Chiefs

by Stuart Woods

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Other Books By

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  Book Two

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  Book Three

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Copyright

  BOOKS BY STUART WOODS

  BLUE WATER, GREEN SKIPPER

  A ROMANTIC’S GUIDE TO THE COUNTRY INNS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND ChiefS

  Chiefs

  By Stuart Woods

  This book is for Judy Tabb

  PROLOGUE

  THE BOY ran for his life.

  He poured forth an effort born of fear and a wild sense of freedom regained. At first he ran entirely unconscious of his injuries, then, tearing recklessly through the dark woods, he struck a tree and went down. He lay stunned for a time he could not account for, and when he was finally able to struggle to his feet, the full force of the pain and the winter air swept over him and made him stagger.

  He heard the dog and the man crashing through the brush, and he ran again, wildly, blindly, the undergrowth tearing at his naked body. Abruptly, he broke through onto a road, hesitated, decided against it, and threw himself across the open area into the brush on the other side. He was momentarily in thick, thorny blackberry bushes, then found himself on a narrow path.

  He was failing now, sucking in air with a loud, rasping noise, his muscles aching, legs wobbling. He heard the man fighting through the blackberry bushes, cursing, and he flung himself forward with his remaining strength. He knew he would rather run until he died than go back to that house. He willed his heart to burst, God to take him, but his exhausted body still carried him unsteadily forward.

  The path turned sharply to the right, but he lunged ahead into thick brush again, hoping for safety. Then he saw stars ahead through the bushes and thought he might break through into a field, while his tormentor followed the path. He gathered his last strength and plunged forward and down, hoping to lie on the ground undetected.

  There was no ground; the earth fell away beneath him. He believed himself to be falling into a ditch, but his ditch had no bottom. He fell, twisting in the air, trying desperately to get his feet under him, while the hard earth waited far below him.

  BOOK ONE

  Will Henry Lee

  1

  HUGH HOLMES, president of the Bank of Delano and chairman of the Delano City Council, was a man who, more than most, thought about the present in terms of the future. It was one of his great strengths, both as a banker and as a politician, but on a cold morning in December of 1919, this faculty failed him. It would be many years before he would have some grasp of how that morning changed his future, changed everything.

  Holmes prided himself on being able to look at a man as he entered the bank and predict what the man would want. On this morning he watched through the sliding window in the wall between his office and the main room of the bank as Will Henry Lee entered, and Holmes indulged himself in a bit of his usual prognostication. Will Henry Lee was a cotton farmer; his standing mortgage was due the first of the year, and he would want it renewed. It took Holmes only seconds to review the circumstances: Will Henry’s debt amounted to about thirty-five percent of the value of his farm, in reasonably good times. That was a lower level of debt than was borne by most farmers, and Will Henry had paid his interest on time and made two payments against principal. But Holmes knew, the boll weevil situation being what it was, that Will Henry might fail with his next crop. Still, he respected the man, liked him, even; he decided to renew. He leaned forward at his desk and pretended to read a letter, confident that he had anticipated the content of their approaching discussion and had worked out an appropriate response. Will Henry knocked at the open door, sat down, exchanged pleasantries, and asked Holmes for the job of Chief of police.

  Holmes was stupefied, partly by the completely unexpected request, and partly by the total collapse of his early-warning system. His mind was not accustomed to such surprises, and it lurched about through a long moment of silence as it struggled to assimilate this outrageous input and get it into an orderly framework of thought. The effort was a failure. To give himself more time, he clambered onto familiar ground. “Well, now, Will Henry, you’re not overextended on your farm. We could probably see you through another crop, even with things the way they are with cotton.” To his credit, Holmes maintained his banker’s face throughout the exchange.

  “Hugh, if I extended I’d have to have more capital, which means getting deeper in debt to the bank. If I did that for another crop things wouldn’t get any better; they’d just get worse. Better farmers than me are going under. I think you’d be doing the best thing for the bank if you took the farm now and sold it. I might get something after the note was paid. To tell you the truth, Hoss Spence offered me nearly about exactly what I owe for the place just last week, but I think I’d rather let the bank take it than let a man buy me out for a third of what the place is worth. Hoss’s peaches and cattle are going to be on a lot of land where cotton used to grow, and I’d just as soon my land didn’t get included in that.” He stopped talking, looked at Holmes, and waited.

  Holmes’s brain was beginning to thrash through the gears now. Item one: Will Henry was right about the bank’s position; taking the farm now would give a better chance of coming through the transaction profitably; things could truly be a whole lot worse next year. Item two: Delano had long been big enough for a Chief, but the town wasn’t big enough to attract an experienced officer from another force. Holmes, as chairman of the city council, had been looking hard for months for a suitable man. The Chief at La Grange had put it to him bluntly. “Mr. Holmes, I’ll tell you the truth; right now Delano couldn’t even attract a decent patrolman from a larger town, let alone a sergeant. My advice to you would be to find a local man that people respect, and give him the job. In a town like Delano he can do about ninety-nine percent of what he’s got to do with just plain old respect.”

  Holmes looked across the desk at Will Henry. He respected the man, and he was a harsher judge than most. Will Henry was well known in the community, even though he and his father before him had been country men. Maybe his always having lived in the country would mix a little distance with familiarity and give r
espect a sharper edge. Holmes resisted an urge to pump Will Henry’s hand and pin a badge on him right on the spot. He had to preserve a reputation for caution, and, anyway, he couldn’t make the decision entirely on his own.

  “Well, I’ll have to bring this up at the next council meeting.” He paused. “Have you talked to Carrie about this, Will Henry?”

  “No, I wanted to talk to you first. Carrie’s all ready to worry us through another crop, but I think it’d be a kind of relief to her to have done with the farm. We’d have to find a house in town, and I think she’d like fixing that up. She’s really always been a town girl at heart, I think. What’s your opinion of my chances for this job, Hugh?”

  Holmes cleared his throat. “Well, I guess you could say it’s within the realm of possibility. I’ll see that the council gives the proposal serious consideration.” The two men rose and shook hands. “I might be able to help you with finding a house in town, too.” He already had something in mind. The banker’s brain was in high gear now.

  But Holmes’s morning was just beginning. When he opened his office door to show out Will Henry, he found someone else waiting to see him. Francis Funderburke, better known in Delano and Meriwether County as Foxy, because of an uncommon resemblance to that animal, stood waiting at a not-too-loose parade rest. The stubby, wiry little man, dressed in stiffly starched and tightly tailored khaki, with trousers tucked into lumberjack boot tops and a flat-brimmed, pointy-peaked army campaign hat raked at a regimental angle over his bright, close-set eyes, looked for all the world like a demented forest ranger or an ancient Boy Scout. “Foxy, how you doing?” asked Will Henry.

  Foxy directed a narrow glance at the farmer. “Lee.” He turned back to the banker. “Holmes, like to speak to you.” Foxy addressed all men by their unadorned surnames and usually in the manner of a high-ranking officer speaking to a recruit. To females he offered a grudging “Miz” before the name, regardless of age or marital status. At meetings with Foxy, Holmes always felt as if he had been summoned rather than sought out, and for some infraction of an unnamed set of rules. He invited Funderburke into his office, with the distinct premonition that his morning was again about to come unglued. He was not wrong.

  Before either man had reached a chair, Foxy said, “Holmes, I want that job.”

  “What job is that, Foxy?” Holmes asked, with a sickly foreknowledge of exactly what job Foxy meant.

  “Chief of police, of course,” said Foxy, his tone implying that Holmes had been attempting to withhold information from him. “I know you’ve been looking hard for an experienced man, and you can’t find one. Well, that means you’re going to have to hire a civilian. With my military experience and knowledge of firearms I’m the man for the job.” Foxy had served briefly in France as a second lieutenant in the supply corps. He had been sent home when a wagon had overturned, landing on his foot. The injury had got him a medical discharge. In Foxy’s mind, and in his telling, the injury was a combat wound.

  Holmes began to marshal his faculties once more. “I don’t see the connection.”

  “I’ve been trained. I know how to lead men.”

  “Well, now, Foxy, a Delano Chief of police isn’t going to have any men to lead. He’s going to be a one-man department.”

  “It’ll grow. Besides, this town is going to need discipline.”

  “Discipline,” Holmes repeated tonelessly.

  “People have got to respect the Chief.”

  There was that word again: respect. Holmes admitted to himself that Foxy did command respect of a kind in the community. His father had left him a small block of early Coca-Cola stock that Holmes estimated must be worth a considerable sum, judging from the size of the dividend checks Foxy deposited in his bank account. Wealth brought a kind of respect. Foxy had served his country in a war, and people respected him for that, although they were hazy about the details. And Foxy was a super-American. In a burst of patriotic fervor he had built a log cabin with his own hands, and he lived in it. True, the improvements added by a series of builders had since made it arguably the most expensive log cabin in American history, but Foxy could still, with some justification, say he had built it with his own hands.

  So people respected Foxy. But they also thought he was crazy. Foxy was certainly an eccentric, but there was considerable tolerance for eccentricity among the people of small towns like Delano, Georgia. Discipline? Foxy was congenitally incapable of requesting anything. Holmes had a brief vision of people driving their automobiles on the sidewalks and shooting each other just to spite Foxy.

  “You know, Foxy, I’m not authorized to hire anybody. I’ve only been conducting a search on behalf of the council. I’d suggest you make application in writing to the council, and I’ll see that it gets the council’s full attention.” Holmes would certainly do that.

  This clearly seemed an orderly and efficient procedure to Foxy. “You’ll have my application today, Holmes,” he barked, and with a curt farewell Foxy Funderburke marched out of the office and the bank.

  Holmes took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. And people wondered why he was almost entirely gray at forty-five.

  One of the tellers stuck his head in and said, “A man wants to open an account.” At the thought of a familiar request Holmes revived. He greeted the new customer warmly. He could, in fact, have kissed him.

  2

  THE REGULAR weekly meeting of the City Council of Delano was duly convened at 4:00 P.M. on December 31, 1919. Present were Hugh Holmes, banker; J. P. Johnson, Coca-Cola bottler; Frank Mudter, Doctor of Medicine; Ben Birdsong, druggist; Willis Greer, city manager and honorary member; Lamar Maddox, undertaker (or funeral director, as he preferred to be called); and Idus Bray, peach farmer, landlord, money lender, and co-proprietor of the Delano Telephone Company.

  The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved, the treasurer’s report (Ben Birdsong’s), showing an estimated end-of-year surplus of $6,300, was read and approved, and a motion for an extension of the sewerage system to Lower Fourth Street was made, seconded, and approved by all but Idus Bray, who changed his vote when it was pointed out to him that new sewerage extensions meant new houses, which would require new telephones. Hugh Holmes, as acting chairman, asked for further business. There was none. Holmes cleared his throat and assumed a look which the others had come to learn meant there was serious business afoot which would likely be settled to Holmes’s satisfaction before the meeting was done.

  “The council has two applications for the position of Chief of police.” There was a loud sigh from Idus Bray. Several chairs creaked as their occupants assumed new positions to indicate their willingness to settle down and resolve a matter which has been hanging over the council for nearly a year.

  Idus Bray said wearily, “You going to start that again, Hugh? This county has a sheriff. A good sheriff.”

  J. P. Johnson cut in. “Skeeter Willis lives in Greenville. That’s twenty-two miles up the road, and you know as well as I do that Skeeter won’t get out of bed for anything less than a shooting.”

  Holmes cut the discussion short. “Gentlemen, this council passed a resolution eight months ago that a Chief of police would be procured for Delano. Unless somebody wants to introduce a motion repealing that resolution, this discussion is out of order. The matter now before the council is who the man will be. As I said before, the council has two applications.”

  “Experienced men?” asked Ben Birdsong.

  Holmes’s reply had an air of finality about it. “During the past eight months I have talked either in person or on the telephone with twenty-one Chiefs all over the state and in Alabama, asking for recommendations. A total of fourteen men were mentioned. Six of them were interested enough to come and talk with me about it. None of the six wanted the job. I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to attract an experienced police officer of good character to Delano without paying approximately fifty percent more money than we can afford. The best advice I ha
d was from the Chief at La Grange. In his opinion, the kinds of problems a Chief would face in Delano could be handled by a local man of good standing, with the support of the council and the help of the sheriff and state patrol when needed. I concur in that opinion.”

  Frank Mudter spoke up. “Our problems here are traffic and petty crimes, with a little peacekeeping thrown in down in Braytown. Anybody with a good head on his shoulders and a fairly strong arm ought to be able to handle the job.” There were murmurs of agreement from Birdsong and Maddox.

  “Who are your applicants?” asked Idus Bray.

  Holmes took a deep breath. “The first application I’d like for the council to consider is that of Francis Funderburke.” There was a moment of silence, followed by a shout of laughter. Holmes kept a straight face. “Foxy feels that his military experience and his proficiency with firearms qualify him for the job.”

  Ben Birdsong smiled. “Well, if we want anybody shot, I guess Foxy’s our man.”

  “More likely, somebody’d shoot him,” said Idus Bray.

  Holmes persisted. “I told Foxy I’d see that the council would give his application serious consideration.”

  “Consider it considered,” said Ben Birdsong. There was a chorus of agreement.

  “I move that the application of Francis Funderburke for the position of Chief of police be put to a vote,” said Holmes.

  “Seconded,” said Dr. Mudter.

  “All those in favor of acceptance of this application, signify by saying, ‘Aye.’ “ Silence. “All those opposed to the acceptance of this application, say, “Nay.’ “ There was a volley of nays. “I also vote nay, so the decision of the council is unanimous in rejecting the application of Francis Funderburke.” Holmes set aside Foxy’s letter and picked up another sheet of paper. “The next applicant for the position of Chief of police is William Henry Lee.” There was a thoughtful silence.

  “Will Henry?”

  “Weevil get him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he’s as honest as the day is long, like his daddy.”

  “He’s a good persuader. At deacons’ meetings he seems to be able to put a point without getting folks mad at him.”