“John’s dead, then?” asked Milo sadly. “Do you know when, Chamberlin, or how?”
The lawman nodded. “Yeah happens I do, Milo. The official version goes that while he was at some kinda conference in Paris, he died of a heart attack in his sleep one night.”
“And the unofficial story?” prodded Milo.
Despite his solemnity, Chamberlin could not repress a grin. “John was a BG, by then, you know, and he and a bunch of other division officers had done gone down to Paris to whoop it up some. Story goes, John died in bed, a’right, but not in his damn sleep, not no way. His heart gave out while he was humpin’, hot-shaggin’ some French whore, he was. Died in the saddle, he did, and if you gotta go, damn if that ain’t the way to go—chock full of good food and strong booze and balls-deep inside of a redhot pussy. Bernie and me thought old John would’ve chose that way, if it’d been for him to choose, you know.”
“What about Bernie?” asked Milo, his clearest memory of the man being the sight of him belly-crawling out of the company CP on the day the Hitler Jugend snipers killed Jethro Stiles and Sergeant Webber, with a carbine, a bazooka and two rockets for it.
Chanierlin shrugged. “He made out real good, Milo. Back as early as the first, real Sixtieth Division reunion, back in ’fifty-five, he was running one his fambly’s two men’s stores in Richmond, Virginia. He went back and really did marry that lil gal he all the time was talkin’ about, and by ’fifty-five, he had him five kids and anothern on the way. I didn’t get to no more of the reunions till the big one, down to D.C., back in ’sixty-two, and by then Bernie’d done parlayed his two stores into near twenny in three states and had got to nine kids before him and his wife had figured enough was enough. We ain’t seen each other since then, we use to write to each other now and then, but I jest ain’t got no time anymore, with all the pies I got my fingers into, and I guess he don’t either.”
It was at that point that the scarred man—who had insisted on phoning up a neighbor with a phone, then had had to wait while his wife was fetched to talk to him—returned to the room, saying, “Sher’ff, Depity Fontaine wants you to call him and so does Dr. Kilpatrick over to the hospital.”
With a brusque “Thank’y, Billy; be back fast as I can, Milo,” the big man departed.
Sipping at a beer—he did not smoke and had politely declined any of the whisky—Billy Crawford proved a veritable fountain of information about Sheriff Sherwood Chamberlin, and there was, Milo soon became aware, much to tell of his sometime comrade-in-arms.
“My paw and Sher’ff Chamberlin, they come back to the county from the war ’bout the same time, Mr. Moray, sir. They both went back to work out to the gravel pits, but the sher’ff, he didn’t stay long, for all that Mr. Royal, hisself, offered for to up his pay and make him a supervisor if he would stay. Naw, he moved down to D.C. and went on the cops, there, found out he liked cop work and commenced at taking college courses in it.
“He’d married Betty Wading within a year of coming home, but she just couldn’t seem to get to like living in D.C., so he took a little house out on Yellow Creek Road for her and come out here as often as he could to be with her. Long about ’fifty-two or -three, I think it was, old Sher’ff Quinn, his car blowed a tire on a wet road and rolled over three, four times and burnt up with him in it.
“He’d been sher’ff since way back when, and at his fun’ral, old Mr. Royal took Sher’ff Chamberlin aside and tol’ him he wanted him to come back to the county and be sher’ff.”
“To run for sheriff, Billy?” inquired Milo. “To leave a secure job and run for sheriff?”
“No, sir, Mr. Moray, sir; you don’t unnerstand. See, back then, Mr. Royal, he owned this county—lock, stock and barr’l—just like his paw afore him, and his grandpaw and all. Aw, it was elections and all, for the looks of things, but everbody knowed that whosomever Mr. Royal was for, he was gone win whatever he was runnin’ for. And all the sher’ff would tell him, they say, was he’d think on it and pray on it and let him know ’bout it.”
Milo chuckled. “That sounds just like the Chamberlin I knew, years back, Billy, damned if it doesn’t.”
“Wal,” continued Crawford, “after a couple of months had gone on and the depities as was running things had fucked up real good and proper a Couple times and the fuckin’ state police had had to be called into the county one those times and still no word from the sher’ff, old Mr. Royal, he had hisself drove into D.C., had him a confab with some of the big shots the sher’ff worked for, then, then talked to the sher’ff.
“I hear tell the sher’ff wouldn’t talk to Mr. Royal alone, naw, had a couple his D.C. officers with him and he laid it on the line to Mr. Royal, too, they say. He told the old man that was he to come out here and be sher’ff, he was gone be sher’ff of all the folks in the county, not just a fuckin’ errand boy for the Royal fambly, and that Mr. Royal had best get that straight up front and be ready to sign a witnessed contract that would say that and some other things or he could go back and make one his depities the sher’ff.
“And what happened then, Billy?” asked Milo.
The slight man grinned, took a sip of beer and shook his scar-shiny head once. “Wal, Mr. Royal, he won’t no way use to being talked to that way by hardly nobody and he invited the sher’ff to hell in a fuckin’ leaky bucket and stomped out and drove back out here, is what. But then that very next month, the guvamint mens, they caught a passel of moonshiners in the fuckin’ act … and two of them was county depities. The nextest day after he heard ’bout all that fuckin’ shit, Mr. Royal, he went back into D.C. and ate him a heapin’ helpin’ of crow. He signed ever’thing he was told to sign and when he come back, the sher’ff come with him.”
Crawford took a real swallow of the beer, refilled his glass from the bottle and went on. “The sher’ff, he went th’ough his inher’ted hashup like a dose of salts, Mr. Moray, sir. Of the three depities was left, one was prosecuted and sent to jail for stealing from the county and the other two jest lit out for parts unknown. He brung in three retired D.C. cops to help him hold things down, then got Mr. Royal to twist enough tails to get the state police to take on my paw and four other fellers in the next trooper training class they run.
“He made Mr. Royal buy custom police cruisers with lights and sireens and all, got radios put in them and in the office, laid out reg’lar p’trol patterns on a county map and talked Mr. Royal round to paying the depities enough so’s they didn’t feel ’bliged to steal and take payoffs from roadhouses and cook moonshine jest to make ends meet, no more. Got so, they use to say, ever time the sher’ff he’d call in for another ’pointment for to talk to Mr. Royal, the old man would take to pounding his desk and th’owing things and slamming doors and all and yelling that the sher’ff was out to plumb bankrupt him … but he allus saw the sherff and talked to him and most allus done whatall the sher’ff wanted, too.
“Mr. Royal’s kids had all died before him. His eldest boy was kicked by a hoss and kilt while he was playing polo at some ritzy place in Upper Marlboro, back in the thirties. His next-oldest boy was a bomber pilot that was lost in Europe, somewheres in World War Two, and his youngest boy was kilt in training right at the tag end of that war. His daughter, after she’d got loose from two no-count men she’d married, took to drinking so heavy she’d done had to be locked up in some private sanitarium till she kilt herself one night. Old Miz Royal, she took sick and died ’long bout nineteen and fifty, too, so Mr. Royal didn’ have no close relatives nowhere, and ever’body just figgered when he come to die, too, it was gonna be some kinda bad shake-up all over the county.