“And?”
“And what, Will?”
“What did you do then? What else did you ask him?”
“I asked him nothing else. Told him he could do with a damned sight more respect for the law and left. What more was there for me to ask him?”
“Ask him if you could see the watch, see if it looked like Johnny’s.”
“I don’t know what Johnny’s watch looked like. Do you?”
“No, but somebody must have seen it, somebody at that sawmill or some neighbor. Or a shopkeeper, maybe.”
“Will, I’ll tell you what I told Josh Miller. That boy had no living relatives. The only neighbor that cared a whit about him was old lady Cox who lives in that shack down the road from him, and she’s blind as a bat and couldn’t tell a pocket watch from a wagon wheel. I think it’s an act of pure evil what was done to that boy — a gentle soul like that — but without a witness, without something to link a man to the killing beyond a bunch of guesswork and just plain talk, there’s not a thing I can do about it. You got anything to add? Josh said you heard the whole thing happen. You hear Eddie Bishop’s voice? Or Wendell Pike’s? Hear Johnny yell out their names or anybody else’s?”
“No. I heard voices, but—”
“But they could have been anybody’s. The dogs were barking up a storm, you said that yourself. I got no reason to hang any crime on Eddie Bishop because he’s got himself a new pocket watch. There’s nobody to say it was Johnny’s, and frankly, Will, like I told you, nobody gives a tinker’s damn that the boy’s gone, beyond the awful meanness of it. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. The only way the Bishop boy’s got any chance of being brought up for that killing is if someone finds the money pouch or that locket in his possession, and you can be damned sure nobody’s going to, not at this point. Or, even more unlikely, if he confesses. Or, best of all, if Johnny Grant rises up out of the grave and points a finger at Eddie and says, That’s the one who cut my throat. The boy’s off scot-free, Will, and there’s not a thing for it, not a thing.”
“Maybe not,” Will said. He thanked the sheriff for his time and determined to himself that there must be a thing for it, that he would find the thing for it, and the thing he found would bring that dead boy justice.
It was the first thing that had made sense in weeks.
The sheriff had given him no satisfaction but several ideas. Find the money pouch and locket. This had no realistic value, since Eddie Bishop, although rough, was not stupid and would know these two things would link him to the crime. The sheriff’s favored option, Johnny rising up from the grave, was also not worth wasting a thought on, although with his newfound fantasy of Hannah doing the same, it was hard for William not to picture this, picture the boy coming forth from the earth and finding justice for himself.
A confession seemed only slightly more possible. Any man who would do such a deed would not have to worry with being pricked by a conscience. Either he had none or a conscience so twisted that his only notion of good and evil involved injustice to himself. William thought and thought, he thought while covering seeds, while chopping wood and combing hair and collecting eggs. He thought of Johnny Grant and the boy’s naive trust and how it had probably helped to kill him, and he thought of Eddie Bishop and his meanness and greed, which would probably kill him one day but hadn’t yet. He had taken everything the Grant boy had in the world, even his dogs, at least one of which had been cut for pure meanness, and he had taken his mama’s locket, which had been taken for greed. Done everything, Josh Miller had said, but open up the boy’s mouth and...
William, as though suddenly bewitched, put the egg in his hand back into the nest and sat back on his heels in the floor of the chicken coop. Gold teeth. If the boy had had them, the killers would want them. But only if they thought they were there.
The new plan, conceived in an instant after weeks of pondering, was as obvious as it was frightful. William faulted himself for not thinking of it the same night Josh had spoken the words, for not going home at once for the shovel and rope. The trouble was, then as now, he would need some help.
He had not had much use for the preacher since Hannah had died. The man, who had no wife to miss and no children to raise alone, had asked William to accept the unacceptable. The idea that Hannah was in heaven did not warm William’s bed at night, nor dry her daughters’ tears. To the girls, William spoke of Hannah being in a better place; to himself, he only knew of a stone and six feet of earth.
He had spoken to no one about his thoughts, for they were surely blasphemous, and as bitter as he was, there were still the girls to think about, their place in the community and their future, for who would want to bring into the fold of their family the daughter of a blasphemer? The few remarks he had made, sentiments that had leaked out after several mugs of rum, had been to Josh, who had suggested, stupidly, that he speak his mind to the Reverend Brown. At the time, William had likened that notion to thrusting a scalded hand into the fire. Now he had a real use for the man. What he was planning was against the law and was on church property. More importantly, he needed another pair of eyes and ears to make the scheme work, a pair of eyes and ears that carried the weight of moral authority behind them. Who better, if he could be convinced of the sanity of the scheme, than the Reverend Brown?
For several more days William went about his farm work, rehearsing and carrying out the plan in his mind, flinching at the open horror of it but at the same time reveling in the idea that it might work and the boy might ultimately rest in peace.
He made inquiries of his more pious neighbors about when the preacher’s circuit would bring him their way, about where he’d be staying and how long. Finding this out, he did what he had to do. Come the Reverend Brown’s Sunday, William scrubbed the girls the night before, dressed them in their cleanest dresses, suffered through the purgatory of hair combing, and went to church.
The service lasted two hours and consumed most of his patience, the socializing with friends and neighbors the rest. He had spent half an hour watching the girls gather bluets for their mother’s grave by the time most all of the wagons had gone, finally giving him a chance to speak to the minister privately. He had originally thought to invite the man home for a meal, but Callie and Louisa were terrified of him and William did not want to start a series of nightmares that might go on for weeks. Instead he requested a private meeting for later that night, around nine if it was possible, as he had already arranged to leave the girls with a neighbor and his need to speak with the reverend was urgent.
After laying out his request, William willed the preacher to accept it. If he did not, if he balked or as much as hemmed and hawed, William planned to plead an immediate need for spiritual guidance, for salvation from hell, for anything that would draw the man to the church at nine o’clock.
He was relieved when the Reverend Brown immediately agreed to the meeting. Figuring he was chalking up sins fast enough without lying to a man of God, William gathered up the girls and left the churchyard quickly, before the preacher had a chance to ask him what it was about.
The girls had cried again at being left, and William wondered at the condition of his own heart that he felt simple sadness for this instead of agony, that his newfound craving for justice had grown stronger than his need to spare his children pain. He had assured them they were needed to keep Aunt Lottie company, kissed them both, and left. Riding to the church, rehearsing his upcoming speech in his head, he felt something akin to excitement. The emotion was so foreign, he wondered again at his own sanity.