Oh, he’s just got ahold of one with the rag on, Woodenhead said. Hell, Tyler, if you couldn’t of waited a day or two, the least you could of done was take your britches off.
Tyler just grinned weakly and didn’t say anything. There was something reassuring about this ribald camaraderie, but he knew he must be off. He drained the Coke and set the bottle aside, and so into the night.
When the last streetlight stood vigil against the night and the highway dropped and curved sharply, he was thinking about Sutter as he rounded the curve and was suddenly hurled into absolute and inexplicable darkness. Reflexively he locked the truck down in a caterwauling wail of protesting rubber and ceased in the middle of the road with his hands clamped whiteknuckled to the steering wheel. Faroff and faint headlights were wending toward him, and he felt for the lightswitch. He hadn’t even remembered to turn on the headlights.
I’m going to the law, he said.
No, you’re not. That would be the end of it. The money and everything. This is our last chance to get away from here.
It’s not mine.
He’s bluffing. Trying to scare us. Looks like he did you, too.
You didn’t hear him, Tyler said. But she was implacable as stone. His words rolled hollowly out, and her hardened face just turned them back to him and they began to sound craven even to his own ears.
Think what it would be like, Kenneth. Us somewhere else, some city, Nashville or Memphis maybe. With all that money, thousands and thousands of dollars. Dressing fine, driving a fine new car. Doing what we please. And the law won’t help. Daddy always said the law was like two people fighting over a blanket on a cold night. The one that’s the biggest and the strongest winds up with most of the cover. And the last time I looked that wasn’t you.
Give me the pictures.
What are you going to do with them?
Hide them. Just in case.
She went out of the room. When she came back in, she laid them on the table. He took from his pocket a square he’d cut from a canvas tarp, and he wrapped the pictures carefully and taped them and slid them into a Prince Albert tobacco tin.
She watched him wordlessly. He finished and rose and just as wordlessly went out into the night.
He was sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs in the courthouse drinking a dope when a deputy came through a side door with a sheaf of warrants in his hand. He went past Tyler without speaking and stood for a moment before a door marked sheriff’s office fumbling out keys. He unlocked the door and went in. He was in there for a few minutes. When he came back out, he didn’t have the warrants and Tyler was still there. He’d finished the dope and sat holding the empty bottle as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
You want something?
I wanted to see the sheriff.
He ain’t in.
I figured that by the door being locked, Tyler said. The deputy stood waiting as if there might be more forthcoming, but there was not.
What did you want with the sheriff? The deputy was a small stoopshouldered man with fiery red hair and a long, aquiline nose, and his eyes veered warily as if he didn’t know whether to suck up to you or push you around.
I wanted to talk to him, Tyler said.
I’m a duly sworn deputy sheriff, the deputy sheriff said. If it’s got anything to do with breakin the law or enforcin the law, then you can take it up with me.
When do you reckon he’ll be back?
He’ll come when he comes, the deputy said. He ain’t responsible to me. You through with that bottle, it needs to go back upstairs by the dopebox where it belongs.
It was a good half hour before the high sheriff came, and when he did the deputy was with him. They stood before thedoor unlocking it, and Tyler wondered vaguely what there was to steal. The world was all locked doors. Watchdogs, keep off signs. As he turned the key, the deputy nodded toward Tyler. Him, he said.
Uh-huh, the sheriff said.
They went in and Tyler sat a few minutes longer debating whether to stay or leave. He’d about decided to leave when the door opened halfway and the deputy’s head poked out.
He’ll see you now, he said.
Tyler rose and went in. The sheriff was seated behind his desk with his palms laid flat on it. He was a big man. He wore pressed khakis, and his shirtsleeves were folded back a neat turn. He was dark, and his hair was brilliantined back into ornate and intricate waves. He wore a thin mustache of the sort favored by certain movie stars of the nineteen-forties and he was considered to be something of a ladies’ man.
Something I can help you with, young feller?
I hope so. I don’t know, but I thought I’d ask and see.
Take a chair there. To begin with, who are you?
I know him now, the deputy said. I told you I thought I knew who he was. That’s old Moose Tyler’s boy.
Uh-huh. What can I do for you, Moose Tyler’s boy?
Now that he’d come this far, he didn’t know what to say without saying too much. It seemed to him that with the mention of his father’s name a line had been drawn with him on one side and them on the other. He’d lived too long on the outskirts of the enemies’ camp to ever dine at their table.
My sister and I have been having some trouble with Granville Sutter. He’s done a lot of talking about what he’s going to do. He’s threatened to rape my sister and kill both of us. The sheriff was watching him, deceptively casual. How’d you happen to wind up on the wrong side of Sutter?
Well, it sort of come up about my sister.
The deputy laughed. I’ll just bet it come up about his sister, he said. He turned to the sheriff. He’s got a hell of a nicelookin sister.
Hush up, Harlan. You want to elaborate on this business about your sister, Tyler?
He tried to go out with her, and she wouldn’t go. He didn’t want to take no for an answer. He slapped her around some and threatened to shoot us.
Where do you fit into this?
What?
Why’s he threatening you?
Hellfire. I don’t know. Because I took up for her, I guess.
Uh-huh. Listen close to me, Tyler. I’m going to explain something to you. You’re young and you ain’t been around and you’ve got a lot to learn. You take a man wants something real bad and don’t get it, he’s likely to say some things he don’t mean. Sort of in the heat of the moment, you might say. When he cools down a bit, it’ll all be forgot. Likely he’s done forgot it, and you worrying yourself to death about it.
And that’s it? You’re not going to do anything? Talk to him, or anything?
The law’s a funny thing, Tyler. It requires that a crime be committed before a man’s arrested for it. If we arrested everybody that thought about doing something illegal, there wouldn’t be jails to hold em. And if everybody Granville Sutter threatened to kill wound up dead, Fenton Breece would have to hire him a couple of helpers and put on another shift. If Sutter roughed her up like you say and she swears out a warrant for assault, that’s another matter. But she’ll have to do it. You can’t do it for her.
But then if she did, you’d have to serve the warrant and arrest him? He’d be in jail?
Till he made bond. Which knowin Granville would be somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen minutes. And then he would be madder than hell. Which you wouldn’t want. My advice to you would be to let bygones be bygones.
Whiskey, the deputy said suddenly.
What? the sheriff asked.
This has got to do with whiskey or I miss my guess. This boy here’s got into it with Granville over whiskey the same as his daddy did. Probably set up back there in one of them hollers in the edge of the Harrikin and Sutter’s got wind of it. Man go prowlin around back in there, no tellin what he’s liable to find.
Tyler had risen. Unnoticed, his chair toppled sidewise against the wainscoting and fell. His face was white with anger.
I ought not to have come here, he said. He was staring down into the sheriff’s face. The face was bland and almost politely inquisitive. I knew better all along and by God I came here anyway.