His eye fell on a poster stapled to a telephone pole: Vince Doll for Sheriff—#1 Protecting Citizenry. How many had Doll printed up? Every time you turned around, there was his stern mug plastered on a pole or propped up in a storefront window. Despite Temple’s assurances to Etha that the Democratic primary, a little over two weeks away, was a sure thing, he was far from certain. This was the first time Temple had butted up against an opponent since coming to town and successfully winning the position of sheriff, pretty much because no one else wanted it. A couple of months back, Vince Doll, who owned the county’s grain elevator, had gotten it into his head that the sheriff’s office would be better served by a businessman who had also helped found the town back in ’93. And, surprise, surprise, Doll himself fulfilled both qualifications. Another reason his gut was doing cartwheels. Being that there was no one running for sheriff in the Republican primary, largely because there were no Republicans in Jackson County, the winner of the Jennings-Doll contest was a shoo-in come November. Now, all of a sudden, Temple’s chances seemed rocky. He checked his watch. Forty-five minutes to kill. Temple snorted and climbed into the driver’s seat. He turned over the engine and twisted the radio dial until he landed on a peppy tune.
He drove without direction, past skeletal stalks of wheat and alfalfa and derelict barns. Most of the farmhouses, once whitewashed, had been scalped of paint by the blowing sand. And there were still a fair number of soddies, erected during pioneer times, which were nothing more than bricks of turf stacked on top of one another.
After a time, Temple grew drowsy. He pulled off by a row of fence posts, some crowned with crows baking in the sun. The posts, the crows, seemed to be sending a message. The dots of the birds. The dashes of the fence posts. Dot, dash. Dot, dash. Feeling his lids begin to lower, he leaned back. That whiskey still, once he’d found it last night, had taken hours to break up. The clock had read 2:36 when he’d finally slid under the sheets beside Etha.
Now settled in his car, he tipped his hat over his eyes and drifted off beneath the warm felt, sliding into a dream about fishing. He was squatting on the banks of a muddy creek, spearing a worm onto his son Jack’s hook. The little boy squeezed his eyes and mouth into a tight kernel of disgust. Jack was wearing the sweater he refused to take off, the one with moth holes and unraveled cuffs. Seeing the delicate knobs of his son’s wrists, Temple’s heart swelled. Why, he’s not dead. He’s as alive as can be. Why did I think he was dead? Relief, cooling as summer rain, pattered at the edge of Temple’s consciousness. But then, suddenly chilled, he woke with a start. He was huddled tight as a pill bug against the car door. He jerked upright. The air had changed. The clear sky had thickened and dulled to pewter. And, on the horizon, a four-thousand-foot-tall mountain of dirt was boiling. A dust storm. The biggest he’d ever seen and it was coming fast. Temple watched it churn toward him, his mouth slack with wonder and fear. A shrieking flock of crows unscrewed into the sky. Jarred into action, he scrambled out of the car, hauled an oily length of chain from the trunk, and hooked it to the bumper. The dry air of dust storms generated enough static electricity to short out a car engine. Everyone kept a chain in their vehicle to channel the electricity into the ground. Back behind the wheel, his heart thrumming, Temple tried to think. Carrying tons of swirling topsoil, the deadly blizzards of dust could turn day into night, suffocate cattle, and bury a car within minutes. Four weeks ago the Clapsaddle boy had gotten caught in one walking from the barn to his house. They’d found his body a day later, swallowed in a dune not a hundred yards from his mother’s kitchen door.
The sheriff itched to turn the wheel, smash his boot against the accelerator, and drive to town as fast as possible. Through the sedan’s windscreen he saw the vast billows piling on top of one another, gaining height and speed. His roiling gut told him there was no way he could outrun the thing and get to town in time. He had to shelter now. Where was the closest farm? He knew the answer even before it coalesced in his mind: the Fullers’. The last family he wanted to beg a favor from. The family, for God’s sake, that he was turning out of house and home. But Temple didn’t have a choice. He gunned it west, gravel flying beneath his tires.
Within minutes, the car was engulfed in a howling thunderhead of topsoil from Colorado, Kansas, the Panhandle—hell, from China, for all Temple knew. The bright afternoon plunged into brown twilight. Spectral glimpses of telephone poles kept him on the road. What if I drive right on past the Fullers’ and don’t even know it? He gripped the wheel as if it were a dousing rod, as if he were dying of thirst and it was leading him to a deep pool of clear water. Etha’s heart-shaped face rose before him. He clutched the wheel harder and drove on.
Suddenly, the gay red paint that Hazel Fuller had chosen for the farm’s mailbox materialized. “Praise the Lord!” Temple shouted into the howling gale. He turned right, missing the drive and plowing into a culvert. The car stalled out at a cockeyed slant. He wasn’t sure where the farmhouse stood; his sense of direction was completely off-kilter. Unknotting the bandanna from around his neck, he counted to three and leaped from the car. Flinging up the hood, he fumbled for the radiator in the dim brown light. After a minute, his fingers found the cap. He unscrewed it and stuffed the bandanna into the water. Pulling it back out, he pressed the wet rag over his nose and mouth and ran, head down, toward a hazy rectangle of light. Beneath his boots, drifts shifted and pulled as if quicksand. He stumbled onto the porch and pounded at the door. No answer. He pounded louder. The storm was full upon him now, its roaring load of dirt and sand blocking every sound.
After an eternity, Jess Fuller’s voice cried out, “Someone there?”
“Let me in!” Temple shouted through the clotted bandanna.
The door opened a crack. Temple stumbled over the threshold and into a damp shroud. Every housewife in Jackson County hung wet sheets over doors and windows to keep out the dust. But it made no matter. It found its way inside, passing through walls as flour through a sieve. Jess stood on the other side, his eyes dark in the weak flicker of a kerosene lantern. “Well, look who it is.”
Temple lowered the bandanna, now stiff with a muddy mix of soil and saliva. As his eyes adjusted to the light he took in Hazel, sitting stoically at the kitchen table, her arms around the huddled boy.
“Ma’am,” the sheriff nodded.
Jess stood with legs dug in, arms across his chest. “You must be disappointed that the auction is a bust. Leastwise for today.”
“Not so.”
Jess snorted. Pressure rose in Temple’s chest.
A particularly strong blast walloped the frame house, setting the door and windows jittering. The boy whimpered. Hazel shushed him.
Temple saw fear flicker in the child’s eyes. “You know, we can holler ourselves hoarse at each other or we can sit ourselves down and reassure your young’un that everything will be all right.”
Jess didn’t answer, but yanked out a chair, plucked the kid from his mother’s side, and settled him in his lap. The boy curled into his daddy’s chest with a snivel. Temple perched at the opposite end of the table. He studied Jess’s boyish face, now screwed into a scowl. No mystery in that. But when he turned to Hazel, Temple detected something unexpected—a gleam of triumph, as if she’d been in a protracted battle and had, at last, emerged victorious.
She rose. An enamel coffee pot sat on the stove. She lifted it, nodding at Temple. “Want some? Cold but strong.”
“Don’t you give that man a drop!” Jess barked. “Don’t you dare. I mean it. If it weren’t for this duster, we’d be watching that pot and everything else we scraped for being sold off. And you know what this man,” here he paused and jerked a thumb toward Temple, “you know what he’d be a-doing, right? Standing to the side, rifle at the ready, making sure you and me don’t put up a fuss.”
He slammed his fist on the table, the noise setting his little boy to wailing. “And Mr. Sheriff, when you and that banker pull it off, that’s the kiss of death on your reelection. You
can forget about it. Over at the grange hall? That’s all they’re talking about. Who’s the friend of the farmer? And it sure as heck ain’t shaping up to be you. My place is auctioned? You can count on losing at least thirty votes right off the bat.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that.”
Temple stiffened. He knew that he was on thin ice with the folks in town, who seemed to be backing Doll, but the farmers too? He’d believed that the rural folks appreciated his fairness and plain talk. That they understood the foreclosure auctions were not his doing. That they recognized Temple would do his best by them, including stalling off auctions until they had a chance to pack up. But now Jess was telling him different.
Hazel hadn’t moved. The coffee pot was still aloft. She slowly lowered it. “It ain’t the sheriff’s fault. He’s doing his job. And besides that, I’m not going to make any sort of fuss when the auction comes off. I’ll be smiling and clapping because there is nothing for us here. Nothing. And the sooner we are shut of this place, the better.”
A load of grit slammed against the farmhouse. The lamp wick wavered but held. Hazel pulled a cup from a basket that had been packed for travel, blew into it, and filled it with coffee.
She offered it to Temple. As he reached out, it crossed his mind that Jess might rise up and strike it from his hand. And Temple couldn’t really blame him. He’d do the same, if he was in Jess’s position. But then Temple’s gaze fell on the child’s pinched and dirty face and he knew Hazel was right. This was no place to raise a family. Not anymore. Not since the drought bore in and the dusters started. Temple took the cup and raised it to his lips. At that moment, the storm hit full force. Gravel pelted the window, breaking one of the panes. Sand and grit swooped in, choking off the air and dousing the lantern. The cup in Temple’s hand vanished as did his fingers; that’s how dark it was. Impenetrable and thick as the bottom of a barrel of crude oil. He squeezed his eyes and mouth shut, tugging the bandanna up over his face and fighting to get air in through his nose. The tempest of dirt and sand roared as if a freight train was pounding over them, squeezing them between the rails as the colossal engine thundered inches above their heads, throwing off heat and pouring soot into their mouths while they screamed.
Chapter four
As the duster raged, Temple sat stiffly at the Fullers’ table with Jess glaring, the boy sniveling, and Hazel pouring coffee, her chin cocked. A loose shutter banged without mercy. After a while, however, its clatter slowed, then stuttered. Temple timed the intervals between gusts. As soon as the pause reached five minutes, he snatched his hat, thanked Hazel for her hospitality, and strode into the choking brown landscape. As he excavated the car, he worried about how Etha had fared back in town even though the courthouse was sturdy and she was unflappable.
After twenty minutes, he got on the road. Dunes rippled across the highway as if the denuded land were trying to draw a blanket over its naked limbs. Every half mile or so, the road was completely clogged. Temple jerked on the brake, hauled himself, and dug. Even on these back roads, Doll posters had been stapled onto pretty near every telephone pole. Bending over the shovel, Temple ruminated. If he lost the primary, he and Etha would have to move. He’d have to find work in a country that was already awash with bread lines. And he’d have to live with the fact that he’d drug her all the way out here, away from her hometown, away from their boy’s grave. Overrode her objections and drug her out for this job that might now disappear.
The drive back to Vermillion took two hours instead of the usual forty minutes, and so it was midafternoon when the Jackson County Courthouse came into view, its brick walls rising above the flat prairie town. It had been built in 1903, ten years after Vermillion was founded. Ten years after thousands of white settlers raced to claim plots in Indian Territory. The cannon on the courthouse lawn was a replica of the one that had announced the government-authorized land grab in 1893 with a tremendous boom.
Temple pulled around back. All the county offices, including the sheriff’s, were on the first floor, their pebbled-glass doors surrounding a large three-story foyer. Temple strode inside and found Deputy Ed McCance on the telephone. Ed was a former CCC boy from Chicago who had been finishing his stint at the Vermillion camp six months earlier when Temple got the go-ahead from county council to hire an assistant. Ed had filled out an application within the hour. Temple still hadn’t figured out how the boy had heard about the job so quick. But that kind of instinct would make an effective deputy, he’d reckoned.
Spotting Temple, Ed said into the horn, “The sheriff just walked in. Here he is,” and stiff-armed the receiver in the sheriff’s direction.
Temple raised his brows. Before taking the call, he started to say to Ed, “Any sightings of my—” when the deputy interrupted him.
“Etha’s fine. Poked her head in here after the storm passed to check on me.” Then he added, “It’s Chester from over at the Jewel. Got a dead man in his alley.”
Temple pushed a flop of hair off his forehead. “Jeez.” Into the receiver, he said, “What’s going on?”
He listened. Chester’s voice rattled faster than a telegraph key.
“We’ll be right over. Don’t touch anything in the meanwhile.” He turned to Ed. “Grab your camera. I’ll join you after I wash off some of this dust.”
“Yes sir,” Ed said, hurriedly unrolling his shirtsleeves.
“Anything else going on?” Temple asked. “Reports of storm damage?”
“Yeah, lots of calls but nothing that can’t wait.”
“All right by me. We can’t handle anything more right now.”
Settling the camera straps around his neck, Ed said, “Oh yeah, Mr. Hodge called again. Said that Peeping Tom he’s been hollering about for the past two weeks was back last night.”
Temple sighed. “We’ve checked that out twice already. What more does he want us to do? Camp in his backyard?”
Ed laughed. “Sort of. He said if we don’t catch the creep within twenty-four hours, he’s calling his friend the governor to complain.”
Temple rolled his eyes. “I’ll try to get over there later today.”
As Ed hustled out, Temple crossed the foyer, mounted the marble stairs, passed the second-floor courtroom, and continued up a wooden staircase. At the top was a small vestibule. Straight ahead, behind a steel door, was the four-cell jail, and to the right, the sheriff’s residence.
His fingers grasping the apartment’s doorknob, Temple was startled when it was yanked from his hand. Etha stood in the entrance, her brows furrowed. “I thought I heard you. I’ve been worried sick. Had visions of you blown into a ditch.” She wrapped her arms around his waist.
He kissed the part in her salt-and-pepper hair. “Made it safe and sound.”
The door led directly into the kitchen. The smell of soap flakes told Temple that Etha was already laundering the curtains despite the haze of soil that lingered. Temple filled her in on Chester’s phone call.
“He was clearing the fire exit. Found the remains in a drift. Sounds as if maybe someone got caught in the duster and suffocated.”
Etha brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh dear God. Man or woman?”
“Man. Probably a drunk or a drifter from down by the tracks.”
Etha clicked her tongue.
“You make out okay? Worst roller I’ve ever seen,” Temple continued.
“Lucy was cutting down an old dress and needed help. We were having coffee and cookies when it hit.”
“Ah, Lucille’s cookies,” Temple said. “The week-old cracker variety?”
Etha sighed. “Bless her heart. We holed up in the cellar. You?”
Temple snorted. “You won’t believe where I ended up. Had to shelter with the Fullers. It was the closest place.”
“Warm welcome?”
The sheriff shrugged. “Could have been worse. Jess was mad as heck.”
“And Hazel?”
“Sort of smug. I’m feeling she can’t get away from that farm fast enough.”
“Still and all, being run out of your house is not the way it should happen.” Etha turned and took a wet rag to the top of the icebox. “You best go wash up and get moving.”
“’Spect so.”
Bent over the bathroom sink, Temple sent up a prayer that Chester’s discovery was going to be easily explained. A simple accident needing a thorough but quick investigation, a hat-in-hand notification to the next-of-kin, a final report. Over and done. Anything more than that, manslaughter or worse, would explode smack in the middle of the primary. And that would be bad news. Those kinds of cases never moved fast enough for the voters or county officials, who seemed, as the drought stretched onward, to have become more prickly and impatient. As if the cooperative salve of the frontier had evaporated along with the rain.
Five minutes later, Temple planted a goodbye peck on Etha’s cheek.
“I’m thinking you won’t be home for supper,” she said.
“Doubt it.”
“You walking over to the Jewel?”
“Guess I could. It’s only a couple of blocks. You need the sedan?”
“I could bring a hot meal over to you and Ed later if you leave it here, is all.”
“Appreciate that.”
Temple descended the stairs and stepped out onto the street. Cleanup was underway. Shop owners were shoveling off their sidewalks and unfurling canvas awnings. A broken gutter lay across the curb and someone’s laundry line, with housedresses and coveralls still pegged to the rope, was wrapped around a telephone pole. Temple cut through the neighborhood behind the main drag. Mrs. Keller, handkerchief tied around her mouth, was walloping a throw rug against the porch railings. She returned his wave.
The sheriff trotted the final block toward the Jewel. There were a few more folks out, all trying to make the best of a market day hogtied by the storm. A farm family emerged from their jalopy. When the farmer turned his pocket inside out a plume of dust bloomed.
Death of a Rainmaker Page 3