Wild Pitch

by Guthrie, A. B. ;

  Such as they never could understand

  The way we have loved you, young, young land.

  What was more, Jase was all right—after one telephone call. My hand tightened on my all-right baseball.

  We swerved to the left at my direction. A half-mile ahead, in a mown meadow where haystacks stood, lay the Hogues’ ranch house and outbuildings, part of the latter screened from sight by the house. Some scattered cows gazed curiously at us, and one of them in the manner of cows decided to cross ahead of us at the last minute and came close to becoming a casualty.

  Gewald braked to a halt in front of the house. It was a sprawling, old-fashioned building to which age and size and rude taste had given an air. A roofed, deep verandah ran across the whole front of it. Out of the car, I could hear the cackle of hens and the soft blat of a calf. Behind the house someone was pounding, the sound coming clean and sharp like metal on metal.

  At Gewald’s thumbed order I went to the door and knocked. Junior Hogue’s wife opened it, looking too hot to touch after a session over the cook stove. She was a fat, tidy woman with clear, honest eyes.

  “You’ll find Junior and Simon both in back,” she said with so little shown curiosity that I wondered if solitude and hard work had not filed the normal bump down.

  Followed by Gewald, I went around to the back. Junior and Simp were setting a new post for a corral, Simp holding and Junior shoveling and tamping the dirt solid around it. Near them on the ground were a hammer and a bucket of spikes. Both men, stopping work, looked up without any word of welcome as I approached.

  I introduced them to Gewald and said, “Mr. Gewald is a state criminal investigator. He’s here to find out who shot your dad.”

  Junior stared at Gewald, his heavy face reflecting suspicion. Simp wasn’t talking. Junior said, “What’s the matter with the sheriff? His job.”

  I answered for Gewald, who just stood, sizing the two up. “The state thinks the sheriff needs a helping hand.”

  Junior said, “Huh,” as if the matter had been considered and dropped.

  Gewald spoke now. “Surely you want to find out who killed your father.” The words were as much question as statement.

  Junior reversed his shovel and tamped with the handle. Between tamps he answered, “Smart thinkin’.”

  The sun got a clean shot at us there in the open. A bead of sweat ran a clean furrow down Junior’s grimed face. Simp toweled his crotch with his pants. Gewald must have been hot, suit coat, revolver and all, but he wasn’t sweating. I wished for a cold drink.

  “Simon,” Junior said, “see the post’s straight.”

  Simp changed its angle.

  Out of somewhere—outbuilding or field—a big dog came barking. He lay down panting before he could take a bite out of me. A horse thrust its head out of the half-door of the barn and let out a whicker. A good horse, it looked like. All Hogue horses were. Simp, holding the post, stared at the animal, almost as if hunting a communion there not to be found among humans. Junior kept on working.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions,” Gewald said.

  “Ask ’em.”

  “Here in the sun? While your attention’s divided between me and that posthole?”

  Without a word Junior let the shovel fall. Before he moved off, he said to Simp, “I’ll be back in a shake, Simon.”

  Gewald told him, “Better both of you come.”

  “You’re invited, too, Simon,” Junior said, then turned to Gewald and added, “But you lay off him. Hear? He don’t know anything.”

  That last remark, I thought, had a wider application than Junior intended. If Simp knew anything, it was about a world unseen by other eyes, though in his own eyes now flickered the shadows of misgiving, as if strangers had invaded his realm.

  Junior took us around to the wide verandah and motioned toward seats. There was an old glider there, plus a rocker and a couple of straight-backed chairs. Simp took the glider and, like a kid, began swinging. Gewald moved a chair around so’s to half-face him. I sat in the rocker, it being the only seat left. I could hear Mrs. Junior back in the kitchen, getting well done along with whatever she had in the oven.

  “Simon,” Gewald began, “just a couple of things that may help us. Don’t be alarmed, boy.”

  “I told you to lay off him,” Junior said.

  Simp swung and, swinging, started a conversation no one could understand with someone nobody saw.

  “A couple of questions can’t hurt him,” Gewald answered to Junior.

  “They better not.”

  “Simon,” Gewald said then, “do you have any idea, any idea at all, how your father met his death? How he might have met it?”

  Simp, on the down swing, gave Gewald a wide stare and stared away. “Ho,” he answered almost in a shout and resumed his private, untranslatable talk.

  Junior said, “He met his death from a bullet.”

  “Hell, I know. Simon! You, Simon! What do you know, what do you suspect, about the death of your father?” Irritation was putting a keener edge on Gewald’s saw voice.

  Simp slowed his swing and finally stopped it. He looked at Junior as if asking help, a lost child asking help.

  “If he doesn’t know anything, how can he say anything?” Junior asked. In his face I thought I could see a thunderhead forming.

  “He understands, and you understand he understands, and, by God, as the son of the slain man you ought to cooperate.”

  “I would, if you knew your ass from third base.”

  “I know enough to know when a man’s faking. He’s faking.”

  “The man is nuts, Simon,” Junior said, too quietly. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “The question is simple. So can the answer be.” Gewald had softened his tone, then went back to hard stroke. “Simon! Answer me! Any idea who killed your father?”

  For a minute Simp wrenched his eyes to the real world. They flowed with fear. It struck me he might fly away, like a bird, into the refuge of heavens he alone knew. He said, “No idea, have we, Junior? No notion at all. Eh, Junior?”

  “You’re mighty right, Simon,” Junior answered. “No notion at all.”

  Assured, Simp burst out in talk, not to us, not in our language.

  “Shut up, Simon, and listen!” Gewald’s voice cut through the gabble.

  Simp shut up, his short assurance lost, his fears returned.

  “Did you have it in for your old man, Simon?”

  It struck me that Gewald had forgotten the constitutional guarantees, forgotten them in his hard purpose and heat. As the thought struck me, Junior jerked forward in his chair and said, “Jesus Christ!”

  Gewald took a fresh breath to power his saw. “Did you kill him? Simon, did you kill him? Want to talk in a jail cell?”

  It wasn’t fear now but pure terror that swam in Simp’s eyes. He leaped from the glider, jumped from the porch and ran around the house yelling.

  In that same moment Junior sprang up, plunged at Gewald and swung at his face. The chair and Gewald went over.

  Gewald clawed for his six-shooter. I got it first while Junior stood over him—a big man dazed by the punches of circumstance.

  Gewald climbed to his feet. His mouth leaked blood. He said to me, lisping, “Arrest this man!”

  “No.”

  “You have the gun.”

  “Not the authority.”

  “Obstructing an officer in the pursuit of his duties. Give me that gun.”

  I held it behind me and said, “No,” again. The officer in pursuit of his duties might have counted among them a pot shot at Junior. I added in the pursuit of peace, “Don’t hit him any more, Junior.”

  There was no real need for that last. Junior’s rage had been shot with the one blow. He said, “I got to find Simon. He’s scared crazy, my own brother is.”

  “You’ll have to come in to the office, Junior,” I told him.

  “I will. I promise I will, just as soon as convenient. I got to get Simon calmed down.”<
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  “Promises!” Gewald chimed in, his speech thick. “From a man like this one!” Blood was dripping down his chin. He didn’t notice.

  “I said I’d come in, Jase. That means I will.”

  “Good enough. Good enough for Mr. Charleston and me.”

  Junior jumped from the porch and disappeared. I could hear him shouting, “Simon. Oh, Simon. It’s only me. Junior.”

  Gewald said, “Shit,” and at last wiped his chin, and that was the mood in which we went back to town. Shitty.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Well, how’s my short-peckered friend?”

  It was morning of the next day—mid-morning because I had slept late again—and the speaker was one Mike Day. He was just coming out of Old Doc Yak’s office, his big face split in a smile that suggested he had just sold the map to the legendary Lost Dutchman mine. Behind him was Doc Yak, looking pleased, too—which wasn’t his habit. Ordinarily it was as if he couldn’t take time for a smile on account of all his concerns, two of whom I could glimpse in the waiting room waiting for him to finish his facial experiment.

  “Late for work,” I answered, and then asked of Doc, “How’s Mr. Gewald?” Gewald had dumped me off when we returned from the Hogue ranch the night before and had charged into Doc’s office to get repaired.

  “Needed a stitch or two,” Doc Yak said through the smile that showed he was a little long in the tooth. “That was all, not counting dental attention.”

  I signaled a quick good-bye but, though my sudden idea called for speed, didn’t run to the office. Mike Day, I thought. Yep, that Mike Day would bear some investigation.

  And Sheriff Charleston for sure would be at his desk at this hour. He hadn’t been last night, either early or late, and so hadn’t got my report about yesterday. When I went there, Halvor, left alone in the office, had told me, “He’s gone to the big city again, with company or without. Take your pick.” His imagination was making him grin.

  “Know what took him there?”

  “Why, now, I imagine it was wheels, saddle horses bein’ more or less out of date.”

  “So’s your wit,” I said and went home.

  Later, so important did I think the day’s happenings, I tried to telephone Charleston, tried five or six times, and lagged off to bed at midnight with Mabel Main’s words in my ears. “How in hell do I know his whereabouts? Because I’m a telephone operator? Get yourself under the feathers, Jase. That’s probably where your big boy friend is.” Maybe the sour note of disappointment had come into her voice. “Whose feathers I wouldn’t guess.”

  I fell asleep still wishing I could make my report.

  Now, at 10 A.M., Charleston was in the office but not at his desk. He was standing at a window and answered to my good morning with an absent-minded, “Hi, Jase.”

  Jimmy Conner was on the phone. He hung up, got up and said, “Kid locked in a bathroom.” He left, taking with him a jimmy and a bunch of keys.

  “That damn Mike Day,” I said, taking the first opportunity to alert Charleston.

  “Yes,” he answered, not turning from the window.

  “We ought to inquire about him.”

  “So?”

  “Look here, Mr. Charleston,” I said to his back. “It could have been this way. Mike went to collect the debt from his brother. That would be the strange car that Guy Jamison saw. So the brothers got into a fight over the debt, and Mike shot Ben. Then he took out fast, let a little time go by, and came back, saying he had just heard about Ben’s death. What he wanted, what he wants now, is to be appointed administrator of the estate. That way hell collect the money he loaned and probably something to boot.”

  Charleston turned now, his smile small and thoughtful. “Could be, Jase,” he said. “If you can make other things fit, then we’ve got a case.”

  In my fit of inspiration I hadn’t thought about other things, such as where the body was found, the tennis shoes, the trail in the grass, the new Cadillac that Jamison would have identified. But still and all?

  “Mike Day won’t be appointed administrator,” Charleston was saying.

  “Why not?”

  He was a long time in answering, as if my question had to work up through an overlay. “He’s got a record in Minnesota. His license plates led me to it. Record enough to deal him out. Some swindle, some shady dealings in stocks. Fine and six months probated.”

  “And still at it! You can almost bet your boots he just made a sale to Doc Yak.”

  Again my words seemed buried, or, rather, to enter no more than the fringe of his thought. He answered absently, “I reckon Doc Yak’s old enough to take care of himself. Job for the county attorney anyhow.”

  Charleston sat down and frowned. “Damn it, Jase. It has to be. There’s no other answer. But to prove it, to get other people to see, there’s the pinch and the bind. I need a tool.”

  I couldn’t give him one even if I knew more, so I said, “Could I ask where is Gewald?”

  “He got to me early and told about yesterday. Now he’s gone to the city for dental work.” He added with the smile that meant sour amusement, “Didn’t trust our local practitioner.”

  “But he’ll be back?”

  “Sure. Chompin’ with his new bridgework. I fought a delaying action this morning, his teeth and I did, but he’s out to get Junior. He’ll bring charges. Assault. Obstruction. Grounds enough, too. He might even push for an information charging murder or murders, mad as he is.”

  “If he’s still as mad as he was yesterday.”

  Charleston breathed out a slow breath and drew another one in. He spoke as if idly. “I could tell him about Buster Hogue’s hat.”

  “Why?”

  “He might get bamboozled by it and held up for a spell.”

  “Bamboozled?”

  “Like we were. The hat doesn’t signify, hole or no hole. It’s one of those little things that stands big in the way of progress. Devil’s work, Jase. What does it matter whether Loose Lancaster saw Buster Hogue take his hat off before he was beaned in his bald spot?—which he didn’t and that’s no matter, either. He saw the hat lying away from its perch after the shot and got mixed in his dates. Hell.”

  The sheriff swiveled away from me and then swiveled back, as if determined to put his mind on what I had to say. “Now tell me,” he said.

  “I couldn’t report last night, not with you gone some place.”

  He didn’t answer. He merely nodded.

  “Well,” I went on and told about yesterday, all that I could remember, which, I was sure, left out nothing important. The telephone rang a couple of times while I was talking, as it did again later, but the matters seemed trifling though Charleston made note of them.

  When I was finished, he said, “Deductions, if any?”

  “For an innocent man Simp Hogue seemed too scared.”

  Charleston put in, “For an innocent, sane man.”

  “All right, but what’s more, Junior Hogue shielded him. Didn’t want him questioned. Didn’t want him to answer.”

  “To you, then, they’re suspect, one or the other or both?”

  “I don’t know. You asked how things hit me.”

  “Of course, Jase, and thanks. Good report. Now let’s go back.”

  We were interrupted by Jimmy Conner, who came in carrying the jimmy, the keys and grub for the one guest the law had invited to jail. “Kids,” he said, as if being young was a capital crime. He rid himself of the keys and the jimmy and took the grub to the back.

  Then Charleston asked, “Why do you figure Ben Day was killed, Jase?”

  “Because someone had it in for him.”

  Charleston smiled a sort of fatherly smile. “You can do better than that.” It struck me that he was being indulgent.

  “Blackmail,” I answered from a sudden enlightenment that embarrassed me because it had been so late coming.

  “Right. Victim or victimizer?”

  “Far as I know, Ben Day didn’t have much.”

>   “Right again.”

  “Where does that get us?” I asked, knowing almost before he replied.

  “Closer. It rules out the peedads. Who but the damn tax-gatherers would try to get money out of Loose Lancaster, Oscar Oliphant, Pierre Chouquette, Old Man McNair or the likes of them? That leaves?”

  “It sure as hell leaves the Hogues. Junior’s got a bankroll now his father is dead. I hear there’s a trust fund for Simp.”

  “Yes. Who else?”

  “Guy Jamison, I guess, and Professor Hawthorne, I guess, and Doctor Pierpont, I guess, but I don’t guess it’s any of them. Might as likely be Old Doc Yak or Felix Underwood or you or anybody, except they weren’t at the picnic.” I was getting mixed-up and out of the mixup asked, “But did they have to be at the picnic?”

  “You mean, did he have to be? As my old granny used to say, put your thinking cap on.”

  “Affirmative,” I told him, pleased to have hit on a term so professional.

  He nodded, dismissing the subject, and asked out of left field, “How far along is the report you’ve been writing?”

  “Pretty far.”

  “Bring it up to date, today if you can, and let me see it.”

  “It’s not filled out like I want it. It’s mostly what people said, plus just an idea or two of my own. I aim to get it in better shape sometime,” I said, feeling shy about having him read it although I hadn’t put anything very personal or intimate in it.

  “That’s what I want, what people said.”

  “Could I ask why?”

  “Pisswillie, Jase. I’m a rube sheriff, as Gewald would tell you. Don’t take notes except in my head. Not often, I don’t. And what I put there may get blurred, not being written on parchment with indelible ink. Confirmation. Correction. Addition. Reminder. They’re what I need. And you’re just the boy that can do it, too, as the old man said to the Lord when praying for relief from his piles.”

  “All right. I think I can finish by night.”