Mockingbird Songs

by R.J. Ellory

  Carson Riggs was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “I guess we both know where we stand, then, little brother.” He smiled like a rodent. “I’m glad we had this little talk,” he added. “We should talk more often, don’tcha think?”

  Evan opened his mouth to speak, but Carson turned and walked back into the house before he had a chance.

  At the end of January, Evan told his parents that he was going back to Austin.

  “It’s where I should be,” he explained.

  William, routinely laconic but periodically eloquent, said, “We understand, Evan. We knew you were only here for a short while. You have the whole world out there waiting for you now, and we couldn’t be more proud. We couldn’t be more proud of both of you, to be honest.”

  Grace took Evan’s hand. “We shall have a party,” she said. “Friday evening. Everyone should come. Let’s make it a dance. We could use the old barn, put some lights up, and you could sing for us.”

  “Oh, Ma, really? You don’t want me singin’, surely?”

  “Why the hell not?” William said. “You’re a singer, ain’tcha? Damned find one, if that reccud o’ yours is anything to go by.”

  “One song,” Evan said.

  “To hell with that, boy,” William said. “You can sing at least two or three. I’ll get them boys over from Ozona, them fiddle players, that fella with the stand-up bass. You can make a band and do some real entertainment.”

  It was the expression on his mother’s face that sold the deal: excited anticipation with a real potential for disappointment if he refused.

  “Okay,” Evan said. “Let’s have one hell of a party.”

  When Carson heard about it, he was uncertain.

  “Maybe there’s an ordinance about public performance and the consumption of alcohol and whatever,” he said at Sunday dinner.

  “I am sure there’s gonna be an ordinance about everything somewhere,” his mother said, “and every single one of them designed to stop people enjoying themselves. Fact of the matter, Sheriff Riggs, is that we’re having a going-away party for your brother, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You got a problem, then the first two arrests will be your father and me.”

  Carson smiled. “Looking forward to the party,” he said, which was not at all what he meant.

  Had the party been derailed, a great many things might have been a great deal different. But it wasn’t. It was a done deal. Invites went far and wide, and those musician boys from Ozona agreed to come on over the Wednesday beforehand and rehearse up some numbers with Evan. They were proud to be asked and said they could gather up four fiddles, two more guitars, a couple of washboards, and a double bass. Grace and Rebecca were in charge of the food, William Riggs and Ralph Wyatt in charge of the liquor. Carson was given the job of fixing up lights and power supplies and whatnot for the old barn, that same barn where Evan had once kept Rocket, same barn out of which Carson had scared the poor thing. But that had been a different age, the better part of nineteen years before, and to anyone beyond the immediate confines of the Riggs family, the resentments and petty jealousies that had plagued them as children were a thing of the past.

  If only that had been the case, then the events of the early hours of Saturday morning, February 5, 1949 might never have taken place.

  But they did take place, and—in hindsight—it was doubtful that anything could have been done to stop them.

  THIRTY

  “You done poked a hornet’s nest, son,” Glenn Chandler said as Henry got out of the truck in front of the house.

  Evie walked to the porch steps and looked up at her pa. He had on a face that she rarely saw.

  “Sent one of his boys out here to warn you off.”

  “Warn us off?” Evie asked. “Who was it? What did he say?”

  “It was Alvin Lang, Carson Riggs’s deputy, and he said that Henry should find his way home right about now.” Chandler looked down at his daughter. “And you, my sweet, should be a mite more careful about the company you keep; otherwise there mightn’t be work for you in Calvary.”

  “What did you say?” Henry asked.

  Chandler smiled. “I said I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, and that if he had business with you, then he should take it up with you. I told him I wasn’t no messenger boy for the Redbird County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Go, Daddy!” Evie said, laughing, but her father didn’t join her in the laughter.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re digging up, but what I do know is that Carson Riggs ain’t happy about it. These are people you don’t want to upset, for a great deal of reasons.”

  “We went over to Odessa,” Evie said.

  “What the hell for?”

  “See Carson and Evan’s ma in the psych place they got up there at Ector County Hospital.”

  Glenn Chandler seemed to take a step back, though in truth he didn’t move an inch. “You did what?”

  “We went on out to—” Henry started.

  Chandler raised his hand without looking at Henry. “I’m asking my girl, son,” he said, his tone direct, unflinching.

  “Pa?” Evie said, her voice tremulous.

  Chandler took a moment and then came on down the porch steps. He waved at the pair of them. They came around the front of the trunk and stood before him as if scolded kids. Henry had his hands clasped behind his back, just as he’d been required to stand when being addressed by a boss at Reeves.

  “People’s lives are people’s lives,” Chandler said. “Now, I don’t know what kind of deal you had with Evan back there in Reeves, son, but Evan ain’t Carson, that’s for sure. Seems to me that whatever you tryin’ to dig up is something he wants to stay buried. He lost his father, his mother’s out there in Ector, his brother’s in jail for murder, and now some ex-con snot-nosed punk comes sniffin’ around his personal affairs like a hungry stray in the yard. Maybe they’s all dead bodies up in that man’s yard, maybe not. I don’t know, and I don’t care to know. What I do care about is that I got a sheriff’s deputy, in uniform, mind—Sam Browne and .44 to boot—over my place on a Sunday morning, telling me that Carson Riggs don’t much care for my daughter getting herself up in his business. That’s gonna give a father some cause for concern.”

  “Daddy, I’m more than capable of takin’ care of myself, and Henry hasn’t gotten me into anything that I didn’t want to get into.”

  Chandler smiled. “So tell me, sweet pea, what is it exactly that you pair of busybodies have gotten yourself into?”

  Evie glanced at Henry. They both knew the answer to the question, as did Glenn Chandler.

  “’S what I figured,” he said. “In fact, I’d go so far to say that if you took everything you know between you and put it together, you wouldn’t even reach half a clue.”

  “Pa … Henry made a promise. He gave his word to Evan.”

  “I understand that, sweetheart, but that is between Henry and Evan, and it doesn’t include you. I find out that whatever is going on here is jeopardizing your safety, then I am gonna get concerned, and I am going to dissuade you from pursuing this. I am your father, Evie, and that is my instinct. And your mother would say the same thing.”

  Evie shook her head. “No, she would not.”

  Chandler looked momentarily surprised. “You’re telling me what my wife would have thought?”

  “I’m telling you what you know she would have said about this, Pa. Last-chance saloon for the lost and lonely. That’s what she used to say, right? This house is the last-chance saloon for the lost and lonely. You told me that. You told me that she never backed off, that she always spoke her mind, that she always had something to say about the things she disagreed with. You told me that she was the toughest woman you ever met.”

  “Well, she ain’t here now, Evie, and you are, and that’s what I have to deal with.”

  “No, Pa, what you have to deal with is that she and I are the same … at least in that way, and I have made a decisi
on. I want to help Henry keep his word to Evan, and you have to accept that I am not a child no more, and that’s just the way it is.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yep. End of discussion.”

  Chandler turned to Henry Quinn. “And what do you have to say about all of this, Henry Quinn from Reeves County Prison?”

  “I don’t have anything to say, Mr. Chandler. I understand what you’re feeling, and I understand that Carson Riggs sent his deputy over here to warn us off, but I guess I’m as stubborn as your daughter. I made a promise to a man who saved my life, and I reckon that until I’ve done what he asked me, this is not really my life. That may sound crazy, but it’s the way I think. If I were up there in Reeves and I knew I was never gonna get out, and this girl was all I had in the world, would I want to say sorry? Would I want to make some kind of reparation? I think I would, sir. Evan Riggs can’t do that, but I can, and I said I would, so I’m going to.”

  “And if folks get hurt in the process? People who have no right getting hurt?”

  “I don’t intend that, sir,” Henry said. “Least of all Evie. And she can quit right now, and if she does, I’ll be sorry about that, but it won’t stop me.”

  Chandler smiled. “Jeez, you pair are so alike, it’s painful to watch.”

  “No one is gonna get hurt, Daddy,” Evie said. “I mean, what’s he gonna do? Kill us?”

  “He’s the law, sweetheart. Don’t be so naive. Fifteen minutes and he could have Henry here back in Reeves for another half dozen years. He’s been sheriff in Calvary since the war. You don’t think that says something about the sway he holds over there? Whatever the deal is with Redbird County Sheriff’s Department, I am thinking that Carson Riggs is the grand dragon of all that and more besides. He’ll find out that you went up to Odessa. You think he won’t? Christ, Evie. You went to see his mother in the hospital. What were you thinking?”

  “We were thinking that his mother might be able to shed some light on where Evan’s daughter is,” Henry said.

  “And?”

  “She has pretty much lost the plot,” Henry said. “She’s been up there at least fifteen years. She’s an old woman. She didn’t make a great deal of sense, but she spoke of someone called Rebecca, and from what we can guess, Rebecca was up there at Ector County, too. Seems that Grace Riggs visited her, and then Carson told her not to visit anymore. Anyway, from what she said, it seems that this Rebecca is dead, may even have died in Ector itself.”

  “The girl’s mother?” Glenn asked. “Is that who this Rebecca is?”

  “That’s what we think,” Evie said.

  “And the daughter’s name is Sarah, right?”

  “Right,” Henry replied.

  “And you didn’t think to ask them if this Rebecca died in their care, seeing as how you were already in the building causing trouble?”

  Henry looked at Evie. Evie looked right back.

  “Not exactly Holmes and Watson, are you?” Chandler said, to which neither of them had an appropriate answer.

  “Easy enough to find out, I guess,” Chandler said, “but the more people you speak to, the more questions you ask, the more certain Sheriff Carson Riggs will know what you’re doing.”

  Glenn Chandler took a step forward and put his hands on Evie’s shoulders. “If I lose you …” He hesitated, then shook his head and sighed deeply.

  “Pa—” she started, but her father raised his right hand and placed it against her cheek. He kissed her forehead, and then he turned to Henry.

  “I said it before and I’ll say it again. Anything happens to her, Mr. Quinn …”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen, Pa,” Evie interjected.

  “I’ll take care of her, sir,” Henry said. “I give you my word.”

  “So be it,” Chandler said, and with that he turned and walked back to the house.

  Henry reached out his hand. Evie took it.

  “He sent Alvin Lang out here,” she said.

  “You know him?”

  “Some.”

  “I met him when I arrived,” Henry said. “When I went down to Riggs’s office. He’s a big guy, and like Riggs said, he’s the grandson of the governor or whatever.”

  “Big guy with a small dick, I reckon,” Evie said.

  “You know this from personal experience?”

  “Fuck off, Henry Quinn.”

  Henry laughed.

  “So where now?”

  “Calvary cemetery first, then Clarence Ames,” Henry said.

  “Last thing Clarence said to us was something about buryin’ ourselves. You think it was a hint?”

  “No idea, but I want to see if there are any Riggs graves out there, or graves for anyone called Sarah who could be the right age for Evan’s daughter. If not, I want to go back to Ector and get into their records office.”

  “You ain’t quittin’ ’til you know for sure what happened, are you?”

  Henry nodded. “Here until the last dog is hung, little lady.”

  Evie laughed. “Who the hell talks like that, Henry Quinn? I mean, really? ’Til the last dog is hung. You are such a loser.”

  “Enough of that there mouth, woman,” Henry snarled. “Ain’t you got some cleanin’ to do?”

  She swung her hand backward and connected with his shoulder. “Just get in the car, will you?” she replied. “Christ, sometimes you are fuller of shit than a Christmas goose.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The world came to see Evan Riggs. At least that’s the way it seemed.

  It had to be said that Carson held up his end of the deal, and the old barn where Rocket once lived was transformed into something special. Carson and a handful of men from town—George Eakins, Warren Garfield, Roy Sperling among them—took one side off the building and created an open stage. They set a platform for the band inside, hung lights all over, pulled hay bales out and covered them in tablecloths where food could be set down. Though it was February, it was temperate, somewhere in the late sixties; it was warm enough for folks to be out there in shirtsleeves and cotton print dresses, cool enough to dance and not have folks passing out from heatstroke.

  And the boys built a dance floor, as well; they dragged a couple of dozen rail sleepers down from the lumberyard, set them in front of the barn to the right, laid floorboards over and nailed them fast. It was a sight to see, watching them put it all together like a Swiss chronometer.

  Carson ran the whole thing like a site foreman, barking orders, telling Roy Sperling to “heft it like a man, not a schoolgirl,” to which Sperling recommended he “go soak your head in a bucket of bullshit, Carson … I’m a doctor, not a goddamned longshoreman.” It was good-humored, and Evan made a point of getting out there and pitching in.

  “Stay out of it,” Carson told him. “Know you can drag sleepers and nail down boards with the best of us, but what would happen if some darn fool like Warren Garfield dropped a hammer on your hands, eh? The man’s a lawyer, not a carpenter. You stick to your rehearsals; we’ll build you your Grand Ole Opry.”

  For the first time in as long as Evan could recall, there seemed to be no tension between them. It was a good feeling. Maybe Carson was mellowing. He was twenty-nine years old, had been sheriff for five of those years, and perhaps the simple fact of having to deal with real peoples’ lives day after day had settled him somewhat. Carson had never been the soul of patience, but a law-enforcement job demanded a good deal of patience, if only to contend with the utter stupidity and ignorance of some folks. Other than that, it required more than enough sensitivity, delivering up bad news about car wrecks, arms and legs lost in agricultural machinery, the mess left behind after a once-in-a-decade homicide. Such business as this was all sheriff business, and Carson appeared to have grown into it without the expected awkwardness that folks had predicted. Maybe, after all was said and done, Carson was the better choice for Rebecca. Evan could see that, and he loved her so much that he couldn’t find it in himself to resent her for loving someone else, even if tha
t someone else was Carson. Part of being human seemed to be reconciling oneself to the fact that one could not always have what one wanted. As with Lilly, so with Rebecca, but for different reasons. Lilly denied herself the world. Rebecca just denied herself the limits of human experience.

  By late afternoon on Friday the fourth, the Riggs farm was already like the scene of a wedding party. There was an excitement in the air, perhaps nothing more than the thrill of having a real-live celebrity music star in Calvary, perhaps for reasons known only to those attending. Whatever the motivation, it didn’t matter; the atmosphere was everything, the hubbub and the noise, the flowers, the food, the plates of baked goods and cured hams and pitchers of home brew that were endlessly ferried from the backs of cars and trucks and station wagons. Clarence Ames and his wife, Laetitia, showed up with a whole hog—head, tail, and all in between—and William Riggs and George Eakins helped him rig up a spit. They had that thing turning by four in the afternoon, and by six the smell was sufficient to draw even greater crowds from Lord only knew where.

  Grace Riggs watched her son take the stage at eight, and the roar of voices must have come from nigh on three hundred throats. She didn’t know for sure, and she sure wasn’t of a mind to be doing any counting, but that was the way it seemed. A sea of smiling faces right across the front yard and all the way down to the barn.

  William stood beside her, snaked his arm around her waist.

  “Our boy done good,” he said.

  “They both done good,” she replied, and was about to say something further when she was interrupted by Evan and his pickup band breaking forth into “One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart).” Evan and the boys had worked up a number of covers, some of the recent hits from Ernest Tubb, Tex Williams, and Bob Wills, but it was Evan’s songs that the people of Calvary, Ozona, and Sonora had come to hear, and when he hit the opening lick of “I’ll Try and Be a Better Man” the place went crazy. Double bassist fell apart in the middle eight, but no one seemed to notice, and if they did, they didn’t care. The dance floor looked like it would drop right through the sleepers, but people kept on dancing. Evan was grinning like a fool, making quips about the folks he knew, telling tales of how such and such a line was inspired by some darn fool stunt he and Carson had pulled when they were kids, and it seemed like the world that had showed up was a world owned outright by the Riggs brothers.