Oliver globed the lamp and the room brightened perceptibly. He could feel the reassuring weight of the pistol dragging down his jumper pocket and he shifted his balance and turned that side slightly away from Hardin toward the window.
“I reckon you get to do the talkin,” he said. “You got all the high cards.”
“Yes I have,” Hardin agreed. “And I’m about to lay out my hand. I been slackin off, easin up, givin all you cocksuckers too much rope. I ort to’ve klled young Winer instead of tryin to teach him a lesson. But once a fool ain’t always a fool. I’ll put him where his daddy sleeps when I finish with you.”
He turned a wrist toward better light, glanced at the time. “I’m just tryin to figure if I got to do this quick or I got time to play with you a little. You been needlin me pretty steady here lately and I’d like to sort of even the score. But I see I ain’t. I reckon I’ll have to content myself with this.”
He abruptly crossed the floor in two or three strides and hit Oliver savagely alongside the neck with his fist. The old man went sideways in crazy, teetering steps, then his knees unhinged and he fell against the wall and slid down. Bitter hot bile rose in his throat and he thought for a moment he was going to vomit but he fought it down. He had fallen on the gun and his hip hurt but there was an almost exquisite pleasure to this pain.
Hardin had approached and stood spraddlelegged over him. “You all right?” he asked with mock concern.
“I’ve done somethin to my hip,” the old man said thickly. “I may have broken it.”
“Likely you have,” Hardin agreed. “A old man’s bones is brittle. I’ll fix you up with Dr. Feelgood here directly and you won’t feel a thing.”
Oliver shifted his position and rubbed his hip. He was wondering how good the light was, how drunk Hardin was, how sure he was of himself. He slid his hand into the jumper pocket. When he clasped the cold bone grip of the pistol it was like shaking hands with an old friend.
“Help me up,” he said.
“You don’t need up. You’ve wound up what string you had and this is where you was when it played out.”
“Help me up so I can lean agin the wall. I don’t want to die on my back like a snake you rocked to death.”
“All right,” Hardin said expansively. “Even if you was a snake I believe I’ve about pulled your teeth.”
He tilted the rifle against the wall and Oliver lifted his left hand toward Hardin and Hardin grasped it. Oliver fired the first shot through the denim and the concussion was enormous in the small room, showering them with splinters and flakes of flourpaste and dead spiders. Even at this range the shot was high and slammed into the loft and he withdrew the piece and fired again. Hardin’s face was slack with wonder. He’d thrown up a hand as if he might bat away the bullets with flesh and bone and two fingers disappeared in a pink mist of blood and bonemeal. He was still clasping Oliver’s hand. When he finally hit Hardin in the chest Hardin was abruptly jerked from his grip like some lost soul to floodwaters. “Oh let me,” he was saying when the fourth bullet struck him but Oliver never found out what he wanted. Hardin got up even with the dark hole charred in his face and then he fell heavily back.
The cold winter constellations spun on, even paler with the advent of dawn. It was very cold and the night seemed absolutely still. With the passing hours a gray, lusterless light began to suffuse the world. In the east a pale band of paler gray paled further still. Shapes began to accrue from out of shadow and here a star winked out and was no more. Another, the stars were folding. Far in the east and the last one burned like a point of white fire and vanished and rose slowly and washed the bare blue trees. The world gleamed in its shroud of frost. A mist crept down from the pit and hung there shifting bluely in the wan light.
After a time out of the sound of creaking leather and jangling metal an old stifflegged man appeared leading a horse. The breaths of man and horse plumed in the bitter air like smoke. A rope was knotted into the tracechains and what kept the rope tautened was a man dragged splaylegged across the frozen whorls of earth. The old man did not so much as glance at the house. Man and horse and the curious burden vanished alike in the thick brush shrouding the pit spectral and revenantial and insubstantial as something that might never have been. They were in there for some time, then only the old man and the horse came back out and went back the way they had come.
At length a yellow dog came stealthily up out of the woods and watched the house before approaching it warily. It paced the perimeter of the yard and paused and lay on its belly watching the house as if it expected someone to come out and stone it away. When no one did it arose boldly and crossed to the rear of the house and began to forage in the garbage can by the back stoop. The can tilted, fell, rattled on the frozen ground. After it fed the dog raised its head scenting the air and its hackles rose uneasily and it moved covertly toward the bordering woods and vanished into them.
9
Early Sunday morning the jailer unlocked the door to the bullpen and motioned to Winer. “The governor called,” he said. “Your pardon come through at the last minute.”
“What about me?” Chessor wanted to know.
“They just left word to let Winer out. They ain’t set your bond yet and I doubt they’s a man in the county can go it when they do.”
“Well, hellfire.”
The town locked in Sunday quietude, a city under siege. He walked on listening to his footfalls, his discolored reflection pacing him in storefront glass like a maltreated familiar. De Vries’s cabstand was the only place open and it was here that Winer heard the news.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Hell, it’s all over town. I heard it so much I don’t even remember where I first heard it.”
“And they know it’s Pa?”
“What I heard they ain’t no doubt about it and now they sayin old man Oliver seen it done and kept quiet all these years. They say Bellwhether’s gone after a warrant now. Murder one, and I hope the son of a bitch gets the electric chair.”
“Does Hardin know?”
“If he don’t he’s the only one. I seen that black Packard go through about daylight. He may be a lost ball in the high weeds.”
“Somebody’s givin me a runaround.”
“Well, it’s not me,” de Vries said. “I’ll tell you anything I can.”
“Where’s he at then?”
“Who? Bellwether?”
“Hellfire. My pa. What’d they do with him?”
“Well, it was just a skull was all. What I heard they sent it off to them scientists. I guess to see who it was and all. I reckon Bellwether and Oliver was waitin to see for sure it was him before they told you about it.”
“Sent it off,” Winer said in wonder. He turned and opened the door and went through it.
“Hey, I thought you wanted a cab,” de Vries called but Winer had already gone from sight.
Winer walked down to the Snowwhite and cornered there and went through an alley past the garbagestrewn back doors of merchants and exited by the General Cafe. He seemed unaware of where he was and such Sunday faces as he met he did not acknowledge. He crossed the street against the light and went on across the bare courthouse yard and up the wide steps to the double door. It was locked. He descended the steps and went around to the side. He peered through the darkened glass to an invisible interior. He pushed against them but these doors were locked as well. He sat on the concrete stairs to wait. A cold wind sang off the stone coping and bore scraps of dirty paper before it. He had no coat and after a time he began to shiver and he got up. The temperature was falling.