Strawman's Hammock

by Darryl Wimberley

  It was Linton’s turn to flush beet red.

  “All right, gentlemen…” Barrett began, but it was too late.

  “Track this!” Linton snarled and spit a blind of well-chawed tobacco juice directly into the sheriff’s face.

  What happened then was hard to untangle. Lou flinched aside to blunt the effect of Linton’s filthy missile, leaving Barrett to take the nicotined charge square on his chest. Instinctively, Bear reached for the smaller man’s wrist in a come-along. By that time Sheriff Sessions had Linton by the neck.

  Things escalated when Gary leaped to his father’s aid.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The younger Loyd charged Lou from the blindside, just beyond Cricket’s desperate reach, to tackle the sheriff high in the ribs.

  What had started out as a peaceful interview was now an assault on an officer.

  It was time, then, for training to take over from instinct. Barrett moved with Cricket as a single man.

  Cricket jerked the son free. A kick to the instep brought the youngster howling to the hard marble flooring. Barrett caught the father’s fist in midflight and slapped it into a steel bracelet.

  “The hell—?” Linton turned furiously to face his new assailant, and when he did Sheriff Lou Sessions crossed with a solid right hook straight up the side of the older mans’s head.

  “Daddy!” Gary screamed curses from the floor.

  “Jesus, Lou!”

  Barrett caught Linton Loyd as he fell. Cricket kept Gary Loyd pinned to the floor, and was on the radio.

  “This is Agent Bonet for PD One.” He spoke rapid fire into the receiver. We are at the Loyd river house. We need backup. That is backup and an EMS at a residence—Linton Loyd. On the river.”

  * * *

  Thurman Shaw bailed out the father and his son. Barrett was there to see that sorry procession as it emerged from the county’s pitiful excuse for a jail to pass by boarded-up doors and the jerry-rigged evidence bin. Thurman paused at the duty desk. Lou Sessions was there with a deputy.

  “We plan to bring suit, Sheriff Sessions,” Thurman announced, accepting the sergeant’s clipboard.

  “For assaultin’ an officer? Be my guest.”

  “And I demand the immediate release of all property.”

  “If you talkin’ about the Humvee, you can ferget it. I dusted for prints off that thing already. Got hair off the carpet—black and straight.”

  “You had no warrant!”

  “That vehicle is linked to a crime scene.”

  “The murder?” Thurman was incredulous.

  “The assault,” Lou grated. “On me. Could’a been a gun in that ’vee for all we knew. Could’a been a threat to me or one of the FDLE.”

  “That’s a stretch.”

  “I got the Humvee. And everything in it.”

  Thurman smiled. “We’ll see.”

  “You better see quick, counselor. We just about got that thing turned inside out.”

  Thurman signed a receipt for his clients and handed over pairs of wallets, watches, and gold-plated fountain pens matched father to son.

  “You sorry sack of shit,” Linton Loyd mumbled to the sheriff through a jaw swollen the size of a gourd.

  “That’s enough, Linton.” Thurman ran a veined hand through his shock of rooster’s hair. “We got him by the short hairs this time.”

  Lou snorted. “Sure you do.”

  Thurman Shaw turned then to Barrett.

  “Agent Raines? See you outside?”

  Barrett glanced to the sheriff for his reaction. Lou took the gesture to mean that he was asking permission.

  “Go ahead.”

  Barrett followed Thurman and his clients through the chipped oak doors that exited onto the sidewalk outside the jail. Elizabeth Loyd waited in her lavender Lexus beside the Viking fence securing the jail’s sally port, a porcelain smile painted on her face as though she were picking up her husband for a football game. Or shrimp and steak at Ramona’s.

  “Better watch that son of a bitch in there.” Linton pushed past his attorney to speak directly to Barrett. “He’ll fuck you in a minute.”

  “Oh, Linton,” the wife smiled vacantly. “I do wish you wouldn’t use that language.”

  “Get in the car, Linton,” Thurman advised. “You too, Gary.”

  Only when the Loyds were inside the Lexus and the doors closed did Thurman return to Barrett.

  “I don’t want to have to put you between Lou and Linton, Bear.”

  “No.”

  “Off the record?” The rooster ran a mottled hand through his comb.

  “All right,” Barrett agreed.

  “It looks to me like you’re between a rock and a hard place on this thing, Bear.”

  “Again,” Barrett agreed with a grim smile.

  “So tell me. Off the record. Was this assault provoked?”

  Barrett hesitated. “Provoked? With words, maybe. Attitude. But an assault on an officer, Thurman…” Barrett shook his head. “The hell was Linton thinking?”

  Thurman actually smiled. “Probably ’bout how he’d rather have you for sheriff.”

  “I can’t lie for him, Thurman,” Barrett countered urgently. “Don’t even give him the ghost of an idea that I’d be willing to do that.”

  Shaw wagged his head. “No, no. Last thing in the world any of us wants you to do is lie. No, sir. All we want, Bear, is to make sure you tell the truth.”

  “Of course I’ll tell the truth!” Barrett shot back angrily. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Thurman Shaw held Barrett’s eyes a long, long moment.

  “Awright,” he said finally. “Fair enough.”

  With that ambiguous reply Barrett prepared to end his day. But then he saw the familiar mast of Channel Seven’s live van. That meant an interview with the station’s most despised and anemic mongrel, the dishonorable Stacy Kline.

  “Looks like Stacy’s got wind of the story.” Thurman smiled ruefully. “You better get inside, Barrett.”

  Raines shook his thick head.

  “Won’t do any good. Bastard, Stacy. He’d follow a maggot to a gut wagon.”

  Seven

  Night had fallen as dark as the inside of a cow by the time Barrett Raines settled his cruiser between Aunt Thelma’s trailer and the rear of his own modest, modular-framed home. There had been some add-ons to the Barrett mansion over the years: a second bathroom, deck, carport. Barrett’s hand trailed absently over the hood of his restored Malibu as he headed for the back door, shedding his tie and cotton-thin blazer.

  A light switched on.

  “Bear?”

  Laura Anne stepped into a weaving cone of illumination. She had changed into a sundress from her workday attire. It showed off her legs, the curve of her belly and hip.

  “Home at last.” He emerged into the bulb’s swaying light.

  “What happened to you?” She pointed to the ruin of his shirt.

  “Chewing tobacco.” Barrett mounted the back steps to take her hand. “Where’re the boys?”

  “In bed. It’s nine o’clock.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right.” She smiled. “At least you’re home.”

  Barrett brushed her lips with his own, accepted a squeeze on his tightened shoulders. Then he went straight in to see his twin sons.

  Ben and Tyndall. Fraternal twins. About as opposite as two boys could be. Tyndall was the larger, builder child, sleeping now with a football, his mouth relaxed into the small O that only sleeping children master. Ben’s frame, long and svelte like his mother’s, stretched beneath the tent of his sheet. He had a flashlight going.

  “Benjamin.”

  Off went the light.

  “Daddy?”

  “What you reading, goose?”

  The child emerged. “Harry Potter.”

  “You like it?”

  “Mmmhmm!” Ben pulled out his light and book. And then, hesitating, “But I like Tolkien better. The hobbits and the ring? There’
s … more to it.”

  Barrett sqeezed his precocious son to his chest.

  “That’s very good, Ben. Still—there’s room to enjoy both. Everything in its place.”

  “You always say that, Daddy.”

  Ben dropped his lamp and book to wrap thin arms about his daddy’s neck. And then, abruptly, without preamble: “Do you need lots of sleep, Daddy?”

  “Yes, I do. And so do you.”

  “Ooooookay.” The boy burrowed into his sheet like a squirrel.

  “Night-night, Daddy.”

  “’Night, Benjamin. ’Night Tyndall.”

  A gentle snore was the only response.

  * * *

  Laura Anne and Barrett made slow love before the ten o’clock news. The pre-news hour was getting to be prime time for them both. Couldn’t find time much earlier. Couldn’t get up the energy much later. Twelve years married, Barrett thought, and we still find time.

  She was as firm in the belly as when Barrett had first seen her. Heavier in the breasts with childbirth. A long back, strong, strong shoulders and legs. And that mile of supple skin.

  This was another reason to work near home.

  Afterward they watched the flicker of the bedroom’s television from between their toes.

  “Boys have their party Saturday after next.”

  “Good.”

  “They want a puppy.”

  “I ain’t gonna have no whinin’ puppy in the house.”

  “We can put him out back.”

  “I’m not going to potty-train him, either.”

  “You trained the boys, Bear. How much harder can it be?”

  Barrett grunted. “You get hold of Cory and Corrina?”

  “All set. And I’m thinking of inviting another fifth-grader.”

  “Somebody special?”

  “She’s Latino. Isabel Hernandez. Her parents are migrant workers. I’ve met the mother. I think I can get her to come.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Rolly Slade’s boy is taking pictures of her.”

  Barrett turned. “The mother?”

  “No. Little girl.” Laura Anne related the day’s incident. “I suggested to Alton that he ought to contact the sheriff.”

  “Good suggestion.”

  “He didn’t.”

  Barrett frowned. “Honey, I don’t know that there’s much I can do. I really don’t have any independent authority here.”

  “I know that.”

  Barrett grunted. “I wonder if the boy has a computer.”

  “What difference does that make?” Laura Anne asked.

  “I’ll mention it to Lou,” Barrett answered obliquely, and then the evening news came on.

  Stacy Kline, a poster boy for bulimia, displayed a microphone that towered like a spear of broccoli from a fist as devoid of flesh as a talon.

  “… and late this afternoon there was consternation in the county jail as Linton and Gary Loyd were arrested for an assault against Sheriff Lou Sessions.…”

  “Were you—?” Laura Anne began.

  “Yes.” Bear nodded.

  “… Sheriff Sessions is here with me now. Sheriff, can you give us your side of the incident?”

  A cold smile remained like a ravine below Lou’s cratered complexion.

  “Aw, Stacy, it wouldn’t really be proper for me to give details before the hearing.”

  “Then this will go to court? Gary and Linton Loyd will face justice?”

  “As would anybody, let me emphasize that, anybody who assaults an officer of the law. Nobody’s above the law in Lafayette County.”

  “FDLE agents present at the time were less helpful to this interviewer.” Stacy’s offscreen edit led into what passed for his interview. Segue from Lou’s brittle face to Stacy’s ambush of Barrett Raines.

  “I almost got away,” Barrett declared mournfully from his bedside vantage as the TV offered bouncing footage to show Stacy chasing him down from behind.

  “Agent Raines? Agent Raines, Stacy Kline, Channel Seven News.”

  “Well, good evening, Stacy.”

  Turning to the newsman’s summons, Barrett displayed a shirt that looked to be splattered in blood.

  “I understand you were present at the assault on Sheriff Lou Sessions?” Stacy’s thin wrist shook as if palsied.

  “It hasn’t been ruled an assault yet, Stacy. Only alleged.”

  “But there was an arrest.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were present?”

  “I was. With Agent Bonet, Tallahassee office.”

  “And so we can expect to see you testify in court.”

  “If I’m subpoenaed as a witness, naturally. Yes.”

  “That puts you in an awkward position, doesn’t it, Agent?”

  “Awkward? How?”

  Stacy dropped his bomb.

  “Well, isn’t it true that Linton Loyd is backing you to run for sheriff against Lou Sessions?”

  “What?” This from Laura Anne.

  She turned from the caricature of her husband on the small screen to face the man in her bed.

  “Just listen,” Barrett replied.

  “Mr. Kline, I don’t know where you got your information, but it is incorrect. I haven’t even sat down to think about whether I ought to run for sheriff, let alone who I’d be asking to back me. That is a fact which you can verify with Mr. Loyd himself.”

  “So there is nothing to this rumor?”

  “Well, Stacy, I’m relieved to hear you call it a rumor. Because that’s exactly what it is.”

  Laura Anne snagged the remote to silence the tube.

  “What’s this about running for sheriff?”

  “What’s this about teaching school? We both seem to be gettin’ the itch for change.”

  “You know very well school’s not the same as sheriff.”

  “Doesn’t pay as much for damn sure. And neither one pays like the restaurant.”

  “I can sell the restaurant.”

  “Don’t let’s go countin’ our chickens before they hatch, honey.”

  “Don’t ‘honey’ me, Barrett Raines! How long have you been thinkin’ of running for sheriff? When did you get the idea? Where?”

  “Week or so ago,” Bear answered tiredly. “At camp.”

  Laura Anne sat up straight. “So that’s why Linton had you out.”

  “Well, it sure as hell wasn’t to hunt deer.”

  “Then you lied, Bear! On TV. You lied to that despicable Stacy Kline.”

  “Hell I did. I haven’t accepted Linton’s backing or anybody else’s. I haven’t even decided if I’m gonna run.”

  “Gonna run? Or should?”

  “Don’t you start, Laura Anne…”

  “Start what? We just about get our lives back to normal and you’re thinkin’ politics! Black man running for sheriff in Lafayette County? You got to be a bubble and a half off plumb to think that’s gonna happen.”

  “Thanks for your support.”

  “Don’t talk to me about support!” she flashed angrily. “That restaurant was my support! Sixteen- and eighteen-hour days is my support!”

  “I know, I know.” He reached for her. “I’m sorry. Really I am. It’s just—I were sheriff it would give me even more time than we have now, Laura Anne. I’d be closer to work. A whole lot more flexible hours—”

  “And every four years you’re out of a job,” she finished.

  He sighed heavily. “Yeah. There’s that.”

  Laura Anne turned away from him a moment. It took a while to see that she was crying.

  “Baby! Baby, I haven’t done anything! Not a damn thing! It’s just talk. What-ifs, that’s all.”

  “Well, what if I want to leave the restaurant?” She turned back to him. “You get messed up in politics, there’s not a stable salary for the family, Bear. Even if I sell the business, that’s not what we oughta be livin’ on. That’s for college, for old age. And wouldn’t it be nice for the boys to start life with something? Ju
st some small, certain inheritance beyond a—a pushout trailer and a hot rod?”

  She was crying again.

  “You’re right. You’re right.” Barrett eased over to her side of the bed. “Look. Laura Anne. I can work in the FDLE ’til the cows come home.”

  She nodded. “It’s just—I feel like it’s my turn, is all. For you to help me.”

  It was. Barrett knew it.

  “Tell you what. Until you have decided whether you want the restaurant or the classroom, I’m not changing anything. How’s that?”

  She nodded. “Would make it a lot easier for me.”

  Barrett spread his wide hands gently on her leg.

  “I wasn’t trying to do anything behind your back.”

  “No.” She laughed. “But Linton Loyd was. Who do you think gave Stacy that story? Or had it given?”

  Barrett nodded. “I know. I know.”

  “Run for sheriff!” Laura Anne shook her head. “Linton poured it on good, did he?’

  “He tried.”

  “Said he’d back you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which means he’ll buy you votes.”

  Barrett squirmed. “I wouldn’t want that.”

  “Makes you think you’ll have any say in the matter? Tell you something, Bear, you get in bed with a man like Linton Loyd, you’re gonna wake up with fleas big as nickels.”

  Barrett reached for the freshly washed sheets.

  “Puppies get fleas.” Barrett nuzzled his wife.

  “They’ve got medicine for puppies,” she said.

  “Night-night.”

  * * *

  Sparks were flying next morning in the Lafayette County courthouse. Barrett rose early to arrive with Cricket and Warden Jarold Pearson for the hearing scheduled in Mayo. The attorney representing the state of Florida had his fountain pen tapping code on the arm of a hardwood chair like the last telegrapher on the Titanic. Judge Alfred Carey Blackmond, sitting for the third circuit, glanced up from the writ on his desk.

  “Roland. Please?”

  Roland Reed’s platinum-tipped pen paused in medias res, lending an unnatural silence to chambers only recently made available to visiting judges. The county judge’s office, just downstairs, was too busy and too cramped to accommodate the circuit judge’s needs, so an old jury room one flight up had been recently renovated for third-circuit business. It was a serviceable interior, complete with phone lines and modems and computers. But it did not have the character of the chambers Judge Blackmond had enjoyed while a county judge in Perry. Barrett Raines had visited those wainscoted and oak-paneled digs on more than one occasion, enjoying the high tin-pressed ceiling, luxuriating in the airy view of a town square verandahed with the limbs of sycamore trees.