Eventide

Tell me now.

You don’t want other people to know about what I got to tell you.

What the fuck’s that suppose to mean?

You’ll know when we get there. Now let’s go.

The old man leaned back against the wall, looking from the deputy to Hoyt, and the bartender stood watching from behind the bar.

Well, if this ain’t the goddamn shits, Hoyt said. I’m shooting pool here. He drank from his glass. He looked at the old man. You owe me for this game, and the one before.

It ain’t over yet, the old man said.

Yeah it is. It’s close enough.

I was coming back on you.

You was coming back, my ass.

And this one would of put us even.

Listen, you old son of a bitch. There’s no way you was going to win this game and you still owe me for the last one.

Let’s go, the deputy said. Now.

I’m coming. But he still owes me. You all seen it. He owes me. I’ll see you boys this afternoon.

He downed the rest of the beer and set the glass on the table and sucked on the cigarette once more before stubbing it out. Then he walked out ahead of the deputy. On the sidewalk he said: You got your vehicle?

Waiting on you, around the corner.

They went around to Third Street and got in and the deputy drove two blocks to the reserved parking lot on the east side of the county courthouse. He led Hoyt down the concrete steps to the sheriff’s office in the basement, where they took him behind the front counter to a desk and charged him with misdemeanor child abuse and read him his rights. Then they booked and printed him, and afterward they led him back through a little corridor to a small windowless room. After they sat him down at a table, the deputy who’d picked him up switched on the tape recorder while another sheriff’s deputy leaned back against the door, watching.

He claimed he was teaching them discipline. He did not try to deny it. He thought well of himself for it. He told them it was the right thing. He said he was putting order into their lives. Now when do I get out of here? he said.

There’ll be a bail hearing scheduled within seventy-two hours, the deputy said. What did you whip them with?

What?

You whipped them with something. What was it?

Let me ask you something. You ever seen those kids? Walking around town? They need discipline, wouldn’t you say? And you think their folks are ever going to do it? I don’t think so. They don’t know how. Wouldn’t even know where to start. So I was doing them a favor. All of them. They’re going to thank me someday. You have to have discipline and order in this life, isn’t that right?

That’s what you think? You believe that?

Goddamn right I do.

And you think an eleven-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy need to be physically abused to learn discipline?

It didn’t hurt them. They’ll get over it.

They’re in pretty bad shape right now. They look real bad. We have pictures to prove it. How long have you been doing this?

What are you talking about? That was it. One time. It’s not like I enjoyed it. Is that what you think?

You’re sure about that.

Yeah. I’m sure. What have they been saying about me?

Who?

Those kids. You’ve been talking to them, haven’t you?

What did you hit them with?

You’re still on that.

That’s right. We’re still on it. Tell us what you used.

What difference does it make?

We’re going to know.

All right. I used my belt.

Your belt.

That’s right.

The one you’re wearing right now?

I never used the buckle end. Nobody can say I used the buckle. Is that what they’re saying?

Nobody’s saying anything. We’re asking you. We’re not talking to anybody else right now. We’re talking to you. You used something else too, didn’t you.

I might of used my hands a couple of times.

You hit them with your hands.

I might of.

You used your fists, you mean. Is that what you’re saying?

Hoyt looked at him, then at the other deputy. What if I smoke in here? he said.

You want to smoke?

Yeah.

Go ahead. Smoke.

I don’t have my cigarettes. They’re out there in the front. Let me borrow one off of you.

I don’t think so.

Then let me buy one off you.

You got any money?

You mean on me? What the hell are you talking about? You emptied my pockets when you brought me in here. You know that.

Then I guess you can’t buy any cigarette, can you.

Hoyt shook his head. Jesus Christ. What a asshole.

How’s that? the deputy said, moving toward the table. Did you say something?

Hoyt looked away. I was talking to myself.

That’s a bad habit to get into. You can get into a world of trouble doing that.

WHEN THE SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES AT THE HOLT COUNTY JAIL finished questioning him that day, they led him back through the little corridor to the double row of cells. There were six in all, three on each side, and they were rank with the smell of urine and vomit. Hoyt stepped into the cell they’d indicated and sat down on the cot, and after a while he lay back and went to sleep.

The next day, upstairs in the courtroom, the judge set his bail at five hundred dollars. Hoyt had a little less than five dollars, no more than that. So they walked him back down to his cell in the basement and handed him orange coveralls that had HOLT COUNTY JAIL stenciled on the back in black letters.

It turned out the next docket day in this outlying district was a month away, since there had been one three days before, so Hoyt had to stay in jail waiting until then for his court date. When he heard about this state of affairs he cursed them all and demanded to see the judge.

One of the sheriff’s deputies who was nearby said: Raines, you better shut your goddamn mouth. Or somebody is going to come in there and shut it for you.

Let him try, Hoyt said. We’ll see how far he gets.

Keep it up, you smart son of a bitch, the deputy said. Somebody’s going to do more than just try.

Part Three

20

SO HE WAS ALONE NOW, MORE ALONE THAN HE HAD EVER been in his life.

Living with his brother seventeen miles out south of Holt he had been alone since that day when they were teenage boys and they’d learned that their parents had been killed in the Chevrolet truck out on the oiled road east of Phillips. But they had been alone together, and they had done all the work there was to do and eaten and talked and thought out things together, and at night they had gone up to bed at the same hour and in the mornings had risen at the same time and gone out once more to the day’s work, each one ever in the presence of the other, almost as if they were a long-suited married couple, or as though they were a pair of twins that could never be separated because who knew what might happen if they were.

Then when they had become old men, after a series of peculiar circumstances had transpired, the pregnant teenaged girl Victoria Roubideaux had come out to the house to live with them, and her coming had changed matters for them forever. And then in the spring of the following year she had delivered the little girl and her arrival had changed matters once again. So they had grown used to the presence of these new people in their lives. They had become accustomed to the way things had changed and they had got so they liked these new changes and got so they wanted them to continue day after day in the same way. Because it began to feel as if each succeeding day was good to them, as though all of this new order of things was what was pointed to all along, even if they could never have known or predicted it in any way or manner beforehand. Then the girl had finished high school and had gone off to Fort Collins to attend college, and they had missed her, missed her and her little daughter both terribly, because after they were gone it was as if they were suffering the sudden absence of something as elemental and essential as the air itself. But they could still talk to the girl on the telephone and look forward to her return at holidays and again at the start of summer, and in any case they still had each other.