Mockingbird Songs

by R.J. Ellory

  When Dr. Gordon came to them, it was almost dark outside. They had been there for more than two hours, and there couldn’t have been more than three dozen words shared.

  “He’s going to be fine,” were Gordon’s first words, and they produced a flood wave of relief. Grace shed tears. William held her. Evan just sat white-faced and wide-eyed.

  “He has a hairline fracture here,” Gordon said, indicating a point on his brow up and behind the right eye. “It really is very small, perhaps three-quarters of an inch, and it will heal quickly. There is no indication of internal bleeding, no hemorrhaging, no swelling of the brain. It was just a very bad concussion, and the external swelling is superficial. You get an impact, and blood rushes there as fast as possible to aid and speed healing. That’s all you’re seeing. Same principle as a bruise.”

  “That is wonderful news, Doctor,” William said. “Thank you so much.”

  Gordon smiled. Three hours earlier he’d had to tell a father that he wasn’t one, that his firstborn had died in childbirth. This was altogether better news to be delivering.

  “He may have headaches for a while, and he certainly shouldn’t be involved in anything strenuous or physically demanding for a month or so, but I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t recover fully and with no adverse effects.”

  William stood and shook Dr. Gordon’s hand. He clapped the man on the shoulder and gripped it firmly. “You have no idea how relieved we are,” William said, but Dr. Gordon reckoned he did.

  Carson stayed overnight. Grace stayed with him.

  On the run home, Evan sat up front with his pa and once again explained that he hadn’t been involved in the incident.

  “I know that, Evan. We’ve been distracted. We were just worried about Carson. If we didn’t pay you much attention, it was simply because of that.”

  Evan nodded. “Okay,” he said, seemingly satisfied. “I just didn’t want you and Ma thinking that maybe I pushed him for what he done to Rocket.”

  “Rocket?” William asked. “What did Carson do to Rocket?”

  “When he let him loose, remember?”

  Which William did, but that had been all of eight years earlier, and he couldn’t have thought of it more than twice or thrice since.

  It was an odd moment, somehow disquieting, and though they changed the subject and talked of many other things on the way home, William couldn’t get it out of his mind that there must still be some shadow of resentment between his youngest and his eldest.

  That did not sit right, and he made a mental note to speak of it with Grace.

  EIGHT

  Never one to judge by first impressions, Henry Quinn could not help but be a little surprised by Calvary. Expecting little more than a wide part in the road, Calvary seemed to him a fully-fledged town, long-established, boasting a main drag, a grain store, a couple of general mercantiles, a garage, two saloons, a pool hall, a brightly-lit supermarket, a boot maker, a saddler, and a host of other businesses and concerns that led away to a tall-spired church that had the look of fresh paint and generous accommodation.

  He pulled the Champ up to the curb in front of a soda fountain, well-kept but outdated, a range of barstools and the long curved counter visible from the street. Even the soda jerk wore an outfit that wouldn’t have gone amiss fifty years earlier.

  If anyone were angling to haul Calvary, Texas, into the 1970s, they were slacking on the job.

  Henry imagined there were a multitude of such places: quiet burgs minding their own affairs, unconcerned with whatever progress was being forged and hammered in San Antonio and Houston and Dallas. Rushing headlong toward the twenty-first century might be all the rage there, but this century was just fine for the likes of Calvary. Come to think of it, the last century might find even more favor.

  Up at the counter, the place empty but for himself and the man serving, Henry asked after Sheriff Riggs.

  The man smiled as if he knew something that was a secret to most others.

  “Well, son,” he said, “Sheriff Riggs is not only the law; he’s pretty much a law unto hisself also, so where he’d be right now I have not the slightest notion.”

  “Is there a Sheriff’s Office?”

  “Oh, I’d say there’d be about a half dozen offices where Sheriff Riggs attends to his business, if you know what I mean.”

  Henry frowned. “I don’t understand … I’m sorry—”

  “Merl,” the man said. “Name’s Merl. As I say, Sheriff Riggs’ll be out and about, doin’ something or other,” he explained, which in truth was no explanation at all. “Time we have?” he asked himself, and looked back at the clock on the wall. “Somewheres around four. I guess he’ll be back at the department office in an hour or so. You carry on the way you was headin’; maybe a quarter mile after the church, take a right—cain’t miss it ’cause it is the only right you can take—and you’ll see the building down there. Low-slung place, one story, painted blue. If there’s a sheriff’s car outside, then he’s in. If there isn’t, he ain’t.”

  “Appreciated, Merl.”

  “No bother, son. What’s your name, anyways?”

  “Henry. Henry Quinn.”

  “Well, good luck on finding Sheriff Riggs there, Henry Quinn,” Merl said, as if to imply that such a thing was some kind of Holy Grail escapade.

  Henry, resisting any sense of obligation to get a soda, went back to the pickup and drove past the church. He pulled up facing the turn of which Merl had spoken. He could see the roof of the blue, one-story building and guessed he would stay there until Sheriff Riggs appeared.

  For an hour he didn’t see a single car, and then a tired-looking Oldsmobile Cutlass crawled past. The driver’s eyes looked straight ahead, and the passenger—a girl of no more than five or six—stared at him blankly, as if seeing right through him, her expression unchanging even when he smiled. There was nothing to read into it, but it nevertheless provoked a sense of disquiet.

  Merl’s seeming air of dismissive nonchalance, the girl’s vacant stare, and here was Henry Quinn in his pickup waiting for the brother of his cellmate. As if to remind himself of his reason, Henry reached back into the knapsack and took out Evan’s letter. Sarah. That was it. Just the forename. Evan said that Sarah’s mother was dead and he did not know the name of the family who’d adopted her. All he otherwise knew was her date of birth—November 12, 1949—and the fact that his brother, Sheriff Carson Riggs of Calvary, Texas, would be able to help.

  As if to echo that thought in reality, a black-and-white appeared in Henry’s rearview and headed on down the road toward him. As it slowed and turned, he was aware of being scrutinized by the driver, by assumption alone the one and only Carson Riggs. Beneath the hat and behind the sunglasses, Henry had no way of determining if this was indeed Evan’s brother, but there was only one way to find out. He waited for the car to turn and head down to the Sheriff’s Department building and then followed on after it.

  Exiting his car, Henry felt sure that the driver of the sheriff’s vehicle was undoubtedly Carson Riggs. His sunglasses removed, there was a distinct likeness, perhaps not in specific physical characteristics, but certainly in presence and posture. Where Evan was rangier, attributable perhaps to the Reeves diet, Carson was heavier-set in all aspects. A whisker shy of six feet tall, his hair full yet grayed, he leaned against the car, his thumbs tucked into the Sam Browne belt, his hat now tipped back and his hand raised against the last glares of the setting sun.

  Henry got out of the pickup and paused before speaking.

  That pause was sufficient for Sheriff Carson Riggs to get the first words in.

  “Howdy there, son. Can we do for you?”

  “I was looking for Sheriff Carson Riggs.”

  “I’d call your mission a success, then.”

  “You are he?”

  “Am indeed, head to toe and all in between.”

  “My name is Henry Quinn.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, sir. It is.
I came looking for you on an errand from your brother.”

  Carson Riggs stood up straight, took off his hat, and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Well, well, well. If I’d had to make a list of all the things you’d say, that there’d be pretty much the last.”

  “He said you might be surprised.”

  “Well, you can tell him I was,” Riggs said, and put his hat back on.

  “I came to ask you about his daughter.”

  Riggs seemed to take a step back then, not physically, but spiritually. That was the only way Henry could have described it.

  “His daughter?”

  “Yes, sir. His daughter.”

  “I take back what I said earlier. That would have definitely been the last thing on my list.”

  “You know where she’s at?”

  “Not the faintest clue, Mr. Quinn. You have any idea how long ago this was?”

  “I know her name is Sarah, and she was born in November of 1949. Your brother said that you were her legal guardian after he was jailed.”

  “He said what?” Riggs looked positively baffled.

  “That you became her legal guardian.”

  Riggs smiled wryly, and yet there was a sympathetic tone in his voice when he spoke. “I guess more than twenty years in Reeves has finally turned the poor son of a bitch’s mind, Henry Quinn. He said that I became her legal guardian? His daughter? Hell, that is just the wildest notion I ever did hear. You do know she was adopted, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And did my hapless, hopeless, half-crazy brother happen to tell you the name of the people who adopted her?”

  “He said he didn’t know that.”

  “And I guess you met him in Reeves.”

  “Yes, sir. I did.”

  “Bunked with him?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And he set you on this foolhardy errand to find a girl he hasn’t seen for more than two decades who is someplace with a family whose name he does not know?”

  “That’s right.”

  Riggs smiled sardonically. “And you agreed to this?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “Might I ask why?”

  “Because he is my friend. Because he helped me out at Reeves.”

  “Well, son, you are a better man than me. I mean, hell, I’m a sheriff. I have the entire Redbird County Sheriff’s Department at my disposal, and I would be hard-pressed to find that girl. I think my brother has set you on a coon hunt where there ain’t no coons.”

  “Perhaps you would be willing to help me find her, Sheriff Riggs.”

  Riggs frowned and once again removed his hat, but this time he tossed it through the open window of his car. He eyed Henry warily, as if the young man had said something that might be read one way or another, and both meant some fashion of trouble.

  “And why would I do that?”

  Now it was Henry’s turn to be puzzled. “Because he’s your brother … because the girl is your niece—”

  “Well, son, you’re assuming that such a thing gives Evan Riggs an entitlement to my time and efforts, and I can assure you that it does not. You are assuming that just because he is my brother, he is also my friend.”

  Henry understood, or at least believed he did. Sheriff Carson Riggs’s brother was a convicted killer, not only that, but up in Reeves for life. To assume that there were issues between him and his sheriff brother would be pretty safe as assumptions went.

  Henry wondered where that left him and his obligation to Evan. He wasn’t no detective, and he sure as hell couldn’t afford to hire one. Three years’ prison salary amounted to three hundred and eighty-five dollars and change, and with the little he’d given his ma, the work on the car, just his expenditures since leaving Reeves, Henry Quinn had less than three hundred left.

  “So, I don’t know where that leaves you, son. Guess you could ask around. Some of the old-timers might be able to help you some. Not many of them go back that far, but if you check in the saloon, you’ll see ’em. I’m sure a slug or two of the good stuff’ll get ’em talking.”

  “That’s much appreciated, Sheriff. Thank you for your time, and I am sorry if I stirred up something you aren’t comfortable talking about.”

  “Oh, don’t give it a thought,” Riggs said. “I’m just a little saddened to know that poor old Evan has finally lost his senses.” There should have been a smile in his voice, but Henry didn’t hear it. “I do have one question for you, though.”

  Henry knew what it was before it was asked.

  “What you do to get yourself in a place like Reeves?”

  “Malicious wounding, unlawful possession.”

  “How long they give you for something like that?”

  “Three years.”

  “Seems like a darned fool thing to have brought on yourself.”

  “It was.”

  “But you is all rehabilitated now, I guess.”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “And you have a probation period?”

  “No, sir. I do not. I am required to inform the authorities if I want to leave the state anytime in the next year, but no probation.”

  “Good ’nough. ’Cause I don’t wanna be hearing about no trouble in town.”

  “You won’t, sir.”

  Riggs stood a little taller. “I know that you can’t generalize about these things, but I guess there are folks whose trust you gotta earn, and there are those who trust you from the get-go and will go on doing so until you betray that trust. I err toward the latter philosophy, despite the number of people who try to dissuade me from it.” Riggs smiled coolly. “Don’t be one of those people, Mr. Quinn.”

  “I won’t, sir. I am not here to cause any trouble for anyone.”

  “Good to hear. Now, I guess you is plannin’ on stayin’ overnight.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Ask at the Calvary Mercantile. Man there name of Knox Honeycutt. He’ll see you right.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Henry replied.

  “Don’t mention it,” Riggs replied, and headed into the office building.

  Henry stood there for a moment, uncertain as to how he felt. Like he’d left the store only to realize he’d been short-changed. More than that, like Sheriff Carson Riggs had just told him to leave Calvary without saying any such thing at all.

  NINE

  For a long time everything stayed the same, and then suddenly everything changed.

  Because of the girl.

  Grace knew it, could see it as plain as day after night, and even though William wasn’t blessed with female intuition, he could see it, too.

  Neither believed it was anything so troublesome as jealousy or envy. It didn’t possess that dark a shadow. Perhaps it was nothing but physics, the simple truth that the world appeared to work in binary ways. Two were company, as they say, but three was plain awkward.

  Rebecca Wyatt was fifteen years old. It was the outset of 1938, and just two weeks after the New Year’s celebrations, the Riggses were looking at Carson’s eighteenth. No doubt about it, the boy had become a man, at least physically speaking.

  “He doesn’t catch fire like Evan,” William said, and not for the first time.

  “Longer fuse doesn’t necessarily mean any less of a firework.”

  William smiled at her. “You ever anything but glass half full, Grace Riggs?”

  “Saddens me that he’s a disappointment to you,” she said.

  “I don’t think—”

  Grace touched her husband’s sleeve as they sat there at the kitchen table. It was early morning, a few days before Carson’s birthday, and neither boy was yet awake. “I see it, William. I reckon Carson sees it, too, though he doesn’t know what he’s seeing. Must be hard work being the less favored.”

  “I don’t intend to be that way toward him.”

  “I don’t think you ever intended a mean thing in your life. Sometimes the way we want to be and the way we are just don’t work out. People c
an see it, and sometimes you are easier to read than the funny pages.”

  “Is it that obvious?” William asked.

  “It is obvious how much you love Evan,” Grace said, and would not be pressed for further comment.

  And then they spoke of the girl.

  “She is a beautiful girl,” Grace said. “Will be an even more beautiful woman. But she’s a gypsy.”

  William frowned.

  “No mother, raised by her father, and she has an errant spirit,” Grace explained.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Some people are content with whatever life brings to the doorstep. The rest go out and look for more. Carson is the first. Evan is the second. I think our Miss Rebecca Wyatt is far more like Evan than she is Carson.”

  “She’s a child,” William ventured.

  “No, she isn’t,” Grace replied. “Girls get grown faster than boys in every way. And she’s a bright flame, that one. She’ll go one of two ways. She’ll want someone to keep her grounded, remind her that life isn’t all Ferris wheels and fireworks, or she’ll do what Evan’s going to do.”

  “What Evan will do?”

  “You don’t think he’s going to run out of here the first moment he sees a way? That boy is going to take the road less traveled; of that I am sure. Music, you know? He’s an artist. He’ll never be a farmer. What Carson will do, I do not know, but those boys could not be less alike if we had planned it.”

  “I see how Carson looks when she is around,” William said.

  “And I see how she looks when Evan shows up,” Grace replied.

  “We shall see who wins, eh?”

  “My concern, if you want to know the truth, is that everyone will lose.”

  “I would hate to see either of them hurt.”

  Grace smiled, her expression slightly distant, as if remembering something tinged with sadness. “Steel yourself, William Riggs. Life has a habit of disappointing most of us.”

  The birthday arrived. Carson Riggs, eighteen years old. Hard to fathom how such a number of years had passed, but they had. The boy was a man, and Grace had him in a suit and a bow tie, his hair slicked with pomade, his shoes shined Sunday best. He looked the part more than he acted it, but it was his birthday, so allowances were made.