“He did what?” Mitch asked.
“Cut the deputy’s hand off that he was handcuffed to,” Prentiss went on in an eruption of words, too excited to see the fury in Mitch’s face.
”And you come over here and told that in front of Jessie? Why, you long-nosed sonofabitch!” Mitch said with the singing edge of violence in his voice. He took a step toward Prentiss and the youth backed up with his hands held out placatingly and shocked bewilderment on his face.
“Hold on, Mitch,” he pleaded. “I ain’t done nothing. I just said what was on the radio.”
“You didn’t have to say it in front of Jessie. You better go on home. When we want any more of your goddamned news, we’ll send for you.”
Prentiss looked from Mitch over to Cass as if for support, with his face puzzled and hurt. He had always been somewhat in awe of both the Neely boys, and this violent reception of his news, especially after the way Cass and Miss Joy had hung onto his words, was disconcerting and a little frightening.
“Well, I didn’t mean no harm,” he said. He looked around at all of them and turned to go. Cass started to say something but glanced toward Mitch and changed his mind.
“Thanks for telling us, Prentiss,” Joy called after him. She threw a spiteful glance at Mitch.
After Prentiss had shuffled his deflated way up the road Cass stirred uncomfortably on the step. “That was a cruel thing to say to a neighbor, Mitch. You oughtn’t to talk like that,” he said, not looking up.
Mitch thought of Jessie trying to shut out the sight and the thought of it by burrowing her face into her arms out in the barn and felt no sympathy for Prentiss. It wasn’t his fault, if you thought about it, but maybe the big-mouthed fool would stay away from her the next time he had any news like that.
“What about Jessie?” he asked coldly.
“Well, she’d have to know sooner or later. No way you could help that. Now you’ve insulted him like that, he won’t come back no more.”
“I can stand it,” Mitch said.
“We won’t hear no more news about Sewell,” Cass said querulously.
Mitch stared at him. “That’ll be all right, too. I don’t want to hear no more of that news about Sewell.”
Cass sighed and looked at the ground. “A hard heart is a sin. You got no feeling for your brother.”
“Listening to it ain’t going to help him.”
“You just got no feeling for him.” Cass brought out a soiled bandanna handkerchief and dabbed futilely at his eyes. “I tried to raise my boys up to be Christians,” he said tearfully to Joy. “But I reckon it’s a judgment of some kind on me that they’re so hardhearted. It’s a sin visited on the father.”
I hope the old goat ain’t going to cry, Joy thought. She patted his arm. “Don’t take it so hard, Cass. It’ll work out all right.”
“It’s an awful thing,” Cass went on piteously. “Thinking of that boy out there somewheres running from the law and prob’ly hurt and hunted down like a wild animal and we don’t even know where he is and got no way of finding out. He might be shot right now with a bullet in him and we’d never know. Got no radio, and no nothing. I reckon nobody cares, though. Ev’body’s got to be hardhearted.”
Mitch looked at both of them with contempt and turned and went around the corner of the house, feeling the sickness in his stomach. If we had a radio, he thought, and could set and listen to the news, everything would be all right and we’d find out that Sewell didn’t hold up nobody or kill no deputy or butcher him up with a knife. That’s all we need—more news.
Because he had to be doing something, he went out to the woodpile behind the house and began splitting wood for the kitchen stove, attacking the pile of red-oak blocks with a bitter violence to shut out his thoughts. In a little while Jessie came out of the barn and went past him toward the kitchen, looking straight ahead like an Indian. Mexico trotted toward her but she went on past him and into the house. Mitch watched her helplessly and left her alone. There’s nothing you can do, he thought.
He looked up suddenly, and dropped the ax. Cass had come around the corner of the house carrying a short length of old plowline in his hand. He stopped a whistled to Mexico, not looking toward Mitch.
Mitch watched him. Well, he’s got it squared around his mind till it’s all right, he thought. I should have known I was just making it easier for him when I bounced that damn Prentiss out of here. He works it around in his mind till all the facts agree with him and then he goes ahead.
He walked over to where Cass was knotting the line about Mexico’s neck.
“You going somewhere with Mexico?” he asked, choking on the fury inside him but keeping his voice quiet because he didn’t want Jessie to hear it in the kitchen and because he knew he was fighting water that would flow around him until he drowned in it without ever finding a solid place to hit.
“I ain’t one to put a dawg ahead of my family,” Cass said with martyred politeness.
“I didn’t say nothing about that. I said, where you going with Mexico?”
“Ain’t air one around here that’s got more regard for Mexico than I have, but my family comes first with me.”
You could talk all day and never get an answer, Mitch thought. “Where you going with Mexico?” he insisted.
“Maybe it’s my fault that I ain’t hardhearted enough to just set here and do nothing while they chase my boy around the state with guns like he was a wild animal and not do nothing about it and not even know where he is, but that’s the way I am, and I’m getting too old to change.”
“You figure that’s going to be a big help to Sewell, setting in front of a radio and hearing ‘em talk about him?”
“No. It won’t help Sewell none, unless there’s some way the Almighty can let him know that there was at least one of us cared enough about him to try to find out where he was.”
I could stop him, Mitch thought. It ain’t that I ain’t big enough to stop him, but it’s what would happen afterward. Any man can raise his hand against his daddy if he wants to, when he’s big enough, but he can’t never live with him any more. Sewell did it when he sold his guitar, he hit him and called him a name nobody can call his own daddy and ever forget about it afterward, but he left when he had done it.
How am I going to leave? I couldn’t take Jessie with me, working in sawmills and road camps. And what would happen if I left her here? He can’t work the crop by himself, even if he would, and you can’t live on grass.
“Go on,” he said, his face dark with passion. “If you’re going to do it, go on before she comes out here and sees you.”
Seven
“—one of the most intensive man hunts in the history of the state. As you will recall, Neely escaped three nights ago after wrecking the automobile in which he was being transported to the state penitentiary to begin serving a life sentence for armed robbery.
“There are several factors that go to make this one of the most sensational crime stories in this area in the past decade. One of these is the fact that it concerns Sewell, or Mad Dog, Neely, a gangster and hoodlum who has almost reached the stature of Public Enemy Number One, at least in this state. Last year, it will be recalled, he was on trial for the slaying of another hoodlum in a gang war between rival slot-machine syndicates, and he is alleged to have been involved in a number of brutal beatings in connection with the slot-machine rackets and their warring factions. He was acquitted of the murder charge, you will remember, when one of the state’s witnesses disappeared on the eve of the trial, probably as the result of threats and intimidation, authorities believe.