Child of God (5 page)

W
HEN
B
ALLARD CAME OUT
onto the porch there was a thin man with a collapsed jaw squatting in the yard waiting for him.

What say Darfuzzle, said Ballard.

What say Lester.

He sounded like a man with a mouthful of marbles, articulating his goatbone underjaw laboriously, the original one having been shot away.

Ballard squatted on his heels in the yard opposite the visitor. They looked like constipated gargoyles.

Say you found that old gal up on the turnaround?

Ballard sniffed. What gal? he said.

Thatn was left up yonder. Had on a nightgown.

Ballard pulled at the loose sole of his shoe. I seen her, he said.

She’s went to the sheriff.

She has?

The other man turned and spat and looked back toward Ballard. They done arrested Pless.

That’s your all’s lookout. I didn’t have nothin to do with her.

She says you did.

She’s a lyin sack of green shit.

The visitor rose. I just thought I’d tell ye, he said. You do what you want.

T
HE HIGH SHERIFF OF SEVIER
County came out through the courthouse doors and stood on the portico surveying the gray lawn below with the benches and the Sevier County pocketknife society that convened there to whittle and mutter and spit. He rolled a cigarette and replaced the package of tobacco in the breast pocket of his tailored shirt and lit the cigarette and descended the stairs, a proprietary squint to his eyes as he studied the morning aspect of this small upland county seat.

A man opened the door and called down to him and the sheriff turned.

Mr Gibson’s huntin you, the man said.

You don’t know where I’m at.

Okay.

And where the hell is Cotton?

He’s went to get the car.

He better get his ass on up here.

Yonder he comes now, Sheriff.

The sheriff turned and went on out to the street.

Mornin Sheriff.

Mornin.

Mornin Sheriff.

Hey. How you.

He flipped the cigarette into the street and stepped into the car and pulled the door to. Mornin Sheriff, said the driver.

Let’s go get the little fucker, said the sheriff.

Me and Bill Parsons was goin to go birdhuntin this mornin but I don’t reckon we will now.

Bill Parsons eh?

He’s got a couple of good dogs.

O yeah. He always has the best dogs. I remember a dog he had one time named Suzie he said was a hellatious bird dog. He let her out of the trunk and I looked at her and I said: I don’t believe Suzie’s feelin too good. He looked at her and felt her nose and all. Said she looked all right to him. I told him, said: I just don’t believe she’s real well today. We set out and hunted all afternoon and killed one bird. Started walk-in back to the car and he says to me, Bill says: You know, it’s funny you noticin old Suzie was not feelin good today. The way you spotted it. I said: Well, Suzie was sick today. He said yes, she was. I said: Suzie was sick yesterday. Suzie has always been sick. Suzie will always be sick. Suzie is a sick dog.

H
E WATCHED THE SHERIFF
stop out on the road a quarter mile away and he watched him ford the sheer wall of dried briers and weeds at the edge of the road and come on with arms and elbows aloft, treading down the brush. When he got to the house his pressed and tailored chinos were dusty and wilted and he was covered with dead beggarlice and burrs and he was not happy.

Ballard stood on the porch.

Let’s go, said the sheriff.

Where to?

You better get your ass down off that porch.

Ballard spat and unleaned himself from the porch-post. You got it all, he said. He came down the steps, his hands in the rear pockets of his jeans.

Man of leisure like yourself, the sheriff said. You oughtn’t to mind helpin us workers unscramble a little misunderstandin. This way, mister.

This way, said Ballard. They’s a path if you don’t know it.

B
ALLARD IN A VARNISHED
oak swivelchair. HE leans back. The door is pebble-grain glass. Shadows loom upon it. The door opens. A deputy comes in and turns around. There is a woman behind him. When she sees Ballard she starts to laugh. Ballard is craning his neck to see her. She comes through the door and stands looking at him. He looks down at his knee. He begins to scratch his knee.

The sheriff got up from his desk. Shut the door, Cotton.

This son of a bitch here, the woman said, pointing at Ballard. Where the hell did you find him at?

Is he not the one?

Well. Yes. He’s the one, the one … It’s them other two sons of bitches I want jailed. This son of a bitch here … She threw up her hands in disgust.

Ballard scuffed one heel along the floor. I ain’t done nothin, he said.

Did you want to make a charge against this man or not?

Hell yes I do.

What did you want to charge him with?

Rape, by god.

Ballard laughed woodenly.

Salt and battery too, you son of a bitch.

She ain’t nothin but a goddamned old whore.

The old whore slapped Ballard’s mouth. Ballard came up from the swivelchair and began to choke her. She brought her knee up into his groin. They grappled. They fell backward upsetting a tin wastebasket. A halltree toppled with its load of coats. The sheriff’s deputy seized Ballard by the collar. Ballard wheeled. The woman was screaming. The three of them crashed to the floor.

The deputy jerked Ballard’s arm up behind him. He was livid.

You goddamned bitch, Ballard said.

Get her, the sheriff said. Get …

The deputy had one knee in the small of Ballard’s back. The woman had risen. She cocked her elbows and drew back her foot and kicked Ballard in the side of the head.

Here now, said the deputy. She kicked again. He grabbed her foot and she sat down in the floor. Goddamn it Sheriff, he said, get her or him one, will ye?

You sons of bitches, said Ballard. He was almost crying. Goddamn all of ye.

Bet me, said the woman. I’ll kick his goddamned cods off. The son of a bitch.

N
INE DAYS AND NIGHTS
in the Sevier County jail. Whitebeans with fatback and boiled greens and baloney sandwiches on light-bread.
Ballard thought the fare not bad. He even liked the coffee.

They had a nigger in the cell opposite and the nigger used to sing all the time. He was being held on a fugitive warrant. After a day or two Ballard fell into talking with him. He said: What’s your name?

John, said the nigger. Nigger John.

Where you from. You a fugitive ain’t ye?

I’m from Pine Bluff Arkansas and I’m a fugitive from the ways of this world. I’d be a fugitive from my mind if I had me some snow.

What you in for?

I cut a motherfucker’s head off with a pocketknife.

Ballard waited to be asked his own crime but he wasn’t asked. After a while he said: I was supposed to of raped this old girl. She wasn’t nothin but a whore to start with.

White pussy is nothin but trouble.

Ballard agreed that it was. He guessed he’d thought so but he’d never heard it put that way.

The black sat on his cot and rocked back and forth. He crooned:

Flyin home

Fly like a motherfucker

Flyin home

All the trouble I ever was in, said Ballard, was caused by whiskey or women or both. He’d often heard men say as much.

All the trouble I ever was in was caused by gettin caught, said the black.

After a week the sheriff came down the corridor one day and took the nigger away. Flyin home, sang the nigger.

You’ll be flyin all right, said the sheriff. Home to your maker.

Fly like a motherfucker, sang the nigger.

Take it easy, called Ballard.

The nigger didn’t say if he would or wouldn’t.

The next day the sheriff came again and stopped in front of Ballard’s cage and peered in at him. Ballard peered back. The sheriff had a straw in his teeth and he took it out to speak. He said: Where was that woman from?

What woman?

That one you raped.

You mean that old whore?

All right. That old whore.

I don’t know. How the hell would I know where she was from?

Was she from Sevier County?

I don’t know, damn it.

The sheriff looked at him and put the straw back in his teeth and went away.

They came for Ballard the next morning, turnkey and bailiff.

Ballard, the turnkey said.

Yeah.

He followed the bailiff down the corridor. The turnkey followed. They went downstairs, Ballard easing himself along the iron bannister pipe. They went outside and across a parking lot to the courthouse.

They sat him in a chair in an empty room. He could see a thin strip of color and movement through the gap of the double doors and he listened vaguely to legal proceedings. After an hour or so the bailiff came in and crooked his finger at Ballard. Ballard rose and went through the doors and sat in a church-bench behind a little rail.

He heard his name. He closed his eyes. He opened them again. A man in a white shirt at the desk looked at him and looked at some papers and then he looked at the sheriff. Since when? he said.

It’s been a week or better.

Well tell him to get on out of here.

The bailiff came over and opened the gate and leaned toward Ballard. You can go, he said.

Ballard stood up and went through the gate and across the room toward a door with daylight in it and across a hall and out through the front door of the Sevier County courthouse. No one called him back. A drooling man at the door held out a greasy hat at him and mumbled something. Ballard went down the steps and crossed the street.

Uptown he walked around in the stores. He went into the postoffice and looked through the sheaves of posters. The wanted stared back with surly eyes. Men of many names. Their tattoos. Legends of dead loves inscribed on perishable flesh. A prevalence of blue panthers.

He was standing in the street with his hands in his back pockets when the sheriff walked up.