Wild Pitch

by A. B. Guthrie Jr.

  With the judge’s approval I sold Mrs. Jenkins’ chickens to Brick’s Butcher Shop and deposited the returns with the court. Mother thought about buying a couple of hens, but I put the nix on that, saying I didn’t choose to eat off my friends.

  Old Doc Yak, who as a doctor of course had no business sense, cleared forty thousand dollars on a five-thousand-dollar investment that Mike Day had conned him into making. The money didn’t change Doc, except that it enabled him to buy a new car not half as good as the one that had fallen to pieces.

  Mike Day had a good thing, or his company did—rights to coal lands in the northwest that soon came into high demand for strip-mining. He owns the bank now and Ben Day’s old place, for which he paid a fair price, as well as a couple of Cadillacs and a bird dog. He has cautioned me against drink and hare-brained financial involvements.

  Gewald—now I’m giving credit—had nothing but praise for our sheriff.

  Soon after the case of the murders was closed, Geet breezed into the office, fresh as a first flower, her face glowing and her eyes on high beam but not focused on me. She called out, “Chick,” and went forward, and I went on out. I should have known. Hell, I did know but had refused to admit it. Those telephone calls and that date, or those dates, with what Halvor said was a dish.

  They were married—which, in spite of my knowing, jolted my hormones as well as my notions about sexuality and age. No doubt about it, they got and get along fine.

  My feelings have changed, but all I could say to myself at the time was, “Pisswillie.”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries

  Chapter One

  F. Y. Grimsley hated Indians, full-blood, half-blood, quarter-blood and any with a known fraction of taint. That much I knew as I listened to him bitching to Sheriff Chick Charleston, that much and more.

  Grimsley had a sizable cattle ranch in the southwest corner of the county. What with owned and leased land, it amounted to twenty thousand acres, give or take a stray section or two.

  “It’s your job, Charleston. Get up in the collar!” Grimsley was saying for the fifth or sixth time if not in the same words. He took his hat off and slapped it on his knee, losing about an acre of dust from the ranch. His head, scarred high on the dome, was so bald that, seen along with the scar, you could have sworn he had had a skin graft.

  F. Y. Grimsley, standing for Frank Yantis Grimsley, as I already knew, thanks to a plat of the county. A lot of people didn’t like him for one reason or another, all good, and used his initials for words appropriate to their feelings.

  “Five hundred cows, plus calves, some here, some there,” Charleston said. His head moved in a slow shake. “We’ll scout around, but we can’t keep steady watch on all that beef.” As nearly always, his tone was mild.

  “Did I ask you for that? No, by God! Just find out. Be a detective for once, like you’re paid for. Have a look, listen and add two and two if you’re up to it.”

  Charleston shied a glance at me. “Jase, here, knows his figures. Just back from college.”

  Grimsley snorted. “You ain’t funny, and it ain’t college brains I’m in need of. Them professors don’t know ass from sassafras. So cut out the cracks! Get into action!”

  “Any particular place?”

  “On my ranch. Where the hell else?”

  “That’s not so particular.”

  “Goddamn! You think I can scout every gulley night and day? What I know is I’m losing stock.”

  “Singles or bunches?”

  “Singles, maybe. Two or three at a time, maybe. Who knows? Here’s one case. I had some in my west field. Forty cows, thirty-four calves. Yesterday the tally showed thirty-seven cows and thirty-one calves. No dead ones around. None coyote-killed. There you are. Your move, Mr. Sheriff.” Grimsley’s mouth was as small and as round and as tight as a bullet hole.

  “Any signs of butchering?”

  “No. No guts at all.”

  “You mentioned Breedtown.”

  “Sure. It’s somebody there; more’n one, likely. I’ll bet my butt on that. They ought to wipe that place off the map. Bunch of squatters. No rights.”

  “That land under lease?”

  “No. Government-owned. I’d lease it myself except it doesn’t amount to shit, bar Eagle Charlie’s eighty acres.”

  “He owns that?”

  “Where in Christ’s name does that figure? Yes. He got title to it, don’t ask me how. Only piece of land around there worth a damn. Has that nice spring on it.”

  “What about Eagle Charlie?”

  “For an Indian he ain’t so bad. I said, for an Indian. It’s them hangers-on, aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews and all them inbreds and God knows what.”

  Eagle Charlie, I thought. Short for Sees Eagle Charbonneau, my father had told me. A cross between Indian and French and no known relation to the Charbonneau who got famous by being married to Sacajawea in the days of Lewis and Clark.

  “You’ve talked to Eagle Charlie?” Charleston asked.

  “All this fool palaver!” Grimsley answered. It looked as if he might wham his hat again and lose another acre of ground. “It don’t do no good to talk to Charlie. Them ragged-tailed Indians don’t pay any attention to him, even if some call him chief.”

  “No chiefs ever had much authority. No downright say-so.”

  “I’ll remember that when I ain’t thinkin’ about something important.”

  “Tell me more about Charlie. How does he get by?”

  “Charleston, you’re askin’ for what you already know. Just killin’ the by-God time. All right. That spring of Charlie’s waters a garden. Potatoes and rutabagas and such. His poor goddamn wife does all the work. I know that.”

  “He wouldn’t charge the others for water from his spring.” Charleston shook his head. “No Indian would.”

  “Naw, not as I know of. He works once in a while, gettin’ logs out and helpin’ come hay-time. Kills a deer when he needs it, in season or out. He does all right, what with his garden and a couple of milk cows.”

  “Those relatives squat on his land?”

  “Not so much. Just visitors once in a while. The rest camp out around. You know, shacks, log cabins and maybe a tent or two, depending. They ought to be on the reservation, the whole kit and caboodle.”

  “No place set aside for them. They’re landless Indians, Chippewas and Crees mostly.”

  “They don’t belong where they are. Neighbors to my cows, thievin’ neighbors.”

  “The Indians had the land in the first place.”

  Now for the second time Grimsley did slap his hat on his knee. One hand swiped at a cloud of dust. “You think I come here to fight the Indian wars all over again! I’m just askin’ help, some simple goddamn help.”

  Charleston sighed and said, “All right, Grimsley. We’ll do what we can.”

  “You better. Right away?”

  “Right away.”

  “One thing I damn near forgot,” Grimsley said while he made a pointer of his beat-up hat. “You know that walkin’ ladder that swamps out saloons?”

  “Luke McGluke.”

  “That’s his name. And you know his automobile that no poor-ass junk dealer would give room in his yard to? Well, a couple or three times I’ve passed him on the road, bound Breedtown-way. Think on that.”

  “Thanks. I’ll remember.”

  “I want results,” Grimsley said. He got up, put his hat on his skin graft and went out.

  Charleston smiled at me, not with any great mirth. “Joyful job, public office is.”

  I said, “I guess he can stand to lose a beef or two.”

  “Not the question, Jase. The law’s the law—but pisswillie.”

  So things stood that late afternoon. The next morning F. Y. Grimsley was dead.

  Chapter Two

  I lazed up the street after leaving the sheriff’s office, renewing acquaintance with those I hadn’t renewed it with in the two days si
nce my return. The June sun was sinking. It hadn’t shed much warmth even at its height. June is a chancy month in my country.

  After two years away—a long time in my reckoning then—I had expected a lot of changes in Midbury, but I hadn’t noticed many. Same old place. Same people around, except that Otto Dacey, the one man in the county certified sane, wasn’t wetting his pants or the gutter anymore, the Lord having taken him away. In his place as saloon swamper was this Luke McGluke, who was as sane as Otto and just as worthy of notice. He stood about six feet seven when he straightened his hinges and was as spooky as any wild goose.

  I had seen him just yesterday and learned something about him. His real name, which nobody seemed to know, wasn’t Luke McGluke. We had a habit in our town of giving men handles from old cartoon characters or made up from whim or actual initials. Some of them had a bite to them.

  Felix Underwood stood in the last sun outside his parlors. He called himself a mortician now, perhaps because undertaker was too close to the quick. I shook hands with him.

  “Hear you’re hooked up with Chick Charleston again,” he said.

  “Yep. Back to being sheriff’s flunky.” I didn’t tell him that I was a sure-enough deputy, though he might have heard so already. That news would get around soon enough.

  The fact was that I could hardly believe it myself. Yesterday, when I had called on Charleston, he had offered me a badge. “Wait,” I told him. “You know I’m not quite of age.”

  “You’re registered for the draft, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. For some time.”

  “Well?” He raised one eyebrow.

  I didn’t have any answer.

  “No one’s going to squawk,” he went on, “and I’m short of men. The town and county made a deal a month or two ago, and as a result this office will play town marshal. I have Halvor Amussen ticketed for that job. He’ll need help, some from you. He’s on vacation now. Back soon.”

  “Halvor?” I said. “Town marshal? To see girls don’t get raped?”

  Charleston gave me his good smile. “Halvor’s in love and safe enough now. That girl he’s stuck on will kill him if he tries to play rooster.”

  “I see old Jimmy Conner is still around.”

  “Right. Still my inside man, mostly. And Monk Fitzroy will stay up north at Petroleum. Even with you deputized, I’m still shy on staff. If someone likely comes to your mind, let me know. Here’s your badge.”

  Now Felix Underwood said to me, “Was I you, I’d wonder about going back to the sheriff’s office. Look at last time.”

  “My hand healed up well enough.”

  “Oh, did it now?” he said, his head shaking a no. Felix was a baseball fan and managed the town team when he could recruit enough players. “Not good enough to give a hop or a curve to a ball?”

  “No, but good enough to write or serve papers or even, come to that, hold a gun.”

  “A good pitcher ruint,” he told me.

  My pitching days had ended when a crazy psychiatrist had batted my hand with a six-gun two years ago. Not that I cared much anymore. One year to go, and I’d be out of college and ready, as they say, for the real world. Mad psychiatrists weren’t counted as real.

  “You watch out, Jase,” Felix said. “Burnt once should be enough.”

  The Jackson Hotel, the Commercial Cafe and the Bar Star Saloon stood as before, all showing signs of life as the working day ended. I went into the saloon for a beer. Though the law at that time said you had to be twenty-one if you had anything alcoholic, the management figured that the use of a razor qualified you for a drink. The bar was old-fashioned. It had three tables, one rounded for card players, and a fairly long counter complete with brass footrest and spittoons. A jukebox stood in one corner but wasn’t used much. The common-run customer was a rancher or ranch hand or other outdoor worker who didn’t mix hard liquor with hard rock.

  Old Doc Yak was there, spindly as ever, chasing a homeopathic pill with a jigger of whiskey. F. Y. Grimsley was inside, too, talking to Junior Hogue and whoever would listen. He had had time for a couple of drinks before my arrival. Tad Frazier had moved up in life, from handyman to bartender. He was drawing a beer for Hogue.

  These men I knew. I didn’t know a young, well-built one who had red hair that reached from his turned-brim Stetson to the collar of his leather jacket. His attention was on the Coke that he sipped. Neither did I know two others. They stood off by themselves, maybe because they had a copper cast to their skins and knew Grimsley’s feelings.

  Refreshed by his formula of pill and Old Pebbleford, Doc Yak said, “Welcome home, Jason.” He gave me his hand. Hogue interrupted Grimsley’s talk long enough to say, “Hi.” I had shaken hands with him yesterday.

  “What portent in your return, Jason?” Doc Yak asked, adding with a smile as the events of two years ago came to his mind, “Trouble again?”

  “I’m not contagious.”

  “No. Only diseases are.”

  Hogue had overheard our conversation, even while listening to Grimsley. He called out, “Tad, shake a leg. See what Typhoid Mary will have.”

  Tad did and then pumped my hand with his wet one.

  “I’ll tell you again, Hogue,” Grimsley was saying, the whiskey talking loud in him, “and I’ll warn everybody.” His eyes traveled the bar and came to rest on the two breeds, a name we used for anyone with a touch of Indian blood in him. “I’ll shoot any trespassers on sight, right away, pronto, night or day.”

  Though they must have heard him and felt his hard stare, the breeds showed no outward notice.

  Hogue asked, “Why warn me? I got cows of my own.”

  “I’m warnin’ the world.”

  “Law or no law?”

  “The goddamn, son-of-a-bitchin’ law! Pussycats. Fraidycats.”

  The redhead lifted his Coke. I thought I saw a look of distaste on his face. The breeds worked at their beers. It is surprising how long a man can make a beer last if he hasn’t cash enough for another.

  Hogue wasn’t one to pass over a slur on a friend. His thumb jerked toward me as he spoke to Grimsley. “By any chance are you referrin’ to Jase here?”

  “Just a general idea,” Grimsley replied, maybe a little as if in apology.

  He was saved from any real ruction by the entrance of Luke McGluke, who shied away from the bar on his way to the rear.

  “Boo!” Grimsley yelled at him.

  McGluke didn’t increase his pace, since he was already traveling at about three strides to the mile. As he let himself out, into the lean-to in the rear, he threw a look over his shoulder. I saw a frightened hate in his face.

  “Spooks easy, that half-wit bastard,” Grimsley said, the words trailing after him as he made for the door.

  When he had gone, Hogue said, “That character has lived too long.”

  “Blame it on me,” Doc Yak put in. “I doctored him for pneumonia last winter.”

  “That makes you pardner to the crime of him living,” Hogue said. “What do you call it, Jase?”

  The redhead answered. “Aiding and abetting, with equal responsibility.”

  I said, “That’s close enough.”

  “For my sins I’ll buy another round,” Doc Yak said.

  Tad filled the orders, omitting the breeds according to custom. The redhead asked for another Coke. I introduced myself to him.

  Hogue interrupted us. “I’m awful forgetful of manners.”

  “They call me Red Fall.” The man had a good grip.

  “He drinks slop and wrangles dudes for Guy Jamison,” Hogue told me.

  “Just say I drink slop,” Fall said, apparently not offended. “No dudes to wrangle for two or three weeks yet.”

  “Strayed from the south somewheres,” Hogue went on.

  “Southwest.” Again Fall spoke, unruffled.

  Doc Yak said, “Drink up. Time’s wasting.” I never had known him to waste so much time or to have more than one drink.

  After he had drained his gl
ass, he turned to me. “Don’t turn up any more dead bodies, boy.”

  The remark struck me as thoughtless and out of order. Hogue’s father had been shot dead two years before. But there was Doc Yak for you.

  Chapter Three

  “Too early for red raspberries,” my mother told me. I knew she had scouted the town for my favorite fruit. “I did find some strawberries, though.”

  I smiled at her and said my thanks.

  We were seated—Dad, Mother and I—at the family table, eating home cooking, which was treat enough for me.

  Dad was preoccupied, not gruff or unpleasant, just preoccupied, and I knew he would speak his thoughts soon, as he did.

  “I suppose you saw that revival tent going up across the creek, Jase?” He was shaking his head.

  “Just a glimpse of it.”

  His head kept moving. “I had thought we were beyond and away from such foolishness.”

  I said, “Oh?”

  “I mean primitive religion,” he went on. “Redneck stuff as preached in the south. Hysterical nonsense. I suppose this evangelist—Brother Sam he calls himself, short for Brother Samuel Muir—I suppose he wore out his welcome in Oklahoma.” A half-smile came to Dad’s mouth. “Or for the moment saved everyone there.”

  “Now don’t be extreme, Father,” Mother said.

  “You haven’t been exposed as I have,” Dad told her. “I can still hear the holy whine of those soul-savers. I have seen the converted knuckleheads hitting the sawdust trail, as they say. I have seen people with the jerks and heard the babble of unknown tongues. Obscene, I say.”

  To keep him going, I said, “But you’re religious, Dad.”

  “To an extent. To an extent.” He paused to gather his thoughts. “I go to church, believing that, despite fable and superstition, it is a force for good. Religious? Religious in the sense that I believe in Christian principles of conduct. I take no stock in the ignorance that thinks it has heard God’s call to save sinners. Primitives! Holy rollers! Healers! Foot washers! Snake handlers! The devil with them!”