Chapter Seven
The Wraith thought about crossing the river for a beer, but recognition was too dangerous. Instead, he drove to the lake overlook and stayed in his truck, sipping from a half pint of whiskey and thinking about how close he’d come to being run over the night before because he’d been drunk and not paying attention. He thought about the two who died with little interest other than their names. Mayfield and Clay. An idea was born. He chuckled and tilted the bottle toward two houses barely visible in the distance opposite the glistening body of water.
***
Late Saturday afternoon Ned and Judge O.C. Rains were drinking coffee in the back booth of Frenchie’s Café, only a block north of the Lamar County Courthouse. Boyhood friends, they argued like an old married couple most of the time.
Judge Rains blew over the surface of his coffee and took a tentative sip. “Say she picked Frank up and gave him a lift?”
“That’s what I think happened. He hired her for a secretary last week. I went by his office here in town, and some of the young folks who volunteer for his campaign say they’d been there late in the night and were the last ones to leave.”
“So did his car not start? Is that what happened?”
Oklahoma Sheriff Clayton Matthews had located Frank’s Ford in the parking lot of The Black Cat, one of the many honky-tonks just across the Red River. No one had seen Frank in the club, nor Maggie either.
Ned picked at a rough edge of one fingernail. “Can’t say yet.”
“It’s a mystery. That’s a fact.” O.C. knitted his white eyebrows together. “I can think of one or two reasons a man might be with a woman.”
“Not one that’s high-yellow, and not Frank Clay. They’re…they were both married and he’s one of the best men I ever knew. He was a good husband and doted on them kids of his. The problem is that the wreck’s done relit the fire between them two families. You know of that Mayfield bunch Maggie was married into. John Washington says every one of them boys are mean as snakes an’ll kill you for your hat if he decides he’s partial to it, and the Clays are just as bad. Hell, O.C. you sent Monte Clay up for shooting his own brother’s business off two years ago when Monte thought he was messin’ with his wife.”
O.C.’s eyes flicked over Ned’s shoulder when the bell over the door jangled and followed the customer down the counter to watch Frenchie pour coffee. “Hell, if you’re part of that Clay bunch, you’re either sorry as the day is long and belong under the jail, or you’re such a teetotaler that you won’t admit that you like a beer ever now and then.”
“Cody went over and asked around too, and said nobody saw Frank in any of them joints last night. Somebody woulda recognized the mayor, if he’d been in there.”
“I figured you’d be the first to suspicion something.” O.C. leaned forward and laced his fingers. “Especially since Maggie’s been spending more time across the river than usual.”
“If you knew that, why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.” O.C. grinned and let him off the hook. “John told me this morning.”
Ned grinned. “She’s been seen around them gun and knife clubs out by Frogtown. They’ll let anyone come in and drink over there, white, colored, high yeller, or red.”
Despite how badly Ned despised the cluster of beer joints just across the river from his precinct, the joints backed into the deep woods several miles farther east were nothing but a deeper level of hell. The dregs of Oklahoma lived there, earning a living in mysterious, and usually illegal ways. It was a dark place of cuttings, fights, and unspoken atrocities. Not a man given to fantasies, he wished the whole collection of warped shacks would catch fire and burn clean.
Frenchie came by with a plate and headed for the booth closest to the door. O.C. gave her a grin when she passed and she winked at them.
“Careful, you old coot,” Ned chuckled. “One little dose of that’ll kill you.”
“I’m too old to even think about it these days.” It was Judge Rains’ way of saying things were still same at his house. His wife, Catherine, had been bad sick for years and the only relief for her was the white light at the far end of the tunnel.
O.C. tapped at the scarred table with a thick fingernail. “You talk to Tylee yet?”
“Ain’t laid eyes on him. John asked around and says he went off visiting his woods children out toward New Boston. He got in a scrape and wound up in jail. Still there as far as I know.”
“Knowing how he is, that’s the best place for him right now.”
“There’ll be a killin’ over this when he gets out.”
Ned shook a few grains of salt into his coffee to cut the bitter. “Maybe not. I hope they all learned their lessons after the war. Killin’ one another don’t solve a thing.”
“I hope you’re right, but folks don’t always pay attention to the lessons of their elders.”
There wasn’t anything to say to both truths.
They sipped for a few moments, surrounded by the smells of fried food, coffee, and the constant underlying odor of bacon and grilled onions. The backbeat of customer’s voices and the tinkling of dishes from both the booths and the kitchen was as comforting as a soft quilt to the two old lawmen who’d been eating there for decades.
Frenchie came around with a fresh pot and filled their thick mugs to the brim. “Y’all need anything else, O.C.?”
“You have any peach pie back there?”
“Nope. Cherry and apple.”
“I’d rather have peach.”
“You’ll get either cherry or apple today. That’s all I got to offer.”
“Why don’t you ever have peach?”
“We do. But not today. Cherry or apple?”
O.C. frowned in disappointment. “I’ll have to study on it.”
“Fine.” She popped her gum, smiled at Ned, and stopped by another booth to check on the customers there.
A ghost of a thought flicked through Ned’s mind. Their ongoing discussion of pie, especially peach pie, made him think of Frank and Maggie, but it was lost before he could get a good grasp on what it was.
O.C. burned his lips on the coffee and hissed. “I knew good and well that was hot.”
“I’ve done the same thing myself. Stings, don’t it?”
“It’ll feel better when it quits hurtin’. Say Frank and Maggie came over the dam and went off the backside?” They were back on the subject at hand.
“Yep. Right where it curves.”
“Which way were they going?”
“Toward Center Springs.”
“That don’t make no sense.” O.C. shook his head. “They didn’t have any business being over there.”
“It’s a free country, last time I looked.”
“Have you talked to any of Tylee’s people yet?”
Ned studied O.C. for a long moment. “This is bothering you, ain’t it?”
“That whole damn family bothers me. I’ve had members of both sides before my bench in the past. You know as well as I do what happened after the war before it all settled down. We’re lucky more people weren’t killed in that little feud. Hell, we don’t even know for sure who killed who, and only two of ’em were sent to the pen.”
“Well, I’ll get over there to talk to ’em directly.” He paused and picked a callus on his thumb. “I been thinkin’ on it and can’t rightly remember exactly how all this started to begin with.”
O.C. drank some coffee. “It was a silly disagreement. Frank Clay’s uncle Randall Clay sold Old Man Mayfield a lame blue-nosed mule one Saturday in the Chisum wagon yard. Randall said the mule was fine when they traded, and that Mayfield’d lamed it on the way home.
“The next Saturday Old Man Mayfield was back in the wagon yard with the mule and told Randall he wanted his money back. They took to arguin’ and before you know it, they almost went to fi
ghting. A couple of cooler heads kept ’em apart, and it was a good thing they did. A black man hitting a white back then was cause enough for a lynchin’. Anyway, Mayfield finally shot the lame mule right between the eyes at a cutbank by the road, not far from the army camp and let it lay where it fell.”
“I remember now. Randall’s own mule was found dead in his barn a few days later. Somebody’d cut its throat and Randall accused the Mayfields.”
“That’s right. The whole thing spun out of control after that. Archie Mayfield’s old truck had a flat on a high-bank gravel road a couple of miles from his house and he was changing it when William Clay came by in his car. Archie couldn’t pull far enough off that skinny little road, and William Clay couldn’t get past. It made him mad that a Mayfield was blocking his way, and he got out to give him a cussin’. When William looked in the back of Mayfield’s truck, he saw half a bushel of pears and said Archie stole ’em from a tree on his property.
“He backed around and headed straight for town where he swore out a complaint with Sheriff Poole. Well, you know Poole was crooked as a dog’s hind leg and didn’t need much excuse to arrest Archie. He’d arrest a colored fellow for breathing air, so he caught Archie at the wagon yard in town and worked him over for what he said was resisting arrest, and then took him in to spend a month in jail before they let him out. Archie drove straight to the bottoms and caught William having lunch under a tree by a cotton field he was plowing and beat the hell out of him. Archie went back to jail after that and woke up dead in his cell. Nobody knew how it happened. Old Judge J.W. Haynes ruled it a suicide and before you know it, it was one thing after another.”
The stories took Ned back for a long minute. “Well, things has changed over the years, even though there’s still hard feelings. Both families have long memories, but at least a couple of ’em turned out all right, like Frank. He was a good man. The rest of them Clays are rough as cobs. I’ll speak to a few of the Clays and have John talk to the Mayfields, and warn ’em off, but that’s all I can do.”
“Better let Cody tell John.”
“Why?”
“He’s sheriff. I don’t believe you oughta be tellin’ John who to talk to. He ain’t your deputy, you know. Times are changing, and you better not be giving him orders no more, no matter how long y’all’ve been working together.”
“’I god, you’re right. I’m just so used to working with him, it’s got to be a habit.”
The bell above the door jangled and Ned’s eyes lit up when he recognized Graham Harwell. Ned waved him over and pointed at a stool at the counter beside their booth. Their hats rested upside down on the counter, the usual way of reserving the stools so customers couldn’t hear their conversations.
“Graham, sit there and tell O.C. what happened out by that damned lake the other day.”
O.C.’s expressive eyebrows rose at the unusual offer.
Graham took the stool with a sheepish look on his face. “Mr. Ned, that story’s embarrassing.”
“Why come?” O.C. noticed Graham’s arm was in a cast. “Your busted wing have something to do with it?”
Graham sighed. “I’m gonna get this out of the way and tell it one time. After that, I don’t want to hear one question or one word.”
Ned chuckled. “Fine, then.”
“Well, Ned knows I bought me one of them used Airstream campers and have been itching to use it. Anyway, they opened the new campgrounds up out at Lake Lamar, and I pulled it over there and set it up. Some friends decided they wanted to see the trailer, so they came out and we had a big old time. We built a fire outside, and before you know it, more folks showed up and camped out, too.
“Anyway, a lot of beer came with ’em, and it was after midnight before we finally got tired. Some folks crawled in their own tents, and one or two drove back home, but a few stayed around the fire to talk. Linda and I went into the trailer and I decided to take a shower before going to bed. I was standing there, in a stream of nice hot water, when I heard her scream from the living room. She’d seen a snake crawl under the sofa.”
O.C. shuddered. He’s always been afraid of snakes, especially since Ned threw one on him when they were kids.
“Buck-nekked and dripping water, I came running in there and she hollered that a snake was under the couch. I didn’t believe her, but I got down on all fours to look.”
Ned’s imagination got the best of him and he shuddered at the mental image.
“Linda’s little Dachshund was passing through about that time and when he saw me on all fours, he cold-nosed me somewhere that we aren’t going to discuss.”
Graham had to wait until the two old men regained control of themselves.
“What did you do, fall and break your arm?” O.C. had forgotten his coffee.
“I wish. I jumped forward and cracked my head against the table and passed out for a minute. Linda didn’t see what happened and thought the snake bit me and caused me to have a heart attack, so she ran to the door and called for help.
“The guys hurried in to get me and take me to the emergency room. They made a stretcher out of a blanket and were carrying me out the door, still nekked as the day I was born, when Winston Moore got tickled about the whole thing and lost his grip on one corner of the blanket and dropped me half in and out the door. That’s how my arm broke.”
Frenchie returned with the coffee pot and refilled their mugs and they realized she’d been listening from behind the counter. “Did y’all kill the snake?”
“You’ve only heard half of it,” Graham said. “While they were gone with me to the hospital, Hubert Stillwell stayed behind to do just that. He looked the trailer over and couldn’t find the stinking thing, so he told Linda he believed it was gone. She was worried sick and sat down on the couch and when one of those little throw pillows fell over, there that damned snake was and she fainted dead away.”
Graham smiled to himself on that one.
“Hubert killed it and seeing Linda passed out, he thought she’d had a heart attack and laid her on the couch. Anyway, he’s had some training because he’s a volunteer fireman, so he leaned over and blew in her mouth. Now, remember, they’d all been drinking some, so when Hubert’s wife walked in right about then to check on Linda and saw them like that with his mouth on Linda’s, she picked a cast iron skillet off the stove and laid him out.
“Anyway, Linda woke up with Hubert across her chest, bleeding from the scalp. She screamed bloody murder. That’s when Hubert’s wife saw the dead snake on the floor commenced to beating it ’til the skillet’s handle broke off and the pan slapped Linda in the side of the head, causing it to bleed.
“About that time Ned here rolled up to check on everyone after he got a call there was a disturbance. He knew we’d all been drinking, ’cause he saw Hubert come back from across the river earlier in the day.”
When Graham paused to take a breath, Ned picked up the story. “That’s when I heard the commotion in the trailer and when I pushed through, I saw Linda screaming on the floor with Hubert laying across her and his wife standing there with that broke handle in her hand. There was blood everywhere, so I spent the next two hours sortin’ out what happened.”
“So now you’ve heard the story and I ain’t telling it again.”
O.C. had been laughing so hard his sides were hurting. “What kind of snake was it?”
Graham looked embarrassed. “Just an ol’ rat snake. Anyway, I’m trying to sell the trailer, if anybody wants one. It has a hole in the floor, though.”
O.C. leaned forward, knowing something good was coming down the pike. “How’d it get a hole in the floor?”
Graham shrugged. “You know how snakes are, they’ll still move or twitch or curl even when they’re dead. Well, my cousin Benny came in and thought it was still alive and shot that dead snake with his .410.”
Graham paused. “I’ll sell it chea
p.”
“I bet you will,” O.C. grunted, waved to Frenchie for more coffee.
“Oh, I remember why I came in here in the first place. Ned, some carnival folks asked me if they could set up in that pasture I have out near the army camp on Highway 271. They can’t get the fairgrounds for some reason, so I told them yeah.”
O.C. grunted and tasted his coffee. “They can’t get on the fairgrounds because they run crooked games.” Ned and Graham raised their eyebrows at the same time. O.C. waited a beat before continuing. “They were talking about it after the city council meeting here while back. They say the games are rigged, so they’ve been uninvited since the last time they were here.”
Ned sighed. “That means they’ll be fleecing folks in my precinct. I hope you get paid good for all this trouble.”
Graham brightened. “The feller I talked to said they’d give me ten percent of the gate.”
“You get that in writing?”
“Sure enough.”
“Well, it probably won’t be enough, because they sure saw you coming.”
“Why come?”
“Carnies don’t make their money at the gate. They make it from the games.”
Graham’s face fell. “I thought it was a good deal.”
“It is for them. I reckon I’ll have to go over there and have a talk with ’em. When do they plan to open?”
“Tonight.”
“Fine then.” Ned gathered up his hat. “That’ll be all right. I’ll run over there and check on them.”
“Well, I just wanted you to know.”
Ned shrugged. “There shouldn’t be any problems with that.”
Chapter Eight
The Wraith had arms made of whipcord and sinew. He cracked the knuckles of his leathery hands and waited in the hot, still woods, remembering. He was back in his hometown of Center Springs for the first time in four years.
***
Ned turned off Texas Route 271, the main highway from Chisum to Oklahoma, as the sun sank toward the trees. He pulled into Graham Booth’s pasture not far from the decommissioned Camp Maxey army camp.
Unraveled Page 4