He made his way to the office at the opposite end of the hallway and paused with his hand above the doorknob. He could almost hear his father’s voice, resigned and unhappy, holding up his last report card. “Hick, you are capable of so much more.” What would he say to him today?
He opened the door and stepped through a portal in time. Gladys Kestrel had been the school secretary for decades. She hardly changed as the years ticked by, her hair grew a shade grayer, the glasses a little thicker, but her hooked nose and thin mouth were exactly as he remembered.
She looked surprised to see him. “Why, Hick Blackburn,” she said, with a smile, “what brings you here?”
He removed his hat and said, “Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at last year’s absentee records.”
Her face didn’t conceal her surprise. “Okay,” she said as she moved across the room to the filing cabinets.
Reaching in, she pulled out a folder, checked the contents and then handed it to him. “I don’t guess it’d do me any good to ask what you were wanting these for, would it?”
“No ma’am,” he answered smiling. “I won’t keep ’em long, though.” He glanced at the office that used to be his father’s. A peculiar heaviness settled in his chest.
Back at the station, Adam sat on the edge of Hick’s desk with his arms crossed as Hick recounted Coal Oil Johnny’s story.
“Good God almighty,” Adam exclaimed. “The eephus? Hell, I ain’t heard that word in years. My old granny used to try to scare us with stories to keep us in the house after dark.”
“Well, at least we have a witness,” Wash offered practically.
Hick leaned back in his chair and scratched his head. “But to have one, and then have it be Coal Oil Johnny.” This was met by a grunt from Wash.
“Maybe he’ll remember something useful,” Adam said in a voice of little hope. He rose and walked to the window with his hands in his pockets, seemingly meditating on what he had heard. He stiffened and had barely gotten the words, “Here’s Fay,” out of his mouth before she burst into the station.
She was breathless from running, and her face was tight with worry, her eyes frightened. “Tobe’s got his gun out again,” she managed between gulps for air. “He’s shooting off into the woods and I’m scared he’s gonna hit someone. I grabbed Bobby and took him straight to my mother’s, then came here.”
The three men rushed out of the station but Adam turned back. “Hick, maybe you ought to stay here with her, help calm her down. She’s a mess.”
Hick glanced back. Fay was sobbing, sitting alone in the station house. She didn’t know Wash or Adam very well, and he knew she’d be most comfortable with him. “Promise me you won’t bring him in,” he said to Adam.
Adam’s usually cheerful expression was grim. “Hick, you can’t let him keep doing this. Murphy’s gonna have a field day with it tomorrow as it is. You don’t bring him in this time and there’ll be hell to pay for sure.”
“I don’t give a damn about Murphy!” Hick shouted. “I am sick of caring about what he, Lem, or anyone else says about the way I do my job. It is my job until I hear otherwise, and I say don’t bring him in. Let him sleep it off. He’ll be fine in the morning.”
“He won’t give us his gun,” Wash warned. “We’ve tried before. It just means we’ll be doing this all over again next week or the week after.”
“Then we do it again,” Hick countered. “You don’t know Tobe, and you don’t know what he’s been through. You lock him up and it’ll kill him.”
A sob caught their attention and Adam turned to go. “Promise me,” Hick repeated, grabbing Adam’s arm.
Adam nodded and glanced toward the station. “Take care of her.”
Hick watched them leave and then went back inside. Fay was seated in the chair nearest the window with a handkerchief pressed to her nose. Her eyes were red, her face tear-stained. “What will they do to him?”
Hick pulled a chair in front of her. “They’ll put him to bed. This time tomorrow he’ll have forgotten all about it.”
“Thank you, Hick. I know this puts you in a bad spot, but I couldn’t stand it if he got put away.”
“Seems to me you might be better off without him,” Hick couldn’t help but say.
Fay shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe. I know he drinks and curses and he ain’t worth much, but he’s all I got. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thanked God that he married me before he left. If he did to me what you did to….” She faltered, realizing what she was saying. “Anyway,” she continued with a false brightness in her voice, “I do thank you for helping him.”
Hick walked across the room and sat down at his desk. “Fay, I’d do anything for Tobe. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this up, though. If he hurts or kills someone, it’ll be my head, too.”
“I know that,” she replied, staring at her hands in her lap.
There was a pause and Hick ventured, “You really think you’re better off with Tobe? The way he is now?”
Fay crossed the room and looked down at Hick sitting at his desk. “I know he ain’t perfect, but he’s the same man I fell in love with. You can’t just stop something like that.”
“What good has he done you?”
She smiled a thin smile. “No good that I can think of. But, I know what he did over there. None of you boys came back as innocent as you left. Tobe killed more men in a month than live in this whole town. He hears ’em moanin’ and cryin’ whenever he’s alone and it’s quiet. He’s hurtin’, Hick. How could I up and leave knowin’ that?”
“But Fay,” Hick reasoned, “it’s dangerous for you to be there.”
“No,” she disagreed. “Tobe would never hurt me—”
“Not on purpose,” Hick interrupted.
She looked at him and repeated more firmly, “Tobe would never hurt me, and I won’t leave him alone. If the whiskey helps to take the edge off what he’s feeling, then so be it. But he needs me more than he needs that whiskey, and I’ll be there when he remembers.”
Hick ran his hands through his hair. “Fay, I got to be honest with you, I can’t sit here and let this go on forever. If it keeps up, I’m bringin’ him in. How could I live with myself if he hurt you or Bobby?”
“You ain’t forcing me to stay there. No one is. It wouldn’t be your fault.”
“But I can stop it. To just sit back and do nothing….” His face suddenly contorted and his stomach tightened.
“Hick?”
“I’ll go talk to him. I’ll let him sleep it off tomorrow, but something’s got to be done.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“He’s lucky to have you,” Hick told her with a faint smile.
“We’ll get through this; I know it. Someday, he’ll forget about what he done. It don’t matter what happened there … he’s home now.”
Hick rose and walked her to the door. “I’ll be out to see him in two days, okay?”
Nodding, she gathered her purse and handkerchief. Then, she squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Well, I’m off to my mother’s. Bobby and me will sleep there tonight. Like always.” She paused at the door with her hand on it. “Thank you, Hick.”
He watched her make her way down the street toward her parent’s home.
The cigarette he was smoking was mostly gone when Adam’s car came into view. Relief flooded him when he saw they had not brought Tobe with them. Adam was alone, evidently already taking Wash home for the day.
“Tobe sleeping?” Hick asked.
“Yeah,”
There was a silence, then Hick asked, “He been shooting long?”
Adam’s face was dark. “Long enough to have everyone at Ellen Isle in their front yards, madder than hell. Hick, this can’t go on much longer. Those people are scared, and they got every right to be. A drunk with a gun ain’t a good combination.”
“I’ll talk to him in a day or two,” Hick promised.
“Murphy was up t
here.”
Hick shrugged, collecting his hat. “I reckon I’m too tired to care right now.”
Adam sat at his desk and put his feet up, ready for his night shift at the station. “You need anything before I go?” Hick asked him.
Adam shook his head. “Nothing happened last night when you were here, nothing happened the night before when Wash was here. I don’t expect anything to happen tonight, either.”
“That’s what Wash thought the day they found the baby,” Hick reminded him.
Adam leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. Smiling his slow smile, he answered, “Don’t think there’s much chance of a repeat.”
Hick walked out of the station glad for the end of another muggy delta day. The car windows let in the breeze, cooler now that the sweltering red sun dipped below the tops of the cypress trees. It left in its wake beautiful ripples of pink and golden clouds, and produced a night that invited one to be outdoors.
Not anxious to go home to his empty, hot house, he turned down the street toward Pam and Adam’s house. It was a gravel road lined with houses of various shapes and sizes. Adam’s was one of the smaller ones, bought long before he ever thought of marrying. Hick saw Pam in the side yard taking diapers off the clothesline as he pulled over.
She smiled at him as he approached, clothespins sticking out of her mouth as she dropped a diaper into the clothes basket. Removing the pins, she said, “Hey, little brother. What brings you out this way?”
Hick made a sweeping motion with his arms and replied, “This weather. Just enjoyin’ the night air.”
She paused, pushing her hair back from her sunburned face. “It is right nice out here tonight,” she agreed. “First time all day I’ve been able to get anything done. The kids is so cranky when it’s hot. But this,” she paused and breathed in the evening air, “this is lovely.”
Everything was bathed in pink, a gentle warm breeze blew up, the mosquitoes buzzed happily around Hick’s ears.
Children’s voices rang out from behind the house. “They playin’?” Hick asked.
“They’re catching lightning bugs to keep in a Mason jar.”
At that moment a shrill scream reached them from the back yard. Pam’s eyes grew wide and she gasped. She threw the clothespins down and ran to the back yard, with Hick right behind her.
Following the sound, they rushed up the steps onto the back porch and found Sammy, the four-year-old, on a chair with his hand caught in the wringer attachment of the washing machine. Henry and Benji had arrived and were hollering, adding to the chaos of the moment.
“Ooowww!” Sammy screamed as the wringer continued to pull on his hand.
Pam crawled behind the machine, unplugging it from the extension cord that ran out the window of the house. Hick went to the boy, carefully extricating his hand from the wringer by spinning it backward. The hand emerged skinned and bloody and the little boy howled when he saw it.
“Hush, Sammy. Let’s get him inside,” she said to Hick in a trembling voice.
Hick carried the sobbing boy into the house and they went directly to the sink. Pam turned the water on and Hick held the boy’s hand under the spigot, rinsing the ugly wound. Sammy cried as the stinging water ran down his hand, the blood trickling to the tips of his fingers and into the sink, pooling with the water puddled there.
Hick’s eyes fixated on the blood standing in the bottom of the white porcelain sink. It spun around the drain, a circling, swirling stain that made him dizzy. He suddenly felt hot, his forehead drenched in sweat, his head grew light and everything brightened, and then the darkness closed in on him. He staggered backward a little with Sammy in his arms.
“Hick!” Pam exclaimed. She took the child from him and he sat down heavily at the kitchen table, eyes clenched tight, stomach heaving with the smell of blood burning his nostrils. Sammy cried against his mother’s bosom and she stood swaying back and forth trying to comfort him, all the while her eyes upon her brother’s face.
He finally looked up at her, his face white, his lips pale. “Sorry, Pam. I don’t know what happened.”
“The sight of blood never bothered you before.”
“It’s not the sight,” he said. “It’s the smell. God, it’s horrible.”
Pam looked confused. “But Hick, I don’t smell anything.”
“You can’t smell that bl—” he began then stopped. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s take a look at that hand.”
She brought the child over to the table and set him on it, his legs dangling over the side. “Let mommy see,” she said in a soothing tone.
His hand was clenched behind his back.
“Sammy, let Uncle Hick see,” Hick persuaded.
The boy looked at him, tears pooled in the bottom of his eyes, his chin quivering. He held the hand out and turned it over. The skin had been stripped from the top of his fingers and hand, rubbed off by the friction between the two rollers. It was angry and red, moist with blood. Sammy’s eyes grew wide when he saw it. The sobs that had started to die down became more noisy and frightened.
“Doc should see this,” Hick told Pam.
She nodded. “Can you take me?”
They piled into Hick’s car and he sped to town. Sammy’s crying had turned into a muffled sob by the time they arrived at Jake Prescott’s house. The child’s face was flushed and miserable, his nose running, his eyes red. Pam and the boys climbed out of the car. “I’ll get Adam,” Hick called out the car window. He rushed to the station.
Adam was surprised to see him. “What are you doing here?”
“Pam’s at Doc’s house,” Hick answered. “Sammy had an accident with the washing machine and Doc’s looking it over.”
Adam jumped to his feet, his usual calm demeanor gone in an instant. “Is he okay?”
“He’ll be fine,” Hick assured him. “He messed up his hand pretty good, though. Pam wants you to meet her at Doc’s. I’ll stay here tonight.”
Adam was halfway out the door before he thought to turn around. “Thanks, Hick. I owe you one.”
“Don’t mention it,” Hick replied, but Adam was long gone.
The files of absentee records sat on his desk. As he opened the first one, his mind wandered. He could hear Fay’s voice, again, saying, “If he did to me what you did to—” He shook his head wondering at women’s devotion. He thought of Fay, his mother’s love for her children, Pam’s devotion to her boys, of Maggie. Suddenly, the image of another woman loomed before him, unbidden and terrible, an intensely loving woman. He shook his head, begging her to leave, and convulsed with pain at her memory. He buried his head in his hands. There would be no paperwork—or sleep—tonight.
9
Hick’s chin rested on his hand as he took a drag of his sixth cigarette of the morning. The sky was brightening, but was still washed out in the dawn’s gray light. Slivers of purple and pink sliced through the clouds like luminous fingers, streams of light arcing out across the horizon.
He had been waiting for dawn when the town awakened and everything came to life. As he slipped on the extra uniform he kept at the station, he was too bleary-eyed to wonder that his clothes no longer fit, or that his blue eyes seemed to stand out from his thin, brown face.
He finished shaving just as the door opened and Adam walked in.
“How’s Sammy?” Hick called from the bathroom.
“Doc dressed his hand real nice and gave him something to help him sleep. Says it’ll be a long time in healin’. Might have to go into Memphis for a skin graft if it don’t get better on its own.”
Hick entered the room tying his tie and watched as Adam plopped a fresh newspaper on his desk. “I told you this would happen,” Adam said, his face sober.
Hick sat down and looked at the front page of the paper quickly reading the article. Wayne Murphy wrote, in gleeful detail, of the fall of Cherokee Crossing’s former favorite, Tobe Hill. He seemed to take delight in recounting the minute details of the day before. If you wan
t to break the law in Cherokee Crossing, the article read, be sure to buddy up to our esteemed sheriff first. It seems Tobe Hill can unlawfully discharge his weapon in town at will, whereas the majority of us would be in jail at this hour. The corruption and ineptness must stop. Hick read the last sentence twice, feeling his heart pounding, trying to control his temper.
“Well?” Adam demanded. “Now, what are we going to do?”
“Tobe didn’t break no laws,” Hick responded.
Adam put his finger on the article and pounded it on the desk. “Hick, you can’t protect Tobe anymore. It’s in the paper. Everyone knows Tobe fired that weapon again yesterday.”
Hick rose from his desk and got his hat. Pausing at the doorway, he turned to Adam and answered, “I ain’t saying what Tobe’s doin’ is smart, and I know it ain’t safe. But Tobe don’t live in the city limits. It ain’t unlawful to discharge a weapon on Ellen Isle.”
Hick marched across the road to Wayne Murphy’s office and stalked inside. Wayne was leaning over his printing press, apparently getting ready to publish a second edition, a rare thing in Cherokee Crossing.
He snorted a little when he saw Hick. “Morning, Sheriff. Looking for a paper?”
Hick went to the counter and removed his hat. “No, Wayne, I’m not.”
Wayne seemed reluctant to leave his press. “I’m kind of busy right now,” he told Hick. “Need to get this edition printed before interest dies down and I can’t sell them. Can you come back a little later?”
Hick ran his hand across his mouth hard and tried to choke back his rage. “Wayne, I notice your story has quite a few details in it. I wasn’t there, but you wrote with so much knowledge that it made me feel like I was.” Hick paused and then asked in a cool voice, “How’d it happen that you were?”
Wayne looked up and narrowed his eyes. “Let’s just say there are certain benefits to being across the street from the sheriff’s office.”
“So, are you saying you followed them out to Tobe’s?”
“I ain’t saying anything,” Wayne replied working quickly and paying little attention to Hick. He walked to the back room to get more paper and Hick marched around the counter and followed him.
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