The Thicket

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I had Eustace come in and help me untie him and get him out of the chair. Fatty was damn easy to handle, being as weak as a broom straw in a high wind. I gave him the damp rags and had him wipe his ass and throw the rags in the corner of the room, and then I had him pull up his pants. I picked up the three bloodied teeth he had spat on the floor, wrapped them in one of the bandannas, and gave them to him. I don’t know why I did that, but I did. Fatty took them and clutched them in his hand, not even knowing what they were. I don’t think right then he knew who he was. He put the teeth in his pocket.

  Finally, with me on one side of him and Eustace on the other, we hauled him out of there. Jimmie Sue, Shorty, and Hog followed. We hitched his lard over to the sheriff’s office, a few people staring but no one seeming to care one way or another, and managed him through the door.

  The sheriff was in one of the two cells lying on a cot, and when we came in and shut the front door to his office, it woke him up. He sat up quickly and looked at us. He was a lanky fellow with a face made for being most fondly remembered from a distance. He had one leaky hay-fever eye and a nose that flagged to one side and a mouth outlined by deep scars. He had an ear missing. His hair was oily and was parted on one side and flapped over his bald head. There was a kind of pink, gnarled scabbing in spots on the side of his face and the top of his head, but another look told me it wasn’t scabbing at all but burnt-over skin that had ribbed up in places.

  He studied us—not only Fatty, Shorty, Eustace, Jimmie Sue, and me but also Hog.

  “Is that the same old hog you had, Eustace?” he said. “Or did you eat that one and get another?”

  “Same one,” Eustace said, “though there’s still a chance he might get eat up, I get hungry enough.”

  “And I see you still got your midget,” the sheriff said.

  “That is funny,” Shorty said.

  “Why I said it,” said the sheriff. He came out of the cell then, wandered over and sat in a chair behind his desk. On the desk was a half bottle of whiskey and a greasy plate with a biscuit lying on it. Behind him on the wall was a telephone. Actually, it was the first I’d ever seen, but I knew what it was, having seen photographs of them in the Sears and Roebuck. His battered and dirty hat was on the end of one of the chair arms, and he took it and put it on. It improved his looks due to the shading of his face. “That there fellow that’s all beat up, I don’t reckon he’s a friend.”

  “Oh, he and I are extremely close,” said Shorty. “If you prop him against the wall and lift me up, I will give him a kiss on the cheek.”

  “Ha,” said the sheriff, and then his eyes rested on Jimmie Sue.

  “Jimmie Sue,” he said. “How’s your cat?”

  “Resting comfortably in the fork of a tree,” she said.

  “I been thinking about coming over and seeing her sometime,” he said. “I’d like to pet it a bit.”

  “Thing is, Winton,” Jimmie Sue said, “she’s not as available for petting as she once was.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about at first, but it came to me gradually, and I could feel my face redden.

  “That’s a shame,” the sheriff said.

  “I’ve retired,” Jimmie Sue said. “You’ll have to look for another kitty.”

  Perfect, I thought. Not only me and Grandpa, but the one-eared sheriff has been in the same fork of the tree where I’d nestled earlier that day.

  The sheriff gave Jimmie Sue a little grin, nodded at Fatty, who was wobbling. “What’s his story?”

  “It’s a whole dime novel,” Eustace said, then turned to me and nodded.

  I told the sheriff all about it. Just as I finished up, Fatty, who had begun to bleed from a number of spots, fell down and lay on his side.

  “Get him up and lay him on the floor in there,” the sheriff said. “I’m not for having blood all over my cot. And he stinks something awful.”

  “Yeah,” Eustace said. “He do at that. But some of that stink, just to be fair, is Hog.”

  Me and Eustace dragged Fatty into the cell and closed the door. The sheriff tossed Eustace the keys and Eustace locked Fatty inside and tossed the keys back to the sheriff.

  “I seen him around before,” the sheriff said. “But what call have you got to say he’s the desperado you’re looking for? You said you didn’t see the robbery, now, didn’t you, boy?”

  “It’s him,” I said. “And if he didn’t rob the bank, he was in on the kidnapping. I was there when that happened. I told you that.”

  “So you did,” said the sheriff.

  “I seen the robbery,” Eustace said. “I seen him ride out of town to beat the band and shots buzzing at him like bees, and him buzzing some back at folk. It was him, all right.”

  “Well, now,” the sheriff said. “Well, now.”

  A back door opened and a colored man came in carrying a bucket of water in one hand, a mop in the other. He was a lanky fellow and had a white spot on his forehead that started just above his right eye and ran wide and up into his hairline.

  The sheriff looked at him, said, “Spot, you going to have to come back later. I got folks here and a prisoner.”

  “You don’t want the cell swabbed out?” Spot asked.

  “I didn’t say that. I said I got company.”

  “I see ’em,” Spot said. “It ain’t gonna take but a minute.” He had already come in by now and let the door, that he had been keeping open with his butt, close behind him. He glanced at the cell where Fatty lay on the floor. “I can mop around him,” he said.

  “Goddamn it,” the sheriff said. “I run this office or you?”

  “I run this here mop.”

  “Shit, mop on then.”

  There were some chairs along the wall, across from the sheriff’s desk, and Shorty climbed up in one and sat down, his short legs jutting out. I took a chair beside Jimmie Sue. Eustace sat on the corner of the sheriff’s desk, and Hog lay on the floor. Spot started cleaning. All progress stopped while he slopped that bucket and mopped, making what looked to me more of a mess than a cleaning, but he stayed at it. He may not have been good, but he was determined. We lifted our feet, and he mopped beneath us. When he came to Hog, the beast looked up and snorted. Spot mopped a wide space around him. Then he had the sheriff put his feet on the desk, and he mopped under there. Spot said, “Y’all keep your feet up till it dries.”

  “Spot, for God’s sake,” the sheriff said.

  “God likes a clean room same as the next fella,” Spot said. We all kept our feet up while Spot took the keys off the desk and walked across his fresh-mopped floor, making wet footprints. “Don’t y’all worry none about that,” he said. “I’ll mop myself out when I finish in the cell.”

  He unlocked the cell, went inside. We stayed silent, watched him mop around Fatty and under the cot, then he nudged the slop bucket a little with the mop. I could hear water moving inside it; there was good possibility it would be filled with piss and turds. I feared he’d knock it over, but he didn’t. He just pushed it aside and mopped where it was, hooked the mop against it, slid it back in place. He mopped his way out, going back over his footprints, slinging the wet mop strands a little, hitting Fatty on the shoulder. He closed the cell door, locked it, started mopping again, working his way backwards, wiping out his footprints until he come to the back door. When he got there he tossed the keys on the sheriff’s desk and bumped his butt against the door so that it came open. He went out, and the door closed. We could hear him splashing the water out of the bucket on the ground.

  “He thinks he owns this goddamn place,” the sheriff said.

  “You want your trash carried out this week, and that chamber pot full of what I figure is your shit,” said a voice from behind the door, “you better treat me a little more special.”

  “Goddamn nigger has ears like a coyote,” the sheriff said.

  “You can be sure of that,” came Spot’s voice again. The sheriff sat silent, and after a while he got up and went to the back door an
d peeked out. “He’s gone,” he said. He looked at Eustace. “I didn’t mean nothing by that nigger remark.”

  “Hell, I know that,” Eustace said. “We been in enough tight spots together for me to know that. You don’t got to explain yourself. What you got to do is give us our reward money.”

  The sheriff turned crafty. You could see that craftiness light on him like a bird. His mouth twisted, and he showed his teeth, and even with his face like it was that smile lit him up and gave him a friendly look. The kind of friendly that makes you put a hand on your wallet.

  “You know we got to fill out papers, send them in, and wait,” the sheriff said.

  “Sooner they are filled out,” Shorty said, “the sooner the proper items will be in the mail and we can await reasonable return. Though we will have to leave for a while and come back through for it.”

  The sheriff nodded at Fatty in the cell. “How’d he manage to get all marked up like that?”

  “He resisted while we had him tied securely to a chair and beat him with a pistol,” Shorty said.

  “And a shotgun stock,” Eustace said.

  That made the sheriff laugh.

  “We told him to stay put,” said Eustace, “but he kept falling out of the chair. And he was tied to it.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the sheriff. “I seen him around before, but I ain’t got no paper on him.”

  “He robbed the bank just the other day,” Eustace said. “It’s gonna take a while for the bulletin to show up. Wouldn’t surprise me none, though, to find out there’s already some kind of paper on him. What we’d like to do is get those reward papers filled out, then we can be on our merry way. When we come back you might have some merry money waiting for us.”

  “You’re going after them others Red told me about?” the sheriff said.

  “My name is Jack,” I said.

  “What I said. Red.”

  I gave up after that.

  “That is our plan,” Shorty said. “Track them down, bring them back. One way or the other. File claims on them, receive the reward money. Simple, really.”

  “Y’all get killed, don’t come back,” said the sheriff. “I got them papers sent in, then who is that money going to? Maybe I should wait till you come back with the others before we mark up the forms.”

  “We will come back,” Shorty said. “And if we do not, we can make someone out as the beneficiary.”

  “Would he be someone we know?” the sheriff said.

  “It could very well be someone in this room,” Shorty said.

  The sheriff considered on this for a moment by leaning back in his chair and looking at a large, dark water spot on the ceiling. The ceiling sagged there, and pretty soon a good rain was going to break it through. It was right over his desk. It was like that sword of Damocles you hear about, and one day it was going to fall. Well, the sheriff sat there for some time looking at that water spot, and pretty soon all of us, except Hog, who had drifted off to sleep, were looking at that spot as if waiting for it to take on the shape of Jesus.

  Finally the sheriff got up, went to the telephone. He took a little cone off of a hook, took hold of a crank jutting out of it, and went to work squirreling it around. He’d come up on the toes of his boots each time he took the crank high, and then settle on his heels as the crank come down. Finally he quit cranking and started yelling at somebody in the phone as if they were standing across the street and he was in his doorway.

  After a moment he listened, and then said, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No goddamn shit. We’ll, I’ll be set on fire, and in fact I have been before.” He laughed at his own joke, said a few more uh-huhs, and hung up. He went back to his desk. “I called the doctor’s office over in Hinge Gate. Only one I know there has a phone. He said the bank was robbed.”

  “Now, ain’t that a surprise?” Eustace said. “We done told you that.”

  “I got some descriptions of the robbers, and that there fella does seem to fit the description of one of them, except they didn’t mention all them bruises and red marks.”

  The sheriff grinned when he said that.

  “So are we going to receive the financial reward or not?” Shorty said.

  The sheriff dug around in his desk drawer and came up with some papers. Shorty dropped out of his chair, waddled over to the desk, and began filling them out with a feather pen that he dipped into a little bottle of ink that the sheriff had taken out of a drawer and placed on his desk.

  “They have a thing now called a fountain pen,” Shorty said. “You should get you one.”

  “Naw,” the sheriff said. “I’m all right. I don’t like change. That phone and the two or three places it connects around here are too much. Besides, I was thinking you fellas, and the young lady with the cat in the tree, are heading out after them others pretty quick, and since I’m thinking about going with you, I don’t need to fill out the papers.”

  Shorty stopped writing while the sheriff’s words sank in. “Wait a moment. You are not a bounty hunter anymore, Winton. Why would you be going?”

  “I’m a goddamn sheriff,” he said. “You might need someone along like me.”

  “If you were to go with us,” Shorty said, “might your prisoner in there starve to death?”

  “Ha,” the sheriff said. “I got me a deputy. He’s out getting me and him lunch right now. There won’t be enough to share, by the way. We just got enough for ourselves.”

  “Ain’t nobody asking for none,” Eustace said.

  “Problem solved,” the sheriff said.

  “Look here, Winton,” Shorty said. “You do not have jurisdiction where we are going.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it really matters, do you?” the sheriff said.

  “I believe that is how the law works,” Shorty said. “You might want to read it sometime, as it is the sound basis for your job.”

  “It gets in the way of my arrests,” the sheriff said. “I like to think for myself, not let the law get all mixed up in it.”

  “That is our liberty, not yours,” Shorty said. “You have an obligation to the law. We do not.”

  “I think I can take that liberty, I want to,” said the sheriff. “I was thinking I could ride along, and we could split the money five ways. I say five because I assume Hog is not receiving a share. Four is already a good bite into it, so how would one more hurt? That way no one makes much, but we all make something.”

  “The girl is not receiving one red penny,” Shorty said. “She is merely along for decoration, and as a sometime saddle mount for the kid.”

  “Hey,” said Jimmie Sue.

  “You don’t have no call to talk to her like that,” I said.

  “Perhaps not,” said Shorty. “But that is exactly how I am talking, is it not?”

  Feeling Jimmie Sue had been insulted, I stood up. Jimmie Sue nabbed my pants leg with her thumb and forefinger and tugged. I paid it no mind. I said, “I’ve had just about enough of you, sir. First you have been rude to me and insulted my religion, and now you have insulted Jimmie Sue, who has been most kind to me.”

  “For four bits,” Shorty said.

  “That’s enough of that,” I said.

  “To get it straight,” Eustace said, “that was my four bits.”

  “Listen here, kid,” Shorty said. “If you think it has come time for you to kick the midget around the room, I assure you I will climb you like a chipmuk, land on your head like a ton of fat bricks, and drop you all the way to the bottom of hell. But if you feel the bear is in you, come ahead.”

  I clenched and unclenched my fists.

  Jimmie Sue, as if he had insulted someone other than her, and then me for taking up for her, said, “What’s a chipmunk?”

  Eustace said to me, “I think we should stay on friendly terms, cousin, and the best way for that to happen is for you to sit your ass down before Shorty tunnels up your butt and comes out your ear.”

  I didn’t like it, but the truth was, they were all I had. Besides, looking at Shorty, I saw
that he was indeed ready to climb me. I had seen him about that business earlier with the chicken fighter and wanted no part of it. Still, I felt that to sit down and say nothing in front of Jimmie Sue might scar me in her eyes. I was about to say something smart when Jimmie Sue tugged at my pants again, said, “You want to find your sister, don’t you?”

  I looked at her, nodded, and sat down.

  She whispered in my ear. “What’s a chipmunk?”

  “Kind of like a squirrel, I think. They got them out west, I figure. It really matters to you?”

  “I like to be up on things,” she said.

  “Well, then,” the sheriff said. “Now that it’s been determined that the girl don’t get a bite out of things and the boy has sat down, you can count me in, can’t you?”

  “I hate all you sons a bitches,” came Fatty’s voice.

  We looked over at him. He had gotten up and was sitting on the cot.

  “You shut up in there,” the sheriff said. “Or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”

  “I heard what you said about someone robbing a bank,” Fatty said. “But it wasn’t me.”

  “Oh, yeah, it was,” Eustace said.

  Fatty didn’t argue. He just sat on the cot with his head hung.

  About that time the front door opened and a man with a clean white hat sitting high on his head came in. He was wearing a gun slung low on his hip and tied down with cord against his leg. The holster tipped forward a little, and the butt of the gun was oversized for good gripping. The man himself had a fresh-scrubbed, pink face marked with shaving nicks. He had stuck bits of brown paper to them to soak up the blood. He was wide-eyed and had plenty of straw-blond hair poking out from under his hat. He was a little chubby, and his feet seemed small in his boots. They kind of sloshed when he walked.

  He saw Fatty behind the cage, sitting on the cot. He closed the door and went over there. “Why, look at him,” he said. “He looks like he’s been dragged through a patch of prickly pears.”