Jem watched McParlan limp down the steps toward Anna’s office, and he went around the Sheriff’s desk and sank into the deep leather chair. The leather cushion sighed under him and he leaned back, kicking his boots up onto to the desktop. He tapped them together so that dirt fell from their soles onto the desk’s immaculate surface.
Jem had been to see Deputy Tom Masters once as a boy. Tom’s son Bart was the same age as Jem, but they lived too far apart to spend much time together. Anyway, Bart was a small, pudgy boy with a round face who didn’t like to get dirty. Whenever Jem or one of the other boys would pull a snake out of a rock and chase the girls around with it, Bart would run away too. Jem didn’t trust that.
The Clayton’s house was set toward the rear of the settlement and their closest neighbors were Royce and Katey Halladay. Sam preferred it that way because it meant people were less likely to bother him and his kids, especially if they were sore about something he did on his job. It was Sam’s practice to ride the length of Pioneer Way into work each morning, just to make sure nobody had stolen it during the night, he said.
On a summer morning, months before the Beothuk raid, Sam was sitting in his office watching a prisoner everyone called Shoelace Bob. Jem had no idea what his real name was, or why they called him that, they just did. He heard Bob’s snores from the street as he bounded up the steps two at a time. Bob’s stockinged feet were sticking out from the cell, with his toes curled around the cell bars. Jem opened the door and winced at the odor coming from Bob that was like fermented potatoes.
Sam looked up from his newspaper, “What are you doing here? Who’s watching your sister?”
“Miss Katey woke us up for breakfast and told me to bring you some.” Jem handed his father the basket of food Katey Halladay had prepared for him. There were biscuits wrapped in napkins, and thick sausages Sam could pick up and eat with his fingers.
“God bless that woman,” Sam said. He pushed an envelope across his desk at Jem. “Since you’re here, I need you to do me a favor. Take that to Tom Masters on your way home. Tell him not to be so damn careless next time.”
Shoelace Bob sat up in his bunk to listen as they talked. There was a huge, swollen lump the size of a fist over Bob’s right eye and an imprint of the butt end of one of Sam’s Colt Defenders sat in its purple nucleus. Whatever reason Sam had to buffalo the man the night before, it had clearly taken the fight out of him. Shoelace Bob was meeker than a schoolmarm when he waved Jem over and said, “Hey, boy, come here.”
Jem hesitated and looked at his father, who considered it for a moment before telling Jem, “Go ahead. Okay, stop. That’s close enough.”
Bob wrapped his fingers around the bars. “Tell Tom I’m real sorry for what happened, and I didn’t mean nothing by it. Ok?”
“Ok.”
“You taking his badge back to him?”
Jem felt the hard star-shaped object inside the envelope and said, “If that’s what this is.”
Bob dug into his pocket and pulled out a coin. He flipped it through the bars toward Jem. “That’s for your trouble. Just make sure you tell him.”
Jem held up the coin for Sam to see and said, “Is it all right if I keep it?”
Sam said that it was and Jem darted down the steps with the envelope in one hand and the money in the other. He ran to the candy store and bought a cold bottle of soda pop and two honeysuckle sticks. He tucked the second stick in his back pocket for Claire, but as the first one dissolved in his mouth, he began having serious doubts about the second one’s life expectancy.
Tom Masters had a small, older home with a well-kept front yard and a wide porch. There was a freshly painted swing at one end that looked out on Pioneer Way. Jem knocked on the screen door and heard someone call out they were coming. Tom Masters opened the door, clutching a hunk of raw steak to his face. His mouth was busted open and he squinted like the sunlight made his bruises hurt even worse. “Jem? What are you doing here?”
Jem handed Tom the package and watched him struggle to open it with one hand. Jem asked for it back and ripped it in half. He handed Tom a badge with the word DEPUTY stamped across the front.
“Phew,” Tom said. “I thought I lost this in the tussle.”
“Shoelace Bob said he’s sorry and didn’t mean nothing by it.”
Tom clucked his tongue and pulled the steak from his face, showing Jem where his eye was completely swollen shut and the bare patch where his hair should be. There were stitches zigzagged across the freshly shaved skin. “My boy cried like a baby when he saw me. I lost a whole day’s pay at the mine, and will probably miss a few more. Plus, I still owe Doctor Halladay for these stitches. Ask me how worried I am about what that son of a bitch feels.”
“Well, he said he’s real sorry,” Jem said.
Masters sighed and pressed the steak back to his face. “I guess that goes with the job. Just remember, someday when you’re out there rounding up the bad guys, don’t ever accept an offer to shake hands with someone you’re fixing to arrest.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve known Bob since before I was your age. He thumped me like this the second he had me by the hand.” Tom rustled Jem’s hair and said, “You want me to call Bart down?”
Jem said he had to go, and ran from the porch. He pulled the second honeysuckle stick out and decided that whatever part of it survived the trip home could be Claire’s.
Jem heard later that Shoelace Bob had knocked Tom Masters out cold with one punch, but continued to beat the Deputy while he was lying there on the street. Bob ripped off Masters’ badge and dropped it in his pocket, laughing right up until the moment Sam Clayton swung the butt-end of a Colt Defender across his face.
Jem thought about Bart Masters’ fat face filling up with tears and scowled. I’d never act like that, he thought. Not that anything would happen to Sam Clayton. He’s the one that does the swinging, not the one who gets swung on.
Jem rode up to the path to Masters old house, remembering Bart Masters. Wishing he could go back and tell that boy how little he’d really known. Maybe if I see him, Jem thought, I’ll buy him a beer and that will make us even.
The house was smaller than he remembered. The same porch swing still faced Pioneer Way, but its chains were rusted and there was a heap of tools scattered across its bench.
Jem knocked on the screen door and Fred Walters called out, “Who’s there?” Walters looked up from his seat on the couch and said, “Sam Clayton’s boy!”
“Yes, sir.”
Walters finished his beer and set it next to a pile of other bottles. “I bought this place from my son-in-law Bart right after Tom Masters died. Bart married my youngest daughter.” Someone was washing the dishes in the kitchen and Walters cocked his head in that direction and pressed his hand to the side of his mouth, “That was my pretty one. Anyway, Tom worked for your daddy as a deputy. After I moved in, I found an old picture of him and Sam standing in front of the Sheriff’s Office. There’s two little kids in it, who I am guessing are you and your sister. What’s her name?”
“Claire.”
“Right. Let me go look for it.” He started up the stairs but stopped halfway and called out, “Hey, Janet!”
The water stopped in the kitchen. “Yes, Daddy?”
“How you gonna fetch a husband if you can’t even get a feller a damn beer when he’s standing in your living room? We got company. Stop stuffing your face for a minute and come say hello.”
Jem waited for Walters to go upstairs and he walked toward the back of the house. There was a woman standing by the sink, stone ugly and bigger than a locomotive, but she smiled kindly at him as she dried her hands on a towel. “I apologize. I didn’t hear you come in. Would you like a beer?”