Me and Mark started to follow and Pepper held up her hand without turning around. “I didn’t invite you two.”
We stopped, and my ears burned when the men laughed.
“I believe she told you how the cow ate the cabbage.” Mr. Floyd slapped his knee as if was a good joke.
Pepper and Scottie weren’t around there but for just a minute or two. They came back and Pepper was smiling like a possum eatin’ green persimmons. Scottie’s face was flushed and she was chewing her bottom lip. She gave Pepper’s arm a little squeeze and slithered back to her shoes. Pepper sat on the top step.
Mr. Floyd noticed Scottie suddenly had something on her mind other than robbers. “You hear something you liked?”
“Sure did.” She grinned wide. “Something a lot more interesting than some old rotting bills.” She stopped when a horse came loping up to the bottle-cap parking lot. Scottie stood to see better and leaned on the rail with both hands. The skirt pulled high and tight across her bottom and the only people looking at the horse and rider was her and Pepper.
It wasn’t unusual for folks to ride up to the store. A lot of the locals worked cattle on horseback, and came in for a lunch of sliced baloney, rat cheese, and crackers. Uncle James had horses at one time and we rode them up to the store just for somewhere to go.
The man under a sweat-stained Stetson was a real cowboy. Mack Vick worked Mr. Bill Preston’s new ranch. He wasn’t much older than Uncle James, but he’d cowboyed out in West Texas before he came to Center Springs about the time I lit at Grandpa and Miss Becky’s house.
He reined the dun up in the parking lot and grinned at the men on the porch. Deep creases on his cheeks made me think of the movie actor Randolph Scott. “I was wondering where you’d got off to. Bill didn’t know you were here.”
Scottie frowned. “I got bored. I don’t have to tell him everywhere I go.”
“That’s between you and him. I was just sent to find you.” Mr. Mack’s eyes locked on Scottie as he built a hand-rolled and stuck it into the corner of his mouth. “I guess you boys ain’t heard.”
“So you noticed I was gone?” She cocked a hip and squared her shoulders to keep him involved in their conversation.
It was the first time in my life I’d ever seen a woman’s nipple hard against the material of her shirt and I almost dropped my Dr Pepper. Mark swallowed loud beside me and even Pepper was quiet for once.
Mr. Mack lit the cigarette with a wooden kitchen match and squinted around the smoke. “Only because more work’s gettin’ done today.”
Scottie straightened and wrapped her arm around the corner post. It was enough to release the men so they could turn their attention to Mack Vick.
Floyd cleared his throat. “Heard what?”
Mr. Mack looped one leg over the saddle horn and didn’t seem to be in a hurry to tell his news, and I kinda got the idea that he was enjoying the moment.
Ike Reader finally couldn’t stand it anymore. He always liked to be the one with fresh news and it was killin’ him not to know. “Listen listen, what’s your news?”
Mack came back to the conversation, though he was still looking at Scottie. He dropped a bomb on us hard and fast like he was telling us the sun was up. “Tom Bell’s alive and he’s back.”
Chapter Ten
Two matronly women in print dresses reaching to mid-calf stopped on the courthouse staircase overlooking the high-ceiling lobby, watching Ned and O.C. kneeling beside Jules’ still body on the black and white penny tiles.
More people pushed in through the brass and glass doors as news of the crisis swept down the hot streets like wildfire. Curious individuals in suits and overalls flowed around the edges of the lobby like cold molasses.
Sheriff Cody Parker pushed through the clot of townspeople. At first he thought Ned was hurt and a knot of dread tightened his gut, then he saw him on the floor, cradling Jules’ head in his lap. “What happened?”
Tears streamed down Ned’s cheeks. He looked twenty years older than when Cody saw him the day before.
Still on one knee, O.C. rested a hand on Ned’s shoulder. “I’god he was talking one minute and the next he just fell off his stool.”
Cody knelt and lifted Jules’ eyelid. The old man’s face was completely slack. Cody placed two fingers against the artery in his neck. They waited in silence while Cody felt for a pulse. “He’s gone.”
Ned rubbed the old man’s short gray hair. His voice was low and quavered like a man twenty years his senior. “You were a good man, Jules. A good man.”
Cody removed his hat and waved at a circling fly. “Did someone call an ambulance?”
“Ned had somebody do it.” O.C. glanced up to see a ring of quiet people standing around them. Women were wiping tears. Others openly wept. From the expressions on their faces, several men fought a tide of rising emotions.
Jules had operated the elevators as long as most could remember. He was hired not long after the courthouse was built to replace the one that burned in the Great Fire of 1916. He traveled up and down the short elevator shaft through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression when sad, tattered folks came in and begged to keep their farms and homes, through the Second World War as a steady stream of drunk, battered, and black-eyed soldiers traveled up to the top floor cells and back down again the next day, and through the good years of the 1950s. He was a constant everyone expected to see each morning when they came to work.
An era had ended.
Ned kept patting the old man’s still chest. Great BBs of sweat mixed with the tears rolling down his cheeks. Concerned that Ned might be in danger from his own heart, Cody met O.C.’s eyes.
The judge leaned in. “He helped him pass.”
Shocked at the revelation, Cody inhaled sharp and loud. “He said he’d never…”
“Of course he would, when the time came. It was a given. We always knew he’d do it again to help family, if they needed it. Jules is family.”
The glass and brass front doors flew open and the trio looked up, expecting to see the ambulance drivers with a stretcher.
Instead, Deputy Anna Sloan pulled a ragged young man in cuffs into the rapidly filling lobby. It was a good thing they were already on the floor, because Ned and O.C. would have been there anyway when Tom Bell followed her inside.
Ned frowned at the apparition. “Tom Bell. Are you a ghost, or real?”
“I’m real as you, Ned. Howdy.”
Emotionally exhausted, Ned bowed his head and cried like a baby.
Chapter Eleven
The smog-filled air in Austin was so thick it looked like the central Texas hill country was burning. The population of the state capital weighed in at over two-hundred-thirty-thousand, twenty times the size of Chisum. It provided plenty of anonymity for those who wished to operate without notice, moving like ghosts through the city.
The team of operatives assembled by senior agent Mr. Gray blended in with the populace in their dark suits, dark ties, and bare heads. The only hats in evidence on the streets were older men refusing to follow current fashion trends by keeping their three-inch brim LBJ’s.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the city was a magnet for the Flower Children who preferred the emerging laid-back music scene on Sixth Street, only blocks from the Capitol. The college kids at the University of Texas embraced the raw new music of The Flying Burrito Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Janis Joplin, and Crosby Stills & Nash.
Fresh in from northeast Texas, Mr. Brown hung his coat over the back of a wooden chair in their nondescript office above Leland’s Western Wear, eight blocks down the street from the Capitol Building. Nothing more than a front for their mission, the rented space contained a metal desk and wooden swivel chair, two blond-stained chairs, a leaning coat rack, and a dented metal file cabinet painted green. He adjusted the revolver in the shoulder rig an
d pulled his sweat-soaked dress shirt away from his chest.
Mr. Gray closed the top drawer of the desk that contained a thirty-eight revolver and picked up his pipe. Clamping the stem in his teeth, he adjusted the metal desk fan and leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Brown. Any problems?”
He chose the simple names that were easy to remember. No one in their business went by their real names. Even their organization had no name in most places and was merely referred to as The Company by those who worked there.
Mr. Brown ignored the uncomfortable chairs and stepped to the open window. He studied the traffic on Congress Avenue two floors below. “Nothing to write home about. The folks in that one-horse-town drive a hard bargain.”
He angled himself toward the UT campus, disappointed that he couldn’t see the tower made famous by Charles Whitman, a former Marine sharpshooter, who took rifles to the observation deck and killed or injured forty-nine people only three years earlier.
The Company provided orders and the money, lots of it to test a new concept in biological warfare. A dozen metal canisters full of a substance code-named Gold Dust rested in a rented house in the small community of Round Rock, twenty miles north of town.
The canisters contained bacillus globigii, considered to be harmless to most people, and an added stimulant, bacillus subtilis commonly found in hay, dust, or water. The CIA had experimented nearly twenty years earlier with another bacteria, serratia marcescens, with disastrous results they buried and never spoke of again.
The new bacteria was guaranteed to be harmless this time. Mr. Gray’s assignment was to test the germ’s dispersal and viability by distributing it across the rural part of a small county via air and water. A team under a completely different supervisor tested those samples after they reached town either from the air or through the municipal water system, determining the rate of distribution, the area, and the saturation level.
Gray chose Chisum in Lamar County due to its remote location, similar atmospheric conditions to nearby Dallas, and the relatively small population which allowed them to monitor the results. He packed his pipe and lit it with a paper match from a book bearing the name Pittman Radio and TV Service.
Gray scratched at her bare rear with a thumbnail. “How’d it go?”
“Fine. Found a hayseed crop duster that thinks a lot more of his little plane and abilities than he should.” Mr. Brown answered with his back to the room, surveying the stores below. He found it easier to lie with his back to Mr. Gray. “He sprayed two canisters up along to the Oklahoma border and wanted a buttload of money to do it.”
“Get it done?”
“Yessir. I’d expect the other team to have the results in less than a week.”
“Any problems?”
Mr. Brown hesitated a beat, then turned back into the sparse room. “Not a one.”
“What did you do with the empty containers?”
“They’re back at the house, sealed in the box.”
“You guys didn’t get exposed, did you?”
Brown’s stomach dropped. “No. There shouldn’t be a problem anyway, should there?” They’d assured him the bacteria was benign, but Gray’s question was alarming in light of Green’s accidental exposure. “You said the bacteria wasn’t dangerous.”
“I never trust anyone in this business.” Mr. Gray fiddled with his pipe. “Those eggheads say we built up immunity thousands of years ago, but it pays to be careful. Hell, you shouldn’t even trust me.”
Brown grunted as Mr. Green came through the door and into the stifling room. He shucked his suit coat to reveal a snub-nosed .38 on his hip. His coat joined Mr. Gray’s hat on the rack beside the door. He coughed, lit a cigarette, and snapped the Zippo closed. “What are you guys talking about?”
Mr. Gray nudged an ashtray in Green’s direction. “Those things will kill you. Look at John Wayne.” He spoke through a blue stream of smoke rising from his pipe stem. “They say he lost a whole lung from those coffin nails he smoked.”
“Yeah, but look how good he’s doing on just one.” Green coughed again, deep and wet. “I’ve been hacking like this since I was seventeen years old.”
“When’d you start?”
“Twelve.” He rolled both sleeves to his elbows while they chuckled.
The harsh jangle of the phone interrupted their conversation. Mr. Gray waited, and the black rotary phone rang again, then a third time, the bell resonating in the office for a full second after the last ring.
They stared at the device resting on a phone book as if it was about to move.
It rang again exactly thirty seconds later. Gray picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
A tinny voice was clear in the quiet office. “Update?”
Mr. Gray told him what the other two men had reported and listened. “Fine then.” He hung up the phone and rested the pipe in the ashtray. “We need to wrap this up as soon as possible. Come by here on the way out of town. If the door is open, I’m still here. If it’s locked, do what the kids say, and split.”
Mr. Green stood and rubbed out the butt. “And the remaining canisters?”
“They’ll be gone tomorrow. I have people taking care of that. Get the results from those eggheads and let’s go back home. We have another assignment waiting.”
“Where?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out. See you in D.C.”
Chapter Twelve
It was threatening rain Monday afternoon when Miss Becky lowered her sewing at the sound of Ned’s car crackling up the gravel drive. Heavy clouds to the northeast seemed to rest on the treeline beyond the hay barn. Wind freshened, rattling a piece of loose tin on the chicken house.
The windows and doors were open and the familiar pop of a John Deere in the bottoms floated on the breeze. A scattered covey of quail in the pasture called each other back together with their familiar bob-white whistle. Field larks moving through the grass and weeds lifted their heads, raising their own lilt.
She’d already turned on the lamp beside her blue cushioned chair to better see her mending. Moments later, the house echoed with his footsteps on the porch, then through the kitchen.
“It’s coming up a cloud.” Ned stopped just inside the door and dropped his hat on the television. He’d been in town, so he was dressed in black slacks and his trademark blue shirt. He unbuckled his belt to slip the holster off and the look on his face spoke volumes. She knew he wasn’t concerned with the breaking weather, though he dearly dreaded dark thunderstorms.
“What’s wrong, hon?”
Ned’s usually sharp blue eyes were dull and full of sorrow. He laid the holstered pistol on top of the television. “Old Jules died today.”
Her breath caught. “Sweet Jesus! Bless his old heart, he finally got to Heaven.” She stopped. “What are you not telling me?”
His hands shook. Ned focused his attention on unpinning his badge. “I had…” He choked on the words.
Miss Becky waited. She knew her husband, and something was terribly wrong. She seldom saw him so full of emotion.
Ned took a breath and started again. He ran a hand over his bald head.
“I had to…” Tears welled and he wiped them with the back of his work-hardened hand. His watery eyes skipped through the room before finding the window screen and the pasture beyond. “He couldn’t let go.”
It was Miss Becky’s turn to catch her breath. “Oh no.”
“I had to help him.”
The storm was moving fast, pushing cold air into the hot, humid mass that had been smothering them for over a week. Lightning cracked nearby and thunder rolled over the house, vibrating the dishes in the china cabinet. The lights flickered and went out.
She rose, dropping the mending to the floor. “Oh!” Her exclamation wasn’t over the power outage. It was so routine during storms that they were often surprised when the pow
er didn’t go out during a cloudburst.
An old dread had finally reappeared. Two steps later she was in his arms, and felt Ned trembling. “Dear Lord. Not again.”
The bottom fell out of the clouds. Heavy raindrops hammered the shingles.
“I didn’t want to.”
It came out, I din’t wont to.
She pressed her cheek against his chest and held him close. “I know. You didn’t want to ever do it again.”
“He fell out and we laid him on the floor. He was a-strugglin’ and strainin’ for breath. It was pitiful. He was talkin’ out of his head, sayin’ he was seein’ angels, but couldn’t turn loose.”
Ned’s shirt soaked up Miss Becky’s tears that welled for Jules, Ned, and the troubles they’d suffered so long ago from his own Poisoned Gift, one she’d prayed would vanish and never return. “I thought all that was behind us.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “He was layin’ there, his eyes rolling around. O.C. said I had to help him turn a-loose.”
“He didn’t have no right to say that.”
“It wasn’t right or wrong. It never crossed my mind to help Jules, but when I heard O.C., it dawned on me that I was there for a purpose. Like I’ve heard you say a hunnerd times, the good Lord puts us in places for a reason. I sat on the floor and pulled his head in my lap and I heard that same buzzin’ in my head and felt the air suck out up above me.”
The downpour arced off the eaves in a wide waterfall. They were silent for several minutes. Holding on in the midst of two different kinds of storms.
She pulled her head away from his tearstained shirt. “I’m remembering what happened.”
“It was a long time ago. Most of those people are dead, or moved away. The rest probably won’t know nothin’ about it.” He drew a long, shuddering breath.
“My stars, Ned. People around here hold onto stories until the day they die.”
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