William Gay - The Long Home

The fat man was on his hands and knees trying to get his handkerchief out. Winer was standing over him to see if he tried to help Jiminiz but this was an idea that seemed not to have occurred to him. “A doctor,” he said, looking at his bloody hands. “A doctor.”

There wasn’t any doctor. There was just the frantic barkeep on the phone and a door that looked miles away from the jukebox singing, I have no one to love me except the sailor on the deep blue sea.

When the sirens began Winer was trying to haul Buttcut off Jiminiz. Buttcut was hitting him in the face. “The law’s coming,” Winer said.

“I’ll learn you,” Buttcut said. “Now beg me to quit.” Jiminiz wouldn’t beg.

Jiminiz said, “Fuck you,” through broken teeth.

The law came through the door and didn’t waste any time. Cooper hit Buttcut alongside the head with a slapstick and a pair of highway patrolmen hauled Winer up between them and started for the door. The girl would stay with him. She swung onto his arm. A young hatchetfaced patrolman named Steele turned from Winer momentarily to disengage her, his face turned in profile to Winer was red and freckled, a sharp, intent face. The expression was that of someone immersed in his work, a surgeon perhaps, removing some unwanted growth. It was a curious electric moment. Winer would always remember, the peculiar birdlike feeling of her hand clutching his arm and Steele peeling back one talon at a time, the grip finally lessening. When he struck Steele in the jaw the other patrolman blackjacked Winer and he dropped as if his knees had turned to water.

He sat groggily on the floor. The world darkened then lightened. Intercut with still photographs of the girl’s pale face were random images like sequences in a film improperly spliced: Buttcut holding Cooper aloft by the ankles and upside down and Cooper flailing wildly with the slapstick and cursing Buttcut’s knees. Then Buttcut dropped him and kicked him in the side and stepped across his body into the waiting arms of the highway patrolmen and Winer could hear their labored breathing and after a while Steele say, “He says he’ll come peaceable if we let him ride in the front.”

“Let the big motherfucker drive for all of me,” Cooper said. “I believe he’s tore somethin aloose inside of me.”

The cold air of black night, cold frost on the chrome doortrim. The Packard waiting like a hearse. A hard hand in his back and his cheek on the icy concrete, stars spinning out faint and fainter above the flaring streetlamps. So far, so far.

Then Buttcut’s legs drawing back. Winer’s eyes watching just that, fascinated, the knees coming up in slow motion, the denim tightening over them until you thought it would split, Cooper half-turning, his mouth opening, big brogans kicking out and the windshield exploding in a slow drift of safety glass and the onrush of icy air and the steering wheel clocking as the car slewed against the curb.

Bellwether bore the sad tidings to Oliver and sat with his feet cocked on the hearth while the old man digested them in silence save the loud tick of a clock measuring out the moments.

“I asked him was there anybody he wanted let know,” Bellwether said. “He first said no, then he named you.”

“What’s he charged with?”

“Disorderly conduct and assault.”

“What about that Chessor boy?”

“Them two plus public drunkenness. Resistin arrest and assault with intent to commit murder. Destruction of private property, destruction of city property.”

“They Lord God.”

“There may be a few more by now. The returns are still comin in.”

“And you say he whupped that Mexcan feller?”

“I’d say so. He had to have this jaw wired together and he’s got a mouthful of busted-up teeth. He just got generally stove up.”

“What do you reckon Chessor’ll get out of it?”

“He’s good for eleven-twenty-nine anyway.”

The old man arose, turned his back to the heat from the stove. “I’ll tell you what I’m goin to do,” he said. “When his bond is set I aim to go it. I aim to stand good for it, then I’m goin to tell him to ease hisself across the stateline and be gone. What do you think of that?”

“I think you’ll be out some money.”

“In my time I’ve spent more and got less out of it.” Oliver opened the stovelid and spat into the fire. Flickering flames lacquered his brown face with orange. “You ever get anything back on that skeleton?”

“Skull,” Bellwether said. “I was comin to that. Well. It was Winer all right.”

“We knowed that. Have you told that boy yet?”

“No. I’ve got to though. It’s not somethin I’m looking forward to.”

“I wish you’d hold up a day or two. He’ll kill Dallas Hardin and turn twenty-one in Brushy Mountain state pen.”

“No, he won’t. There’s no proof Hardin even shot him. Mr. Oliver.”

“Why, shitfire. You know as well as I’m settin here that Hardin shot him.”

“Knowin ain’t provin. I can know all day long but what a jury’s goin to want to know is how I know.”

“Young Winer ain’t that picky,” Oliver said.

After Bellwether had gone Oliver went to bed but he could not sleep. He lay in the darkness staring at the unseen ceiling. Over the past few days a plan had presented itself for his consideration, little by little, like an image forming on a photographic plate. If I got to do it then this is the only time, he thought. They boy don’t know yet and he’s out of the way in jail. I won’t get this kind of shot at it again. God knows somebody’s got to do it. And it looks like it’s goin to have to be me.

William Tell Oliver went three times to the sheriff’s office before he caught Cooper there with Bellwether. He pushed the door open a little way and Bellwether was arranging papers in a drawer and Cooper was turning at the noise the door made opening with a cup of coffee in his hand. Cooper looked ill used. His face was battered and swollen and he moved with the caution of a man aware of the fragility of each internal organ.

“Lord God,” Oliver said. “What happened to you?”

Cooper just turned away, a sneer deepening further the asymmetry of his discolored face.

Oliver addressed Bellwether. “I paid that boy’s fine,” he said. “But the judge is keepin him till tomorrow mornin anyhow. They ain’t even set bond. They still studyin about it.”

“Well. That’s between you and the judge, Mr. Oliver. I don’t have anything to do with that end of it.”

“I know. That ain’t what I come about.” He leaned on the desk, his hands cupping the rim and supporting his weight. The hands looked dark and gnarled and bewenned and they looked like something carved with infinite patience from knotty walnut.

“I figured when I brought that thing in yins would scout around a little and maybe find somethin out about it. But I reckon not. Yins send it off to Nashville and let em take pictures of it or whatever and doctors look at it through microscopes And it ten year out of the ground it ort to’ve been in and no words said over it and no end in sight. Well, I wanted to stay out of it all I could but I see I can’t. If yins can’t find the straight of it then, I’ll have to tell you the rest of it.”

Bellwether’s eyes were halfclosed and he wore a patient, bemused look. He rested a jaw on a cupped palm. “All right, Mr. Oliver,” he said. “Pull you up a chair and drop the other shoe. You beens settin with it drawed back long enough.”

They sat in the squadcar. Small, cold wind out of the north, a rattle of frozen trees. All was dark save the random orange pulse of Cooper’s cigarette, then Hardin’s gold lighter flared, his broken profile twinned by the glass beyond it, then darkness again and the sudden rasp of his voice.