Out of the Darkness

by Robert D. McKee

  Polly was very young when her mother married Emmett Pratt. He was a stern man, but gentle with her, and over the years she’d grown to love him. Despite all that had happened, she still thought of him as her father. There had been a time in the early years at the ranch when she had even cared for Sonny. Sure, even in the good times he’d been an aggravation. When they were kids, he had teased her without mercy, but she had cared for him the way any sister cared for an older brother. It had been in her nature to be caring in those days. She wondered now if that was something she would ever feel again. Last spring Sonny had stolen the capacity for that from her.

  She still wondered at what had happened. Sometimes she’d wake in the night, and for a moment she would have forgotten about it. For a brief moment in her half-sleep she would not remember. But then like a rock slide, the memory of that afternoon by the river would come crashing down on her. The feel of Sonny and Hank. The weight of them. The smell of them. All of it would be with her again in the night as real as it had been that day.

  And the fear. Even in those rare moments when the memory of it was tucked into some dark corner of her mind, the fear was always present.

  She’d had a chance in these months since to examine her fear. It was like a thing she could touch and see. She had gotten to know it. She had held it, turned it over, looked at it, lived with it. It had become a part of her. It was something alive, growing inside her in a way that no doctor could remove.

  The fear came in many forms. She feared what Sonny would do to her. He would kill her without a second’s thought; she knew he was capable of that. So there was that fear—the fear of death. But there was another fear as well. It was a kind of fear she had never known existed until that day at the water’s edge when Sonny and Hank and Lester had dragged her down to the river. “Take her,” Sonny had said to the Jones brothers. “She’s yours. Do anything you want to her. She’s a present from me to you.”

  Lester had looked confused, like he didn’t understand what Sonny was saying, but Hank wasn’t confused. “You mean right here?” he asked.

  “Right here in broad daylight in front of God and everyone,” Sonny said.

  Hank’s rubbery tongue rolled out and wet his lips. He was staring down at Polly, who’d been thrown to the ground. He was considering it; she could tell. “Well, Lester,” he asked, “what do you think? You want some of this?”

  Lester shook his head. “This ain’t right, Hank.” He looked to Sonny. “You’re jokin’, aincha, Sonny?” he asked.

  “Hell, no,” Sonny said. “I been putting up with this little bitch for too long now. I say you do what you want, then let’s gut her.” He pulled a knife from a sheath on his belt. “I wonder how big a gut pile a little bitch like this would make. What d’ya think, Lester? Bigger than an antelope? As big as a deer?”

  “Stop it, Sonny,” Lester said, and there was a quiver in his voice. “This ain’t funny. Polly here’s your sister.”

  Sonny’s fist lashed out and caught Lester on the tip of the chin. Lester was lifted in the air, and he came crashing down on his back. There was a whoosh as the wind exploded from him. In a cat-quick movement Sonny was on Lester’s chest, his right knee buried in Lester’s throat. Sonny’s teeth were bared, and the flat of his knife was against Lester’s upper lip, the edge under his nose. Lester’s eyes were wide and crossed as he looked down at the blade. A flick of Sonny’s wrist, and Lester’s nose would be neatly shaved away. “That little bitch is not my sister. Her and her whore mother come into our house and they never left, but that doesn’t mean she is anything to me. You got that, you dumb son of a bitch?”

  “Yeah, Sonny, sure. Sure I do.”

  “Say it,” Sonny ordered. “Say, ‘She ain’t nothing to you, Sonny.’ ” He wiggled the knife, and a trickle of blood leaked down the side of Lester’s face. “Say it, you damned cockchafer, or I’ll cut off your nose.”

  “Sure, Sonny,” Lester said. “She ain’t nothin’ to ya. I know that. Nothin’ atall.”

  Sonny slowly got up, never taking his eyes off Lester. Lester rolled over on his side, holding his throat and trying to get his breath.

  “She ain’t a God-damned thing to me,” Sonny said, and he came over to Polly, pushing Hank out of his way. He reached down, grabbed the neck of her dress, and ripped. The material tore away, exposing her breasts.

  “Hoo-wee,” said Hank. “Look at them things. Ain’t they pretty ones, though?”

  Polly watched Sonny undo his gun belt and drop it to the ground. As he undid his pants, he repeated, “She ain’t a Goddamned thing to me. No, sir. Not a thing.”

  Now, as Polly walked down the street on that crisp, late September day, still she was afraid. She still feared that Sonny would kill her, and do it in some horrible way. But there was the other fear, too. A stronger fear. It was the fear of feeling again those feelings she’d felt that day. The fear of having no control. The fear of helplessness and being at the mercy of Sonny Pratt. Mostly, though, it was the fear of being made to feel like something less than human.

  It was a warm day as long as she stayed out of the shadows. The sun was bright, and the sky was a thick blue.

  She walked down Third, going nowhere in particular. She had nowhere to go. Hers and her mother’s lives had been uneventful since those first two or three nightmarish days after Dr. Hedstrom’s arrest.

  The doctor’s lawyer’s office was down the street from where she was now. Mr. McConners seemed like a nice enough man, but Polly worried that he was too young and inexperienced for all of this. He was only eight or nine years older than she was.

  She ached when she thought of the doctor’s going to prison. It seemed strange, but he was taking it all very well. She and her mother had visited him a number of times since his arrest and release on bond, and although he wasn’t pleased with the circumstances, still he made his jokes. He was no longer practicing medicine, which he admitted missing, but it allowed him more time to “tinker,” as he called it. To Polly it seemed the doctor’s tinkering was little more than his playing with his gadgets and machines.

  Originally the doctor’s trial had been set for the end of November, but due to Judge Walker’s schedule, it was changed to the end of December. But as soon as the judge arrived for the trial, it was the doctor’s plan to plead guilty. He said he would be convicted anyway. He might as well get it over with.

  Polly could make no sense of any of this judicial business, none of it. Because the doctor’s case took precedence over civil matters, the divorce trial of Polly’s mother and Emmett Pratt could not be heard until the judge returned to Probity next March. Polly could not understand how people were supposed to set their lives aside until the system worked them into its machinery.

  Despite all the eyes that followed her as she passed, the walk was invigorating. She was only a few blocks from the boarding house and already she felt better. But as soon as she realized she was feeling better, that caused her to remember again, and again the fear took hold. It was the same trap in which she always found herself. She spent her life in a maze. Every turn led back to the same place: her fear.

  She hated Sonny Pratt. Despised him not only for what he had done to her, but for what he continued to do. Though she had not seen him since the beating the night of the picnic, he was with her always.

  Sometimes she’d try to remember the Sonny from before—the twelve-year-old Sonny she had come to know when her mother first married Emmett. He was wild even then, but he was not evil. She was certain of that. But that Sonny was gone. There was a fire that had gone out inside that Sonny, and this new Sonny was dark and cold.

  Polly walked past a group of women who stood in front of the haberdashery. As she neared, their whispering stopped and once she was past, she could hear it taken up again. She knew what they thought, of course: that she was a bad girl, that she had been with some boy and become pregnant, that she had gone to the doctor and convinced him to do what he’d done because she was ashamed.


  And what Polly read in the eyes of these women was true, at least in part. She was ashamed. She was ashamed, not for what she had done, but for what she could not bring herself to do. She could not stand up to her stepbrother.

  She was a coward. That was not a word often applied to women, but Polly knew it applied to her. She knew what Sonny and Hank Jones were capable of, and she feared for her life. It was as simple as that. If she told the truth about what had happened to cause her pregnancy, Sonny would kill her. And even if she did tell the truth, it wouldn’t help the doctor. Dr. Hedstrom himself had told her that. She would be putting her life in jeopardy for no reason whatsoever.

  No reason at all.

  A group of people was milling around in front of the sheriff’s office watching a couple of men untie a large bundle from the back of a pack horse. Polly couldn’t imagine what could be so interesting about that, but she crossed the street anyway to have a look.

  She stood at the edge of the crowd trying to peer between the arms and elbows of the men, standing on her tiptoes so she could better see. One of the men taking the bundle from the horse was Sheriff Collins himself and the other was a man she didn’t know.

  Once the bundle was untied and the two men were hefting it down, a third man, Lawyer McConners, stepped from the crowd and helped them. As they lay the bundle on the ground, the edge of the tarp that covered it lifted and fell away. There was a gasp from the crowd, but no sound came from Polly. No sound could come from Polly. It was choked off by what she saw.

  Lester Jones lay in the dusty street. His eyes were glazed, wide, and lifeless. His face was a white-gray color, and tied around his neck was a black and red scarf. It was a deep red in the center, and black around the edges. It was an odd-looking thing. And no matter how hard Polly tried to make it look the way it was supposed to look, the way a scarf should look when knotted around a man’s neck, it still was strange and not quite right.

  It was at that point she realized what she was seeing wasn’t a scarf at all. It was a wound. A cut. Like a toothless smile—this smile beneath his chin, rather than above—Lester Jones’s throat had been sliced wide open.

  No scream came from Polly, but her hand leapt to her mouth as she backed into the street. She turned away from the crowd and she saw, leaning against a building at the entrance to an alley, Sonny Pratt. Their eyes met, and as he stared at her, he lifted his head, chin up, and with a smile, he dragged his index finger across his throat.

  Polly spun on her heel and ran. She sprinted, running like she had not run since she was a girl, pumping her arms and legs as fast as she could. In her panic, she ran without direction or purpose. She ran even without understanding why she was running. She ran hard and fast. She ran first one block, then another, and another, putting as much distance as she could between Lester and her—between Sonny and her. She ran, her eyes bleary with tears. Her head filled with her own screams and the feel of Sonny Pratt’s breath in her ear. She ran, and ran, and ran, until she could not run anymore.

  And then she stopped.

  Pain stitched her side. Her lungs bucked and heaved inside her chest. Perspiration rolled down her brow, into her eyes, and mixed with her tears. She sucked in air, but it was as though she couldn’t get enough. There wasn’t enough air in the world to fill her up. She doubled over, holding her stomach, and dropped first to one knee, then the other.

  Slowly the pain began to ebb, and it was replaced by a numbness. She felt nothing—no pain and no fear. She had seen Lester Jones lying dead in the street, his throat laid open—the lights out behind his eyes. And as horrible as that was, she felt nothing. If that was Sonny’s worst, fine; there it was. She had seen it.

  The cold numbness tingled out from the center of her to her arms and her chest and her head. It was a feeling that was almost as frightening as the pain and the fear that for so long had been a part of her.

  But not quite.

  “Polly, are you all right?”

  It was a voice coming from behind. She was leaning against a white picket fence, and slowly she turned and peered up through the slats. It was Dr. Hedstrom. She looked around at where she was. In her mindless run, she had ended up on the doctor’s street, in front of his house.

  He wore old boots, jeans, and a work shirt. In his hand he held a rake. Scattered throughout the yard were piles of crisp, brown cottonwood leaves.

  Again he asked her, “Are you all right?” He dropped his rake and stepped over the fence. He bent down and touched her face.

  “Yes,” she said. “I am all right. I’m fine.” With the sleeve of her dress, she blotted the sweat from her forehead, and then she pushed herself up. The doctor stood with her. She lifted her eyes to his and said, “We need to talk.” With that, she turned and walked to the gate, slipped the latch, and stepped into the doctor’s yard.

  “Talk, Polly? About what?” Chester asked.

  “About what we are going to do,” she said. “About what we are going to do about the horrible things that are happening around here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Here, boy,” Brad Collins said to the ten-year-old who was staring down at Lester Jones. “Back away from there.” Collins fished in his pocket and pulled out a penny. He tossed it to the boy and said, “Go to the mortuary and tell Mr. Summerhayes what we got here. Tell him he better come on over.”

  Micah watched as the boy, without speaking, and without his eyes leaving Lester’s throat, shoved the penny into his pocket. He backed off a few steps, turned, and bolted down the street.

  “The rest of you folks move on too,” Collins said. “We got us a dead man here. You seen him now, and there ain’t nothing more to see.” The people began to straggle away. “Go on, now,” Collins said, hurrying them up.

  Micah stood with his hands in his pockets.

  “That goes for you too, lawyer,” said Collins.

  “I’d like to stay, if you don’t mind, sheriff.” Micah nodded in the direction of the short, fat man who had brought Lester’s body into town. “I’d like to ask this gentleman a few questions.”

  “What’s your interest in all of this, McConners?”

  Micah shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe something.”

  Collins, who had never been very friendly toward Micah, had been less so in the last few weeks. Micah expected it had to do with his representation of Chester. Chester’s pending trial was big news in Probity. It was the sort of news that generated controversy. Lines had been drawn, and in many ways Brad Collins had been caught in the middle—not a place a sheriff prone to indolence liked to be. Micah would bet that Collins, if he could have any wish in the world, would choose to be invisible. Micah knew Collins liked things painless and uncomplicated, and already Micah was proving to be a thorn in the side of the sheriff and the prosecuting attorney as well.

  The short, fat man who’d brought in the body was wiping down the side of his pack horse with a rag. A considerable amount of blood had leaked out of Lester onto the horse’s right flank.

  Micah extended his hand to the man. “Name’s McConners,” he said.

  The man shoved the rag into the bib of his overalls, started to extend his own right hand, but stopped when he noticed it was smeared with blood. “Sorry,” he said, and gave the hand a couple of quick swipes on his pants’ leg and stuck it out again. “Matthew Wright. I grow wheat out east-a Lost Springs ’bout two mile.”

  “So what brings you into Probity, Mr. Wright?” Micah asked.

  “I come in a couple, three times a year for supplies.”

  Micah pointed down to Lester. “Where’d you find the body?”

  “ ’Bout a mile out from town. He was laying in the ditch deader ’n hell. I tossed him on the back of Beulah here and brung him in.” The man let go an amber stream of tobacco spit that hit the dust of the street and puddled into a ball of juice and dirt. He wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at the sun. “Whatsit, ’bout ten o’clock now?” he asked.


  Micah pulled out his watch. “A quarter after.”

  “From the looks of him,” said Matthew Wright, “I’d say he’s been dead for ten, twelve hours. That the way you figure it, sheriff?”

  Collins nodded. “I reckon.”

  “You see any tracks, or anything unusual around where you found him?” Micah asked.

  “They’s tracks all over. Hell, man, it’s a damned road. But I ain’t seen nothin’ unusual, ’ceptin’ a dead man in the barrow ditch. That was unusual ’nough for me.”

  Despite himself, Micah smiled. Matthew Wright was a blunt man, and Micah liked that.

  “How long you in town for, Mr. Wright?” Micah asked.

  “A few of hours is all. I need to be gettin’ back.”

  Micah jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “My office is down the street a ways,” he said. “If you wouldn’t mind, once you’re ready to head out, maybe you could stop by and I’ll ride with you to where you found the body. I’d like to take a look around for myself.”

  “I’ll do ’er,” Wright said as he mounted his riding horse and reached down for the lead rope of the pack animal. “I reckon it’ll be two, maybe three o’clock. That okay by you?”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Micah said.

  As they watched Wright ride in the direction of the general store, Collins asked, “What the hell does Lester Jones being dead have to do with you, McConners?”

  Micah took one more quick look at Lester’s blank eyes. “Nothing, I hope,” he said. But as he walked away, he was thinking that hope was pretty thin.

  It was after five o’clock in the afternoon by the time Micah finished rubbing down Chester’s bay. Since he didn’t own a horse of his own, he had borrowed one of Chester’s to ride out on the road with Matthew Wright. Once Micah was finished tending to the animal, he tossed some oats in the bin, gave the horse a pat on the rump, and headed for the house.