.”
Larry Berlin laughs out loud. “You know something, Jack? He’s pretty funny.”
“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” the Sheriff says. “You could just as well be laying there right alongside of your Brooklyn buddy in the icebox.”
“I never even saw that fella before this morning,” Ike Toombs says. “He had a nice friendly smile. That’s all I remember.”
He is remembering how it was now, coming out of the pinewoods where he slept under a kind of lean- to he rigged out of some branches, with soft, sweet-smelling pine needles for his bed. He slept good, woke once in the middle of the night because a mockingbird was singing his fool head off in the dark nearby, and fell back into a deep sleep. Woke stiff and came on out of the woods to the edge of the road while it was still night-time and the last stars were still out and the air was full of rich woodsy smells. Using a piece of old clothesline for a string, he slung his guitar across his back and set out walking slow and easy along the shoulder of the road. Walked along a good piece, feeling the stiffness coming out of his joints and legs as he moved, felt almost young again, as he often did with a good dawn and a great stretch of road in front of him. Walked along until that white car came and stopped for him.
He was a nice, smiley, soft-spoken fella. A big guy, but he talked soft. A Yankee, but most mannersable and polite for one. Probably a traveling salesman or something, either got up real early or been driving all night, and was lonesome for the sound of a human voice.
It don’t take you too much time to make up your mind do you like somebody or not. You don’t, you can’t never know what a man you meet was like before, what kind of things he done in the past. And once he drops you out the car and leaves you by the side of the road and is gone for good, the future, his future, belongs only to him also. So what do you have to go by? He gives you a cigarette and you talk along a little bit about the weather and the road. He is sick of listening to the radio and turns it off to talk to you. He’s got a real nice smile. Good teeth, and he’s lucky for that. You know him for about half an hour maybe on the highway and the only things you got to know and judge by are good. And then here come a po-lice car running down on you from out of nowhere. And then the man is all of a sudden different. He’s clean forgot about you. All he’s thinking about is running for it, outrunning the cop. All the time that souped-up car is gaining. De Angelo has another little smile on his face. Maybe because he seen when it come close enough that there wasn’t but one man in the car chasing them. He starts slowing down. And then just about that time Ike Toombs looks across and sees the pistol in the shoulder holster. Thinking, Either, I hope to the Lord, he’s a cop hisself, or else he’s some kind of a gangster. And there ain’t a whole lot left to do but scrunch down real low in the seat and hope for nothing except that whatever happens neither one of them takes it in mind to shoot you, too, while they’re at it. Or maybe just accidentally blow your head off.
“I don’t care nothing about what kind of a smile he had,” the Sheriff says.
“Yes, sir, you can sit here in this crummy office in the stinking jail and let somebody else, somebody like this young fella here, do your worrying and your dirty work for you. Let me tell you something, Sheriff. You might just as well have pulled that trigger your own self.”
“People like you make me sick to my stomach.”
Which is literally true. Sheriff Jack Riddle feels sick. He feels like throwing up in the wastebasket. He is thinking about the type of which this Ike Toombs is a single, miserable example. Without roots, without ties, without anything. They are worthless. Scum! Fungus on the tired face of the earth! They breed like maggots, feeding on dead things. Bounce aimless across the country landing one place and another like grasshoppers. A plague of grasshoppers! Might just as well have never been born.
“What about him?” the prisoner says.
“Who?”
“That old drunk you turned loose when we first come in.”
“He can’t help himself.”
“You mean you can’t help him,” the prisoner says. “But it don’t make no difference. He needs you and you need him around.”
“I don’t need you around.”
“Turn me loose, then,” the prisoner says, laughing. “Turn me loose!” Then he is serious again, but unable to resist faintly smiling at his enemy: “He’s going to keep on coming back and you’re going to keep on giving him his freedom. Because it makes you feel good. And, you know, the funny thing is a poor old fella like that, he’s scared to death of his freedom.”
Dirty scum spreading across the world! Corruption! You’ve got all the rest of it, but then you have to come here, even here, a quiet little old town trying to die slowly in peace. With nothing for you. Where you’re not known or wanted. And you’ve got to bring trouble and violence and bad news with you. Like a sickness. A contagious disease. People like you ought to be purged off the face of the earth—
“Jack? You just going to stand around and listen to all that shit?”
“I ain’t going to listen anymore,” the Sheriff says.
He goes to the door, yanks it open, and shouts into the hall.
“Monk! You, Monk!”
“You won’t have to listen to me no more,” the prisoner says. “Once I go out through that door, I’m gone.”
“Monk! I’m calling you!”
“For something I never done.”
“It’s out of my hands.”
Young Larry Berlin has finally finished up filling in all the required blanks on the form. The only thing he’s got left to do is to fill up the blank space labeled “Remarks” where it says you are supposed to give the details of what happened in your own words. He is feeling pretty good. Lucky and glad to be alive. Before this morning he has never actually fired a weapon at anyone. But he feels no remorse. After all, it’s what the county gives him an expensive pistol for. It’s why he has to spend so much time over on the State Police Range learning how to use it. Why in the hell would they spend money on something, give it to you, teach you how to use it, spend all that time and money, and then, when the time came, expect that you wouldn’t do anything? He wasn’t wearing that pistol and keeping it all clean and everything just for decoration.
He took after that car because it was speeding, breaking the law. He didn’t know it was a hot one until afterwards. He wasn’t thinking about anything at all then except giving the driver of that car holy hell. Chewing him out for driving that fast and giving him a ticket. Even if it was just dawn and the road was empty. What if some farmer was to come out on the road in a tractor or a wagon? He wouldn’t expect nothing to be coming at him that fast and he couldn’t see good in that kind of light anyway. So he run the car down and got out. And here come the driver. Then it all happened just the way you practice for it, just like they teach you. Like on a cowboy show on the TV. Or something. The big guy is going for a gun and you don’t even have to think (if he had to think he’d be pushing up daisies), you reach down and find the pistol in the holster right where it ought to be and it comes out and up in a smooth fast motion. He shot fast and well. And that was a good thing to know you could do, to count on if you ever needed it. Because if you goofed the first time, you wouldn’t be around to try it twice.
It’s just like hunting. Shooting a deer or a squirrel or a rabbit. And it don’t make any more mess than that either. If you shoot a gun at an animal you better expect to look at some blood. And, anyway, he had seen a plenty of things on the highway, right after an acc
ident, that looked a hell of a sight worse than that did. People call you a killer if you gun somebody, even just trying to protect yourself—and ain’t that the first law of nature or something? But a man drunk behind the wheel of a car, he don’t call himself a murderer just because he busts somebody open like an egg on the highway.
Maybe the old bum was telling the truth. Maybe the driver was just trying to get rid of that pistol. Throw it down on the road. Well, that was his lookout. He didn’t have no business carrying it around with him in the first place. He doubts it, though. If he shot the kid over at Ocala, he wouldn’t be so anxious to get rid of it.
Jack has sure bugged him this morning. Giving him a bad time about everything. Jack won’t carry a gun and that’s his business. He can take his chances if he wants to. This morning, though, without one on him his luck would have run out. Maybe he knows that now. Maybe it will put the fear of the Lord in his soul. You can sit on your ass around a place like Fairview and forget about a lot of things. Everybody knows who you are. You got a name and a reputation and you probably won’t need a weapon. But then when somebody comes barreling in, driving a hot car and running for his life from a robbery you don’t even know about yet, way down the road, he’s going to cut you down without stopping to ask your name, rank, and serial number.
This won’t hurt things for Larry around this county either. He’s young and new at the job, but he can’t stand in the shadow of Jack Riddle forever. And he isn’t planning to. Now everybody will know he’s his own man.
Jack is fit to be tied by the time Monk finally gets there. He’s blinking his eyes. Probably been sacked out somewhere in an empty cell.
“Where in the hell have you been?”
Monk just grins and shrugs. One look at Jack’s face and he knows better than to try and come up with some kind of excuse or story. Monk may be dumb, but he’s smarter than that.
“Take this man upstairs and lock him up—solitary.”
Monk nods, then tips his head for the prisoner to come along with him. The prisoner takes a step, then hesitates. He’s a sly one, all right, but he ain’t feeling so good now. He turns back to face Jack. Which is what you’d have to call a mistake.
“Can I keep my box with me?”
How dumb can you get? He could have walked right out the room with it and nothing would be said. Jack’s so pissed off he wouldn’t even notice. When you go out of your way to ask for trouble, the odds are pretty good you’re going to get some.
“I don’t want none of your music around here.”
The stupid sonofabitch is begging him now. Honest to God. Tears in his eyes and everything.
“Lemme keep it,” he says. “Please. I can’t live without my music.”
What do you think Jack does? Finally blows his top. Goes sky high, red in the face, foaming mad. You’d have to see it to believe it because it don’t happen often. Monk’s pop-eyed.
“Give him a comb, Monk,” Larry says quickly. “Maybe he can blow some music on a comb.”
You got to give it to the prisoner. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. He quits crying like you shut off the water valve and he slips on his coat that don’t fit worth a damn and tries to suck in that belly and hold up his head. Ever see a big fat slob trying to look dignified?
“Let’s go, fella,” Monk says.
But the prisoner, he’s waiting for something more from Jack. He shakes his head and stands there staring at Jack like Jack owed him something. Jack don’t want to give him the time of day. He’s all through being mad, but he’s finished and done with the fella. He ain’t going to stand there and let him stare at him, though.
“Anybody you want notified?”
Then the nutty old fool commences to laughing again. That laugh could bug you right out of your mind if you listened to it long enough.
“Answer me!”
“Nobody worth mentioning,” he says.
And then Monk takes his arm and they go out with the prisoner holding his head up very high. Once they get outside the door he gets another laughing fit and you can hear the old fool laughing all the way up the stairs.
Jack is wandering all around the office looking at everything like he never saw it before. He stoops down and picks up the guitar and puts it in the wastebasket. He stops and looks at the calendar, cusses, and rips the page off because it’s a month old. He picks up the magazine and starts to crumple that up too.
“Hey, Jack, that’s my magazine.”
“Take it,” he says, throwing it. “Keep it out of sight. What do you leave a thing like that laying around for?”
He comes over and takes the phone and calls Betty. Won’t be home right away, he says. Got a lot to do.
Larry Berlin is thinking maybe if he can finish this report Jack will let him go awhile. Paul is coming on duty any minute now. No reason why he should have to hang around all morning.
Jack is over there in the closet on his hands and knees fumbling around. After a while he kind of backs out. He stands up. Got a silly grin on his face. He’s got something in his hands. A beat-up old leather belt with a holster on it. He puts it on. Goes to the filing case and pulls out a pistol, checks it to see is it loaded, and stuffs it in the holster. Can you beat that?
Then he walks over to the window. There’s a fly over there buzzing against the pane. Jack cups his hand to catch him. He’s quick, got very quick hands for such a big man. Catches that fly and holds him in the cup of both his hands. Then he opens the window with one hand and leans out and lets the fly go.
The fresh air feels good. Takes some of the stink out of the room. It’s not even the middle of the morning yet, so it’s not too hot. They have the sprinklers on over by the Courthouse. Greenest grass in town except for the cemetery. Jack is still leaning out the window.
“Jesus, Lord in Heaven,” he says.
“What’s wrong, Jack?”
He turns around. “I feel so old and tired,” he says.
Damn if he don’t look wore out this morning.
“Aw, you got a lot of mileage left.”
“We got work to do, boy. We got a lot of work to do on this thing.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I feel like an old man.”
He tucks in his shirt and hikes up his trousers. Puts on his hat. Must be going home after all to clean up and have something to eat.
“Hey, Jack,” Larry says. “How do you spell incident? One n or two?”
“How the hell would I know?” Jack yells at him. “Look it up in the freaking dictionary.”
“All right, all right, all right. I was only asking.”
Evening Performance Page 52