Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

“Sher’ff,” said the scarred man, “Depity Gregory said that he’d get a car here as quick as he could and he said to tell you he couldn’t find no paper on anybody named Milo Moray, neither.”

“Who the hell ast him to?” demanded Chamberlin, his craggy face darkening. “ I needs wants and warrants, it’ll be me asts for wants and warrants!”

The scarred man shuffled a bit uneasily. “Well … he did say Chester had been on yore car radio to him … ?”

Chamberlin nodded shortly. “Figgers. Bubba’s his cousin and he didn’ like watchin’ him get beat to a frazzle here. But it none of it wouldn’t of come down if he’d done like I tol’ him and jest kept Bubba and his crowd of fuckers outen thishere bar of mine. Wal, Mr. Chester’s done had the course, this time ’round, that’s for sure, that’s for dang sure. I’ll have Sampson find me a new bartender as ain’t a fuckin’ relative of nobody in this county, and Chester can start workin’ off his fuckin’ fat ass and beergut out the gravel pits agin.

“Oh, speakin’ of Sampson, Billy, would you step over there and tell him to set up the private room for me and you and Milo to have dinner in tonight? Tell him steaks and lobsters. That sound a’right to you, Milo?”

Later, seated across the table from Chamberlin in the lavishly appointed private dining room of the restaurant, sipping whisky and packing his old, battered pipe, Milo asked. “What ever happened after I left the company, the battalion, there in Delitzsch? Did you all really get into the Bavarian Alps to hunt SS?”

“Aw, naw, Milo.” Chamberlin shook his head, his cornpone speech lessening noticeably, for some reason.

“Seems like the minnit the fuckin’ war ended, ever SS and Nazi and his fuckin’ brother was doin’ his fuckin’ danmedest for to get the hell out of Germany or elst cover his ass so it looked like he hadn’t never been nothing but a pore, rear-rank private or Gefreite or suthin’ in the fuckin’ Wehnnacht or a swabby in the Kriegsmarine or best a pore fuckin’ civilian. Them Oberkommando bugtits might’ve set plans to fight up there to the last bullet, but with old Hitler dead, won’t nobody was willin’ to do no such thing when push come to shove. So the battalion jest squatted right where we was for a while, gettin’ fat and sassy on hot A-rations and all the hootch we could find to liberate, getting in replacements and equipment and all, learnin’ what it felt like to be clean and wear clean clothes agin, standing chickenshit inspections ever now and then and even doing fuckin’ close-order drill, for Chrissakes, and route marches and compass problems, too.

“Right after you left, that fuckin’ John Saxon, he twisted my pore balls some kind of fierce till I let him commission me, then upped me to first looey and give me the comp’ny. He done the same thing to Bernie Cohen and made him my exec. That horny old bastid was a piss-cutter, he was, God bless his old soul.”

“John’s dead, then?” asked Milo sadly. “Do you know when, Chamberlin, or how?”

The lawman nodded. “Yeah happens I do, Milo. The official version goes that while he was at some kinda conference in Paris, he died of a heart attack in his sleep one night.”

“And the unofficial story?” prodded Milo.

Despite his solemnity, Chamberlin could not repress a grin. “John was a BG, by then, you know, and he and a bunch of other division officers had done gone down to Paris to whoop it up some. Story goes, John died in bed, a’right, but not in his damn sleep, not no way. His heart gave out while he was humpin’, hot-shaggin’ some French whore, he was. Died in the saddle, he did, and if you gotta go, damn if that ain’t the way to go—chock full of good food and strong booze and balls-deep inside of a redhot pussy. Bernie and me thought old John would’ve chose that way, if it’d been for him to choose, you know.”

“What about Bernie?” asked Milo, his clearest memory of the man being the sight of him belly-crawling out of the company CP on the day the Hitler Jugend snipers killed Jethro Stiles and Sergeant Webber, with a carbine, a bazooka and two rockets for it.

Chanierlin shrugged. “He made out real good, Milo. Back as early as the first, real Sixtieth Division reunion, back in ’fifty-five, he was running one his fambly’s two men’s stores in Richmond, Virginia. He went back and really did marry that lil gal he all the time was talkin’ about, and by ’fifty-five, he had him five kids and anothern on the way. I didn’t get to no more of the reunions till the big one, down to D.C., back in ’sixty-two, and by then Bernie’d done parlayed his two stores into near twenny in three states and had got to nine kids before him and his wife had figured enough was enough. We ain’t seen each other since then, we use to write to each other now and then, but I jest ain’t got no time anymore, with all the pies I got my fingers into, and I guess he don’t either.”

It was at that point that the scarred man—who had insisted on phoning up a neighbor with a phone, then had had to wait while his wife was fetched to talk to him—returned to the room, saying, “Sher’ff, Depity Fontaine wants you to call him and so does Dr. Kilpatrick over to the hospital.”

With a brusque “Thank’y, Billy; be back fast as I can, Milo,” the big man departed.

Sipping at a beer—he did not smoke and had politely declined any of the whisky—Billy Crawford proved a veritable fountain of information about Sheriff Sherwood Chamberlin, and there was, Milo soon became aware, much to tell of his sometime comrade-in-arms.

“My paw and Sher’ff Chamberlin, they come back to the county from the war ’bout the same time, Mr. Moray, sir. They both went back to work out to the gravel pits, but the sher’ff, he didn’t stay long, for all that Mr. Royal, hisself, offered for to up his pay and make him a supervisor if he would stay. Naw, he moved down to D.C. and went on the cops, there, found out he liked cop work and commenced at taking college courses in it.

“He’d married Betty Wading within a year of coming home, but she just couldn’t seem to get to like living in D.C., so he took a little house out on Yellow Creek Road for her and come out here as often as he could to be with her. Long about ’fifty-two or -three, I think it was, old Sher’ff Quinn, his car blowed a tire on a wet road and rolled over three, four times and burnt up with him in it.

“He’d been sher’ff since way back when, and at his fun’ral, old Mr. Royal took Sher’ff Chamberlin aside and tol’ him he wanted him to come back to the county and be sher’ff.”

“To run for sheriff, Billy?” inquired Milo. “To leave a secure job and run for sheriff?”

“No, sir, Mr. Moray, sir; you don’t unnerstand. See, back then, Mr. Royal, he owned this county—lock, stock and barr’l—just like his paw afore him, and his grandpaw and all. Aw, it was elections and all, for the looks of things, but everbody knowed that whosomever Mr. Royal was for, he was gone win whatever he was runnin’ for. And all the sher’ff would tell him, they say, was he’d think on it and pray on it and let him know ’bout it.”

Milo chuckled. “That sounds just like the Chamberlin I knew, years back, Billy, damned if it doesn’t.”

“Wal,” continued Crawford, “after a couple of months had gone on and the depities as was running things had fucked up real good and proper a Couple times and the fuckin’ state police had had to be called into the county one those times and still no word from the sher’ff, old Mr. Royal, he had hisself drove into D.C., had him a confab with some of the big shots the sher’ff worked for, then, then talked to the sher’ff.