Junior Grimes was changing the spark plugs in a pickup when his mother came to the door of the garage and told him, “J. S. Kline called. He wants you to bring the roll-back up to his place.”
Junior straightened. A frown crossed his face. “Is it his tractor or pickup?”
“He didn’t say. Just wanted you to come by.”
His mother didn’t know how to take messages, Junior fumed, not for the first time. He prided himself on his quick response to problems with working equipment. If old man Kline’s tractor broke down while he was in the middle of a job, Junior would hurry up there with an assortment of parts that would probably allow him to repair the tractor on the spot.
Calling Mr. Kline back was likely not worth the effort. Farmers who lived alone weren’t usually sitting by the telephone sipping coffee.
Junior finished installing the spark plugs and replaced the ignition wires. Then he started the vehicle and backed it out of the garage. Ten minutes later he was on the road to Canaan at the helm of the roll-back.
Junior liked to drive. He found that thinking went better when he was behind the wheel of something. He had a lot to think about these days. Sheriff Arleigh Tate had not spoken to him since the “great tire fire,” as it was being called by the Edenites. Nor had the sheriff questioned Arch Stehlik. For reasons that he couldn’t pinpoint, this bothered Junior. Alas, he had never before been seriously troubled by a burdened conscience. Oh, he had been in trouble on occasion—with Arch around, little difficulties were bound to crop up from time to time, difficulties with his mother, his girlfriend, and the law—but he was usually caught fairly quickly, so his conscience didn’t fester.
Deputy Delmar Clay was ostentatiously investigating the Barrow boys, who apparently had never in their lives suffered from conscience pangs. The chances that Delmar would manage to do more than annoy the Barrows were, of course, very slim. Still, that was the one bright spot on Junior’s horizon.
His girlfriend, Diamond, was being distant and uncommunicative. At first Junior attributed her mood to a female problem, but in his experience female troubles didn’t last more than a few days, and Diamond’s sulks had been going on—what? Two weeks? More?
Junior hoped it wasn’t the marriage thing. Why do women always mess up a good romance talking about marriage?
Maybe she was in a snit over his request for help with Billy Joe Elkins’ problem. Billy Joe and Melanie Noroditsky’s. Arch had tactfully pointed out that this was a possibility, but Junior had difficulty understanding why this might be so. He who was always willing to help anyone who needed it couldn’t quite see that everyone else didn’t feel similar obligations to his fellow man.
J. S. Kline was sitting on his front porch when Junior rolled in.
“You showed up mighty quick,” Kline said as Junior walked over.
“Thought you might need a little help. Be broke down or hung up somewhere.”
“Nope.” Kline nodded toward the Camaro on blocks. “Want you to haul that out of here.”
Shocked, Junior tilted back his cap and rubbed his forehead. He scrutinized Kline’s face. The man appeared serious. His flinty eyes didn’t waver from Junior’s.
Junior turned to survey the Camaro. “Hadn’t considered that,” he admitted.
“It’s been sitting there long enough. Take it to the junkyard.”
With his hands buried in his pockets, Junior Grimes strolled over to the sedan and peered in through the broken windows as he considered the ins and outs of this unexpected turn of events. J. S. Kline followed him.
“Can only give you a hundred and fifty for it, Mr. Kline. Ain’t much, I know, but the engine is about the only thing that’s worth any—”
“Ten years ago you offered me a hundred for it.”
Actually the car had no value today except as scrap metal, about two cents a pound, and Junior had to bear the expense of hauling it to the junkyard to recover that. The engine was undoubtedly beyond salvage. Junior’s cash offer was merely window dressing to ease Mr. Kline’s pain. Afraid that the old man would see that, Junior blustered, “Things has gone up in ten years. It’s worth a little more now.”
“Well, I’m not selling it. I’m giving it to you. Put it on the roll-back and haul it anywhere you want.”
“I know what this car means to you, Mr. Kline. I don’t want to take it if you’re going to miss it or regret that you gave it to me.”
Kline’s face got colder. “Think I don’t know my own mind?”
“Oh, no, sir. Nothing like that. It’s just…” Junior took a deep breath. “Thing like this is important. Seems like a mighty big step to me after all these years, that’s all. Mighty big step.”
Kline remained silent.
“Knew your boy,” Junior added. “He was about ten years older than me. Bought stuff down at the store and took me hunting a time or two…hell of a football player, so he was. I wanted to grow up to be just like him.”
“Talked to that new woman preacher,” J. S. Kline said. “Carcano. She made sense.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s pretty smart, and she knows things.”
Junior waited expectantly for more, but Kline apparently thought he had said enough. He stood for a while longer looking at the car, then abruptly turned away. He tossed over his shoulder, “Get it out of here.”
Junior watched him go.
“Mighty big step for a Wednesday,” Junior told the trees and weeds and whoever else might be listening. “So it is.”
J. S. Kline was sitting at the foot of an apple tree near the top of the orchard when Junior drove away with the Camaro securely chained to the bed of the roll-back. As the sound of Junior’s diesel engine faded, the reaction set in.
His son was gone and his wife was gone. The car had been his last link with them, with the past and all that could have been and never was. Now it, too, was gone.
He felt empty. Profoundly empty. As if he were dead. Truly, he wished he were. Wished he were beyond all caring, beyond the remembering and the pain and the love he felt for his son and had never shown.
The preacher had sensed that. Mrs. Carcano. “Did you ever tell him how much you loved him?” she asked, gently, with that soft, knowing voice.
“No,” he admitted, ashamed of the truth yet not willing to lie to a preacher.
“That was what the car was for, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And your wife knew that.”
“Said the car was a waste of money.”
“Because your son knew you loved him. Your wife knew that. Knew that a gift wasn’t needed to tell him what he already knew in his heart.”
He had broken down then. Told the preacher of the boy, told how the pride in that boy—and the love—used to flood through him so strongly he couldn’t speak, confessed to her that it had been impossible to tell the boy how he felt. Oh, his words sounded so silly now, a generation after the boy was dead. And his mother was dead. Silly words of loss and pain from an old, old man with much to regret.
Mrs. Carcano had listened. No words of comfort or advice. Listened and nodded. That was all.
Then she went away.
That was two days ago.
He had thought and thought, then called Doolin’s and left word for Junior to bring the roll-back.
His son was truly gone and would never be coming home. With the car sitting by the mailbox, waiting, he had never had to accept the finality of that brutal fact. Now the car was gone.
He sat in the orchard as the sun sank toward the horizon and the shadows lengthened, watched the sunset, watched the dusk creep over the land.
His wife had known. And he didn’t listen to her.
All these years of pain, and he hadn’t listened.
His refusal to face the truth had hurt her deeply. She, too, was gone forever, had been gone for many a year.
Maybe God knew how he felt. Knew how much he had loved them both, still loved them both.
A jay scolded him from a branch. Probably wanted to roost in this tree for the night.
“All right,” he said to the bird, and got to his feet. He walked down through the orchard toward the house he had shared with his wife for forty years, the house the boy had been born and raised in.
The house was dark.
He would turn on a light.
In a night this big, there should be a light.
“So I kissed Mom good-bye and shook Dad’s hand,” Verlin Ice said. “He gave me twenty dollars, and off I went on the bus, all the way to Fort Knox. It was my first big adventure, and I’ll admit it here today, I was more than a little tense. Scared, to tell the truth.
“Everything went okay until they made us take off all our clothes and get in line, then they ran us through this medical building like cattle through a chute. Shots in both arms at the same time—and I hated needles. Still do. Don’t know why I didn’t pass out. The sergeant told me not to tense up, but I did, gritted my teeth and trotted through that line naked as the day I was born while fellas on both sides jabbed and jabbed.”
Verlin Ice shook his head at the memory. “I figure there ain’t a disease in the world that could get me now. No, sir. I’m immune to just about ever’ bug there is. Ever’body else gets ’em, but not me.”
Here Verlin paused and launched a dark stream of tobacco juice into the dirt floor of the barn. His audience of hound and state trooper waited patiently for the monologue to continue. Verlin munched on his quid a little and wiped his mouth.
“I was doing okay at that army business there for a while. Got so I could march pretty good, say yessir and nossir and salute pretty tolerable…and I always could shoot. Can shoot just about any rifle made pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. I was banging away with the best of those army fellas back then. The sergeants said that I had a talent, said I had a future in that outfit.”
He thought about that a bit, about those strange days when he was young. Finally he said, “Also had a cousin who was a bigwig there at Fort Knox, though I didn’t know it at the time, which was a shame, ’cause he could probably have pulled some strings and got me out of all that marchin’ and salutin’ and runnin’ and gettin’ inspected.
“But I guess it worked out. I was doing just fine until I sort of had a heart attack on bivouac. The captain came into the hospital where they had me and told me he’d sure like to keep me ’cause I’d make a good soldier, but he had to send me home.
“It was a hell of a thing. Haven’t had another heart problem from that day to this. Sorta suspect all I had was indigestion from eating too much rich food—the army was sure a good feeder—but a fella never knows. Awful hard to argue with a doctor. I do sort of wonder sometimes, though, what my life might have been like if I hadn’t had that attack. Might have been a top sergeant or general or something. Do you ever wonder about what if?”
Sam Neely had been waiting patiently for an opportunity to nudge the conversation toward where he wanted it to go, and this looked like it. “I do,” he said fervently. “A fellow tries to steer his life, but there are times when it seems to go in a certain direction whether he wants it to or not. Take women, for example. You get a certain woman on your mind and there’s nothing in the world you can do to get her out of your thoughts.”
Verlin Ice nodded his agreement. “Down at Fort Knox there was this gal in the pay office,” he said, “with yellow hair. She always gave me a big grin when she saw me, batted her eyes in that way that yellow-haired gals have—”
Sam Neely wasn’t the least bit interested in Verlin’s romantic adventures. He interrupted. “Truth is, I’m interested in your daughter Crystal.”
“Huh!”
“Yep. She is a fine woman.”
“Crystal, you say?”
“Crystal,” Sam Neely said firmly.
“There’s a woman I could never figure out,” her father mused. “Fine hunk of woman, but too smart. Always reading. She’s looking for something but I don’t think she knows what it is. Lot of women like that, though.”
Neely opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it.
“Of course,” Verlin continued, “all women are hard to figure. Don’t know that it does a man any good to ponder about what’s in their heads. Any man who thinks he has women figured out is a fool. Men just sorta take life as it comes, if you know what I mean, but women want to make life into their idea of what it should be.”
“Maybe—”
“Now, you take Crystal. Too smart for her own good, with a college education, working in Capitol City, not interested in any of the local boys—doesn’t think they’re good enough. Maybe they aren’t.” Verlin shrugged. “Now she’s hanging around that writer fella, Hudson. Didn’t know he was a writer. Writes books, so I hear. Now Crystal’s talking about giving up her job in Capitol City. A writer!”
Verlin shook his head as he considered this amazing turn of events. “You just can’t predict life,” he said after some thought. “She went to see him again this morning, so she did. Diamond went, too. Said she wanted to meet this man.”
“They’re there now?” Neely asked sharply. “At Hudson’s?”
“I suspect so. Unless they went someplace else. With women you never know. Those girls are so flighty that—”
He fell silent because he lost his audience. Trooper Neely had walked out of the barn, and the hound hadn’t been paying much attention. Verlin addressed his next comment to the dog anyway. “Funny thing—Crystal didn’t want Diamond to go.”
Verlin got up from the feedway where he had been sitting and walked to the door of the barn, where he could see Neely getting into his cruiser. “Nice fella, but he’s got it bad, I think.”
Sam Neely crossed Hudson’s porch and knocked on the front door.
At the third rap the door flew open and Crystal charged out, almost into his arms. She had a book in her hands.
“Hello,” he said, not emphasizing it, because he had a suspicion that what was coming was not going to be pleasant.
“Where are they?” Crystal demanded.
“Who?”
“They went for a walk,” she said, partially answering her own question. She galloped to the end of the porch and scanned the plowed earth behind the house. Then she trotted back to the front door and went into the house.
Since she left the door standing open, Neely followed. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion, but I—”
“Did you know?” she demanded, shaking the book at him.
“Know what?”
“That he’s Rip Hays?”
Neely felt as if he’d arrived in the middle of the movie. “I thought his name was Richard Hudson.”
“It is! But he’s Rip Hays, too.”
“Are you sure that—?”
She thrust the book at him, holding it so he could see the cover. Depicted boldly on the dust jacket was a sun-bronzed weight lifter in a loincloth swinging a large sword. “Hudson’s Rip Hays!” she exclaimed. “It’s a pen name, like Mark Twain. He writes Prince Ziad!”
“Look, Crystal. I—”
“I’m not Crystal. I’m Diamond.”
Neely felt dizzy, light-headed. “Didn’t you and I…?”
“Oh, yes. But it didn’t mean anything. Two healthy people, we needed each other. Then. That was all it was. Purely physical. Just a roll in the hay.”
“In the leaves.”
“Whatever.” She made a dismissive gesture.
“But you’re Diamond. We had never even met.”
“Oh, that. So my sister and I look a lot alike. We’re identical twins. Not really identical, but almost. Don’t feel bad. You’re not the first boy who made that mistake.”
“And how long is that list?” Neely asked bitterly.
Diamond ignored the question, if she even heard it. “He’s Rip Hays!” She hugged the book to her bosom. “Oh, my goodness. I had no idea. Crystal has been mooning over him for weeks and I thought she was just off her rocker. But he’s Rip Hays! My heavens. Imagine that!”
“I haven’t read any Rip Hays books,” Neely said simply. The truth was, he had never even heard of the man.
“Prince Ziad is simply the most magnificent man in the universe. He’s handsome, kind, intelligent, brave, he understands women—”
“I certainly don’t,” Sam Neely said with conviction. “I confess, I don’t know what the hell is going on here.”
“He understands. And Richard Hudson is the man who wrote him. Don’t you see? Richard Hudson is Prince Ziad!”
This was too much for Neely. He found a chair and lowered himself into it.
“Crystal didn’t want to tell me,” Diamond explained, continuing to hug the book. “Wouldn’t talk to me about this man she was spending all this time with. I couldn’t understand it. That isn’t like her. Then when they took a walk a short while ago, I started looking. Found all these Rip Hays books, looked in his desk drawers—oh, I know that I shouldn’t have, but still… You understand, don’t you?”
Neely was beginning to get a glimmer.
She put down the books and knelt on the floor beside him. “Oh, you poor man. I’m sorry. You’re in love with Crystal, aren’t you?”
“I sorta thought I was…”
“You poor, poor man. She’s thrown herself at Rip—Richard, I mean. It’s really obscene. She’s such a leech. It’s obvious that he doesn’t want her, but she refuses to face it.” Her voice hardened. “Don’t worry—I’ll pry her off, then you can have her.”
“Why would you—”
She bounced up and almost skipped across the room to look out the window. Then she turned to face him, wearing a radiant smile. “I’m going to take him.”
“Richard Hudson?”
“Rip Hays. Prince Ziad.”
“They are figments of the man’s imagination,” Neely objected reasonably. “They don’t exist. Richard is a pleasant little fellow who just wants to be left alone so he can dig up arrowheads and write.”
“I’ve read his books,” the lady said in no uncertain terms. “This man is searching for love. I have looked into his soul and he has looked into mine—he knows every nook and cranny. We were born for each other.”
“Umm.”
“He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“I see.” Neely rose from the chair and settled his hat onto his head. He stepped tentatively toward the door.
“We’ll be so very happy,” Diamond assured him. “You’ll see.”
“I do see. But I thought you and Junior Grimes…?”
“Junior? Hah! He doesn’t want to leave his mother. Never has and never will, not for any woman alive.” She glanced out the window again.
“There they are!”
She bolted for the door.
Diamond Ice was bounding like a young deer across the plowed furrows as Neely dived behind the wheel of the cruiser. He got the motor spinning and backed out smartly onto the Vegan road.
As he was driving away he got a glimpse of Goofy on his cinder blocks with his nose pressed against one of Hudson’s windows.
When he arrived at the state police office in Indian River, Sam Neely found two people waiting for him, a man and a woman, both gray-haired. They came into his small office and sat in his two visitor’s chairs.
“What can I do for you?”
“My name is John Morgan Ramsey. This is my wife, Flora. We’ve come about the Barrow boys.”
Neely pulled his yellow legal pad into position and armed his pen. “What have they done this time?”
“We were on the road between Canaan and Goshen, just driving along, when they passed us in that old car of theirs. They hollered a bit going by, then slowed down in front of us until they were barely moving. When we got close behind them, they spun their wheels and showered our windshield with rocks.”
“Which one was driving?”
“Looked like Bushrod to me—they call him Bush—but I couldn’t say for swearing to. He and Coonrod look a lot alike, so they do, and I don’t know ’em that well. Don’t want to know ’em no better, neither.”
“I see.”
“Well, they did that rock trick to us twice. The second time the windshield cracked. The third time I wouldn’t pull up behind them close enough, I guess, so they parked their car and came walking back. Leaned in my window, called me some names, said I better quit messing with them if I knew what was good for me.”
“Called John some pretty dirty names,” Mrs. Ramsey said.
Mr. Ramsey continued his narration. “Then they got back into their car and drove away laughing. I was pretty hot about it, so I came here.”
“When did this happen, Mr. Ramsey?”
“About an hour ago, more or less.”
“Did anyone else witness this incident?”
“Well, not that I know of.”
“Are you willing to sign a complaint?”
Here John and Flora Ramsey looked at each other. Neither seemed in a hurry to speak. Neely suspected that they had thoroughly discussed this aspect of the matter during the drive to Indian River.
“They know who we are,” John Morgan Ramsey said finally. “We have a farm near Goshen, keep about a hundred and ten head of stock. The Barrow boys have been known to sit out on the road and shoot cattle. Just shoot ’em and watch ’em drop. To get even with people. And nobody ever sees who did it, so the law can never touch ’em.”
“Without a complaint, Mr. Ramsey, there is nothing that I can do.”
“I told you he’d say that,” Flora Ramsey told her husband.
“It seems like there ought to be something,” Mr. Ramsey said stoutly. “The Barrows are outlaws who don’t play by anyone’s rules. Yet we have to.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Those cattle are our living.”
“If you should change your mind about signing a complaint, please come back.”
Sam Neely ushered the Ramseys from the room and closed the door behind them. Then he went back to his chair and sat looking out his window at the alley behind the courthouse.
After a while he decided to get on record with his own complaint. “If You’d put Your mind to it, God,” he said aloud, “seems to me that You could have done a little better job of putting this world together.”