by Rob Riggan
“Yessir.” For just a moment, there was a light in his eyes, a twinkle, Elmore decided, suddenly liking the man and feeling awful for him. “Only I wrecked my only car.”
“Deputies lost two, no, four cars, wasn’t it?” Grinning harder now. It had been a good run. Everyone had talked about it.
“Three. The city lost one. Anyhow, I done ’em a favor getting rid of those Chevy sixes. Junior there thanked me while I was waiting bail. Kind of whispered it to me.”
“What are you driving now?”
“Oh, Cub loaned me one—that’s Clyde Dean—”
“Forrest,” Elmore finished for him, still smiling. “He’s a hell of a guy.”
“Yessir, he is. They’ve always been like family to me. I’m driving trucks for them, doing a little work in the shop when things are slow. I have a lot of bills to pay.”
“I imagine.” Damn, he thought, there I go again!
“You did a real good job defending Lizzie. She didn’t deserve jail or anything bad at all.” Winthrop winced.
“Thank you.”
“Can you defend me? I haven’t got much to pay the court, and a lot less for you. But if I could work it off somehow … I need some help, Mr. Willis. Man’s got to stop falling at some point. I got to have a license to work.” He stared right at Elmore, his chin up slightly, holding onto that pride the best he could, Elmore thought. No self-pity. Just fact.
“Have a seat,” Elmore said.
A little while later, Elmore was walking up South Charlotte Street from the courthouse, the sun warm on his face, his thoughts on Winthrop Reedy, turns of fate and such matters. If he wasn’t exactly happy these days, he suddenly reasoned, at least he was occupied, richly so. Eyes on the sidewalk, he was even feeling a moment’s gratitude when he bumped into another pedestrian. “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am,” he said, turning red as his gaze lifted over the swollen belly of a pregnant woman. Then he found her face.
Rachel was blushing furiously.
His attention plunged over her big belly and then up again to find her eyes wide in dismay. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. Something she’d once told him about getting pregnant started gnawing at him, in the car after that first god-awful visit at her parents’. Then he remembered: “I would never, never marry anyone because I got pregnant! Especially if I loved him. I’ve seen that kind of hell.”
“No,” she whispered.
They stared at each other, Elmore vaguely aware of other people passing, someone even greeting him by name, a car honking somewhere down the street. He found himself counting back: one … two … three …
“Elmore?” she said, panic edging into her voice. “Elmore!”
In a dreamlike state, he turned away and started back the way he’d come.
“Elmore Willis, where are you going?”
He walked slowly at first, then faster. Soon he was running.
“Elmore!” she shrieked, almost a block away by then.
He ran full tilt, his face split by a huge, unruly grin.
He stopped the car beyond the portico of the small, unused frame building with its white paint and red trim faded like the sign hanging over the rusting gas pumps. He recalled when he first saw the place in 1948, the car fan up front whirring furiously over his mother’s perpetual discontent, but there was a haze around all that now, and it wasn’t unpleasant. He found he wanted to run here, too, just like in town a little earlier, feeling his impatience tickle up through his chest, but he held back. With some semblance of dignity, he strode past the store and up the grassy bank just north of it toward the neat, recently painted house. A new Ford sedan, fresh from the road, sat under the carport. He knocked on the screen door to the kitchen, then turned away to look back down toward the highway and the forest crowding it on the other side.
“Why, Elmore! It’s been a long time.”
Friendly, Elmore thought. “Mr. Cady,” he said, turning to the gaunt man stuffing his shirt into his pants, his hair still wet from an after-work shower. Cady looked no different, no older than the man he remembered from behind the counter almost a quarter of a century earlier, as though in the shadowy interior of that little building down by the highway preserving spirits had worked, keeping him equally young or old, depending on how one looked at the tall, wiry and slightly stooped figure who, except for the graying hair, could be any age at all. That Rachel, with her beauty, could be born of such rocklike and homely material was truly wonderful, he realized.
Cady’s features softened as he pushed open the door. “Come on in.”
“Thank you, sir.” Elmore stepped into the kitchen with its spotless linoleum floor, chrome-edged table and four chrome-and-vinyl chairs. A plastic-encased clock was grinding through the hours above the sink. Cady had started for the door leading to the dining room and parlor beyond when Elmore stopped him. “I don’t have time to visit, sir,” he said, halting in the middle of the kitchen.
Cady turned just as his wife called from another room, “Who is it?”
“It’s Elmore Willis.”
“Elmore? Have him come in!” Again, no trace of reproach, Elmore noted, certain now. He shook his head as Cady indicated the living room.
“I really have only a minute,” he heard himself say, thinking, I have only a lifetime. “It’s about Rachel.” Cady’s countenance grew stern as he sensed something in Elmore’s gravity. “I didn’t bring any shame on her on account of Charlie Dugan.”
“Good Lord, whoever said you did?”
“Rachel kind of said she walked out on me because I turned my back on your family and defended Puma Wardell.” He heard a car coming up the mountain fast. “I still am Puma’s attorney. What happened with Puma and the department, Charlie getting shot and all that, that wasn’t my doing. But I had to represent Puma. That was my word.”
“I agree,” Cady said, leaning his tall frame closer. “I’m sure Charlie does, too. It’s a real shame, his resigning, God knows, the real shame being how few will probably ever know what really happened.” He gave Elmore a quizzical look, but it wasn’t unkind. “Anyhow, Charlie isn’t angry at Puma—he never wanted him charged. Everyone knows the politics of that department and this whole blasted county are shameful.”
Elmore heard the car slow. “The law of family and kinship saying I can’t see her anymore …,” he began.
“What on earth are you talking about, man?”
I’m dead right! He heard a car door slam, then the crunch of feet on gravel. Awkward, heavy. “Because I defended Puma, sir. Anyhow, I didn’t shame her that way.”
“Rachel told you that?”
Glancing past Cady to Rachel’s mother, now standing in the doorway, her face so familiar yet different, softer, without the hard edge, pale, worried, Elmore listened to the footsteps slowing on the carport’s concrete apron.
“Elmore, we haven’t seen Rachel since the first of the year,” Cady said. “And in any case, I couldn’t speak for her. She’s a grown woman with her own mind. Lord, how I know! If she doesn’t want to see you, that’s between the two of you, and she can give you whatever reason she wants, though I’m truly sorry. I suspect you’re a good man, and we thought she was much more than fond of you. We’ve missed your visits.”
“But I did shame her.”
“You what?”
“Elmore Willis!” The door flew open, jerking Cady’s attention away.
“I brought shame on her, and on you and your family,” he persisted.
“Elmore!”
“Quiet, girl!” her father said, staring at Elmore.
“Look at her. That child she’s carrying is mine.”
“You don’t know that for sure, Elmore Willis, damn you! I’ve slept with more men than you.” She yanked his arm, trying to turn him toward her, but he kept his face toward her father’s. She began to pound on his shoulder with her fists.
“Rachel Cady, this is a Christian household!” her mother cried, looking frantically from daughter to husband.
Cady stared at Elmore, first in disbelief, then bewilderment, then finally with a look as cold and hard as Elmore had ever seen. For a long moment, his silent agitation filled the room, stilling even the women. Feeling the older man’s looming violence, Elmore met his gaze as though to dare him. Then all at once, Cady relaxed. “What do you plan to do about it, Willis?” he asked almost mildly and with what sounded like genuine curiosity.
“Not a damn thing,” Elmore said, yanking free of Rachel, who was now sobbing, “Are you crazy?” Elmore headed out the door and down the mountain, never looking back.
It was dusk when he entered Damascus. He stopped at Dorothy’s Restaurant, where he ate a huge meal—steak, eggs, toast, grits and coffee, lots of coffee. He was in no hurry. After chatting with some city cops, he headed out and put Phineas on his leash.
They took a long downtown walk, Elmore thinking he still had plenty of time. It was Friday night, and people had begun to arrive for the movies, parking along the courthouse square, some walking in pairs, chatting, a lightness in their step as they headed up North Charlotte Street toward the theater. Patience, he reminded himself, watching them.
The cars, too, began to circle, the big Plymouths, Dodges, Chevys and Fords, jacked and gleaming under the street lights, throbbing and swollen-looking as they commenced their slow rounds of the square, then on up North Charlotte and back down South Charlotte to the Southern Railway overpass, before they rumbled back up the hill with an almost matronly stateliness.
Not now, Elmore thought. It’s still too early. So, to the dog’s delight, they walked farther out from the square in a widening concentric pattern, exploring the tree-lined streets with their neat bungalows that within weeks would be peeking through heavy leaves and shrubs but now looked stark blue or orange in the street lamps, the silence profound against the increasingly distant sounds of downtown.
It was after ten o’clock when Elmore settled in the chair at his desk, only the desk lamp on. With a sidelong glance at his master, the dog crept onto the huge sofa, scratched around on the old blanket there, then lay down with a sigh. The windows were open to the sounds of the street, the rumble of the parading vehicles on the square, the periodic cries and laughter. There would be no cavalcade of sirens that night, he reflected. No law-and-order theater. That was over and gone. The thought brought a brief wave of sadness. But he couldn’t stay in that frame of mind—he was too wound up. He swung his feet onto his desk and leaned back, trying to make himself comfortable.
He dozed and dreamed he was at the window. The rain clattered against the glass while the sky flashed blue fire over the tops of the great oak trees and the courthouse. Below, Dugan stood on the back of a dump truck, a huge overturned barrel in his hands, its contents flaming down the gutters like white fire while silhouettes of men crawled up the hill toward the truck on their hands and knees, faces to the ground like dogs. Dugan was laughing, shaking the barrel and laughing, looking up at Elmore in his window the whole time, his face right outside the glass and huge, the skin pasty, the teeth sharp. Elmore snapped awake.
The dog, motionless on the couch, was watching the office door and listening. Elmore held his breath. He heard several car doors slam on the street below. He looked at his watch. It was 3:57 A.M. The dog slid off the blanket and crept across the floor. He stuck his nose to the crack below the door and growled.
Less than two hours later, Elmore found himself shivering as the dampness of high, dew-soaked grass penetrated his slacks above his boots. A chill was in the air, and the mist hung dimly white and low in the valleys beyond the edge of the field in which he stood. He was looking east, where on the blue rim of a distant mountain a reddish line appeared and began to creep through the gaps of the trees, giving them shape. An old barbed-wire fence was outlined in the distance, its weathered posts leaning crazily as it wandered off the hill.
He was still in the clothes he’d been wearing when Cady and several other men burst into his office and got him. Now there were even more men, many more than he would have imagined, all dressed in suits, guns cradled in their arms or slung over their shoulders, all kinds of guns, shotguns, rifles, an M-1 carbine, the faces not fat with too much money or food, a few mustached. No crossed eyes. He marveled that so many came so soon. There were women now, too. Some had been there when he arrived, staring at him brazenly when the men pulled him from the car. Other cars were still arriving.
The fire of the rising sun turned golden, blinding him for a moment, causing him to turn away. Soon its heat reached him, and he shivered again, knowing he wouldn’t be cold much longer. He looked down at Phineas lying in the grass beside his boot, where he’d been for the last half-hour, calm and motionless except for the occasional turn of his head. Like he knows what’s going to happen, Elmore thought, proud of him, knowing he could never have trained any dog that well. It had still been dark when the men led him and the dog across the field. He had only a vague idea where they were. They’d headed north out of Damascus, climbed a great deal, maybe ten cars in all, then turned off the main highway long before New Hope and climbed more, a narrow road crowded by enormous trees. The road had soon turned to dirt. No one talked. He recognized the man driving his car as Rachel’s cousin Wilbur, a Grafton from up near Asheville. They’d met once at the Cadys’ house. He was about Elmore’s age and height, a thin man with curly blond hair, an easy, handsome smile and quick humor. He’d come through the office door right behind Rachel’s father, looking just as grim, no one speaking a word.
It seemed Wilbur had been personally assigned to him while the others stood nearby, their quiet talk occasionally interrupted by the clink of a gun or cigarette lighter. The birds made a wonderful racket just at daybreak, like they were trying to yell up the sun. He looked around again, all the men in suits, the faces with their surface differences and underlying, unmistakable likeness. Like the Hatfields or something, he thought, watching the sunlight glint off the steel barrels. Elmore suddenly smiled as his mother came to mind. Checking this one out, Claire? His calm surprised him.
A breeze arose, swept up over the hillside, rippled the high grass, then passed over him, tickling his temples and carrying the smells of dank pine forests and creeks. He felt his soul fill and was almost moved to tears.
“Elmore here can’t be all Yankee,” Wilbur said suddenly, his voice not loud nor excited, just the suddenness and proximity startling. “Brings his dog to his wedding.”
“As best man, no less,” someone else rumbled, another cousin. Elmore had never imagined there were so many. “I do admire his sense of priorities.”
“Hell, Wilbur, you’d been better off marrying your dog instead of what you did.”
“I heard you, Avery Mason!”
“Dear Lord, I didn’t realize you were here, Nell!”
Quiet laughter drifted across the field.
A man’s head appeared over the brow of the hill, the sun behind him, the fog filling the valleys below the blue ridges. It was like he was rising from the first day of creation. Elmore recognized the preacher from the little Bethel Harmony Church at New Hope, the pants of his dark blue suit pulled up over his navel, preacher-style. The whole man had barely come into sight when he stopped and stared at the group staring at him—at the guns, at the lawyer standing with his dog—and blanched.
“Who’s getting married here,” Elmore said quietly, “me or that preacher?”
“He does look a tad peaked,” Wilbur agreed as Rachel’s mother, dressed for church, it seemed, came hurrying up over the hill and took the preacher’s arm. Showing none of the distress of the day before, she chatted lightly, bolstering him.
Then Rachel appeared on the arm of her father, although it was more like her father was holding her—a tight hold, if not quite a hammerlock. Wearing a plain yellow dress and evidently barefoot, a garland of white flowers having dropped cockeyed over her forehead, her short, dark hair askew, she was in a rage. The men grew silent and grave at the sight of her. “Whew, Elmor
e,” Wilbur whispered. “Maybe you’d best take off across this here field and let me shoot you and get it over with.”
But Elmore didn’t hear him. He thought Rachel looked the loveliest he’d ever seen her. Soon she was beside him, not looking at him, just scowling, her father to her left, his hand still locked on her arm. “Can I let you go, daughter?” Elmore heard Cady whisper.
“I wouldn’t,” she snapped.
Then he felt Cady move a step or two away and knew she’d been released.
The preacher, his thinning hair not carefully brushed as usual but rumpled and jutting almost straight up, stood in front of the couple holding his Bible, Rachel’s mother a step or two behind him. The men and women began to ease into a semicircle behind Rachel and Elmore. “You’re giving away the bride?” the preacher asked, his question ending in an inadvertent squeak as he addressed Rachel’s father.
Cady nodded.
“The best man?” the preacher demanded, looking around. “Is there a best man?”
“The dog,” Wilbur said.
“Well, I …”
“Get on with it,” someone growled behind Elmore. The preacher swallowed hard.
“A ring? Is there a ring?” His voice jumped still another octave.
Rachel’s mother stepped forward and handed a ring to Elmore. “This was your grandmother’s, Rachel,” she said, looking at her daughter, not Elmore. Not yet. Then she walked over beside her husband and took his hand.
“You going to need a ring, too?” the preacher said to Elmore, eyeing him with sudden pity.
Elmore shook his head.
“Hell, he doesn’t need no ring. He’s got a dog.”