“But they've got them up north, too, Claire,” Elmore groaned, actually talking to her like he was still up north with her, not lying in a field outside some old house in North Carolina with half the stuffing knocked out of him by a sonuvabitch who called himself a lawman. It began to rain again, a soft parting of the skies that released a scent of damp, overgrown land that overwhelmed him, leaving him exhausted.
“No, up here their size is discreet, and they're called bullhead, which is modest. They don't grow to the size of boxcars. Evolution is occurring up here.”
Just as the sky began to lighten, he thought of Rachel again, and with the thought came anger to fight the shame. He suddenly knew he had to get up and out of that field, that he couldn't die yet.
Standing beside Pemberton's table in Dorothy's Restaurant, Elmore could see that the doctor felt his presence pouring down onto his lunch, messing it up in good style. “I'm trying to eat. You want something?” Pemberton said finally.
Elmore didn't answer.
“Look, I have patients to see, but go ahead, have a seat. I'll listen.”
Elmore just stood there, waiting for him to look up and make eye contact. Pemberton tried to keep on eating. After a while, it was apparent he couldn't concentrate on what he was trying to put in his mouth, even if Dorothy's food didn't take much concentration. His left leg had been sticking out straight from under the table, but now he slowly pulled it back under as though to hide it. Elmore watched him grimace. Yeah, it hurts, you sonuvabitch.
Pemberton dropped his fork on the plate. “So what do you want?” he demanded, and looked up. “Good
God
, man! What happened to you?”
He wasn't prepared for Elmore's face, puffed up like red popcorn, one
eye nearly shut and going blue. Elmore knew it by heart, having studied himself at length in a mirror. But he didn't reply. He wanted Pemberton to figure out all by himself what had happened, and to just keep looking at that mess of a face until he did. Then he saw Pemberton shiver, saw it ripple right down into his toes.
“Who did
that
?” Pemberton said, managing to keep his voice steady, if just barely. Sweat broke onto his forehead.
“I expect it was meant for you,” Elmore said.
“Elmore, that is terrible! It's assault!” Then it just gushed out: “We got that bastard! He's finished! Misfeasance, malfeasance, whatever.”
“Misfeasance. But no one will believe you.”
“Right! Nice to see you can talk. That's good!” Pemberton looked like he was about to pull Elmore down into the booth and kiss him. “Damn, man!” he exclaimed, staring out the window at the sun like he was seeing it for the first time, seeing a beautiful, warm autumn day. “No, you're wrong, Elmore. It
is
possible!”
Elmore looked at him the way he'd been looking all along. At last, Pemberton cocked a questioning eye. “Not even a chance without me,” Elmore said.
“Of course. I know that.” Pemberton looked genuinely confused.
Elmore was succinct. “Fuck you.” He started to turn away, then added, “Nothing personal. I just wanted to see you in daylight.”
It took Pemberton a moment to find his tongue. “Well, just who the
hell
do you think you are?” he shouted. “It's a rough, tough world, little boy! Grow up!”
He was still yelling when Elmore pushed through the glass door to the street and was greeted by a delicious blast of sunshine.
The first day's newspaper account was the glory, a little handed-out story and pictures of the loot from the raid and Stamey all bandaged, but it wasn't front page. It wasn't until the second morning that the Damascus paper called: “Is it true you resigned, Eddie?”
Now, he didn't know that reporter well, he was new, but there he was, already on a first-name basis. Technically, until the preceding day, he had been Captain Edward Lambert, but rank in the department was always a bit of a joke until you were given it, and then you could pretend for a minute or two that it mattered beyond a bit more pay in a too-small check. That reporter wouldn't have dreamed of calling Charlie anything but “sheriff” or “Sheriff Dugan.” There was an unspoken process when people perceived to hold rank gave the nod to having their first names used. Eddie usually didn't mind; Damascus wasn't a big place. Still, at some level, it rankled, that day particularly. Familiarity was not necessarily a mark of respect.
He'd lived in the South long enough to know most black people were called by their first names, and here he was in his mid-fifties and little more to show than that. Brother, he was feeling sorry for himself this morning.
“Ask the sheriff,” he said. He wouldn't have told him anyhow.
“He told me to ask you.” Which, though Eddie didn't know it then, was a lie, because Charlie had already disappeared, but this was the press in pursuit of the public's constitutional rights.
“Well, now, isn't that a pickle?” Eddie said, and hung up.
The radio station called, too. And the paper in the next county. He guessed this was news. He gave them fair and equal treatment. Then another day went by, and the next evening right around suppertime, after he'd gotten less shy with the phone because it hadn't been ringing, he received another call: “Eddie, this is Harlan Monroe.”
“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”
“I won't mince words. What the
hell
is going on between you and Charlie? Good
God
, man, rumors are flying everywhere.”
“Like I told that reporter of yours, you'll have to ask Charlie.”
“Well, I can't get hold of Charlie.”
Silence. Did Harlan think he knew something about
that
?
“Seems he's left town for a few days on businessâat least that's what Dru says. And the department. So, off the record, why don't you fill me in? A lot of tippytoeing going on. It's election time, Eddie. People around here depend on Charlie, as you well know. Maybe I can be of assistance.”
Oh, he could just see the assistanceâ“Local Attorney Beaten in Raid, Sheriff Unavailable for Comment”âand couldn't help but marvel. But he was being unfair, as Harlan soon proved. Harlan was a good man for a newspaperman, though he fascinated Eddie the way people with power always did; they could run a little righteous in their belief in their own importance and impact, though it was a different righteousness than a preacher's, more subtle. It was like Harlan was saying to him,
Now, we all know you're playing games. Well, you've had your little fun. This is grown-up business, and you're in over your head
. Eddie hated being patronized.
“Well, sir,” he said real calmly, “it's not for me to talk about, but I won't be impolite and just hang up. I'm letting you know I'm about to hang up.”
“Eddie, for Christ's sake, you know where I stand.” Harlan was beginning to sound more real. “This is not for publication, okay? So what happened
during that raid, or does this really have to do with something else, like Martin Pemberton being bound over? And the Carvers. What's bugging Charlie?” That threw him. Harlan was a much better and certainly smarter man than Eddie often wanted to give him credit for. “You and I both know Charlie stuck his neck way the hell out, and much as I admire him for it, and his principles, I'm not sure how wise it was. And I don't believe for a second it's overânot with Pemberton. He stands for too much, Eddie.”
The man spoke right to his heart, and for a moment Eddie wanted to spill it all. When he woke that first morning after the raid, after almost no sleep, he'd felt like he'd been on a month-long bender, and the feeling wasn't going away. If any man were to tell him he could walk out on friendship and duty like that and not be hauntedâno matter how right it might have been, or how necessaryâhe'd call him a liar. It had already begun to feel much too heavy for him to bear alone, even before he resigned. Oh, he was sorely tempted to talk.
It was Harlan himself who saved him. Harlan heard Eddie hesitate and got a tad impatient: “This is a lot more serious than even I thought, isn't it? And we've got an election coming up.”
Fucking politics!
“Mr. Monroe, I appreciate your calling, and truly appreciate your interest. I know you've been a real friend of Charlie's for years, and he values that. We all do. But if you have any questions, you'll have to talk to him. I'm sorry.”
After he hung up, he went back to the kitchen and turned the radio on, vowing not to answer another phone call. Then he sat down at the table to finish the beer he'd opened before Harlan called. The first taste told him he'd lost interest. By that time, he realized he couldn't stand the radio either, and got up to snap it off.
He returned to the table, sat down and stared at nothing. The kitchen was full of early-evening shadows, the sun having moved around to the front of the house. The morning sun in the kitchen always made him feel alive, its light bright and cheerful, the feeder at the window full of birds, the sounds of their ruckus filling the room over the noise of water running in the sink for coffee. But the evening was a time he especially loved, the way the shadows gently enfolded him in his thoughts or memories, but more often in a feeling of time and memory without specifics. He hadn't
been able to visualize his wife for years. Oh, he could look at the pictures in the other room, but they didn't reach out to him the way they once had; he couldn't taste her anymore, or smell her, or feel her moving through the rooms. He'd gradually filled the vacuum with himself.
He listened to his ship's clock tick in the next room. It had sat on that doily on top of the TV from the time they'd moved to Damascus and he'd bought the television new for her. She was already dying, and he didn't know what it meant yet, because at first, except for the pain that came over her sometimes, and the occasional hospital visits, their lives saw no changes. There was no way he could have comprehended that coming loss. All he could do, all he wanted in the world, was to comfort her, but he didn't know who he was or wasn't comforting. At no time had he ever felt more how powerfully they were connected, and at no time had he felt more the gulf that separated them, their minds, their thoughts, their feelings and little secrets.
You can't speak it all
, he thought.
Words just mess it up, and anyway, there isn't time. People are mysteries to each other
. He recalled thinking that maybe she really wouldn't be leaving after all.
He listened to the clock chime the hour, its distinct, pure ring more a reminder than an announcement. It was suppertime, time to put something together to put in his belly, like he'd been doing for years. But he didn't move. The refrigerator clicked on and gurgled. He was truly sorry to have hung up on Harlan. He knew Harlan had Charlie's interest in mind and was a real friend. It was so tempting to talk to him, but some things run too deep.
Who let the cat out of the bag, anyhow?
he suddenly wondered, like he gave a damn. Well, he thought he knew.
In old chinos, a T-shirt and slippers, he was dressed almost the way Charlie had found him that day after his first election when he came to hire him back. He was trying to be an unemployed bachelor once more, allowing himself a little aimlessness for a day or two until he got used to the fact that he'd just walked out of a life that meant a lot to him and there wasn't much outside it. That first time, he'd seen it all as politics, nothing personal, no real attachments to anyone except to work he kind of liked, and a paycheck. He'd have found another job eventually, of that he'd been certain, but he was a good deal younger then. Now he felt gutted and listless. He had no sense of a future. He had no idea what was out there anymore, and couldn't care less. Once or twice, he tried thinking about
the events of two nights before, but it was a huge numbness, the way, he imagined, someone who's been burned terribly feels at first because his nerves have been charred; the real horror was yet to come.
He scarcely heard the tap at the front screen door. But then he heard it again, hesitant sounding. He figured it had to be some kid selling for the Scouts or Little League or an adult doling out religious tracts, and was heartily disinclined to get up for either. Then he heard a familiar voice glide through the screen, the front room, down the hallway into the kitchen: “Mr. Lambert?”
As though caught running around naked, he looked down at himself. Panicked, he yanked off his T-shirt and snatched a better shirt out of the clean laundry in the next room. He would have taken a shower if there'd been time.
She was getting ready to step off the porch, her head bowed in thought or hesitation, maybe deciding he wasn't there. “Oh!” she exclaimed when he spoke her name, and turned back.
Of course he'd seen her before, many times at the farm when he had to go out and pick up Charlie, though that was little more than to stand by the car door and give her a wave or swap a little idle talk until Charlie came on out, though he was usually waiting. And there were the few occasionsâin the almost eight years, he could count them on one handâwhen she had come to the office. She was in her early forties now, but her red hair was still fiery and her gaze filled with no false modesty and fluttering womanhood, just open interest, though her face was lined in a way he'd never seen before and her eyes had dark circles of fatigue around them. She was a head taller than he, and her figure was fuller than he remembered, but it was that of a maturing woman, striking, even breathtaking. She reminded him of the tomboy you grew up with and finally got out of your hair, only to kick yourself for the rest of eternity for having taken for granted. There was still a wildness about her, something indefinable but edged with humor, the belly-laugh kind, and sorrow, lots of sorrow. He knew she'd been no saint, and it spoke volumes about Charlie to have landed her and kept her loving him all these years. But he supposed it spoke even greater volumes about her. Seeing her there, he suddenly felt his own sense of loss so keenly he wanted to retreat to the kitchen. He gathered himself, though, and stepped out onto the porch. “How can I help you, Mrs. Dugan?”