The Right Side of Wrong (4 page)

The information was startling. The Buchanan house was within hollering distance from Ned's farm, and he didn't know anyone had moved in. “That place is about to fall down, but I don't reckon he'll do much fixin' if he's that old.”

“Like I said, he's in pretty good shape. I imagine he'll go at it pretty slow.”

“What was
he
doing out on that road that time of the morning? That don't smell right to me.”

“I didn't think so neither, 'til they called up here a little bit before dinner and cleared him. W. B. told Jack everything about Tom's story checked out with the Rangers. He cain't sleep but two or three hours at a stretch, and when he woke up before daylight, it was snowing. He's lived his whole life down in the Valley, and he ain't never seen snow except on television and in movies.

“His pappy brought him here to Lamar County when he was a baby. That figures to be about eighteen eighty or so, if my cipherin' is right. But they left for south Texas before he was big enough to crawl. Anyways, he wanted to get out in the snow that mornin'. Said he drove over toward Slate Shoals 'cause he thought the country might be close to like what he'd left, and that put him by the creek at the right time.”

Ned's brow wrinkled. “Sounds kinda fishy to me, O.C. Goddamnit, who the hell goes around in the dark of the mornin' to look at snow?”

“Well hell, Ned, you'd argue with a fence post,” O.C. shot back. “I reckon a man who wakes up about the same time as you and ain't seen snow in his whole life might want to get out in it first thing of a morning. There was enough light for him to see to shoot, so it wasn't like he was out driving at midnight. The boys say he's all right. And unless I hear something different, or you find out something I don't know, his story'll
stand
.”

The white-haired judge was sympathetic toward his childhood friend who stared stubbornly at his hands. “Ned, he saved Cody's
life
. That boy mighta froze to death, or been et by them hungry dogs if Tom hadn't come along when he did.”

Ned felt a little better. “Well, all right then. I'll drop by there in a day or two and thank him.”

“You do that.” The relief was evident in O.C.'s voice. “But you'll have to wait a while. He's already left for the Valley again to handle some business.”

“That sounds like runnin' to me.”

“Naw, I talked to W.B. about it and he said it was all right. W.B.'s word's good as gold to me. My boys are still investigatin' and when Cody wakes up, we'll talk to him. Maybe he'll remember something they can use.”

Ned rubbed a rough palm over his bald head, as he did when frustrated, or thinking. “I'll do a little looking myself.”

“I know. Maybe you'll find something out. I want somebody's ass in jail for trying to shoot one of my constables, and not because he's Cody, neither. You be careful yourself. We don't know why they tried to kill him, and they may have it in for you, too. You've been on the wrong side of
that
fence before.”

“Well, I ain't worried, but I'll see what I can find out.”

“I know you will, but bring them in and I'll deal with 'em.”

The silence hung heavy between the two men for several long moments as they remembered the same incident with heavy hearts.

“They hurt that boy, O.C., and I intend to do something about it.” Ned stood and picked up his hat.

“I know.”

“I tell you, this world's gone to hell in a handbasket. The outlaws are getting out as fast as we put 'em in jail, and now that they're doing away with chain gangs, we're gonna have more trouble than anyone ever bargained for.”

“You ain't a-kiddin.” O.C. shifted his weight and the chair creaked. “You didn't see many men come back for a second round on a road crew. It cured a lot of meanness over the years.”

“It did. I'll bring 'em in if I can, but you understand they don't deserve a spot even on a chain gang for something like this. Some people just…”

“…need killin'. Shut the door behind you.”

“I always do, and quit ordering me around like a pup. I've had enough of that already this morning, between your new deputy and Miss Becky. You mess with me, and I'll open a couple of winders out here on my way out.”

“Don't forget your coat, you damned fool. You'll catch double pneumonia out there and won't be worth a nickel to me if you're sick. And besides, I keep smelling cow shit and I bet it came in with you.”

Ned slammed the door and O.C. chuckled.

He loved to jab his old friend.

Chapter Five

Pepper tugged at her pony tail like she wanted to pull it out by the roots. “I hate hiding out in this damned stupid tree.”

My eleven-year-old, near-twin girl cousin and I were about to go crazy with nothing to do. Pepper cusses worse than any man I ever heard, and it keeps her in trouble more times than she can count. Sometimes her breath smells like Lifebuoy toilet soap when she comes to visit.

The snow was long gone two months after Uncle Cody got out of the hospital and weather had warmed up enough for the trees to leaf out.

We were sitting in what passed for our tree house so Miss Becky couldn't put us to work cleaning house or hoeing in her garden. The house was clear from our perch, but Miss Becky couldn't find us through the leaves, though I didn't doubt she had an idea where we were.

The summer before, I nailed a few planks across two limbs in the giant red oak on top of a little hill a hundred yards from the barn. When it was finished, the disappointing tree house was nothing more than a platform, far from what I'd imagined.

For the past month I'd been trying to talk Pepper into building a bigger tree house with me. I wanted to use the wood stacked up under one wing of the hay barn that was from another barn Grandpa tore down before we were born. The oak planks were hard as iron, and driving a nail through them took about fifty hits each. I knew that from experience, because from time to time I got an urge to build things.

I wanted a sprawling tree house like I read about in
Swiss Family Robinson
. I'd been working through that book for about two weeks and liked it a lot, other than the folks back then tended to talk loud all the time. When they said something, they cried this, and then they cried that. We don't take much to hollerin' in Lamar County, unless it's when Miss Becky is calling us for supper.

Our tree house came out to be a triangle, since we'd started cutting boards to fit the fork of the tree near the trunk and it widened out a considerable ways. We were sitting on the first platform in that red oak, and I was thinking about starting another halfway around the tree, where two limbs grew straight out from the giant trunk. But then I'd still have two flat spots and no walls or roof.

“I'm tired of this,” Pepper complained.

“Well, that's 'cause you're a girl. I intend to build this house in six levels, with swinging ropes and running water and a roof that we can sit under when it rains.”

“You don't know nothing about that. We'll build a bunch of damn floors that look like a piece of splintery pie and pretty soon you'll get tired too. Let's find something fun to do instead of sitting here on our asses and talking about building shit.”

“Like what?”

“Well, we can play secret agent some more. I love that new Johnny Rivers song.”

We watched Secret Agent every time it came on TV. I'd decided I wanted to be a spy, and made a secret agent case like the ones they advertised on the commercials. Miss Becky had a small stained pasteboard suitcase I made up with compartments to be like those guys on television. I'd even cut a hole in one end and wired Miss Becky's German camera to shoot pictures out of the case. It worked pretty well and I'd already shot some pictures of people who didn't know I was doing it.

Uncle James brought the little camera home from Germany when he got out of the army. He sent back a lot of other stuff too, that I wanted to use in my spying, like the giant glass radio that could pick up broadcasts from across the oceans. When I was real little, he sent me a windup tank that I still kept in a box under the bed.

Pepper's mood was taking the wind out of me. “We've played secret agent so much lately that I'm getting tired of it. Besides, I'm out of film. I still have that roll that needs developing. I shot the last few pictures in town the day it snowed and Uncle Cody got hurt.”

She gave up on pulling herself bald and hung her legs off the wide of the tree house. “Well, I'm tired of doing nothing.”

“Let's make some tom-walkers.”

Tom-walkers are tin can stilts made by punching two holes in the sides of #10 tomato cans with a nail with a piece of long string through them, forming a loop. To use them, you stand on the upside-down can and hold the long loops in your hands to pull them up tight to your feet.

“Naw, I don't want to walk around on top of some old tin cans…wait a minute.” She held up a hand to make me stop talking. “Is somebody shooting?” We heard guns going off nearly every day, so it wasn't a big deal, except the hard thumps came quickly.

I stood up to see through the new leaves, toward the south. “Naw, that's somebody hammering on something, you dummy. It sounds like it's coming from the Buchanan place.”

“Don't call me dummy, butthole.”

The hammering wasn't long and steady like ours. Each time it started with two soft hits, and then three more hard ones. “Let's go see what they're doing.” I stepped carefully off the boards and onto a long limb that stretched out and down, almost to the ground.

My dog, Hootie, was waiting for us. He'd already checked the pasture for birds and was lying beside the trunk. We straddled the limb like a horse and worked our way down until our weight lowered it enough for us to drop the last six inches or so. I was particularly careful, since I fell out of a tree back in November and broke my arm. It had healed all right, but it was still a little stiff at times.

With nothing else to do, we tore off across the pasture toward Center Springs Branch, the clear water namesake for our little country community. The barbed wire fence barely slowed us down and we sprinted across the empty two-lane highway. Hootie ran circles around us, jumping and playing in excitement.

Even though the Buchanan place sat on a little rise, you couldn't see the house from the highway because of all the woods growing thick and tall. Beyond the trees, a worn-out plank corral rotted down right beside the barn that needed a lot of work.

Pepper and I had been all through the two-story house a bunch of times, because it had been empty for so long. I never asked anyone, but it looked to us like the folks who once lived there just up and walked away one day, leaving everything behind.

Inside, we found rotting clothes, pots, pans, dishes, rusty bedsteads and even a three-door oak icebox, the kind where you put a chunk of ice inside to keep things cool. It stood nearly as tall as the top of my head, and one time Pepper dared me to get in it. She closed the door and left me in there for five minutes, kicking and screaming to get out. When she finally yanked at the latch to open the door, I was mad and crying. I intended to fist-whip her when my feet hit the floor, but I had an asthma attack so bad I couldn't do anything but suck on my puffer for half an hour.

That was all before the Incident that started only a hundred yards or so from the Buchanan place.

I shivered at the recollection. It was the first time we'd been so close to Center Springs Branch where we'd been taken by The Skinner less than a year ago. What folks called our “emotional scars,” and the very real scar burned into Pepper's shoulder, were barely healed on both of us.

We still talked about it some, when folks weren't nearby, and that helped us feel better.

The hammering continued to draw us like a magnet.

We walked past the sagging barn, where the owner once kept mules and horses to pull his plows. A stiff, dried-up harness hung from one of the warped rafters, and beside it was a newer set of leathers. There were still a few folks in Center Springs who knew how to hitch up a plow horse. Grandpa was one of them.

Even though it was 1966 and people were flying around in space capsules, Grandpa used Lightning to break up the garden twice a year, more to keep in practice than anything else.

A wiry white-haired man in Wrangler jeans and a western shirt was bent over the porch with his back to us, driving a nail into the wood with hard strikes of his hammer. A black hat hung on a nail beside the door, and I immediately knew he was as close to a real cowboy as any man I'd ever seen.

He somehow knew we were behind him and tensed for a second when we stopped. He took a couple of nails out of his mouth, turned around, and smoothed his thick white mustache with a forefinger. “Howdy, young'uns. Who'r you?”

Pepper jabbed a thumb in my direction. “This is Top and I'm Pepper.”

“With that cotton top of his, I suspect I should call y'all Salt and Pepper. Y'all twins?”

“Nossir, cousins, but we're right about the same age, though I'm a little bit older than him.”

“Only by a few days,” I argued.

“Who's that?” He pointed to Hootie, who sat down right by his feet and stared upward like he was waiting for a biscuit.

Hootie was a good judge of character, and if he went that close, then I figured the man was all right. “That's Hootie. He's my bird dog.”

“He's a fine looking pup. Who do you belong to?”

I didn't want to get into one of those tangled family explanations, so I piped up before Pepper could start unraveling our whole string. “We're Ned Parker's grandkids.”

He nodded. “That'd make you kin to Constable Cody Parker, too.”

His voice was soft, kinda raspy way in the back, but it was strong and you knew he had a whole lot of bottom in him. That's what Grandpa says about anyone who's solid, and not frail or sickly.

“Yessir.”

“Good to meet you. You in law work, too?”

I gave him a grin for his ribbing. “Some day.”

“I bet you're right. I'm Tom Bell.”

Mr. Bell didn't carry an ounce of fat under a thatch of thick, white hair, and still had every one of his own teeth, that I could see. He stuck out a leathery hand and I shook it with a firm grip, like Uncle Cody taught me. He let me know that he was satisfied with the way I shook.

He had a set of downright interesting peepers. They were wide and glassy, as if he was fighting mad. But at the same time, even though they might bore a hole right through you, his eyes didn't appear dangerous…right then.

On top of that, I didn't see a hint of a smile, but he didn't look aggravated or anything. You could bet your boots that he'd have that same look even when he was mad enough to spit nails. He was a matter-of-fact man, and all business. I knew men like him in Center Springs.

I took an instant liking to Mr. Tom.

He clasped Pepper's hand with both of his for a moment, a little softer. “Y'all c'mon and let's sit a spell. I need to blow for a minute.” He waved a hand toward four straight-backed, cane-bottom chairs on the new part of his porch. On the opposite side, all the boards were gone, and spider webs connected the floor joists with the dirt below them.

The front door was open to the living room and revealed the most cluttered house I'd ever seen. There were all manner of household items stacked up head high. Furniture, a trunk, farm tools, harnesses, cowboy clothes, saddles, walking sticks, and fishing and hunting gear all looked like it had been pitched out of a truck to land right where it was. Some of it was out of place in our part of the world, because as he told us later, everything in the house came from the Valley.

He meant the Rio Grande Valley way down south, the Texas border between us and Mexico. I'd heard of it, and was surprised to hear a white man say he'd lived down there. I thought the whole place was Mexicans. From time to time someone came back from a visit down there with a truck load of watermelons, cantaloupes, or fruit like oranges and grapefruit that we couldn't grow up in
our v
alley up on the Red River.

Above us, raw new rafters waited for boards to shade the porch. The sun shot straight through and made it warm and comfortable. Mr. Bell lifted the dipper from the white enamel water bucket beside his chair and took a long, loud swaller. He sounded like a horse, gulping down that water, and Pepper's eyes crinkled when she got tickled at the noise. A big faded sticker on the side said, “Federal Enamel Bucket as Advertised in LIFE.”

He pitched the last few drops out in the yard and offered the dipper to me before he sat down. I wasn't thirsty, but I dipped out some cold water from around a floating chunk of ice, and drank to be neighborly. I put the empty dipper back in the bucket.

It annoyed Pepper that I didn't hand it to her. “You could have offered me a drink.”

“You know where it is.”

Mr. Bell's eyes twinkled. He tilted his chair back on two legs against the unpainted house boards. “You two sound like me and my sister when I was your age, son. She was a ring-tailed tooter if there ever was one.”

“That'd be
her
.” I jerked my thumb at Pepper. Before she could work up a mad, I changed the subject. I'd heard Mr. Bell's name when Grandpa and the other men were talking about Uncle Cody's ambush. “Are you the one who saved our Uncle Cody?”

“Depends on how you look at it. I found him in that creek bottom a few weeks ago. I reckon it was the doctor saved him after he got to the hospital, right? How's he doing?”

“He's fine,” Pepper said. She had a real soft spot for Uncle Cody. “He's home now and getting better every day.”

“You shot them dogs that were about to eat him.”

Mr. Tom didn't say anything for a minute, like he was choosing his words carefully. Then he nodded at me. “He was in a tight and I did what was necessary to get him out of it. Never liked to see a lawman in any kind of trouble. Goes against the grain, right?”

Being “in a tight” was an old fashioned phrase from up on the river that meant someone was in trouble. I was surprised to hear it used by a man who'd lived somewhere else all his life. “Did you know he was the law when you shot that dog?”

The skin around his eyes flickered at the question. He didn't expect a kid to turn the conversation back around to clear up a point. “Nossir, I sure enough didn't. But I saw his badge right quick when I picked him up, along with that pistol on his hip.”