by Meg Muldoon
A moment later, the car was backing up and squealing out of the dirt lot.
“We don’t tolerate thieves,” Clyde Driggs said, stepping out from the office, angry and red in the face.
“Well said, brother,” Pete said in agreement, not bothering to look up from his newspaper.
Chapter 5
Warren hadn’t gotten so much as a single wink of sleep.
All night, he’d been tossing and turning, thinking about Mae and all the time he’d wasted by not talking to her.
Why had it been so hard? Why did the thought of speaking to her make his insides turn to buttermilk pie?
And why was it so easy for somebody like Philip to just sit right down next to her and start up a conversation?
Were they going steady now? Was that why she’d been sitting in his car yesterday? Why he’d given her brother a ride to the general store?
Warren didn’t know for sure, but there was one thing he did know: Mae Reed wasn’t riding in his car.
Warren got ready for school that morning, feeling sluggish and sick to his stomach. The bacon and eggs that his mother made him seemed to have no flavor. It was all he could do to chew.
“You coming down with something, Wren?” she asked, noticing how pale her son looked.
Warren began shaking his head, about to make up some excuse for his poor appetite, but just then, a few loud raps echoed from the front door.
“Don’t forget what you were going to say,” his mother said, getting up to answer it.
Warren picked at his food.
A moment later, he heard a voice that would have made any Christmas River resident’s hair stand up on end.
“Mrs. Peters?” the deep-throated voice grumbled. “We need to talk to your son.”
Warren heard his mother stammer.
“What’s this… what’s this all about, Sheriff Coe?”
“The shooting of Clyde Driggs – that’s what.”
Warren felt his blood turn icier than the waters of the Christmas River in January.
Chapter 6
Warren sat at the kitchen table feeling no better than a frog trapped in a pot of boiling water.
Sheriff Sullivan Coe and two of his deputies sat around the table, all staring at Warren like the teenager had been the one to shoot Clyde Driggs in the back on the steps of the general store early that morning.
Warren knew something of Sheriff Coe because he was friends with his son, Sully Jr. It was widely known that the senior and junior got along worse than a snake and a mongoose, and Sully Jr. often complained about how his father made him go to church anytime he so much as mumbled “shoot” or “dang it” by accident.
Sheriff Coe had the reputation of being a real ruthless fellow. The Coes were devoutly religious, and the Sheriff treated his work as a mission handed down directly from the almighty himself. It seemed as though he ruled Pohly County with an iron fist, and was often quoted in the local newspaper as saying that there was no place to hide in Christmas River for sinners.
Everyone in town knew that it was best not to tangle with Sheriff Sullivan Coe.
And here Warren was being grilled by the fearsome man like a big slab of fatty steak.
“We already know who committed this terrible, terrible deed,” Sheriff Coe said in a thundering voice, as if speaking from the pulpit. “But we need you to corroborate some things for us, young man.”
Warren gulped hard, glancing over at his mother standing in the corner of the dining room. She looked worried.
“Tell us what happened yesterday afternoon when you showed up to work at the general store,” Deputy Meeks – a short, pudgy man with big ears – said.
“It, uh, it was a slow afternoon,” Warren said, his voice coming out shaky. “I asked Pete if I could have a Coca-Cola. He said yes. We talked a little while about… about various things and—”
“Tell us about what happened when Leroy Reed showed up,” Sherriff Coe interrupted.
“Uh… well … Leroy showed up wanting to talk to Mr. Driggs. Clyde Driggs, that is. The older brother. They talked a couple of minutes or so. Then Leroy left.”
Sheriff Coe crossed his arms over his substantial gut and leaned back in the chair that Warren’s father normally sat in.
“Be specific, young man. What did they talk about?”
“I couldn’t hear all of it,” Warren said. “They were in the back. All I heard was Leroy talking about something not being right. And then Mr. Driggs told him that if he came back, he’d call you – the Sheriff. Then Leroy left.”
Sheriff Coe looked at one of his deputies with a knowing expression.
“Did you see Leroy at all after that?” Sheriff Coe asked.
“No, sir.”
“What about any time after he got fired? You see him hanging out around the general store or the lake lately?”
Warren was about to say “no, sir” again, but then something came to him.
Sunday night at the lake, when he’d gone fishing to clear his head – Warren thought that he’d seen Leroy in the forest on the opposite side of the lake.
Warren gulped as he remembered something else.
Leroy had been holding a rifle, too.
“Son?” Sheriff Coe said. “Do you need me to repeat the question?”
Warren glanced at his mom. She was gazing at him, urging him with her eyes to say something.
Warren hesitated another long moment.
Then he shook his head.
“No, sir. I haven’t seen Leroy around except for yesterday afternoon when he came in.”
Sheriff Coe was silent for a long moment. He stared so hard into Warren’s eyes, Warren thought his head might burst into flames under the man’s brimstone gaze.
Warren was a bad liar – he didn’t have enough practice at it. And he knew that Sheriff Coe, with all the power of God behind him, must have seen right through him.
“I’d advise that you tell the truth, young man,” Sheriff Coe said. “It’s a serious matter, and if you know something, then you better come clean now. If we find out you lied to us about something down the line, the consequences won’t be to your liking.”
The Sheriff looked at Etta Peters.
“Your family won’t like it much, neither,” he added.
Warren’s hands grew slick with perspiration. He swallowed back some bile that had climbed up his throat.
“I don’t know anything more about what happened,” Warren said in the stiffest voice he could muster.
Sheriff Coe eyed Warren for a long, long moment.
Then he grabbed his hat and stood up.
His deputies followed, and the pack of them began leaving the small house without saying another word.
Warren shot up out of his chair, suddenly gripped by something he couldn’t explain.
“Is… is Mr. Driggs going to be okay?”
The Sheriff didn’t bother looking back at him.
“Have you ever seen a man shot in the back with a rifle before?” he growled.
Warren’s mouth went bone dry.
“They’re usually not okay, son.”
Warren watched in silence as the lawmen left his house.
When they were gone, Warren looked at his mother.
He could tell then that she’d seen right through him – that she knew he was lying about something. And that she was disappointed in him for doing what he’d done.
He cleared his throat, about to explain it, but she just shook her head solemnly.
“You better get to school, Wren,” she said, clearing away the plate with the half-eaten bacon and eggs. “Your father will be expecting you to do better in English class this week.”
She went into the kitchen and didn’t say anything more.
Warren felt a sinking feeling in his gut for the rest of the morning.
Chapter 7
By the time Warren got to his English class that afternoon, the news of what happened had spread through the school like a forest fire in
August.
Leroy Reed, war veteran and older brother to Mae, Sadie, Bobby, Grant, and Gordon Reed, had been arrested for the attempted murder of his former employer, Clyde Driggs.
All through the hallways, people were whispering about the scandal, which was perhaps the biggest to ever hit Christmas River.
“That yellow belly shot ‘em in the back. Only a coward does something like that.”
“I heard Leroy really wasn’t all that brave in the war, anyway. Probably shot his own leg just to get home.”
“All them Reeds are no-good, bottom-feeders. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened.”
Mervin Paulson had thrown that last nasty barb, and it had taken everything Warren had not to stop in the hallway and land a hard punch on Merv’s small, mean face.
When Warren got to class, he noticed that Mae’s seat was empty.
He sat down next to Philip.
“How’s Mae doing?” Warren asked.
Philip’s face went pale.
“How should I know?” the big-nosed, blue-eyed quarterback said in a low voice.
“You were with her yesterday, weren’t you? I saw you pull up to the general store with Mae and Leroy—”
Philip’s eyes grew larger than Etta Peters’ Lemon Buttermilk Pie and his face went just as pale as one of those pies, too.
“You’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” Philip said, raising his voice slightly. “I wasn’t nowhere near that general store yesterday or any day. You hear? Nowhere near it.”
Warren was about to argue back, but Mr. Stanley started speaking, beginning a painstakingly dull lecture about Herman Melville.
All Warren could do for the rest of the class was stare at Mae’s empty chair.
Chapter 8
“You’re a good kid for coming,” Pete said, patting Warren on the back. “But I won’t be opening the general store for some time in light of what’s happened.”
Pete let out a sad sigh.
“Maybe never again.”
Warren had decided to come to the general store after school, just in case Pete needed him to work.
Instead, they sat on the warped boards of an old picnic bench near the lake, drinking Coca-Colas, gazing at the bloodstains on the front porch of the store.
Pete didn’t look well. His face was puffy and his eyes were bloodshot like he’d been crying. Warren noticed that there was some blood on Pete’s shoes, too – blood that most likely belonged to his brother.
Pete hadn’t been the first one to find Clyde collapsed and bleeding out on the front steps of the general store that morning – that had been a customer named Roger Porter. But Pete had arrived shortly after for his usual shift, finding Roger on the store’s phone, trying to call the police for help.
Warren imagined it must have been shocking for Pete to find his brother in such a terrible state.
“I just keep thinking,” Pete said, running a shaky hand through his thick, blond hair. “What if it was me? I mean, I open the shop sometimes in the morning. What if I’d been the one who…”
Pete closed his eyes.
“It should have been me,” Pete said quietly. “I was the one who caught Leroy stealing in the first place. He was probably wanting to kill me. But instead…”
The words lingered in the air like cigar smoke. It wasn’t all that cold outside, but Warren shivered anyway.
“I had a bad feeling when I woke up this morning,” Pete said. “First thing when I opened my eyes, I knew something bad was going to happen today. I felt it in my bones.”
“How is Clyde doing?” Warren asked.
Pete just shook his head, not saying a word.
Warren looked down at the pine needles strewn in the dust beneath his feet.
“I don’t know what Ada’s going to do if he doesn’t make it,” Pete said. “I mean, Clyde’s everything to her. They only just got married, too. They were… they were going to start a family. Clyde always wanted one.”
Warren had never known anybody who died before.
It was hard to know how to act when faced with such enormity and confusion. Even though Father Grummond talked about death plenty in his sermons at the church the Peters attended, Warren had never really understood on an emotional level the complete and utter finality of it.
Just yesterday, Clyde Driggs had been in his office, doing paperwork, going about his life like it was just any other day.
Now he was lying in the hospital, hovering on the edge of eternal nothingness.
The thought made Warren feel hollow and empty inside.
“At least Sheriff Coe got him,” Pete said. “If Clyde doesn’t survive this, then at least we’ll be able to count on justice being served.”
Pete’s eyes flooded with water and he looked away.
Warren had never seen Pete like this. He was always so gregarious and jolly.
It just didn’t seem right for something so tragic to happen to his family.
“Excuse me, Mr. Driggs?”
Warren felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up at the sound of the small voice.
He turned his head back and his heart did a double flip in his chest.
Pete’s expression of gloom and depression suddenly turned at the drop of a hat into one of barely-controlled rage.
“Mr. Driggs, I came here because I need to talk to you. I’m so sorry about what happened to your brother. But you have to believe me. Leroy would never do something like this. He doesn’t have that kind of evil in him. I would know, I’ve known him my whole—”
Pete Driggs jumped off the picnic table, standing up.
“I know your brother, too,” Pete said, his words filled with anger. “I know that he’s a thief and if he’d had his way, a no-good murderer as well. Now get out of here. And don’t show your face on this lake again.”
“Now, Pete, don’t be like that—” Warren started saying, but Pete was already walking away furiously toward the general store.
Warren felt his mouth go dry as he looked back at Mae Reed.
Tears were streaming down her face, but she cried them silently.
She looked at Warren – for the first time ever, perhaps.
Only it didn’t happen the way that he’d dreamed of all those days sitting in English class, stealing glances at her.
She looked at him as though she was seeing right past him.
A moment later, she turned and began walking quickly down the lake road from where she had come.
Warren ran after her.
“Hey!”
She didn’t turn around.
“Can… can I give you a ride somewhere?”
“I don’t need your pity,” she shouted back. “I don’t need anyone’s pity!”
He ran out in front of her.
“But it’s three miles back to town,” he said.
“I know. I walked every one of them to get here and I’m going to walk every one to get back, too.”
There was a kind of fierce, defiant beauty in the way she spoke that made Warren’s knees turn to jelly.
Her beautiful brown eyes sparkled beneath a well of tears.
“Please, Mae,” Warren said. “I can’t let you walk back like this. It… it wouldn’t be right.”
Warren nodded in the direction of his Crosley station wagon.
“Please,” he said again.
Mae Reed didn’t look too happy.
But eventually, she put aside her pride and saved her feet some blisters by taking Warren up on the offer.
Chapter 9
“I don’t profess to know much about this world,” she said, wiping away a fresh stream of tears. “But what I do know is that my brother is the best kind of man. The very best kind. And he couldn’t have possibly done the things they’re saying.”
Warren glanced over at Mae as the station wagon rumbled on down the uneven dirt road through the trees.
“In the war, he saved his friend’s life by carrying him through twenty
miles of jungle on his back,” Mae continued. “It slowed him down and that’s why he got shot. That’s how come he walks with a limp. That’s how come Philip Clayton’s dad won’t hire him for work at the mill – because he’s crippled. That job at the general store was hard enough to get. And then last week, they accused him of stealing.”
Mae shook her head.
“Leroy would never do that. He tried to explain it to Mr. Driggs yesterday – that it was all a big misunderstanding. But Clyde Driggs wouldn’t listen. And now…”
Up until that point, Mae had been crying, but had managed to keep her face ridged and stoic.
Now, something broke inside of her and she began shaking hard. She covered her face, stifling back the sobs.
Seeing Mae so upset made Warren feel downright miserable.
He tried to think of words to comfort her, but he could think of nothing to say that would help.
Leroy’s situation wasn’t looking very good.
“I’m… I’m sorry, Mae,” Warren said. “I really am. I don’t believe you or your family deserves this.”
Mae stopped shaking as hard.
She looked over at him. Her pretty face was flushed and her lips were trembling.
“Do you… do you really think he did it, Warren? Do you think he could have shot Mr. Driggs?”
Warren took in a deep breath, thinking it through.
He thought of the figure he’d seen in the woods Sunday night and the black silhouette of that rifle.
“All I know is that Leroy was always kind to me,” Warren said. “And he always struck me as a good sort of man, too.”
Mae bit her lip and smiled sadly. A few more tears spilled over the rims of her eyes.
“I have to help him,” she whispered. “Nobody else in this town will. It’ll have to be up to me.”
The stretch of dirt road was quickly coming to an end and soon they would be back in town.
“What about Philip Clayton’s dad?” Warren asked. “He has money. Can’t he help?”
She narrowed her eyes at the road ahead of them, an annoyed expression coming across her features.
