“Let the big motherfucker drive for all of me,” Cooper said. “I believe he’s tore somethin aloose inside of me.”
The cold air of black night, cold frost on the chrome doortrim. The Packard waiting like a hearse. A hard hand in his back and his cheek on the icy concrete, stars spinning out faint and fainter above the flaring streetlamps. So far, so far.
Then Buttcut’s legs drawing back. Winer’s eyes watching just that, fascinated, the knees coming up in slow motion, the denim tightening over them until you thought it would split, Cooper half-turning, his mouth opening, big brogans kicking out and the windshield exploding in a slow drift of safety glass and the onrush of icy air and the steering wheel clocking as the car slewed against the curb.
8
Bellwether bore the sad tidings to Oliver and sat with his feet cocked on the hearth while the old man digested them in silence save the loud tick of a clock measuring out the moments.
“I asked him was there anybody he wanted let know,” Bellwether said. “He first said no, then he named you.”
“What’s he charged with?”
“Disorderly conduct and assault.”
“What about that Chessor boy?”
“Them two plus public drunkenness. Resistin arrest and assault with intent to commit murder. Destruction of private property, destruction of city property.”
“They Lord God.”
“There may be a few more by now. The returns are still comin in.”
“And you say he whupped that Mexcan feller?”
“I’d say so. He had to have this jaw wired together and he’s got a mouthful of busted-up teeth. He just got generally stove up.”
“What do you reckon Chessor’ll get out of it?”
“He’s good for eleven-twenty-nine anyway.”
The old man arose, turned his back to the heat from the stove. “I’ll tell you what I’m goin to do,” he said. “When his bond is set I aim to go it. I aim to stand good for it, then I’m goin to tell him to ease hisself across the stateline and be gone. What do you think of that?”
“I think you’ll be out some money.”
“In my time I’ve spent more and got less out of it.” Oliver opened the stovelid and spat into the fire. Flickering flames lacquered his brown face with orange. “You ever get anything back on that skeleton?”
“Skull,” Bellwether said. “I was comin to that. Well. It was Winer all right.”
“We knowed that. Have you told that boy yet?”
“No. I’ve got to though. It’s not somethin I’m looking forward to.”
“I wish you’d hold up a day or two. He’ll kill Dallas Hardin and turn twenty-one in Brushy Mountain state pen.”
“No, he won’t. There’s no proof Hardin even shot him. Mr. Oliver.”
“Why, shitfire. You know as well as I’m settin here that Hardin shot him.”
“Knowin ain’t provin. I can know all day long but what a jury’s goin to want to know is how I know.”
“Young Winer ain’t that picky,” Oliver said.
After Bellwether had gone Oliver went to bed but he could not sleep. He lay in the darkness staring at the unseen ceiling. Over the past few days a plan had presented itself for his consideration, little by little, like an image forming on a photographic plate. If I got to do it then this is the only time, he thought. They boy don’t know yet and he’s out of the way in jail. I won’t get this kind of shot at it again. God knows somebody’s got to do it. And it looks like it’s goin to have to be me.
William Tell Oliver went three times to the sheriff’s office before he caught Cooper there with Bellwether. He pushed the door open a little way and Bellwether was arranging papers in a drawer and Cooper was turning at the noise the door made opening with a cup of coffee in his hand. Cooper looked ill used. His face was battered and swollen and he moved with the caution of a man aware of the fragility of each internal organ.
“Lord God,” Oliver said. “What happened to you?”
Cooper just turned away, a sneer deepening further the asymmetry of his discolored face.
Oliver addressed Bellwether. “I paid that boy’s fine,” he said. “But the judge is keepin him till tomorrow mornin anyhow. They ain’t even set bond. They still studyin about it.”
“Well. That’s between you and the judge, Mr. Oliver. I don’t have anything to do with that end of it.”
“I know. That ain’t what I come about.” He leaned on the desk, his hands cupping the rim and supporting his weight. The hands looked dark and gnarled and bewenned and they looked like something carved with infinite patience from knotty walnut.
“I figured when I brought that thing in yins would scout around a little and maybe find somethin out about it. But I reckon not. Yins send it off to Nashville and let em take pictures of it or whatever and doctors look at it through microscopes And it ten year out of the ground it ort to’ve been in and no words said over it and no end in sight. Well, I wanted to stay out of it all I could but I see I can’t. If yins can’t find the straight of it then, I’ll have to tell you the rest of it.”
Bellwether’s eyes were halfclosed and he wore a patient, bemused look. He rested a jaw on a cupped palm. “All right, Mr. Oliver,” he said. “Pull you up a chair and drop the other shoe. You beens settin with it drawed back long enough.”
They sat in the squadcar. Small, cold wind out of the north, a rattle of frozen trees. All was dark save the random orange pulse of Cooper’s cigarette, then Hardin’s gold lighter flared, his broken profile twinned by the glass beyond it, then darkness again and the sudden rasp of his voice.
“What then?”
“The he said about dark both of you got into a Diamond-T truck. Said his goats was out and he was huntin em up that branch-run and kindly keepin out of sight in the brush, listening for their bells. Said he was lookin right at the truck when all at once the inside of it just lit up yeller and he heard a boom and directly you got out draggin Winer toward where that big old pit of a thing is.”
Cooper could see Hardin’s vague dark outline. When Hardin grinned he could see his teeth. “That old son of a bitch,” he said. “That sweet old son of a bitch.” There was something akin to admiration in his voice as if upon coming across his traits encoded idiosyncratically in others he could not help but feel kindly toward their possessors. “Course you know it’s all a pack of lies.”
“Course,” Cooper said automatically.
“You think that old man’s been settin on a piece of information like that for ten years? The shit he has. He’d a done had me in the pen or a pauper, one or the other. Either that or the worms would’ve finished up with him a long time ago.”
“Well, I knowed all along he was lyin.”
“Did you? Somehow I doubt it, Cooper. What you know is what you heard last. When you hear Oliver you know that and then when I talk that’s what you know.”
Cooper didn’t say anything for a moment as if he were marshalling his forces. “I know one thing,” he said. “I know Bellwether’ll be after Humphries till he issues a warrant first thing Monday mornin and he’ll be on your doorstep before the ink’s good and dry on it.”