“I spoke to Whitcombe,” Henney said suddenly. He glanced significantly at Carter, and then went on in an excited voice that kept rising gleefully with a shrill, whinnying, malicious hysteria. “He says we’re goin’ up tomorrow an’ burn ’em all out. He says we’re gonna get rid of ’em for good. He says it doesn’ matter what happens to the Wilson boy. He says we’re goin’ up anyway an—”
He might have continued indefinitely had not Mercer interrupted.
“Did you let him put butter on these sandwiches?” he demanded.
The sudden inquiry caught Henney by surprise, and he blinked his eyes in confusion.
“What’s ’at, Jay?” he stammered.
“Nothing, Henney,” Mercer said, in a softer voice. “It’s not important.”
He pushed a sandwich to Carter. Carter pushed it back.
“You’d better eat something,” said Mercer, with rough solicitude. “You look like hell.”
“So do you,” Carter replied sullenly.
He took the sandwich and bit into it. The gums on one side of his mouth were inflamed, and he moved the food over with his tongue and chewed it slowly. He drank some coffee and then took another bite and washed that down with more coffee and then, even while he was reminding himself that he had eaten nothing since lunch and was telling himself that the chicken tasted good, he laid the rest of the sandwich aside and forgot it.
“I tol’ ’im no butter,” Henney said defensively, finally understanding. “I didn’ watch ’im, but I tol’ ’im not to put any butter on.”
Mercer was silent, and Henney picked up his newspaper and resumed reading.
Soon Beeman and Whitcombe returned. Whitcombe was a brash young man of twenty-six who wore his uniform with a careless insolence. Beeman was older, almost forty, and hard as nails. He had a pale, gaunt, angular face, with very thin lips, strong bones, and a small, round, wrinkled scar high up on one cheek, and he was the coldest and most efficient-looking man that Carter had ever seen. He wore black leather gloves, thin, black, tight leather gloves that gave him a menacing air of competence.
“He’s going to die,” Beeman said, when he had crossed the room and was standing by the window.
“Did he say anything?” asked Carter.
“He’s in a coma.”
“Did he say anything before that?”
“He don’t have to,” Whitcombe drawled placidly from the side. “There are witnesses.”
“But did he say anything?” Carter implored vehemently.
“He said that Jess Calgary did it,” Mercer said, without looking up.
“Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
Carter cursed silently. Beeman had poured out a cup of coffee, and he came to the table for the can of condensed milk and the wet spoon that lay at Carter’s elbow.
“They know you up there, Carter,” he said, in his dry, precise voice. “You could bring him in for us.”
“I’m a schoolteacher,” Carter said. “Not a policeman.”
“Not for long,” said Whitcombe. “I guess this puts you out of business.”
Carter saw the wink he sent in Henney’s direction and the unsuccessful effort Henney made to repress a chuckle. He was too weary to resent it.
“We’ll pick him up in the morning,” Mercer decided. “It’s too late to do anything now.”
“He may be hard to find,” Carter argued.
“There’ll be enough people helping us,” Beeman replied.
“There sure will,” echoed Whitcombe.
Henney, encouraged perhaps by Whitcombe’s manner, took a bold step toward Carter.
“Yes,” he exclaimed broadly, his pale eyes glinting with a vindictive light. “You’re goddamn right there will. You an’ your smart college ideas. Puttin’ ’em all in the same school like that. We all knew this would happen, but you wouldn’ listen. No, you were too smart. Well, it’s all your fault, goddammit, an’ it serves you right!”
Carter sat without looking at him, listening to his voice as if to some incomprehensible noise in the distance. When he finished, Mercer let out a long breath and spoke to Whitcombe.
“Find something for him to do downstairs.”
Henney followed Whitcombe out docilely, glancing back at Carter with dogged emphasis. He was very careful with the door this time, too careful, and after he had gone it swung open with a creaking moan and wavered there slightly in the draft from the hall. Carter stared at it morosely. It distracted him terribly, like a crooked picture hanging on the wall, and he rose finally, swearing, and slammed it shut. Every bone in his back gripped him with pain, and when he sat down he could do nothing but curl forward over the table like some monstrous fetus.
“Go get him, Carter,” Mercer said. “It’ll be better that way.”
“Will you take care of him if I do?”
“We’ll do what we can.”
“How much will that be?”
Mercer was honest. “You know how it is, Carter,” he said regretfully. “We’re all relatives here.”
Carter laughed scornfully and shook his head.
“Be smart, Carter,” said Beeman. “They’re your friends, not ours. If we go, every car in town will go with us.”
Carter gave no reply. The coffee was making him sick. He carried the cup to the basin and turned the faucet on to rinse it. The force of the water almost tore it from his hand. When he drank finally, the water was tepid and colored slightly with the faint shadow of rust and still tasted strongly of coffee.
“I’ll think about it,” he snapped irritably.
“Think fast, Carter,” Beeman pursued remorselessly. “He has to be here by morning.”
The inflexible logic of his reply and the cold and hostile persistency with which it had been delivered were more than Carter could stand.
“Let me alone!” he cried furiously.
He slammed the cup down with a bang, shattering it into a noisy spray of fragments, and stared angrily from the slumping reluctance of Mercer to Beeman’s trim and rugged and clean-shaven rigidity, his eyes darting defiantly from one to the other and back again, and then to the faded, yellow squalor of the old walls with their loathsome clots of squashed mosquitoes and to the mute black wound of the window where the sparkling moisture and crusted patterns of soot distorted the amputated reflections on the glass, and finally he turned abruptly and strode from the room and down the stairs to the landing where Whitcombe and Henney stood in quiet conversation and past them swiftly without a glance and down the last flight of steps, stumbling over the bottom few, and through the door and out, finally, into the street.
The cold, fresh air brought him to a stop. He stood there, panting, and allowed himself to grow calm. It was still dark out, although the first sinister rays of green were already creeping into the sky. A number of men shifted slowly in a group across the street. In their shaded movements, they seemed like the amorphous images of a dream. The streetlamps had long since been extinguished, but the paved road was dimly visible in both directions, looking like shrouded marble in the paling darkness. It was a few minutes before Carter realized he was cold. He pulled his coat closer about him and walked down the street to the diner.
Three men were at the counter, a young mechanic from the filling station and two older men from the railroad.
“They’ve been sitting around all night,” the mechanic was complaining insistently when Carter entered, “just like they expected him to walk in alone and lock himself in a cell.”
They fell silent at Carter’s appearance. Carter paused in the doorway, caught in the harsh spotlight of their belligerent curiosity. He swayed uncertainly a moment and then walked to the other end of the counter.
“Hear anything about the Wilson boy, Mr. Carter?” the mechanic called after him.
Carter shook his head and sat down directly in front of the cake stand. A solitary cut of coconut pie was before him. It was soggy and yellow, and grew after a minute to resemble some festering organ
of the body. He shifted to another seat.
Freddie Hawkins approached slowly, flicking idly at crumbs with a clean white towel.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Carter,” he said quietly.
“Thanks, Freddie. I’m glad someone is.” Carter kept his own voice low. “Bring me some coffee, please.”
“Strange thing, Mr. Carter,” Freddie said, with an abstracted air of puzzlement, as he set the cup down, “that Calgary boy getting into trouble. He did some work for me when I enlarged the place. Funny fellow. Anyway, Mr. Carter, here’s what stumps me. He’s a big fellow, and that Wilson boy ain’t no wider than a splinter. Why’d he have to stab him?”
“I don’t know, Freddie. I don’t know anything anymore. Freddie, you’ve been listening to them. What’s going to happen tomorrow?”
Freddie shook his head. “There’s going to be trouble, Mr. Carter. It’s like a holiday, a real holiday, and they’re going to have it, no matter who pays for it. It’s almost like Christmas the way everybody’s walking around in a fever of excitement. Don’t let their anger fool you. It’s a chance to feel important, and they’re going to use it.”
“Why, Freddie? Why?”
“That’s hard to say, Mr. Carter. Maybe they just want to be respectable. Everybody wants to be respectable, and joining a mob is the easiest way.”
Carter nodded, and after a few seconds said, “Freddie, what are you going to do tomorrow?”
“Me, Mr. Carter?” Freddie said. “I get pretty tired by the time I finish up here. I guess I’ll just go home and sleep. There’s not much else I can do, is there?”
The door opened before Carter could reply, and Mercer entered, moving sluggishly with a ponderous fatigue. He stood motionless a moment, his eyes going through the oblong interior until they found Carter. The tough stubble on his face was black now and very dense.
“Hey, Mercer!” one of the men from the railroad demanded. “When the hell are you getting busy?”
Mercer ignored him. He walked slowly to Carter and sat down beside him.
“You need a shave,” Carter said.
“Go get him, Carter. It’s the only thing that will keep the people in town.”
“Do you think it will?”
“It might,” Mercer said. “We’ll hold him as long as we can. Maybe they’ll be too tired for anything else.”
“Turn him right over,” Freddie suggested. “Don’t give them a chance to win anything. Maybe you can put some shame into them that way.”
“Who let you in?” Mercer said to him.
“I did,” answered Carter.
“Bring me some coffee, Freddie.”
“Some cold water,” Carter added. “A glass of cold water.”
Freddie moved off with a nod. Mercer watched Carter steadily, waiting for his reply. Carter shifted uncomfortably.
“Get me some gum,” he said. “My throat is sore.”
Mercer called to Freddie for chewing gum. Carter had forgotten the cigarettes. When Freddie returned, Mercer sent him for a pack. Carter began quickly on a slice of gum, but his back teeth started aching almost immediately, and when he turned irately to spit the gum out it stuck to his lip, and after he had plucked it off with his hand it adhered to his fingers and wouldn’t shake off, and he was forced finally, cursing aloud by this time, to twist it off with a paper napkin.
“I’ll go talk to him,” Carter said. “I’ll go hear what he has to say.”
Mercer nodded and said nothing.
“That’s all,” Carter insisted. “That’s all I’m going to do.”
Mercer nodded again. Carter rose and walked outside. Dawn was coming with a rush, bold, brazen, and bright, and the blackness that had consolingly made the hours seem unreal was mixing already with a dull gray morning light that stirred like heavy dust in the air and gave the forbidding pallor of tombstones to the concrete sidewalks and the two imitation marble Corinthian columns in front of the bank and to the flat white facades of all the buildings that stood small and square on both sides of the quiet street. Mercer was beside him.
“It’s too early,” Carter said.
“They’ll be getting up early.”
“All right. I’ll go now.”
“Thanks, Carter.”
“Don’t thank me!” Carter said, with vicious feeling. “For Christ’s sake, don’t thank me!”
He turned from him and strode back past the police station to where he had parked his car in the afternoon. He had forgotten to put the top down, and the steering wheel and the two brown leather seats in front were coated with moisture. He had left the cigarettes behind again. The windshield was a solid blank of mist. He entered the car and drove slowly toward the river, gravely intrigued by the ground fog bunched up into thick white veils. It was going to be a nice day. The sun was full already, and the few clouds in the sky were puffed up like clean bedding and scattered remotely through the heavens. An empty shell of a moon hung in profile overhead. A raw chill was in the air.
He crossed the bridge and went faster as he moved into the hills where the small community of Negro farmers, whose begetters of a generation before had emigrated from the Deep South to purchase the land from the town on a plan dictated by the authorities, contended with the tough earthen slopes for substance.
Soon he passed Will Perkins alone in his field, a mule in traces and a bulky hand plow before him in silhouette, standing motionless as a monument as he watched Carter speed by. There was something odd about the scene, and when he had passed some more of their farms, each with a solitary sentinel staring somberly toward the road, he realized what it was. There was no smoke in the chimneys, no sign of a woman or child; the only motion came from the restless thrusts of a hound or the scratching flurry of chickens or from a fat sow swaying through the yard with a squealing litter at her heels. The families had been moved out overnight; the men had remained behind and were waiting. There was pathos in the landscape, in the utter lack of activity, in the grim, gray, ominous quiet, and Carter was reminded for a moment of Sudbury and Hales taking the sacrament in the tower with the knowledge that at that same moment their lives were being traded to the mob. The need for haste swept over him, and he drove faster still.
He had been to the Calgary place before, but he was not sure now that he remembered the way, and when he arrived at the dusty thoroughfare that marked the settlement, he left his car and hurried into the general store. About a dozen men stood inside. Carter scanned each of the men quickly.
“Where’s Ira Calgary?”
There was no sound. He scowled impatiently and picked out a man whose name he remembered.
“Raymond, where’s Ira Calgary?”
“Ah don’ know, Mista’ Cahta’,” Raymond answered. “Ah ’spect he’s at his place.”
“Take me there.”
Raymond moved forward soberly, a square, good-looking man with a face made for sport and virile merriment. A voice from the back intoned, “How’s the Wilson boy, Mr. Carter?”
Carter came to an abrupt stop. There was a long moment of silence before he could reply.
“He’s all right,” he answered slowly, turning a bit to face them. “Yes, he’s all right.” He paused uncertainly in the doorway and then turned sharply and walked out.
They passed two homes to get to the Calgary place, each with a man in dark clothes gazing at them with lugubrious interest. Ira Calgary was waiting at the gate to his yard, a corroded feeding pail in his hands and a few brown hens clucking at his feet.
“You’d better give them something to eat,” Carter said, trying to smile.
Calgary turned with obedient melancholy and chucked a handful of corn to the ground. He looked back at Carter and waited. He was a tall, thin man with a long face, heavy lips, and big teeth. His eyes were mottled with moist flecks of yellow and protruded slightly. There was a goitrous swelling on his neck.
“Too bad about that scrape yesterday.” Carter paused, but Calgary remained silent, and he swallowed nervously and
went on. “Good thing no one was hurt. The Wilson boy is all right. They want Jess in town to sign a paper. I’ll drive him in and then take him on to school when he’s finished.”
Calgary regarded him suspiciously. “You say no one was hurt?”
“No. It was only a scratch. Where’s Jess?”
Calgary looked dubiously at Raymond.
“Go get him, Ira,” Raymond said.
“He says no one was hurt,” Calgary argued.
“Go get him, Ira,” Raymond repeated firmly.
Calgary turned and walked despondently into the house. Carter and Raymond waited without talking. Far below them the town rested like a somnolent white island, its anchored insularity intensified by the brief contact it made with the state highway that tapped it obliquely and then darted swiftly into infinity like a jagged cable. The dirt road he had traveled was clear and sharp. A heavy haze enriched the color, and it unrolled slantingly into town with the softness of a ceremonial carpet, the dark hues alternating in radiant planes of purple and deep red in the shifting daylight. A rooster sent an echoing question into space.
The door to the house opened and Ira Calgary reappeared. Jess was with him, walking in passive silence, tall and thin like his father, but not nearly as tall and a good deal wider. A bandage bound his head from front to back. One side of his face was badly smashed; the broken flesh was swollen and discolored. Carter turned cold when he saw him.
“You’re hurt, Jess,” he said softly.
“Yes, suh, Mr. Carter.”
Carter gazed at him with morbid awe. He forced down a rising taste of nausea, burdened to his soul suddenly by that viscous paralysis that came to him always with the spectacle of illness, violence, or injury, and he balanced himself against a feeling of dizziness that awoke every nerve in his body to the pains and cruel pressures of all his tired and infected parts. He swallowed again and said, “They want to ask you some questions, Jess. I thought I’d drive you in and then take you to school when you’re finished.”
“He says no one was hurt.”
“Yes,” Carter said. “Will you come?”
Jess nodded. His gaunt air of submission was both meek and sullen. He lingered an instant and then moved forward regretfully and came listlessly through the gate and began walking steadily down the path, his eyes staring blankly at the ground, his arms dangling at his sides loosely.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 Page 26