The Bible Salesman (20 page)

They were in a curve to the right — drifting over the middle line — when headlights appeared as if risen from the ground. Henry swerved right but couldn’t avoid the sideswipe, ricocheting off the Cadillac like a glancing billiard ball. He saw the ditch coming and, as he stomped the brakes, heard a loud, earth-shaking thud-bang behind him somewhere — the other car hitting something.

His door did not open easily, but he got it open and stood on the asphalt. His heart was racing. He had to leave quickly. No, help out. The police would be here, right away. A bright moon lit the road in both directions. Back down the road, a lone headlight was shining from the car that had hit the tree — shining upward at a sick angle like a spotlight, smoke and dust drifting through the beam. He unbuttoned and stepped from the dress and threw it toward the ditch. He should go help out. That’s what he had to do. “Do unto others as you would have them . . .” It looked like . . . he believed it was a Chrysler. Could it . . . ?

He opened the back door of the Cadillac and grabbed his suitcase and valise. Randy’s door was against the ditch bank, and Randy was slowly sliding across the front seat toward the steering wheel. Henry looked at the other car again. Somebody was getting out of the driver’s side. Oh God, yes, it was Clearwater, holding his head. Oh God. Henry jumped the ditch, started walking toward the woods. Something pulled him toward the Chrysler. He would say, “That was a close call. Are you okay?”

But he ran into the woods. What would Randy do? He really didn’t know Randy. They were not friends. He’d just met him. Henry’s foot, leg — a hole. He stumbled, fell, felt for the pistol. It was still there, under his belt. He got up, found his suitcase and valise. He would keep going as far and fast as he could. A loud pop. A gunshot? What in the world? Clearwater wouldn’t . . . What happened back there? After a few minutes of catching his pants in briars, stumbling, almost falling, he burst into a field, his throat dry. He looked straight ahead, over a distant line of woods and up into the full bright moon that bore into him like a lone headlight. He found a tree, sat down, leaned his back against it, and looked up at a gray-white cloud skittering along, lit from behind.

He heard somebody coming. Randy? I’ll just sit still, he thought. Wait, and let him go by me.

He looked back toward the sounds. Where the hell did he get a flashlight? Was that Randy? Oh, no . . . He slipped on his butt to the side of the tree away from the flashlight, now shining here and there as if lighting up the entire woods. He pulled out the pistol, cocked it, held it in his hand under his leg. The flashlight was beside him, then in front of him, shining in his eyes, right there in front of him so that he could see nothing behind the light.

“You made a big mistake.” Clearwater’s voice, garbled somehow. “You’re dead, sonny.”

“You won’t in the FBI, were you?”

“I said you are dead.”

A kind of wordless message flashed before Henry:
Love him and die. Kill him and live
. “I was coming back for you,” he said. Improvise. “I just heard this Hank Williams song and I was thinking about what it was like, you playing music with that fellow you knew in Knoxville. Sit on that stump right there and tell me. I forgot his name. Just tell me his name, something about him.”

Clearwater knew something was wrong with his neck, head, and leg. His sock, the right one, felt sticky and wet — blood — and he had to sit down, but he needed to kill the boy because he knew too much and had double-crossed him. His chin was tingling. He looked into the face shining up at him, the pale face, makeup, and lipstick. “Roy Acuff,” he said, and turned his head to look for that stump.

Henry raised his gun and pulled the trigger, saw both flashes, heard two shots — his and one from Clearwater’s gun — and felt a bullet slam into the tree beside his ear as if he’d shot at himself. Henry fired three more times: bam, bam, bam. Clearwater collapsed onto the ground with a low moaning. He lay on his back, his leg moving.

The leg stopped moving.

Henry stood. He looked over his shoulder. He started to walk away and then walked back, looked at the body again. He bent over and picked up Clearwater’s left arm and then let it drop. The right hand held the pistol. He needed to move it out of his hand. What if he wasn’t dead?

Henry’s knees were shaking. He felt nauseated. Far through the trees he saw light from the headlight beam. Without turning, he experienced a yawning of the woods behind him, a great yawning out of which came a vacuum, and to Henry its color was yellow and it was more clear and definite and real than Jesus had been when Henry used to pray to him and see him. He was on his own now. Certainty had birthed an uncertainty.

He knelt and removed the gun from Clearwater’s hand. It came easily. He didn’t want it there to shoot him as he walked away. He threw it as far as he could. He had to tell somebody. The sound of the gunshots was in his head.

Stop and just think. The doctor would tell the police he didn’t do anything. The doctor would be on his side. The next car that came by out there would stop, probably. But there was no traffic. They must be in the middle of nowhere. He wanted to go home.

He heard something coming, rustling along. Randy? Had Clearwater brought the doctor? Or had he . . .

He stepped behind a tree. He could hide, then walk along the road. He had to go home. His valise and suitcase! Where were they? His money was in the suitcase. It was Randy coming. But his money was in his suitcase. He stepped out. “Hey,” he said.

Randy stopped, looked at Henry, and turned halfway around.

“Wait,” said Henry. “Stand right there. I got to go back just a little ways and get my suitcase and valise. Wait right there.” Randy acted as if he did not know him. Oh. He wasn’t in the dress. He’d left it by the ditch. And where was the wig? He walked back to the tree, found his suitcase and valise. Then Randy followed him as he trudged back toward the road. Henry didn’t know what to say to Randy. His face felt numb. He finally got to the Chrysler, looked in the back window, walked to the other side of the car, and there he saw the doctor on the ground, sprawled faceup, a bullet hole in his forehead. “Stay over there in the road,” he said to Randy. “We got to start walking now.”

Mrs. Albright was awakened late Tuesday night by a knock on the front door. She slipped on an old shirt of Yancy’s, turned on the bedroom light, the living room light, the front porch light, and then opened the front door.

He wore a denim jacket with pin-on buttons. He stood there, not speaking.

“You look . . . you look familiar,” she said. Somebody was driving away. “Come in the house, young man. Come in.”

The young man bent, reached toward a cat, then looked up at Mrs. Albright.

“Yancy?” she asked. “Is it you, Yancy? You like cats now? Oh, Yancy. Jesus has raised you and sent you home. Let me fix you something to eat, son. Come on in here and sit down at your place. Nobody will believe this. Nobody will believe me.” He reached out to her, took hold of her sleeve.

Thomas’s tail tip moved as if it were alive. He stood and followed the old lady and the new man. Several other cats came along. Angel said, “Glory hallelujah! I’m going to pour me a little drink. This is too good to be true.” Isaac said, “Listen. Hear the rats out back?”

Mrs. Albright opened the back door. “Go catch you one,” she said. Several cats scooted out. Then she looked into Randy’s face and smiled. He stood, holding on to her sleeve.

“Why don’t you sit down right here?” she said. “I’ll fix you a bite to eat.”

Henry drove around for an hour — in the ’39 Ford coupe he’d paid cash for just outside Drain — then drove down to Swan Island and checked into the Deluxe Olympia Hotel. It was two a.m. His mind replayed the last two days, the last few months. He lay on his bed unable to sleep. He was dizzy with fatigue. He had to tell. He called the police station.

The McNeill police car pulled up in front of the Deluxe, and officer Donald Sturgis opened the car door, stood behind it a minute looking around, hitched his belt, walked inside to Henry’s room, and knocked.

Sturgis sat in a chair. Henry talked. Sturgis listened, then said, “Come on with me down to the station.”

At the station, Henry sat in a chair in Chief Bob Hillman’s office and talked again. Chief Hillman called Sturgis in to sit with Henry, then walked out, stayed gone for a while, walked back in, sat down.

“Mr. Dampier,” said the chief, “I hate to get waked up in the middle of the night for malarkey like this. I’ve talked to the police in Drain. Just now. On the phone. There was no Preston Clearwater involved. The man shot in the woods down there was Gregory Vinson, and he’s been identified by his family. He’s a war hero. You must have heard about this on the radio. That they know who murdered him — and that doctor. The Night Shooter. And they’ve arrested a colored boy in Brownlee for shooting that truck driver. I made that phone call too. Officer Sturgis didn’t think to make these phone calls before he called me in the middle of the night. And on top of that, Mr.” — he looked at his notepad — “Dampier, nobody reported a safe stole down in Panakala. I made that call too. And if you think Blinky — Mr. Smathers — at Johnson and Ball is a criminal, then you got another thought coming. I’m not calling him in the middle of the night. Sturgis, take this fellow back where he came from. And for God’s sake learn to use the damn telephone, Sturgis. And listen, son, you go on home and don’t be playing no more tricks like this.”

At the homeplace the next morning, Henry told Aunt Dorie he had to finish up something he was in the middle of. “I’ll be gone a couple of days and then I’ll call you.”

“Henry, you look terrible. You need to go to bed. What’s wrong?”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Do you have to go out again right now?”

“Yes ma’am. I do.”

“Well here, take this, son. I cleared yours and Carson’s little things off the dresser and put them in the top drawer, and I knew which of all the things were yours, and so I wrote them down for some reason. Right here. Here, take this with you.”

“Okay. Bye. I’ll be back. I love you. I’m sorry.”

“I love you.”

In his car, before cranking it, he read:

necktie clip, package of bbs, wooden gun, an old pocket watch with tiny wheels out and lying around, knife in holster, piece of leather about 15 inches long, small corn-cob pipe, 2 Bibles, map, box of 20 gauge gun shells, 2 pocket knives, eleven penny prizes, world globe, Tom Mix billfold, piece of broken glass, rubber bands, Sunday school quarterly, small cedar chest, old army overseas cap, tin box full of marbles, broken field glasses with one lens missing, 12 inch ruler, 2 keys, 2 pencils, one broken marionette head and sandpaper, tract on tithing, book of rules for carom, leather watch band, toy airplane

He drove down to Mrs. Albright’s. He’d decided that the only way he’d get listened to by any kind of officials was to take Randy back to Drain. He walked up onto the porch and knocked. Mrs. Albright opened the door, spread her arms. “Oh, Henry. Henry, a miracle has happened. I thought it was Yancy at first, but it’s somebody new that has returned in his place. I don’t know how it happened. Come on in.” She stepped back for him to enter. “Somebody dropped him off. Look. It’s a miracle.”

Randy sat in the middle of the living room floor. He wore Yancy’s clothes. The electric train was running its orbit.

“I’ve been calling him Jericho,” said Mrs. Albright. “All the horns and trumpets they blowed and all. I haven’t even told nobody that he’s here. You’re the first person to come by. Sit down. He loves the cats.”

Henry settled into a chair, breathed in, out, looked around. His eyes felt full of sand. “Mrs. Albright, this is hard. I’m in the middle of something I’m trying to solve. I need to take . . . his name is Randy, and I’m the one brought him here yesterday, or day before, whenever it was, and I made a big mistake and I need to take him back to prove that I was involved in some stuff I need to own up to, or straighten out somehow. I’m the only one can do it.”

Mrs. Albright turned to stone. But her eyes, alive, stayed on Henry’s eyes as if they were in them.

“Well, then,” said Henry. “Let me think of something else. I can think of something else, I guess.”

In Henry’s old desk at the homeplace was a Kodak box camera and a roll of film. He found them. Aunt Dorie followed him back outside. “Can’t you tell me anything?” she asked.

“I can, as soon as I get things straight. I’ve got a girlfriend. I can tell you that. But I’ve gotten into trouble in a way, not in any way you can imagine. Everything is okay, but it’s not. I can explain, but I’ve got to send a picture to Georgia first.”

“Henry, I miss you so much. I hope you haven’t been drifting from God.”

“I’m not drifting.”

“Can Carson help you out?”

“I’ll go see him, but I’ve got to work this out on my own.”

Over a week later, the Atlanta police received a photograph of the missing Criddenton boy and a woman identified — in a long letter from a Henry Dampier — as Mrs. John Albright.

Linda Abbott, a social worker from Drain who worked in Atlanta, and Detective Smithy Newman were assigned the case. Mrs. Abbott was familiar with the Criddenton situation: the doctor, the retarded boy, the mother who disappeared years earlier. She knew the facts not from her social work, but from town knowledge.

She and Detective Newman decided to visit Simmons, North Carolina. Mrs. Abbott would visit Mrs. Albright, and Newman would meet with the Dampier boy.

Mrs. Abbott’s preliminary report suggested that the Criddenton boy stay where he was. She could imagine no better place for him, and there were no relatives to insist otherwise. She would be willing to arrange for guardianship.

Newman investigated possible charges against Henry and then refused to bring any, given a lack of evidence of criminal intent. Investigations of a car-theft ring operating out of McNeill, North Carolina, and a murder in Brownlee, Georgia, were begun.

1951

S
EPTEMBER

F
or their honeymoon, Henry and Marleen spent two nights and a day at the Deluxe Olympia Hotel and then drove up the coast to catch the three-car ferry at Tiny Bob’s Crossing for a two-day fishing and camping stay on Mc-Garren Island. They left the Ford on the mainland — they were walk-ons — and had with them a tent, two fold-up beach chairs, fishing gear, cast net, a cooler of drinks, groceries, paper plates, and a skillet. They stacked their belongings against the back of the pilot house near the bow of the ferry. Two old Buicks with extra-wide, half-flat tires were the main cargo.