“This is Wadeville, isn’t it?” Smeg asked.
“Yep. Used to be county seat ’fore the war.”
He meant the War Between The States, Smeg realized, recalling his studies of regional history. As always, the Slorin were using every spare moment to absorb history, mythology, arts, literature, science—You never knew which might be the valuable piece of information.
“Ever hear about someone could get right into your mind?” the man asked.
Smeg overcame a shock reaction, groped for the proper response. Amused disbelief, he decided, and managed a small chuckle. “That the unusual thing you have around here?”
“Didn’t say yes; didn’t say no.”
“Why’d you ask then?” Smeg knew his voice sounded like crinkling bread wrapper. He pulled his head back into the car’s shadows.
“I jes’ wondered if you might be hunting fer a teleepath?”
The man turned, hawked a cud of tobacco toward the dirt at his left. A vagrant breeze caught the spittle, draped it across the side of Smeg’s car.
“Oh, dang!” the man said. He produced a dirty yellow bandanna, knelt and scrubbed with it at the side of the car.
Smeg leaned out, studied this performance with an air of puzzlement. The man’s responses, the vague hints at mental powers—they were confusing, fitted no pattern in Slorin experience.
“You got somebody around here claiming to be a telepath?” Smeg asked.
“Can’t say.” The man stood up, peered in at Smeg. “Sorry about that there. Wind, y’know. Accident. Didn’t mean no harm.”
“Certainly.”
“Hope you won’t say nothing to the sheriff. Got ’er all cleaned off your car now. Can’t tell where I hit ’er.”
The man’s voice carried a definite tone of fear, Smeg realized. He stared at this American peasant with a narrow, searching gaze. Sheriff, he’d said. Was it going to be this easy? Smeg wondered how to capitalize on that opening. Sheriff. Here was an element of the mystery they’d come to investigate.
As the silence drew out, the man said: “Got ’er all clean. You can get out and look for yourself.”
“I’m sure you did, Mr.… ahhh…”
“Painter, Josh’a Painter. Most folks call me Josh on account of my first name there, Josh’a Painter.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Painter. My name’s Smeg, Henry Smeg.”
“Smeg,” Painter said with a musing tone. “Don’t rightly believe I ever heard that name before.”
“It used to be much longer,” Smeg said. “Hungarian.”
“Oh.”
“I’m curious, Mr. Painter, why you’d be afraid I might tell the sheriff because the wind blew a little tobacco juice on my car?”
“Never can tell how some folks’ll take things,” Painter said. He looked from one end of Smeg’s car to the other, back to Smeg. “You a gov’ment man, this car an’ all, reckoned I’d best be sure, one sensible man to another.”
“You’ve been having trouble with the government around here, is that it?”
“Don’t take kindly to most gov’ment men hereabouts, we don’t. But the sheriff, he don’t allow us to do anything about that. Sheriff is a mean man, a certain mean man sometimes, and he’s got my Barton.”
“Your barton,” Smeg said, drawing back into the car to conceal his puzzlement. Barton? This was an entirely new term. Strange that none of them had encountered it before. The study of languages and dialects had been most thorough. Smeg began to feel uneasy about his entire conversation with this Painter. The conversation had never really been under control. He wondered how much of it he’d actually understood. There was in Smeg a longing to venture a mindcloud probe, to nudge the man’s motives, make him want to explain.
“You one of them survey fellows like we been getting?” Painter asked.
“You might say that,” Smeg said. He straightened his shoulders. “I’d like to walk around and look at your town, Mr. Painter. May I leave my car here?”
“’Tain’t in the way that I can see,” Painter said. He managed to appear both interested and disinterested in Smeg’s question. His glance flicked sideways, all around—at the car, the road, at a house behind a privet hedge across the way.
“Fine,” Smeg said. He got out, slammed the door, reached into the back for the flat-crowned Western hat he affected in these parts. It tended to break down some barriers.
“You forgetting your papers?” Painter asked.
“Papers?” Smeg turned, looked at the man.
“Them papers full of questions you gov’ment people allus use.”
“Oh.” Smeg shook his head. “We can forget about papers today.”
“You jes’ going to wander around?” Painter asked.
“That’s right.”
“Well, some folks’ll talk to you,” Painter said. “Got all kinds of different folks here.” He turned away, started to walk off.
“Please, just a minute,” Smeg said.
Painter stopped as though he’d run into a barrier, spoke without turning. “You want something?”
“Where’re you going, Mr. Painter?”
“Jes’ down the road a piece.”
“I’d … ahhh, hoped you might guide me,” Smeg said. “That is if you haven’t anything better to do?”
Painter turned, stared at him. “Guide? In Wadeville?” He looked around him, back to Smeg. A tiny smile tugged at his mouth.
“Well, where do I find your sheriff, for instance?” Smeg asked.
The smile disappeared. “Why’d you want him?”
“Sheriffs usually know a great deal about an area.”
“You sure you actual’ want to see him?”
“Sure. Where’s his office?”
“Well now, Mr. Smeg…” Painter hesitated, then: “His office is just around the corner here, next the bank.”
“Would you show me?” Smeg moved forward, his feet kicking up dust puddles in the street. “Which corner?”
“This’n right here.” Painter pointed to a fieldstone building at his left. A weed-grown lane led off past it. The corner of a wooden porch jutted from the stone building into the lane.
Smeg walked past Painter, peered down the lane. Tufts of grass grew in the middle and along both sides, green runners stretching all through the area. Smeg doubted that a wheeled vehicle had been down this way in two years—possibly longer.
A row of objects on the porch caught his attention. He moved closer, studied them, turned back to Painter.
“What’re all those bags and packages on that porch?”
“Them?” Painter came up beside Smeg, stood a moment, lips pursed, eyes focused beyond the porch.
“Well, what are they?” Smeg pressed.
“This here’s the bank,” Painter said. “Them’s night deposits.”
Smeg turned back to the porch. Night deposits? Paper bags and fabric sacks left out in the open?
“People leaves ’em here if’n the bank ain’t open,” Painter said. “Bank’s a little late opening today. Sheriff had ’em in looking at the books last night.”
Sheriff examining the bank’s books? Smeg wondered. He hoped Rick was missing none of this and could repeat it accurately … just in case. The situation here appeared far more mysterious than the reports had indicated. Smeg didn’t like the feeling of this place at all.
“Makes it convenient for people who got to get up early and them that collects their money at night,’ Painter explained.
“They just leave it right out in the open?” Smeg asked.
“Yep. ‘Night deposit’ it’s called. People don’t have to come aound when—”
“I know what it’s called! But … right out in the open like that … without a guard?”
“Bank don’t open till ten thirty most days,” Painter said. “Even later when the sheriff’s had ’em in at night.”
“There’s a guard,” Smeg said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Guard? What we need a guard
fer? Sheriff says leave them things alone, they gets left alone.”
The sheriff again, Smeg thought. “Who … ahh deposits money like this?” he asked.
“Like I said: the people who got to get up early and…”
“But who are these people?”
“Oh. Well, my cousin Reb: He has the gas station down to the forks. Mr. Seelway at the General Store there. Some farmers with cash crops come back late from the city. Folks work across the line at the mill in Anderson when they get paid late of a Friday. Folks like that.”
“They just … leave their money out on this porch.”
“Why not?”
“Lord knows,” Smeg whispered.
“Sheriff says don’t touch it, why—it don’t get touched.”
Smeg looked around him, sensing the strangeness of this weed-grown street with its wide-open night depository protected only by a sheriff’s command. Who was this sheriff? What was this sheriff?
“Doesn’t seem like there’d be much money in Wadeville,” Smeg said. “That gas station down the main street out there looks abandoned, looks like a good wind would blow it over. Most of the other buildings—”
“Station’s closed,” Painter said. “You need gas, just go out to the forks where my cousin, Reb—”
“Station failed?” Smeg asked.
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Sheriff, he closed it.”
“Why?”
“Fire hazard. Sheriff, he got to reading the state Fire Ordinance one day. Next day he told ol’ Jamison to dig up the gas tanks and cart ’em away. They was too old and rusty, not deep enough in the ground and didn’t have no concrete on ’em. ’Sides that, the building’s too old, wood all oily.”
“The sheriff ordered it … just like that.” Smeg snapped his fingers.
“Yep. Said he had to tear down that station. Ol’ Jamison sure was mad.”
“But if the sheriff says do it, then it gets done?” Smeg asked.
“Yep. Jamison’s tearing it down—one board every day. Sheriff don’t seem to pay it no mind long as Jamison takes down that one board every day.”
Smeg shook his head. One board every day. What did that signify? Lack of a strong time sense? He looked back at the night deposits on the porch, asked: “How long have people been depositing their money here this way?”
“Been since a week or so after the sheriff come.”
“And how long has that been?”
“Ohhhhh … four, five years maybe.”
Smeg nodded to himself. His little group of Slorin had been on the planet slightly more than five years. This could be … this could be—He frowned. But what if it wasn’t?
The dull plodding of footsteps sounded from the main street behind Smeg. He turned, saw a tall fat man passing there. The man glanced curiously at Smeg, nodded to Painter.
“Mornin’, Josh,” the fat man said. It was a rumbling voice.
“Mornin’, Jim,” Painter said.
The fat man skirted the Plymouth, hesitated to read the emblem on the car door, glanced back at Painter, resumed his plodding course down the street and out of sight.
“That was Jim,” Painter said.
“Neighbor?”
“Yep. Been over to the Widow McNabry’s again … all the whole dang’ night. Sheriff’s going to be mighty displeasured, believe me.”
“He keeps an eye on your morals, too?”
“Morals?” Painter scratched the back of his neck. “Can’t rightly say he does.”
“Then why would he mind if … Jim—”
“Sheriff, he says it’s a sin and a crime to take what don’t belong to you, but it’s a blessing to give. Jim, he stood right up to the sheriff, said he jes’ went to the widow’s to give. So—” Painter shrugged.
“The sheriff’s open to persuasion, then?”
“Some folks seem to think so.”
“You don’t?”
“He made Jim stop smoking and drinking.”
Smeg shook his head sharply, wondering if he’d heard correctly. The conversation kept darting around into seeming irrelevancies. He adjusted his hat brim, looked at his hand. It was a good hand, couldn’t be told from the human original. “Smoking and drinking?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“But why?”
“Said if Jim was taking on new ree-sponsibilities like the widow he couldn’t commit suicide—not even slow like.”
Smeg stared at Painter who appeared engrossed with a nonexistent point in the sky. Presently, Smeg managed: “That’s the weirdest interpretation of the law I ever heard.”
“Don’t let the sheriff hear you say that.”
“Quick to anger, eh?”
“Wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say?”
“Like I told Jim: Sheriff get his eye on you, that is it. You going to toe the line. Ain’t so bad till the sheriff get his eye on you. When he see you—that is the end.”
“Does the sheriff have his eye on you, Mr. Painter?”
Painter made a fist, shook it at the air. His mouth drew back in a fierce, scowling grimace. The expression faded. Presently, he relaxed, sighed.
“Pretty bad, eh?” Smeg asked.
“Dang conspiracy,” Painter muttered. “Gov’ment got its nose in things don’t concern it.”
“Oh?” Smeg watched Painter closely, sensing they were on productive ground. “What does—”
“Dang near a thousand gallons a year!” Painter exploded.
“Uhhh—” Smeg said. He wet his lips with his tongue, a gesture he’d found to denote human uncertainty.
“Don’t care if you are part of the conspiracy,” Painter said. “Can’t do nothing to me now.”
“Believe me, Mr. Painter, I have no designs on…”
“I made some ’shine when folks wanted,” Painter said. “Less’n a thousand gallons a year … almost. Ain’t much considering the size of some of them stills t’other side of Anderson. But them’s across the line! ’Nother county! All I made was enough fer the folks ’round here.”
“Sheriff put a stop to it?”
“Made me bust up my still.”
“Made you bust up your still?”
“Yep. That’s when he got my Barton.”
“Your … ahhh … barton?” Smeg ventured.
“Right from under Lilly’s nose,” Painter muttered. His nostrils dilated, eyes glared. Rage lay close to the surface.
Smeg looked around him, searching the blank windows, the empty doorways. What in the name of all the Slorin furies was a barton?
“Your sheriff seems to hold pretty close to the law,” Smeg ventured.
“Hah!”
“No liquor,” Smeg said. “No smoking. He rough on speeders?”
“Speeders?” Painter turned his glare on Smeg. “Now, you tell me what we’d speed in, Mr. Smeg.”
“Don’t you have any cars here?”
“If my cousin Reb didn’t have his station over to the forks where he get the city traffic, he’d be bust long ago. State got a law—car got to stop in jes’ so many lights. Got to have windshield wiper things. Got to have tires which you can measure the tread on. Got to steer ab-solutely jes’ right. Car don’t do them things, it is junk. Junk! Sheriff, he make you sell that car for junk! Ain’t but two, three folks in Wadeville can afford a car with all them things.”
“He sounds pretty strict,” Smeg said.
“Bible-totin’ parson with hell fire in his eyes couldn’t be worse. I tell you, if that sheriff didn’t have my Barton, I’d a run out long ago. I’d a ree-beled like we done in Sixty-one. Same with the rest of the folks here … most of ’em.”
“He has their … ahhh, bartons?” Smeg asked, cocking his head to one side, waiting.
Painter considered this for a moment, then: “Well, now … in a manner of speaking, you could call it that way.”
Smeg frowned. Did he dare ask what a barton was? No! It might betray too much ignora
nce. He longed for a proper Slorin net, all the interlocked detail memories, the Slorin spaced out within the limits of the narrow band, ready to relay questions, test hypotheses, offer suggestions. But he was alone except for one inexperienced offspring hiding out there across the fields … waiting for disaster. Perhaps Rick had encountered the word, though. Smeg ventured a weak interrogative.
Back came Rick’s response, much too loud: “Negative.”
So Rick didn’t know the word either.
Smeg studied Painter for a sign the man had detected the narrow band exchange. Nothing. Smeg swallowed, a natural fear response he’d noticed in this body, decided to move ahead more strongly.
“Anybody ever tell you you have a most unusual sheriff?” he asked.
“Them gov’ment survey fellows, that’s what they say. Come here with all them papers and all them questions, say they interested in our crime rate. Got no crime in Wade County, they say. Think they telling us something!”
“That’s what I heard about you,” Smeg offered. “No crime.”
“Hah!”
“But there must be some crime,” Smeg said.
“Got no ’shine,” Painter muttered. “Got no robbing and stealing, no gambling. Got no drunk drivers ’cepting they come from somewheres else and then they is mighty displeasured they drunk drove in Wade County. Got no juvenile dee-linquents like they talk about in the city. Got no patent medicine fellows. Got nothing.”
“You must have a mighty full jail, though.”
“Jail?”
“All the criminals your sheriff apprehends.”
“Hah! Sheriff don’t throw folks in jail, Mr. Smeg. Not ’less they is from over the line and needs to sleep off a little ol’ spree while they sobers up enough to pay the fine.”
“Oh?” Smeg stared out at the empty main street, remembering the fat man—Jim. “He gives the local residents a bit more latitude, eh? Like your friend, Jim.”
“Jes’ leading Jim along, I say.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pretty soon the widow’s going to be in the family way. Going to be a quick wedding and a baby and Jim’ll be jes’ like all the rest of us.”
Smeg nodded as though he understood. It was like the reports which had lured him here … but unlike them, too. Painter’s “survey fellows” had been amused by Wadeville and Wade County, so amused even their driest governmentese couldn’t conceal it. Their amusement had written the area off—“purely a local phenomenon.” Tough southern sheriff. Smeg was not amused. He walked slowly out to the main street, looked back along the road he’d traveled.
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert Page 72