He stopped in the middle of the graveyard and looked around. Puppy had said next to Aunt Eva, but he wasn't even sure where she was, and she'd been dead so long. Eva's was an old funeral, barely remembered. Kids in ties and crying women, mud on their shoes. He was little then. A Davis or a Clark, she'd be next to them. He started reading the names on the stones and working his way right and suddenly found himself in the middle of them. They were all buried together, had been for the last hundred years. Fathers, mothers, children, the grandfathers and the dead from three wars. He found the grave but he couldn't believe it. There was no stone, only a small metal shield with a white card clamped to it and the name of the funeral home embossed on it to mark her resting place. He squatted and peered at the card, the typewritten words of ink almost bled away. No flowers, plastic or any other kind. Not even the withered stems. Just a rough patch of ground with blue and red clay. He knew that she had probably been buried in the cheapest casket they could find.
He got on his knees there next to the little metal marker and tried to read the tiny words and numbers printed there. He looked back to see if his brother was coming. He could see Puppy's feet sticking out a window of the car. Faint music drifted on the summer air. He felt close to these dead here with their stones and the finality of the earth that bound them together. There was a stone there he'd never visited and he finally turned his head and read it:
He cried then, rocking on his heels, watching the small brown striped bees hovering nearby in the scattered clover. After a while he stopped
crying and wiped the wetness away from his face with his fingers and sat there, hardening his face, changing it so that his brother would not know that he had cried. He went out the gate and back down over the gravel to the car.
Puppy was lying on the seat, his eyes closed, his fingers intertwined peacefully on his chest. Glen slapped his feet down from where they were propped on the door, and when Puppy opened his eyes and started up he told him, “I ought to whip your ass. You and Daddy's both.”
“You ain't changed a damn bit.”
“What'd you do with her money? Spend it?”
Puppy held on to the back of the seat with one hand and the steering wheel with the other and struggled to pull himself upright.
“I ain't seen the damn money. Daddy took care of all that stuff.”
“Why ain't there a stone?”
Puppy glared at him and then came on out the door.
“Why don't you ask him? They ain't no need in gettin mad at me over it. I didn't have nothin to do with it.”
Puppy stepped past him and pulled a cigarette out. Glen kicked at the rocks he stood on and looked again out over the grass. “How much you reckon one costs?”
Puppy lit his cigarette and sighed a lungful of smoke. He motioned helplessly. “I don't know. I figure you could get one for a couple hundred if it ain't too fancy. If you want, we can ride over to Tupelo one day and see.”
Glen leaned against the car and put his hands on the hood. “I like to never found her. All her brothers and everybody out here and you can't even hardly find her place. I want us to ride over there one day before long and price one. You reckon they'd finance it?”
“I guess they would. They financed the funeral. We ain't never paid for that yet.”
Puppy turned to the car and rested his arms on the roof, smoking his cigarette and tapping softly with the tips of his fingers on the faded paint and just waiting for the rest of the questions, a small annoyance showing on his face.
“So how much was the funeral?”
“I think it's about twelve hundred dollars all told. It costs a right smart to get buried these days.”
“Well? Have you paid any on it?”
Puppy was evading his eyes. He was clearly troubled, but he began nodding.
“Sure. I made a few payments on it. When I could. Here and there.”
“How much?”
“Well goddamn, Glen, I got three kids to feed and bills to pay just like everbody else. Shit, I ain't made out of money.”
“How much have you paid on it?”
“I don't know exactly.”
“How much would you guess?”
“Aw. I guess about thirty dollars.”
“Shit,” Glen said. He walked around the hood and got in the car on the other side. “Take me out to the house. I got a lot to do.”
Puppy got in the car and closed the door. “Well you don't have to get pissed off about it. I've had a lot on me. It ain't been easy for me neither.” He cranked the car and turned it around under the trees, backing up in the gravel and scraping his tailpipe on the bank.
“Damn,” he said. “This old car's about wore out. I wish I had the money to buy me a new one. I went out there and cranked yours once in a while.”
“How long's it been since you cranked it?”
Puppy started to answer and then saw a white car pull in off the highway and block the road. There was a six-pointed gold star emblazoned
on the door. He hit the brakes and the right front wheel grabbed in the gravel so that the front slewed a little and they came to a sudden halt, sliding in the rocks. Dust flew up around them and came in through the windows.
“Son of a bitch,” Glen said. He put his hand on the door handle but Puppy grabbed his arm. He tried to get loose and out the door but Puppy held him tighter.
“Now wait a minute,” Puppy said.
“Wait's ass. I want to talk to that bastard.”
“Hell. Don't get sent back the first day you get home. You know he ain't gonna take no shit off you.”
“But I'm supposed to take some off him?”
“Just wait and see what he wants.”
“I know what he wants. He wants to rub my nose in it.”
“Well don't get out. Just stay in the car. Hear?”
Glen turned loose of the door handle and jerked his arm loose from Puppy, then eased back in the seat.
“I ain't scared of him. I did my time.”
The sheriff got out of the car with his sunglasses on and left the door open. They could see a racked shotgun above and behind the front seat. When Puppy switched off his ignition they could hear the cruiser idling, the rough stutter of the cam. Bobby Blanchard wore blue jeans and a blue checked shirt. He wasn't wearing a gun. He stopped about four feet away from the car and nodded to them.
“Hey Randolph. Hello Glen.”
Glen didn't answer, just stared into the dark glasses on Bobby's face. Bobby's pants were wet below the knees.
“I ain't come to give you a hard time, Glen.” He crossed his arms over his chest and studied the ground, toed at the gravel with his cowboy boot. “There's not anything I can say that'll make you feel better.”
“You got that right,” Glen said.
Bobby looked off to one side, looked up at the sky, then looked back. “I was just headed home to change clothes and I saw the car. I sure am sorry about your mama.”
“He's just upset cause we ain't got her a stone yet,” Puppy said.
“If it means anything from me, I hate it all happened like it did,” Bobby said. “I wish a lot of times I had a crystal ball. I could stop a lot of stuff before it starts.” He put his hands in his pockets and he seemed uncertain of what he was saying.
“I'm gonna make sure he stays out of trouble,” Puppy said.
“Why don't you shut the hell up, Puppy?” Glen told him, and pointed to Bobby. “All he wants is somebody to kiss his ass.”
“The man just wants to talk to you.”
“I've done served my time, I told you. I don't have to talk to nobody. You can set here and lick his ass all day if you want to but I ain't.”
The man who'd sent him up pulled his sunglasses off. He flicked them lightly along his thigh. He hadn't shaved and he rubbed unhappily at the black bristles on his jaw.
“I tell you what I'm gonna do, Glen. Just for today. While it's just you and me and Puppy here. I'm gonna take a little shit off you so we can get it all straight.”
“I figured you'd get around to that.”
“I try to do my job. If somebody calls me up at two o'clock in the mornin, I get up and go. If it's Saturday night and I got the fights on television, I get up and go. I been over at Spring Hill all night draggin a pond for a boy that drowned yesterday afternoon. We found him about an hour ago. Eleven years old. I just went and told his mama.”
“What in the hell's that got to do with me?”
“Well, I'll tell you. I get paid to do whatever needs to be done. I try my best to keep the drunks off the road and the troublemakers in line.
Now I'll be the first one to admit that you had some bad breaks. But it don't excuse what you did.”
“I told you he run out in front of me.”
“You were drunk.”
“I spent three years of my life in that goddamn shit hole you put me in.”
“Which a lot of folks think wasn't near long enough. Ed and Judy Hall would have loved to seen you rot down there. If you'd killed my kid I'd probably feel the same way. But I'm not the judge. I'm just the sheriff. You're out now. All you got to do is act right. I know we ain't never gonna be friends. You never did like me anyway.”
Glen was trembling and he didn't trust his voice. He said, “Well let me just tell you a few things. I don't want to be your friend. And I don't need no lecture from you. Now what do you think about that?”
Bobby nodded and put his glasses back on.
“That's about what I thought. But I tried. You got two years' probation, right?”
“Eighteen months.”
“Who's your probation officer?”
“I don't know. I'm to go to the office.”
“It's probably Dan Armstrong. When are you supposed to report?”
Glen made Bobby wait before he answered.
“Monday mornin.”
Bobby nodded a little more and he seemed to weigh this information while he watched the ground. He looked up quickly.
“Okay. He's gonna tell you everything, so you don't need to hear it from me. Your brother there could probably talk a little sense into you if you'd let him. Long as you stay straight, you won't hear a word out of me. I don't want you to think you got to carry a chip around on your shoulder. Now if you want to, we'll shake hands like grown men. Put all this behind us.”
And he stepped closer and held his hand out, a big strong hand with freckles and fine black hair on his arm. He offered it and stood in the hot silence waiting. Glen spat out the window.
“I'll tell you what I'll do,” he said. “Since it's just us three out here. Just you and me and Puppy? You take that badge off for five minutes and I'll stomp your ass in the ground. Then we'll see if you want to be friends or not. See if you want to shake hands then.”
Bobby drew his hand back slowly and said, “You wouldn't win.” He turned and walked back to his cruiser and got in and shut the door and turned around.
“Boy that was real smart,” Puppy said. “Man try to do you a favor and you.⦠Boy,” he said. He cranked the car. “I don't believe you sometimes.”
“Why don't you just carry me somewhere I can get a beer and shut up?” Glen said.
“You start any shit with him you'll be right back in the pen.”
“He ain't gonna send me back to the pen. He'll have to kill me first.”
“If you don't act right he will. And I didn't think you was supposed to go in a bar while you're on probation anyway. I thought you wanted to go home.”
“I don't now.”
After Puppy had pulled out into the road and they were moving again, Glen said, “Hell, you can go in a store and buy me some, can't you?”
“I guess I can. Have you got any money?”
“Hell yes, I've got some money. You ain't got any on you?”
Puppy shook his head sadly. “Ain't got much.”
“Didn't you get paid yesterday?”
“I did. And I lost most of it in a card game. And I had to put gas in the car this mornin. Reckon I could get that back from you?”
Glen was already reaching for his billfold. “How much?”
“Aw. I guess about ten dollars. Ten or twelve.”
Glen gave him fifteen. They bumped over the rough old highway through the afternoon sun past stretches of timber and by yards with wrecked cars parked in orderly rows. He saw familiar things, a solitary tree in a field, the rotting hulk of a wooden wagon sinking its way into the ground. He watched everything until they pulled into a place near Abbeville, a little county joint with beer signs in the windows. Puppy parked and got out.
“What you want and how much?”
“Get a case and make sure it's cold. Here.”
Glen handed him some more money and watched him climb the steps, could see him through the windows going to the big cooler. Cars and trucks passed down the road beside him. Finally Puppy came back out with the case slanted against his hip under one arm. Glen reached and opened the back door. Puppy slid the beer onto the seat, then took a six-pack around to the front.
Glen looked at the beer. He placed his hand on it. Cold in the hot air, clean little bright cans beginning to sweat. He tore one loose and opened it with the church key that was on the dash and turned it up to his mouth and let it stand there until he drained it. He took the can down, belched.
“That was pretty good,” he said, and got another one.
“Damn, Glen, they don't allow you to drink on the premises. Got a sign right there.”
“I don't give a shit. Now carry me over to Barlow's.”
“You ain't got no business over there. He'll be drunk and you'll be into it before you know it.”
“You sound like a old woman, Puppy. I got some unfinished business with him.”
Puppy turned the wheel and looked out the window to see if anything was coming.
“You had any sense you'd let it slide, too. You don't need to go over there. Let's go see Daddy.”