Chiefs (9 page)

The man shrank back against the wall. “Now, listen—”

“Come here"

The man edged fearfully over to him. “Hold out your hands.”

“Now, listen—”

“Hold out your hands!”

The man held out his hands. Will Henry handcuffed him. “Now, go out and get in the back seat of my car. You won’t get lost, will you? Just get in the back seat, and don’t say anything to Mr. Holmes or your wife.” The man started to speak. “If I hear one more word out of you I’m going to take this blackjack and do to you just what you did to your wife.” The man turned and hurried to the car. Will Henry stood in the living room chewing his lower lip. He was breathing very fast; his lungs seemed too full of air.

The Smith woman was still standing there. “Will you be all right with the baby, Mrs. Smith? Can you take care of all this all right and call the doctor?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything here.”

Will Henry left the house and got into the car. Holmes had the woman’s head on his shoulder and was holding the sodden handkerchief. All the way to the doctor’s house Will Henry was torn between his concern for the woman and his hatred of her husband. He said as little as possible.

Frank Mudter was standing shivering on his front steps in a bathrobe when they arrived. He helped Holmes put the woman inside. “You leave her with us, Will Henry. Martha and I will get her fixed up and put her to bed. Call me tomorrow.”

Will Henry and Holmes walked back to the car. Butts was huddled in the back seat, saying nothing. “Will Henry, I think if I’m ever at that jail again when you get a call, I think I’ll pass up the opportunity to go with you,” Holmes said. “I’m just not cut out for seeing things like that.”

Will Henry had not realized how shaken Holmes was. He had handled the woman very well, but Will Henry could see that he was trembling. He hoped Holmes had not noticed how upset he himself was.

“I’m glad you did come, Hugh. I don’t know what I’d of done without you tonight. I’m going to go downtown and inaugurate our new jailhouse now.”

Holmes glanced into the car. “It couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow,” he said.

Since Holmes lived only across the street from the doctor, Will Henry left him there and drove to the police station. The lights were still burning. He took Butts into the jail area, took the handcuffs off, and locked him into a cell. “It’s freezing in here,” said Butts. He was beginning to sober up.

“There’s four blankets in that cell, one on each bunk,” Will Henry said to the man. “That’ll have to do you, because I’m not about to start building fires for bastards like you. For all I care, you can freeze to death tonight.” He slammed shut the main door to the jail area and locked it. “Tomorrow I’m going to see how many things I can charge you with. You’ve beat that woman up for the last time.”

He locked the building and went home.

That night he had trouble getting to sleep. “I’ve got to learn not to get mad on this job,” he told Carrie. “I swear, I hate being mad. I think it’s punishing me more than that man down in the jail.” He finally fell asleep in her arms, as she rubbed the back of his neck. It was another half hour before she fell asleep.

The following afternoon Mrs. Butts came to the jail in a taxi and told Will Henry she would not press any charge against her husband. She would not listen to any argument. Will Henry let the man out of his cell, and the couple went home together in the taxi. Will Henry was furious.

Chapter 11.

ON MONDAY MORNING Will Henry rose, bathed, shaved, and, for the first time, dressed in his uniform. Carrie had cuffed the trouser bottoms and pressed everything. He pinned the large badge to his shirt and affixed a second one to his cap. He had not worn a badge before, but he had kept the small gold one in his pocket.

“You look real handsome,” Carrie said when he came down to breakfast. She handed him a small gift-wrapped box. “Here’s a finishing touch to your uniform from the children and me.” The box contained a gold tie clasp adorned with a tiny replica of his badge.

“Now where on earth did you get a thing like that?”

“I ordered it from the same company in Atlanta that made your badges.” He kissed her and thought that the fine hand of T. T. Brown was evident here.

Will Henry arrived at the station at a quarter to eight and built a fire in the wood stove. He and Carrie had spent two hours after church the night before giving the place a final cleaning and putting it in order before its official opening. Idus Bray was the first to arrive, a few minutes before nine. He ambled in as though the thought had just struck him that he might stop by, and then he went over the building in minute detail. Finally, he seemed satisfied that the city’s money had been properly spent. “Phone working all right?” he asked, patting the instrument.

“Just fine, Idus. Had our first call Saturday night, before we were even officially open for business.”

“Yeah, heard about that. Man ought not to beat his wife like that. Still, seems like something our police force shouldn’t have to spend its time on.”

“Well, I guess that comes under the heading of keeping the peace. Can’t let folks go beating each other up, even in their own homes.”

Bray grunted what seemed agreement.

The other council members wandered in over the next hour, and a number of passers-by stopped in. All complimented Will Henry and Holmes on the thoroughness with which the station had been planned and equipped. Skeeter Willis put his stamp of approval on the jail and admired Will Henry’s new uniform, much to Will Henry’s embarrassment. He wondered how long it would take for him to become used to wearing it.

Finally, they returned to their businesses, and Will Henry was left alone. George Pittman, the postman, came by with the mail, peeked into the jailroom, and fled as if afraid that he would be held there if he stayed too long. Will Henry sat down and started to open the mail.

He heard the sound of someone vigorously opening the door and wiping his feet on the doormat just inside. He looked up from the mail in time to see Foxy Funderburke marching through his office toward the jailroom. He got up and followed. Foxy marched briskly in and out of each of the four cells, felt the mattresses, flushed the toilets, stamped on the floor, looked under the bunks, and tested the strength of the bars.

“Morning, Foxy.”

“Lee.”

Foxy stood in the aisle between the cells and looked about. He seemed irritated because he had found nothing amiss. He stalked past Henry into his office and gave the place a cursory glance. Will Henry was annoyed. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee, Foxy?” He could think of nothing else to say.

“Never drink the stuff. Eat your insides out.” Will Henry felt as if he had spoken above his rank.

Foxy stared at him fixedly for half a minute without speaking. Will Henry felt forced to look away. He went to his desk and began shuffling through the mail.

“You’re not the man for this job, Lee.”

Will Henry looked blankly at Foxy, startled by the statement. “I’ll do the best I can, Foxy. Look, I hope there’s no hard feelings between us because I got this job. I—”

“You’ll never survive. Somebody’s going to kill you.”

There was a brief silence while the two men stared at each other. Finally Will Henry spoke. “Well, if you hear about anybody planning to do that, I wish you’d tell me about it.” Foxy stared coldly at him for another ten seconds, then executed a nearly military turn to the right and stamped out of the station.

Will Henry was baffled by the exchange. He was not accustomed to dealing with people who did not make sense, and there was something about Foxy which transcended the silly eccentricity most people ascribed to him. There was something angry and—menacing. It made Will Henry uneasy.

Chapter 12.

APART FROM the incident of the inept bank robbers, Will Henry’s first month as chief had been free of any serious demands upon him as a policeman. He had had a period of adjustment, an opportunity to ease into the job, to begin to feel comfortable in it, without the pressure of major incident. On the Wednesday following the opening of the police station his period of adjustment came to an end.

He arrived at the police station on the stroke of eight, to find a young boy sitting on the doorstep, clutching a hound dog and weeping as though the end of the world were at hand. Will Henry knew the boy from church. He was called Brother, as his sister was called Sister.

“Good morning, Brother,” Will Henry said as casually as he could. He didn’t want to show too much concern for fear of increasing the weeping; it was a technique he used when his children came to him with stubbed toes. “What can I do for you? What’s the problem?” Brother almost collapsed with relief, but every time he began a sentence his sobbing and gasping overtook his speech. Will Henry sat down beside him on the steps. “Now, just take it easy. Take your time and get your breath back. I’ve got all day, no need to rush.” Brother gradually collected himself enough to speak.

“There’s this fellow out in the woods.” He stopped.

“Out in the woods.”

“Yessir, right next to the Scout hut, right at the bottom of Hodo’s Bluff.”

“What’s this fellow doing, Brother?”

“He’s not doing nothing, sir. He’s dead.”

Will Henry took a quick breath. “You ever seen a dead person, Brother?”

“No, sir.” *

“Well, how do you know he’s dead?” Will Henry thought maybe the boy had come upon a bum sleeping in the woods.

“Well, he’s nekkid, sir. And there’s ants in his eyes.”

Brother Maynard had awakened with a start at exactly six o’clock on that morning. He did not need an alarm clock. He brushed his teeth and dressed, and then went to the kitchen. He fried an egg and two strips of bacon and made a sandwich of them, wrapping the sandwich carefully in waxed paper. His dog, Buster, who was almost a purebred beagle, watched with interest and earned a scrap of bread for his attention. Brother’s name was John, but his parents had called him Brother and his sister Sister for all of their lives, and so had everyone else. Brother was fourteen.

He dressed warmly and rode his bicycle to the M&B depot, Buster trotting alongside. At near enough to six-thirty, the Atlanta train pulled into the station and dropped off 400
Atlanta Constitutions.
Brother counted out 172 and folded each of them into a tight three-cornered hat, warming himself next to the potbellied stove in the stationmaster’s office. He placed the papers in neat rows in the large grocery bike basket, then pedaled around virtually the entire “town” (as opposed to “mill town”) side of the railroad tracks, tossing papers accurately onto front porch after front porch. He rarely tossed a paper onto a roof or under a porch any more. Finally, he pedaled laboriously up Broad Street, up the mountainside, where there were eleven more subscribers. He always saved this part until last, so that he could enjoy the ride down the mountain. His final delivery was invariably to the solitary mailbox which Foxy Funderburke had erected at the crest of the mountain, exactly on the city limit, so that he would not have to come all the way into Delano for his paper. Foxy’s house was a mile further along, on the Talbot County side of the mountain.

When Brother had delivered Foxy’s
Constitution
, he turned off the road onto the footpath the Boy Scouts had built from the crest of the mountain, past the Scout hut to the end of Fourth Street. The path was wide and smooth enough for his bicycle, and Brother relished the thought of the long, steep, practically straight coast down the mountainside. The sun had risen now, and half the mountain was in bright new sunlight, the other half in cold blue shadow. Brother began his descent, and his speed increased rapidly. He had never been able to bring himself to make the whole coast without once using his brakes, but this morning he was determined. The bicycle went faster and faster. Buster began to drop back on the path, too winded to bark more than once or twice. Brother’s eyes were almost closed from the force of the wind. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His hands grew numb as the wind rushed through his woolen mittens. His forehead, cheeks, and the bridge of his nose hurt furiously from the cold. It occurred to him that if he struck a stone or a fallen limb his battered body would probably not stop rolling until it reached the Scout hut.

There was a jolt as the path turned slightly uphill, then leveled off as it approached the hut. Finally, he applied the brakes and brought the bike to a halt at the foot of Hodo’s Bluff, which rose nearly a hundred feet straight up the mountainside. He leaned the bike against a tree and flopped down in the leaves and pine needles, his heart pounding wildly. Buster trotted up and dropped beside him like a stone. They both panted for a minute, before Brother regained enough strength to open his sandwich. Buster wolfed down his small piece and hoped against all odds for more.

Brother pushed back until he was resting against the foot of the bluff. He munched his sandwich and looked lazily around him. The early morning sun filtered through the pines and the haze. Everything more than a few feet away had a fuzzy, out-of-focus quality that Brother found particularly pretty. He especially liked the way the sunlight struck the smooth faces of a number of granite boulders which were embedded in the earth and pine needles around him. The low angle of the light and the smoothness of the stones gave them the texture of the hides of fallen beasts—elephants, maybe, felled by the gun of some mighty hunter. The texture of one smaller boulder in particular caught his eye. It was whiter than the others, probably from a covering of dead, gray moss. As he chewed his sandwich and stared at the rock it seemed to change in texture, as if his eyes had suddenly reappraised an optical illusion. There was something familiar about that texture, something he had seen only this morning. He recalled with an unpleasant jolt that it was the texture of his own skin, which he had inspected while dressing before the mirror that morning, longing for a summer tan.