“You’re an angel from heaven,” I told her. “I feel as nasty as a buzzard. This will help a lot.”
She gave me a quick smile and asked, “What’s wrong with your foot?”
“It’s broken,” I replied.
“Don’t it hurt?”
“Lord, yes, it hurts,” I replied and raised my toddy glass. “But this whiskey is helping.”
“I’ve got something better than that,” she said and went out the kitchen door. By the time I’d finished washing my face and hands, she reentered the room and set a prescription pill bottle beside my glass. “Half-grain codeine,” she said. “I broke my arm a couple of years ago, but I couldn’t take this stuff. It made me crazy. You’re welcome to it if you think you can handle it. There’s about twenty of ’em left.”
“Now I know you’re an angel,” I told her.
“Better start off with two,” she said and poured more bourbon into my glass.
A few minutes later I tore into a plateful of sausage and buttered biscuits and ribbon cane syrup, eating like a man who hadn’t been fed in a week. By the time I was halfway through my meal both the codeine and whiskey had started to kick in, and I felt better than I had since I heard about Madeline’s death. I looked across the table at my hosts. “This is so kind of you,” I said.
“Heck, we’re glad to have company,” Frank Riddle said. “It gets lonesome out here.”
“Where are we exactly?” I asked.
He grinned. “A little north of Batson and a couple of miles south of Kaiser’s Burnout. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” I said. “But I saw a sign last night that said we were five miles from Saratoga. I’ve been there. So we must be … what? About twenty miles west of U.S. Sixty-nine. Right?”
“That’s about it.” He sipped his coffee in silence for a few moments, then said, “You know, it truly surprised me that you recognized a Lightner dog a little while ago.”
“We had some of them,” I replied. “Some of John Colby’s stock, too.”
“You say your dad was a fighter?”
“In a small way. He had a few dogs and couple of Mexicans who took care of them for him. He was a rancher by occupation.”
“Where you from?” he asked.
“Matador County.”
He nodded thoughtfully and forked another piece of sausage onto his plate. “My daddy fought dogs all over Southeast Texas and southern Louisiana. Gamecocks, too. That old fellow outside is the last good pit dog he had. Won seven straight fights in record time, and killed one of Floyd Bedding’s best dogs in under five minutes. I don’t hold with it, though.”
“Me either,” I said. “I’d get real attached to one of the dogs, then Dad would take it off and get it killed. I’m still half mad about some of the animals I lost.”
“I understand,” he said with a nod.
“What do you do?” I asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“He hunts,” his wife chimed in with a grin.
He smiled at her easily. “I farm some. And like she said, I hunt a lot. You see, my family had some land in the Batson oil field, and we’ve got a little money. As long as we’re careful with the checkbook we do fine.”
“I see.”
“I guess you wonder why we don’t move into town where living would be easier.”
I shook my head and grinned. “It’s no mystery to me. I live way out in the country, too. We’ve only had electricity and running water at my ranch for a couple of years.”
We ate on in silence, and finally he pushed his plate aside and lighted a Camel. I dug around and came up with my Chesterfields and got one going.
“I know you’re bound to be curious about all this business,” I said. “I mean, what I’m doing out here in the woods in the early morning with a broke foot and torn-up clothes.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, but a little curiosity never killed a man.” He glanced at his wife and winked at her affectionately. “Or a woman either, though I’ve known some that thought it would.”
“I feel obliged to you,” I said. “And I think you have a right to know what you’ve gotten into by taking me in. Do you know who Milam Walsh is?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“How much do you know about him?”
“I know that he’s sorry, and that he’s a big-time crook who’s capable of just about anything.”
“He’s all of that,” I agreed with a nod. I went on to relate how Walsh and his goons had kidnapped me in front of Alma Copeland’s house, and how I’d rammed the car into the big gum tree, and how I’d held the muzzle of Walsh’s own Colt Police Positive ground into his belly with about three pounds of pressure on the trigger until he carefully unlocked my handcuffs. I told them how I’d fled, leaving the three Jefferson County lawmen in the wrecked Buick, and how I’d spent the night shivering in the cold darkness before stumbling onto their place.
“Why did they grab you?” Riddle asked.
“Because I’ve got evidence squirreled away that links Walsh up with some New Orleans gangsters, and he wants to get his hands on it.”
“So they were going to beat on you until you told them where it is…”
I nodded.
“You’re lucky you got loose from them. After they got what they wanted, they’d have left your carcass somewhere out in the bushes just as sure as taxes.”
“I know that,” I replied. “And you may be in danger, too. They could come here looking for me.”
He smiled wryly and shook his head. “No, they won’t. They might sneak up here by the dead of night and kill somebody, or throw a body out in a ditch, but you couldn’t pay him or any of his people enough money to come in the daytime and bother a man. Especially not me.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because this is Hardin County, and my uncle has been high sheriff here for nearly thirty years. He’d as soon kill Walsh as not.”
“Really?”
“You bet. My uncle John is a Campbellite elder with fixed ideas about how lawmen ought to act, and Walsh don’t measure up to his standards. In fact, the two of them done had one little head-butting incident.”
“What happened?”
“Walsh come up here trying to throw his weight around about an old boy from Port Arthur that Uncle John had locked up in the jail. He slapped the fire out of Walsh in front of about a dozen people, right there on the street in town.”
“What did Walsh do?” I asked.
“He tucked his tail between his legs and went on back to Beaumont. So you just relax and don’t worry. You’re as safe here as you’d be at home. My uncle ain’t got no more use for that man than he has for a cut dog, and Walsh knows it. Want another shot of this whiskey?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Every time I find myself on the verge of giving up on the human race, I meet somebody like Frank and Nan Riddle. Then I’m forced to pull up a few inches short of the simon-pure misanthropy my instincts tell me is the only sane response to my own species. People like them are what everybody could be if we’d all just practice a little common decency. I also suspected that what he’d said about being careful with the checkbook was modesty on his part. Either that or the desire to keep his dollars-and-cents business to himself, something my dad always claimed was a sound practice for anyone, man or woman. I knew that with the war on and oil at an all-time high, even a few acres in the Batson Field would yield very generous royalties, and my guess was that they had money enough in the bank to buy just about anything they wanted. But they also had something that was almost as important: sense enough not to want much.
After breakfast he offered to take me into the county seat to a doctor.
I shook my head. “They’re bound to have seen me limping off last night, so I’d just as soon not have it known around town that a stranger with a broken foot was looking for medical attention.”
Instead I asked him if he’d drive me to the nearest phone to make a call. “Be
happy to,” he replied. “But if you’re not going to see the doctor, why don’t you stay here and rest and let me make it for you? That is, if it’s not too personal.”
I thought for a few seconds. I’d already decided to take Deader Simms up on his offer of help. It was either that or call the phone company office in Palestine and leave a message for Nora to come get me. But I reasoned that Simms could more easily afford the time and the gasoline. Of course I could have called Jim Rutherford, but that would have meant going back to Jefferson County, something I didn’t intend to do. But there was no reason Riddle couldn’t deliver a message to Simms for me. And I was utterly exhausted. “Okay,” I said. “But you need to understand that if he’s not at home you may be stuck with me until tomorrow.”
He waved off the possibility as not worthy of concern. “Always glad to have a little company. Don’t you worry about it.”
I gave him Simms’s number and tried to pay him for his trouble. He acted mildly insulted at the suggestion, which was exactly what I had expected. He did agree to take my unlimited gas rationing card and fill his truck up while he was in town. A few minutes later I dozed off into a dreamless sleep between sparkling white sheets that smelled faintly of wood smoke and lye soap.
They woke me shortly before the noon meal, which consisted of home-cured ham, winter turnip greens, hot corn bread, and more ribbon cane syrup.
“Your Mr. Simms answered on the second ring,” Riddle told me as we sat down at the table. “He said he’d send somebody to take you wherever you needed to go, but he thought it would probably be late in the day or maybe even early evening when they got here.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“He also asked me if you’d made any progress.”
“What did you tell him?”
He gave me an ironic smile. “I said you’d made so much progress that you’d got your foot broke and your car stole, and that you probably didn’t need no more progress right now.”
I laughed. “You’re right, you know. I sure don’t need any more cases like this. Which is why I’m quitting law enforcement and going back to ranching.”
“I don’t blame you. I did tell him that you said you’d call him in the next few days, and that you had part of the answer.”
After we ate I took two more codeine tablets and spent the bulk of the afternoon dozing in a rocking chair beside the fireplace. Riddle was in and out as he did his chores around the place. They had a battery radio, and a couple of times I heard the strains of fiddle music and once I caught a Cajun-tinged voice that identified the station as one in Lafayette, Louisiana. A little after four Nan came in with a mug of fresh coffee for me and noticed me gazing at the picture of a young man in an army uniform that sat on the mantelpiece. “That’s our boy, Sam,” she said.
“You don’t look old enough to have a boy in the army,” I said.
“I was fifteen when we got married,” she replied with a girlish laugh. “We get started young down here.”
“Do you have any other children?”
“One daughter. She’s married to a fellow that works at the Texas Company refinery in Port Arthur. He does some real important something-or-other that keeps him out of the army. I reckon they figure he’s worth more where he’s at than he would be carrying a gun. I wish Sam had something like that. I worry about him all the time.”
She left the room and I drank my coffee, then dozed a little more. About an hour before sundown my host helped me hobble out onto the porch for a breath of fresh air. It was chilly, but being out-of-doors lifted my spirits. The sky had cleared during the day, and the dying light of the setting sun gave the remote clearing an unworldly feel. The land we were on had never been logged. All around us loomed a great forest of tall climax hardwoods. It was a setting that made it easy to imagine what the whole country had been like before the white man came. We sat in a pair of rough-hewn hickory rockers and talked. I told him about Isaiah Tucker’s journey to Texas and about the founding of La Rosa, and he recounted to me how his great-grandparents had come to the Big Thicket in the 1840s, and I learned that Kaiser’s Burnout got its name when a Confederate officer named Kaiser torched several hundred acres trying to flush out draft resisters during the Civil War. We talked of dogs we’d hunted behind and deer we’d killed and men we’d known, now all gone from this earth. Finally our conversation lapsed and we sat in silence enjoying the timeless peace of the gathering twilight. Then, just as we were rising to go inside, Jack Amber’s Cord glided softly up the drive and stopped in front of the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I said good-bye to Frank and Nan Riddle on the front porch.
“Come back next fall and we’ll get us some deer,” Frank said.
“I’ll do it,” I replied as I shook his hand, knowing that in his world such an invitation was about as high a compliment as he could pay a man. And I meant it. But first I had to manage to live through the next few days.
Once we were in the car, I asked Jack to take me to Press Rafferty’s place. Going to La Rosa would have meant an all-night drive, and I just wasn’t up to it.
“What in the hell were you doing that caused you to wind up way out here in the shape you’re in?” Jack asked as soon as we were back on the road.
I quickly gave him an abbreviated version of the previous day’s events, ending with my arrival at the Riddle home early that morning.
“So Walsh is in this mess up to his eyeballs?” he said.
“Right. And as a principal, not just as the after-the-fact leech we thought he was. Or at least he thinks he’s a principal. The people behind him may have other ideas.”
“But who in hell could he be fronting for?”
“Beats me, Jack. I spent the whole afternoon trying to figure that out. But whoever it is, they think big.” I went on to tell him about the string of resort casinos Walsh had bragged about the evening before.
“Amazing,” he muttered.
“So how are things going with your book in Port Arthur?” I asked.
“Oh, just great,” he said bitterly. “I’m back in business, and they’re taking twenty-five percent right off the top.”
“How about the one in Houston?”
He shook his head. “They can’t touch it.”
“And the Maceos?”
“Nobody’s approached them either.”
“How’s Rosario?” I asked.
“He’s okay, but the bodyguard died.”
“Did you know him?”
He nodded. “Yeah. He was an ex–high school football star at Texas City. Got a scholarship to UT, but got hurt his first year. The boy wasn’t too bright. Rosario took him on just to give him a job.”
“Pity,” I said.
“By the way … I went by the Creole and took care of your bill.”
“Thanks, Jack,” I said in relief. “I’m glad you thought to do that. I’ll send you a check as soon as I get home.”
He shook his head. “It’s on Mr. Simms. And I picked up your clothes and suitcase and stuff. It’s all in the trunk.”
“Thank God. I’ve been wearing what I’ve got on for two days. Now if I only knew where my car is.”
“I don’t think you’re likely to ever see it again, Virgil.”
“Me either, but I can always hope.”
* * *
Press had already gone to bed, but Nora was still up reading by lamplight. She came to the door in her robe, shotgun in hand, and I lunged from the car and yelled out my name lest she shoot us on general principles. Once she saw who I was, she quelled the dogs long enough for us to get in the house unmolested. By that time the commotion had brought her dad out of bed, and I introduced them both to Jack. Press took one look at me, shook his head sadly, then went outside to crank the Delco so I could get a bath. While I soaked, Jack ate a quick supper. Just as I was getting out of the tub he stuck his head in the bathroom door. “I’m off, Virgil,” he said.
“You’re not driving back to the c
oast tonight, are you?”
He shook his head. “I’m going to stay at the O’Neal Hotel in Palestine. Your friends offered me a room here, but I’m always more comfortable in a hotel.”
After he left, I dried off and limped out into the hall. Nora appeared and tried to get me to eat. I shook my head. “Just a toddy and then sleep,” I said. “I’m dead on my feet.”
She steered me into the guest room, disappeared, then quickly returned with a bottle of brandy and a glass, both of which she placed on the table beside my bed. “Sleep tight,” she said. “If you need anything in the night, just call out. I’m in the next room. And by the way, there’s an old pair of crutches out in the barn Daddy said he’d find for you tomorrow.”
Jack had put my suitcase on the end of the bed, and I quickly changed into fresh underwear and a clean undershirt.
I downed two more of the codeine tablets with about three ounces of brandy, climbed into bed, and was asleep before I knew it.
* * *
The doctor was a barrel-chested GP. Though it was Sunday morning, the man was dressed in a shirt and tie under a clean white lab coat. His practice was in one side of a big Victorian house on Highway 79 in Palestine. He and his wife, who doubled as his nurse, lived in the other half. Nora had known the man for years and said he was one of the better doctors in town.
“Some people are born fools, Mr. Tucker,” he said. “And some people have to work hard to get there. Which is it with you?”
“Both,” Nora said, answering his question for me. “He came into the world crazy, and he’s done his best to improve on what God gave him.”
“I believe it,” he said, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you do something about this foot when it first happened?”
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