The Edge of Town

by Dorothy Garlock

  Chief Appleby hurriedly passed the people milling around on the sidewalk in front of the stores. The revival meeting had just ended, and a number of cars were parked along the street. To the folks who came to town only on Saturday night, it was a chance to visit with friends and get caught up on the news. The crowd parted to allow the new police chief to pass, then their eyes followed him to the telephone office.

  Mrs. Ham looked up when the chief came in the door but continued to talk into the mouthpiece that hung around her neck.

  “Chief Appleby is here now, Mrs. Reynolds. I must hang up so I can tell him what you’ve told me.” Mrs. Ham, a petite blonde, widowed by the war, pulled the plug from the switchboard. “Mrs. Reynolds says that something is going on in the house across the street from hers. Otto Bloom and his wife are fighting. Their little boy ran over to tell her that his papa was beating his mama. Mrs. Reynolds says hurry. He has hurt her before and could kill her this time.”

  “Where do they live?” the chief asked on the way to the door.

  “Two blocks toward the river from the corner and a half block north. Mrs. Reynolds will be waiting in the yard,” Mrs. Ham called as Corbin shot out the door, letting it bang shut behind him.

  Corbin could run a half mile without breaking into a sweat. He liked to run. During his high school days he had been state champion in the mile and long-distance races and had considered training for the national competition, but his need to hold a job had prevented that. However, to stay fit he went out into the country once a week, usually on Sunday, and ran a mile or two.

  He trotted effortlessly down the middle of the darkened street, holding the gun on his hip to keep it from bouncing. He had just turned and slowed when a woman, clutching the hand of a small boy, stepped out from behind a tree.

  “Hurry! She’s crying and begging.” Then they heard clearly the sound of a crash coming from the house.

  Corbin hardly paused to hear what the woman said. He bounded up the porch steps and flung open the door. He could hear a woman sobbing and pleading in the next room. Long strides took him to the doorway.

  “Don’t …Otto. Please—”

  “What’s going on here?”

  A man was holding a woman by the hair. She was on her knees and he was slapping her with his free hand. He looked up at Corbin with bloodshot eyes.

  “Who …the hell are you? Get outta my house!” The words were slurred.

  “I’m the police. Let her go.”

  “This’s my woman. This’s my house.” The clean-shaven man wore a white shirt splattered with blood. He jerked on his wife’s hair. She cried out and he drew back his fist.

  “Hit her again, and I’ll beat you to a pulp.” Corbin sprang across the room and grabbed the man’s arm. “Let go of her hair, you spineless worm, or by God, I’ll break your damn arm.”

  Yelping at the pressure, Otto released his grip on his wife. She fell back sobbing. With each sob, blood spurted from her nose. The apron that covered her dress was soaked. The thin brunette, who may have been pretty once, scrambled to her feet and stood back against the wall.

  The chief jerked the abuser’s arm behind his back. The man began to struggle.

  “Ya got no right to be messin’ in my ’ffairs—”

  Corbin had had plenty of experience in dealing with tough drunks while he was in the army, and he subdued and handcuffed the pudgy man easily. In the process Corbin’s foot kicked something solid. He looked down to see a large chunk of coal on the floor.

  “Did he hit you with that coal?” he asked the cowering woman.

  “He threw it. It hit me on the back.”

  Corbin jerked the cuffed hands up between the man’s shoulder blades. He yelped in pain.

  “Yeow! Ya …son-of-a—”

  “Call me that and I’ll throw both your damn shoulder bones out of joint. A man that’d beat a defenseless woman isn’t fit for crow bait.”

  “He’s …drunk,” the woman said between sobs.

  “You need to see the doctor, lady. I’ll put this pile of dung away and send the doc down.”

  “You’re takin’ him?”

  “Yeah, I’m taking him. He can sober up in jail.”

  “Now, listen here”—Otto was becoming agitated again—“ya got no right to take me nowhere. I work for Mr. Wood—”

  “I don’t care if you work for the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re going to jail. Not because you’re drunk, but because of what you’ve done to this woman.”

  “Couldn’t you …just tie him up here …till he sobers up?” The woman’s muffled voice came through the cloth she was holding to her nose. “He could lose his job.”

  “No. He’s going to jail.” Corbin shoved the man against the wall. “Stay there,” he commanded. He took the woman by the arm and led her to a chair. One of her eyes was swollen shut and would likely be very black in a short time. Corbin began to grow angry when he looked over at Otto Bloom. The man’s expression was one of an outraged child who had been picked on by a bully.

  Corbin took a minute to look around. The house was surprisingly neat except for the smashed dishes and food on the floor. The table had been set for supper when the fight began.

  “Your boy is with the lady across the road. I’ll ask her to come stay with you until the doctor gets here—”

  “No. I don’t want …her to see me—”

  “Ma’am, your nose is broken. You could be bleeding inside. You’d better get tended for the boy’s sake.”

  “She’s not hurt. She’s puttin’ on, like she always does.”

  Corbin turned on the man. “Shut your mouth,” he snarled. “If I hear another word from you, I’ll take out this blackjack and do to you what you’ve done to her.”

  Anger did to Corbin what running didn’t. He was breathing very fast. Even in his drunken condition, Otto Bloom knew he was in danger of being beaten with the blackjack. When the tall angry man grabbed his arm again, Otto scrambled to his feet and let himself be pushed out of the house, onto the porch and out into the yard.

  “Mrs. Reynolds,” Corbin called from the front yard and waited for the woman and the boy to appear. “Will you stay with Mrs. Bloom until the doctor gets here? I’ll have the telephone operator send him down.”

  “Doctor? I’m not payin’ no doctor,” Otto started to protest.

  Only the wide frightened eyes of the boy stopped Corbin from hitting the drunk. With one hand he clamped Otto’s arm, fingers pinching so tightly the man yelled; with the other, Corbin patted the child on the head.

  “Go on in and help your mama, boy. She needs to know that you’re all right and that there’s one real man in the family.”

  The boy made a wide circle around his father and ran into the house. Mrs. Reynolds followed.

  Corbin propelled Otto down the middle of the street. He debated about marching him down Main Street in full view of the Saturday night crowd but changed his mind and took him in the back door of the courthouse. Otto began to threaten.

  “You’ll lose your job. Mr. Wood’s not going to like it.”

  Corbin pushed him into a room that held only a cot and a slop jar. A dim light from the street came through a small window near the ceiling.

  “You can’t leave me here,” Otto said, suddenly becoming aware of his situation.

  Corbin didn’t bother to answer. He took the key from his pocket and unlocked the handcuffs.

  “I’m … not staying here.”

  Corbin went to the door without answering. “I’ll be back in the morning.” He closed it and twisted the key in the lock.

  “Mr. Wood will fire you for this!” The yell reached the chief as he was walking up the stairs.

  The next morning Amos Wood and Mrs. Bloom were waiting on the courthouse steps when Corbin came to check on his prisoner.

  “We’re here to get Otto. Let him out,” Wood demanded without so much as a greeting.

  “That’s up to Mrs. Bloom.” The pair followed Corbin down the stairs. At the
door of the locked room, he turned and looked at the woman. Both her eyes were black, a strip of tape crossed her nose, her lips were puffed and her cheeks were bruised.

  “Get on with it,” Wood snarled. “I’ve not got all day.”

  “Look at her, goddammit!” Corbin snarled. “Don’t you care what this man did to his wife?”

  “What happens between a man and his wife is no concern of mine … or yours.”

  Corbin eyed him with contempt before turning to Mrs. Bloom and speaking to her gently.

  “Ma’am, you’ve got a right to press charges against him for what he did to you.”

  “I can’t. He was …drunk—”

  “The next time he could hurt you real bad.”

  “I can’t—” Came the whispered response.

  “You heard her, Appleby. She’ll not press charges. She knows what side of the bread her butter’s on.”

  “What’s your interest in this, Wood?”

  “He works for me. I look out for the men who work for me,” Wood answered belligerently.

  “How about their families? Do you look out for them, too?

  “I pay a good wage. That takes care of them.”

  Corbin gave him a disgusted look and turned to the woman.

  “Are you sure you want me to let him out, Mrs. Bloom?”

  She nodded, and Corbin knew that she would not listen to any argument. She had been beaten down until she no longer had strength to stand up for herself. And Wood, the fat toad, for some reason, owed something to Otto Bloom.

  Corbin Appleby was furious as he unlocked the door.

  * * *

  “I didn’t want to ride in his old car anyway.” Jill reached the end of the lane, turned and marched off down the road toward town.

  “I wanted to ride,” Joy whined.

  “Honey, the car wouldn’t start this morning and if we waited much longer we’d be late for church,” Julie explained.

  “We could’ve gone in the wagon. Jack said he’d hitch up.” Jason was sulking. He had wanted to stay and watch Joe and his father work on the car.

  “It’s only a twenty-minute walk to the church. We’ll be there by the time Jack could hitch up. Besides, it’s all downhill.” Julie tilted her hat to keep the sun off her face.

  “I’ll be all sweaty by the time we get there,” Jill called over her shoulder.

  “We’ve had the car only one day and already you’ve all gotten lazy,” Julie teased. “If we didn’t have it you would have walked to church without a complaint.”

  “I wish we didn’t have it.” Jill’s bad mood of last night had carried over to this morning. “She’ll ride in it more than we will.”

  “Joe said that if they got it started, he’d be at the church at noon to take us home. Joy, stop kicking your toes in the dirt. You’re getting your stockings dirty.”

  “Papa won’t let him drive it,” Jason said.

  When they turned a bend in the road, Julie’s saw a man running up the hill toward them. What in the world? Had something bad happened?

  “What’s he running for?” Jason asked the obvious question.

  In his shirtsleeves and wearing lightweight shoes laced up over his ankles, the tall, lean man kept up a steady pace as he ran toward them. His elbows were bent and his arms moved in conjunction with each stride. Dark hair flopped down on his forehead.

  He moved over to the far side of the road as he approached them but never broke stride. His eyes flicked quickly over the children, then settled on Julie. He smiled.

  “Mornin’, ma’am.”

  “Mornin’.” Julie hardly had the word out of her mouth by the time he passed. Astonished, she and the children turned to watch him. They had never seen a grown man running along the road. She wondered where he was going.

  “Do you know him?” Jill asked.

  “No. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”

  “He’s crazy. He running away from the asylum?”

  “There’s not an asylum within a hundred miles. He didn’t look as if he’d run that far.”

  “I wish I could run like that,” Jason said, and Julie’s heart lurched painfully for her little brother. “My teacher said that some Indian tribes could run almost as fast as a horse. Reckon he’s a Indian?”

  The white frame church sat on the outskirts of town. It had been a country church at the turn of the century. Now the town of Fertile had spread out until the church was within the town limits. Julie’s grandfather had been the mason who had laid the foundation for the New Methodist Church. On the other side of town was the Lutheran church and nearer to the river, the Southern Baptist.

  Julie and the children entered the church and slid along one of the pews to sit near the open windows. It was so hot! Her dress was sticking to her back. She removed Joy’s straw hat and swished it back and forth to create a little breeze. Her thoughts wandered when the preacher settled into his sermon.

  She hadn’t told anyone about her date this coming Saturday night with Evan. Oh, Lord. She was glad now that she hadn’t. He might just have asked her on an impulse and wouldn’t show up. She had lain awake last night and thought about him, remembering every word he had said to her.

  His face was sharply etched in her memory. His blue eyes beneath dark, level brows had seemed to see right into her mind while they were playing cards. His mouth was firm and unsmiling— most of the time. It and his eyes set the tone of him, hard and rough and capable of taking care of himself in any situation; yet she could sense the loneliness and vulnerability in him.

  The idea that a man who had seen much of the world would be interested in a country girl was ridiculous. He must have met many attractive worldly women. Julie was perfectly aware of how countrified she was—and then there was the other thing! The more she thought about it, the more miserable she became.

  “All stand for the final hymn.”

  The words interrupted Julie’s thoughts. The service was drawing to an end. She took the hymn book from Joy, who was seated between her and Jill, and nudged Jason, who was almost asleep.

  When the hymn ended, the Joneses filed down the aisle to the door of the church where the Reverend Meadows waited to greet them. He shook hands with each of the children before greeting Julie.

  “How are you, Julie?”

  “Fine. I didn’t see your wife here this morning. Is she well?”

  “She stayed with Mother this morning to give Eudora a chance to come to church.”

  “Give my regards to both Mrs. Meadows and your mother.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Julie followed the children out into the bright sunlight, where the congregation mingled in the area in front of the church, visiting and exchanging bits of news.

  “There’s Miss Meadows,” Jill exclaimed. “Hello, Miss Meadows.” The preacher’s sister had been Jill’s first Sunday school teacher, and Jill had formed an attachment to her.