EQMM, July 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  He had not been against Boyd from the start, and that knowledge is still sharp inside him, talons hooking up under his ribs and giving him a stitch when he breathes deeply. A big man, Boyd seemed jolly at the start and never dangerous. If he drank, he just turned clownier and had to be dumped into his truck and driven home. Because he was from town, he'd been in and out of minor scrapes with authorities—a little post-game vandalism, occasional shooting of pop bottles in the Lexington limits, cherry bombs, open containers, soaping windows—but Sherburne had never had cause to involve himself. Harmless pranks, just signs of dander, and when the boy graduated and went into his daddy's body shop, he bought a cabin out on the Buffalo forks near Irish Mill and joined the sporting crowd. Hunting, fishing, plinking, various sorts of tomcatting and larking. Innocuous, if not wholly innocent. Ree was in school, and then out West. A couple of years later, McCall had met him at a horse race and brought him over to buy the lumber from a stable Thurston was tearing down. He put his back into the work and never flinched, screeching back at the noise of the prised nails like one bird answering another. He had a way about him, Sherburne thought, that suggested some preoccupation, a part of his mind off somewhere. Maybe it was carousing with his running mates, after this uncatchable muskie, the rumor of a panther or some famous one-eyed bear, but he was respectful and offered a fair price for the planks.

  He wasn't sure where Boyd and Ree had met, but it didn't take them long to start cutting a figure at cakewalks and picnics, her swinging on the crook of his arm, everybody whispering that, if there was a woman who could bring his mischief down a notch, it was Deputy Sherburne. The women in her line were all strong, strivers and winners. The men were something else, alternately quiet and fierce, most every one of them peace officers who had played a part in taming this pocket of the Blue Ridge where the rough terrain encouraged smuggling, shining, and other mischief which threatened to drag it back to the nineteenth century. She was strong stock, all right, and pretty enough to get her way, even the chipped tooth a part of her charm. Her rider's long legs, Donyell's eyes. Let Cole dance; before long, she'd be calling the tune.

  That was how it seemed at first. In the span of a season she became Mrs. Boyd Cole, but she went by Deputy Ree Sherburne beyond the threshold of the little bungalow they rented off Jackson Avenue, and it was Sherburne on her nametag, Sherburne on her paycheck. Thurston figured this would remind anybody, Boyd first among them, that she hadn't stopped being quick and right and everything else stamped into the family name just because she'd worn a veil and sliced a sugary cake.

  * * * *

  "Daddy,” McCall says, “won't you ride back with me and spend the evening? Pitch some horseshoes and hunt up a glass of the Wild Turkey? The baseball game's on the radio later. The world's still here, you know. You need to come on back to it."

  "I'm fine, son. I'll throw a rope around that mess and haul it down to the draw, give it a little kerosene and a salute."

  McCall winced almost imperceptibly at the “son,” for Sherburne was usually content to call him by name.

  Carrying the mug's three sharp pieces over to the bin, he could just see into Ree's old room, and though the shade was drawn, he knew what his eyes would fall on if he stepped across the threshold. Even when she came home to die, she had kept her old swallow-tailed drum major uniform on the cedar valet, the blue wool with its gold epaulettes and three rows of brass buttons still clean and moth-free. The white hat with its rabbity-looking cockade. The back, which he seldom saw, read Rockbridge County Panthers. She had treasured it more than any relic from the university, more than anything but her riding gear, which he kept soaped and polished in the tack room. She was not fond of the English, but had adopted it for competition. On her own, it was Western from the start, and she loved wearing rough gloves, working a quarter horse. She'd ridden all over the county—Pine Top to House Mountain to Goshen—since she was so small she had to learn to pee from the saddle, afraid if she got down, she wouldn't be able to climb back up without a mounting stool.

  Spunky, Sherburne thinks. He almost calls her pet name, “Honeyree,” aloud, as he would if she were within arm's reach. The toughest sweet person God made, he thinks. Would suffer and grit her teeth and not...

  McCall's voice breaks in on his thoughts: “Stew's in the icebox, but I got to get back and tell some lies. Everybody that's going, get in the truck."

  * * * *

  Six weeks after she looked him in his tearing eyes, her own dry from resolve or dehydration, and whispered, “Daddy,” for the last time, he'd taken the pickup down to Winston's R & M and walked in, looking especially hang-dog on purpose. He'd made up his mind a month ago and let it simmer. They say revenge is best served cold, and he'd allowed the heat to seep out of it, despite the old “crime of passion” defense. By some forms of reckoning, action was allowable; by some, it was his obligation.

  It was the first Friday after Easter, and the place was milling with people who'd stayed home and sober during the religious days. He hadn't been through the door himself since he took off his badge three years back, but he wasn't surprised to find it the same—the elbow-shaped bar cluttered and rough with scorch marks and carvings, the sputtering neon beer signs and the big round display with the Clydesdale-drawn grog wagon circling in jerky fashion. He'd liked the white-socked Scottish animals when he was a boy and always thought the beer-haul work beneath their dignity. Even the plastic ones in the smoke-grimed dome reactivated his resentment.

  He was looking for Boyd over by the pool tables, but he took in the flashing jukebox, yellow neon Miller signs, cues lined up on the wall like weapons in an armory. The cackley country sound he'd never liked filled the room—an old Kitty Wells tune, he thought—punctuated by the smack of colliding balls like breaking bones.

  The men nodded to him, saying “Thurston” or “Chief.” If they couldn't break the habit, he could live with that, but then they didn't have a hint what had happened inside him.

  Glasses clinked, and over at the waitress station a woman laughed high and musical, nervous, sounding no more at home here than he was. Noticing the rodeo shirts on the young people, he thought the place unreal, almost a movie set, and the light refracting against so many surfaces reinforced the impression. But he was looking for Boyd, and nothing else held his attention for long. He felt he was back in one of his dreams, as cigarette smoke billowed and curled in witchy fashion. By the time he reached the corner table, his son-in-law had seen him and offered what resembled a friendly smile.

  "Step in, Dad, take a stick. Feeny and me are just about to rack ‘em up—cutthroat okay by you? Let me get you a glass of popskull.” He talked this way when he was working on a drunk.

  "Bottle of beer's fine."

  Boyd reached up and placed an unlit cigarette between his lips, where it dangled. Sherburne had seen him hold one there for what seemed hours, tonguing it from side to side, never lighting it. He could see by an exchange of glances that Boyd had a flirtation going with a lean blond gal moving toward them. Her name was Janette Walls, a beauty operator, and Boyd was waving her off.

  "Glad to see you're getting out."

  Sherburne selected a house cue, hefted it for balance, and ground its tip into the Silver Cup. The sound of graphite on chalk reminded him of friction between bone and bone.

  "Break to me?"

  "To celebrate you being back among us, right, Feeny? Dollar a game?"

  Boyd's denim jacket was nearly the color of the chalk, not far off the coats road gangs wore as they whipped their sling blades, counted off, and squinted from the light glancing off the gun boss's rifle. Underneath it he wore his orange coveralls from the garage, and they looked no less institutional. Sherburne thought, The system should take him down. It's not to me. Then he stroked a low ball into the side pocket. But they won't do it, can't. He knew what he meant to do but had no idea how being here would accomplish it. Just surveillance. Shoot your game, bide your time.

&n
bsp; Money changed hands, at first mostly from his and Feeny's to Boyd's, and the mechanic began to flaunt his advantage, though his shots were less effective as he downed shot after shot of Jim Beam, and the tide turned. By ten, Sherburne was beginning to tire of the make-believe and said he'd need to get home.

  The dispute that followed fast after is no less vague to him than it was that night, but Boyd had bet more on his young eyes and bluster than he could afford, and he'd fallen six dollars down to his in-law and a couple to Feeny. He'd cried foul a couple of times and nearly ripped the baize trying a ridiculous shot. When Sherburne went to the toilet, Boyd followed, jokey, ranking but maybe not meaning it.

  "You can't quit a winner, Chief. One more go."

  "You're drunk, Boyd.” They're alone, and for the first time he eyeballs the bully in cop fashion—aggressive, threatening.

  "Drunk, hell. I'mo go down to Buffalo Creek and check my trot lines, then hunt me up somebody special, but first I wanna coup my losses, so don't make me smack you around, you old bastard.” He was grinning like a brier-eater.

  "Boyd, you couldn't whip a cripple."

  "You got no sense of what I could do."

  "That's a bet you don't want to back."

  When Boyd swings, Sherburne X's his forearms, catches Boyd by the wrist and elbow, then whips the thrown fist behind him, twisting into a high hammer-lock. His left hand grabs a big hank of Boyd's hair, and Sherburne pushes the cussing mouth into the towel dispenser.

  "Like I said, you're drunk. If you intend to hurt somebody, Boyd, come at him when you're sober and his back's turned. Or maybe her. That's your best hope. Now I'm going home and put you out of my mind, and you need to fix yourself up before you step outside, son. Be quick about it.” A sober man would have been startled at the hiss he puts on “son."

  As he strode out, he prayed Boyd would follow instructions and that he'd be too proud to mention the scuffle. If he was to pursue the plan that was forming, it was important their confrontation not be known. Shaking his head, he thought how lucky you have to be once you step outside the rules. If he could catch Boyd at his fishing, that would be luck of the highest order.

  Driving home faster than he should on the mountain road, he thought of several men he'd had to arrest because of some mischief that started over a pool table—Jimmy Dinkins, the Mabry boy, Ex Billups, even Gideon Winston himself once. Glass from the pool lights had spattered under more than one swung stick. Broken cues became clubs, broken bottles got teeth. Sometimes there was a knife or the quiet mayhem of a razor. Those were the events that had drawn him to the Rack & Mug over the years, on duty, but no one in his recollection had ever been killed over it. Not on his watch, anyway.

  A slim moon eased in and out of stacked-up clouds, as he listened to the new Senators lose to the Yankees again on the radio. The boy Maris homered off Cheney in the eighth. It could come in handy to know this. “Location, location,” the realtors say, but he knew timing is the key to the world.

  In thirty minutes he had the trailer hitched and was leading Levi into it. Ten years ago, he'd have skipped the saddle, but pommel and stirrup had become necessities. Thirty and ten. It was mostly in the numbers, and it was close, risky, even improbable. That was the virtue in it. Bar to barn to the forks of the Buffalo where the man strung his trot lines just under the weir he'd built—illegally, of course. Another of his petty offenses. Sherburne thought, If I didn't know his routine, his honey holes, I couldn't do this. It's always somebody on the inside, or it's impulse and clumsy and all luck.

  He considered stepping inside for his service revolver, but he slid into the truck thinking, If an idiot's going to shoot me, he'll have to furnish his own. An old joke on the force.

  And if he didn't bring it off, just half managed or worse, what would Matthews and Sawyer and the others think, having to cuff and Mirandize him, slide the heavy grille shut and shovel his meals in through a slot? He couldn't let himself think about that. Eyes on the road, careful of the trailer, quiet, over the mountain and down toward the Buffalo.

  He tried to distract himself by wondering again if it was named for bison grazing on the banks two hundred years back or if it was beau fleuvre from some Frenchman's whim, but the idea that wouldn't free him as the dark fields and farms rushed by was this: Sherburne had long been convinced that law-abiding men decided to cross over in recognizable stages. At first, you were considering it, half fantasy, half logistics problem. Then you began to see a way through it, like an assignment, after which, in a moment of fool's sight, you'd see it all clear, and you would have done it in your mind, the actual crime now almost an afterthought, the true thing already complete in your head. The great mystery had always been: What is the pivot? What kind of shift has to happen inside you to overcome both virtue and inertia? Was it something to do with the challenge? The potential rewards? Or more a matter of some perverse twist in yourself, an appetite you weren't aware of but had to feed as soon as you discovered it, a weak link that strained and snapped? Some men would call it the ripening recognition of an older law, an absolute. His resistance to that convenient logic was pretty much gone.

  Little transgressions—illegal search, excess force, unwarranted detention—had always occurred because, for some reason, the circumstances seemed to blur the line or to bend it the way a sustained downpour can alter a current. Some jerk would cuss you or kick out. Once, a fat lumberman named Lyle had tried to bite his wrist. When the moment passed, though, the river would be back in its proper channels, the birds singing, and the guilty party—previously just beyond the fingertips of the law or in mid-struggle—would be firmly in its grasp. But this was different. The stream had not altered, the justice behind his intent had nothing to do with stretching or reinterpreting or even an over-reaching in the heat of the hunt. With the cooling night air streaming at his face from the windows, he felt a little intoxicated with the thought that he might be leaving the boundaries of rule for “strange and mysterious ways.” “Eye for an eye,” he said and tried to believe it.

  Sherburne had observed the way Boyd's movements in the bar had been a dance, everything from his eyes to his feet, the way he shot his cue stick back and forth, the jerky motion with which he threw back the shot of amber courage. All a self-satisfied dance. Could a scrupulous man ever hear that music, catch that rhythm?

  Foolish, and perverse, he knew. He was driving under the influence of his anger, and he needed to settle down, but the feelings rushed through him. He clutched on a curve and slowed in time to prevent the trailer from fishtailing. “Easy, Levi,” he said.

  All those years protecting and serving under oath, he had been able to hold his emotions in check, as he'd learned from his father, the way of his family for seventy years, ever since a young hunter and horse trader named Blaine Sherburne had been conscripted to stalk a killer in a snowstorm and nearly died driving his prey off a cliff near Natural Bridge. “The family business,” yes, but he had hoped to be the last Sherburne to carry a badge, to sleep in the lean-back chair in a jail office or on surveillance in a misty field, to feel light without a gun, to suspect every person, every word, to bend under the weight of public confidence. But there had been horses in the family for a century and a half, too, and now, with Ree dead and McCall more intrigued by diesel engines and not blood kin anyway, there would be no more Sherburnes, no more horses. At least he could tie off one ugly loose end.

  * * * *

  By the time he had parked two miles into a sheltered lane behind the dump at the Seiver switchback, the ground fog was rising, veiling the quarter moon and stars. Levi's breath was a whiter mist, and he stroked the horse's neck and said, “Okay, fellow, just two miles. We know the way. Likely he won't be there at all."

  Tightening the cinch, he swung up and let the reins slack. Levi heard the one click of his tongue and started out, easy at first, then faster, with his choppy gait, once he felt the touch of boot heels. He would never understand how a horse could pick his way in the dark, but th
ey rode briskly through gullies and over deadfalls, weaving amid jabbing stumps and over the cobbles of a dry creek bed. Occasionally Sherburne would rein in and sweep his flashlight across the terrain, then move on, but he wasn't even certain the horse needed it, not because he naturally carried his head low, but for some reason unrelated to sight.

  How long had it been since his last night ride like this—rough country, a destination, timing crucial? He couldn't remember, and he was surprised at how calm he felt, as if he had no dog in the fight at all. They jogged and scrambled but never slid badly, and as they approached the stream, he could see the rising embankment beyond the water. He could hear the shush of the current and then a screech owl's out-of-season shrilling in the distance. What he smelled was the moisture of moss and punkwood, the sweat of the horse, and wet dust on the wind. Tying the horse to a snag, he thought it would be too much to wish for rain.