Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

“I hear tell the sher’ff wouldn’t talk to Mr. Royal alone, naw, had a couple his D.C. officers with him and he laid it on the line to Mr. Royal, too, they say. He told the old man that was he to come out here and be sher’ff, he was gone be sher’ff of all the folks in the county, not just a fuckin’ errand boy for the Royal fambly, and that Mr. Royal had best get that straight up front and be ready to sign a witnessed contract that would say that and some other things or he could go back and make one his depities the sher’ff.

“And what happened then, Billy?” asked Milo.

The slight man grinned, took a sip of beer and shook his scar-shiny head once. “Wal, Mr. Royal, he won’t no way use to being talked to that way by hardly nobody and he invited the sher’ff to hell in a fuckin’ leaky bucket and stomped out and drove back out here, is what. But then that very next month, the guvamint mens, they caught a passel of moonshiners in the fuckin’ act … and two of them was county depities. The nextest day after he heard ’bout all that fuckin’ shit, Mr. Royal, he went back into D.C. and ate him a heapin’ helpin’ of crow. He signed ever’thing he was told to sign and when he come back, the sher’ff come with him.”

Crawford took a real swallow of the beer, refilled his glass from the bottle and went on. “The sher’ff, he went th’ough his inher’ted hashup like a dose of salts, Mr. Moray, sir. Of the three depities was left, one was prosecuted and sent to jail for stealing from the county and the other two jest lit out for parts unknown. He brung in three retired D.C. cops to help him hold things down, then got Mr. Royal to twist enough tails to get the state police to take on my paw and four other fellers in the next trooper training class they run.

“He made Mr. Royal buy custom police cruisers with lights and sireens and all, got radios put in them and in the office, laid out reg’lar p’trol patterns on a county map and talked Mr. Royal round to paying the depities enough so’s they didn’t feel ’bliged to steal and take payoffs from roadhouses and cook moonshine jest to make ends meet, no more. Got so, they use to say, ever time the sher’ff he’d call in for another ’pointment for to talk to Mr. Royal, the old man would take to pounding his desk and th’owing things and slamming doors and all and yelling that the sher’ff was out to plumb bankrupt him … but he allus saw the sherff and talked to him and most allus done whatall the sher’ff wanted, too.

“Mr. Royal’s kids had all died before him. His eldest boy was kicked by a hoss and kilt while he was playing polo at some ritzy place in Upper Marlboro, back in the thirties. His next-oldest boy was a bomber pilot that was lost in Europe, somewheres in World War Two, and his youngest boy was kilt in training right at the tag end of that war. His daughter, after she’d got loose from two no-count men she’d married, took to drinking so heavy she’d done had to be locked up in some private sanitarium till she kilt herself one night. Old Miz Royal, she took sick and died ’long bout nineteen and fifty, too, so Mr. Royal didn’ have no close relatives nowhere, and ever’body just figgered when he come to die, too, it was gonna be some kinda bad shake-up all over the county.

“I tell you, Mr. Moray, sir, it was some damn fuckin’ shocked and flat flabbergasted folks here’bouts when his will was read, I tell you, sir. For all he’d spent a lot of time in his last ten or so years yellin’ to ever’body could hear him ’bout how the sher’ff was the worstest mistake he’d ever made, was drownedin’ him and his corporation and the county in red ink, was mollycoddlin’ his damn depities and ridin’ roughshod over the better folks in the county, it was none other than Sher’ff Sherwood Chamberlin he left his controllin’ int’rest in all three his corporations to.”

Milo whistled and shook his head. “So now Chamberlin owns this county, huh?”

“Not really, naw, sir, Mr. Moray,” replied Crawford. “He could, and no fuckin’ mistake about er, was he a mind. But no more’n a week or so after he’d inher’ted ever’thing, he drove down to D.C. and talked to a lot of folks and then talked to folks the first bunch had sent him to and come back up here with a bunch more, one of them a perfessional county manager and the rest either from the state guvamint or the U.S. guvamint. He ’lowed as how it weren’t right and proper for no man to die and jest give a whole county and ever’thing in it to another’n, said it won’t democratic and that he’d fought a war for democracy and was willing to fight as many more as he had to, come to that. He ’lowed as how nobody should be sher’ff for life, neither, and said the next elections was gonna be honest to God real elections with no fixes on nuthin’ or there’d be hell to pay.”

“And yet, I see he’s still county sheriff,” said Milo, puffing at his old pipe.

“All he’s done and seen done for thishere county and all, Mr. Moray, sir,” said Crawford, with feeling, “it jest plumb ain’t no livin’ man anybody’d have for sher’ff but him, Sherwood Chamberlin.”

As if on cue, Sherwood Chamberlin opened the door and came back into the private dining room. His face was solemn and his voice, when he spoke, grim. “Milo, Billy, I just got through talkin’ to Dr. Kilpatrick, over to County Gen’rul. Bubba Rigny was a DOA—dead on arrival at the emergency room.”

Milo set down his pipe with meticulous care, laid both hands flat on the table and addressed the lawman. “It was self-defense, of course, Chamberlin … not that I meant to do more than beat him insensible. I have an attorney in New York City. I’ll have to ring him up and get a local recommendation. Whatever the bond is, I can post it; even if I don’t have enough cash on me, my attorney can wire me the difference.”

“I seen it all, too, Sher’ff, ever’ minnit of it,” said Crawford, soberly. “Bubba and Wally and Abner set out to beat Mr. Moray and he jest defended hisself, was all. Bubba’s beat me a whole hell of a lot worse than Mr. Moray beat him. I’ll swear on the Bible to ever’ bit of it, too …”

Chamberlin picked up his glass of whisky and drained it off with a working of his prominent Adam’s apple, then said, “Relax, the both of you, jest relax, hear. If anybody kilt Bubba Rigny, it was Bubba Rigny. Seems he come out of it in the meat wagon, see, and beat up on pore Claude Tatum some kinda bad, then got the damn back door opened and jumped out the meat wagon that was jest then doing over sixty on the fuckin’ highway, That alone likely kilt the crazy fucker, but then too one my depities, Chuck Fontaine, was right behind in a cruiser and so close he couldn’t help but run right over Bubba’s body.”

The lawman shrugged, and as he hooked a finger around the neck of the whisky bottle and began to pour more of the dark-amber fluid into his glass, he declared, “It’s gone hurt Bubba’s pore paw and maw and some others, likely, but not as bad prob’ly as it was sure as hell goin’ to if he’d lived long enough to do suthin’ would see him in the penitent’ry ’stead of jest in my lockup or the county farm, if not the chair or in a state boobyhatch for life. Bubba, he never was swung together too tight, see, Milo; he was a murder jest waitin’ to happun from the time he was jest a tad. He got some kinda charge out of hurtin’ other folks and animals and all; he was jest born mean, seemed like, and he dint never get no diffrunt or no better. Most his kin wouldn’t have ary a particle to do with him from the time he was no more’n ten or twelve; after he beat his pore paw near to death when he was ’bout fourteen, he was put in the reform school for a couple years, but all that seemed to do was make the fucker meaner.