Black Angus (16 page)

But then that was life, Blanchard reminded himself. He would not likely come out of the adventure as the same man either.

At the end of the field he carefully guided the tractor and rake through the corner and then the next one and started back, with the length of the field ahead of him. And as he bumped along, with the sun lying hot upon him and shimmering in the cut hay ahead, he suddenly saw himself back in Saint Louis, at Darling, sitting at his old desk in his old office, and for the first time that morning the windrow behind him wandered out of line, almost intersecting the one made on the last pass.

At noon, as Clarence and the haybucking crew broke for lunch, Blanchard drove Tommy back to the house and threw together a lunch of leftover chicken, cold cuts, bread, and apples. Shea was in the living room. Still wearing only his chinos, he had set up camp in Blanchard's easy chair, with the inevitable can of beer in one hand and the other plundering a bag of potato chips as he sat watching an Arkansas version of television news. Every so often he would whoop with laughter, and Blanchard did not have to wonder why, for he could well remember his own and Susan's disbelief when they first came to the area and viewed the locally produced shows and commercials, especially those of car dealers who could neither resist the glamor of performing on television nor overcome their terror at doing so. It was a folksy terror, however:

“Naow, y'all come daown and see us, heah? We gitcha a deal you jist cain't not refuse, no way, no sir, no haow.”

Blanchard did not bother to ask Shea to join them for lunch; the sink indicated that he already had more than taken care of his nutritional requirements for the day. There was a dirty skillet, the broken shells of a half-dozen eggs, an empty bacon package, an equally empty fruit juice pitcher, and half a loaf of whole wheat bread, which had been almost full that morning. As if to compensate for their guest's prodigality, Tommy ate very little. He was too excited.

“Boy, Blackie sure gonna have lots of hay next winter. He won't be hungry, will he, Bob?”

“No sir.”

“He have all he wants to eat, all the time.”

“That's right.”

“And them little guys, they sure strong, ain't they, Bob?” He was much impressed with Russell's teenagers, all smaller than he was but still able to throw the hay bales high up onto the wagon, often well over their heads.

“Of course, they're strong,” Blanchard said. “That's why we hired 'em.”

Tommy thought about that for a while, then he grinned, liking the idea. “That's right. That's why we hired 'em.”

Blanchard got up to get a glass of water. Through the window over the sink he saw a car turn in at his gate down the hill, a car with a red domelight.

“Sure enough, that's why we hired 'em,” he repeated, going on into the living room.

“Where's your car parked?” he asked Shea.

“Around the back. Why?”

“Somebody's coming up. The sheriff, it looks like, or one of his deputies. You better get upstairs.”

“You got a point. Wonder what the hell they want.”

“Yeah, I wonder.”

Carrying his beer, Shea ran up the stairs so fast the house
shook. Blanchard went out onto the front porch and lit a cigarette as the car pulled into the circle and stopped. The officer was slow getting out, a tall, heavy, balding man with the broad butt and potbelly endemic to his profession, evidently an occupational hazard. Hitching up his belt and holster, he came slowly up the short walk, grinning with his teeth. His eyes, hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, kept their own counsel.

“Howdy there, I'm Sheriff Hume,” he said. “Only been in office a few months, so there's still lots of folks I don't know.”

Blanchard shook his hand. “I'm Bob Blanchard.”

“Well then, you're just the man I want to see.”

“About what?”

“Oh, just some little old business, won't take but a minute. I imagine you're a purty busy man, with a spread like this.”

“We're making hay today,” Blanchard said.

“That's the ticket. Make it while the old sun shines, huh?”

“I was just getting ready to go back out.”

But the sheriff was not to be hurried. He hitched up his belt again and slowly looked about him, as if for some specific object. Evidendy not finding it, he turned his head and spat into the grass.

“Uh, you know a man named Shea?” he asked.

“Yeah. He's an old friend of mine, from Saint Louis.”

“He been visitin' you lately?”

Blanchard nodded. “He left the night before last.”

“Oh yeah, I heard about that night.” The sheriff grinned again. “Understand he just about knocked down the whole Sweet Crick tavern.”

“It was an accident. He's a pretty big man.”

“That's what I hear. And I also hear he got his ass whupped afterwards.”

“I guess that's why he left.”

“Wouldn't be a bit surprised. Anyway, if he's took off, then it's out of my hands. I'll just have to let some other peace officer somewheres else worry about him.”

“Might as well.”

The sheriff nodded reflectively, grinning still. “Incidentally,” he said, “you know he's wanted, dontcha?”

“For what—child support?”

The sheriff laughed. “Oh, a little more than that, I'm afraid. Felonious assault, assault and battery, flight to avoid arrest—you name it. According to the want slip, before he cut out he banged up his wife pretty good and put his brother-in-law in the hospital and his son too, a ten-year-old boy. Bet he didn't tell you that, did he?”

“No, he didn't tell me that.”

“No, I wouldn't think so. Well, I'd better let you get back to work. But if this Shea turns up again, you let me know, okay? We can't have dangerous characters like that runnin' around loose now, can we?”

Blanchard thought of the Sweet Creek clientele, Jiggs and his friends. “No,” he said, “we wouldn't want that.”

As the sheriff turned and started for his car, it occurred to Blanchard that there was one important question the sheriff had not answered, one Blanchard had not asked. Now he did.

“How'd you know about this man? Who told you he was here?”

The sheriff was already getting into his car. “His wife called me,” he said. “I guess somebody tipped her.”

Blanchard nodded, as if he appreciated having the information, when in fact it sickened him. As the sheriff drove away, he remained there on the porch for a time, wondering which of them—himself or Shea—Susan had wanted to hurt.

Tommy came out of the house and sidled close to him, afraid of the police car even though it was already on the blacktop, almost out of sight.

“That was a police car,” Tommy said.

“Just the sheriff, Tommy. He's a nice man.”

“Does he shoot people?”

“No. He just locks up bad guys, that's all he does.” At his brother's look of relief, Blanchard gave him a pat. “You stay here a minute, okay? I'll be right out.”

He had heard Shea come back down the stairs. Going inside, he found him sitting on the bottom step, cradling his head in his hands.

“I take it you heard that?” Blanchard said.

“Yeah. And it sounds worse than it was.”

“I hope so.”

“Well, it does.”

“That how your boy feels too, you think?”

Shea made a gesture of futility. “I was drunk,” he said.

“Somehow I figured that.”

“I was drunk and I was just trying to get out of the goddamn house. Evelyn knew I'd withdrawn most of our savings and for some reason she called her fairy brother up to come over and stop me. Well, the guy weighs about a hundred forty. I just pushed him aside, and then she came at me with a goddamn golf club and I swung out, trying to protect myself. Then little Joey came flying at me—”

“And you pushed him aside too.”

“That's right.”

“You push hard, Shea.”

“Well, that's all it was—I pushed them, that's all. I shoved them away. I don't know what the hell the cop meant—hospital. They weren't that hurt. I was just trying to get out of there.”

Blanchard nodded, more in indifference than in acceptance or understanding. He was tired of Shea and all his problems, especially now that he could not even deal with his own.

“Well, in any case it's over,” he said. “It's over and done. It's
now I'm worried about. When will you be able to travel?”

“You mean, get out of here?”

“Leave here, yes.”

“Right now, if you want.”

“No, not now. Not in the shape you're in. But in a day or two, maybe then, all right?”

“Whatever you say.”

Blanchard did not miss the shade of contempt in the big man's bruised eyes. “You didn't tell me you were wanted on a felony charge,” he said. “If you get arrested here, then I do too—for harboring a fugitive.”

Shea grinned crookedly. “Thoughtless of me, wasn't it?”

“You could say that.”

“The story of my life.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Shea looked up at him with a frown, pretending to be serious, confounded. “I wonder why,” he said. “I really do.”

“Sure, you do.” Blanchard turned away from him. He went out onto the porch, and Tommy followed him to the pickup. It was still early afternoon. There was still a lot of hay to make.

All through the afternoon and most of the evening they worked. After Blanchard finished raking he joined Russell's crew in loading the bales onto the wagon and then unloading them in the hay barn, load after load. Twice during the late afternoon the baler broke down, but each time Clarence and Blanchard got it going again. By seven o'clock all the hay was baled and Blanchard took Tommy back to the house and then got out his own wagon, smaller than Russell's, and pressed it into service too, with himself and one of the teenagers bucking the hay while Clarence drove the tractor. And finally, by dark, the field was clean and one of the hay barns was full, jammed to
the rafters with close to two thousand bales of fescue and red clover hay smelling of both verdancy and death, an odor that always worked on Blanchard as powerfully as that of wood smoke, stirring in him dim primeval feelings, memories he could not quite make out.

Blanchard paid Russell, who in turn paid the teenagers. Then they all left, with Clarence following them at dusk. Blanchard sleepwalked through his chores and finally made it to the house, where he planned to spend the next hour in a tub of hot water, hopefully while Shea made supper for the three of them. But when he reached the living room only Tommy was there, sitting on the floor playing with his toys. Blanchard looked in the sunroom and out on the porch, but the big man was not there either. He asked Tommy where Shea was, and Tommy thought about it, frowning. Then his face lit up.

“He went huntin',” he said.

Blanchard felt a sudden weakness. “
Hunting?
”

“Yeah. He took one of the guns, out of the rack. And he went huntin'.”

“Where?”

Tommy frowned again, brightened again. “Upstairs. He said there was a mouse in his room, and he was—”

“Did he shoot the gun?”

“I ain't heard it.”

Tired as he was, Blanchard ran up the stairs to the second floor and on up the attic flight and burst into the tiny room. Shea, naked except for a pair of jockey shorts, was sitting at the head of the bed, crosslegged, looking like a great hairy Buddha. The gun, Blanchard's twelve-gauge pump shotgun, lay across his lap.

“Give it to me,” Blanchard said.

“But I haven't used it yet.”

“And you won't either. Give it to me.”

“Why not?” Shea held the gun out to him with both hands, as if he were surrendering a ceremonial sword. “But why all the sweat, old buddy? What'd you think, I brought it up here to use on myself?”

“You tell me.” With the gun safe in his hands, the crisis apparently over, Blanchard's exhaustion fell on him like one last bale of hay and he sagged into the room's only chair.

“I keep hearing a mouse in the room,” Shea said. “I was gonna use it on him, that's all.”

“Sure you were.”

“Honest injun.”

“And blow a hole in the floor or wall? That'd make a lot of sense, wouldn't it?”

“I guess I wasn't thinking.”

“I guess not.”

Blanchard sat there for a time looking at Shea, at his limp smile and the pain behind it, the guilt. “
Why?
” he said finally. “Can you tell me that?”

“Why wasn't I thinking?”

“Stop it, will you. Stop acting like a jerk.”

“It's no act.”

“I want an answer,” Blanchard persisted.

And the big man continued for a time to meet his gaze, smiling his tired, rueful smile. Then he looked down and shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “I really don't. But honest, this isn't what it seems.”

“What isn't?”

“The gun. I brought the thing along just in case, you know? In case I metamorphosed up here—in case I suddenly changed from a cockroach into a man, with cojones and everything. Then I'd have had it handy, you see? I could've put it in the old mouth just like Papa did and blow these exquisite brains all over your exquisite wallpaper.”

“How long you been here?”

“Sitting here? I don't know. A couple hours, I guess. I don't seem to have any real fix on time lately. I just wander lonely as a cloud.”

“No shit.”

“None at all.”

For some reason Blanchard thought it important to pin Shea down, make him face what he almost had done, and why. “It was what the sheriff said, right? About putting your boy in the hospital?”

“I doubt it. I doubt it was any one thing. Just me, old buddy. What I am.”

“And what is that?”