The Homecoming of Samuel Lake (14 page)

Chapter 17

Sheriff Early Meeks was born prematurely, back at the turn of the century, and he’d been Early ever since. Early was the name his daddy gave him, thinking it was cute, and everybody agreed that it was, even Early, once he got big enough to have an opinion. Early was more than a name. It was who he
was.
Sunday School started at 10:00
A.M.,
so he was there at 9:45. He was supposed to show up for work at 8:30, so he came in at 8:00. He never seemed to be in a hurry, but he was always, always early.

Sheriff Meeks was an extreme sort of man. Extremely tall, extremely lean, and (for the most part) extremely just. Once in a while, his idea of justice varied somewhat from the letter of the law, and when that happened, he bent the law like a coat hanger.

Years ago, when Yam Ferguson had turned up in his own front yard with his head on pretty much backward, Early had been the first lawman on the scene. The body was behind the wheel of Yam’s convertible, and the engine of the car was still warm, but Yam wasn’t. Even if Early hadn’t already been handed all the pieces of this puzzle, it wouldn’t have taken much imagination to figure out that Yam didn’t drive himself home that night.

Everybody knew that Yam had been messing around with the wives of at least half a dozen soldiers who were off fighting for their country. Knew it, and despised him for it. They also knew that Toy Moses was the only one of those soldiers who had come home that evening.

This they knew because, when Toy got off the bus in Magnolia, he caught a ride with Joe Bill Rader, who lived a few miles past the cutoff to Toy’s place. As soon as Joe Bill got home, he told his wife, Omega, how Toy, who never had been much for conversation, talked the whole solid way about how glad he was to be home, and how he hadn’t told Bernice he was coming because he didn’t want her going to a lot of fuss and trouble getting things ready for him. When they got in sight of Toy’s house, and saw the tail of Yam’s car sticking out on the other side, Toy’s whole face went slack for a second, and then he asked Joe Bill not to stop. Said he’d forgot he needed cigarettes, and thought he’d just go on down to his mama’s store and get some. The last time Joe Bill saw Toy, he was standing in front of that store looking like a man who wished he’d been sent home in a pine box.

Omega wasted no time calling her sister, Almarie, who couldn’t be blamed for passing the news on to a few trusted friends. One of those friends was Early’s wife, Patsy, so Early already had a little background information when he got that phone call sometime after midnight. The one from a man whose voice he recognized.

“I thought you ought to know that Yam Ferguson is dead,” the voice said. “I expect you’ll be wanting to talk to me, but I’d appreciate it if you could give me a few hours first.”

Early had given the man more than a few hours. He’d given him all these years, and still had not asked him a question. He knew all he needed to know, without even thinking about it. Toy had left the store and gone back to his house and walked in on something he couldn’t handle. Yam had turned out dead, and Toy hadn’t wanted the body to be found at his place. If that had happened, Bernice would have been the talk of the town. Of course, she turned out to be anyway, but since Toy moved the body, she could at least pretend to be as much in the dark as anybody else regarding what had become of Yam Ferguson.

There wasn’t a mark on Yam’s car when Early got there, but the front end was bashed in like a sonofabitch by the time he called in to the office and told the night man that he’d been passing by Yam Ferguson’s house a little while ago and saw his car in the yard. He said he stopped to find out if Yam was sick or drunk or what, and when he got up to the car, he could tell it had been wrecked. Looked like maybe Yam had run into a tree, and the poor bastard must have broken his neck from the impact. How he managed to drive himself home was a mystery.

The Ferguson family didn’t buy that story for a minute, and they raised a big stink, but it didn’t do a bit of good. Judge Graves had lost a son in the war, and he’d been dying a little himself since that day. The way he saw it, Yam had gotten just what was coming to him.

The first thing Swan asked when she got out to Grandma Calla and Sheriff Meeks was “Who died?”

Grandma Calla said, “Nobody yet.” Which Swan took to mean “You’d better watch your step today, Swan Lake.”

Grandma Calla hadn’t taken her eyes off of whatever she was looking at, so Swan turned her eyes in the same direction, and she practically did die, at what she saw. Over in the calf lot, Willadee was stroking and soothing a huge white horse while Uncle Toy swabbed turpentine onto the animal’s oozing wounds. The horse quivered—maybe scared, maybe just hurting—but it stood the treatment without a sound.

Swan went queasy, and wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t.

Sheriff Meeks made a contemptuous racket in his throat and spat off to one side.

“What’s the matter with that horse?” Swan wanted to know. “How’d we get it?” What she really wanted to know was whether it could be hers, just hers. She could already see herself taking care of it and spoiling it and being the best friend it could ever have. If that horse belonged to her, it would never want for anything, not one solitary thing. She would brush it and pet it and feed it sugar cubes. Swan had read in books about kids feeding sugar cubes to horses, and it sounded like a sure way to make one come when you called it. Grandma Calla didn’t keep sugar cubes in her kitchen, but she had some in the store, and Swan would talk her out of a box, she’d even work for it if she had to. Doing things for that horse—
her horse
—would not be work, it would be a labor of love, and she wouldn’t mind, she’d put her whole heart into it. Shoot, her whole heart was already there.

“We didn’t get
it,
” Grandma Calla said. “That horse got
us.
And not for long. Soon as we find out who it belongs to, we’ll have to give it back.” Her mouth went tight and bitter when she said that last part.

“Give it back to whoever did
that
to it?” Swan crackled angrily.

Sheriff Meeks said, “A man’s property is a man’s property. The law don’t say how a man can use what’s his.”

Which just flattened Swan. For a second. Then her eyes started snapping, and she threw her arms out like she was being crucified.
“Well, if you’re not going to do anything about it,”
she hollered at the top of her lungs,
“what the hell are you doing here?”
She had forgotten about not cussing in front of any grown-up except Uncle Toy.

Sheriff Meeks looked at her for a second, real steady, trying to make her cringe. He just didn’t know Swan.

“I’m here because your uncle called me,” he answered, finally. And then he asked Calla, “You reckon there’s any chance that kid’ll ever grow into her mouth?”

Early didn’t stay long. He’d promised to meet Bud Jenkins in town at the café at eight o’clock, and it was already going on seven. Counting that it took nearly half an hour to get there, that didn’t leave him much time for being early. Before he left, though, he wrote down a description of the horse and promised to get the word out that it had been found.

Noble and Bienville had come outside by now and were petting the horse with syrupy fingers. Snowman didn’t mind. Of course, the kids didn’t know that his name was Snowman. They were fighting over what to call him. Grandma Calla resolved the matter by informing them that they were not going to keep the horse, but if they
did,
it was going to be
her
horse, it was her garden the thing had torn up, after all, and nobody who didn’t act right and help with the chores was ever going to get to ride it. Plus, as long as it stayed on the premises, its name would be John.

“John?”
Bienville yelped.

“Whoever heard of a horse named
John
?” Noble complained loudly.

Grandma Calla didn’t feel she owed them an explanation, she could name her horse anything she pleased, but she told Willadee in private that she’d caught herself a couple of times lately saying her husband’s name when nobody was around. Now if anyone caught her doing it, she could pretend she was thinking out loud about the horse.

Blade was fear-struck by what he had done and what his daddy would do when he found out. It wasn’t a matter of
if.
Blade knew that, as surely as he knew that his arms and legs were getting scratched bloody by all the blackberry vines and saw briers that kept snaring his arms and legs.

About the time Toy Moses was returning from taking Bootsie Phillips home, Blade was crawling back through his own bedroom window, unaware that he was leaving smears of blood on the sill. The house was dark and quiet, not a sound anywhere except for Blue sucking his thumb in his sleep. Blade hated sleeping in the same bed with his little brother, mainly because Blue always let loose with the waterworks sometime in the wee hours, but also because of that sucking sound.

Blade slid into bed, staying as far away as possible from his brother and the puddle collected by the rubber sheet that protected the mattress but not the little boys who slept on it. The pee was cold, and smelled foul, and seeped into his sleepers, making them cling wetly to his skin, but that wasn’t why he was shivering.

At precisely 5:30 in the morning, Ras Ballenger headed out to his barn to feed the livestock and discovered that Odell Pritchett’s horse was missing. Seeing that gate standing open sent shock waves up and down his spine. Having a horse stolen is bad enough when it belongs to you, and its hide is not laid open in a dozen places. But when it’s someone else’s animal, and you’re going to have to explain to its owner how it came to be missing, and (once it’s found) how it came to be in that condition, that complicates matters considerably.

What Ras couldn’t figure out, though, was how anybody got on the place and took the gelding without his dogs letting him know about it. Those dogs didn’t go up to strangers with their tails wagging—and nobody was allowed to come around here enough to be anything but a stranger.

Snowman hadn’t managed to let himself out of the lot, that much was for sure. The gate had been fastened with a chain that was looped around the gatepost, with the two ends held together by a clasp that only fingers could open. A smart horse can lift a chain off a hook, but it can’t undo a clasp.

So someone had done this. The question was who. It couldn’t have been Odell Pritchett. Odell wasn’t the type to come in the dark of night—why should he, it was his horse, he could come for it in broad daylight. And even if he had been the one, he’d have come in a truck, pulling a trailer, both of which are noisy. Granted, he could have parked out on the road, and walked in, and led his horse out. But there again—why hadn’t the dogs done their job?

Ras dragged his eyes away from that gate and the lot that didn’t have a horse inside, and he turned around and stared for a moment at his house.

Geraldine always got up even earlier than Ras did. One thing he could not abide was a lazy woman. When she heard his boots scraping on the porch, her stomach clenched up a little, because he’d be wanting his breakfast on the table when he walked in the door, and she was just now starting the bacon. Since when did he get the feeding done in less than five minutes?

You could always feel him coming into a room, because the air changed to fit his mood. When he was boiling mad, you felt the heat, and even when he was just normal (at least for him), you could feel the tension popping all around. Right now, though, the air felt flat and dead. Which hardly ever happened.

Geraldine cut her eyes at Ras as he sauntered in, but he never glanced her way. He was getting himself a mug of coffee, which also hardly ever happened. A man breaks his back to provide for his family, he likes his coffee poured and handed to him. She’d heard him say that enough times to know it by heart.

Geraldine’s insides started doing somersaults. She was used to her husband stomping around ranting and raving. But the way he was now, all easy and calm—that, she wasn’t used to.

“You’re awful quiet,” she said. She didn’t mean to speak first, but she couldn’t stand the strain.

Ras sat down at the table and blew on his coffee, gazing at her over the rim of the mug. His eyes looked almost gentle.

“So are you,” he said back. Sounding sly. “You was last night, anyways.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. Somehow she had done something wrong, and she had no idea what it was.

“I don’t remember bein’ quiet last night.”

“Well you sure was. Like a little mouse, you was quiet.” He skimmed his fingertips over the tabletop, like a little mouse, running silently in one direction. Skimmed them back the other way. Zig-zag, zig-zag. Back and forth. That was one busy little mouse.

Geraldine tried to remember being quiet the night before. Had Ras spoken to her and she hadn’t answered? Had she walked past him without speaking when he expected to be spoken to?

The bacon was about to scorch, so she turned it over and pressed the pieces down flat with the spatula.

“Well,” she said, “I reckon I was quiet while I was asleep.”

Ras smiled.
Smiled.
Like she had just said the magic words.

“Seems to me you got that wrong. You was quiet while
I
was asleep.”

She frowned. This whole thing had a bad feeling. Whatever quicksand she had fallen into, there wouldn’t be any getting out of it now. You fall into quicksand and you do nothing, you go under. You try to get out, you go under faster.

“I don’t know what on earth you’re talkin’ about,” she flared. Might as well go under fast, and get it over with.

Ras said, “Maybe you was sleepwalkin’. Sometimes folks do things when they’re sleepwalkin’ that they regret when they wake up.”

Geraldine wagged her head side to side, the picture of confusion.

“If I’ve ever in my life walked in my sleep, I don’t know about it.” She meant to sound emphatic, but the words had a tentative tone. As if she couldn’t really be sure.