Death of a Rainmaker

by Laurie Loewenstein

  Temple steadied himself. “Look here. I’ve been sheriff of Jackson County fifteen years. I’ve done my honest best to keep the peace and enforce the laws fair and square. I am mindful of circumstances, especially in these hard times, and willing to bend when I know someone is trying to right a wrong.” He cleared his throat. “It is true. I don’t have pals in the highest offices of the capital, as Doll says he does. I am not on a first-name basis with the governor and such. But I am known among sheriffs and judges across the state. And I’d like to think that I have their respect.”

  He paused, searching for some nods of affirmation. The crowd was stone still. “I was hoping to stand on my record, my reputation. I am not one to attack my opponent. But let me ask you, Vince. What exactly have you done for the people of Jackson County?”

  Doll grinned and shrugged elaborately. “I’m not sheriff.”

  “No, but you are a town founder, as you constantly remind us. A businessman. You own the grain elevator. What is more important to a farming county than that? These are tough times. Drought. No work. Hungry kids. Foreclosures. You benefitted from the sweat of the farmer in the good times. What have you done to help in the bad? You are in a position, so you say, to speak to state officials. To make sure Jackson County is not forgotten. Gets its share of farm aid. To date, none of that has happened. The farms are shriveling up, the children are crying from hunger, the man who wants to do an honest day’s work is reduced to asking for handouts.”

  There was silence. But Temple was too pie-eyed to tell if that was because the crowd was ruminating on what he’d said or gathering itself for an attack.

  Doll, who also might have been uncertain, quickly stepped into the pause. “Mr. Jennings, you well know that I have dedicated my life to Jackson County. Have done everything possible to see that it grows and thrives. Yes, this drought is an unfortunate setback, but I am confident that the rains will return soon. It is a matter of waiting it out.”

  Temple studied his hands. “I also want to say that I think your plan to hire deputies to work on commission is ill-founded. I have seen other counties go this route. And I have seen the number of unwarranted arrests go up. I myself have attended funerals downstate which were patrolled by commissioned deputies hovering like vultures, waiting for the grieving to get liquored up and take a swing at someone. I even saw one such lawman provoke a fight so he could make an arrest. This is not the kind of person we want protecting the peace. We want someone like Ed McCance, my deputy. Yes, he is not local, but he is the best man for the job. I’ve never seen a harder-working young fellow. Honest and dedicated.”

  He sensed that beside him, Hinchie was fidgeting in his seat, maybe trying to get him to sit down. But Temple went on. This all had to be said. “And as far as the tramps go, I just want to say that most all of those fellows, to a man, would rather be earning their own bread and living at home with their families. Hardly a one is a no-count or criminal. Most are just men and boys down on their luck. I’m not inclined to clear out the only place that gives them some shelter before they hop the next freight.” He stopped abruptly. “I’ve said my piece. Thanks for listening.” He sat down hard on the stool.

  After a minute, the hum and chatter of the Idle Hour resumed. No one approached the sheriff to shake his hand or pledge support. Hinchie patted his shoulder. “You’re a good man.”

  “That doesn’t put food on the table,” Temple responded grimly.

  Soon after, Hinchie headed home and Temple stayed on, ruminating on where a fellow of fifty-four years might get work in hard times.

  * * *

  After Temple left for the Idle Hour, Etha had burst into tears. The sadness of Frank’s story, of poor misused Florence, cast a pall over her heart. But there was something else. Minnie’s warnings, the murmurings in town, and Temple’s own countenance told Etha that by tomorrow evening, he might very well lose. And a few months after that, she would be relinquishing the house keys. Turned out like so many others these days.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Carmine.

  “Stopping by to hear how your trip went.”

  Etha sniffled and blew her nose. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. Come on in.”

  Carmine ambled into the kitchen, beating his dusty hat against his leg.

  “You should know,” she said, “that I haven’t had time to bake a pie seeing as we were on the road for the past three days.”

  Carmine chuckled. “Shoot.”

  “But I might have some oatmeal cookies in the jar.”

  “Milk?”

  “Check if it’s still good.”

  Carmine opened the icebox and took a sniff from the bottle. As Etha arranged cookies on a plate, he grabbed a tumbler and poured himself a glass.

  They sat at the kitchen table, Etha burning to tell him about Frank’s arrest. If she swore Carmine to secrecy, Temple might never know. She opened her mouth to begin but the young man was shoving a package wrapped in brown paper across the oilcloth. “For you.”

  Etha straightened. “Really?”

  It was a copy of Cimarron with a worn khaki cover and a cracked binding.

  Carmine bit into his second cookie. “Read it?”

  She shook her head.

  “The guys were passing it around and I thought you might like it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Busily pressing the crumbs off the plate with his index finger, Carmine said, “Like to read it when you’re done.”

  “Of course,” Etha said. But then the thought came soon that she might no longer be living in this place, with Carmine just up the road. Watching him finish off the milk, her throat swelled.

  He continued to chatter about goings-on among the fellows and then, after goodbyes were said, Etha sat alone, pressing her hands against her eyes, feeling her palms grow slippery. An advertising jingle blared from the radio. Slowly she rose and fished an old Gazetteer out of the trash. In the parlor she approached the knickknack shelf and her eyes fell on the green-glazed vase. The miniature tea set. The celluloid cowboy that Temple had won for Jack at the Illinois State Fair. She kneeled and slowly wrapped each piece in newsprint. Later she’d find a cardboard box. And then other boxes. Until by November, all their belongings were packed and they headed out for parts unknown.

  * * *

  Primary day emerged hot and hazy. Temple spent most of the morning filling Ed in on the events leading up to Frank’s arrest and preparing for the arraignment before Judge Layton, which was scheduled for that afternoon. He telephoned the CCC camp. Carmine was out on a planting brigade. Temple asked Commander Baker to let the boy know an arrest had been made and that he was cleared.

  As Etha dressed to run errands, Lottie called. Her first words were: “I know I should be upset about this, but strangely I’m not.”

  Etha, in her slip and one stocking, frowned into the mouthpiece. “What’s going on?”

  “Chester. After the premiere I expected . . . well, you know. And when I brought up how well we worked together, he agreed, and when I pushed further, he all but admitted he never intended to marry me.”

  Etha sucked in her breath. “Oh dear.”

  “No, it’s all right. I was crushed but then my eyes opened. I saw our ten years together for what they were—a long road going nowhere. So I walked out. Walked out and this morning called my uncle who has been pleading with me to take a buyer’s position in his department store out in Oklahoma City. I start next month.”

  Etha, who had been leaning against the wall with the receiver pressed to her ear, slid down to the floor with a thump. “I can’t believe it. Are you sure?”

  “Never more so.”

  Etha sighed. “I think this is the right decision. But I’m going to miss you terrible.”

  Lottie’s voice was determined: “We’ll make it a point to get together regular. And when we do, you won’t have to listen to my laments about Chester.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Etha said, and then they were laug
hing.

  On her way to the butcher’s, still struggling with a lump in her throat after Lottie’s call, Etha crossed through a line of voters snaking through the courthouse foyer, making their way to the basement where ballots were cast. Most hung their heads or looked away when they saw her. Earlier that morning she had urged Temple to call Hank Stone at the Gazetteer about the arrest and he promised to make time. Yet seeing the steady line, it seemed likely that many votes would be recorded before the afternoon newspaper was out.

  But the fact was that the Gazetteer had just completed an early press run. The front page announced, “RAINMAKER KILLER CAUGHT,” in the tallest, thickest font the linotype had in its arsenal.

  A fresh stack was already front and center on the customer counter when Florence Hodge stepped up to pay her past-due bill. She’d been too twitchy and anxious to answer the door when the delivery boy rang last week. Now she stood at the counter, waiting for the office clerk to look up. He was counting a pile of coins dumped from a dirty canvas collection bag. Most were pennies. How long would it take for him to finish and notice her? Florence stared at her fingers, bloody and raw around the nail beds from constant nibbling, and quickly curled them under. She felt the press of time. In not too long, John would be coming up the front sidewalk and she had yet to run laundry through the wringer and get dinner underway. Count faster, Florence silently begged the clerk. Then her eyes fell on the stack of newspapers, on the cacophonous headline. The blood in her veins seemed to empty. Timidly, she plucked up the top issue, still damp from the press. Below the headline was the same photo of Roland that had run the day after he was murdered. Two weeks ago, seeing that image had set her nerves twanging and jumping all over the place. But not as badly as the night before, when she and John had driven out to the TNT demonstration and she had first caught sight of Roland standing smugly beside the pastor. Everyone’s head was bowed. Except his. Except hers. Their eyes had briefly met. Florence thought she would collapse right then and there. The one thing that had gotten her through these years with John was that she would never see Roland again. Vomit had pushed into her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed it. The smothering shame that she’d endured every day since she had run off with the no-count all those years back was choking off her breath. Roland did not seem to recognize her. John had never met the man who had, as he described it, “soiled her.” But later, at the end of the explosions, John had insisted on talking to the rainmaker. Florence had asked to wait in the car but John said, “Oh, no, I don’t want any men sniffing around when I’m not there.” So it was then that Roland took her in. He glanced casually at the pale face and shapeless dress and looked away in . . . what? Indifference? Disgust?

  Now he cast the same look at her from the front page of the Gazetteer. Florence began reading. A man had been arrested. One who had known Roland Coombs in St. Joe. One who had shipped out as a doughboy and returned to find Roland had run off with the girl he was sweet on. The killer’s name was Frank Turnball. Florence froze. That nice quiet boy? Frank? He’d had a crush on her, she knew that, but they’d never gone on a single date. It didn’t make a bit of sense that he had killed Roland, killed anyone. And because of her? Her head throbbed. She sat down hard on a chair at the end of the counter.

  The clerk must have heard her. “You all right?” His spotty face, aflame with adolescence, swam into focus.

  “Just a little faint.”

  “I’ll get some water.”

  When he returned, she drained the glass and paid her bill. Then she sat down and finished the article.

  The prisoner had been arrested in a soddie five miles from town and was housed in the county cellblock. She peered out the window, trying to imagine Frank Turnball, the schoolboy, in jail. A wagon pulled by a lame mule passed down the street. Suddenly, she remembered Frank gimping across the playground at the end of recess. Frank had been marked out by a couple of older boys. Every day they stalked him, cornering him by the cellar stairs. There they kicked his scrawny shins with their heavy shoes until his legs bled. It all rushed back—the dark wet spots on his trouser legs and his stiff shuffle toward the schoolhouse door at the end of recess.

  Florence pressed her hand against her mouth. The memory was as vivid as if it were yesterday. And that was not really surprising. She had felt the crack of John’s brogans against her own shins many times. The fierce pain as if her bones were snapping. The sticky trickle of blood running down her stockings. The purple lumps. The shame. But she had never once thought of poor Frank Turnball’s sufferings until now.

  * * *

  Temple was alone in the office, the telephone receiver pressed to his ear, when Florence walked in. He gestured to the chair beside his desk, holding up a finger to indicate he was almost through. She sat, pocketbook pressed tightly against her stomach.

  “Sorry to keep you,” he said after hanging up. “You here about Frank Turnball?”

  She jerked as if someone had pierced her with a darning needle. Fumbling within herself, she said, “How did you know?”

  “Frank told us about you and him,” he said gently. “How you were sweethearts—”

  “No, we weren’t,” Florence interrupted. “I don’t know where he got that idea.” She studied her hands. “I did know him from school, of course. He was always kind. A quiet boy. That is how I remember him. And that is why I can’t believe . . .”

  “That he killed a man?”

  Florence nodded.

  “The man you ran off with?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Temple leaned forward and laid a hand over hers. “Even if there was nothing between you two back then, you need to know that Turnball believes there was. And that is why he cracked Coombs over the head.”

  Florence crumbled. “Oh Lord.”

  Beyond the closed door a steady stream of chatter flowed from the line of voters. Her dress stuck to her skin and her mouth seemed filled with cotton.

  Temple was talking: “It is not your fault Turnball got things twisted around. He might not be quite right in the head.”

  Florence’s legs ached. She bent to rub them, then straightened abruptly. “I’d like to see him.”

  Temple paused. “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  And so Temple and Florence passed through the line of perspiring voters and mounted the stairs to the dim cellblock. Inside an office fan churned. The space smelled of bleach and sweat.

  “Turnball, you’ve got a visitor,” Temple said, swinging a chair in front of the cell.

  Florence approached timidly and lowered herself. A thin figure gradually emerged from the dark cocoon of the bunk.

  “And who might that—” Frank stopped. “Why Floss!”

  “Hello, Frank,” she said softly.

  Both hesitated, seeking out their younger selves in the other’s face.

  “You were always the prettiest girl in school.” Frank produced a crooked grin. “Still are.”

  Florence leaned forward. “I’m sorry to see you in such a state.”

  He quickly covered his mouth. “Lost most of them when I got gassed. Did you know the Huns gassed me?”

  “No. But I meant sorry you are in jail and all.”

  Frank shrugged. “Roland? He deserved it. Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes!”

  Florence said to Temple, “I’d like to stay a bit, if that’s all right?”

  The sheriff studied the set of her mouth. “I’m right downstairs if you need me.”

  The lukewarm breeze from the fan lifted the damp hair from her forehead. She became aware of an inner stillness. As if all her twitching anxieties, her shame and denigration, had sunk, silt-like, beneath a vast lake. Maybe it was because Frank, even in his deluded state, had sought to punish the man who had used and discarded her. No other man, certainly not her husband, had tried to right that ancient wrong. Or perhaps the tight fists of her nerve fibers had opened because she now beheld someone truly more pitiful than herself. Someone to
whom she had something to offer—comfort, friendship.

  She turned to Frank. “You were in the war?”

  “Saw action in Argonne Forest.”

  “Tell me. I want to hear it all.”

  * * *

  The polls closed at six sharp. As was the tradition, most of the farm folk who had come in to vote decamped to the courthouse lawn for box suppers, to gab and eat for the couple of hours it took to count the ballots. Then they’d come back into the courthouse foyer to hear the results. Townsfolk made their way to the Maid-Rite or the Idle Hour with similar intentions. Wagering in general was not acceptable in churchgoing circles, and so did not figure in on the courthouse lawn or at the Maid-Rite counter. However, it was a different story at the Idle Hour where bets were placed with the odds favoring Doll.

  * * *

  Stomach twisted with worry, Etha could hardly think about cooking supper and she supposed Temple wouldn’t be hungry anyway. Still, she decided to prepare some chicken for frying, figuring if it didn’t get eaten that night, it would be good tomorrow. As she dipped the second drumstick in buttermilk, she heard the shouts of two men reverberating up the staircase and getting louder. One was Temple. Etha opened the door and saw a red-faced John Hodge puffing up the stairs toward her. Her husband was right behind.

  Hodge was yelling, “I demand to see my wife!”

  Temple’s face was stern. “If Mrs. Hodge wants to see you, that is her decision.”

  “Of course she wants to see me, I’m her husband!”

  The two men reached the top of the stairs and were now facing off in front of the cellblock door.

  Temple grabbed Hodge’s arm. “Stop right there.”

  Hodge whipped around. “You’ve no right.”

  Temple brought his face close to the man. “You’ve no right to beat the daylights out of her.”

  Hodge pulled back but Temple didn’t loosen his grip.

  “I promise you, no matter if I am sheriff or not, I will see that you are locked up if you ever touch her again.”

  “How dare you talk to me like that when you’ve left her alone with a murderer?” Hodge was still blustering, but Temple’s accusation seemed to have temporarily taken the wind out of him. He glanced at the heavy steel door and turned back, disgust crossing his face. “I’m not standing here begging like a dog for that poor flop of a woman. Tell her I’m going for a drink and will be home in an hour. And I expect dinner on the table.”