Unspeakable (5 page)

"My son and I held it together."

"But he's no longer around, right?" Corbett glared at him hard. Quietly Jack added, "The boy told me his daddy had died."

"That's right." Corbett assumed a tight-lipped, stoic expression. "Now if you'll excuse me, Mr. Sawyer, I'd like to get back to my work. I'm not hiring. You or anybody." Stalling, Jack looked down at the ground and dug a little trench in the dirt with the riding heel of his boot. He hadn't known how he was going to approach Corbett. The idea of asking the man for a job hadn't occurred to him until he heard himself proposing it. Now it seemed the logical course. Good thing he had observed and made subconscious mental notes of the needed repairs. If the ranch had been in tiptop shape, this would have been a tougher sale.

"I'd be willing to give you a hand with that fence anyway," he offered. "No obligation." Corbett looked at him with irritation and seemed ready to order him off his property.

"I'm a good worker," Jack said.

It was Corbett who finally relented with a shrug. "Suit yourself. Got some gloves?" Jack removed a pair of leather work gloves from his hip pocket and approached the fence. "Want me to hold the post or wind the wire?"

Pride wouldn't let Corbett do the easier job. "I'll handle the wire." They worked in silence. Jack held the post in place while Corbett pulled and stretched the barbed wire taut around it, then nailed it into place. They moved to the next post. Then the next.

"How many acres have you got?"

"Six fifty. Just over a section."

Jack whistled. "How long have you had the property?"

"All my life. I inherited it from my father."

"How many head you run?"

"Several hundred."

"Where are they now?"

"In another pasture. Across the river."

"Herefords?"

"And a few Angus. Prime beef. The hell of it is..." He grunted with the effort of stretching the wire.

"Want me to do that?"

"I can get it."

Jack noticed that the older man's face was turning red from the effort, but he let it pass. "Hell of it is?" he prompted.

"Too many vegetarians these days." He hammered the last nail into place.

"The scourge of a beef cattle rancher." Jack let go of the cedar post, removed his hat, and fanned his face with it.

Corbett reached for a thermal jug that he'd previously stowed in the notch of a cottonwood tree. Before taking a drink himself, he offered it to Jack. "Go ahead," Jack told him. Corbett drank directly from the spout, then handed the thermos to Jack.

"Where'd you get your experience?" Corbett asked, once again using his handkerchief to blot his face.

Jack recapped the thermos and put it back in the tree. "Everywhere."

"You've worked ranches?"

"I've done a little of everything."

"Then you must come with plenty of references."

"No, sir. None."

Corbett came as close to a smile as he ever got, Jack thought. "You've got gall, Mr. Sawyer. I'll hand you that."

"Call me Jack. Why do you say that?"

"You ask me for a job, but you have no references."

"Guess you'll just have to trust me."

"Guess again," Corbett returned curtly as he bent down to gather his tools. After neatly replacing them in a metal box, he came to his full height, retrieved his thermos, then faced Jack. "I appreciate you helping Anna with her car if it was giving her trouble. And thanks for your help with the fence. But I won't be hiring you."

As he headed across the pasture, Jack fell into step with him. "Mind if I ask why not?"

"No, I don't mind you asking. And I don't mind telling you. I don't know you from Adam. You could rob me blind."

"That would be pretty stupid. If I was going to do that, I wouldn't have introduced myself first."

"I've got David and Anna's safety to think about."

"Hiring me isn't going to endanger you or them."

"I don't know that, do I?"

Jack placed his hand on the other man's arm, halting him. Corbett glanced down at his hand and Jack immediately removed it. "All right, you don't know me. I'm a stranger that dropped out of nowhere. Yesterday I left a job in Corpus. If you want a reference you can call my boss there."

"How come you left?"

"I got ready to."

"Just like that?"

"That's the way I live."

"Doesn't make you sound very reliable, does it, Mr. Sawyer?"

He started moving again. Jack, undeterred, went with him. "As long as I'm here, I'll give you a full day's effort, every day. I have experience in all types of work because I've paid my way doing just about anything that was legal.

"I've been a short-order cook and a fishing guide. I've worked in oil fields and assembly plants. I've broken horses, milked goats, washed dishes, cleaned toilets, and once, when I was real hungry, I pimped for a five-dollar whore."

Corbett stopped walking and turned to him.

"That's right, Mr. Corbett, I've done a lot of things I'm not too proud of. Show me a man who hasn't. But I swear to God there's one thing I'm not, and that's a thief. I won't steal from you. And I would never hurt you, your daughter-in-law, or her boy. In fact, it might give you some peace of mind to have another man around, keeping an eye on the place."

That was the ace that Jack had been waiting to play, and it worked. He had Corbett's attention and could sense his resolve weakening. So it came as a mild surprise and a huge disappointment when Corbett shook his head no. "I'm sorry, Mr. Sawyer. The answer is still no."

"What can I say that'll change your mind?"

"Nothing. Fact is, I can't afford you."

Jack grinned. "Probably not. I'm fairly expensive. But I think we can work something out."

"Like what?"

"I need a place to live."

Corbett actually uttered a sound that could pass for a laugh. "You must think I'm crazy."

"I'm not suggesting that you take me into your home. But what about that old trailer parked on the north side of the barn? I could bunk in it."

Corbett glanced in that direction. "It hasn't been used in years. My wife and I lived in it while we were building the house. We tore down the original, but wanted to build on the same site. That was almost forty years ago. I should've sold it to a salvage yard, but never could bring myself to. It's probably falling apart."

"Does it have water and electricity?"

"Hookups. The stove works on butane."

"I'll clean it out. It'll suit me fine." Corbett tested him with another long, measure-taking stare. Jack's eyes didn't flicker. He'd developed that knack by dealing blackjack in a Reno gambling hall. "Well, Mr. Corbett, what do you say?"

CHAPTER SIX

C
ecil Herbold had gnawed his index fingernail down to a nub by the time the Arkansas state policemen strolled into the office of the garage and body shop where he worked. There were two of them. Mean bastards, by the looks of them.

It had only been a matter of time before they showed up. They had let him sweat out the morning in anxious anticipation of the inevitable. Now here it was well after lunch on a sweltering afternoon, and even though he had been expecting the visit, his sphincter was tested when one of the duo upended a wastepaper basket and sat down on it, facing him, not more than six inches away from the tip of his nose.

"Now, Cecil," he began, "we asked Mr. Reynolds if he would lend us this nice office of his so we could talk to you private, away from your coworkers and all. He was most obliging. So I'd hate to test his hospitality and wear out our welcome. We pride ourselves on not taking advantage of law-abiding citizens. Let's make this short and sweet, okay?"

These guys were nothing but hillbillies with shiny badges, starched uniforms, and fast cars. Cecil didn't know these two personally, but he'd known their type all his life, and hated them. Their faces were shaved so close their skin was chapped. There wasn't a wrinkle between them. Hot as it was, there weren't even sweat rings under their arms.

But they looked as stupid as the day is long. Take away the uniforms and badges, the fast cars and good guns, and he and Carl would make mincemeat out of them in no time flat. Soon. But later. This wasn't the time. For now, he had to play dumb and scared. Which was good. He could be convincing. Not that he was dumb. But he was a little scared.

"If you've come here to talk to me about that stunt my brother pulled yesterday, I'll tell you right off that I don't know anything about it."

The guy sitting on the trash can glanced over at his partner, who was leaning against the wall, arms folded, ankles crossed. He rolled a matchstick from one side of his mouth to the other and said, "He must think we've got shee-ut for brains."

"Swear to God," Cecil cried earnestly. "I'm telling you the truth." The worst that could happen would be that they would throw him in jail on some trumped-up charge just to keep an eye on him. He must convince them that they had his full cooperation.

"First I knew of that prison break, I heard it on the evenin' news when I got home from work. I settled down with a Diet Pepsi in front of the TV and there was my brother's face, filling up the goddamn screen. Nearly messed my pants." He paused to gauge their reactions, but they were revealing none.

Doggedly he continued, "All I know is the same as what everybody knows. I learned about it from the TV."

Matchstick hitched up his pistol holster. The one on the trash can pursed his lips and continued to stare at Cecil, who squirmed uncomfortably in his seat until he could stand the tense silence no longer. " What? "

"You think we're stupid, Cecil?"

"No, sir."

"You know Myron Hutts?"

"No, sir."

"You never met him?"

"No, sir. Him and my brother linked up at Tucker. I was never in Tucker."

"No, you were in Cummins."

Because the Cummins Unit was a medium maximum-security facility, Cecil felt that a little righteous indignation was called for here. "That's right, I was."

"You served for armed robbery, right?"

"Right. I never killed anybody."

"Oh, right, right. Almost forgot that. You left the actual killing to your little brother Carl, didn't you? That's why your sentence was so much lighter than his."

This was a sore subject. Cecil couldn't argue the trooper's point or he would be confessing to a murder that, technically and truthfully, Carl had committed. But he didn't want to admit to a character flaw, either. That flaw being that, while Carl seemed unaffected, even exhilarated, by shedding someone's blood, the thought of taking another human life made Cecil slightly queasy. Disturbed by this introspection, he blurted out, "I went to prison and paid my debt to society. I found Jesus and got rehabilitated."

Matchstick nearly choked before removing the shredded wood from his mouth so he could laugh.

"I'm on parole," Cecil declared. "You think I'm going to do something as damn-fool stupid as my brother did? No way. Cummins was no picnic, you know. I got out and I'm staying out."

"Uh-huh." The seated officer wasn't impressed by his sincerity. "Hear about those guards at Tucker?"

"Heard they, uh...they died."

The trooper came closer, until he was almost touching noses with Cecil. "They didn't die, asshole. They were assassinated. Your brother got one of them in the heart with a shank. Stabbed him through the eyeball while he was at it. Hutts slit another one's throat, nearly cut his head clean off."

He leaned back and tugged at his earlobe as though reflecting on the prison break, which had mobilized every law enforcement agency in Arkansas and neighboring states. A manhunt had been organized for the apprehension of Carl Herbold and Myron Hutts, who were to be regarded as armed and dangerous. Citizens were warned to exercise extreme caution if they sighted the pair.

"Have to hand it to old Carl. He planned it good," the state officer remarked. "That Myron character, he's a certifiable idiot. Hasn't got the sense God gave a rubber duck. But your brother is one smart sum'bitch. He had even figured a way to get those tracking devices off them. They were found, but Carl and Myron weren't attached to them. No, sir. All that's been found is their prison uniforms, their dog tags, and those high-tech devices, which turned out to be good for nothing. 'Cause those boys are long gone."

The convicts had outfoxed the authorities and outrun the tracking dogs. Helicopter patrols, search parties on foot, and roadblocks hadn't turned up a trace of them during the night. Damn, Cecil was proud of his little brother!

It was all he could do to keep from smiling proudly as the trooper enumerated Carl's crimes, which Cecil considered accomplishments on a par with those of his heroes Jesse James, John Dillinger, and Clyde Barrow.

To conceal his pride, he worked his face into an emotional grimace. "I just hope y'all don't kill him. Our whole lives it's just been me and him."

"Now, that ain't quite the truth is it, Cecil? Y'all had a mama. She married a nice man, who tried to do right by y'all. I got the records, see? So don't be lying to me, Cecil."