The Rock Hole

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  After they arrested Frank Lightfoot at his relative’s house in Chisum, those same kinfolk that hid him found out Mark was living with us. Frank at first told his family that everyone in the house was dead, so they were excited to hear Mark was alive. In some sort of strange way they wanted to take him into the same house that hid his murdering daddy.

  Mark didn’t want to go, but he had to. They drove up to get him one afternoon after school in a wore-out Pontiac that smoked and rattled on only seven cylinders.

  Mark didn’t say much when they stopped in the yard. He recognized his uncle and sort of withdrew inside himself. Without a word to anyone he went in the house.

  The Indian man who was driving didn’t get out. He spat tobacco juice out the door until Grandpa went over and leaned on the roof and talked a good long time to him. The man never said a word, but I figure he couldn’t because he wouldn’t spit past Grandpa, so he was probably drowning while Grandpa talked. I got a sense Grandpa laid down the law about Mark and what he’d do if he heard he was being mistreated.

  Miss Becky was hanging clothes on the line with her mouth full of wooden pins. Mark’s aunt was dark and we could see the Choctaw in her face through the open car window. Miss Becky finished pinning the sheet on the line and when the woman got out, they spoke for quite a while next to the clothes line. Miss Becky planted her feet and gave the woman what for. In fact, she did most of the talking and finger pointing.

  I went inside where Mark was packing. He didn’t have anything when he came to live with us but the cast-off clothes he wore on the night of the murders. Miss Becky’s cooking put some weight on him, and a growth spurt kindly put him into a bind. She sewed him a few shirts during the following weeks and Grandpa brought home some britches from one of his trips to town.

  Instead of picking up the new clothes, Mark laid his outgrown shirt and pants on the bed and started to unbuckle his belt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Changing clothes.” He wouldn’t make eye contact with me. “I’ll leave these here and you can have ’em.”

  “Them clothes are yours. Miss Becky will have a fit if you don’t take them with you.”

  “You think it’ll be okay?”

  I felt a lump in my throat, and my eyes started burning. “Sure, gather everything up while I get you something to carry them in.” I left so he couldn’t see the water in my eyes. Mark’s eyes were watering, too, when I came back and gave him two paper grocery sacks. We choked it down and put his clothes into the sacks and went outside.

  Miss Becky met us on the porch, sniffling. Mark hugged her neck and she whispered in his ear for a long time. He listened, nodded, and then kissed her cheek. She kissed him back, ran her fingers through his black hair and then let him go. I followed him out to the car, not knowing what to do or say. He shook Grandpa’s hand and put his sacks of clothes in the car.

  Grandpa raised his eyebrows toward the man behind the wheel and gave a little half-nod to drive his point home.

  Mark stood with me beside the door for a long minute. “Pepper’s going to throw a fit,” I said.

  “I’ll write her a letter.”

  I raised my right hand. “How?”

  “Paleface.” With a quick grin, he punched me in the shoulder and climbed in with what looked like about twenty other Indian kids in the back seat. I watched them drive off in a cloud of blue exhaust.

  During the next few weeks neither Miss Becky nor Grandpa talked about Mark when I was around. I could tell they missed him pretty bad, and I did, too, because it was fun to have a boy around.

  Pepper sure acted funny when she heard Mark was gone, and she didn’t stay with us for quite a while.

  Grandpa finally got all his cotton in. One morning it was nearly seventy degrees at sunup.

  The next morning there was a frost.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Top and his grandparents sat on the porch, enjoying the long shadows of the evening and the mourning dove calling from the woods across the highway.

  The phone rang in the living room. Miss Becky grunted out of her rocker and went inside. She called through the screen door. “It’s for you, Daddy.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Neal Box.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “You know Neal isn’t going to tell me. He’s wantin’ you.”

  Ned sighed and went inside. “Hello.”

  “Ned, this is Neal. You better get up here to the store. Bill Stevens is up here.”

  “Ain’t no law against Bill being at the store.”

  “I know, but he’s been drinking and he’s getting loud and poking people with his nub.”

  Bill Stevens lost his right hand in a hay baler accident back during the War. Never one to be held back due to such a minor thing like the loss of an appendage, Bill continued to work as hard as ever, using the stump as if a hand were still attached.

  The calloused stump was hard as stone. Whenever Bill was drinking he tended to poke his listeners with the blunt end of his wrist.

  It was like being rammed with a baseball bat, and if the conversation turned heated, the poking became almost violent. Men could usually take it up to a point, but ladies found themselves frightened and angry, almost violated, by being poked with his nub.

  “All right. I’ll be there directly.” He hung up the phone and spoke through the screen door. “Mama, I’ve got to go up to the store and stop Bill Stevens from poking people again.”

  “When will that man ever learn?”

  Not bothering to change his clothes, Ned pinned his badge to his overalls, slipped the 32.20 into his front pocket and the sap into a back one and drove to the store.

  Bill was out in front of Neal’s store, talking loudly to a group of men. When Ned got out of his car, Bill drove home a point by poking some fellow Ned didn’t know in the chest.

  The man took a step back from the force and then moved forward, his hands doubled into white-knuckled fists.

  Ned slammed his car door. “Hold it, mister. Bill, come here.”

  The stranger turned his anger toward the man in overalls until he caught a glimpse of the badge. His eyes immediately shifted to the bulge in Ned’s pocket and then slipped to the ground at his own feet. Ned watched him fade back toward the porch before directing his attention to Bill.

  “Bill Stevens, you old son of a gun, how you doing?”

  Bill frowned at Ned and rocked slightly on his unsteady feet. “Hidy, Ned. I’m doing good. I been drinkin’. What are you up to?”

  “Aw, I heard you was here, and I wanted to see you.”

  “Well, I been meaning to talk to you.” Bill started to jab at him with his stump.

  Ned batted the arm away as if swatting at an annoying fly. “Now don’t be poking people with your nub, Bill. I’ve done told you nobody likes it and it hurts.”

  “Well, they don’t like it ’cause I ain’t got a hand.”

  Ned sighed. “People don’t care about your hand, but they don’t like being jabbed with a nub. Especially when you’re drunk.”

  “I ain’t completely drunk, and I’ll poke who I want to.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re on your way to being mean drunk, and you know I won’t tolerate it. And if you jab anybody else I’ll lay a sap upside your head. Now, get in the back seat of my car here and let me take you home. You don’t need to be driving in the shape you’re in right now.”

  “I ain’t in bad shape.”

  “You will be if you don’t get in the car. Now, go ahead on and let me talk to that feller over there while you rest.” Ned opened the car door and walked away from Bill as if he’d forgotten the man. The tactic was perfect, because without anyone to argue with, Bill simply sat in the back seat with one foot on the ground to wait.

  The man started an old Ford pickup but was unable to leave because of the haphazard parking of the other men. Ned’s own car plugged the last remaining bit of space in the lot. The stranger looked annoyed and
scared.

  Ned walked over to the stranger’s truck and laid his hand on the edge of the open window. “How you doing?”

  “Fine.” The driver glanced around nervously, as if looking for escape.

  “You know Bill there?”

  “Naw, he was just poking me when I disagreed with him about something.”

  “You’re not from around here. You from Chisum?”

  “Hugo.”

  “I’ve never seen you here.”

  “Well, I’m not really from Hugo, but I moved there about a year ago. Had a job with the circus ’til lately.”

  “Oh, you one of them clowns?”

  The man suddenly became angry. “Mister, I weren’t no clown. Not everybody in a circus is a clown. I shoveled elephant shit and put up and took down tents ’til I couldn’t stand them people no more. They put more stock in their animals and canvas than they do with people, so I left.”

  The quick display of anger was a surprise. Ned slipped both his hands into the back pockets of his overalls. The leather sap felt good. A tickle in the back of his mind made him wonder if a man with such quick anger could be the type of person to channel his feelings into mutilations. He’d already shown his aggravation toward animals.

  He wrapped his fingers around the sap. “Now don’t get mad. I was just asking.”

  “I’m not wanted for anything, sheriff.”

  “Aw, I ain’t no sheriff. I’m just constable around here and I never meant you was wanted. I only wanted to visit for a minute. You got a name?”

  “Babe.”

  Ned brightened. “Babe? Like in Babe Ruth?”

  “Yeah, my daddy liked baseball.”

  “Well, Babe, you play ball?”

  “Never cared for it.”

  “I used to play a little pasture ball. You didn’t get Bill to start talking about baseball did you? He gets carried away when he’s talking about the Houston Colt Forty-fives.”

  Babe shrugged. “We were talking about a lot of things.”

  Ned nodded and looked the truck over. “This your truck?”

  “It belongs to a friend of mine.”

  “He loan it to you?”

  Babe looked toward the store. “I just come up here to get some bread and baloney.”

  Ned looked into the empty seat. “You’re leaving without it?”

  “Well, I guess I better. I never did get inside.”

  “No need to leave. I ain’t runnin’ you off. What did you say your last name was?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Ned nodded. “But if you was to say, what would it be?”

  “Carter.”

  “All right, Babe Carter. You sit right here in the truck, or go inside for your bread and baloney and I’ll be right back. Now, don’t you leave before we say goodbye.”

  Ned turned and started back to his car. He glanced over his shoulder after a couple of steps, but Babe sat behind the wheel staring straight ahead.

  Bill was stretched out asleep in the back seat. Ned folded his legs inside and closed the door, then went around and called in on his radio, giving the dispatcher Babe’s name and the license of the truck.

  While he kept a wary eye on the stranger, two locals wandered over from the domino hall. They mostly ignored Nub, asleep in the car, but Babe was a different story. Already anxious and fearful due to the Skinner in the river bottoms, they asked Ned a dozen questions before the radio finally squawked back. He picked up the microphone. “Did you find anything out?”

  “Yep. Babe Carter did five years in the McAlester prison for armed robbery. He liked to rob stores, but there aren’t any warrants out on him right now.”

  “What about the truck?”

  “Belongs to Larry Dockery over in Idabel, but it isn’t reported stolen.”

  “All right, thanks, Frankie.” Ned replaced the microphone on the holder. Well, at least he can’t be the man I’m after, he thought.

  “You gonna arrest that man?” one of the farmers asked.

  “No reason to.” Ned told him and returned to the truck. “All right, Babe Carter. I reckon you can go when you’re ready, or when these boys move their trucks. Now, don’t forget your bread and baloney.”

  For the first time Babe looked Ned directly in the eye. “That’s all?”

  “No reason to bother you anymore.”

  “I haven’t had much luck with lawmen.”

  “I imagine not, but maybe you ain’t run into the right kind. Now, you make sure you stay out of trouble.”

  “You know about me now, don’t you?”

  “I know you done your time and paid your debt and now you’re a free man. You be careful around here, because all these boys are carrying guns these days.”

  “What for?”

  “Some meanness, and we don’t know yet who’s doing it. Walk soft on this side of the river.”

  “Well, thanks, I guess.”

  “You take care now, Babe Carter.”

  When Ned started his car and turned around on the highway toward Bill’s house, the ex-con was still sitting behind the wheel, staring at the store. Driving off, Ned worried that he was considering every encounter as a potential lead to the killer.

  If he didn’t get control of the situation and his own suspicions, he’d be looking for the crazy man every time he answered a call for a family fight, or whenever he pulled over a drunk.

  It was no way to operate as a lawman.

  He glanced in his rearview mirror at the sleeping man. Could it be Bill? Is he the one? Nah, it ain’t like that Fugitive television show where the one-armed man did the killing. Bill couldn’t be the man I’m looking for. It’d be hard to do all those things with just one hand and a nub.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It finally cooled off for good in October. Skeins of honking geese flew over the bottoms, on their way south toward the Gulf Coast.

  The mornings were frosty and the cold settled in the low places, making steam rise from the streams and branches crisscrossing the fields. The leaves began to change; the persimmons to yellows, the oaks to reds, and the sycamores and sweet gums turned red, yellow and orange.

  Grandpa took me squirrel hunting while leaves fell around us. He let me carry the target gun and taught me to shoot fox squirrels in the eye to avoid ruining the meat. I learned to stand still with the rifle while Grandpa walked around to the other side of the tree and made noise to get the squirrel to turn on the limb to give me a clear shot.

  One Saturday morning we loaded half a dozen bales of alfalfa into the back of the truck along with a sack of range cubes and went to feed his cows in the Whitman pasture.

  It was my job to climb up in the back of the truck with a pair of wire cutters and break up the bales of hay and scatter the sections. Then he made a u-turn and drove slowly back past the cows while I shook range cubes off the tailgate.

  Finished, he let me drive around the pasture for a while in low gear. I wove through the trees and around the pool. Sometimes I followed my own tracks back through the frost. Tiring of dodging cattle, I drove through the gate and he rewired it behind us.

  I slid back over to the passenger side, and he took the wheel. “Let’s go by Myrt Howard’s place. I need to talk to him.”

  Myrt and his wife lived in a leaning shack in a pasture of cow pies. They had a grown son, Clayton, who spent his day sitting on a pallet in the middle of the wooden living room floor, playing with beat up pots and pans.

  Clayton was just one member of the large family and he didn’t get much special treatment. He was mentally about two years old and always laughed when we dropped by. I made it a point to talk to him when we visited Myrt and he’d grin and drool at me. I wasn’t ever afraid of Clayton, but I kept a distance between us because he was a big man like his daddy and could have hurt me without ever intending to.

  He was asleep on the floor like a little baby in front of the wood-burning stove when Grandpa knocked softly and Myrt’s little wife opened the door. “Hidy, Ned,�
� she whispered.

  “Florence.”

  “Myrt’s in the barn with his bird dogs.”

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  She gave him a sad smile and closed the door.

  I was excited at the news, because Myrt was the only man I knew who raised Brittany spaniels. Most quail hunters used rawboned English pointers, and they ranged way off from the hunters. The smaller, loving Brittanys stayed close.

  We walked down to the chicken-wire dog pen under a wide red oak beside the barn, but Myrt wasn’t there. A mama dog stuck her head out of the tipped-over 55-gallon barrel and looked at us with sad eyes. I could tell she had pups because her bag was swollen. Dogs in other pens barked and jumped up with their feet on the chicken wire.

  “Myrt?” Grandpa hollered over the din.

  A gruff watery voice called through the closed barn door. “In here.”

  Grandpa lifted the latch and we stopped inside the dim interior so our eyes could adjust to the light. Myrt met us in the long hall that stretched the dusty length of the barn. Feed cribs on either side gave way to stalls. Dust glittered in the beams of sunlight slanting through wide gaps in the barn’s walls. The air smelled like sweet feed, alfalfa, and manure.

  Myrt probably weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. He kept his gray hair sheared close to his bullet head. His eyes were tiny and close together, and his jowls hung down like a bulldog’s.

  “Hidy, Ned.” His voice was thick and juicy from a mouthful of chewing tobacco. Myrt was a nasty chewer, content to spit anywhere and on anything. The floor of his truck was brown and thick with dried tobacco spit.

  His eyes flicked past Grandpa to me. “Hidy, Top.” He held a claw hammer in his left hand and a puppy in the other that looked as if he were almost weaned.

  “Hidy.” I looked with interest at the puppy and the hammer. Myrt wasn’t holding him like I would have. He held it like a can of peaches. The pup kept whimpering for his mama.

  The men stood for an uncomfortable minute while the pup tuned up loud and long. The mama dog in the pen outside heard him and let loose with a howl of her own. Myrt shrugged and spat into the dirt at our feet. “Daisy out there got stuck with a litter and here it is hunting season.”