After speaking his own empty words to the sky, he waited while the girls each spoke a prayer, with Callie’s being a jumble of lamentations and requests addressed to God and her mama in turn, and Louisa’s a suggestion that Mama come down for a visit. William tried to listen to the phrases like he always did, to see what was in each girl’s heart, but his mind kept slipping away, to the fresh mound of earth in the swampy ground that no one would be coming to visit.
It started a few days later, without William even realizing anything had begun. He had not left the farm for several days, doing man’s work in the daytime, woman’s work in the evening, and the devil’s work at night, sitting on the stoop and longing for Hannah to come back to him. Sleep, which had become a matter of three or four hours a night, was something he longed for during the day, when it was impossible. So it had been with a foggy brain that he had gone to the feed and seed store and bought exactly half as much corn seed as he needed for his southern and most productive cornfield. Getting the girls ready for another trip to town to buy more, he wondered if they were even safe with him as a caretaker. Perhaps he would confuse Louisa for a barrel of pickles and leave her standing beside the counter in the store or forget he had children altogether and ride off with a couple of feed sacks in their places. Nothing anymore would surprise him.
For this reason he spoke to the girls quietly after lifting them from the wagon in front of the store, asking them to remain in his sight at all times and to hold hands and never lose sight of each other. Even Callie was sobered by something in his demeanor, and the two followed William into the seed store like a pair of tiny ghosts and stood quietly behind him, moving as he did and never uttering a sound. And so it was that William, who had been living a life of nothing but distraction for weeks, was able to take note of his surroundings in the seed store. And what he noted was that the man leaning on the far end of the counter, waiting for his order to be filled, was Eddie Bishop.
William could not have sworn it was the Bishop boy; he had never spoken to him that he could recall and had no more than a nodding acquaintance with his father. On getting closer, however, he saw what he needed to see. An old scar, running from the boy’s left ear to his upper lip, marked him as Eddie Bishop, the Eddie Bishop who had gotten his face half cut off in a drunken brawl one night after work.
Sending Callie and Louisa over to warm themselves by the stove, William walked down to the end of the counter where Eddie stood.
“Morning, Eddie,” he said. The boy looked at him briefly before returning his attention to the door of the storeroom.
“Morning,” he muttered almost inaudibly, dropping one arm onto the countertop and stretching to see as far into the back as he could. After a moment or two, he fell back on his heels and began drumming his fingers on the countertop.
“I was wondering what the time is, Eddie,” William said, not bothering to conceal the chain of his own watch. “Would you happen to have the time?”
“What?” Eddie asked. He stopped drumming his nails on the glass and stared at William as if he’d asked for a ride to the moon.
“The time,” William repeated, putting his hands into his pockets in such a way as to leave the watch chain draped over the flesh of his arm. “I know you’ve got yourself a new watch. I saw it the other night at the tavern. I was wondering if you could give me the time.”
“What’s wrong with your watch?” Eddie asked, turning to face him for the first time.
“Not a thing,” William said, and in that moment they locked eyes and William knew he had achieved his purpose, which was to do nothing more than needle the boy, to nudge him into a state of unease.
“The time, Eddie,” William said again. “I really need to know the time.”
Eddie scowled and looked away, then fumbled at his pants pocket and pulled out a watch. “Half past eleven,” he said, fumbling again to replace it and nearly missing the pocket when the storekeeper suddenly appeared with his order. The boy slung the two feed sacks over his shoulders and left the store without giving William another glance.
Walking to the other end of the counter to place his own order, William counted the first skirmish as his, although the victory had no practical merit in the course of the war.
Two more days passed, and in those days William tended the children and worked to keep up with his chores but no longer as a sleepwalker stumbling through an endless succession of hours. The tiny flame in his brain that had sparked to life on hearing of the murder now bore a steady light, neither flickering nor dancing but glowing brighter and stronger with each passing day. On the third day he determined it was time, or well past time, to talk to the sheriff. The boy had already been dead for two weeks and William had heard nothing more about it.
He dropped the girls off at Lottie Calvin’s place, partly because she had been pestering him for weeks to accept some help and partly because he did not want them to hear his conversation with the sheriff. Louisa screamed as if she was being thrown to the devil and Callie attached herself to his leg, but he had to let them out of his sight sometime, so he passed them over to Lottie, waited till she had hold of them, and left. There was nothing for it but to close his heart as best he could, though Louisa’s screams echoed in his brain all the way to the county jail.
He had known the sheriff would be hard to nail down and it took three more stops before he found Sheriff Clayton Burwell engaged in a game of horseshoes behind the gristmill. Even though prodded by his own impatience, he knew better than to interrupt the game. Hoping the man he needed the ear of would win, he watched and waited until Arnold Morgan got two ringers in a row and Sheriff Burwell was undeniably defeated. Without giving the man a chance to engage in the usual banter, William stepped up to him and asked for a word.
“Sure, Will, what’s on your mind?” Burwell asked, rubbing his palms against his trouser legs and then lifting a tankard that sat on the ground beside them. “That was a stinker, wasn’t it? Two back-to-back and by Arnold Morgan.”
“Rotten luck,” William said, and then rushed on while the man was taking a drink. “I was wondering, Clayton, what’s been done about that Grant boy’s killing. It happened near my place, you know, close enough for me to hear the whole thing.”
Burwell exhaled with satisfaction and shook his head. “That was a bad thing, killing a half-wit boy like that: cutting his throat like a hog and leaving him laying in the road to bleed to death. Some folks are too damn mean to live and that’s the truth.”
“And?” William prompted and waited, but the sheriff was deeply engaged in slaking his thirst and dismissing his horseshoe opponents with a wave and a few acid remarks. When it seemed as if he had forgotten the subject altogether, William brought it up again.
“Have you gotten anybody for it yet?” he asked. “Josh Miller told me he was going to talk to you about it — about what he knew. Or what he thought he knew.”
“He did,” the sheriff said, and collecting the horseshoes from the far stake, he walked over to the back of the mill and hung them on a nail. “I listened to him and I thanked him.”
“And?” William said again, wondering if the man was thick. “What came of it? What are you doing about Eddie Bishop?”
“I rode over to the sawmill one day when he was working. I asked him if he had anything whatsoever to do with the killing of Johnny Grant. He said no, or I believe it was, hell no. I asked him if he’d gotten himself a new watch recently, that someone had seen him with one the day after the killing and it looked mighty suspicious, and I wanted to know the truth. He said he had got a new watch recently and not that it was any of my damned business, but Wendell Pike gave it to him because it seems Wendell was figuring on getting himself a new one and didn’t need it anymore. Not that it was any of my damned business, I believe he added in case I missed it the first time.”