Junior stepped inside and shut the door. “What are you doing here?” he asked John ominously.
“What are you doing here, is more like it,” Jane said. More screams from downstairs as Atmon and Beaupre found Mrs. Pettibone intractable.
“Get dressed!” Junior said to Jane, who was obviously getting dressed. John, who fought with an annoying and nearly uncontrollable desire to laugh, had reached a hard knot in his bootlace. He gave it up and reached for his sooty shirt.
“I ought to…” Junior began with exaggerated iciness. Jane took one step and slapped him across the face. He nearly fell down.
“Now let’s mind your business,” she said. “You’re in trouble and you came to me for help.”
And as if Junior’s try at being the protector of his sister’s purity had been a kind of hysteria, her slap shocked him out of it. He sat dispiritedly on the bed (but with one purposeful hand pulled the spread up over its revealing disarray), put his head in his hands and asked, “Is everybody going nuts?” in an exhausted voice. Jane put a comforting hand on the back of his neck.
John held back his laughter for a grave and admiring moment. What a woman! He was struck sober by a somewhat frightening, yet strangely erotic, sense of her great value. Now he would scheme for permanence and availability, do his best to lose his freedom in the pursuit of happiness. He sat down against the wall and laughed out loud.
“What’s so goddam funny?” Junior asked.
“I just had to be convinced, Janie,” John said. “Oh, dear! Oh! Oh!” He laughed and laughed as they watched him. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’m sorry, Junior. Is it about your fight in the fire-house?”
“You had to be convinced?” Jane asked. At this, Junior looked hurt—jealous—and John could not blame him. Junior’s plight seemed the most pressing thing at the moment. The heavy feet of the law marched up the stairs.
“That I won’t ever run away from you, Janie.”
“No!” Junior yelled. “They say I killed Bemis, for Christ’s sake!” Now, having said it, and having thus invited Atmon and Beaupre into the room, Junior was terribly afraid. He stood up and backed against the far wall, his big hands limp at his sides, his face turned away from the door.
Joe Beaupre burst in, ran across the room and struck Junior on the face with the barrel of his revolver. Blood appeared, rich and dark. Junior didn’t raise his arms. Beaupre struck again, and Atmon came for his share. He punched Junior in the chest.
“O.K.!” John found himself shouting at the busy backs of the police. They crowded each other, trying to get in the best licks, but Junior wouldn’t go down.
“That’s enough!” John shouted. They wouldn’t hear him. Their breath hissed, they grunted and worked. He thought of boars, brute and powerful, mounted in maniac lust upon the backs of pummeled sows. They would not stop. They would not stop. Jane tried to pull Atmon away, but he shrugged her off and went on pounding. She slipped and went down on her knees. Seeing her there, helpless as is frail love in the presence of brute force, John felt his arms grow strong and willed himself berserk.
Willed himself, but the blue cloth of authority stretched with an invincible sheen across those bulky shoulders. He would as soon attack a priest as violate this bluer cloth. It was not in his character to do what it would be necessary to do, and this character he had defined over the years spoke only flight and disappearance to him. In order to fight them he would have to assume the authority of his burning town.
He never knew what decided for him—the necessity of one unavoidable action, Jane upon her knees crying, “Stop!” or the soft smack smack of fists and metal against Junior’s flesh. He searched for a weapon, and a measure of his control was that he did not choose Bruce’s pistol, but the narrow bed table. He forced himself between their arms and Junior, held the table defensively against their blows and raged at them, his voice bloated, megaphonic in his own ears: DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
Their lustful faces showed no recognition. They tried to move him aside, but he pushed the table edge hard against their faces until it hurt them. Joe Beaupre cracked his hand against the wood and dropped his revolver. As he bent to pick it up John kicked it under the bed.
As if he had been awakened from deep sleep, Chief Atmon showed surprise. “Hey!” he said sternly, and then was even more surprised. Sam Stevens’ big arms circled him and held him still.
“Git his gun, John,” Sam said. As John took Atmon’s big revolver from its holster, Junior fainted. His wrecked face, jaw distended, torn by the sharp front sight of Beaupre’s gun, pressed gently against Atmon’s chest and left a nest of blood there as he fell.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Atmon said. Joe Beaupre was out of it. With a vacant expression on his pale, sweaty young face, he waited. The doorway was full of other waiting faces—Salvation Army women and men just back from the fireline. Jane and Mrs. Pettibone knelt and put their hands to Junior’s wounds.
Sam nodded to John, his blue eyes cold and tired.
“Give me back that gun!” Atmon demanded.
“You’re under arrest,” John said.
“You’re under arrest!” Atmon shouted.
“No, you are.”
“Junior Stevens is under arrest! You’re all under arrest!” But a nervous shifting of his eyes—Sam still held him absolutely in place—showed that a fearful reorganization was taking place in Chief Atmon’s scheme of things. John took the shiny handcuffs from the holder on Atmon’s belt and fastened Atmon’s right hand to Joe Beaupre’s apathetic left one.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Atmon said, rubbing his imprisoned wrist. John had forced his hand into the cuff, and this surprising strength in John Cotter had further unnerved the chief.
“I asked you that,” John said calmly, “but I’ll tell you. I’m the man who just arrested the chief of police. In fact I just arrested the whole goddam police force.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Don’t you feel that you’re under arrest? Try to get out of here.”
Atmon was silent. He looked desperately around the room—as far around as Sam would let him turn—but everyone watched John Cotter. No one met Atmon’s eye. John saw this, and evidently Sam did, too. He released Atmon and went to Junior.
“Stand over there,” John said, and it was still amazing to him that the two policemen did as they were told. A familiar fear came over him: the descent of responsibility upon his unready shoulders. It seemed to him that everyone waited for the chance to shift responsibility upon him. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The words were learned at a time in his life when the custodians could damn’ well solve their own problems. Well, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? John Cotter?
Sam Stevens picked up Junior and placed him gently on the bed. Junior breathed wetly through his mouth. Little bubbles of blood formed at his lips and ran down one side of his chin on a slow, forked stream. His nose was bent and plugged. Women were running for water and clean cloth.
Sam came back to Atmon and bent over to look him in the face. After a time he said: “I knew you was a fool, Atmon. I knew you was a nasty fool. But I figured you wouldn’t do no harm since nothing much ever happened in Leah anyways. I was wrong.” He grabbed Atmon’s arm and pulled him violently toward the bed, dragging Joe Beaupre along too. “Look what you done,” Sam said, forcing Atmon down toward Junior’s mangled face.
“You don’t know it, but you’re headed for big trouble,” Atmon mumbled.
“Don’t hurt him, Sam,” John said. Sam gave him a narrow glance, then pushed the police away.
“Reckon there’s been enough butchering done,” Sam said, “but I’m going to see you in jail, both of you. You can’t get away with what you done in Leah! Where in God’s name did you think you was, you goddam fools? On television? Ain’t you from Leah? You think we’re going to let anybody git by with being that lousy mean in Leah?” The old man’s anger filled the room; in the presence of his gigantic wrath the
legality of Atmon’s and Beaupre’s arrest would not be questioned.
“He’s having trouble breathing. We’d better get him to a doctor,” Jane said. Mrs. Pettibone ran for the telephone.
“Sam, I guess we better get the state police in on this,” John said. “I’m not too sure what a citizen has to do to arrest a policeman.”
“We’ll make it good and legal,” Sam said, staring meaningfully at Atmon.
“You’re going to be in big trouble,” Atmon said.
“WHAT?” Sam crowded Atmon to the wall and raised his huge arms over Atmon’s head. “WHAT?”
“I ain’t scared of you,” Atmon said unconvincingly.
“Don’t hurt him, Sam,” John said.
Sam watched Atmon closely, then nodded, apparently satisfied. “The hell you ain’t,” he said, and turned to Joe Beaupre. “I always thought you was a decent boy, Joe,” he said sadly. “Now what got into you, anyways?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Stevens. He was running away.”
“What for?”
Joe looked up with new, though faint, hope in his eyes. “He killed Charlie Bemis and tried to burn down the Town Hall, that’s what he done.”
Sam thought this over. “Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. That don’t change nothing in your case, though, Joe. You was just beating on him for the fun of it.”
“He was running away,” Joe said.
“We got eleventeen witnesses to say he wasn’t, Joe. You better set on that one. He just run home, Joe, and you know that. He just run home. He didn’t aim to run nowheres. You know he used to live here, and the minute you see him turn up my road you knew damn’ well he wan’t going anywheres.”
Junior began to moan. Jane dabbed at a white lump as big as half an egg on his forehead. The watchers stood about the bed, their hands waving as if to help her, or to keep her fingers from touching the most painful parts.
John went downstairs and found Mrs. Pettibone, her connection made, stuttering and sobbing incoherently into the telephone. He took it from her and found that she had called a wrong number.
“They won’t come!” she cried, her sallow face translucent about the brown hollows of her eyes, her maloccluded teeth grinding on brown lips. He led her to the kitchen and sat her down, hoping that among her dishes she might find her night meaningful again.
“We’ll take him to the hospital in Northlee, Mrs. Pettibone. He’ll be fine. Don’t you worry, now.”
“Oh, John Cotter!”
“It’s all right now, Mrs. Pettibone.”
She tried to smile, and even tried to hide her teeth from him. “They beat him so!” she said, and then bent down to cry again. “He’s such a baby.” Her rough hands circled her forehead as if to shade her eyes from strong light. He knew she shaded her unfortunate face from his eyes. “You never liked him anyways,” she said. “But you saved him. I see you. You got right in between them and him and saved him. You done it.”
I done it all right, he thought. The state police had come back, and he went out to meet them. Two troopers he didn’t know stood in the light from their car’s headlights and spotlight, examining Junior’s car. Their brightly trimmed-green uniforms, always able to make him a little more alert, a little more nervous, now made him hesitant. He didn’t stop, however. It was too late for that.
“Did they get him?” one of the troopers asked.
“They got him, all right. We’re going to take him to the hospital. We’ve got Atmon and Beaupre,” John said.
“You what?” Both of the tall young men turned and examined him closely.
“We’ve disarmed them and arrested them. Right now they’re under citizen’s arrest.”
“What the hell is that?” one asked.
“Oh, Christ, you know,” the other said. “What did Atmon do now?”
“Junior Stevens wasn’t offering any resistance, but they cornered him and nearly beat him to death. We had to arrest them to stop it,” John said. He tried to fill his voice with as much calm authority as he could find.
“Can they do that?” one trooper asked.
“Yeah. It’s in the goddam Constitution,” the other said.
“You mean some lousy civilian could arrest me?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Damn.”
They started toward the house and met Sam Stevens and the others halfway. He handed the two guns to the troopers and made his formal complaint.
“I don’t care whether them two goes to jail tonight or not—they will soon enough. I just don’t want to see them strutting around with no guns.”
In the motionless air the big white house rose up behind them, the black mountain behind it. From the valley of the fire only a dull red glow lay ominously on the smaller hills.
“You better call the selectmen, John,” Sam said. “Next time we’ll git us a policeman ain’t so fond of television.”
“What about the sheriff, Sam?”
“Oh, him. He’s on his ass up at the county seat. Where’d you expect?” Sam looked out at the embers of the near hills. “We got to git my grandson to the hospital, John. What I can’t figure is, what with the fire and all, them two felt like killing a man. Jesus, I don’t. Do you, John?” In the burnished, wide old face that had been wrathful as God’s there was now an honest perplexity. He stood with his legs apart, as he always did, ready for any upheaval in his universe and perhaps expecting it.
“He didn’t do it,” Jane said. “He was there. They saw him run out of the town clerk’s office—right into their arms—but he says he was going for help. I believe him.”
“If you do, then I do too,” John said. They had spent most of the night at the hospital and now drove east from Leah Town Square toward the farm, having picked up Bruce’s car. They had left the ton-and-a-half truck parked on Maple Street in front of the dark Cotter house. It was dawn, and above the brown smudge of the fire the sky was white, yet the hills were still dark as night. The fire still burned, now not advancing against the firebreaks and the lines of men. As long as there was no wind the fire could be held, but only rain could put it out for good, and there was no sign of rain. The dry woods-soil burned deep, stumps were emberred to the small roots, and even a small breeze might start the fire’s advance again.
“If Junior didn’t do it, Atmon and Beaupre have had it,” John said.
“They’ve had it anyway,” Jane said. “They’re through in Leah, no matter what happens. Nobody liked Junior very much, but nobody liked Atmon, either.”
“It’s been some night,” he said, glancing over at her. In the eastern light she was pale and seemed very fragile. Her clear skin was nearly as white as new snow, it seemed to him, and her hair, drawn back from her forehead, was nearly as light—fine and seemingly brittle, as if she had been carefully carved from ivory, like a cameo. He found it difficult to believe that this slight girl had made such animal moans beneath him, had been so strong with lust the afternoon before. Now he wanted to hold her and comfort her with infinite gentleness, to make her forget the violence she had seen last night; violence he knew she had as much strength to take as he. He reached for her hand, found it cold, and brought her over against him. She leaned lightly against his shoulder, one hand on his chest.
“If he’d done it, he wouldn’t have come to me,” she said. “He only came to me when he felt he’d been cheated, when it wasn’t his fault. I don’t know why, but that’s always been the way. He’s older than I am, but I’ve always been the one he came to. Not Sam or Mrs. Pettibone or anybody else. It’s been that way as long as I can remember, even before our father and mother died. I know he didn’t do it, Johnny.”
“I know it,” he said.
“You’ve got to know it!”
“Why?”
She moved away to look at him with a startled, doubtful expression. “Johnny, I’ve got to know you. You’ve got to be here. You’ve got to take charge. You’ve got to do everything.”
“Janie, I’m not going to r
un away from you. Even when you say frightening things like that!” He smiled at her, but she didn’t seem to be reassured. “As a matter of fact I might be in a lot of trouble. I don’t know too much about this ‘citizen’s arrest’ business. Don’t know if it applies to duly appointed police officers or not. The state police look at it with a disapproving eye. Any police would, I suppose.”
While he had waited for Jane in the hospital waiting room, a captain of state police came over to view this presumptuous civilian. The captain of police had stood for a long time in front of him, looking quite stern in spite of his wonderment. At that moment John nervously went over his relationship with the law, and remembered that it had been two years since he’d renewed his permit to carry a loaded pistol or revolver. Bruce’s Ortgies was then beneath his handkerchief in his back pocket. A minor crime, since he was neither an alien or a felon, but he didn’t want to be at the mercy of the police—not in the smallest way. He felt himself to be a bad, a very bad, example in their eyes. And the selectmen he called—the two who were not on the firelines—were also quite disturbed. They admitted no love for Atmon and Beaupre, but felt that Junior Stevens probably deserved what he’d got. “He may lose an eye,” John had told them. This had made the selectmen more careful. “I didn’t know you were in Leah,” one had said. “You going to stay home now, John?” The similarity of their pointed questions about his staying home struck him: who was to cope with these odd problems? They nominated John Cotter.
“I’m not going to run away, Janie,” he said again.
“Did you see Bruce?” she asked.
“No. Why?” He knew why.
“Because he’s your brother.” She still held herself away from him so that she could watch his face.
“I thought of it. You know I did. But I can’t do it. Maybe it wasn’t visiting hours.”
“Bruce is in a private room.”
“Look,” he said, suddenly irritated, “let me take care of Bruce. You take care of your brother and I’ll take care of mine.”
She didn’t answer, just closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the seatback.
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