“He smart-talked me. I asked him if he knew something about Frank getting killed and he said no, but he didn’t care if he was dead or not.” He shrugged. “We got to arguin’ and before you know it, we went to fightin’. He was gettin’ the worst of it and come out with this knife. I took it away from him and he got cut. That’s why he’s layin’ there.”
“There’s a lot of blood. How much did you cut him?”
“Enough to make him stop. He wouldn’t quit.” Wes held out his arm so Ned could see the long, bloody wound across a faded hula girl. “I only did what I had to.”
“You ain’t done nothin’ to help him, then.”
“I ain’t done nothin’ else to hurt him, neither.”
A long death rattle emptied Olan’s lungs.
Wes dropped his arms. “I reckon we’re done, now.”
“I guess we are.” They heard a distant siren. “Sit back down in the shade right there. You’re under arrest.”
“It was self-defense, Ned.” Harvey Reid stood just inside the store, holding the door wide. “We all seen it. They was just fighting ’til Olan pulled out that Old Hickory.”
Ned sighed. “It ain’t my job to say whether anybody’s guilty or innocent. That’s what the courts are for. Turn around, Wes. I got to cuff you.”
“I’m bleedin’.”
“I’ll tie if off with the bandana in my pocket after I’m done.”
Harvey spoke from the door. “You heard what I said, Ned?”
“I heard you. Get back inside and close the door. You’re lettin’ flies in.”
“All right” Harvey let it slam and spoke through the rusty screen. “Wes, I’m still gonna need a dime for that Coke you drank, too, before you go to jail. I don’t reckon you’ll want to keep the bottle, so you can forget the deposit.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Heat never bothered The Wraith, but the added humidity reminded him of when he hauled hay to make a living. It would be much nicer in Alaska, with a remedied past and a bright future ahead.
***
Top was laying flat of his back on the porch when Ralston skidded up the drive and slid to a stop beside the porch. He was out in a flash, rushing to Top’s side before Mark could get out of the backseat.
Miss Sweet opened the passenger door and struggled with gravity. “Laws, if I only had my legs back. Mark, you get my bag for me.”
“Your chicken’s getting out.”
“Don’t’ matter none, hon. We’ll catch her later. Sweet Jesus, lay your hands on that po’ baby ’fore I get there. Hon, I’m a-comin. Ralston!” She shouted his name as if he were a mile away. She finally made it out of the sprung seat. “Is he breathin’? He’s so white and still, the poison’s probably got to his heart if it was a big snake.”
Ralston knelt over the boy’s still body. “He’s white as a sheet, but he’s breathin’. Smells like a whiskey still, though.”
“What from?”
Ralston fought down a chuckle, turning it into a cough. “Probably this jar of shine sittin’ here beside him.”
Miss Sweet frowned and shot Mark a sharp look. “I thought you said he was snakebit. If you boys was drinkin’ and got me over here for sinnin’, me and Miss Becky both are gonna wear your little white rears plumb out.”
“He is snakebit.” Mark stayed beside the car, unconsciously crossing his heart staring at a huge pool of vomit beside Top’s head. “It was the biggest rattler I’ve ever seen. I chopped it in pieces over yonder if one of y’all wants to look. Me and him thought it would be a good idea to give him a drink of whiskey for the pain. We always heard it was.”
She sat on the edge of the porch and blew through her lips. “Get his sock off and let’s see the bite.”
Ralston raised Top’s leg. “Blood’s a-running out on the ground. I ain’t never see a snake bite bleed so much.”
“Well, that ain’t right.” She leaned forward to see. “Snakebites don’t hardly bleed and that’s a fact.”
Ralston pulled off Top’s sock. She twisted the boy around and took his foot. “I don’t see no marks.” She twisted his calf one way and the other, looking for the bite.
It was Ralston who saw where the blood was coming from. “Bottom of his foot. There’s a hole bleeding pretty good.”
She twisted Top’s whole leg to see his foot. “Why lands. This ain’t no snakebite! Praise the Lord! He’s done stepped on a nail. Look it went plumb through his shoe. Must have hit a vein to bleed like that.”
She started to laugh. “Praise the Lawd. It ain’t the poison that’s got him, he’s feelin’ that whiskey.”
Ralston joined in. Mark didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He was relieved Top wasn’t going to die from the snake bite, but then again, it was him who got the whiskey.
Norma Faye’s car turned in the drive and Mark saw Miss Becky’s terrified face through the open passenger glass. He figured he’d just as well go inside and pack his sack so they could go ahead and kick him out.
Chapter Thirty-three
I woke up on the couch with my right foot soaking in a bucket. An empty galvanized bucket rested on the floor beside me. My head spun like a cyclone and I leaned over and puked in the pail.
Miss Becky and Miss Sweet came in through the kitchen door and I fell back on the couch and closed my eyes.
“Careful with that foot, baby boy. Don’t slosh that coal oil all over your Grandma’s linoleum.” It was Miss Sweet’s old crackly voice.
Someone put a cold washrag on my head and I cracked an eye to see Miss Becky. I started to say something, but my stomach rolled and I puked again.
“Lay back.”
I swallowed. “How bad off am I?”
“Not as bad as you’d think.” That was Uncle Cody’s voice. I twisted my head to see him sitting in Grandpa’s black wooden rocker. “Your foot’s gonna be sore from stepping on that nail. Your butt’s liable to be worse, though, when Ned gets home and finds out you’ve been into the shine he put back for evidence.”
That time everyone laughed, even Miss Becky, and the sound plowed through my head. “I’m not gonna die?”
“No.” Miss Sweet gave a pat to the Bible in her lap. “You was lucky. When you jumped away from that snake you stepped on a nail sticking through a piece of trim that blew off the front of the chicken house.”
I finally saw Mark standing beside the hall door, looking uncomfortable.
The chair creaked as Uncle Cody rocked. “One question, kiddo. Did y’all get into the whiskey before or after you stepped on the nail?”
“I thought I’d been snakebit. I told Mark to get some because my foot was hurting and I figured it might help until he got back.” My stomach rolled and clenched again at the thought of the oily moonshine. I choked it down because I didn’t want to see the inside of that bucket again.
Uncle Cody chuckled. “All right, then. Y’all are off the hook with me, but Ned’s gonna be a different story when he gets home.”
When the nausea faded, I twisted around to see Uncle Cody. “I had visions. I thought it was the poison.”
“I saw that contraption beside your head. It was most likely a panic attack and an asthma attack at the same time.” Miss Sweet whistled through her false teeth. It aggravated her, so she bit them back into place. “You only drank enough whiskey get sick at your stomach. What in the world made you think that was a good idea for snakebite?”
“TV.”
“Um hum.” Uncle Cody rocked. “That idiot box is gonna be the ruin of us all. I’m taking you to Doc Townsend tomorrow to get you a tetanus shot.”
“What’s that?”
“Something so you don’t get lockjaw from that rusty nail.”
I closed my eyes and heat flushed through my body causing them to snap back open. “Uncle Cody…”
“Yeah?”
> “I need to tell you what I saw.”
“Mark showed me. It was the biggest rattler I’ve ever seen. Every bit of six feet, and as big around as my arm. Twelve rattles and three buttons. Mark chopped that snake into two dozen pieces for you.” He chuckled and everyone laughed with him. “It’s a good thing it didn’t bite you, cause you’d-a died sure enough.”
“No. Not the snake.” I told him about my vision, while Miss Becky and Miss Sweet prayed for me and everyone else in Lamar County.
***
All the old-timers around Center Springs always said that if you soak a wound in coal oil, it won’t hurt as bad later. I believed them, because they’ve been right about a few other home remedies I’d used.
One was spirits of camphor for burns. It also took the sting of summer out of my skin every time and I barely peeled. The other was turpentine for small cuts. I tore my finger open a year earlier on a barbed-wire fence and Miss Becky wrapped a turpentine-soaked bandage on it for the day. It never did get sore.
I was thinking about that and already feeling better from some kind of awful-tasting tea Miss Sweet dosed me with. She was gone and Grandpa hadn’t been home but for a few minutes. He heard our story and didn’t do nothing but shake his head. He took off his pistol and laid it beside his hat on the TV set and went into the bathroom to wash up.
Mark went outside to sit on the porch, probably to get away from the butt chewing I was sure to get. The phone rang. Miss Becky answered and listened for a minute. The television was off and the house was so quiet I could hear the man’s voice on the other end, asking for Grandpa.
“It’s for you, Daddy.”
The door was open and he was washing his face and throwing water like a duck taking a bath. “Who is it?”
“He called his name, but I didn’t get it. Says he’s the medical examiner in Dallas and he has news about that killin’ at the fair.”
I started to tell her the man’s name, but decided not to. If Grandpa knew I could hear, he might hold the phone so I couldn’t listen.
He dried his face and replaced his glasses. “That was fast.” He took the phone and stood to talk, instead of sitting at the telephone table. “This’s Ned.”
As I hoped, he didn’t put the receiver close to his ear. He never could get past the habit of pushing the receiver too hard and the arm of his glasses hurt his ear.
The voice on the other end came through loud and clear in the quiet house. “Sheriff Parker, this is Dr. Greg Miller. I’m the chief medical examiner here in Dallas. We have the body of Merle Mayfield, who was beaten…” he paused, and I imagined him holding a clipboard and squinting at the writing. “…at a carnival a few nights ago.”
“That’s right. Y’all must be all caught up. I haven’t heard of you getting finished with an autopsy this fast in a long while, but I ain’t Sheriff Parker. I’m Constable Ned Parker and he was killed in my precinct.”
“Well, we’re far from caught up, but I found something that you might like to know to aid in your investigation. Your name and number is on this report, but I wonder, should I call the other number here with this information?”
“You can, but it’s on my plate, so Sheriff Parker’ll tell me as soon as y’all hang up.”
“I thought you were the sheriff.”
“I guess you didn’t hear me. We’re kinfolk and like I said, I’m constable of Precinct Three.”
“Maybe I should call Sheriff Parker first.”
Grandpa sighed like he does when he’s getting frustrated. He rubbed his head and I knew I was right. “You can if y’ont to, but let’s cut out the middle man here. What do you have?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Well, we were evaluating the body of Merle Mayfield before putting it in storage when we discovered a wound that might change the course of your investigation.”
“What’s that?”
“The initial report states that the victim was beaten to death with a blunt object, possibly an axe handle found at the scene.”
“Yep.”
“He was beaten all right. The bludgeon wounds are most obvious, of course, but they weren’t the true cause of his death. During my examination, I found a knife wound high up on the back of his neck in the hairline. Someone knew what he was doing. A sharp, thick blade entered the base of the skull and severed the spinal cord where it meets the brain stem.”
“How soon can you get me a full report?”
“Weeks. I only called this soon because I thought you should know about a different cause of death than you expected.”
“All right then. Thanks.”
“I’m not through”
Grandpa paused. “Go ahead on.”
“There’s another body here, one Joe Bill Haynes.”
“He’s the mayor…was, pro-tem, I mean.”
“We were asked by Sheriff Parker to expedite this autopsy, due to the fact that he’s an elected official. Well, the whole thing was too interesting to pass up, being it was from the same county. In the course of the procedure, I found Mr. Mayfield also died of a severed spinal column. It’s my assumption that the two deaths are related. In all my years performing autopsies, I’ve never seen this before, and since they come from your county and happened close to the same time…”
Grandpa stiffened like somebody shot him. He looked into the big picture-print of a desert landscape above the couch that had been there for years. I don’t think he was looking at the picture as much as looking into it.
“Hey, wait!”
“Sir?”
“You have two other bodies there. Frank Clay and Maggie Mayfield.”
There was a long pause. “Another Mayfield. I didn’t make the connection earlier. What about them?”
“Have you finished working on them?”
“Not yet. There’s been a lot of business coming our way from y’all. It was a run-of-the-mill automobile accident, so they took a backseat.” He chuckled. “Backseat. Car wreck. You get it?”
“Um, hum. See if you can get to them pretty quick. I think all this might be connected.”
“I have a lot of other work from other places.”
“Yep. I’m sure you do. I’ll be waitin’ on your call.”
Grandpa set the phone in the cradle and stared into the desert for a long time. He was thinking hard with his back to me. He finally turned to face me. “How’s your foot?”
“It ain’t real good yet.”
“I bet. You able to walk?”
“Yessir. It didn’t go deep and I’ve been to the bathroom and back a couple of times. I’ll be all right if I don’t put any weight on it. It really don’t hurt much.”
“Good. Now about that whiskey. The next time you kids get into any of that, you won’t be able to sit down for a week. Some of that stuff in there was run through radiator coils, and it’ll make you go blind, if it don’t kill you.”
I’d never heard that. “Yessir.”
“But I know why you did it.” He picked up his hat to leave and stopped. “Don’t you say nothin’ about what you heard here, neither. That ain’t none of your business.”
I simply nodded and turned my attention to the trees beyond the screen door and wondered how he knew so much at his advanced age.
Chapter Thirty-four
The Wraith sat in the musty darkness, chewing a tasteless sandwich and hoping no one would come in to check on him. Sometimes he needed to be alone, to calm himself. If he didn’t, bad things happened that he couldn’t control. He finished and dropped the wax paper at his feet. Testing his work, he stepped on the wooden floor that fell out from under him like a gallows’ trap door.
***
Cody was sitting on the porch, chuckling at Top’s adventure and watching birds flitter around the house they’d inherited from Tom Bell. It was rare for him to be h
ome to enjoy such a quiet afternoon. Norma Faye was in the kitchen and could tell something was bothering him because he didn’t go back to the office after leaving Ned’s house.
She finished the dishes and left them in an aluminum pan to drain. All the windows were open to catch the breeze and because it was still warm, she chipped ice into a glass and filled it with sweet tea.
Cody leaned back against the wall, boots propped on the top rail. The sad look in his eyes disappeared when she stepped through the screen door with the sweating glass. “That looks good and cool.”
She grinned and handed it to him. “I figured you’d be warm out here and thought this might help.”
He took the glass and she wiped the sheen of sweat on his forehead with her slim hand. She sat on the porch rail with her back against the post so she could see both the yard and Cody. “You know, babe, we’ve pretty well got it made here.”
He drained half the glass and sat it beside her. “You’re right about that. Who’da thunk it?”
“Neither one of us four years ago.” She laughed. “I’m glad it worked out and you got me.”
“Me too.”
“I’m glad you’re home this afternoon.”
“It sure is quiet out here, away from town. I wish I could work out a way to sheriff from this chair. Maybe I need to get a radio out here and then I might not have to go in.”
Norma Faye cocked her head. “You gonna tell me what’s bothering you?”
“What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
“Because you’re talking foolish, and you’re here now instead of working just like last night. That’s not like you. What’s wrong?”
He hesitated. “Well, John and Anna think I need to stay away from these murder investigations and let them handle it.”
“I think that’s a good idea. Your job is to oversee the whole department, not go out investigating.”
“It is, but there’s another reason.”
Her eyebrow arched.
“Somebody may be trying to tie me to these murders.”
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