Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

I’D JUST CLOSED THE SLIDING GLASS DOOR AND STEPPED ONTO THE deck when I heard the kitchen telephone ring. It was a hot Sunday evening in early September, and, just like I do every day after dinner, I’d gone out to the deck to smoke my one cigarette of the day and listen to the crickets get started up for the night.

I shook a cigarette from the pack and fished the lighter out of my pocket, and once I had it lit, I turned and looked through the glass in time to see Sheila answer the telephone. She looked back at me where I stood in the floodlight by the door, and she listened to the voice on the other end of the line, and then she rolled her eyes. She raised her hand and motioned for me to come inside, and then she pointed to the telephone and mouthed the words “It’s for you.” I decided to make a show of her not letting me smoke in the house anymore, and I raised my cigarette up to where she could see it, and I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. She sat the phone on the counter and walked across the living room and slid the door open.

“I hate to interrupt your exercise,” she said, “but you’ve got a telephone call.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Robby,” she said. “Again.”

“Good Lord,” I said. “What does he want now? Can’t you take a message?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” she said. “Sounds like an emergency.” I flicked the end off my cigarette and dropped the butt into my breast pocket.

“It’s always an emergency,” I said. “Especially with him.”

“I told you he was nervous. And too young. You should’ve thought twice about deputizing him.” I walked into the house, and when I passed Sheila I squeezed her hand.

“I wanted to deputize you,” I said. “I just couldn’t get you to carry a damn gun.”

“We spend too much time together anyway,” she said, smiling. “Answer the phone.” I picked up the receiver and leaned against the kitchen counter. I made a show of clearing my throat like people do when they’re about to give a speech.

“Hello,” I said.

“Sheriff, it’s Robby down at the office. I just had a 911 call come over from Ben Hall up on Long Branch Road. He says his son’s been killed.”

That was about the last thing I expected Robby to call and tell me on a Sunday evening, and I stood up straight and put my hand in my pocket and raised my eyes to Sheila’s. It looked like she was waiting for me to tell her something funny that Robby might’ve said, but the longer I looked at her the more her face changed to resemble the same concern she probably saw on mine. “What happened?” she whispered. I lowered my eyes and looked at the tiles on the kitchen floor. My fingers fumbled with the lighter in my pocket.

“How’d it happen?” I asked.

“He don’t know,” Robby said. “His wife left the house about six thirty this evening to take their boys to church. And then, about eight o’clock, he got a call from Adelaide Lyle telling him his son was over at her house and that he’d died. He asked her what happened, and either she didn’t know or she wouldn’t say.”

“Did it happen at her house?” I asked.

“No, sir. It happened at the church.”

“Which one of his boys is it?”

“It’s the older one,” he said. “The slow one. The one they call ‘Stump.’”

“I’m going to head over there now,” I said. “Won’t take me but a second to get things together here.”

“All right,” Robby said. “Ben Hall’s on his way there right now. Sounds like his daddy’s back in town, like he might be going to drive him.” When I heard that my stomach dropped to the floor, and for a second I thought I might lose the dinner I’d just finished eating a few minutes before. “Sheriff?” Robby said. I looked at my watch. It was almost fifteen after eight. I knew I wouldn’t beat Ben and his daddy there, even if I left right then.

“I’m here,” I said, “but I’d better get going. There ain’t no telling what Ben will do to those church folks if any of them are at that house when he gets there, especially if his daddy’s with him.” I didn’t notice that Sheila had left the room until she walked back into the kitchen carrying my hat in one hand and my holster in the other. She laid them on the counter beside me.

“Miss Lyle’s address is 1404 River Road,” Robby said. “About two miles past that church on the right. You know where I’m talking about?”

“I do,” I said. I undid my belt and slid my holster onto it.

“You reckon I should meet you there, Sheriff?” he asked.

“You might want to think about it,” I said. “I might could use the help.” I hung up the phone and finished fastening my belt.

“What’s happened?” Sheila asked.

“Ben Hall’s oldest son’s been killed out at that damn church,” I said. “And it sounds like they’ve moved him to Adelaide Lyle’s house out there on River Road.”

“Why would they take him there?”

“Would you want a dead boy lying around inside your church when the law gets there?”

“You think he died at the church?”

“I think so,” I said. “There wasn’t no reason to move him otherwise.” I put on my hat and turned and walked down the hallway to the front door where the keys to the cruiser hung on a hook by the light switch. The front door was open, and I looked out through the glass in the storm door and for a moment I watched the yellow lights of what were probably the last few fireflies of the summer move through the darkness of the front yard. I took the keys off the hook and flipped the floodlights on, and all the fireflies disappeared. In the storm door’s reflection I could see Sheila standing behind me at the end of the hall.

“Guess who’s back in town?” I asked her.

“I heard you talking to Robby,” she said. “You think he’ll be with Ben?”

“It sounds like it,” I said. I looked into the glass and watched her ghostly image fold its arms across its chest and lean against the wall behind me.

“Please be careful, Clem,” she said. “Don’t let any of this get out of hand. There’s no use in anybody getting hurt, especially you.”

“I’m not planning on anything getting out of hand,” I said, but as soon as I said it I knew good and well that sometimes you can’t account for the bad things that happen.

ICLIMBED INTO THE CRUISER AND TURNED ON THE LIGHTS AND the siren and drove along the top of the ridge before taking the road down toward Marshall. I knew there were hollers in places below me where it had been dark for almost an hour, but up here on the ridge the sun was struggling to be remembered and I could see red and gold still lighting up the sky in the distance on the Tennessee side of the mountain. I remembered the half-finished cigarette in my breast pocket, and I dug it out and pushed in the lighter on the dash. When it popped, I lit up and rolled down the window.

I smoked what was left of that cigarette and thought about how our son, Jeff, was still alive the last time I responded to a call about Ben Hall. Jeff was about sixteen years old then, maybe seventeen, and the boys were probably juniors at the high school. My son had been friends with Ben for a long time, and I’d known him just about his whole life, but then again so had everybody else, especially after he started making a name for himself on the field. Ben was probably the best football player to ever come out of this county. He’d played left tackle, and he was a big boy too, bigger than any of his teammates, bigger than just about any lineman he ever faced. He got a scholarship to Western Carolina and spent half his freshman year riding the bench and realizing that they made bigger boys than him in other parts of this country. They put him at linebacker near the end of the season, and he did pretty well: played in a few games, did a little partying, got into some trouble, and came home that summer after his grades had fallen so low that he couldn’t keep his scholarship. There wasn’t no way his piece of shit old man could get himself together enough to pay his tuition so he could go back in the fall, so Ben just hung around Madison County, got married to a sweet-looking girl named Julie, and he’d been here ever since.