Justice (24 page)

He was easy to find. He was wearing a white shirt, and on the moonlit night his broad back stood out like a ship's sail on the sea. He was standing with a group of men, all of them drinking and smoking. When Gail tapped Jack Pepper on the back, she interrupted a conversation about horses.

“Excuse me,” she said as he turned around. “My husband would like to see you inside.” Then it occurred to her that he might not know who she was, much less to whom she was married. “Wesley Hayden. I believe he needs your assistance.”

Gail didn't show much in her fifth month—not much
more than a little tummy—but she had taken to wearing maternity clothes nonetheless. It was due to shyness more than anything else. She would let her appearance announce her condition to the town. If she looked pregnant, she wouldn't have to respond to every busybody's question about whether the rumor was true that she was expecting.

Perhaps the cotton print maternity smock she wore that night caused Jack Pepper to treat her with unusual respect. Or perhaps it was nothing so noble on his part. Perhaps he was simply obeying a command that came from Julian Hayden's son.

Jack Pepper set his bottle on the ground, tossed his cigarette away in a shower of sparks, and strode quickly toward the bar.

Gail wasn't sure what she should do. Wesley had told her to wait for him outside, but she couldn't stand there with that group of cowboys. She looked around the lot for someone she knew. She recognized faces but saw no one she would feel comfortable approaching. If there were a group of women she could stand with them, but all the women were with husbands or boyfriends. So Gail did what she was hoping to do all along—she walked back to the bar and looked through its smeared window to see what her husband and Jack Pepper were going to do.

What happened inside coincided so precisely with her arrival at the window that it seemed as though it were staged for her benefit.

Gail saw her husband walk behind Gordon LaChapelle. Wesley must have done so quietly because LaChapelle didn't
turn on his stool to watch him. When Wesley was directly behind the Indian, he reached up and grabbed him by his hair, pulling LaChapelle backwards off his stool.

LaChapelle was caught completely off balance, and he fell so heavily that Gail wondered for an instant if his fall was caused by something else—could he have fainted and Wesley was only trying to catch him, to break his fall? No, if he had lost consciousness, he would have pitched forward, the way his weight was leaning. Besides, she could tell that Wesley had not just pulled LaChapelle back but had hurled the Indian to the floor.

The stool toppled over too, sliding out to the side while LaChapelle went straight back. The Indian cracked his head on the floor, and as soon as he hit, Jack Pepper—where had he come from?—grabbed one of his legs. Just as quickly, Wesley had the other leg, and together they dragged Gordon LaChapelle across the floor and toward the door.

At first Gail believed that LaChapelle must have been knocked unconscious by the fall, because he allowed himself to be dragged without protest. Then she saw his arm flop out to the side and his hand grab weakly for something to hold onto.

Wesley and Jack Pepper backed through the screen door, and as it closed behind them it banged against Gordon LaChapelle's ribs.

By now a crowd had gathered, and the people formed a kind of circle—half of them in the bar and half of them outside watching.

Once they were outside, Wesley nodded to indicate they
were to drag him to the right, in the opposite direction from where Gail stood. Wesley asked Jack Pepper, “Did he leave anything on the bar? Money? A hat?”

“I didn't see nothing.”

Then they were out of sight, behind some parked cars and trucks. Gail knew she wouldn't follow them, no matter how badly she wanted to know what was going on, so she listened intently.

She heard some grunts, some breathy exhalations of air, some scuffling sounds—all of which could have come as easily from a man being beaten or a man being helped to his feet.

No one else in the crowd ventured behind the parked cars either, a fact that Gail considered remarkable considering these people's curiosity and their level of inebriation. If it were merely a fight they would have all gathered around—she had seen that often enough—but this was official business; since the sheriff was involved it was best to stay back.

Gail was still standing alone, and she could tell that others were staring at her. Because she was pregnant? Because she was the sheriff's wife? Her baby shifted inside her, a slow liquid roll that felt almost deliberate and made Gail feel as if she was nothing more than a vessel, as if this life inside her was as likely to respond to the moon's pull as to Gail's will.

A truck's engine coughed and sputtered to life, and then a nearby stand of birch trees was briefly illuminated by headlights sweeping past. Gail guessed that was Gordon LaChapelle driving away, and she wondered how far he'd get in his beaten, drunken condition. There were so many accidents along these county roads—someone missing a curve and rolling down a
ravine, a car or truck stalling on the railroad tracks, a driver too drunk or sleepy to go on and pulling off on the shoulder only to be crashed into by another car. It distressed her that so many of these accidents involved Indians.

Wesley and Jack Pepper walked out from behind the parked cars. Wesley scuffed his feet through the gravel and thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets as if embarrassed to be the focus of so much attention.

Gail heard Jack Pepper ask Wesley, “Where'd he get that truck?”

“I have no idea.”

“I try to put a little money aside. I can't afford no new truck.”

“You've got money saved?”

“I'm tryin'. I don't always manage.”

“Tell my dad you need a raise.”

“Your dad's always been fair with me. I got no kick.”

Wesley saw Gail waiting for him and put his hand out to her as though he were meeting a prospective voter on the street. She took a step back.

“You want to go back inside?” he asked.

Jack Pepper drifted off to resume drinking with his friends. Gail could tell from the way they greeted him that they were eager to know what had happened with Gordon LaChapelle. She was, too, but she was in no hurry to ask Wesley.

“Are we staying?” she asked.

“We can go. I just have to talk to Paul Gurch for a moment.”

“I'll wait out here.”

“Suit yourself.”

Wesley left her alone again. This time while she waited someone approached her. Carol Clifton, who also worked at the courthouse, walked unsteadily toward Gail. Carol looked like she was dressed for a square dance, in a bright yellow blouse and a wide flared skirt. Gail could see that Carol was drunk. She carried a bottle of beer, and she could not stop smiling at Gail.

“It's not like this, sweetie,” Carol said.

“What isn't?”

“You know. Here. Living here.”

“Just tonight?”

“Tonight, sure. I know you're thinking about your baby and all. I would, too. But I wouldn't worry. I mean, I don't.”

“I was thinking about Wesley.”

“Wes? He wears a tie.” Carol pointed the neck of her beer bottle toward the group of cowboys. “That's who you should worry about. Donnie Eidsen over there? A steer stomped on his foot and it swelled up so bad he couldn't even pull on his boot, much less put it in a stirrup. So he ain't drawing his pay right now.”

Gail squinted through the darkness. She wasn't sure who Donnie Eidsen was, but she thought she saw one of the cowboys leaning awkwardly against the hood of a car, and he may have been resting a sore foot on the car's bumper.

“Wes is workin' anyway,” Carol said again.

“Yes, he is.”

“Too bad he has to when you're around.”

Wesley came out of the bar. He held the door open while he called something back to Paul Gurch. The open door let the bar's light tumble out and cast Wesley's silhouette on the ground. Gail kept her eye on the shadow, letting it tell her when her husband was coming her way.

Carol turned to leave, then stopped. “How much longer you going to work?”

Gail hunched her shoulders. “Until the doctor tells me I can't.”

“See you Monday then!”

As they drove home Gail thought about how glad she was that she was pregnant. It meant Wesley would not initiate lovemaking that night. Since she announced her pregnancy he would not touch her in that way unless she indicated that it would be all right. And tonight she was not about to do that. She didn't want to take a chance that his blood might be heated not by desire for her but by the violent act he had been involved in. There had been times in the past when he came home late, after making an arrest, when he wanted her so badly it was all she could do to make him slow down. And she didn't mind giving herself to him if it meant their lovemaking could help wipe out some unpleasantness he had encountered on his job. But if he came to her simply because he was so full of himself he didn't know what else to do—why, then she didn't want him to touch her.

They had been in the car a long time, riding in silence, but
Gail knew Wesley wanted to talk. He was just trying to find a way to start. He had even been driving slower than usual—oh, he might pretend he was looking for deer or stray cattle or Gordon LaChapelle's car in the ditch—but she knew he was searching for words. He began to click his tongue the way he did when he was working up the courage to speak. And they had to talk in the car. When they got home, Wesley's father might be waiting.

Mr. Hayden was famous for his insomnia, and sometimes on nights when he couldn't sleep he would come over to their house and engage Wesley in endless games of gin rummy. If Mr. Hayden found Len McAuley awake and sober he'd bring Len along and the three of them would play pinochle. As long as those men were awake in her house, Gail couldn't sleep. She would lie in bed and listen to them at the kitchen table, the shuffle and slap of the cards, their strange counts—“Nine, twelve, thirteen, and twenty for gin;” “Rope for sixteen, aces for ten.” Sometimes these were the only words they spoke. Since she didn't know how to play any of their card games, it seemed as though they were talking in code, some secret manlanguage that they spoke to prevent her from understanding.

Gail could make things easier for her husband simply by starting a conversation. Anything would do, an observation about the stars in the spring sky, the way the baby stopped kicking when they were in the car. But Gail was determined to wait.

Finally Wesley found a way to translate those sighs and tongue clicks into actual words. “You didn't like that, did you?”

He expressed so exactly what she had been thinking that her heart suddenly flooded with feeling for him. She was tempted to call the discussion off. But only tempted.

“No, I didn't.”

“Paul has good-paying customers. Men want to be able to bring their wives, their girlfriends out for the night. I want to bring you.” This last remark was so unexpectedly tender that it too caught her by surprise.

“Why does it have to be that way?” she asked.

“What way?”

“So rough.”

“I didn't arrest him. Is that what you think—I should have arrested him?”

“Not necessarily.”

“What then?”

“It's not for me to say.”

He went back to his silence and his tongue-clicking. He moved his hands back and forth on the steering wheel.

She relented and said, “Couldn't you have talked to him?”

“I talked to him.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did he say?”

“He wasn't moving.”

“So you moved him.”

“I moved him. That's right.”

She could feel his anger now, filling the car the way the scented night air would if she rolled down her window.

“Why didn't you wear your gun tonight?” She knew he
usually carried one on duty, but she also knew that he made an effort not to let her see it. Before he met her someplace or entered their home, he left it in the car or in his office. For all Gail knew, he had it under the seat right now.

“So I could shoot Gordon off his bar stool?”

“So you could—I don't know—make him move along without . . . without what happened.” She hated coming to this point in an argument with Wesley. She had allowed him to get her off the path she wanted to be on—a lawyer's trick, she was sure.

Wesley was quick to say, “He's going to be all right. We made sure of that before we sent him on his way. Gordon's got a hard head.” He seemed to say this in admiration.