Home Fires Burning

by Robert Inman

  “You probably ought to,” Jake said.

  Hilton took a step inside and Jake flinched, knowing that Hilton was about to lash out with those huge rock-hard hands of his. But Hilton stopped, held his hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching his fists. “You smart-mouth sonofabitch,” Hilton said in a strangled voice.

  Jake could see then how bad it was between himself and Hilton, how he had humiliated the man by taking his gun away from him in front of everybody, how he had made this man who had been his lifelong friend look like a fool. A doddering old fool.

  “I’m sorry, Hilton,” Jake said weakly.

  “You’re goddamn right you are.”

  Jake didn’t say anything else, because he could see that it was beyond words. Hilton stood over him a moment longer and then turned on his heel and walked out, whanging the cell door closed behind him and snapping the big padlock, stomping down the corridor and out into the alleyway, slamming the outer door with another bang, leaving Jake alone, shaking with fear, sick with the smell of piss and doom strong in his nostrils.

  As he sat there, Jake remembered the summer evening years ago when Hilton Redlinger had staggered out of a meeting at the Masonic Lodge above the drugstore and got into the back seat of his police car and bellowed for everyone to hear, “Somebody stole my goddamn steering wheel!” A small crowd had piled out the door of the Lodge, roaring with laughter, just as Jake happened by on his way home. They had pulled Hilton out of the car and sent somebody to Lightnin’ Jim’s for another bottle and then all sat on the curb by Hilton’s car, passing the bottle and making the soft warm night rich with their voices, to hell with what the Methodists and the Baptists might think.

  One of the younger men had asked, “You ain’t gonna put this in the paper, are you, Jake?”

  “No use overstating the obvious,” he had said. “When a trusted public servant makes a fool of himself on the town square, it’s better gossiped about than written about.”

  Hilton, voice thick, had thrown his arm around Jake’s shoulder. “Jake, you’re a pisser, but you’ll do to hunt with. Hooooo, doggies.” Then he leaned back and passed out on the sidewalk.

  Remembering it now, Jake thought to himself just how much of a pisser he was, how he had pissed into the wind again and gotten it all over himself. And how much damage he had done — damage that might not be undone.

  Jake sweltered through the afternoon, the sweat dripping from him until it soaked his clothes and made him light-headed, finally lying prone on the wretched cot and drifting off into a sleep haunted by heat phantoms, chased by grinning corpses that rose from gray metal caskets. He woke finally to see that the afternoon was gone, twilight lingering in the alleyway outside the single window of the calaboose corridor.

  He heard a voice, high-pitched and tentative. “Daddy Jake?”

  Then Hilton, thundering, “Get the hell out of here, boy! You want me to put you in there, too?”

  And small feet running away down the alley.

  Hilton unbolted the outside door, brought him a metal plate with two slices of ham and some potato salad and a piece of light bread on it, a metal cup of iced tea, slid it through the open space under the cell door, and stalked out, wordless. Jake ate every morsel and then lay back down in the gathering dark and went back to sleep.

  The next time he woke it was morning. He heard bells and saw Rosh Benefield standing in the corridor. He realized it was Sunday and the bells were coming from the two churches — Methodist and Baptist — pealing away at each other like warring artillery from opposite sides of town. Hilton unlocked the cell and Rosh had to turn sideways to get through the narrow doorway. He stood there over Jake, blinking in the gloom. Jake sat up slowly, feeling the raw scratchiness behind his eyelids, smelling the stench of his own sweat. “I was in prison and you visited me,” Jake mumbled.

  “Do you want to get out of here?” Rosh asked.

  Jake nodded.

  “All right. We’re going over to the courthouse first thing in the morning and you’re going to plead Guilty.”

  “What’s the charge?”

  Rosh pulled a sheet of paper out of his coat pocket and read from it: “Disturbing the peace, discharging a firearm in public, simple assault, resisting arrest, failure to obey an officer, creating a public nuisance, loitering …”

  “Loitering?”

  “That’s what it says here. That’s what Chief Redlinger has charged you with.”

  Hilton stood in the corridor, glaring at Jake through the bars.

  “Who am I supposed to plead to?”

  “Judge Pettus Rawlins.”

  “Can I think about it?”

  “No. Pettus is leaving town first thing in the morning. He won’t be back for two weeks. I’ll see him at church in a half hour, and if you want to plead Guilty, I can get him to hold off leaving and see you in his chambers. If you decide to plead Not Guilty, your case will go on the next jury docket. That’s August. In the meantime, you’ll stay here.”

  “Here?”

  “Here.” Rosh took a deep whiff and screwed up his face.

  “And if I plead Guilty?”

  “I don’t know. Depends on what kind of mood Pettus is in tomorrow morning.”

  Thirty days in the county jail, that’s what kind of mood Pettus Rawlins was in at seven-thirty on Monday morning. Jake stood meekly before him, drained from another day and night in the calaboose, with Rosh Benefield at his side and Hilton Redlinger right behind. He answered when asked that he had read the charges lodged against him by a duly sworn officer of the law, and that he pleaded Guilty to the whole lot of them — loitering included.

  “One year,” Judge Pettus Rawlins said. “Thirty days active in the county jail, eleven months suspended if you behave yourself, another year probation. Pull another stunt like this, Jake, and I’ll put you away for so long you’ll forget who you are.”

  Jake ducked his head. Rosh prodded him in the side. “Yes, your honor,” he mumbled.

  Hilton marched him out of the courthouse, past the pinochle game already going full tilt under the pecan tree on the corner of the courthouse square (the pinochle players paid them no heed; they were old men and had seen every kind of foolishness), on to the county jail a block away on a side street. It was an ugly yellow brick two-story building with a high fence all the way around, topped by two strands of barbed wire. There were two signs attached to the fence. One said COUNTY JAIL and the other said HOLLERING AT PRISONERS PROHIBITED.

  So, he thought, I’m a prisoner. And then he thought, So? He decided that he wasn’t particularly humiliated to be a guest of the county with a criminal record. When a man took his life into his own hands and shook it for all it was worth, he had to be prepared to accept the consequences. That was part of it. If a man couldn’t handle the consequences, he wouldn’t ever do any shaking in the first place.

  Hilton turned him over to the sheriff’s wife, who ran the jail, and he took up residence in the tiny second-story cell with the view of the pecan tree and the courthouse clock tower, and spent the rest of the day wondering what the hell they were doing with his newspaper.

  The next day, he gave up staring out the window and asked the sheriff’s wife for reading material. She brought him a coverless, dogeared Look magazine from 1940 with a lengthy photo section on women’s fashions. He read what was left of the magazine twice, every word, wondering all the while what the hell they were doing with his newspaper.

  The third day, Wednesday, he decided that they had damned well better be doing something with his newspaper, because if it failed to publish, the U.S. Post Office would yank his second-class mailing permit, and there would be the devil trying to get it back. The post office rule was inflexible. Come sleet, snow, sin, sickness, corruption, or catastrophe, you were expected to publish a weekly newspaper weekly. He had heard stories of editors going broke while the post office dilly-dallied over a lapsed second-class mailing permit. Jake fretted and fumed through the day, through the hours wh
en he should have been sitting on the bucket seat at the top of the big Kluge press, feeding sheets of newsprint into its maw while Lonnie ran the printed sheets through the clattering folder nearby. He hardly touched the lunch they brought him at noontime, and by the time sunset flamed the courthouse tower, he was exhausted with the frustration of not knowing. Dusk came quickly and before long he could barely make out the outline of the clock tower against the purpling sky. What the hell was he waiting for, he asked himself, a signal flare? He finally gave up and lay sweating on the narrow bunk until he drifted off into a fitful sleep in which Whit Hennessey chased him across the courthouse square waving an official-looking piece of yellow paper.

  In the morning, Rosh Benefield came and brought him a copy of the paper. It was not much of a paper, but it was something.. There were eight pages, most of the inside taken up by the usual advertisements (most of them repeated verbatim from the week before) and a lot of filler material, including all the type he had set on Thursday and Friday from the pages of trivia his rural correspondents had brought by. The front page was a curiosity. There was a lengthy account of the sermon given on Sunday by the Methodist preacher. Then there was a rambling and somewhat confused recounting of the Town Council meeting. And under the byline of Lonnie Tibbetts, there was the following:

  Mr. Virgil Baker had the Grand Opening of his store today. It is called Baker’s Sundries and Mr. Virgil Baker says he has everything from Soup to Nuts. One thing he has is a jawbreaker machine which many people have not seen before. If you have a penny you can put it in the machine and turn the crank and get a jawbreaker which comes in several colors. You can see all the jawbreakers inside because the top of the machine is made of glass. Mr. Virgil Baker says it is the first one in these parts and he got it from St. Louise. Mrs. Biscuit Brunson came in for the Grand Opening and she said she wanted some Ludens Cough Drops and Mr. Virgil Baker said they didn’t have anything but Smith Brothers but they are awfully good and Mrs. Biscuit Brunson said what kind of drugstore was that anyway that didn’t have Ludens Cough Drops and Mr. Virgil Baker said he would have to order some. So they do have everything from Soup to Nuts except Ludens Cough Drops.

  “Mother of God,” Jake said softly. There was more — an announcement of a new war bond drive from Tunstall Renfroe, apparently written by Tunstall himself; several items about servicemen, a recipe for chicken noodle casserole. But the left-hand column, Jake’s column, was blank except for a single paragraph set in boldface and bordered in black.

  The staff of the Free Press begs your indulgence for the next four issues while the Editor is indisposed. Correspondents and advertisers are urged to continue their usual discourse with the paper. Personal correspondence to the Editor may be addressed in care of the County Sheriff.

  Rosh stood patiently while Jake scanned the paper. It was an abomination, but it was neatly laid out and, most important, it was published.

  He looked up at Rosh, “Who did it?”

  Rosh clasped his hands behind him. “They, ah, all pretty much pitched in.”

  “All?”

  “Pastine, Francine, Lonnie of course. And they got some fellow from Taylorsville to come over at night and set type and help them make the press run.”

  “Pastine and Francine?”

  “Pastine is responsible for the Methodist sermon. Francine and Lonnie sat through the Town Council meeting and I believe they, ah, got an approximation of it.”

  Jake looked down at the front page again. “What about Henry? There’s nothing here about Henry.”

  “The War Department is turning Europe upside down, I’m told. It has gotten congressional attention. So far, nothing. And they don’t know who the poor boy was in the casket.”

  So, nothing was settled. All that commotion he had caused, and nothing was settled. Henry, even in death, was up to his old tricks. Henry couldn’t even come home in the right casket. Would they never be free of Henry?

  “Is, ah …” Jake hesitated, “is anybody going to come see me?”

  Rosh rocked back and forth on his feet, a mountain swaying. “Well, I’m here.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “I think the words Pastine used were, ‘Let him rot.’ “

  “She’s still mad.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite the word for it, Jake. Humiliated comes closer, but that’s also inadequate.”

  “Well, what the hell,” Jake exploded. “I was right, wasn’t I? That wasn’t Henry, was it?”

  Rosh let him fume for a moment and then he said, “No, it wasn’t Henry.”

  “Well?” Jake said triumphantly.

  “I don’t think it’s ever occurred to you that you can’t just tear around like a wild bull in a china shop and not break things, Jake.”

  Jake folded the newspaper carefully and put it on the bunk next to him. Then he got up and went to the window and looked out at the pecan tree and the courthouse clock tower. It was cloudy this morning, a thick overcast freighted with the heat and moisture of early summer, ready to unload in a downpour.

  He turned back to Rosh, who was watching him. “Why did you come, then?”

  “Damned if I know,” Rosh said.

  Jake ducked his head. “Look, I’m sorry, Rosh.”

  “All right.”

  “I didn’t mean what I said over there at the funeral home Friday night.”

  “I accept that.”

  Remorse swept over Jake. “I’m just what you said I am, Rosh. I’m a sonofabitch. I screw things up a lot. I’m getting old …”

  “Spare me, Jake.”

  Jake looked up, surprised at the hard edge in Rosh’s voice, something he hadn’t noticed until now.

  “You can go just so far, Jake,” Rosh said. “Folks will take and take and take, as we’ve all been taking from you all these years, and then finally something tips the balance. It’s funny, you know, I think people generally admire what you did out there at the cemetery on Saturday. They’re aghast, but they sort of admire you for doing what you thought had to be done, especially since it turned out the way it did. But as for me” — he bit off the words — “I think it was an obscene act.”

  Jake cringed, feeling the lash of Rosh Benefield’s tongue, so civilly brutal, the way so many cowering witnesses and plaintiffs had felt it in the big airy courtroom on the second floor of the courthouse. Rosh never raised his voice in court, but he could use it like a scalpel, peeling away layer after layer of flesh until he left you raw and bleeding, naked and ashamed.

  “You couldn’t just leave well enough alone,” Rosh went on. “It was either be right or be damned, and so now you’re a little bit of both. You act like you’re the only person in the world, as if the rest of us are supposed to hang on your every exquisite turn of phrase, forgive your every indiscretion, cater to your sense of what will do and what won’t. Well, Jake, let me tell you, I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re about nine-tenths horse’s ass.”

  Jake just sat there and took it, gape-mouthed. Then he shut his mouth and swallowed hard, tasting bile, his own wretchedness rising up in his throat. Finally he said, “I never meant to hurt anybody.” He put his head down in his hands and shut his eyes and stayed that way for a long time. When he looked up again, Rosh was gone and there was a great yawning space where he had been.

  Jake thought a lot about Rosh Benefield the rest of that day and he kept going back to Friday night just past, when Rosh had poured the whiskey on the ground between them in back of Redlinger’s Funeral Home. They had wounded each other before, as any friends eventually must. But this time, Rosh had poured out the whiskey. It had been something special between them, more than just the countless jars of Lightnin’ Jim’s Best they had emptied in the shank of the evening in the newspaper office. For Rosh, it was a small sign of his defiance of the furious and terrible Ideal, who had condemned Jake Tibbetts to perdition and forbade the mention of his name in her house after Hazel had been killed in the wreck. In the face of all that, Rosh had stuc
k.

  He had stuck even when Jake had settled the score with Ideal for the vicious way she had cut Pastine to the quick at Hazel’s funeral and then had shut her off from all social intercourse. Jake had bided his time while the rancor built in his gut. And then it happened in 1939 that Ollie Whittle built his radio station in the upstairs over the Farmers Mercantile Bank and, even before he went on the air, arranged for Ideal Benefield to air a weekly Saturday morning news and society program. Ideal was, after all, the town’s social arbiter.

  Jake wrote in his weekly column:

  This newspaper takes note of a forthcoming competitor in the community. One Oliver Townsend Whittle, until late a resident of the next county, has brought to our midst the marvel of radio.

  Henceforth, our sensibilities will be enriched by all manner of intellectual commerce, some of it, according to Mr. Whittle, coming by transcription from such citadels of culture as New York and Chicago. Our community can scarce go unchanged. Surely we unschooled bumpkins of the hinterlands will reap rich rewards. Our ladies will wear mail-order cosmetics, our young will hum the exotic melodies of the Hit Parade instead of good Baptist and Methodist hymns, and our Police Chief will benefit from the exploits of the Lone Ranger.

  One would be so bold as to suggest that Mr. Whittle should schedule a periodic program of local happenings, so that we can chronicle the social upheaval in our midst.

  Such a program must be undertaken bravely, boldly, incisively. It must be ruthless in its rooting out of the old ways and its heralding of the new.

  The key to such an endeavor, obviously, is the host (or hostess). We suggest, in short, that Mr. Whittle engage the services of some local entity who is so unflinchingly mean that her (or his) urine would etch glass… .

  and then the shit had hit the fan. Everyone knew that Ideal had already been hired, though Jake professed ignorance. A delegation had called on him, he had apologized in print: