Melanie Thon - Meteors in August

Arlen looked at Mother the way you’d look at a woman drowning a litter of newborn kittens in the toilet. “What kind of woman …?” Arlen said, and my mother answered, “A tired woman.”

I wanted to take him home now, while the streets were still dark and empty.

Arlen glared at Caleb Wolfe. Sooner or later she’d have to blink. “And just when will you be seeing this judge?” she said. The sheriff wasn’t coming up with any answer quick enough for Arlen, so she repeated each word, nice and slow, talking to the sheriff as if he were some kind of full-grown moron.

“No judge comes through Willis unless I call him,” Wolfe said.

Arlen ripped the phone from his desk and shoved the receiver up against his ear. “Then call him,” she hissed.

“You don’t call a judge in the middle of the night, ma’am.”

Arlen flicked the receiver as if she meant to whack him across the jaw. “What’s the number, Wolfe? I’m not afraid of disturbing some judge’s precious sleep. In fact, I’m sure any judge in the county would be mighty interested in hearing how you run this town.”

She started dialing numbers, any numbers, but Wolfe cut her short. “No need to call a judge anyway,” he said. “There won’t be any bail.”

“That’s not for you to decide. You can’t hold a man without bail.”

“No charges. No bail. Simple.”

“No charges?” Mother said. She sounded disappointed. Arlen dropped the receiver in the cradle.

“Red Elk told me to forget it. I could do it myself. I was there. But Red Elk says to me, ‘What’s the point? I don’t swear on the white man’s Bible.’ White people. White jury. White witnesses. One big Indian with a braid. One dark-skinned sheriff with a grudge. Waste of time. You want to take your man home? Fine. I’m glad to get him out of my jail. Stinks worse than any badger I ever had to shoot. I can go home. Sleep in my own bed.”

Daddy cussed when we woke him. Blood from the scratch on his chin had dried to a crusty brown, and he smelled even worse than Wolfe said, urine and beer, a man who’d spilled his drink and pissed his pants. Arlen wasn’t so keen on helping him now. She backed out of the cell and waited in the hallway.

“Time to go home, Dean,” Mother said. She spoke fast, clipping her words. Father sat on the edge of the cot, afraid to look at her. “Now or never,” she said, turning toward the door.

“I’m coming,” Daddy whispered.

After my father was out of the way, Caleb Wolfe still didn’t get much of a chance to sleep in his own bed that night. For days afterward he told his story to anyone who would listen, reciting the events of August third as if they were a litany. Men nodded and said it was a damn shame. The sheriff was hoping for some response that would set him free. Women whispered among themselves, saying it was a terrible thing. But no one ever thought to tell Sheriff Wolfe he wasn’t to blame.

Around six-thirty the calls started. Folks were just waking up when they spotted someone skulking around their windows, a man trying to get a look at fat ladies wriggling into girdles. The sheriff could track him by the calls: Seventh to Willow; he wasn’t moving fast. Wolfe took his time getting dressed and finally nabbed the suspect just past Ike’s Truckstop, less than five minutes after the fellow had exposed his most private parts to Miriam Deets as she was setting the place up for the breakfast crowd. Glory hallelujah , she reported him saying right after she said, “Mornin’, Myron.” Glory hallelujah . Then he pulled his jacket open, revealing his unzippered pants and all that dangled out of them.

Wolfe wasn’t getting off easy this time. There were going to be charges, all right — even though the man was no stranger and no threat, even though he apologized to Miriam and Ike and offered to pay for the pitcher of cream Miriam had dropped on the floor. He even offered to wipe up the spill. Ike Turner told Caleb Wolfe to get that damn pervert out of his place. Wolfe said, “I’ll just take Myron downtown and call his mother to take him on home, if you folks don’t mind.” He didn’t realize that this was the last time Myron Evans was going to get away with his quirks in this town.

“Don’t you dare,” Ike thundered. “Look at this poor girl, shaking like a rabbit, maybe scarred for life, and you want this piece of garbage out walking the streets again tonight? Too bad you don’t have a wife, Wolfe. You’d see it different.”

Caleb Wolfe leaned over and tapped Miriam’s shoulder as she scrubbed the floor. She shrank away as if a man’s hand was a terrible thing. “Ma’am?” the sheriff said. “Do you want to press charges?”

“What?”

“Do you want Myron to go to jail, ma’am?”

She kept wiping the tiles even though the cream was gone. By then Lanfear Deets had come in from the pumps, waving his stump, telling Wolfe to get that scum out of there. Later people asked each other: If Lanfear had two hands, would he have strangled Myron, or told Miriam to forget it and just let him go?

Miriam Deets was a leaf in the wind of Lanfear’s voice; she had no choice but to blow his way. Wolfe planned on talking to her later in the day, or maybe tomorrow. She’d come to her senses and see that Myron Evans was as harmless as they come. She’d laugh at herself for getting worked up and being afraid of a man who unzips his pants and limps around town.

Sending Myron to prison would be as cruel as strapping him down in a chair and turning on the electricity. Men like him had a hard time in prison. Men like Myron had to sleep with one eye open. People who showed themselves never did anything about it. Wolfe knew that, and plenty of other things too. He’d sit Miriam down after she’d had a few hours to calm herself, a few hours for the image of Myron’s Glory hallelujah to fade.

In the meantime he had no choice but to take Myron downtown; still he refused to use his handcuffs, not on a lame man, dammit, and he let Myron sit in the front seat, a friend, not a prisoner. The morning light over the blue mountains was something to see with all that smoke in the air. They said so, Myron Evans and Caleb Wolfe, and didn’t say much else. Later Wolfe swore he had no clue, no clue at all, but he should have read the sign: he knew what was coming when the horizon turned the color of blood at dawn, and he would have paid attention except for the fact that he stopped believing the warnings in the sky when he moved to this town.

Three things happened after Myron was arrested that morning. The first was that Myron’s mother refused to visit him in jail. And the second was that Sheriff Wolfe, having had a very long and tiresome night, fell asleep at his desk. That’s how the third thing happened.

It was past noon when Caleb Wolfe woke with the image of the red sun burning a hole in his skull. He was groggy from the heat and stiff from sleeping in the chair. When he looked out the window, the sun was high and white, but he still had the distinct feeling something was wrong. He splashed water on his face and fumbled down the hall to see if Myron wanted something to eat.

Myron Evans wasn’t ever going to be hungry again. Myron Evans wasn’t going to peep in any windows or sing out any Glory hallelujah’s . Myron Evans was hanging in his cell, strangled by his own shirt.

At 12:17, Dr. Ben pronounced him dead; and by 12:45, Arlen was at our door saying it could have been Daddy if we’d left him there all night by himself, as if something in the cell made Myron do it, as if it had nothing to do with the man himself. Myron left a note for his mother: I try to be good, but sometimes I can’t help myself .

Every time I closed my eyes that night I saw Myron’s thin white chest, his skin stretched so tight I could count his ribs. His face bulged above the knotted sleeve of his shirt. His eyes never closed. The last thing he’d done on this earth was kick the chair out from under his feet. When I could make every other picture disappear, I still saw his feet dangling, those heavy shoes, black and thick-soled, those neat bows, tied for the last time.