Early's Fall

by Jerry Peterson

  She went after the third finger, massaging, straightening. “The colonel. You think he killed Judith?”

  “Trooper Dan does, I don't.” Early's eyes went large in response to the pain. “Heck of it is. . . . there's no proof either way.”

  Thelma went after the fourth finger, then his thumb and the palm of his hand, circles of sweat showing through Early's shirt beneath his armpits.

  “You did good, Jimmy,” she said as she spread on the cleaning fluid Grafton had given her. Thelma watched the fluid lift the salve out of the cracks and crevices of the burns, then dabbed the gunk away. She reached for the silver oxide, to reapply the ointment meant to hold down infection. “Wonder what your hands will look like when the scabbing comes off?”

  “Probably not much different. Thel, these are rancher's hands. They been beat up for years. . . . What did you do while I was out?”

  “Read Judith's diaries.”

  “And?”

  She giggled. “I blushed.”

  “You? That's got my interest.”

  Thelma rubbed the silver oxide in but with a lighter, gentler touch.

  “Feels good,” Early said.

  “Well, you earned a little care.”

  “And what was this embarrassing stuff you read?”

  Thelma leaned back. “How can I put this?”

  “Any way you want.”

  “Jimmy, you're not making this easy.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Um, sex . . .”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Quit grinning at me.”

  “All right.”

  “Jimmy, sex was a forbidden subject in my family, at least with my mother. My grandmother—my dad's mother—she took me aside after you proposed and did she give me an education. She and Granddad must have been wild in bed.”

  Early's eyebrows rose to his hairline, and Thelma's cheeks tinged pink.

  “Look,” she said, “sex was awfully important to Judith.”

  “With the colonel?”

  “Yes, and with others, particularly back in college.”

  “And with Bill?”

  “That's a puzzle. She didn't write about it. . . . Jimmy, it's late. I have to go to bed.”

  Early held up his hands. “With these, hon, I can't sleep. Maybe I'll read some.” He pulled over one of Judith Smitts's diaries.

  First light eased through the Earlys' kitchen window. It crept across the tabletop like a sleep-deprived beetle until it exposed a hand turned upright and then a head, down on crossed wrists . . . shoulders, still in yesterday's shirt, in a slow, rhythmic rise and fall. A fly, awakened from somewhere, buzzed out into the warmth. It settled on the tip of one of Early's fingers.

  He responded to the trifling touch with a small movement that upset the fly. It lifted away, spiraled up in the sunlight, and, with a dive, buzzed into Early's ear.

  He scrunched his shoulder.

  Again the fly flew off. It bumped against the window screen in an effort to depart for the freedom of the outdoors. When that failed, the fly turned back. It rose, circled the room, then came once more to Early and put down in his hair. The insect's rustling about brought out a blackened hand with curved fingers. The hand and the wrist that supported it brushed around until the wrist rolled across the fly tangled in Early's hair, crushing it.

  The business brought Early out of a fitful slumber. He rubbed the back of his hand at his stubble-covered cheeks as he yawned and stretched. And then it hit him . . . the pressure. A wrist went to his belt as he pushed himself up. He stumbled across the room and out, off the porch and down the path to the outhouse. Early hauled at the door latch until it gave way. He forced himself inside. Then he struggled with his jeans and his army-surplus shorts, cursing his hands for their uselessness.

  Early got his jeans open and, using the backs of his hands, pushed them and his shorts down to his knees. He crouched over the one hole, relief coming in a flood of released water and waste.

  When emptied, Early studied his hands and the Montgomery Ward catalog that hung on a nail to the side of the door. How the hell am I gonna wipe myself?

  “Thelma!”

  Early, his hands in new bandages, mashed blackberries into his oatmeal as a vehicle rumbled into his driveway. Thelma, at the kitchen window, sipping from a cup of coffee, glanced outside.

  “It's Hutch,” she said. “Anything supposed to be going on today?”

  “Not that I know of.” Early shoveled in a spoonful of wellberried cereal.

  The hard sound of boot heels came across the back-porch floor and a call of, “Chief, you up for the day?”

  “Better let him in,” Early said, waving his spoon at the door.

  Thelma opened the screen. “Hutch,” she said.

  “Howdy, Thel. It's business.” The deputy raked his Big-brim Alpine Stetson from his head and ducked as he came inside.

  Early went back to work, mushing in his oatmeal. “Thel's fixing to fry some eggs and bacon. Have a bite?”

  “Can't,” Tolliver said. “It's bad.”

  “Better sit and tell me.”

  “Just as soon stand.”

  “What is it, robbery? Bar fight in Aggieville spill out beyond the city limits?”

  “No, it's Pop Irving.”

  Early put down his spoon.

  “Last night . . . he was hit by a train. He's dead.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.” Early pulled his napkin away from the front of his shirt. He threw it aside.

  “From what the railroad people found, they think it's Pop. They can't be sure. Want you to come out.”

  “You call Ella?”

  “She don't like me any more than she likes you. She wouldn't go.”

  “I don't suppose. Where?”

  Tolliver's fingers twisted at a cuff button. “Ten east, out by Zeandale.”

  “That's Wabaunsee County. How about Irene?”

  “Talked to her. She'll meet us there. Asked that we bring our coroner because she's without one at the moment.”

  “You call Grafton?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, he said some things he shouldn't. He was gonna go fishing up on the Blue, but said he'll meet us at the station. The U-P's got a speeder waiting for us.”

  Early looked over to his wife. What he saw did not warm his soul. “I gotta go,” he said and pushed away from the table.

  “Jimmy, you don't have to. Hutch can do this for you.”

  “Pop was a friend. I gotta go.” From the peg by the door he lifted his cattleman's hat and settled it over his wild thatch as he pushed on outside. Tolliver came along behind. They split at the rear of the deputy's Jeep, Early going to the passenger side.

  “She gonna be mad at you?”Tolliver asked after he got behind the steering wheel.

  Early gazed away, deciding whether he should answer.

  The deputy backed the Jeep around into the side yard, then scratched dirt as he bucked the machine out of the driveway and onto the county road. “Kinda glad I ain't married,” Tolliver said as he shifted up through the gears.

  “Come a time you'll change your mind.”

  “Not likely.”

  “Seems I said something like that, then I met Thelma. It became a stampede to the church. . . . What details you got?”

  “The engineer of the Six-Ten westbound saw the shards of a body along the tracks. Stopped his train and walked back to confirm it. Figured it had to be one of the night expresses that hit him.”

  “And he could tell it was Pop?”

  “No. But he found the old railroad cap and a wallet with a scrap of paper with your name on it, even a clipping about you investigating the Smitts's murder.”

  “That's not much.”

  “It was the shoes. The engineer stopped at the station to report what he'd found. The stationmaster—he had the engineer call me, and when he described the shoes, those old wingtips, not what you'd expect a bum to wear. . . . It's just got to be.”

&
nbsp; Early settled into silence, his gaze taking in the sweep of cornfields and hay fields as the Jeep rocked along. He waved a bandaged hand at a baler crew turning a windrowed corner just beyond the borrow ditch.

  “What ya thinkin'?” Tolliver asked as he throttled back after he topped the hill on the west side of Manhattan.

  “How mean life is.”

  “Seems to be in spells.”

  “This sure is one of them.”

  Tolliver cut off on a side street that carried the lawmen toward the Union-Pacific depot, a rococo affair kept painted and polished by a local crew proud to have the station in their town, the youngest employee a quarter-century with the line.

  A big man, who could pass for Santa Claus were it not for his navy trousers and white shirt, the sleeves rolled above his elbows, paced the platform as Tolliver herded his Jeep into the U-P's graveled lot. He hustled over before the deputy could kill the engine.

  “Hutch, sheriff,” Fritz Hollister said, his hand out, “hate to rush you, but you got twenty minutes to get out there and get my section car off the tracks before an eastbound comes through.”

  “You could slow him down,” Early said as he worked himself off the passenger seat.

  “Can't. He don't stop here. He's hot—got the highball.”

  “Why's that?”

  “Hauling Colorado peaches in those new reefer cars to the East.”

  Tolliver took his gun belt and holster from beneath his seat. He strapped on his sidearm, a Forty-Five, a twin to the one Early occasionally carried.

  “Expecting trouble from a dead man?” Early asked.

  “Snakes. That's snake country out by Zeandale.”

  “Cactus, he's right about that,” Hollister said. “How them hands of yours?”

  “Won't be picking any berries for awhile.”

  The three hurried across the platform to where a one-cylinder speeder sat idling on the mainline, a trackman in the driver's seat, gabbing with Doc Grafton and a second man, both sitting on the center section, over the motor, a trailer behind the speeder piled with baskets and a stretcher.

  “You won't find the body intact,” Hollister said. “Be a mess to pick up, and you may not find all of him. No tellin' what the coyotes got.”

  Early settled on the seat to the right of the driver. “You sure are a cheery fella, Fritz.”

  “Just warning you. Train/people collisions are bad. The man always loses.”

  Tolliver sat forward of Early, his back against the back of Randy Brown, the undertaker's son. “Randy,” Tolliver said in greeting.

  “Hutch.”

  “See you drew the short straw.”

  “Dad's got a funeral up at May Day.”

  Tolliver glanced over his shoulder. “Doc.”

  “I'm not talking to you.”

  “That'll save my ears.”

  The driver, with a three-day growth of beard, gazed around at his collection of passengers. “If you boys are settled in,” he said, “we best be going.”

  He pushed the shift lever of the open section car into first gear and let out on the hand clutch. The driver rammed the throttle forward, leaning over to Early as he did. “This rig's not much more than a four-wheel motorcycle, only ain't got the power . . . five itty-bitty horses straining for all they're worth when we got six fat boys aboard.”

  “Only five today.”

  The driver, Heck Millard, came back on the throttle. He shifted the speeder into second gear and slammed the throttle full forward again. Grafton pulled down on the windward side of his fedora, to keep the breeze from blowing it away.

  “How fast?” Early asked.

  “Thirty, thirty-two,” Millard said, his driving hand resting on the brake handle. “Be out there in, oh, twenty minutes.”

  “Isn't that when the express is coming through?”

  “Yup. Sec we get there, we gotta horse this car and the trailer off the tracks or that Baldwin Pacific's gonna blast them off.”

  “And if we're a little late getting there?”

  “That would make for a bad day.”

  Early leaned forward to the coroner. He nudged him.

  “Yeah?” Grafton asked, twisting around.

  “You as grumpy as Hutch says?”

  “Wouldn't you be if you got robbed of a fishing trip? Had my tasters set on a couple pan-fried bass for lunch. Now I'll be damn lucky if I get a baloney sandwich. How're your hands?”

  “Some better.”

  The timbre of the rhythmic clicking of the speeder's wheels over the rail joints changed as the little machine rolled out onto a bridge that took it across the meandering Kaw River, its water moving with no hurry under a cloudless, crystalline blue Kansas sky.

  “Maybe you could throw a line in the Kaw along about where we'll be stopping,” Early said to the coroner.

  “Nope, nothing but damn mud cats in that section. Understand you knew this Mister Irving.”

  “Pop and I hoboed across the country before the war.”

  “Sorry. It's no good losing a friend, particularly this way.”

  “The old man did like trains.”

  The speeder rattled across a second bridge.

  Millard leaned in. “Mile or two now. Engineer said he put a flag beside the tracks to mark the place. . . . Yeah, that's it ahead.”

  He pulled back on the throttle. Before he could reach for the clutch and the brake, a steam whistle moaned in the distance. Millard glanced back. “Oh shit, there he is.”

  He pulled hard on the brake, and steel screeched on steel as the speeder and trailer slid along the rails to a stop. Millard bailed out. He unhitched the trailer and hollered to the others, “Doc, Randy, grab the handles in the front. Hutch, back here with me! Let's lift this beast off the tracks. On three now. . . . One, two, three.”

  The quartet lifted, straining. They side-shuffled with their burden and set the speeder down when they were well clear of the tracks. The men ran back to the trailer and grabbed the sides of the flat bed. “Now!” Millard hollered.

  Up, side-shuffle, side-shuffle, side-shuffle—Brown tripped on a rail—and down.

  The express roared by. The wind blast whipped Millard's cap and Grafton's hat away while Early, Tolliver, and Brown scrambled to hold onto theirs.

  “Cutting it a bit close, weren't you, Heck?” Grafton asked.

  “Naw.” The trackman walked off into the weeds, after his cap. He stopped. “Oh gawd, here's part of him.”

  Grafton and Brown each picked up a basket from the trailer. “Whatcha got?” Grafton asked.

  “A leg.”

  Grafton, Brown, and Early moved into the bluestem and burdock, Early to kneel beside the bloody limb and torn trouser leg, a shoe still on the foot. “It's Pop,” he said. “That's one of the shoes he was wearing. He did love those wingtips.”

  Brown lifted the limb in his basket, twisting away as he did.

  “You all right?” Early asked.

  “I hate these accidents,” the undertaker's son said. “Much rather pick up a body that died in bed.”

  “They do look better.”

  Three shots sounded, and Early snapped around.

  Tolliver stood on the speeder's engine compartment, aiming his Forty-Five off into a hay field. “Coyotes,” he said. “A mama and three pups lunching on something. Got the mama.”

  “The pups?”

  “They ran. Guess I better get out there and see what they had.” Tolliver scrambled off the speeder. He strode down into the ditch and hopped the fence into the field. Twenty yards out, he called back, “Doc, better bring yer basket.”

  “What you got?” Early asked.

  “You don't need to see this. It's a head . . . what's left of it, and a shoulder.”

  Early sat back on the gravel ballast. Grafton touched his arm as he passed. “Sorry, Cactus.”

  Early watched them—his friends—work like rag pickers, parting the weeds with the toe of their shoes or a stick, crouching down, putting something in a ba
sket, and moving on. A stubby speeder, half the length of the one that had come out from Manhattan, putted into Early's view from the east, coming out from Wamego, five miles over the horizon. The two-person vehicle rolled to a stop.

  “Jimmy,” the hefty woman in the passenger seat said.

  “Irene.”

  She held out a pack of White Owl blunts.

  “No thanks,” Early said. “You didn't get run over by the east-bound?”

  “Nope. Old Talley here had us off on a siding before she came by.” Irene Bolton took a short cigar from the pack. She stuck it between her lips, then raked a match across the metal housing that covered the speeder's motor. The Wabaunsee County sheriff wore tans, like Early, but not a cattleman's hat, instead a battered fedora. And like Early, she did not carry a sidearm. Irene Bolton favored a night stick, and one hung from her belt.

  “He who Hutch thought he was?” she asked, blowing smoke from the side of her mouth, away from Early.

  “Yup.”

  “So he's one of yours.”

  “Guess you can say that.”

  Bolton took another drag on her cigar. “You want the investigation?”

  “Irene, it's your county.” Early pitched a stone into the weeds.

  “Well, I'm gonna call it an accident and be done with it.”

  “Don't know what else it would be way the hell out here. Pop was always riding the rails or walking along a road bed if it was a long wait between trains.”

  “But at night?”

  “Coulda been drunk.”

  “I'll sign off on your coroner's paperwork then, keep it legal.”

  A blast came from beyond the tracks, near a concrete culvert that let a creek flow from north of the tracks to the south, to join the Kaw at the base of the Flint Hills a mile on. The sheriffs and the driver of the second speeder twisted around.

  Tolliver held up a snake. He flung it away, into the hay field. “Rattler,” he called out to his audience, all staring at him.

  “Hutch! Get outta there in case he's got family.”

  “Right, chief. . . . Wait a minute.” Tolliver ducked from sight. When he came up, he held a bundle high. “Bedroll.”

  “Bring it up here!”

  Early pushed himself to his feet as Tolliver, a distance away, hop-stepped through the weeds and up the side of the grade. When he got to the tracks, he shambled on, a rolled-up calico blanket over his shoulder.