ruggedly handsome face was set like the prow of the Flying Dutchman. I believe
my hair stood on end.
Midnight Mona cleaved through Big Dick. Went right through the front
seats, and on its way into the engine block its driver reached out a hand and
seemed to touch Lainie’s cheek. I saw her blink and jump, her face going as
pale as white silk. Donny cringed, yelling in stark-naked fear. He twisted the
wheel back and forth because he could see the passing apparition even if
Lainie was blind to it. Then Midnight Mona had gone through the front fender,
its taillights the shape of red diamonds and its exhaust pipes spouting in
Donny’s face, and the Chevy started spinning around and around like a
Tiltawhirl, the brakes and tires shrieking like drunken banshees at an
all-night haunt.
I felt a crunch and heard a thud and I flew into the back of Lainie’s
seat as if pressed there by an invisible waffle iron. “Jesus!” I heard Donny
shout; this time he wasn’t mocking anybody. Glass crashed and something
kabonged in the car’s belly, and with a loud ripping noise of bushes and low
tree limbs the Chevy came to a halt with its nose buried in a bank of red
dirt.
“Yi yi yi yi!” Donny was yelping like a dog with a hurt leg. I tasted
blood, and my nose felt as if it had been pushed right through my face. I saw
Donny looking wildly about; at his hairline along the sides of his head, the
hair had gone gray. “I killed him!” he squalled in a high and giddy voice.
“Killed that bastard! Midnight Mona burned up! Saw it burn up!”
Lainie stared at him, her eyes unfocused, an egg-sized knot bulging on
her reddened forehead. She whispered thickly, “You… killed…”
“Killed him! Killed him dead! Went flyin’ off the road! Boom, he went!
Boom!” Donny started laughing, and he scrambled out through the driver’s-side
window without opening the door. His face looked swollen and wet, his eyes
cocked and crazy. He began to stagger in a circle, the front of his jeans
soggy with urine. “Daddy?” he cried out. “Help me, Daddy!” Then he started
gibbering and sobbing and he climbed up the bank of red dirt for the woods
beyond.
I heard a click.
Lainie had reached down to the floorboard and retrieved the pistol. She
had pulled its hammer back, and now she took aim at the struggling, insane
wretch who sobbed for his daddy.
Her hand trembled. I saw her finger tighten on the trigger.
“Better not,” I said.
Her finger didn’t listen.
But her hand did. It moved an inch. The pistol went off, and the bullet
threw up a chunk of red dirt. She kept firing, four more times. Four more red
dirt chunks, flying in the air.
Donny Blaylock ran for the yellow woods. He got caught up in branches for
a moment, and as he thrashed to get loose the branches ripped the shirt right
off his back. He hightailed it, but we could hear him laughing and crying
until the awful sound faded and was gone.
Lainie lowered her head and pressed her hand to her eyes. Her back began
to tremble. She gave a low, moaning sob. My nose was starting to feel like it
was on fire.
But through it I could still smell a hint of English Leather.
Lainie looked up, startled. She touched her tear-stained cheek. “Stevie?”
she said, her voice alive with hope.
As I’ve said, it was the season of ghosts. They had gathered themselves,
building up their strength to wander the fields—and roads—of October and speak
to those who would listen.
Maybe Lainie never saw him. Maybe she wouldn’t have believed her own mind
if she had, and she would’ve gone running for a rubber room the same as Donny.
But I believe she heard him, loud and clear. Maybe just in the scent of
his skin, or the memory of a touch.
I believe it was enough.
7
High Noon in Zephyr
MY NOSE WASN’T BROKEN, THOUGH IT SWELLED UP LIKE A MELON and turned a ghastly
purplish-green and my eyes puffed up into black-and-blue slits. To say Mom was
horrified about the whole experience is like saying the Gulf of Mexico has
some water in it. But I survived, and I was all right after my nose shrank to
its regular size.
Sheriff Amory, who’d been called by Miss Grace, found Lainie and me
walking back to Zephyr on Route Sixteen. I didn’t have much to say to him,
because I remembered Donny yelling that the Blaylocks owned him. I told Dad
about this when he and Mom came to pick me up at Dr. Parrish’s office. Dad
didn’t say anything, but I could see the thundercloud settling over his head
and I knew he wouldn’t let it lie.
Miss Grace was okay. She had to be taken to the hospital in Union Town,
but the bullet hadn’t hit anything that couldn’t be fixed. I had the feeling
that it would take an awful lot to put Miss Grace down for the count.
This was the story about Lainie and Little Stevie Cauley, as I learned
later from Dad, who found it out from the sheriff: Lainie, who’d run away from
home when she was seventeen, had met Donny Blaylock while she was a stripper
at the Port Said in Birmingham. He had convinced her to come work for his
family’s “business,” promising her all sorts of big money and stuff, saying
the Air Force boys really knew how to part with a paycheck. She came, but soon
after she arrived at Miss Grace’s, she’d met Little Stevie when she’d gone to
the Woolworth’s in Zephyr to buy her summer wardrobe. Maybe it hadn’t been
love at first sight, but something close to it. Anyhow, Little Stevie had been
encouraging Lainie to leave Miss Grace’s and straighten up her act. They’d
started talking about getting married. Miss Grace had been in favor of it,
because she didn’t want any girl working for her who couldn’t put her all into
the job. But Donny Blaylock fancied himself to be Lainie’s boyfriend. He hated
Little Stevie anyway because as much as Donny wanted to deny it, Midnight Mona
could leave Big Dick dragging. He’d decided the only way to keep Lainie
working was to get Stevie out of the picture. The crash and burning of
Midnight Mona had been the wreck of Lainie’s dreams as well, and from that
point on she didn’t care about what she did, with who, or where. As Miss Grace
had said, Lainie had gotten as rough as a cob.
The last I heard of Lainie, she was going home, older and wiser.
Sadder, too.
But who ever said everybody gets a happy ending?
Some of this information came right from the jackass’s mouth. Donny was
behind bars in the Zephyr jail, which stood next to the courthouse. He’d been
found, dancing with a scarecrow, by a farmer with a very large shotgun. The
sight of iron bars in front of his face had squared up some of Donny’s raggedy
edges, and he had come out of his madness long enough to admit running Little
Stevie off the road. It was clear that this time a Blaylock was not going to
escape the long arm of the law, even if the hand on that arm was dirty with
Blaylock cash.
November had touched the yards of Zephyr with frosty fingers. The hills
had gone brown, the leaves falling. They crackled like little fireworks when
somebody came up the walk. We heard them on a Tuesday evening, when a fire
burned in our hearth, Dad was reading the newspaper, and Mom was poring over
her cookbooks for new pie and cake recipes.
Dad answered the door when the knock sounded. Sheriff Junior Talmadge
Amory stood under the porch light, his long-jawed face sullen and his hat in
his hand. He had the collar of his jacket turned up; it was cold out there.
“Can I come in, Tom?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Dad said.
“I’d understand if you didn’t care to talk to me anymore. I’d take it
like a man. But… I sure would like to have my say about some things.”
Mom stepped up beside my father. “Let him in, Tom. All right?”
Dad opened the door, and the sheriff came in from the night.
“Hi, Cory,” he said to me. I was on the floor next to the fireplace,
doing my Alabama history homework. A certain area where Rebel used to lounge
in the hearth’s glow seemed awfully empty. But life went on.
“Hi,” I said.
“Cory, go to your room,” Dad instructed, but Sheriff Amory said, “Tom,
I’d like for him to hear me out, too, seein’ as he was the one found out and
all.”
I stayed where I was. Sheriff Amory sank his slim Ichabod Crane body onto
the couch and put his hat on the coffee table. He sat staring at the silver
star that adorned it. Dad sat down again, and Mom—ever the hospitable
one—asked the sheriff if he’d like some apple pie or spice cake but he shook
his head. She sat down, too, her chair and Dad’s bracketing the fireplace.
“I won’t be sheriff very much longer,” Sheriff Amory began. “Mayor
Swope’s gonna appoint a new man as soon as he can decide on one. I figure I’ll
be done with it by the middle of the month.” He sighed heavily. “I expect
we’ll be leavin’ town before December.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Dad told him. “But I was sorrier to hear what
Cory had to tell me. I guess I can’t kick you around too much, though. You
could’ve lied when I came to you about it.”
“I wanted to. Real bad. But if you can’t believe your own son, who in the
world can you believe?”
Dad scowled. He looked as if he wanted to spit a foul taste from his
mouth. “For God’s sake, why’d you do it, J.T.? Takin’ money from the Blaylocks
to shield ’em? Lookin’ the other way when they sold their ’shine and suckered
people into that crooked gamblin’ den? Not to mention Miss Grace’s house, and
I like and respect Miss Grace but God knows she oughta be in some other line
of work. What else did you do for Biggun Blaylock? Polish his boots?”
“Yes,” the sheriff said.
“Yes what?”
“I did. Polish his boots.” Sheriff Amory gave a wan, tired smile. His
eyes were black holes of sadness and regret. His smile slipped off, leaving
his mouth twisted with pain. “I always went to Biggun’s house to get my money.
He had it for me, first day of the month. Two hundred dollars in a white
envelope with my name on it. ‘Sheriff Junior.’ That’s what he calls me.” He
winced a little at the thought. “When I went in that day, all the boys were
there: Donny, Bodean, and Wade. Biggun was oilin’ a rifle. Even sittin’ in a
chair, he can fill up a room. He can look at you and knock you down. I picked
up my envelope, and all of a sudden he reaches to the floor and puts his muddy
boots on the table, and he says, ‘Sheriff Junior, I’ve got me a mess here to
clean up and I don’t rightly feel up to doin’ it. You think you could clean
’em for me?’ And I started to say no, but he takes a fifty-dollar bill out of
his shirt pocket and he puts it down inside one of them big boots, and he
says, ‘Make it worth your while, of course.’”
“Don’t tell me this, J.T.,” Dad said.
“I want to. I have to.” The sheriff peered into the fire, and I could see
the flames make light and shadows ripple across his face. “I told Biggun I had
to go, that I couldn’t be cleanin’ anybody’s boots. And he grins and says,
‘Aw, Sheriff Junior, why didn’t you name your price right off?’ and he takes
another fifty-dollar bill out of his pocket and he slides it down into the
other boot.” Sheriff Amory looked at the fingers of his traitorous right hand.
“My girls needed new clothes,” he said. “Needed some Sunday shoes, with bows
on ’em. Needed somethin’ that wasn’t already worn out by somebody else. So I
earned myself an extra hundred dollars. But Biggun knew I’d be comin’ that
day, and he… he’d been stompin’ around in filth. When his boots were clean, I
went outside and threw up, and I heard the boys laughin’ in the house.” His
eyes squeezed shut for a few seconds, and then they opened again. “I took my
girls to the finest shoestore in Union Town, and I bought Lucinda a bouquet of
flowers. It wasn’t just for her; I wanted to smell somethin’ sweet.”
“Did Lucinda know about this?” Dad asked.
“No. She thought I’d gotten a raise. You know how many times I’ve asked
Mayor Swope and that damn town council for a raise, Tom? You know how many
times they’ve said, ‘We’ll put it in the budget next year, J.T.’?” He gave a
bitter laugh. “Good ol’ J.T.! Ol’ J.T. can make do, or do without! He can
stretch a dime until Roosevelt hollers, and he don’t need no raise because
what does he do all day? Ol’ J.T. drives around in his sheriff’s car and he
sits behind his desk readin’ True Detective and he maybe breaks up a fight now
and then or chases down a lost dog or keeps two neighbors from squabblin’ over
a busted fence. Every blue moon there’s a robbery, or a shootin’, or somethin’
like that car goin’ down into Saxon’s Lake. But it’s not like good ol’
harmless J.T.’s a real sheriff, don’t you see? He’s just kind of a long,
slumpy thing with a star on his hat, and nothin’ much ever happens in Zephyr
that he should be gettin’ a raise, or a half-decent gasoline allowance, or a
bonus every once in a while. Or maybe a pat on the back.” His eyes glittered
with feverish anger. I realized, as my parents did, that we had not known
Sheriff Amory’s hidden anguish. “Damn,” he said. “I didn’t mean to come in
here and spill all my belly juice like this. I’m sorry.”
“If you felt this way so long,” Mom said, “why didn’t you just quit?”
“Because… I liked bein’ the sheriff, Rebecca. I liked knowin’ who was
doin’ what to who, and why. I liked havin’ people depend on me. It was… like
bein’ a father and big brother and best friend all rolled up into one. Maybe
Mayor Swope and the town council don’t respect me, but the people of Zephyr
do. Did, I mean. That’s why I kept at it, even though I should’ve walked away
from it a long time ago. Before Biggun Blaylock called me in the middle of the
night and said he had a proposition for me. Said his businesses don’t hurt
anybody. Said they make people feel better. Said he wouldn’t be in business to
begin with if people didn’t come lookin’ for what he was sellin’.”
“And you believed him. My God, J.T.!” Dad shook his head in disgust.
“There was more. Biggun said if he and his boys weren’t in business, the
Ryker gang would move in from the next county, and I’ve heard those fellas are
stone-cold killers. Biggun said that by acceptin’ his money I might be shakin’
