The Blackstone Commentaries (44 page)

“ ‘Be that as it may,' Pemberton said, ‘we have to work together, Harlan, and I tell you I was discreet last night. I did not publicly reveal certain information that could permanently ruin the sheriff's reputation. Which
in fact could result in charges being brought against him. When I asked him to resign, it was for his own good, too.'

“Now, that just made me sore. ‘I'm sick of you, Pemberton,' I told him. ‘I'm sick of your self-centered manipulations posing as altruism.' Well, that got him. For a moment, he couldn't hide his anger, and it felt damn good.

“ ‘Harlan,' he said, ‘I once believed in him, too, as you well know. Hell, I got him started here. This is hard for me, but we all make mistakes, and we have an obligation to correct them. And you're making a huge one right now. No matter what your personal thoughts about me, I
was
being discreet last night.'

“So I bit and asked how.

“ ‘You recall that raid out at Rance's Bottom, and Dugan going missing?'

Eddie saw it then, saw it all, and Harlan saw that he did.

“Yes, it wouldn't have made a damn difference if you'd told me, Eddie. I understand that now.

“ ‘I know for a fact,' Pemberton went on, ‘and am willing to swear to it that, unprovoked, he beat the stuffing out of a certain lawyer we both know—actually tried to kill him. No charges. No arrest. Sheer brutality. That's when he took off and Dru almost left him.' He went on and told me what else he knew, then waited for me to make my telephone call, knowing I'd make it.

“When I hung up, right off Pemberton asked, ‘What did Elmore say?'

“ ‘He said you're full of shit.'

“ ‘Oh, hell, Elmore would.'

“Eddie, by then, I felt about the worst I've ever felt about anything in my entire life. Because despite what Elmore said, I knew at once without knowing
anything
for a fact that what Pemberton was claiming was just true and factual enough to be in print—and just true enough to bury the real truth.” Harlan folded his hands between his legs and watched a couple of squirrels romp nearby, giving Eddie time to digest.

“But of course that wasn't the end of Pemberton,” he continued after a bit. “No, the last thing he said going out the door was, ‘One thing you can say about Charlie,' as though he'd read my mind, ‘he likes to think he's an honest man. Ask him a question, he'd never lie. It would be a shame if
I have to go to another paper. It would be a shame if it had to be in any paper at all.' ”

“So what do you want from me?” Eddie demanded, quiet but boiling.

“Eddie, I don't have a clue what I'm going to do about it.”

Eddie stared at that crushed, gray head, the pleading eyes searching his own like maybe he held the answer. Was Harlan just begging for sympathy?
I want to hate this man!
Eddie thought, but knew he couldn't. It wasn't Harlan's fault. “I got to go back to work,” he said, standing up.

XLVII

Drusilla

She'd heard the truck drive up that night, heard his boots on the porch, then nothing. She was in the kitchen waiting. She'd been there since he left for the commissioners' meeting, not able to concentrate on anything, not even TV, because even though they hadn't been told what the meeting was about, they knew. It had that feel about it, that smell. She called his name, waited, called it again, then found him closing the front door very carefully, trying to use both hands despite his sling, like he didn't want to disturb her. “Charlie?”

He turned slowly. His look startled her. She had expected anger at least, but in his face and the way he held himself, and even in the way he looked at her, thoughtfully and gently, she saw peace. “It's up to them now.”

“Them?” Not understanding.

“The voters.” He smiled, and she saw how exhausted he really was. The arm was obviously bothering him, too. “I've done all I can, and if they don't want me …”

“What happened?”

So he'd told her about the commissioners' meeting, saw her growing fury. “No, Dru,” he'd said, laying his good hand on her shoulder. “Listen to me.”

She'd made herself listen and learned that, to him, it was a draw that night. He believed Pemberton had done everything he could, and by trying to humiliate him in front of the other commissioners and the press had taken it out of both their hands and put it in the hands of the voters of Blackstone County. They would decide for themselves whether his having taken Pemberton to court in the first place, and what it stood for, was more important than Pemberton's being acquitted. They could decide what kind of lawman and what kind of law they wanted to live under, and he could live with that because to him a vote was honorable, win or lose. And if they didn't want him and what he believed, then he'd done all he could. He was lucky to have gotten that far, at least, where the choice was clearly defined and people had a way to choose. It could have been so much worse, he said. Didn't she see?

Which of course she did, but didn't because of the tears.

His arm was around her, and she was hearing his voice through his chest, smelling him. She'd always known him to be courageous and fearless, but until then she'd never understood this other kind of courage, the kind that requires a person to stand up for what he believes and risk living on in the knowledge of defeat. It would test anyone's will as nothing else could.

She also understood that no matter what happened, it was all right between them again. Better even. He'd found his way through, they both had, and any doubts and fears she might have carried were gone.

Still, she was surprised late the next afternoon to see a shiny Buick churn up the road and swing into their yard, its dust blowing right on across the field. Of course she recognized the car, knew who it was before Harlan Monroe stepped out and came over to the porch, where she'd been sweeping. Just the way that car came off the road felt bad, like it was something alive and being chased. Harlan tried hard to be fair, she believed, and was Charlie's friend, the bond between them a little stronger than usual, probably due to Doc Willis. “Hi, Dru,” he said. “Charlie around?” He always had a nice smile for her and tried hard this time, too, but it didn't quite
come off. Something obviously weighed on him. Given all that had been happening, and the fact that he was there in person …

“He's out feeding his Angus,” she said, nodding toward the barn lot but already thinking,
It isn't fair
. Even pushing back tears without knowing why. It had been one of the nicest days in years for the two of them, Charlie taking the day off except to talk to reporters on the phone, both of them waking to that peacefulness he'd come in with the night before, knowing it was true, that somehow the two of them were also true, feeling it all through that day. It was beautiful and sunny outside. They both did chores, taking extra time over breakfast, and again over lunch, being together and letting time not matter, as relaxed as they'd been in she didn't know how long. The day was winding down early into a soft, reddish haze, a little bit of gold still in the trees, the leaves all over the yard giving off that sharp, musky smell that made her think of pumpkins and dead cornstalks.

Charlie came around the corner of the barn and let himself through the gate over to where they were standing. He held a white plastic bucket he used to carry grain. He did that sometimes, got a bucket and went out and fed his Angus a little extra by hand. “What brings you out here, Harlan?” He didn't see it coming. He still had that peaceful look, like he couldn't even imagine it.

“Sheriff.” Harlan put out his hand, but it wasn't stiff and formal, none of it, not even his calling Charlie “sheriff,” because he said it in friendliness and respect. His head barely reached Charlie's chest; that Buick had looked like an ocean liner with him in it. Then Charlie glanced at her, and that's when she believed he got it. She went over by his side, felt his arm come to rest on her shoulder.

“This sure doesn't feel like good news, Harlan,” he said.

Harlan looked right at Charlie, and she could see Harlan knew that no matter what it was he'd come to talk about, no matter how the event came about and how it got resolved, if it were true in the least, then there would be no way he could write about it that would make clear what was really true to those who were going to vote. It was going to be that bad. “Depending on how you answer when I ask you a question in a moment here, Pemberton may have taken the election away from you.”

She glanced up and saw Charlie slowly nod, but inside he was bracing
himself; she could see his features hardening. He seemed to stare right through Harlan like he was seeing something or going somewhere no one else could. For just a moment, he was gone. She shivered and clutched her arms, feeling as sad as she'd ever feel.

Epilogue

1973

 

April's softening winds blew down the Appalachians, stirring the smells of blossom and forest and all the wet places where new life was raging. The petals of flowering trees blew over the yards, sidewalks and streets of Damascus, and no matter what misery people knew, they felt a tug of hope and even happiness. All except Elmore.

Almost six months before, Rachel had walked out of his life. He'd called her repeatedly after she told him never to see her again. He even sought her out—once at her school, another time at home. The first time, she had been furious, standing in the parking lot hating him for being there at all. It was November by then, the election was over, but it didn't mean much because Charlie Dugan had already resigned.

“How can you come here?” she shouted over the wind that tossed her hair across her face. “I told you to leave me alone.”

“I had nothing to do with what happened to your uncle.”

He saw she had to think a moment to recollect what he was talking about. “The hell you didn't, Elmore Willis!” she said at last. Tears were in her eyes by then. And of course she was right, after a fashion. He hadn't known how much it still preyed on him, like he might have been able to do something, though Harlan had said no.

“Rachel, whatever I've done, do you know how I've missed you?” His hand was clutched to his chest, as though he would rip his heart out for her on the spot. He wanted to. He'd never felt that way before.

“Stop it!” she shouted, pressing her hands to her ears, her eyes wide, fixed on his clawed hand. Another teacher, a man, paused a few cars away and was looking at them in a worried fashion.

“This can't be about Dugan,” he said. “I don't believe it! Nor about my defending Puma at his trial either.”

“Family means something down here, Mr. Willis. It's the real law, not some lawyer's game.”

“What the
hell
are you talking about?”

“Please get out of my life.”

The second time, two or three weeks later, was worse. There was a car he didn't recognize in front of her house, and by the time he decided he had to go through with it anyhow and reached her steps and pushed the bell, he could scarcely breathe. She opened the door looking relaxed in jeans, a loose shirt and no shoes. A smile vanished from her face, and at that instant he remembered her laughing, pinning his arms to the floor with her knees, her face hovering just above his. “Yes?” She just stared at him, not even outraged, while he stood speechless and let his pride overcome him at last. Without a word, he turned and walked back down the sidewalk to the street.

He'd ceased looking for or even hoping to see her. It was hard in a town the size of Damascus, he found, but in time he fairly well succeeded. In time, too, the incessant dialogues he carried on in his head with her—trying to understand what had happened, arguing with her and even seeking to justify himself for something he thought he might comprehend but in the end couldn't—at last grew muted. Then, one day, they were gone, only an obscure heaviness left to pull at his soul.

His practice flourished. Puma was his greatest advocate, and because people trusted Puma in ways that appeared to contradict any standard of trust Elmore had ever known, they went to Puma's lawyer, who had even taken a dog for payment, and who also happened to be the son of the doctor who had at one time cared for their parents and maybe for them as well. And if at one time the continual references to his father and his clinic had distressed Elmore, a connection he suspected Puma of shamelessly exploiting, they did no longer.

Like those of his father, most of his clients weren't wealthy, and he, too, spent long hours at his work, and believed he would have even if there
were more to his life. He won cases, too, and was particularly pleased to see people coming to him from all political persuasions, for he was surprised at the flowering of his own political prejudices—class-oriented, not party-oriented—in response to this most political of places.