CHAPTER 39

Sam and Billy barely beat Miss Ruthelle to work Saturday, and they had just finished sweeping when Lester Grimes came in carrying the Unionville Times and grinning ear to ear.

“Hey, Sam,” he called. “You’re a celebrity! You got your name in the paper.”

“Let me see that,” Sam said. He dumped a roll of quarters into the cash drawer, pushed it shut, and tossed the coin wrapper into a trash can.

“It’s right there on the front page,” Lester said, handing over the paper, “under the headline about the town council.”

“What is it, Daddy? What’s it say?” Billy asked. He leaned his broom against a display counter, and he and Miss Ruthelle strained to see around Sam. As he scanned the story, his face turned red.

“Why, that sorry son of a bitch!” he said after a moment. “Who the hell does he think he is, attacking Mr. Claude like that?”

“Aw, come on, Sam,” Lester said, trying to cross his arms above his big belly. “You have to see the humor in it. That part about putting Mr. Claude in a rocking chair is funnier than a nudist in a briar patch. You just don’t like what he said about you.”

“Lester Grimes! I’ve told you about that kind of talk!” Miss Ruthelle scolded. “And shame on you, too, Sam Tate!” She grabbed the paper so she could finish reading the story.

“What’s he talking about, Daddy? What’s it say?” Billy asked again.

“Son, it just says Mr. Claude shouldn’t be marshal anymore and the council ought to fire him.”

“Gee, Daddy, I bet that’s gon’ make Mr. Claude feel bad, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, and it makes me feel bad too,” Sam said.

Miss Ruthelle handed the paper back to Lester. “What’re y’all gon’ do, Sam?”

“Whatever we do, it won’t be because of anything Preston Upshaw wrote.”

Neal O’Brien and Fred Vestal were also discussing the story at City Hardware. They saw Lester go into the Otasco store, and when he left, they walked over. By that time, Billy was taking out trash and Miss Ruthelle was into her paperwork.

“Did you see Upshaw’s story?” Neal asked Sam.

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“I told Fred about the conversation we had yesterday,” Neal said. “I’d sure hate for Upshaw to think he’s forcing us into something, but I think you better talk to Bowman as soon as you can.”

“I don’t care what Upshaw thinks,” Sam said. “I’m gon’ stop advertising in that rag of his too.”

“Yeah, so are we,” Fred said.

“I think we need to move fast,” Neal said. “While you’re talking to Bowman, I’ll talk to the other council members.”

“What’re you gon’ say to Mr. Claude if he asks you about the story?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” Neal said. “I can’t think of any good way to handle it.”

“Maybe we ought to ask him what he thinks about it,” Fred said.

“Good idea,” Sam said.

Later, after Billy got the Tates’ copy of the Unionville Times from the post office with the mail, Sam looked to see if Upshaw had run any letters about Becky’s teaching. There was only one, a nasty piece in which Bobby Jack Plunkett tried to compare her to Daisy Bates but only showed why he flunked English so many times.

On most Saturdays, Sam went to the bank sometime in midmorning to deposit checks and get change for the cash register. After Miss Ruthelle made out a deposit slip and a list of change they needed, Sam put everything in a zippered bank pouch and headed across the street. When he opened the front door to Farmer’s State Bank, Jim Ed Davis rushed out, bumping into him.

“Hey! What’s your hurry?” Sam asked.

“Why the hell don’t you watch where you’re going?” Jim Ed barked without stopping.

“Crazy peckerwood,” Sam muttered to himself.

Once inside, he headed straight to the back and, seeing no receptionist around, knocked on the bank president’s partly open door.

“Yeah, what is it now?” Bowman bellowed. Then he looked up and saw Sam. “Oh, it’s you. Come on in. How’s business?”

“It’s fine but I’m not here about the store.”

Bowman reached into his humidor for a cigar, bit off the end, and spit it into a wastebasket.

“What do you want?” the banker asked, lighting up.

Sam took that as an invitation to sit down in the only other chair in the room. Straight and armless, it was positioned directly in front of Bowman’s desk and had legs so short that anyone using it had to look up at the banker.

“I’m here unofficially as a member of the town council,” Sam said. “Did you see today’s Unionville Times?”

“Nope, I don’t read it,” Bowman said between puffs.“I advertise in it just so folks can’t say I’m not supporting the community but I don’t care what else is in it. What about it?”

“Upshaw’s after the council to get rid of Mr. Claude and buy a police car, and between you and me, it just so happens we’ve already been talking about it, only Mr. Claude doesn’t know it. We figure if we’d had a police car and a marshal who could drive it, we might not have had these two cross burnings and the streetlights shot out. We’re worried that something else might happen and somebody might get hurt. That’d be even worse for business. Problem is, the town doesn’t have the money to buy a car.”

Bowman glared at Sam then took a long draw on the cigar and blew a smoke ring.

“And you want me to lend it to you. Is that it?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“You sure as hell don’t think I’m gon’ give it to you, do you?”

“Well, sir, we hoped, seeing as how you’re a community-minded citizen, like you said, you might consider it.”

“Goddamn it!” Bowman shouted, yanking his cigar out of his mouth. “Everybody wants something for nothing. That’s all I’ve heard this morning. Everybody thinks I’m running some kind of goddamn charity here. This here ain’t no Community Chest, it’s a bank, and I’m sick and tired of every goddamn son of a bitch and his brother coming in here and thinking I’m giving money away like it grows on goddamn trees. People think just because I’ve got money, I ought to give them some. Well, I ain’t gon’ do it.”

Surprised by Bowman’s outburst, Sam could not think of a good response, and the two men sat staring at each other.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know,” Bowman said after a few moments, “coming in here like this, as much money as you owe me on that store of yours. All right. I tell you what I’ll do, but only because I think you’re right about Mr. Claude. I’ll donate half the money and lend the town the rest of it if at least three council members will sign a promissory note to pay it off if the town can’t.”

Sam said he would take Bowman’s offer to the council and see if they could make it work. “I’m sure they’ll be much obliged to you, in any case,” he said.

“What do y’all plan to tell Mr. Claude?”

“I don’t know yet. The truth, I reckon. Times are changing and the town needs more protection.”

Bowman picked up a stack of papers, signaling the end of the meeting, and Sam got up and walked out to a teller’s window.

As soon as he finished his banking, he went next door to City Hardware. Older and not as well lighted as the Otasco store, it had long rows of tall, over-stuffed shelves. Along each side wall, a well-worn wooden ladder stood on rollers and was connected to a ceiling rail so clerks could reach things way up top. Neal O’Brien was in the back helping a customer find parts for a refrigerator motor, so Sam lifted the lid on the Coca-Cola box up front, dipped his hand into the ice-cold water, and helped himself to a bottle of Dr Pepper. After Neal rang up his sale, Sam flipped him a dime and filled him in on the conversation with Bowman.

“I figure we’d need to come up with about twelve to fifteen hundred dollars,” Sam said. “You think we can squeeze the rest of it out of the budget somewhere?”

“Yeah, I think so, and we can see if the Ford place will sell us a car at cost. That’d save quite a bit.” Neal fished a Grapette out of the drink box. “I tell you what. I’ll talk to everybody as soon as I can get to them, and if it looks like most of them are for it, I’ll get us together for a special meeting to make it official. Even if we had a car tomorrow, it’d still take a while to get it all rigged up. Are you willing to sign the note?”

“Yeah, I guess so, if you will,” Sam said, taking the last swig of Dr Pepper.

“Yeah, I will too, and I’ll get somebody else. Probably Fred.”

Sam dropped his empty bottle into a wooden Coca-Cola crate sitting on a wire rack. “You got any ideas about who we can get to take Mr. Claude’s place?” he asked.

“I thought we might recruit Jesse Culpepper away from the sheriff’s office.”

“You think he’d give up his chance for a county pension?”

“I think he might,” Neal said. “He’d pretty much be his own boss for a change.”

“Well, I guess if he’ll do it, we’ll be trading age and experience for youth and ability to drive, won’t we?”

“I reckon so.”

“Feels right and wrong at the same time, doesn’t it?”

When Sam and Billy turned on the television after dinner to watch the start of game three of the World Series, KTVE was running a news update about how, overnight, the Soviet Union had launched a basketball-size satellite traveling at the mind-boggling speed of eighteen thousand miles per hour. The 184-pound artificial moon was passing over the United States seven times every twenty-four hours and beeping coded radio signals back to earth. It had captured the attention of scientists everywhere and startled pundits and politicians already worried about growing Soviet military power.

Sam, who had not read a newspaper since the day before, reached over to the coffee table for the El Dorado Daily News. A small front-page headline stated, “Soviet Russia Launches Earth Satellite; Beats US.”The brief story said it was the start of a new era in science.

“Momma,” Sam called to Gran in the kitchen, where she was helping Ollie Mae clear the table. “Come see this. The Russians have put a satellite up in space.”

Gran came to the doorway and stared at the TV while wiping her hands on her apron.

“Aw, Sam,” she said after a couple of minutes. “That’s some kind of trick. Nobody can do something like that.”

“Is that right, Daddy?” Billy asked. “Is it just made up?”

“No, son, I reckon it really happened, all right.” Sam did not like disagreeing with his mother in front of the boy but did not see how to avoid it. “There wouldn’t be any reason for our scientists to say it happened if it didn’t.”

“Pshaw!” Gran said. “I don’t believe a word of it.” She turned back to the kitchen.

“Why’d she say that, Daddy?” Billy asked.

“It’s a little hard to explain, son. You remember when we were talking up at the store a while back about the Giants moving to California, and maybe the Dodgers, too, and how that’s gon’ change Major League baseball, and none of us much like it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, this is a little like that but much bigger. Gran has seen a lot of change over the years, and she’s seeing a whole lot more right now, and sometimes when things are changing really fast, it can be scary. She’s aggravated about integration and she doesn’t much like me being friends with Miss Reeves. This satellite is just one more thing that’s different. She’d rather everything stay the way it is.”

“Is the satellite more important than what’s happening with integration?”

“I don’t know, Billy. They’re both important but in different ways.”

“Look, Daddy. They’re switching to the ball game.”

Sam and Billy watched until Mickey Mantle belted a homer in the top of the fourth to put the Yankees up by six runs. As they drove back to the Otasco store, Sam wished he had not mentioned the Russian satellite to Gran.

“Man, they could sure use Ronnie Metcalf tonight,” Houston Holloway said shortly before halftime of the Razorbacks’ game against the Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University. He leaned forward on the mezzanine steps and brushed a speck of dust off one of his cowboy boots. Even though the Hogs were winning, the game was not holding the attention of the Saturday night loafers. Arkansas managed to get a 14 to 7 lead early, but after that, the teams banged away at each other without effect.

“Say, Sam,” Doyle Scoggins said, changing the subject. “You think Upshaw’s right about Mr. Claude? You think the town needs a younger marshal and a police car?”

“I don’t think Upshaw cares what Unionville needs. He’s just trying to sell newspapers,” Sam said, not taking his eyes off the radio sitting next to him on the wrapping table. He did not want to start any rumors about Mr. Claude before the town council acted. Tucker noticed his friend’s attempt to dodge the question.

“Anybody got any ideas about who’s burning these crosses?” the undertaker asked, trying to steer the conversation away from Mr. Claude.

“No,” Holloway said, “but whoever burned down that shed must have had it in for Sadie Rose.”

“You think there was more than one of them that done it?” Scoggins asked.

“I don’t know,” Holloway said. “I reckon one man could manage it all right, but it’d be easier if there were at least two of them. Did you see it?”

“No, I wasn’t there,” Scoggins said. “I didn’t see the first one either. I don’t like going out in the middle of the night. That’s why I quit the fire department. Anyway, if you had to guess, who’d you say?”

“Oh, somebody like Boomer Jenkins or old Jim Ed Davis, I reckon,” Holloway said. “Maybe even Crow Hicks. From what I hear, they all seem to be getting a kick out of it.”

“It might be any number of folks,” Doc Perkins said. He was sitting in Sam’s office chair as usual.

“You think they’ll burn any more, Doc?” Holloway asked.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Doc said. “I think whoever’s doing it is looking for some kind of reaction. I don’t know what exactly and they may not either.”

“What do you think will happen if there’s another one?” Scoggins asked.

“Hard to say,” Doc said.“I just hope things don’t escalate, like they have in some places.”

“Sam, maybe y’all ought to think about getting that police car,” Holloway said.

“Speaking of newfangled gadgets, what about that Russian satellite?” Doc asked, shifting the talk like Tucker had earlier.

“I sure hate them red bastards beat us to it,” Scoggins said. “I bet they’re gon’ use it to spy on us somehow. The paper said that beeping might be some kind of secret code.”

Before anyone replied, a long Razorback pass play pulled the loafers back into the game, and a little while later, most of them went home thinking more about the Hogs’ 21 to 7 win than about burning crosses and beeping satellites.