On that Monday afternoon when I got to the courthouse there was a group of men, hangers-on and old local men retired from work, standing around in the parking lot in their adjustable caps and their long-sleeved shirts looking at Burdette’s car. The police had moved it from Main Street on Sunday morning and it stood now, long and shiny and red, gleaming in the lot behind the courthouse. Parked beside the cars from town, it looked an affront. The men were talking and gesturing to one another.
“We ought to take a torch and cut this goddamn thing into pieces,” one of them said.
“And parcel it out,” another said. “The son of a bitch. It was our money.”
I went on into the courthouse and down to the sheriff’s office. Bud Sealy was sitting behind his desk, slouched back in his chair reading a magazine. He looked tired. I told him I wanted to talk to Burdette.
“Go ahead,” Sealy said. “You can try it.”
“Isn’t he talking?”
“Not much. Not since the other night when I brought him in. We had a little talk then.”
“But hasn’t he said anything?”
“Sure. But nothing you’d want to print.”
“I need to try him anyway.”
“Of course. You two was friends once, wasn’t you? He might talk to you.”
I walked back into the jail. I had been there a number of times before, for newspaper stories, and as always the jail smelled sourly rank and oppressive. There were three empty cells, then the last one where Burdette was. I could see him through the bars.
He was lying on a cot which was too short for him so that his feet hung over the end uncomfortably. His feet were bare and calloused and he was still wearing the same wrinkled plaid shirt and dark pants he had worn when he had arrived on Saturday. Over in the corner of the cell there was a small sink and next to it a lidless toilet. He looked very bad, though, so that I don’t know that I would have recognized him if I hadn’t known in advance who it was. He looked wasted now, massively fat and excessive, sick-looking. I thought in fact that he must be sick; his skin was the yellow color you associate with serious illness and there were deep circles under his eyes. Most of his hair had fallen out in the years he had been gone so that the top of his head shone under the light now, and on his face there was a look of disgust, a kind of unaccustomed cynicism, as if nothing in the world interested him at all anymore.
Then he spoke. And I knew that I would have recognized his voice. “That you, Arbuckle?” he said. “I been laying here wondering if you’d come to see me.”
“Yes. I’ve come to see you. You’re news, Jack.”
He grinned at me. “You mean this isn’t a social call?”
“I need something for the paper.”
“Well,” he said. “You look about like you always did. Life must agree with you, Arbuckle.”
“It does,” I said. “But you don’t look so well. What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”
“No. Hell. I’m all right. I’ll be a whole lot better once I get out of this goddamn place.”
“If you do get out.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll get out all right. They can’t hold me.”
“They think they can.”
“They can’t, though. That’s a fact.”
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see.”
He began to light a cigarette. His movements were slow and ponderous. When he had it lit he tossed the match onto the floor, over into the corner where there was already a pile of cigarette butts and matches. “What’d you want to know anyway? Since you’re here.”
“It doesn’t matter really. Whatever you want to tell me. Except that I don’t understand what made you come back. Didn’t you like California?”
Now for the first time he sat up. Perhaps the memory of his years on the West Coast still interested him. It was hard to tell; he was so bloated and wasted-looking.
“Arbuckle,” he said, “you ever been out there? To California?”
“No.”
“You ought to sometime. It’s a hell of a place.”
“So they say.”
“Yeah, it’s a hell of a place. Only it’s expensive. You can spend a lot of money out there. They got things in California you never even heard of.”
“Probably.”
“Lots of things.”
“Well, you had lots of money,” I said. “What happened to it? Did you run out?”
“Sort of,” he said. Then, unexpectedly, he began to laugh. “But don’t you think they’d let me have some more?”
Apparently the thought of that amused him. His eyes squinted shut and his gut shook; his heaving weight made the cot bounce. “Why not?” he said, going on. “This is my hometown, isn’t it? Don’t you think they’d let me take some more?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think they would.” I knew of course that he was joking, that he wasn’t stupid, but I didn’t care. I had other things on my mind. I told him there were people in Holt who hated him now. “They haven’t forgotten anything,” I said. “I doubt if they’d give you five cents to leave on. Assuming you were allowed to leave.”
“No? I would of thought they’d of forgot by now. But hell, never mind about that. What about you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I suppose you hate my guts too.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you?”
“Look,” I said. “You never cared what anyone thought of you before. What difference could that make to you now?”
“You’re right,” he said. “It don’t make no difference.” Then his face changed again. There was the show of effort in his eyes, as if he were concentrating. “It’s just that I hear you been seeing my wife.”
“What?”
“Yeah. That’s what I hear. I hear you been seeing my wife. I hear you been seeing Jessie.”
“She isn’t your wife. Not anymore.”
“Oh, yeah. Jessie and me — we’re still married.”
“You ruined all of that a long time ago. She doesn’t want to see you again.”
“Sure. We’re still married.”
“Listen, goddamn it. You leave her alone.”
“And I still got my kids here.”
“You haven’t got anything here. You don’t have a goddamn thing in Holt anymore.”
“Yes,” he said. “I still got my family here. I can count on that much. And this is still my hometown.”
“Listen. You must be crazy. You listen to me, goddamn you.”
But he didn’t listen; instead he began to laugh again. He lay back on the cot with his feet hanging over the end. He was pleased with himself. His heavy sick-looking face smiled out at me from behind the bars. “Anything else you want to know, Arbuckle? Did you get what you needed for your paper?”
“Go to hell,” I said.
And that amused him too. It was all amusing. It seemed pointless talking to him anymore. Finally I left.
Then on Tuesday, Arch Withers paid him a call. Over the years Arch Withers had become an embittered man.
After Burdette had disappeared at the end of December in 1976, Withers had gone on serving as president of the Farmer’s Co-op Elevator’s board of directors and he had finished his term of office, but when he had run for reelection two years later people who owned shares in the elevator had not reelected him. In fact he had been defeated by a large margin, and the loss had affected him deeply. He still farmed north of Holt, but now he didn’t come into town very often; instead he sent his wife when he needed something and he never sat drinking coffee at Bradbury’s Bakery. He was lonely and isolated, living in a place where he had always felt accepted and admired.