Mrs. Thompson nodded. “No, I don’t suppose you deputies will have any say in the matter. The people on the bottom never do. I expect that will be the county board’s decision. You all must be doing a fine job, though. Our grocery store has never been robbed—knock wood—so we have never had need of your services, but all the same I hope they find a suitable replacement soon.” She nodded toward the parlor. “I do wonder what she’s going to do, though, poor thing.”
Having no reply to this, Falcon nodded glumly, and looked around for someplace to eat a second slice of cake in peace.
He saw the sheriff’s youngest boy on a low wooden stool in the corner near the stove, with cherry pie stains around his mouth and red streaks dribbling down his shirt. The child’s ruddy, round face was tear-stained, and he was unusually quiet, but being as young as he was, he might not understand the finality of what had happened. He only knew that something was amiss, the house was full of strangers, and he had to be neither seen nor heard. The pie seemed to have taken his mind off the family’s troubles, though. To be given an unending supply of desserts for the asking, with no one scolding you for eating them, was a wonderful thing, unheard of before now. From time to time he would glance up at the table, trying to decide what he would have next.
The elder son, Eddie, came in through the back door. He nodded to Falcon, his face relaxing in relief at seeing someone he knew, someone other than another old biddy in the house. Eddie sat down on the floor and propped himself up against the pie safe—all the family’s chairs had been taken into the parlor, and there still weren’t enough seats to go around. Without a word, Mrs. Thompson took the boy a slice of winter apple pie on a tin plate. When she turned away, Eddie set it on the floor beside him, untouched.
Falcon sighed. This boy understood what was going on all right—his pinched face and numbed expression was proof of that. If anything, he looked worse than he had when he delivered the news that morning. He was still not wearing his Sunday clothes; his britches were worn and patched, and his faded shirt had seen better days. No one had cared this morning how he was dressed, least of all himself. He kept glancing at the back door, as if he wished he could be somewhere else, and was only waiting for the chance to bolt outside again and make a run for the woods. The boy was dry-eyed, though, a sturdy little fellow with his daddy’s chiseled face and cold blue eyes.
For his part Falcon was relieved to find another male in the house. He knew Eddie better than he knew anyone else in the sheriff’s family. A few weeks after Albert Robbins became sheriff, Eddie took to stopping by the office after school a few times a week. The newsreels and magazines were full of tales about daring outlaws robbing banks and staging gun battles with law officers. Obviously the boy thought there was a chance of such excitement happening here in town, although he didn’t seem aware of the danger that would pose. He saw it like a movie, exciting, but just harmless make-believe. Still, Eddie was proud of his father’s important new job, and somehow or other he wanted to be part of it.
The boy soon learned that being the sheriff in a sleepy rural county bore little resemblance to the responsibilities of the federal G-men, who chased bank robbers like John Dillinger and had shoot-outs with outlaws. Still, Eddie was proud of his father, and he was happy to mop the jail cells or empty the prisoners’ slop buckets, determined to be useful enough for his father to let him stay. After all, something might happen one day. You never knew.
He was a helpful, well-mannered boy, skinny and short for his age, but usually talkative and chipper around people he knew. Now, of course, his burden of grief made him somber and quiet. He stared at the blank wall opposite—or perhaps at his little brother, who was sitting on the wooden stool by the sink wall, still gobbling pie. Apart from the nod to Falcon when he first came in, the boy took no notice of anyone.
Falcon watched him for a few moments while Mrs. Thompson sliced another cake in anticipation of more visitors. He carried his second slice of pound cake over to where Eddie was sitting, and eased himself down next to him on the bare wood floor. He had intended to put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, as a condolence, but at the last moment he thought better of it. Eddie was encased in a shell of grief, not to be broken.
After a companionable silence, Falcon said, “I’m real sorry about your daddy. He was a good sheriff, and a good man.”
The boy nodded, staring down at his plate. “We knew he was ailing and this past week he got worse, but we never thought it would come to this.”
“Yeah. Nobody could have foreseen it.”
Mrs. Thompson stood over them. “If you boys are all right here, I’ll just go into the parlor and see if Mrs. Robbins or any of the others would like a bite to eat.”
“You go on, ma’am. We’ll be just fine here.” Falcon waited until she bustled away before he spoke again. “How are you faring, Eddie?”
The boy shrugged. “I’m bearing up all right, I reckon. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet. I keep thinking there must be some way to change what happened.”
“Most people would wish that in times of trouble.” Falcon wanted to ask about the funeral arrangements, but Eddie did not need to be reminded of such things. Anyway he judged that it was too soon yet. There hadn’t been time to make those decisions, certainly not time for the children to know about it. He decided to tell Roy that they all ought to offer to be pallbearers; he thought the sheriff would have liked that. “Are you managing here all right?”
Eddie shrugged. “I have to, don’t I? Somebody’s got to stay clear-headed enough to take care of Mama and Georgie, and there ain’t nobody else here but me. Reckon in a week or so I’ll have to hunt up a job somewhere.”
Falcon was sorry to hear a quaver in the boy’s voice, but he thought it was even sadder to see Eddie’s stoic determination to take on his father’s responsibilities. Eddie was a brave kid, but he was in over his head, trying to swallow his own grief because he had decided that he had to be the man of the family now. Sometimes it was hard to tell courage from pigheadedness.
Falcon picked up Eddie’s plate of untouched pie and handed it to him. Who knew when the kid had last eaten? “Better eat this. Never turn down a meal, especially in times like this. You’re going to need your strength to cope with what’s to come. Has your mother eaten anything?”
“Miz Thompson tried to make her take a plate. So did I. She keeps saying she’ll eat later, but I don’t think she wants to.” Eddie picked up the slice of pie and chewed it mechanically, his thoughts elsewhere. A tear slid down his cheek. “How can I take care of Mama and Georgie if I can’t even remember to eat?”
“You’re still a kid, son. It’s not your job to take care of everybody else. As for going to work, you’d best stay in school. Your daddy would have wanted you to. I do know that. He set a store by education. He said he wished he’d had more of it himself.”
Falcon wished someone had given him the advice he had just given Eddie. He was older when his own father passed away, but he had felt just the way Eddie did—that everything now was up to him. If he hadn’t tried to take on a man’s responsibilities before he was old enough to shave, maybe he could have worked his way through some local college. Then he might have become a lawyer instead of a county lawman. He patted the boy’s shoulder. “Yessir, Eddie, you do the best you can in your schoolwork, look out for your little brother there, and leave the rest of it to the grown-ups. Most of the folks in this town are good people. I’m sure they will see that you boys and your mama are all right.” He wasn’t entirely sure about that, but he hoped it would be the case.
Falcon tried to think of some way to help. He didn’t have any money to give the family, but he thought he might offer to get firewood for them and chop it if they needed him to do it.
“I’ll think it over,” said Eddie.
“And you can still come by the jail and help us out after school. I reckon we can afford to pay you.” Even if it came o
ut of his own pocket, Falcon would see that the sheriff’s son got paid for his work. He wondered if anybody else was looking out for the family.
“Do you have any kinfolk around, Eddie? Someone we can send word to?”
“My uncle Henry. Daddy’s brother. He farms the old homeplace. We sent word.”
“Well, that’s good. Maybe you boys and your mother can go stay with him on the farm.”
After a long pause Eddie said, “Maybe,” but he didn’t sound like he believed it, or maybe he didn’t want to go.
Falcon wondered what the story was there.
Georgie, who had eaten all the pie that hadn’t stuck to his face and clothes, headed toward the bedroom, calling out for his father to help him.
Eddie sighed. “Georgie’s gotta pee. We don’t let him go outside by himself on account of the train tracks.” He stood up and hurried after him, to head him off before the little fellow could reach the door of their parents’ room.
Falcon watched as Eddie led his younger brother out the back door and across the yard to the outhouse. After a few moments he got to his feet. He had postponed his duty long enough. It was time to pay his respects to the sheriff’s widow.
The rays of the winter sun slanted through the parlor window, too feeble to make the dust motes dance or to disturb the occupants of the room with an unwelcome blaze of light. It did, however, remind them that it was late afternoon. Through meaningful glances at one another, the ladies passed the signal that the visit could come to a close. Soon they began to drift away, one or two at a time. There was supper to fix at home.
A plump blond woman, one of the younger ones without a baby in tow, took her leave of Mrs. Robbins, crying and dabbing at her eyes with a paper handkerchief. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
Ellendor Robbins looked up sharply. It was the first time all day that Falcon had seen her actually paying attention. She didn’t say anything to the blonde, though. She just nodded and the woman turned and walked away, still weeping.
When Falcon finally edged into the parlor, the last of the visitors took it as an excuse to take her leave. Nodding briskly at Falcon, she headed for the door. In the kitchen doorway Mrs. Thompson was putting on her coat, getting ready to leave as well.
Where the devil were Roy and the others?
Duty was duty, but the prospect of being alone with a woman who might become hysterical made Falcon sweat. The widow was now alone, sitting on the horsehair sofa, staring at nothing. Each departing woman had shaken her hand or hugged her, murmuring one last bit of sympathy, and urging Ellendor to send for them if she needed anything. Falcon wondered if she had even noticed.
“I came as soon as I could, ma’am.” He sat down on the straight chair beside the sofa. He would have kept standing out of politeness, but, because he was tall, Mrs. Robbins would have had to crane her neck back to look up at him, and the distance would have required them to speak louder than he thought fitting under such solemn circumstances. He doubted that this poor haggard woman would care to stand on ceremony.
“We didn’t know.”
“No. Nobody did. I didn’t send for you because Albert was young and strong. I kept thinking he was going to get better. I couldn’t imagine him gone. We never thought on it, him and me.”
“Hardly anybody ever does, ma’am. Many’s the time we’ve been called out to the scene of an accident. Some poor fellow killed in a road accident, or a farmhand caught in the machinery; a hunter shot by his buddies, after a drop too much to drink. Then it would fall to one of us to go and inform the families that the man was gone.” He shook his head. “The way most of those folks carry on, you’d think that practically everybody lived forever. Never a thought in the world for worse coming to worst.”
“No. You can’t think like that—not for long. It would drive you mad to dwell on the possibility.” She kept twisting her hands together in her lap, and her voice quavered, but she did not cry.
“It ought to be done, though, ma’am. I don’t have a family myself, but I’ve resolved that if I ever do, I’ll see to it they make some kind of plan for themselves, if I’m no longer around. But maybe everybody tells himself that, and then he never gets around to it.”
He ran out of things to say, and her attention drifted away again. She stared out the window for a few moments before she turned back to him and said quietly, “Mr. Wallace, who was that woman who just left?”
He hesitated just a second too long. “Which one, ma’am? Seems to me like a whole crowd of them just left.”
“The . . . blond woman who was crying.” He wondered what words of description she had considered before she settled on “blond.” Dumpy? Cheap-looking? Brazen? All of them fit.
“Oh, you mean that hefty gal in the green dress?”
She nodded.
“Well, that was just Shelley. She’s a waitress. I almost didn’t recognize her without an apron and a coffeepot in her hand.”
“She seemed awful upset.”
“Well, all of us are, ma’am. We set a store by Sheriff Robbins. I reckon some folks just show their feelings more than others. Wearing their hearts on their sleeves, my mama used to call it. And that Shelley—why, she’d be in tears if you swatted a fly.”
“I see.” She seemed to be thinking about that, and then she said, “What happens now?”
“Now?” The question, and her way of asking it, took Falcon by surprise. Surely the minister had been to see her by now to settle all that. “Well . . . the funeral, I reckon,” he stammered. “You need to let people know when and where that will be so they can pay their last respects. We’d be proud to act as pallbearers—the other deputies and I—if you need any.”
“Thank you. I believe Albert would have liked that. But . . . I meant afterward. The job.”
“Oh, do you mean who will be sheriff now? That’s not up to us, but if it matters to you, you should ask one of the commissioners, but I don’t think you ought to worry about that. You need to set this family to rights.”
“Yes.”
“If there’s any way I can help you . . . Chopping wood, maybe. I’m right good at fixing things. And come spring I could dig you a garden plot out back—” Falcon shifted from one foot to the other, wondering why it embarrassed him to make the offer.
At the offer of help Ellendor blushed and turned away. “No. It’s kind of you, but we couldn’t ask you for any favors like that.”
“Well, it’s early days, ma’am. I know you’ll try to make do on your own, but it would be no shame if you can’t manage it. If you change your mind, all you have to do is ask.”
She nodded, just to say that she understood—not meaning that she ever would would take him up on the offer. She tried again. “When will they decide what happens now about Albert’s job?”
Falcon shook his head. “I don’t know. Soon, I guess. All I know is that I don’t want it.”
“Why? Because it’s dangerous?”
“No. It’s no more dangerous than being a deputy, maybe less so, since we do most of the legwork. But as for taking on the job of sheriff, it’s the paperwork that would do me in. All sorts of reports to fill out and warrants to read . . . I never was much good at spelling in school. I can read all right, but I’d rather be outdoors, using my eyes and ears instead of my writing hand, not cooped up behind a desk.”
Ellendor nodded. Since she had heard Albert say something of the sort about Deputy Wallace, she was not surprised. “What about Mr. Phillips and the others?”
“Roy? I don’t believe he’d care for the extra duties or the paperwork, either, but what would really put Roy off is the politicking. Being the official, elected or appointed, means having to smile and go to receptions and be sociable with the rich folks and the bureaucrats.”
“Yes. I’d consider that the hard part myself. But Albert took it in
stride.”
“Roy says that, if the truth be told, some of those people are just as much lawbreakers as the burglars and bootleggers we do arrest. But rich people mostly don’t get prosecuted. That’s what Roy says, anyhow. I never heard Sheriff Robbins opine on that particular subject, though.”
“No. You wouldn’t. Most of the time my husband didn’t let people know what he thought. Not even me sometimes. If there were anything about the job he didn’t care for, he wouldn’t let on. I know the paperwork was a trial to him. I helped him some with that.”
After a short, strained silence, Falcon said, “Why do you want to know who’ll take Sheriff Robbins’s place?”
“Well, I’d like to inquire as to who gets to decide that.”
“Oh, I see.” Falcon didn’t see at all, but he’d rather talk county politics with the grieving widow than have to hand her handkerchiefs while she wept. “Who does the deciding? Let’s see . . . when Mr. Tyler died, they appointed your husband to take his place until the election, didn’t they? And then he got elected himself. So like as not, the county will appoint somebody to take on the job now—if they can find somebody who will take it.”
“Yes. I see that. I can’t remember who exactly did the appointing when Albert took over. It didn’t matter to me then; all I really cared about was the extra money in his pay envelope. Who did the appointing? Do you remember?”
Prayers the Devil Answers Page 11
