That afternoon when he arrived at the courthouse some of the old men who had been there the day before were there again, standing in the shade, looking out at Burdette’s red Cadillac, still talking and gesturing. They watched Withers park his black pickup in the parking lot, then he approached and passed without saying anything to any one of them. When he entered the sheriff’s office he demanded that he be allowed to see Jack Burdette. “Let me talk to him,” he said.
“Now, Arch,” Sealy said. “He don’t have any of it left. You know that. Hell, would he of come back if he did?”
“Just let me see him.”
“But I can’t let you into his cell.”
“I don’t plan on going into his cell.”
“Sure, but if I let you see him, you better not try anything. You hear me? I’ll be watching.”
“All right. Now where is he?”
So Sealy agreed to let Withers see Jack Burdette. He led Withers back into the jail and then stood guard in the doorway while he began to talk. And it was merely quiet and semirational talk at first, a kind of review of things. But Burdette must have seemed even less interested in what Withers had to say than he had the day before when I had talked to him, and evidently he was considerably less amused. Again he lay stretched out on the sunken too-small cot, lying there heavy and dull, yellow-faced, smoking cigarettes, barely listening while Withers talked on and on. By this time he must have been tired of it all. It was as if he were merely waiting for something. Withers’ talk must have seemed to him to involve only some minor misunderstanding between them, an old dispute of no particular significance. Except that it was more than that to Withers, of course. He kept talking, trying to push Burdette into some kind of response. There wasn’t any response, though. Burdette simply lay waiting for Withers to cease talking.
So in time Withers grew hot. He began to shout, to curse: “Goddamn you, Burdette. Goddamn you.”
And Jack Burdette still seemed utterly uninterested, as if he couldn’t be bothered by any of this. Finally he did manage to rouse himself a little, however. He raised his head. “Withers,” he said. “I wish you’d shut your goddamn mouth.”
“By god—” Withers said.
“I never came back here to hear about your goddamn elevator. Leave me alone. You’re starting to get on my nerves.”
Arch Withers went a little crazy then. He began to shake the bars, shouting for Sealy to come forward and unlock the cell so he could go inside. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch,” he shouted. “I’ll kill him.”
“Sealy,” Burdette called. “Get him out of here. I heard enough of this.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“I don’t have to listen to this, Sealy.”
“Unlock this thing.”
“Sealy, you hear me?”
It went on in that way, a violent refrain, until at last Bud Sealy moved down the alleyway toward Withers and tried to lead him away. “Come on, Arch,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“No. You had your say.”
“By god—”
“Let’s go. Come on now.”
Suddenly Withers began to struggle. He fought Bud Sealy in the alleyway of the jail, shouting still, swinging his arms. Sealy shoved him against the bars of the cell, pinning him there, his heavy forearm under Withers’ chin, and then he pushed him out of the jail back into the office. Withers stood before him, panting.
“Goddamn it, Arch. What in hell you think you’re doing? You want me to arrest you too? I had enough of this.”
“He’s not even sorry,” Withers said.
“What did you expect? Did you think he would be?”
“He don’t even care about any of us.”
“Listen, go home now, Arch. You’re through here. Understand? Go on home.”
But Withers seemed too exhausted to move. He appeared to be spent and defeated. It was as if he had been waiting for years for just this moment and now it had meant nothing at alclass="underline" Burdette wasn’t even sorry. Finally Sealy had to take Withers by the sleeve and walk him out of the office and up the stairs toward the exit.
Outside, next to the courthouse, the local men were still standing in the shade in the November afternoon. When Withers appeared in the doorway they wanted to know what had happened. But he wouldn’t talk to them. He walked slowly past them, down the sidewalk. Their heads turned to follow his progress across the parking lot, past Burdette’s Cadillac and on toward his black pickup. They watched as he climbed into the vehicle and shut the door.
When he was gone one of them asked: “What happened down there, Bud?”
“Nothing happened.”
“But didn’t Withers talk to him?”
“Maybe. But Burdette wasn’t listening to him.”
“What’d he talk about?”
“What do you think he would talk about?”
“Of course. Well, he’s had enough time to think about it anyway. I bet he made a little speech to him, didn’t he?”
Sealy studied him for a moment, studied them all. “Look,” he said. “You boys better go on home too. There ain’t nothing going to happen here. Go on home and see if the wife’s got dinner yet. I seen enough of you for one day.”
After that nothing did happen for a while. For the rest of the week Burdette stayed in jail, lying on the cot in his cell, waiting, sleeping much of the time, his plaid shirt and his dark pants growing daily more rank and wrinkled, while in town along Main Street people talked endlessly about him, at the tables in the bakery and across the street in the tavern, and everyone seemed to know something about it.
But by the end of the week it became clear that something had been occurring elsewhere. Over in Sterling in the district attorney’s office something significant had been going on: the wheels of Colorado state law had been turning and what they had turned up was proof that Burdette was right. He couldn’t be held; the statute of limitations had run out. If he had been out of the state for five years, and if an additional three years had passed, he couldn’t be prosecuted. He was free to go.
Bob Witkowski, the district attorney, called Bud Sealy on Friday afternoon to inform him of that fact.
“What?” Sealy said. “What’s this? You mean, here that son of a bitch stole a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from people and now you’re telling me I can’t hold him?”
“That’s right. That’s what it amounts to.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You’d better believe it. That’s the law. And you’ll be breaking it if you keep him. You’ve already been acting illegally by locking him up for a week.”
“So you’re telling me now I have to let him go? That’s how the law reads?”
“That’s right. Release him, Bud.”
“Well, Jesus Christ Almighty. That son of a bitch. He knew all along.”
Sealy slammed the phone down and stared at the wall.
By nightfall, though, Bud Sealy had gathered his senses and had decided to act intelligently. To avoid any possibility of interference from people in town — there were a number of hotheads in Holt who might drink enough to think they ought to try something, and it was just the beginning of pheasant season so there were plenty of shotguns available in the racks behind the seats in the pickups — he and Dale Willard secretly moved Jack Burdette out of his cell and drove him out to the county line. It was long after dark. Sealy had handcuffed Burdette again and had shoved him into the backseat of the police car behind the protective grille. Burdette had objected, had cursed and shouted, thinking that Sealy was going to ride him out into the sandhills and kill him. But Sealy had told him to shut up and finally he had. Behind the police car Dale Willard followed in Burdette’s red Cadillac.