Early's Fall

by Jerry Peterson

  Galt again thumbed at Early.

  Early took a notepad from his shirt pocket. He paged into it and studied an item. “How well do you know Bill?” he asked.

  “Pretty well, I guess,” Gilson said. “He calls on me about once a month to discuss freight rates and schedule railcars.”

  “Like the cars you need for that wheat shipment to Amsterdam?”

  “Well, I only need them to get the wheat to a river terminal at Saint Louis, but, yes, I arranged for those cars back in July. I've had them on my siding for a week.”

  Early glanced again at his notepad. “Don't you two go back to college? . . . At Fort Hays Normal?”

  “Yeesss. You been doing some checking?”

  “Made a few calls. You were in the same fraternity together, weren't you?”

  “Phi Delta Gamma, uh-huhh.”

  “That last year, he was the president and you were his vice president, right?” Early peered at Gilson when he didn't answer. “You two pretty tight?”

  “I wouldn't say that.”

  Galt came forward in his chair. He thumped Gilson's desk. “Gilly, let's get down to where the rubber meets the road. Nobody but you saw that man here that day. How do you explain it?”

  Gilson turned away. When he glanced back, his mouth had drawn into a tight line. “Ronnie, we talked outside. After a bit, we got in that junker car of mine, and I drove Bill out into the wheat country, and we watched the harvest.”

  “Talk to anybody?”

  “We just watched from the road, Ronnie.”

  “Then after some time, you brought him back an' put him on the train?”

  “You got it right.”

  “Gilly, that doesn't work for Jimmy. He thinks yer lyin'. Frankly, I do too.” Galt pulled a tobacco pouch from his back pocket. He grubbed out a wad, stuffed it in his mouth, and settled back to chew.

  Early turned a page in his pad. He studied it before he looked up. “Mister Gilson, if somebody from your old fraternity called and asked for your help, you'd help him, right?”

  “Sure, if I could.”

  “And if Bill called?”

  “I wouldn't lie for him.”

  “So you'll tell a grand jury what you told us if you're subpoenaed over to Manhattan.”

  “You're going to charge Bill?”

  “That's not up to me. The county attorney wants to present the case to the grand jury. They'll decide whether to indict.”

  Galt hauled Gilson's wastebasket over. He spit a stream of tobacco juice into it. “You lie to a grand jury, Gilly, they gonna put your butt in jail.”

  Gilson resumed prodding at papers.

  Eisenhower cleared his throat. “How's your card game, Gilly?”

  Startled, Gilson turned to the police chief. “Fair,” he said.

  “Does your wife know you lost twelve-large the other night, that you had to take out a second on your house to pay the debt?”

  Gilson's pencil slipped.

  “The banker and I sing in the church choir, Gilly. Gossip like that's just too sweet for old Carl not to let it slip.”

  “You'd tell Helen?”

  “Might,” Eisenhower said.

  “What's it going to take to keep this from her?”

  “A little truth telling.”

  Gilson threw his pencil across the office. He swiveled away from the others, to the window that looked out on the truck scales and the hopper beyond where someone's red Reo was dumping a load of grain. “Shit.”

  He inched his swivel chair back around. The muscles of his face sagged and, to Early, the man looked to have aged a decade.

  “All right,” Gilson said, “Bill called me that afternoon.”

  “Where was he?” Early asked as he scribbled in his pad.

  “I don't know.”

  “What'd he say?”

  “That someone had killed his wife and, if anyone asked, would I say he was with me that day. Well, he was scheduled to be in, but he missed his appointment.”

  “What did you think?”

  Gilson hefted his Orange Crush. He took a long, slow drink before he set the bottle aside. “I didn't know what to think, so I asked him, ‘Bill, did you do it?’ “

  “And?”

  “He said no. Said he'd spent the night and most of the day with a woman he'd been seeing, and he didn't want to get her involved.”

  Early glanced up. “Who's this woman?”

  “My God, man, you think I'm gonna ask a frat brother who he's running around with behind his wife's back? There are some questions a friend doesn't ask a friend, and that's one of them.”

  Early closed the cover on his notepad. He slipped it back in his pocket. “I thank you for your honesty, Mister Gilson, no matter how delayed you were in finding it.”

  “Your county attorney going to call me before your grand jury?”

  “I wouldn't think so. You don't have anything particularly useful to tell them.”

  Outside, the three lawmen stood together, Galt with his elbow on the roof of his cruiser. “Would you believe it? Mister Chamber of Commerce a gambler?”

  “You'd have more respect for him if he'd won,” Eisenhower said, “but he lost big.”

  “And you knew about it.”

  “Hey, I know where the games are, even play a hand now and then.”

  “But never with Gilly?”

  “Naw, his bunch bets more than I can afford. I play with Leroy and a couple others at the back of the barbershop. Ronnie, you ought to sit in some night.”

  “If I want to gamble, I'll take up ranchin'.” Galt puckered and spit a stream of tobacco juice to the side.

  Early reached for the police chief's hand. “For one who wasn't going to say anything, you were a mighty big help and I thank you.”

  “Thank Ronnie. He invited me. Now if you'll excuse me, I got to go roll around town, let people know I'm on the job.” Eisenhower went to his truck and left.

  Galt and Early got into the cruiser, Galt spitting his gob of well-chewed tobacco out the window. “So now you can arrest the husband,” he said as he twisted the key in the ignition.

  “If your Mister Gilson's right, Bill's still got an alibi.”

  “Cattin' around with some woman? You believe that?” Galt spun his cruiser's tires, throwing up dust and gravel as he whipped the car around and headed back for the courthouse.

  “I believed this,” Early said.

  “No, you didn't, or you wouldn'tna come over.” Galt turned his cruiser onto the paved main street.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Early said.

  “Sure.”

  “Did you know the general's mother?”

  “Ida? Sure. Grand old gal. Died a couple years back in that little house of hers. You never saw so many big names in town as when all her sons come home for the funeral.”

  “Anybody living there now?”

  Galt massaged his whiskers as he drove. “Nope. Dwight and Milton made the decision for the brothers not to sell the place. They locked the front and back doors an' left it pretty much the way it was. Talk is they're going to set up a foundation to look after the property. You ever been over there? It's two blocks down and to your left,” Galt said as he guided his cruiser over to the curb. He stopped behind Early's Jeep.

  Early slid out the passenger door. When he closed it, he looked to Galt coming around the front of the cruiser. “Think anybody'd mind if I was to go over and look? I got a lot of respect for the general. Be nice to see where he grew up.”

  “Don't be surprised if the neighbors sic the police on you. They're pretty protective of the place.”

  Early grinned. “I got a leg up. I know the chief.”

  Galt clamped his arm around Early's shoulders and squeezed. “I'd go with ya, but I got a meetin'.”

  “Ronnie, I appreciate your help.”

  “Hell, if we sheriffs don't look out for one another, who's gonna? You hurry on back. Next time we'll swat flies an' tell lies.”

  Early wat
ched Galt hustle his bulk up the steps and into the courthouse. After the Dickinson sheriff disappeared, Early settled himself behind the steering wheel of his Jeep. He fired the engine, glanced over his shoulder for traffic, and U-turned back toward Southeast Fourth Street. Moments later, Early made the turn and watched the house numbers roll up as he drove along. He stopped at the end of the second block, eased through the intersection, and parked in front of a house where an elderly woman swept the porch. Early stepped over to her walk.

  “Excuse me?” he asked.

  “Yes?” The woman stopped and leaned on her broom's handle.

  “Is the Eisenhower home around here?”

  “Why do you ask, mister?”

  “I was in the war in Europe. Kinda feel I know the general a little.”

  “Dwight?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  She set her broom against the wall and came down to the edge of the porch, her hands going into the pockets of her gingham apron. “He and his brothers were a handful for Ida, but she sure raised them right, and I liked them all. That's their house, right across the street.”

  Early glanced at the two-story, white-clapboard structure, the lawn and a one-time flower garden starved for water. When he turned back, he asked, “You going to call the police on me?”

  “You going to do something you shouldn't?”

  “No, ma'am, just look around, maybe sit a spell.”

  “As long as you don't disturb anything,” the woman said. With that, she went back to her sweeping, and Early ambled across the street.

  He expected there to be a picket fence around the place, he didn't know why. There was none. The walk was graveled, as was the street in front of it, no surprise there. But it was such an ordinary house, and lonely, as if it missed the family that had once lived there. Early strolled around back. He peered through the glass of the kitchen door. Early could picture the kitchen on bath-night Saturday night, six hulking boys taking their turns in a washtub by the wood-fired stove, getting clean for Sunday church. He had done it, too, still did because his and Thelma's little place didn't have a bathroom . . . fill a copper boiler on the stove for hot water, then bucket it into the galvanized tub . . .

  He shambled around the side. There he stepped around an old-fashioned rose bush rich with bloom that perfumed the air. Early peered through a window. He rubbed the dust away from the pane with the sleeve of his shirt.

  Hmm. Back parlor . . . rocking chair, another chair, carpet on the floor—couldn't tell the colors for sure—and an upright piano, the varnish gone black. Did the general ever play it? His mother had and Early had heard stories that she had taught Milton, now president of Kansas State Agricultural College . . . well . . .

  Early stepped back. He went around front, to the porch, as unremarkable as the house. Its roof, though, provided a porch for the second floor, and Early could picture the brothers sleeping out there on hot summer nights. Using his hat for a broom, he swept the dust from the steps and sat down. After some time Early became aware that he was not alone, and cold prickled at his skin. He could see them—Tom Rodgers, Alf Debbs, the kid they called Frenchy because of the accent he faked, Carson Wills, Ned Townsend who lied to get in the Army—a big kid but only fifteen, best sniper in Early's squad and he had kept the boy's secret—Dutch Collins and Stumpy Collins, his brother, inseparable even in death. Stumpy had stepped on a land mine and Dutch was beside him . . .

  “You look like you've seen a ghost,” a voice said from the end of the porch.

  Early jerked around, his eyes blinking, trying to focus.

  “You all right?” the Abilene police chief asked.

  “I guess. Neighbors call you about me being here?”

  “No.” Eisenhower held up a bucket. “I come by every couple days to water Ida's rose bush. It was my time today. If we'd get some rain, the lawn would green up and I'd mow it.”

  “You the caretaker?”

  “Kinda. I got the right name. If you don't mind me asking, you looked like you were in another world, sheriff.”

  “Guess I was. It comes back at the strangest times.”

  CHAPTER 21

  * * *

  September 19—Monday Afternoon

  Someone Else's Other World

  Early rounded Sunset Hill on US Eighteen, coming in from Abilene. He went under the U-P's viaduct and back out into the sunlight. Early had stopped for lunch at a café in Chapman, meatloaf and fried potatoes and, as advertised on the menu board, Mom's apple pie, then drove on in silence, enjoying the time to think, but it was over now. He took down his microphone and pressed the transmitter button.

  “Alice,” he said into the mic. “Early here. I'm in town.”

  The voice of his dispatcher came back. “Go ahead, sheriff.”

  “Hutch in?”

  “Up at Randolph. Couple yahoos in a fist fight, broke up the grocery.”

  “When he comes back on the air, tell him to run down Bill Smitts. We need to talk to him.”

  “I can make some calls for you.”

  “ 'At's a good start. Anything else going on?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Gladys wants to talk to you.”

  Early drove by the cement plant. He waved to one of the drivers.

  A new voice came on, hysteria in its pitch. “Jimmywhereyoubeenthepasthour?”

  “Whoa, slow down. Chapman, getting lunch.”

  “It's Thelma.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She's at the department store, now. Mose Dickerson's keeping an eye on her 'til you can get in here.”

  “She's not at school?”

  “Jimmy, what'd I just say?”

  “All right, I'm four minutes away.” Early pitched his microphone to the side. He stepped down on the gas and swerved his Jeep around a hardware delivery truck, skidded onto Eighteenth Street and, four blocks on, cut over onto Poyntz. Early pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor. He watched for teenagers coming out of the high school as he sped by, slowing only when he came up on the courthouse. A block past and he slid his Jeep into a parking place in front of Hall's Department Store, banging his right front tire up over the curb.

  Early bailed out. He ran toward a bench in front of the display window where Mose Dickerson sat, bobbing his lame foot, fanning himself with his sweat-stained Stetson.

  “Jimmy,” Dickerson said without making an effort to rise, “no need to go rushin' in there. She's all right.”

  “She's supposed to be teaching today. Why isn't she at the school?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Well?”

  “Look, I was out on my mail route an' saw her hoofing it toward Manhattan. I stopped, said, ‘What's goin' on?’ An' she said she had an appointment at the beauty shop and I don't know what all else. Couldn't talk her out of any of it, so I figgered the wise thing was to bring her on in, kinda stay with her. Jimmy, there's something not right with your wife.”

  Early stepped up to the glass. He shaded his eyes as he scanned the interior. “I don't see her.”

  “Well, she's got a new look. What's this about the governor calling her, asking her to take a job in Topeka?”

  “Damned if I know.” He went to the door and plunged inside, glancing at the face of each woman shopper he came to.

  From the stairway up to the second floor, Thelma called to him, “Jimmy, you're just in time. I've all these purchases for you to carry to Mose's car.” She held two packages. Behind her and three steps above stood a man, a horseshoe of hair around an otherwise bald head, balancing half a dozen more packages.

  Early trotted up the steps. He relieved the man of his burdens, greeting him with, “Owen.”

  “Sheriff,” the storeowner said. Owen Hall straightened the front of his shirt. “Four new outfits here, and they're really something. She's going to make a dandy impression on that new job. This mean you're moving?”

  “Could be. We gotta
talk a little.”

  “Well, I put everything on an account for you. Know you're good for it.”

  “How much?”

  “Better part of seventy-five.”

  Early winced. He turned and started down the stairs. “What's this all about, Thel?” he asked from behind his pile of packages.

  “Jimmy, it's just the most amazing thing,” she said as she handed her parcels to Dickerson, who had wandered in. She led the parade toward the front of the store, Owen Hall and two of his clerks trailing in the wake. “The governor heard about my work at the school, and he called me and asked me to take a position in his administration. He wants me to head up elementary curriculum planning in the state department of education. Isn'tthatsomething?”

  At the last moment, Hall slid around the group. He wrenched open the front door.

  “ThankyouMisterHall,” Thelma said as she passed by, her hair poofed out and in a wave Early had never seen before. And a new hat and white gloves, and she had never worn gloves, not even at her wedding.

  “Owen,” Early said as he stumbled out, Dickerson hopstepping after him, hurrying to get to his coupe before Thelma and Early got there. He opened the trunk, shoved a tire out of the way, and threw his two packages in. With space open, Dickerson added the parcels Early carried.

  “Sure is a lot of stuff, Missus Early,” he said after he banged the lid down.

  “And I'll need every bit of it. My clothes are just so worn.”

  “I always thought you looked right smart.”

  Thelma smiled at Dickerson. She patted his face.

  “Thel, is this it?” Early asked.

  “I really need to go to Dobson's Jewelry Store.”

  “Why don't we go across the street first, to the Wareham, get an iced tea in the restaurant?”

  Thelma turned to him, a quizzical expression on her face replaced in an instant by an overly generous smile. “That would be lovely.”

  She turned and, without looking for traffic, marched across the street. Early jumped out. He waved at a school-bus driver fast approaching, stopped him before his bus could flatten Thelma. The driver glowered, and Early shrugged, as if to say, it's not my fault.

  The maitre d' met them at the hotel door. He squired them into the dining room, bubbling. “Sheriff and Missus Early, it's always so good to have you here.”