by Kent Haruf
“We ought to take a torch and cut this goddamn thing into pieces,” one of them said.
“And parcel it out,” another said. “The son of a bitch. It was our money.”
I went on into the courthouse and down to the sheriff’s office. Bud Sealy was sitting behind his desk, slouched back in his chair reading a magazine. He looked tired. I told him I wanted to talk to Burdette.
“Go ahead,” Sealy said. “You can try it.”
“Isn’t he talking?”
“Not much. Not since the other night when I brought him in. We had a little talk then.”
“But hasn’t he said anything?”
“Sure. But nothing you’d want to print.”
“I need to try him anyway.”
“Of course. You two was friends once, wasn’t you? He might talk to you.”
I walked back into the jail. I had been there a number of times before, for newspaper stories, and as always the jail smelled sourly rank and oppressive. There were three empty cells, then the last one where Burdette was. I could see him through the bars.
He was lying on a cot which was too short for him so that his feet hung over the end uncomfortably. His feet were bare and calloused and he was still wearing the same wrinkled plaid shirt and dark pants he had worn when he had arrived on Saturday. Over in the corner of the cell there was a small sink and next to it a lidless toilet. He looked very bad, though, so that I don’t know that I would have recognized him if I hadn’t known in advance who it was. He looked wasted now, massively fat and excessive, sick-looking. I thought in fact that he must be sick; his skin was the yellow color you associate with serious illness and there were deep circles under his eyes. Most of his hair had fallen out in the years he had been gone so that the top of his head shone under the light now, and on his face there was a look of disgust, a kind of unaccustomed cynicism, as if nothing in the world interested him at all anymore.
Then he spoke. And I knew that I would have recognized his voice. “That you, Arbuckle?” he said. “I been laying here wondering if you’d come to see me.”
“Yes. I’ve come to see you. You’re news, Jack.”
He grinned at me. “You mean this isn’t a social call?”
“I need something for the paper.”
“Well,” he said. “You look about like you always did. Life must agree with you, Arbuckle.”
“It does,” I said. “But you don’t look so well. What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”
“No. Hell. I’m all right. I’ll be a whole lot better once I get out of this goddamn place.”
“If you do get out.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll get out all right. They can’t hold me.”
“They think they can.”
“They can’t, though. That’s a fact.”
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see.”
He began to light a cigarette. His movements were slow and ponderous. When he had it lit he tossed the match onto the floor, over into the corner where there was already a pile of cigarette butts and matches. “What’d you want to know anyway? Since you’re here.”
“It doesn’t matter really. Whatever you want to tell me. Except that I don’t understand what made you come back. Didn’t you like California?”
Now for the first time he sat up. Perhaps the memory of his years on the West Coast still interested him. It was hard to tell; he was so bloated and wasted-looking.
“Arbuckle,” he said, “you ever been out there? To California?”
“No.”
“You ought to sometime. It’s a hell of a place.”
“So they say.”
“Yeah, it’s a hell of a place. Only it’s expensive. You can spend a lot of money out there. They got things in California you never even heard of.”
“Probably.”
“Lots of things.”
“Well, you had lots of money,” I said. “What happened to it? Did you run out?”
“Sort of,” he said. Then, unexpectedly, he began to laugh. “But don’t you think they’d let me have some more?”
Apparently the thought of that amused him. His eyes squinted shut and his gut shook; his heaving weight made the cot bounce. “Why not?” he said, going on. “This is my hometown, isn’t it? Don’t you think they’d let me take some more?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think they would.” I knew of course that he was joking, that he wasn’t stupid, but I didn’t care. I had other things on my mind. I told him there were people in Holt who hated him now. “They haven’t forgotten anything,” I said. “I doubt if they’d give you five cents to leave on. Assuming you were allowed to leave.”
“No? I would of thought they’d of forgot by now. But hell, never mind about that. What about you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I suppose you hate my guts too.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you?”
“Look,” I said. “You never cared what anyone thought of you before. What difference could that make to you now?”
“You’re right,” he said. “It don’t make no difference.” Then his face changed again. There was the show of effort in his eyes, as if he were concentrating. “It’s just that I hear you been seeing my wife.”
“What?”
“Yeah. That’s what I hear. I hear you been seeing my wife. I hear you been seeing Jessie.”
“She isn’t your wife. Not anymore.”
“Oh, yeah. Jessie and me—we’re still married.”
“You ruined all of that a long time ago. She doesn’t want to see you again.”
“Sure. We’re still married.”
“Listen, goddamn it. You leave her alone.”
“And I still got my kids here.”
“You haven’t got anything here. You don’t have a goddamn thing in Holt anymore.”
“Yes,” he said. “I still got my family here. I can count on that much. And this is still my hometown.”
“Listen. You must be crazy. You listen to me, goddamn you.”
But he didn’t listen; instead he began to laugh again. He lay back on the cot with his feet hanging over the end. He was pleased with himself. His heavy sick-looking face smiled out at me from behind the bars. “Anything else you want to know, Arbuckle? Did you get what you needed for your paper?”
“Go to hell,” I said.
And that amused him too. It was all amusing. It seemed pointless talking to him anymore. Finally I left.
Then on Tuesday, Arch Withers paid him a call. Over the years Arch Withers had become an embittered man.
After Burdette had disappeared at the end of December in 1976, Withers had gone on serving as president of the Farmer’s Co-op Elevator’s board of directors and he had finished his term of office, but when he had run for reelection two years later people who owned shares in the elevator had not reelected him. In fact he had been defeated by a large margin, and the loss had affected him deeply. He still farmed north of Holt, but now he didn’t come into town very often; instead he sent his wife when he needed something and he never sat drinking coffee at Bradbury’s Bakery. He was lonely and isolated, living in a place where he had always felt accepted and admired.
That afternoon when he arrived at the courthouse some of the old men who had been there the day before were there again, standing in the shade, looking out at Burdette’s red Cadillac, still talking and gesturing. They watched Withers park his black pickup in the parking lot, then he approached and passed without saying anything to any one of them. When he entered the sheriff’s office he demanded that he be allowed to see Jack Burdette. “Let me talk to him,” he said.
“Now, Arch,” Sealy said. “He don’t have any of it left. You know that. Hell, would he of come back if he did?”
“Just let me see him.”
“But I can’t let you into his cell.”
“I don’t plan on going into his cell.”
“Sure, but if I let you see him, you better not try anything. Yo
u hear me? I’ll be watching.”
“All right. Now where is he?”
So Sealy agreed to let Withers see Jack Burdette. He led Withers back into the jail and then stood guard in the doorway while he began to talk. And it was merely quiet and semirational talk at first, a kind of review of things. But Burdette must have seemed even less interested in what Withers had to say than he had the day before when I had talked to him, and evidently he was considerably less amused. Again he lay stretched out on the sunken too-small cot, lying there heavy and dull, yellow-faced, smoking cigarettes, barely listening while Withers talked on and on. By this time he must have been tired of it all. It was as if he were merely waiting for something. Withers’ talk must have seemed to him to involve only some minor misunderstanding between them, an old dispute of no particular significance. Except that it was more than that to Withers, of course. He kept talking, trying to push Burdette into some kind of response. There wasn’t any response, though. Burdette simply lay waiting for Withers to cease talking.
So in time Withers grew hot. He began to shout, to curse: “Goddamn you, Burdette. Goddamn you.”
And Jack Burdette still seemed utterly uninterested, as if he couldn’t be bothered by any of this. Finally he did manage to rouse himself a little, however. He raised his head. “Withers,” he said. “I wish you’d shut your goddamn mouth.”
“By god—” Withers said.
“I never came back here to hear about your goddamn elevator. Leave me alone. You’re starting to get on my nerves.”
Arch Withers went a little crazy then. He began to shake the bars, shouting for Sealy to come forward and unlock the cell so he could go inside. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch,” he shouted. “I’ll kill him.”
“Sealy,” Burdette called. “Get him out of here. I heard enough of this.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“I don’t have to listen to this, Sealy.”
“Unlock this thing.”
“Sealy, you hear me?”
It went on in that way, a violent refrain, until at last Bud Sealy moved down the alleyway toward Withers and tried to lead him away. “Come on, Arch,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“No. You had your say.”
“By god—”
“Let’s go. Come on now.”
Suddenly Withers began to struggle. He fought Bud Sealy in the alleyway of the jail, shouting still, swinging his arms. Sealy shoved him against the bars of the cell, pinning him there, his heavy forearm under Withers’ chin, and then he pushed him out of the jail back into the office. Withers stood before him, panting.
“Goddamn it, Arch. What in hell you think you’re doing? You want me to arrest you too? I had enough of this.”
“He’s not even sorry,” Withers said.
“What did you expect? Did you think he would be?”
“He don’t even care about any of us.”
“Listen, go home now, Arch. You’re through here. Understand? Go on home.”
But Withers seemed too exhausted to move. He appeared to be spent and defeated. It was as if he had been waiting for years for just this moment and now it had meant nothing at all: Burdette wasn’t even sorry. Finally Sealy had to take Withers by the sleeve and walk him out of the office and up the stairs toward the exit.
Outside, next to the courthouse, the local men were still standing in the shade in the November afternoon. When Withers appeared in the doorway they wanted to know what had happened. But he wouldn’t talk to them. He walked slowly past them, down the sidewalk. Their heads turned to follow his progress across the parking lot, past Burdette’s Cadillac and on toward his black pickup. They watched as he climbed into the vehicle and shut the door.
When he was gone one of them asked: “What happened down there, Bud?”
“Nothing happened.”
“But didn’t Withers talk to him?”
“Maybe. But Burdette wasn’t listening to him.”
“What’d he talk about?”
“What do you think he would talk about?”
“Of course. Well, he’s had enough time to think about it anyway. I bet he made a little speech to him, didn’t he?”
Sealy studied him for a moment, studied them all. “Look,” he said. “You boys better go on home too. There ain’t nothing going to happen here. Go on home and see if the wife’s got dinner yet. I seen enough of you for one day.”
After that nothing did happen for a while. For the rest of the week Burdette stayed in jail, lying on the cot in his cell, waiting, sleeping much of the time, his plaid shirt and his dark pants growing daily more rank and wrinkled, while in town along Main Street people talked endlessly about him, at the tables in the bakery and across the street in the tavern, and everyone seemed to know something about it.
But by the end of the week it became clear that something had been occurring elsewhere. Over in Sterling in the district attorney’s office something significant had been going on: the wheels of Colorado state law had been turning and what they had turned up was proof that Burdette was right. He couldn’t be held; the statute of limitations had run out. If he had been out of the state for five years, and if an additional three years had passed, he couldn’t be prosecuted. He was free to go.
Bob Witkowski, the district attorney, called Bud Sealy on Friday afternoon to inform him of that fact.
“What?” Sealy said. “What’s this? You mean, here that son of a bitch stole a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from people and now you’re telling me I can’t hold him?”
“That’s right. That’s what it amounts to.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You’d better believe it. That’s the law. And you’ll be breaking it if you keep him. You’ve already been acting illegally by locking him up for a week.”
“So you’re telling me now I have to let him go? That’s how the law reads?”
“That’s right. Release him, Bud.”
“Well, Jesus Christ Almighty. That son of a bitch. He knew all along.”
Sealy slammed the phone down and stared at the wall.
By nightfall, though, Bud Sealy had gathered his senses and had decided to act intelligently. To avoid any possibility of interference from people in town—there were a number of hotheads in Holt who might drink enough to think they ought to try something, and it was just the beginning of pheasant season so there were plenty of shotguns available in the racks behind the seats in the pickups—he and Dale Willard secretly moved Jack Burdette out of his cell and drove him out to the county line. It was long after dark. Sealy had handcuffed Burdette again and had shoved him into the backseat of the police car behind the protective grille. Burdette had objected, had cursed and shouted, thinking that Sealy was going to ride him out into the sandhills and kill him. But Sealy had told him to shut up and finally he had. Behind the police car Dale Willard followed in Burdette’s red Cadillac.
When they were across the county line they turned off onto a gravel road. Sealy got out and unlocked the back door. “Get out,” he said.
“Bud. Now listen.”
“Get out, you son of a bitch.”
“Bud. Listen to me. You better listen.”
“Goddamn you.” Sealy withdrew his gun and shoved it under Burdette’s chin. “Move.”
Burdette slid slowly out of the car and stood up onto the road. He began to rave. “Willard,” he said. “Willard, you’re here. You know that. You’re going to be involved if you let this happen. You know that, Willard.”
“Shut up,” Sealy said. “We’re all involved. Now turn around.”
“Willard. Don’t let this happen, Willard.”
“Unlock him,” Sealy said.
Willard removed the handcuffs. He handed them to the sheriff.
“Now,” Sealy said, “get the hell out of here, you son of a bitch. And don’t you ever come back.”
“What?”
“I’m letting you go. You don’t know how
lucky you are.”
“What? So you found out. You can’t hold me.”
“Something like that.”
“I knew you couldn’t. I told you—”
“Shut up.”
Burdette stared at him.
“And don’t you ever come back here again,” Sealy said. “You hear me? I’m warning you. Don’t you ever come back here. By god, you won’t be so lucky the next time.”
Jack Burdette looked once more at the sheriff, then again at Willard. He walked over to his car. The engine was still running. He got in and backed the Cadillac onto the highway. Then he honked once, in apparent farewell, a kind of final affront, and roared away. It was not quite midnight then.
The next morning there was a new, even more intense feeling of public outrage in Holt when people discovered that the red Cadillac was gone and that Burdette had been allowed to leave. For a long while that morning groups of men and boys stood in the parking lot at the courthouse where the shiny red car had stood all week. They swore to one another that they would do something yet; they would take some action. But no one could think what it should be.
Meanwhile Bud Sealy sat in his basement office looking out at them from behind his barred window. For several hours they stood there talking impotently and disgusted; finally about noon they began to disperse, to wander home for lunch. After everyone had gone, Sealy called his wife and told her to bring him some coffee and a sandwich. He didn’t want to leave, he said; he expected them to come back. And after the noon meal many of them did. They began to talk again, to gesture and swear. In the end, however, nothing happened. It was too late for the local men to do anything about it.
Throughout that morning, though, there had been the fear that something might occur, that someone might be crazy enough to attempt something violent. So about midmorning I suggested to Jessie that we leave town for a couple of days. I had been staying at her apartment all week, out of a sense of protectiveness, and now we decided to take the boys and drive to Denver, to stay in a motel, and drive up into the mountains somewhere. The aspen would have already turned but it would be pleasant in the mountains, I told her, and quiet. She thought that would be a good idea. She called the cafe and told them she wouldn’t be coming in. Then we packed and left.
