Vengeance is Mine

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  When he thumbed back the hammer once again, Ned stepped forward and gently pushed the barrel toward the ground. “It’s over, John. He’s done for.”

  Cody plucked John’s shotgun from where it leaned against the wall and rushed outside.

  The smoking barrel of Top’s rifle slid downward between two vertical boards. Huddled in the weeds outside the barn, Tony’s last realization was that the vein in his numb temple no longer throbbed. Something popped deep inside his damaged skull. He leaned his cheek against the weathered wood, closed his eyes, and slipped away.

  Ned stood over Griffin, dumped the empties from his revolver, and reloaded.

  John drew a deep breath. “You’re wrong, Mr. Ned.”

  “About what?”

  “It ain’t over. Someday I’ll have to pay this debt.”

  Ned looked at the rough-cut rafters overhead, as if to collect his words from the air, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say for a long moment. “John, you didn’t do nothing but save our lives.”

  “I was mad.”

  He saw the anguish in John’s eyes “You had every right.”

  “I just don’t know.”

  A particularly loud clap of thunder rattled the barn when a bolt of lightning struck nearby. The kids peered downward at the dead sheriff from the dark loft. Top’s voice was clear, but shaky. “Uncle Wilbert was right.”

  “Miss Becky said the Lord takes care of things in his own way.” Pepper sighed as scattered raindrops on the roof sounded like falling dimes. “I wish He’d leave us the hell out of it, though.”

  They weren’t able to talk after that, because the clouds finally opened up with rain hammering so hard on the sheet iron roof that it drowned out everything else.

  Chapter Eighty

  Ned pitched his hat on O.C.’s cluttered desk. “I brought us a couple of cold drinks.”

  The old judge eyed the sweating bottles. “I don’t much care for Orange Crush.”

  “I’god, I don’t care if you drink it or not, then.”

  “Settle down, son. You oughta learn to halter that temper of yours.” O.C. chuckled and tilted the bottle. He really had no problem with orange, but he sure enjoyed aggravating Ned. “Thankyee anyway.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “I was reading the paper about that killing in Las Vegas day before yesterday.”

  “I saw that.”

  “There’s another story in here about the bank robbery, too. They got all the money back, after they figured out which was real and which was counterfeit.”

  “That’s what I hear.” Ned settled onto the only wooden chair not stacked with papers. “They’ll be sortin’ this out for months. Add in what they found at Griffin’s house, the Rangers and FBI think he’s been into a lot more than we’ll ever know. They’ll never figure out where it all came from.”

  “I always knew that sonofabitch was crooked.”

  “As a dog’s hind leg.” They sat in comfortable silence for a long moment. Ned picked at the painted label of his bottle with a thumbnail. “They had Tony Agrioli’s funeral a couple of days ago. That little Samantha gal of his had him buried in the Methodist Cemetery, but she wasn’t there. There was a good crowd anyways. I ’magine half of ’em came ’cause of nosiness, but lots of folks liked old Tony.”

  “Saw that in the paper, too.”

  “Then you saw Sam’s name in the story about that Las Vegas killing. They say she was the one who shot that mobster graveyard dead in his own restaurant.”

  “Looks to me like another mob boss got himself killed is all.”

  “Most don’t get shot by their own daughters.”

  “I reckon not. She’ll probably get off.”

  “I hope so.” Ned drained half the bottle. “I wouldn’t blame her for it, after what happened to that young feller.”

  “They say now that Tony was a killer too. He had a whole string of dead people behind him.”

  Ned rubbed his head. “Probably was, but he acted right while he was here. At least till those other people showed up.”

  “Don’t sugar coat it. There was people killed, and a bank robbery to boot.” O.C. thought for a minute.

  Ned was on another track entirely. “I asked her what it was all about. She said Tony worked for the Mob and was trying to get away. That’s what brought the whole thing down on us.”

  The statement cut through O.C.’s own train of thought, surprising him. “You talked to that little gal after she left?”

  “Yep. Samantha’s her name. They must like her in that jail, because somebody let her get on the phone. She called us collect to talk to Becky and the kids, and then she asked for me. She told me a lot more.”

  “Did you get anything that’ll help her out there?”

  “Nope. She wanted me to know they tried to make a go of it in Center Springs is all.” Something under Ned’s upper denture was driving him crazy. He sucked it loose and then bit it back into place. Despite the annoyance, Ned still remembered the bad teeth he had as a younger man, and the tradeoff was worth it.

  O.C. took another long drink. “I wish this world would stay out of our county. All the feds left yesterday. I reckon they’re done, and I’m glad they’re all out of my courthouse. Maybe things now will get back to normal.” With a head full of his own teeth, O.C. leaned back in his wooden desk chair and twirled the fly-swatter between his fingers. “I sure hope it’s over for a while. This kind of stuff makes me nervous.”

  Teeth. Ned almost heard the connections click in his head. Nervous. He frowned at O.C. “What did you say?”

  “I said, all this makes me nervous. These past couple of years have been enough to last me for the rest of my life. Why?”

  Ned ignored the question, struggling to hang onto the thread that kept pulling his attention. He knew that if he quit concentrating, he’d lose his train of thought and it was so frustratingly close.

  Nervous.

  Teeth.

  A recollection tickled his memory. It was the day Chester Humphrey ran away from the highway patrol out by the lake.

  When he’s nervous, he runs.

  He’s been nervous a long time.

  “You know Mr. Ned, when he’s nervous, he runs.”

  A toothache.

  O.C. quit twirling the fly-swatter and waited. It was obvious Ned had something on his mind, and they’d been running together long enough that he’d seen him worry on an idea before.

  There was something…

  A fly lit on a stack of papers. O.C. leaned forward and struck with the swatter.

  Pop!

  The slap was like a distant gunshot.

  Gunshot wound.

  “Now, Chester, look at me.” When the boy raised his eyes, Ned gave him a grin. “It was you, weren’t it, that the deputy saw. What’d you do?”

  “I didn’t do it. I ’ust run oft.”

  Ned came back to himself. “He said he didn’t do it, he just ran off.”

  “Who run off?”

  “Chester. I told you about getting a call from one of your deputies who saw a young boy run off the day before they found Tommy Lee Stark dead in the bottoms.”

  “I remember.”

  “I thought he ran because they saw him cutting the bark off a toothache tree that day, but I believe he ran for another reason.”

  “Do tell.”

  Ned stood and put on his hat. “I will, when I know for sure.”

  O.C. stood and pitched the flyswatter on his desk. “I’m going with you. I’ve killed enough flies for one day.”

  “Well, come on then.”

  O.C. drained his Orange Crush and followed.

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Pepper and I were sitting Indian style under a bare red oak on top of the hill where Great-great granddad Parker built h
is first house. Now there was nothing left but the shade trees overlooking the giant, smoking hole of Lake Lamar.

  It was a cloudy, chilly autumn day. A skein of Canada geese flew high overhead, honking and complaining about the coming weather.

  Smoke from the fires below reminded me of a dream I’d had the night before. I thought about telling Pepper about the giant pit, atomic bombs, and smoky fires, and three blackbirds that fell in at the same time three devils climbed out over the edge.

  But the day was too nice, because I love cloudy days, so instead I sat back to enjoy the cries of blue jays in the bare trees. I shivered and said a quiet little prayer to keep the dream from coming true.

  Pepper either didn’t see it, or thought I was cold if she did. She lit a Kool she’d snitched somewhere, and clicked on her new transistor radio. The Rolling Stones were singing about a nervous breakdown number nineteen or something.

  “You wanna turn that noise off?”

  She shot me a look that I’d seen a thousand times before. “Why does everybody hate my music?”

  I took a deep breath of the cool, clean air. “I didn’t say I hated it, but it’s awful loud and I don’t understand that song at all.”

  She rolled the volume wheel with her thumb and laid the radio on the leaves. She absently played with the Surfer’s Cross dangling from her neck.

  She was looking more and more like those hippie kids in jeans, loose shirts, and a leather vest someone had given her. “You don’t get it, bonehead. The summer of love is over and I missed it. We’re missing everything in this hick town. This place is too damn country, and so is everybody I know. I wish we lived in California. Those kids have it together.”

  “Far out.”

  “Oh!” She slugged me in the arm. “Don’t make fun of me. Do you want to spend your whole life around here with people who dip snuff? Shit!”

  I thought of the sharp, pungent smell of the Garrett’s Snuff that our old aunts spit into empty coffee cans on the floor. “Things are good now.” I watched a car come around the bend across the dam and realized it was Grandpa’s. “We have a wedding to look forward to.”

  For once she agreed with me. “That’s cool. I ain’t never been to no colored wedding before. Me and Daddy went to a colored funeral once. Shit, I hope it don’t take as long for them to get married as it does to get buried.”

  “There’s Grandpa. I wonder who’s in there with him.”

  Pepper straightened up and stuffed the cigarette out beside her leg. She waved the smoke away and used the motion to pull a long strand of hair out of her eyes that had worked its way loose from her headband. She unconsciously checked her part down the middle to make sure it was still straight. “That looks like Judge O.C.”

  They were headed toward us at a pretty good clip. Grandpa saw us, threw up his hand, and then went back to driving.

  I felt kinda funny, him running across us so far from the house. “He’ll probably be mad at us for riding our bikes out here to the lake. You know, he already hates this thing like sin.”

  “Wonder where they’re going?”

  I shot her my own look. “It don’t make no difference. I ain’t gonna go stringing off behind them now or ever again.”

  “See? That’s what I’m talking about. You never want any excitement.”

  “I had all I could stand. We nearly got killed again.”

  “Aw, those bullets missed us by a mile.”

  “Is that why you peed your pants a little?”

  “Don’t you never tell nobody about that.” She punched me in the arm again, this time so hard it hurt.

  “Well, I’m done adventuring. I just want to be an archaeologist and dig up bones, or maybe find gold or treasure. That’s not dangerous or nothing.”

  A group called the Buffalo Springfield started singing about men with guns and stuff going down. Pepper rolled the volume back up, but I didn’t say anything, because I kinda liked that song, even though it drowned out the blue jays.

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Ned piloted his car down the dirt road to Frederick and Geneva Humphrey’s unpainted frame house. Parts of the gravel and dirt road were washboard rough, vibrating the car and knocking a stack of mail off the seat between them and into the floor.

  O.C. grunted forward and collected the scattered envelopes. “You oughta read your mail instead of cartin’ it all around the county.”

  “Picked it up this morning and ain’t had the time or inclination to go through it.”

  This time only one dog crawled from under the warped porch when they arrived at the Humphrey place. It set up a howl that wasn’t nearly as loud as the pack that lived there before.

  Frederick was walking to the house from the barn. “Shut up, dog!” He waved. “Y’all get out.”

  The mutt quit barking and sat in the dirt yard to scratch. Ned and O.C. stepped out and shook hands.

  Frederick shifted a chew to his other cheek and didn’t seem the least bit phased about the two lawmen standing in his yard. “Mr. Ned, Judge Rains, what can I do for y’all?”

  “Where’s all your dogs?”

  Frederick shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. About half of ’em disappeared at one time, and then the rest of them went one by one. Coyotes probably.”

  Another piece clicked into place, but Ned knew he’d never tell Frederick what happened to his dogs. Top was finished, and that chapter was closed.

  Frederick slipped his hands into the pockets of his overalls. “Say, Chester ain’t got in any more trouble, has he?”

  “No, he’s been fine as far as I know.” Ned waved toward the house. “I’d like to talk with him a minute, though, if he’s here.”

  “He’s been in the barn with me all day. Chester!” he called over his shoulder. “Get out here.”

  The youngster appeared and stood in the barn door, watching.

  Ned smiled and closed the distance, but not enough to frighten the boy. “Chester, how’s that bad tooth?”

  He shrugged.

  “We scraped up a little money.” Frederick shifted from one foot to the other, uncertain what to do.

  “Pulled it, huh?”

  “Yessir.”

  Ned studied him. “Good. Now take care of them others and you’ll have ’em your whole life, and not a set of dentures like these in my head. Say, listen to me for a minute, Chester. I’m-a gonna ask you a question that you can’t get in trouble for, understand?”

  The boy blinked once and looked down at his worn Buster Brown tennis shoes.

  Ned put both hands in his own pockets to show that he wasn’t going to do anything. “I believe you were in the bottoms a while back and saw something that scared you. Something that made you run, ’cause you’re nervous and all.”

  Chester wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “It’s all right to say. You can nod or shake your head. I need the answer to a question, and it don’t matter what you say, cause there ain’t no right or wrong answer. Either way, I’ll run you up to the store after ’while and get you another banana ice cream. All right?”

  This time Chester nodded.

  “Good. Now, you ain’t gonna get in trouble at all over this, so here’s the question. Did you see a feller get shot down in the bottoms here-while-back?”

  O.C. and Frederick waited, still and quiet while Chester studied his feet.

  Ned lowered his voice. “Did you, son?”

  This time Chester nodded.

  Ned sighed at the weight that suddenly rose from his shoulders. “That’s all right, because you had nothin’ to do with it. I believe you was just runnin’ the woods and happened to be there, that about right?”

  Shrug.

  “That’s good enough. Now, here comes another’n. You ready?”

  Chester softly spoke to the ground. “You said one.”

&n
bsp; Ned held back a grin. “You’re pretty smart. That’s right, I did say one question, but this one is kinda part of that other’n. I guess I wasn’t finished. Did you recognize the feller that shot the first one?”

  From the corner of his eye, Ned saw Frederick take a breath to say something, whether it was to the boy, or Ned, he didn’t know, but O.C. casually reached out and grasped his arm.

  Ned scuffed the ground with his toe. “You know ’em, don’t you?”

  Another nod.

  “Tommy Lee was one.”

  Nod.

  “Who shot Tommy Lee?”

  The silence in the yard was thick. A blue jay called nearby.

  “Gene.”

  All at once, Ned realized he’d been holding his breath. O.C. and Frederick exhaled as one and it felt as if some crisis had passed.

  “All right, then. Chester, I’m gonna have to leave for a little bit, but when I come back, I’m gonna bring you a whole box of them banana bars, is that all right?”

  For the first time since he’d known the boy, Ned saw a glimmer of light in his eyes. “And a orngikle.”

  “A what?”

  Frederick stepped forward. “That’s how he saws Creamsicle, those ice cream bars that are orange on the outside and vanilla on the inside. He’s taken a likin’ to them, when we have a nickel to spend.”

  O.C. grinned wide. “I’ll bring you a box of them, too, son.”

  Chapter Eighty-three

  Ned and O.C. crossed the dam. O.C. pointed. “Is that your grandkids sitting there?”

  “That’s them all right. I wonder what they’re up to now.” Ned waved as they passed, giving them the eye.

  “Looks like they’re just being kids.”

  “Well, I know ’em. If they ain’t been into anything, they’ll come up with an idea before long.”

  “Aw hell, Ned, we was kids and ran these bottoms like wild Indians. It didn’t hurt us none.” O.C. rolled down the window on his side and the crosswind threatened to yank Ned’s new Stetson off his head. He tugged it back down. Minutes later, they crunched up Gene Stark’s gravel drive. Ned killed the engine and they waited, engine ticking.