Fly like a motherfucker, sang the nigger.
Take it easy, called Ballard.
The nigger didn’t say if he would or wouldn’t.
The next day the sheriff came again and stopped in front of Ballard’s cage and peered in at him. Ballard peered back. The sheriff had a straw in his teeth and he took it out to speak. He said: Where was that woman from?
What woman?
That one you raped.
You mean that old whore?
All right. That old whore.
I don’t know. How the hell would I know where she was from?
Was she from Sevier County?
I don’t know, damn it.
The sheriff looked at him and put the straw back in his teeth and went away.
They came for Ballard the next morning, turnkey and bailiff.
Ballard, the turnkey said.
Yeah.
He followed the bailiff down the corridor. The turnkey followed. They went downstairs, Ballard easing himself along the iron bannister pipe. They went outside and across a parking lot to the courthouse.
They sat him in a chair in an empty room. He could see a thin strip of color and movement through the gap of the double doors and he listened vaguely to legal proceedings. After an hour or so the bailiff came in and crooked his finger at Ballard. Ballard rose and went through the doors and sat in a church-bench behind a little rail.
He heard his name. He closed his eyes. He opened them again. A man in a white shirt at the desk looked at him and looked at some papers and then he looked at the sheriff. Since when? he said.
It’s been a week or better.
Well tell him to get on out of here.
The bailiff came over and opened the gate and leaned toward Ballard. You can go, he said.
Ballard stood up and went through the gate and across the room toward a door with daylight in it and across a hall and out through the front door of the Sevier County courthouse. No one called him back. A drooling man at the door held out a greasy hat at him and mumbled something. Ballard went down the steps and crossed the street.
Uptown he walked around in the stores. He went into the postoffice and looked through the sheaves of posters. The wanted stared back with surly eyes. Men of many names. Their tattoos. Legends of dead loves inscribed on perishable flesh. A prevalence of blue panthers.
He was standing in the street with his hands in his back pockets when the sheriff walked up.
What’s your plans now? said the sheriff.
Go home, said Ballard.
And what then. What sort of meanness have you got laid out for next.
I ain’t got any laid out.
I figure you ought to give us a clue. Make it more fair. Let’s see: failure to comply with a court order, public disturbance, assault and battery, public drunk, rape. I guess murder is next on the list ain’t it? Or what things is it you’ve done that we ain’t found out yet.
I ain’t done nothin, Ballard said. You just got it in for me.
The sheriff had his arms folded and he was rocking slightly on his heels, studying the sullen reprobate before him. Well, he said. I guess you better get your ass on home. These people here in town won’t put up with your shit.
I ain’t ast nothin from nobody in this chickenshit town.
You better get your ass on home, Ballard.
Ain’t a goddamn thing keepin me here cept you goin on at the mouth.
The sheriff stepped from in front of him. Ballard went on by and up the street. About halfway along the block he looked back. The sheriff was still watching him.
You kindly got henhouse ways yourself, Sheriff, he said.
HE HAD THAT RIFLE FROM when he was just almost a boy. He worked for old man Whaley settin fenceposts at eight cents a post to buy it. Told me he quit midmornin right in the middle of the field the day he got enough money. I don’t remember what he give for it but I think it come to over seven hundred posts.
I’ll say one thing. He could by god shoot it. Hit anything he could see. I seen him shoot a spider out of a web in the top of a big redoak one time and we was far from the tree as from here to the road yonder.
They run him off out at the fair one time. Wouldn’t let him shoot no more.
I remember back a number of years, talkin about fairs, they had a old boy come through would shoot live pigeons with ye. Him with a rifle and you with a shotgun. Or anything else. He must of had a truckload of pigeons. Had a boy out in the middle of a field with a crateful and he’d holler and the boy’d let one slip and he’d raise his rifle and blam, he’d dust it. Misters, he could strictly make the feathers fly. We’d never seen the like of shootin. They was a bunch of us pretty hotshot birdhunters lost our money out there fore we got it figured out. What he was doin, this boy was loadin the old pigeons up the ass with them little firecrackers. They’d take off like they was home free and get up about so high and blam, it’d blow their asses out. He’d just shoot directly he seen the feathers fly. You couldn’t tell it. Or I take that back, somebody did finally. I don’t remember who it was. Reached and grabbed the rifle out of the old boy’s hand fore he could shoot and the old pigeon just went blam anyways. They like to tarred and feathered him over it.
That reminds me of this carnival they had up in Newport one time. They was a feller up there had this ape or gorilla, ever what it was, stood about so high. It was nigh tall as Jimmy yonder. They had it to where you could put on boxin gloves and get in this ring with it and if you could stay in there with him three minutes they’d give ye fifty dollars.
Well, these old boys I was with they kept at me and kept at me. I had this little old gal on my arm kept lookin up at me about like a poleaxed calf. These old boys eggin me on. I think we’d drunk a little whiskey too, I disremember. Anyways I got to studyin this here ape and I thought: Well hell. He ain’t big as me. They had him up there on a chain. I remember he was settin on a stool eatin a head of red cabbage. Directly I said: Shit. Raised my old hand and told the feller I’d try it one time.
Well, they got us back there and got the gloves on me and all, and this feller that owned the ape, he told me, said: Now don’t hit him too hard out there cause if you do you’ll make him mad and you’ll be in some real trouble. I thought to myself: Well he’s tryin to save his ape a whippin is what he’s tryin to do. Tryin to protect his investment.
Anyways, I come out and climbed in the ring there. Felt pretty much a fool, all my buddies out there a hollerin and goin on and I looked down at this little gal I was with and give her a big wink and about that time they brought the old ape out. Had a muzzle on him. He kindly looked me over. Well, they called out our names and everthing, I forget what the old ape’s name was, and this old boy rung a big dinner bell and I stepped out and circled the old ape. Showed him a little footwork there. He didn’t look like he was goin to do nothin much so I reached out and busted him one. He just kindly looked at me. Well, I didn’t do nothin but square off and hit him again. Popped him right in the side of the head. When I done that his old head jerked back and his eyes went kindly funny and I said: Well, well, how sweet it is. I’d done spent the fifty dollars. I ducked around and went to hit him again and about that time he jumped right on top of my head and crammed his foot in my mouth and like to tore my jaw off. I couldn’t even holler for help. I thought they never would get that thing off of me.
BALLARD AMONG THE FAIRGOERS stepping gingerly through the mud. Down sawdust lanes among the pitchtents and lights and cones of cottoncandy and past painted stalls with tiers of prizes and dolls and animals dangling from guyropes. A ferriswheel stood against the sky like a gaudy bracelet and little hawkwinged goatsuckers shuttled among the upflung strobes of light with gape mouths and weird cries.