Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

Milo shrugged “Sheriff, I had no option, no choice; it was either let him smash a barstool over my head, kill him, or hurt him enough to put him down for a while. Would you rather I’d killed him, then? And I hereby serve you fair warning, too: while I own the greatest respect for legally designated authority, you try to use that baton on me and I’ll clobber you, too.” He said it all bluntly, matter-of-factly and with patent sincerity.

“Who the hell are you, anyway, mister?” snapped the lawman. “You got guts, I’ll say thet much, you got you ten miles of guts, to take on a half a dozen the toughest brawlers in the whole county, then offerin’ to go after me, too. Seems to me I seen you somewhere, heard you, too. What’s yore name? Whatall do you fer a livin’, huh?”

“My name is Mile Moray,” answered Milo. “I’m a retired army officer.”

“Wal, gawdam-I-rackun!” the lawman swore feelingly. “I’s in the army during the World War Two with a captain name of Milo Moray. You mus’ be, got to be his son.”

It suddenly all clicked together, into place and proper order in Milo’s mind. “No, I’m not my son, Master Sergeant Chamberlin, I’m me, Milo Moray. I was your platoon sergeant, then your platoon leader, then your company commander, before I got transferred to an operation in Munich, back in ’forty-five.”

The lawman just stared, goggle-eyed for a moment, then he declared, “Milo? Hell, no, you cain’t be Milo, the old sarge. Man, he was as old’s I wuz or some older, and didn’t look no older then then you do now, mister. So you his son, really, and jest been tryin’ to josh me, right?”

It took some doing, quite a bit more facts and dredged-up incidents and long-forgotten names of men living and dead, but at last Milo won Sheriff Sherwood Chamberlin’s full belief as to his identity. Tears in his eyes, the big lawman impulsively lapped his long, brawny arms about his old comrade-in-arms and hugged him with a strength of which a grizzly would not have been ashamed.

Stepping back, dabbing embarrassedly at his eyes with his big knuckles, he all at once became again aware of the sprawled and still or moaning, bleeding men lying on the scuffed, stained floor amid smashed furniture. “Chester?” he shouted. “Chester, you go nex’ door and tell Sampson I said to call the fuckin’ rescue squad. Tell the fuckers I said best send two meat wagons, anyhow.”

Looking up at his elder brother, the man Milo had kneed swallowed a sob, then whined petulantly, “You ain’t gone bash him, are you, Sherwood? All he done done to me, yore own baby brother, and you ain’t gone bash him evun oncet, are you?”

Leaning over, the lawman reached out for a handful of his brother’s shirt, thought better of it and instead grasped him by his lank, greasy hair, growling, “No, I ain’t, Wally, ’cause you had it comin’, see. I ’spect you had it comin’ more’n just oncet, too, whin I bashed mens for you. You keep follering the lead of that crazy, no-count Bubba, you gone wind up daid, someday soon. Hear me?”

From beside the door, the fat bartender piped up, “Won’t none Bubba’s fault, this time, Sher’ff. That damn swell, he stuck his nose in where won’t none his bizness, see. And he said plumb terr’ble things to my pore cousin Bubba, too. He called him some really common things, said he went to the movies and all jest to jack off lil boys is all. And—”

“Gawdam you anyhow, Chester,” roared the lawman, “dint I jest thishere minnit git though tellin’ you whut to go do? You don’t go do whutall I tol’ you, you gone need another meat wagon all to yomse’f. Hear me?”

While they awaited the arrival of the rescue squad, the sheriff went from casualty to casualty, squatting beside each of them and critically examining their injuries, commenting upon them. “Damn, Milo, you done some kinda first-rate fuckin’ job on ole Bubba, here; he ain’t dead, don’t worry none about that, he’s jest done passed out agin’ is all. Two, mebbe three, his front tooths is gone, broke off, it’s purely a wonder you dint cut the holy livin’ fuck outen your knuckles, too. His damn nose is broke for sure and his jaw may be, too, and you can bet your fuckin’ ass his cheekbones is cracked all to hellangone. Tomorra, he gone look like Sam Potter’s whole fuckin’ herd of cows run over him … probly feel like it, too. Mebbe it’ll take some the meanness outen him for a while, but don’t put no money on’t.”

Ungently, he proded at his brother’s thorax with the tip of his billy until he produced a thick scream of pain. He nodded, then, “Yup, Wally’s got one, mebbe two cracked ribs; too bad won’t his fuckin’ shithead. Now, Wally, I done tol’ you time after time to keep ’way from that fuckin’ looney Bubba Rigny. ain’t I? He’s got the kinda crazinesses rubs off on other people, and sometime me or somebody is gonna have to kill him and, like as not, some of whoever’s with him then, too. I don’t want one them to be my baby brother, Wally, is all. If you’d minded me ’fore this, you wouldn’t be there covered in puke with cracked ribs and a dang ball-big fulla scrambled eggs atween yore legs, neither.

“Jerry,” he admonished the man in whose face Milo had flung the whisky, “you ain’t gone go blind jest ’cause you got likker in yore eyes. But you don’t stop rubbin’ and clawin’ a ’em. you jest might wind up with a white cane and a police dawg, yet.”

As he moved onto squat by another body, his peripheral vision registered the sly movement toward the door of the knife fighter, and he commented warningly, “Doug Wilkes, I ain’t give you leave for to go, yet. You get your sad ass back here and put it in a fuckin’ chair, till I says diffrunt. I have to come after you, you gone wish I’d let Milo here work on you, too.”

Lifting the head of an unconscious man by its dirty red hair, he used calloused fingertips to explore the egg-sized lump on the back of it, grunted, then let it go to thump back on the hard floor, turning his attention to the swelling, already-discolored face. “Milo, what the fuck you clobber Eugene Fitzger’ld here with, enyhow, a fuckin’ maul? He’s another good ole boy’s gone be drinkin’ his fuckin’ beer though a fuckin’ straw for a while, I figgers. Thanks to you, old buddy, things is gone be dang quiet and peaceful round abouts thishere county till this bunch gets done healin’ up, I’d say. Layin’ here is five the bigges’ troublemakers I got to plague me … an’ it’s gone be six if one Doug Wilkes don’t quit tryin’ to snag thet fuckin’ knife with his fuckin’ toe.”

Still not looking around, he said. “Billy, take the cuffs outn the pouch on the back of my belt here, and put ’em on Doug; cuff him to that chair, he ain’t trustable. Then step out to my cruiser and git Hannibal on the radio, hear? Tell him I said for to send car number three over here and pick Doug up, book him for ADW and thow him in the fuckin’ lockup there to wait on Judge Daniels. He done drawed that fuckin’ fancy-ass spic shiv of his one time too many, to my way of thinkin’. I think some time on the road gang’d make a whole world of diffrunce in him.”

With the prisoner securely cuffed and sitting glumly in the chair, Chamberlin, still at a squat, turned to face Milo and said, “Damn, but I wish I could git that boy, Billy Crawford, to come to work for me, be one my deppities. He come back from Vietnam with a whole pisspot full of medals, you know, and he allus was a real bright boy, and Lord knows he could use the money, too, him and his lil wife. But he ain’t got him but one and a half legs, no more, see, and he says he might not be able to do ever’thing a whole depity could do, and he’s proud, won’t take nothin’ looks like no kind of char’ty. But if I had a real sharp boy like Billy to run the desk and office and all, I could put that cornball shitheaded Hannibal out in one the cars and …” He broke off as the slight man limped back into the bar.