It was chaos at the jail, people making phone calls, muttering, yelling, being booked, while the bondsman flapped around like it was his first meal in weeks. Most of the charges, however, were just of nuisance value, and a lot of people were being released on their own recognizance; they weren't going anywhere and never had. You could always issue a capias and drag them in if they didn't show, because you always knew where to find them, just like escapees from the work camps, most of whom showed up at home.
Earlier they'd found one of the deputies, Stamey Kibler, Junior Trainor's cousin, lying unconscious in that big barn they'd first seen a ways off from the house in Rance's Bottom. They brought him back to the house, arms draped over two deputies, blood pouring down his head from a big, rising lump. But he was conscious by that time, and the wound was seen to be more superficial than it had first seemed.
Stamey didn't know for certain who it was he'd chased into that dark barn. He said that on the way to it, the man had fallen against an old wheel harrow in the high brush. Stamey knew it was a wheel harrow because he
was just about to grab the man when he fell over the same damn piece of equipment and broke his flashlight. The man had gotten to his feet and, limping badly, run off again, then ducked into the barn rather than cross the huge field that lay beyond. The barn, with a central alley and lots of haymow above, was pitch dark except where the moon, beginning to disappear behind some clouds, peeked through the boards.
Stamey had seen the man and called “Halt!” when he jumped out a back window of the houseâlater determined to have been the same room where Dugan busted in and found that surprise grinning in a captain's chair, the only chair still standing, that being just before Dugan ran Eddie back out into the hall and slammed the door. On that evidence alone, Dugan had no doubt who had jumped out the window, and who in the darkness of that barnâafter Stamey called out, “Boy, you are in a world of shit! Now come on out. I don't want to have to shoot you over some nonsense!”âhad stepped out of the tack room and slammed Stamey in the head with a piece of an old singletree.
Eddie had to agree with Dugan that the fugitive probably was Pemberton. It was the only thing they agreed on that night.
Charlie had made a big show of examining Stamey right there in the yard in Rance's Bottom, sympathizing and cooing over him. There was quite a crowd by then, with the addition of some state troopers and a couple more deputies called in to help haul all those people back to Damascus. But it had all seemed false to Eddie, exaggerated somehow. It was fine to be sympathetic with an injured man, but Stamey had also been a damn fool to chase whoever it was into that barn alone without a light or backup. Charlie usually picked up on that sort of thing and was able to be critical even while being supportive, a gift Eddie always admired, especially given what Charlie had to work with. That way, he kept the lid on. But not that night.
What Eddie really believed was that Charlie made all that fuss over Stamey to rein himself in, like sticking his head under cold water. It didn't work. From the look on Charlie's face, Eddie saw his heat was way up and still rising, the more he looked at that goose egg popping out on Stamey's forehead. Maybe he was even blaming himself for what happened to Stameyâhe should have, the way he led that raid. Still, Eddie thought, after what Charlie had done in the back room of that house, if he wasn't properly
disgusted by it, he might at least have seen some irony in the way two wrongs, one from each opposing side, occurred so close together as to cancel each other out. Some people might find humility in that. But no, Charlie had just disappeared again, and Eddie had to go after him.
Eddie had always enjoyed the time back at the jail after a good night's work, all the publicity and noiseâit was like a party, but also how you stayed elected. That night, however, despite Fillmore fluttering around his radio as usual, and the newspaper snapping pictures of a pile of whiskey bottles and gambling paraphernaliaâJunior kneeling in his fancy cowboy boots beside the heap, studying it like he actually could read, along with J. B. Fisher and Stamey, who was sporting a bandage around his head like a veteran of Second Manassasâdespite all the usual talk, bragging and laughter, something had gone missing, and Eddie believed it was lost for good. He felt it at once, and sensed that even those who didn't have the wit to figure out the what or why still knew that Charlie had given something away.
After he'd followed Charlie into the house the second time, and right to that back room again and saw what happened, he didn't say a word to Charlie or anybody else all the way back to town. If Charlie noticed or even cared, Eddie saw no sign, but then he was no longer looking to see what the hell anyone thought. He was suddenly exhausted in a way he'd never been in his life, except maybe after his wife died and he returned to their house to find the sheet still pulled back on the bed, and the dinner tray waiting in the kitchen along with the medications, exactly where he'd left them four days earlier when the ambulance came, everything motionless and hushed and expectant, like she'd just stepped out. If everything had seemed old and depressing then, it was nothing to this night, because now he actually was a lot older, and it was no longer a question of starting over, especially in matters of conviction. Eddie had driven them back to town, Trainor in the backseat again, yapping, Charlie looking straight out into the darkness, raging or whatever he was doing in silence. Everything Eddie did was fully automatic. He'd felt dead.
“Eddie!”
Eddie came out of his thoughts and looked across the crowded waiting room of the jail. Charlie was standing in his office at his desk, phone to his ear, waving him over. “Where you been?” he said lightly, cupping his hand
over the receiver as Eddie entered. Like he hadn't been around all evening. Then it occurred to Eddie that Charlie was acting as though it was still yesterday afternoon. “Can you give me another hour or so here? Then maybe we can take a ride up to Sentry, around the reservoir or something. Find a little peace and quiet.”
Just like nothing had happened. But Eddie caught the way Dugan watched him while he spoke, and there was nothing casual in it, no matter how he tried to sound. He wanted to know what Eddie was thinking. And didn't want to.
Eddie didn't say a word.
“You okay?” Dugan asked, hanging up.
“Mind if I close the door?”
“Be my guest.” Wary now, but still trying to look like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Eddie saw little flames of anger licking over the edges of his eyes. Dugan was barely in control.
I don't believe I've ever known this man
, Eddie thought. He wasn't about to let Dugan sweet-shit him. “Get what you wanted tonight?”
“What do you mean?” Eddie watched him pull himself up a bit, all the hostility back full blown, his lips gone thin. Good God, he was a big man, so big Eddie felt he should have been intimidated, but it was like the first day Dugan had come up on Eddie's porch to ask him to work with himâEddie had nothing to lose. “What's got your dander up?” Dugan asked. “Surely you're not upset over that little business out there at Sheffler's. Elmore's a big boy. He can take care of himself.” There it was, Elmoreâthe surprise guest in that captain's chair in that back room.
“How would you know I was thinking about that, Charlie, unless it was troubling you, too? But that's not it, not quite anyhow. Aren't you beginning to confuse all this pomp and show with actual law enforcement, or is it the other way around? Or maybe that's not it. Maybe the question is, aren't you beginning to get the law and yourself all confused? What did that preacher once tell you? âEarthly failure springs from the very souls we seek to save.' ”
“You know, Eddie, I'm getting real tired of your acting like my grandma.”
“That's good, Charlie, 'cause then you're not going to mind my resigning.” Eddie took out his pistol and emptied the cylinder, then carefully laid the shells and gun on the desk. Then he undid his holster belt and left
it there, too, along with his badge. When he looked up and met Charlie's eyes, he was pleased to see just a hint of surprise. Well, what did he expect? Just who the hell did he think he was? Still, it was only then Eddie himself realized just how far it had really gone.
“I believed in you once,” he told Charlie. “At one time, you knew better than I did what you stood for and what you didn't, and even if I didn't always agree, or if I wondered if you could ever achieve what you wanted, I had to admire the effort. But after tonight, you don't stand for anything anymore.” Eddie turned and opened the door, letting the chaos boil back into that room like the tide.
“I'll get one of the boys to give you a ride home,” Charlie said, speaking lightly, trying to mask itânot for Eddie's sake, Eddie was sure. Charlie Dugan was stronger than the truth: nothing, no one, was going to push him around.
“I'll get a cab.”
You wanted to piss him off, throw the preacher at him.
He'd let Eddie get too familiar. You can't do that with the troops, even the best. He felt a twinge of sadness, then maybe self-pity; he didn't like either option.
The orange streetlights of Damascus finally released him into the deeper night. He saw a pale thread beginning to outline the low hills to the east. He swung the Dodge off the highway onto the narrow paved road that wound eventually to the farm Dru had inherited from her father, and which some people, such was politics, assumed he had bought and stocked with graft money. You heard it most during election time. The election was a little over three months away, but he hadn't been doing much about it. A couple of luncheons here and there, one at the Rotary, another scheduled for the chamber next month, and then a “Meet the Candidates Night” out at the new regional high school in early October. But the Democrats hadn't even put anybody up yet; nobody wanted to run against him. So why did he feel vulnerable? And why didn't he care?
A memory of Pemberton rushed at himâPemberton inviting him to
that dinner at Dorothy's Restaurant while he was still with the preacher, thirteen years ago. Lord, it seemed like yesterday!
“They could use a good deputy here in the county,” Pemberton had said, watching him eat that big steak, the first he'd enjoyed in agesâit had tasted glorious. Pemberton had watched him like the meal was irrelevant, like he ate that shit all the time. “And who knows? There's a lot of Republican sympathy up in the mountains to tap, going back to the War Between the States. We've never had a Republican sheriff, or clerk of court, or county government, for that matter.”
“I don't think I'm interested, Dr. Pemberton.” Not that he hadn't felt the itch. But the man wore a gold watch with a real alligator-hide band and drove a Mercedes.
“Why not?”
Dugan stared at the other man, thinking, Because the law is for people like you. You are the law. And the truth wouldn't matter to you. So he said nothing.
But Pemberton smiled, like he'd heard the thought. “Why not change it?”
Startled, Dugan blushed. You couldn't let your guard down with this man for a second! He thought about the hundred-dollar bill in the collection plate the night before. Get up right now and walk away, a voice told him, because that hundred dollars is what it's really about. “A deputy works for someone else,” he said, smiling as he ignored the voice. “It's a political job.” He was hearing something else here, and it mattered.
“Yes, but who knows? In time ⦔
“What?” Dugan demanded, cursing himself for his eagerness.
“Tradition, law, whatever you want to call it, Mr. Dugan, is one thing, but it's people give it credence, make it what it really is, make it live and work, or not work. But I suspect you know that. A sheriff, good or bad, sets the tone of the law, the respect it receives. Law itself is neutral, words on paper. So it's political, so what? It still might be made fair, depending on the strength of the individual. Or more fair.”
Why me? Dugan had wanted to ask, but thought he knew: he could do the job. Pemberton had already figured that out, or Dugan wouldn't be eating that steak. But again that voice had intruded: The man thinks he can own you.
Dugan's face burned at the memory. Pemberton had him pegged the moment Dugan shamed that hundred-dollar bill out of him! But he'd
known
it, and despite that, he'd wanted to be stronger than any rich sonuvabitch doctor. Stronger than all the men in suits, whether they were from Montgomery, Alabama, or Damascus, North Carolina, or Washington, D.C., or Moscow in the Soviet Union. All at once, the mortification was more than he could bear. He could barely concentrate on the road.
He'd always loved the road he was driving, the road home, loved its curves and sudden openings into little coves, a house or barn nestled here or there, the trees big where the forests spilled off the mountains just to the north, many of them hardwoods not logged since before the turn of the century. He tried to feel the way he ordinarily felt driving it, the gradual easing inside him as the surroundings reached out like old friends to welcome and comfort him.
Yet he was flat inside, not from a lack of feeling, but an overabundance. Allow one and they'd all be there at once, howling, the residue of the raid and everything connected to it. He'd felt shame before, God knew, and he'd felt loss, but never, never failure, not till now. Not even Alabama had been about failure. He couldn't comprehend failure, or rather life after failure. But there was a growing hole in his gut, everything inside it feeling dead. He felt like an old wooden dam beginning to rip apart, nails popping, planks creaking. Well, if all it needed was an act of will, he could hold.
He'd liked that preacher as a man. True, he'd always held his hand out to his congregations, but preachers had to do that. He had been sincere at least, honest and not at all greedy. He didn't take advantage of people. He wasn't looking for a brick home and a new Lincolnâhe sure wasn't driving any Lincoln. Dugan had felt he owed him, or he would have told him it was none of his business when the preacher found him that night he returned from the steak dinner with Pemberton and stated, not asked, “You seen that man in the raincoat!”