Twilight (10 page)

He was sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs in the courthouse drinking a dope when a deputy came through a side door with a sheaf of warrants in his hand. He went past Tyler without speaking and stood for a moment before a door marked sheriff’s office fumbling out keys. He unlocked the door and went in. He was in there for a few minutes. When he came back out, he didn’t have the warrants and Tyler was still there. He’d finished the dope and sat holding the empty bottle as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

You want something?

I wanted to see the sheriff.

He ain’t in.

I figured that by the door being locked, Tyler said. The deputy stood waiting as if there might be more forthcoming, but there was not.

What did you want with the sheriff? The deputy was a small stoopshouldered man with fiery red hair and a long, aquiline nose, and his eyes veered warily as if he didn’t know whether to suck up to you or push you around.

I wanted to talk to him, Tyler said.

I’m a duly sworn deputy sheriff, the deputy sheriff said. If it’s got anything to do with breakin the law or enforcin the law, then you can take it up with me.

When do you reckon he’ll be back?

He’ll come when he comes, the deputy said. He ain’t responsible to me. You through with that bottle, it needs to go back upstairs by the dopebox where it belongs.

It was a good half hour before the high sheriff came, and when he did the deputy was with him. They stood before thedoor unlocking it, and Tyler wondered vaguely what there was to steal. The world was all locked doors. Watchdogs, keep off signs. As he turned the key, the deputy nodded toward Tyler. Him, he said.

Uh-huh, the sheriff said.

They went in and Tyler sat a few minutes longer debating whether to stay or leave. He’d about decided to leave when the door opened halfway and the deputy’s head poked out.

He’ll see you now, he said.

Tyler rose and went in. The sheriff was seated behind his desk with his palms laid flat on it. He was a big man. He wore pressed khakis, and his shirtsleeves were folded back a neat turn. He was dark, and his hair was brilliantined back into ornate and intricate waves. He wore a thin mustache of the sort favored by certain movie stars of the nineteen-forties and he was considered to be something of a ladies’ man.

Something I can help you with, young feller?

I hope so. I don’t know, but I thought I’d ask and see.

Take a chair there. To begin with, who are you?

I know him now, the deputy said. I told you I thought I knew who he was. That’s old Moose Tyler’s boy.

Uh-huh. What can I do for you, Moose Tyler’s boy?

Now that he’d come this far, he didn’t know what to say without saying too much. It seemed to him that with the mention of his father’s name a line had been drawn with him on one side and them on the other. He’d lived too long on the outskirts of the enemies’ camp to ever dine at their table.

My sister and I have been having some trouble with Granville Sutter. He’s done a lot of talking about what he’s going to do. He’s threatened to rape my sister and kill both of us. The sheriff was watching him, deceptively casual. How’d you happen to wind up on the wrong side of Sutter?

Well, it sort of come up about my sister.

The deputy laughed. I’ll just bet it come up about his sister, he said. He turned to the sheriff. He’s got a hell of a nicelookin sister.

Hush up, Harlan. You want to elaborate on this business about your sister, Tyler?

He tried to go out with her, and she wouldn’t go. He didn’t want to take no for an answer. He slapped her around some and threatened to shoot us.

Where do you fit into this?

What?

Why’s he threatening you?

Hellfire. I don’t know. Because I took up for her, I guess.

Uh-huh. Listen close to me, Tyler. I’m going to explain something to you. You’re young and you ain’t been around and you’ve got a lot to learn. You take a man wants something real bad and don’t get it, he’s likely to say some things he don’t
mean. Sort of in the heat of the moment, you might say. When he cools down a bit, it’ll all be forgot. Likely he’s done forgot it, and you worrying yourself to death about it.

And that’s it? You’re not going to do anything? Talk to him, or anything?

The law’s a funny thing, Tyler. It requires that a crime be committed before a man’s arrested for it. If we arrested everybody that thought about doing something illegal, there wouldn’t be jails to hold em. And if everybody Granville Sutter threatened to kill wound up dead, Fenton Breece would have to hire him a couple of helpers and put on another shift. If Sutter roughed her up like you say and she swears out a warrant for assault, that’s another matter. But she’ll have to do it. You can’t do it for her.

But then if she did, you’d have to serve the warrant and arrest him? He’d be in jail?

Till he made bond. Which knowin Granville would be somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen minutes. And then he would be madder than hell. Which you wouldn’t want. My advice to you would be to let bygones be bygones.

Whiskey, the deputy said suddenly.

What? the sheriff asked.

This has got to do with whiskey or I miss my guess. This boy here’s got into it with Granville over whiskey the same as his daddy did. Probably set up back there in one of them hollers in the edge of the Harrikin and Sutter’s got wind of it. Man go prowlin around back in there, no tellin what he’s liable to find.

Tyler had risen. Unnoticed, his chair toppled sidewise against the wainscoting and fell. His face was white with anger.

I ought not to have come here, he said. He was staring
down into the sheriff’s face. The face was bland and almost politely inquisitive. I knew better all along and by God I came here anyway.

You watch your mouth, boy. Anybody cusses in my office I kind of take it they’re cussing me, and nobody cusses me.

Tyler went out without speaking and left the door ajar. The deputy’s voice said, Wouldn’t mind takin little sister a round myself.

He went on in a kind of cold detached rage up the stairs and into the failing winter light. Dusk was falling and a purple mist seemed to be seeping up out of the earth itself andobscuring the town. Buildings looked blueblack and dimensionless. He stood for a moment looking back down the stairs, then he shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders and went on.

Two stone lions stood sentinel at the gate of the house, but they were chipped and weathered and their ancient eyes were blind. They might have guarded some city long sacked and forgotten: the house they actually watched was subtly going to seed, and the gate itself canted on one twisted hinge.

Tyler went up the cracked concrete sidewalk. A plaster mother duck and six plaster ducklings wended their way singlefile through the sere winter weeds, but like the lions they were weathered and blind and seemed to have lost their way.

He went up the steps to the gloom of the porch. Somewhere behind the curtain windows a light glowed and he
could hear soft jazz playing within the house. He rapped on the storm door then opened it and knocked on the peeling white door. He waited awhile and knocked again. After a time he could hear soft footfalls and a porchlight came on over his head. The door opened.

Kenneth?

Hello, Mr. Phelan.

A pair of limpid eyes behind the thick lenses of reading glasses. A thin scholarlylooking man in a white shirt and a blue necktie. Phelan’s cheeks were slick and freshly shaven, and he smelled of Lilac Vegetal. His hand clutched a thin leatherbound volume a forefinger marked his place in.

I thought you were in Knoxville, Kenneth. Well. No. Not yet.

If you wanted to talk to me about it, this is not really a good time for me. Could you come back tomorrow, perhaps in the afternoon?

I did want to talk to you, but not about that. I need some advice about something. Could I come in for a few minutes?

Well. Sure, I guess so. Come on in, Kenneth. He ushered Tyler into a neardark room and made no move to turn on the lights. The room was warm. A gas furnace burned with a soft hissing sound and a thin blue flame. A door opened off this room to what Tyler remembered was the kitchen, and Phelan kept glancing nervously toward it. There was a warm spicy smell of Italian food cooking.

If I’ve come at a bad time—

Oh, no, not a bit of it. Well, to tell you the truth, I was just having a guest over for dinner.

I’ll just be getting on.

Stay a few minutes as long as you’re here. I was just surprised to see you. I’d assumed you’d gone to east Tennessee.

The kitchen door filled with a shadowy form. A heavyset girl in a white dress. A girl Tyler remembered from school. A junior then. A semipretty girl with soft uncertain eyes. At length a name floated into his memory to match the face: Retha Ellison.

Phelan became agitated. There was a curious mixture of humility and defiance in his face. Suddenly it all made a kind of sense to Tyler. Phelan laid a hand on Tyler’s arm.

Kenneth, you remember Retha.

Yes. Hello, Retha.

Hello, Kenneth. How have you been?

Just fine. The grip on his arm had tightened and seemedto be moving him gently toward the door. Tyler felt that for days folks had been taking him by the arm and guiding him places he did not want to go on his own. The anger that Phelan’s kind, familiar face had dissipated returned, seethed just beneath the surface. He jerked his arm hard, and Phelan’s indecisive hand fluttered away.

I guess I’d better get on, Tyler said. He wondered what madness had driven him here to begin with. What advice Phelan could possibly have given him. All these myriad differences between the world he was discovering and the world he’d been taught. There was nothing in Yeats or Eliot or Browning to cover this: had the situation been reversed, Phelan would probably have been coming to him for advice. He wondered how Eliot would have fared against the look in Sutter’s dead eyes.

Well, Kenneth, if you must, then I suppose you must. Tomorrow night, then?

I doubt it.

It wasn’t anything urgent, then?

No. No, it wasn’t anything much. I’ll let you get back to your guest.

Ushered in, ushered out. The hand was at his elbow again as if he were blind or halfwitted and must be forever shown the way.

I’m sorry you have to rush away into the night. But we’ll do it another time. I just had Retha over for some tutoring and we decided to have a bite to eat. You know how things are.

He smiled a quick nervous smile and gave Tyler a conspiratorial wink. Tyler looked away. Beyond the limits of the porchlight the streets lay already dark and slicklooking and empty. Yeah, Tyler said uncertainly, as if the way things were would forever be a mystery to him.

Phelan waved an arm goodbye. His hand still clutched the book, and he looked down at it as if he had forgotten it.

Tyler started down the steps. What are you going to read to her?

Pardon me?

Browning, I’ll bet. You’re going to read her Browning, aren’t you?

For a moment Phelan’s face was empty and dead. You were never a petty person, Kenneth, he said. I wouldn’t start at this late date. You don’t have the flair for it, and it doesn’t become you.

Goodbye, Mr. Phelan. He went on but at the gate he turned and looked as though he might say something further but Phelan had already gone back inside and closed the door. He stood for a moment in the line between light and dark as if he
didn’t quite know where to go or what to do.

Well, he thought. We tried the law and we tried the Poet’s Literary Tea Society. I guess I do it my damn self.

Sutter was sitting under the walnut tree with the Coke crate cocked against it when the county car pulled into the drive and stopped. A deputy got out and crossed the yard and squatted before him like some great ungainly bird. He didn’t speak.

Ezell, Sutter said after a time.

Part of Ezell’s jaw had been shot away and surgically reconstructed and the plastic surgery hadn’t taken properlyso that he looked like a partially healed escapee from some mad scientist’s laboratory.

I heard something you’d maybe be interested in, he finally said. There was a curious vibration to his voice, his disfigured jaw lent it the residual hum of some stringed instrument strummed gently and laid aside.