Mudbound (20 page)

Jamie was a big help to me. He threw himself into every task I gave him, never once complaining about the work or the heat. He pushed himself hard, too hard sometimes, but I didn’t try to stop him. Moodwise, he was up and down. He’d go along fine for three or four days, then he’d have one of his nightmares and wake us all with his shouting. I’d go out there and calm him down while our father grumbled about being kept awake. Pappy thought it was a weakness of character, something Jamie could fix if he just put his mind to it. I tried to explain to Pappy what it was like, reminding him how I’d once had those same kind of nightmares myself, and I was in combat for a lot less time than Jamie.

“Your brother needs to toughen up,” Pappy said. “You wouldn’t see me quaking and screaming like a girl.”

On the weekends Jamie would take the car and disappear for a night, sometimes two. I was pretty sure he was going to Greenville to drink and mess around with cheap women. I didn’t try to stop that either. I figured he was old enough to make his own decisions. He didn’t need his big brother telling him what to do anymore.

But I figured wrong. One Monday in October I was on the tractor in the south field harvesting the last of the soybeans when I saw Bill Tricklebank’s truck coming up the road in a hurry. Jamie had been gone since Saturday, and I was starting to worry. When I saw Bill’s truck I knew something must have happened. We didn’t have a phone, so when somebody needed to reach us they called Tricklebank’s.

I got down off the tractor and ran across the field to the
road. I was out of breath by the time I reached Bill. “What is it?” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“The Greenville sheriff’s office called,” Bill said. “Your brother’s been arrested. They got him in the county jail.”

“What for?”

He looked away from me and mumbled something.

“Speak up, Bill!”

“Driving drunk. He hit a cow.”

“A
cow
?”

“That’s what they said.”

“Is he hurt?”

“Just a bump on the head and some bruises, is what the deputy told me.”

Relief flooded me. I gripped Bill by the shoulder and saw him wince a little. The man was thin as a dandelion stalk and about as sturdy. “Thank you, Bill. Thank you for coming out and telling me.”

“That ain’t all,” he said. “There was a . . . young lady in the car with him.”

“Was she hurt?”

“Concussion and a broke arm. Deputy said she’d be all right though.”

“I’d be obliged if you and Rose would keep this to yourselves,” I said.

“Sure thing, Henry. But you ought to know, Mercy’s the one who placed the call.”

“Damn.” Mercy Ivers was the nosiest of the town’s operators, with the biggest mouth. If everybody in Marietta didn’t
already know Jamie was in jail, I had no doubt they would by nightfall.

Bill dropped me at the house and went on his way. Laura and Pappy were waiting on the porch. I filled them in, leaving out the part about the young lady. I was sorry my wife had to know about any of it, but with the Tricklebanks and Mercy Ivers involved there was no help for it. I figured Laura would be angry, and she was—just not in the way I expected.

“After all he’s done for his country,” she said, “to throw him in jail like a common criminal! They ought to be ashamed.”

“Well, honey, he was blind drunk.”

“We don’t know that,” she said. “And even if he was, I’m sure he had reason to be, after all he’s been through.”

“What if he’d hit another car instead of a cow? Somebody could have been badly hurt.”

“But nobody was,” she said.

Her defending him like that nettled me. My wife was a sensible woman, but where Jamie was concerned she was as blind as every other female who ever breathed. If it had been me out driving drunk and killing livestock, you can bet she wouldn’t have been nearly so forgiving.

“Henry? Was someone else hurt?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her and knock him off the pedestal she’d built for him—I was that mad at both of them. Lucky for Jamie I’m no rat. “No, just him,” I said.

“Well then,” Laura said, “let me get some supper for you to take to him. I’m sure they haven’t fed him properly.” She went inside.

“You want me to come with you?” Pappy asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You’ll need money for bail.”

“I’ve got enough in the strongbox.”

Pappy pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket, took out a worn hundred-dollar bill and held it out to me. I gaped at it, then at him. My father was a Scot to the marrow. Parting him from money was like trying to get milk out of a mule.

“Go on, take it,” he said gruffly. “But don’t you tell him I gave it to you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want him expecting more.”

“Whatever you say, Pappy.”

A
T THE
G
REENVILLE
jail I asked to see Sheriff Partain. I knew him slightly. He and my sister Thalia had been high school sweethearts. He’d wanted to marry her, but she had her sights set higher. Caught herself a rich tobacco planter from Virginia and moved up north with him. Told everybody she’d broken Charlie Partain’s heart beyond repair. For Jamie’s sake, I hoped she’d been wrong. Thalia always did have an exaggerated idea of her own importance.

When the deputy led me into Charlie’s office he came out from behind his desk and shook my hand, a little too hard. “Henry McAllan. How long’s it been?”

“About fifteen years, give or take.”

Charlie hadn’t changed much in that time. He had a little
belly on him, but he was still a good-looking fellow, big and affable, with an aw-shucks smile that couldn’t quite hide the ambition underneath it. A born politician.

“How you been?” he asked.

“Just fine. I’m living over to Marietta now. Got me a cotton farm there.”

“So I heard.”

“You’ve done well for yourself,” I said, gesturing at the badge on his shirt. “Congratulations on winning sheriff.”

“Thanks. I was an MP in the war, guess I just got a taste for the law.”

“About my brother,” I said.

He shook his head gravely. “Yeah, it’s a bad business.”

“How is he?”

“He’s all right, but he’s got one helluva headache. Course, drinking a whole fifth of bourbon’ll do that to you.”

“Can you tell me what happened, Charlie? I got the story secondhand.”

He walked back behind his desk, taking his time about it, and sat down. “You know,” he said, “I like to be called sheriff when I’m working. Helps me keep the job separate. You understand.” His face stayed friendly, but I didn’t miss the sharp glint in his eye.

“Of course. Sheriff.”

“Have a seat.”

I sat in the chair he gestured to, facing the desk.

“Seems your brother and a female companion were parked out east of town on Saturday night. Watching the moon is
what she said.” Charlie’s tone indicated how much he believed that.

“Who is this gal?”

“Her name’s Dottie Tipton. She’s a waitress over at the Levee Hotel. Her husband Joe was a friend of mine. He died at Bastogne.”

“Sorry to hear it. Jamie fought in the Battle of the Bulge too. It’s where he won his Silver Star. He was a bomber pilot, you know.”

“You don’t say,” Charlie said, crossing his arms over his chest.

So much for my efforts to impress him. I decided I’d better stick to the business at hand. “So the two of them were parked, and then what happened?”

“Well, that’s where it gets kinda fuzzy. Your brother don’t remember a thing, or so he claims.”

“And the woman?”

“Dottie says he ran into that cow by accident when they were driving back to town. Which I might believe if we’d found it laying in the road instead of smack-dab in the middle of Tom Easterly’s pasture.”

“You said yourself Jamie was drunk. He probably just lost track of the road.”

Charlie leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on the desk. Enjoying himself. “Uh-huh. There’s just two problems with that.”

“What?”

“One, he busted through a split-rail fence. And two, he hit
that cow dead on, like he was aiming for it. Had to been going fast too. That was some mighty tenderized beef.”

I shook my head, unable to imagine why Jamie would deliberately run into a cow. It made no sense at all.

“Your brother got something against livestock?” Charlie asked, with a lift of his eyebrow.

I decided to level with him. “Jamie isn’t well. He hasn’t been himself since he got home from the war.”

“That may be,” Charlie said. “But it don’t give him the right to do whatever the hell he wants. To just
take
whatever he wants. He ain’t in the almighty Air Corps anymore.” He ground out his cigarette. “All those flyboys, thought they were such hot stuff. Strutting around in their leather jackets like they owned the world and everything in it. The way the girls chased after em, you’d have thought they were the only ones putting their necks on the line. But if you ask me, it was the men on the ground who were the real heroes. Men like Joe Tipton. Course they didn’t give Joe a Silver Star. He was just an ordinary soldier.”

“There’s honor in that too,” I said.

Charlie’s lip curled. “Mighty big of you to say so, McAllan.”

I wanted to punch the sneer right off his face. What stopped me was the thought of Jamie in that cell on the other side of the wall. I locked eyes with Charlie Partain. “My brother flew sixty missions into German territory,” I said. “Risked his life sixty times so more of our boys could come home in one piece. Maybe not your friend Joe, but Jamie saved a whole lot of others. And now—now he’s messed up in the head and he needs
some time to get himself straightened out. I think he deserves that, don’t you?”

“I think Joe Tipton’s widow deserves better than to be treated like a whore.”

Then she shouldn’t act like one
, I thought. “I’m sure my brother never meant her any disrespect,” I said. “Like I told you, he isn’t himself. But I give you my word, sheriff, if you’ll drop the charges and send him home with me, you won’t have any more trouble from him.”

“What about Dottie’s hospital bills and Tom’s cow?”

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll do it today.”

Charlie shook out a cigarette from the pack on his desk and lit it. He took three leisurely drags without saying a word. Finally he got up and walked to the door. “Dobbs!” he yelled. “Go fetch Jamie McAllan. We’re releasing him.”

I got up and held my hand out to him. “Thank you, sheriff. I’m much obliged.”

He ignored my hand and my thanks both. “Tell your brother to stay away from Dottie, and from Greenville,” he said. “If I catch him making trouble here again, he’ll be the one who needs saving.”

W
HEN THEY BROUGHT
him out to me he wouldn’t meet my eyes, just stammered an apology while Charlie Partain and his deputy watched. He reeked of whiskey and vomit. He looked like hell too. There was a bad gash on his forehead and one eye was swollen nearly shut.

Still, he was in better shape than the DeSoto, which they’d taken to the municipal pound. We went there first, intending to pick it up, but I didn’t need a mechanic to tell me it was undrivable. The front end was collapsed like an overripe pumpkin, and the engine was a mangled mess. Jamie’s face went white when he saw it.

“Jesus, did I do that?”

“Yeah, you did,” I said. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know. The last thing I remember is Dolly telling me to slow down.”

“Her name’s Dottie. And you put her in the hospital.”

“I know, they told me,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m gonna make it up to her, and to you. I swear it.”

“You can make it up to me all you want, but you’re never to see her again.”

“Says who?”

“Charlie Partain. Her husband was a friend of his.”

“I wondered why he was so pissed off. He gave me this shiner, you know.”

“He hit you? That son of a bitch.”

“I reckon I deserved it.”

He looked so hunched and miserable. “Next time, do me a favor,” I said.

“What?”

“Go after a rabbit, will you?”

It took him a few seconds but then he started laughing, and so did I. The two of us laughed till tears ran down our faces, like we hadn’t done in years. And if Jamie’s face stayed wet for a time after we were done, I pretended not to notice.

I dropped him at the Levee Hotel, where he’d been staying. While he was getting cleaned up I drove over to the hospital and paid Dottie Tipton’s bill. They were sending her home that afternoon, which I was glad to hear. I didn’t visit her—what in the world would I have said?—but I asked one of the nurses to tell her Jamie was sorry and hoped she’d get better soon.

When I picked him up he looked and smelled a little better. We stopped at Tom Easterly’s place on the way out of town. Bastard wanted two hundred dollars for his cow, which was a good fifty dollars more than it or any other cow was worth, but I thought of Charlie Partain and paid it. The whole thing ended up costing me close to three hundred dollars, not counting the car. Figured I was looking at another four hundred minimum to fix it, and double that if I had to replace it. I’d planned on spending that money on a rent house for Laura and the girls, but now that wouldn’t be possible.

All the way home I dreaded telling her, dreaded seeing that disappointed look on her face.

“We’re tapped out,” I said, when we were alone in bed. “Even with a good harvest, there won’t be enough for a house in town this year. I’m sorry, honey.”

She didn’t say a word, and I couldn’t see her expression in the dark.

“The good news is, Jamie’s promised to stay another six months to make it up to us. With his help, I should be able to put enough by that we can get a house next year.”

She sighed and got out of bed. I heard her bare feet scuffing on the floor, down to the foot of the bed and around to my side. Then I heard a familiar scraping sound and saw a match
flare. She lit the candle, parted the mosquito netting and got in, squeezing in next to me. Her arm went around me.

“It’s all right, Henry,” she whispered. “I don’t mind it so much.”

I felt her lips on my neck, and her hand slip down into my pajamas.