Finally he got down on his knees next to the stove and poked through the ashes. He raked his fingers back and forth through the soot and burned wood. It might have been his imagination, but he thought there was some faint heat left in the stones.
What temperature did sugar melt at? It was pretty hot. Dick’s wife had made some candy in her day. Dick himself preferred pies. They were healthier, it seemed to him, and more flavorful. Candy was too hard or sticky. Bad for your teeth. Too sweet too. And it did something to kids, wound them up. But they’d loved it, and when you lost five in the crib before you got your two you weren’t inclined to deny them anything. And so she’d made it, stirring and stirring, saying something about what temperature the sugar was supposed to be before it’d melt. All Dick knew was that it’d been pretty hot.
And then his fingers closed on something cold, and he brought the little piece of metal out and cleaned it off in his hand. It was a locket, warped and twisted by the heat almost out of recognition. Almost.
68
Matt Shakespeare was sitting comfortably with his feet up on the sheriff’s desk. His tin of hemp cigarettes was open, the air was fragrant with their smoke, and he was making a series of discordant sounds upon the harmonica. Matt’s whole family was or had been musical. His mother had played the piano, and Austin did as well, besides having the voice of an angel at church. Lukas had been a fair hand at the banjo, before he had lost interest in the instrument, and he had been a fine whistler. Matt had no musical talent, but it did not stop him from occasionally playing the harmonica, badly, with the air of someone enormously enjoying a very private joke.
Because of the noise he was making, he did not hear the crowd approaching until they began to pound on the front door.
Matt jerked his feet off the desk and dropped one hand to his revolver.
“Sheriff?” Dick called from outside. “Sheriff, open up.”
“Dick?” Matt said.
“Sheriff, open up,” Dick repeated.
“Dick, what’s going on out there?”
“Where’s the sheriff?” Dick said.
“Open the goddamn door!” Matt heard Bobby scream, and then a roar from the crowd.
“What’s going on, Dick?” Matt said.
“Where’s the sheriff?” Dick asked.
“Are you deaf or stupid?” Matt shouted. “You tell me what the hell is going on out there, Deputy, and why you’re leading a goddamn lynch mob …”
“We found proof,” Dick said.
“What?” Matt said.
“We found proof,” Dick said. “He had a pint of ether in a bottle marked ‘peppermint extract’ and we found things in his oven. A locket, a bit of cloth, something that might have—”
“Sheriff!” Bobby bawled. “You open this goddamn door! You hear me!”
“All right, Bobby,” Matt said, his brain scrambling. “All right, you found your proof. Just calm down. Now we’ll have a trial and you don’t have to worry—”
“Sheriff!” Bobby screamed so loudly that Matt jerked his head away from the door. “I ain’t talking to no brother-killing son of a whore! I’m talking to you, god damn it! Open this fucking door! We ain’t having no trial.”
“Bobby,” Matt said, “you know how the sheriff feels about lynchings.”
“Sheriff!” Bobby screamed, aggrieved. “Answer me!”
“Oh my god,” Dick said, very softly. Which was about right.
“He ain’t in there!” someone else cried.
“I been watching the whole time!” Kendron Parkins said. “He’s got to be in there!”
And then the ax hit the door with such force the blade went all the way through. Matt thought it might be stuck, but Bobby yanked it back out, tearing away a large chunk of the door with it.
“Do that again and I’ll shoot!” Matt cried.
The ax hit the door.
Matt cocked his pistol but then thought better of it. Instead he holstered his gun and raised his hands as Bobby came crashing inside. Bobby took one glance toward the cells, which confirmed what he surely must have already known: there was no one left but Matt Shakespeare. Then he lifted the ax above his head and lunged forward.
But before the ax fell Kendron tackled Big Bobby from behind and drove him into the side wall.
“Let me go!” Bobby screamed. “Let me go!”
“No, no, wait,” Kendron said.
“I’m a tired of waiting!” Bobby screamed, weeping now. “That’s what you all say! I’m not gonna wait no more! My Jenny! Oh god. Where is he? Where’d you take him?”
“We gotta ask him, Bobby,” Kendron said. “We gotta ask him.”
“Look what you done,” Dick said, stunned.
“You think this was my idea?” Matt said. “That’s what you think?”
The mob kept pouring in. Matt backed up to the far wall, his hands still raised in the air.
“Get off me!” Bobby said. “Get the hell off me!”
Kendron let go of Bobby. They both came over to Matt.
“Where is he?” Bobby said.
“What’ll you do if I tell you, hmm?” Matt said. “Why don’t you just calm down for a second?”
“Matt,” Kendron said, shaking his ancient head. “You better just tell us which way the sheriff went.”
Eventually, Matt shrugged.
“All right,” he said. “He took him up to his sister-in-law’s place in Orangedale. Was going to put him in the cellar till the trial. He’s safe as safe can be, Bobby. Ain’t no one going to turn him loose. Just didn’t want him getting lynched in case you guys busted in here. Which, as it happened, you did.”
“The sheriff’s lost his mind,” Dick said. “Lost his damn mind.”
“Come on now,” Matt said. “I ain’t saying I’d have done the same. But he’s a law-and-order man. You knew that when you voted him in. You all wanted a law-and-order man. Remember? How things were before? He was the man who changed them.”
Bobby didn’t bother to reply, only turned to leave, but Kendron caught his arm and then spoke to Matt.
“Matty,” Kendron said. “We know it was the sheriff that put you up to this. And there’s no one that can say you haven’t done your duty.”
“Why thank you, Kendron,” Matt said. But his heart sank.
“And we’re going off to Orangedale now. But if he ain’t there, if you lied to us, there’ll be hell to pay. And not just for you.”
Matt smiled.
“Was that a threat?” he asked. “Me, I don’t threaten people. But I’ll tell you what. Anyone who hurts my brother is going to die. That’s not a threat.” He flicked his eyes between Kendron and Bobby and waited. Kendron nodded, just a little.
“He’s heading to Tucson,” Matt said finally. “Figures to be there by morning. Going to put De Plessey in the jailhouse down there until the trial.”
“Hell,” Kendron said, wheeling around. Bobby followed. The men started shouting and shoving out the door. Matt made his way back to his desk and sat down and put his feet back up. Then he lifted the harmonica to his lips to play a tune to send the mob on its way.
69
Tom, Homer, and Austin had begun at a gallop, but after fifteen minutes or so they slowed to a brisk trot. A hundred miles was a long way, and there was no telling when or if they could change horses. Overhead the stars were glittering, hard and distant, in the sky.
Every now and then Tom glanced over his shoulder, to check the road behind them and to ensure that Homer De Plessey was still in place. The confectioner sat easy in the saddle, a comfortable rider, relaxed into the jarring rhythm of the trotting horse. Behind them by about ten paces was Austin, crouched forward, wild-eyed and nervous.
They’d been on the road for less than two hours when Tom saw the dust rising on the road behind them, driven high by the hooves of their pursuers and shimmering in the moonlight.
“Hell,” he said, pulling up on the reins. “Here they come.”
“We should keep goi
ng!” Austin said. “We’ve still got a mile on ’em.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “And we’ve still got eighty miles to go. We needed more of a head start than this. I hope your brother’s okay.”
“What do we do?” Austin said.
What were they going to do? Tom thought. It was the desert. Yellow sand dotted with cacti and scrub. Tumbleweeds dancing in the night wind. The San Tan Mountain a few miles off to the east, rising up abrupt and rocky, silhouetted against the stars. Everything as dark as you’d like.
“Get off your horse,” Tom said, and then dismounted himself.
“What are we doing?” Austin asked.
Tom walked over to De Plessey and helped him get down. He checked to make sure the manacles were tight around De Plessey’s wrists and then he gave him a little push southward down the road.
“You got a gun?” Tom asked Austin.
Austin swallowed a little, and his skinny throat bobbed up and down.
“It’s all right. Take Mister De Plessey here a little ways down the road and get behind some cover. I don’t think he’s going to try anything, but shoot him if he gives you a reason. The Lord knows it’d make my life easier.”
Austin nodded and took his gun out of his holster. It looked too heavy for him.
Tom turned back to the north. He drew his rifle from where it was secured next to his saddle and then slapped his horse, driving it away. For the next few minutes he stood in the middle of the road with the weapon lowered, alone, cold, blinking against the little sandstorms kicked up by the restless night wind. Somewhere far across the desert a dog howled.
There were only two riders and they were coming hard, real hard. Bobby and Kendron.
Tom raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The flash of it was very bright in the darkness and the sound very loud in the silence.
The pursuers pulled their horses to a screeching halt. The horses were foaming and screaming for breath and trembling with exhaustion. Both men drew their pistols.
“Where is he, Sheriff?” Bobby said. “I’m only gonna ask you once.”
“He’s going to the jail in Tucson,” Tom said. “That’s all.”
“Sheriff,” Kendron said. “We found Jenny’s locket in the fireplace of his little candy kitchen.”
“Is that right?” Tom said. “I’m sorry, Bobby. I truly am.”
“Where is he, Sheriff?” Bobby asked.
“Bobby, if what Kendron says is true, and I don’t doubt his word for a minute, then you don’t have to worry much about the trial. But we have to do it. You understand that, don’t you? It’s things like trials that stop men like Lukas Shakespeare.”
“A bullet stopped Lukas Shakespeare,” Kendron said.
“No,” Tom said. “Shooting ’em just lets ’em decide how the world works. Makes us live by their rules, or lack thereof. Okay? Matty killing Lukas didn’t set us free of him. It’s what we do after. It’s what we do right now.”
Bobby slid off his horse. He still had the pistol in one hand.
“Sheriff,” Kendron said, “for god’s sake.”
“Don’t come any closer, Bobby,” Tom said. “Please don’t.”
“That was a nice speech,” Bobby said. “But you didn’t say anything about my Jenny. She’s still dead. Tell that to your laws. Tell them that. Only they won’t say anything, they’re not real.”
“If laws ain’t real,” Tom said, “then it’s men like Lukas Shakespeare who truly understand the way the world works. And I can’t accept that. I can’t. So get back on your horse, Bobby. Just do it.”
A gun fired, from behind Tom, and Kendron’s head came apart.
Tom whipped around, his heart pounding in his chest, and raised his rifle. Something smashed into his forehead. Stars blazed in front of his eyes, as if they were exploding, growing a thousand times more brilliant, and then they went out, and all was darkness.
70
The Shakespeare residence was a mile and a half from the sheriff’s office, to the north and the west. Matt and Austin had about an acre of land abutting the canal and a small single-story home. The whole place was going to seed. The vegetable gardens were overrun with weeds and the walls sagged inward. Some windows were cracked. The paint peeled. You could smell a faint musty odor in the back of your mind just looking at the place.
Matt felt his throat tighten when he saw that there was no light on inside, no smoke rising from the chimney. Inside the front door he used the jack to pull off his boots, and then he called out, “Austin? Austin?”
There was a lamp on a small table by the front door and he took the matches out of the drawer and lit it.
What would you expect of two young men living together, without a mother to take care of them? It was a mess, with muddy boots scattered around the door, jackets and shirts carelessly thrown over the backs of chairs, and a pile of dirty dishes sitting on the kitchen table. The cupboards were bare and columns of ants trooped boldly across the floor.
“Austin?” Matt called.
He checked their bedroom, shining the lamp around. A set of bunk beds where Matt and Austin slept. Luke’s bed was on the other side of the room, neatly made.
Next Matt walked down the hall to his mother’s old room, with its large bed and mirror, the glass jars and pots on the vanity, the huge closet of clothes and costumes, and the piano in the corner.
Not here, Matt thought. Did he go back to town?
He returned to the kitchen and set the lamp down on the table and then took a half-empty bottle of whiskey down from the shelf. He drank without using a glass and as his gaze wandered the room it happened to fall upon a framed picture hung just to one side above the fireplace.
It was a charcoal sketch of Lukas that had been done when he was around fifteen. In it, Lukas was wearing a huge hat and a neat new suit. He was grinning hugely, showing off a large gap between his teeth, and resting a hand on a pistol at each hip.
It was the grin that broke your heart. Luke had been a bad seed. Matt had always known it, even if his mother and Austin had tried to pretend they did not. But there was no doubt that the men Lukas had run with had changed him. Luke had always been laughing and smiling about something, even if it was something mean. When he’d returned he’d been different. Hard, unsmiling, bitter, and closed off. That attitude he’d learned from them, for sure. Like laughing was weakness and coldness was strength. For all his talk about starting a gang with his brothers he’d had no patience for them any longer. Especially Austin. Austin never could have become cold like that.
Matt looked at the picture a little longer. The anonymous artist had worked roughly and quickly and not caught much detail. But he had captured some piece of the young Luke’s unspoken essence. You could feel his confidence, his wildness, his sense of humor, his capacity for violence.
Matt realized then that his younger brother had run off south with Sheriff Favorite, and a little cold worm of fear wriggled between his ribs and into his heart.
“Shit,” Matt said. “Shit, shit.”
He jogged back outside, pausing only briefly to snatch up his rifle from the gun rack by the door.
71
The first thing Sheriff Tom Favorite noticed was the smell. How bad it was. As bad as it could get.
His eyes were fluttering, trying to open, trying to see. They felt heavy and sticky. There was a pain, he realized, a terrible pain in his head.
An image started to come into focus. A ghost. A skull. No. No. It was getting clearer all the time, coming together, taking shape.
It was a coyote. A dead one. Rotting. The fur curling up like mold, the flesh bubbling away from the bones. Decomposing eyeballs yellowing and collapsing in on themselves. Flies circling over the body.
And ants. There were ants. Two kinds of ants. Red and black. They were marching all over the dead coyote and … were they fighting?
Tom Favorite blinked and saw that they were. The red ants and the black ants were biting one another with their enormous m
andibles and struggling back and forth, wrestling over the top of the dead animal.
And then as he moved his head a little, setting off a fresh wave of pain, he thought groggily, What am I doing here?
Laughter. No, not laughter. Giggling. High-pitched and rapid, like a child’s. But not a child. He became cognizant of the strong hands that held the collar of his shirt and the back of his belt, and that these hands were holding him over the rotting carcass, and then a mouth pressed into his right ear, and he jerked away, making his head throb in pain again.
“The devil made this world,” Homer De Plessey whispered. “And God is dead or sleeping.”
Tom struggled. He couldn’t move his hands or his legs. He’d been hog-tied.
Homer De Plessey kept giggling, but now he lifted Tom up (effortlessly, it seemed) and threw him across the back of a horse.
Tom tried to turn his head to see where they were going, but it was dark and there was nothing around them but desert. He was still trying to catch his breath and say something when Homer mounted his own horse and cracked the reins and they galloped off into the dark.
72
The moon had come up over the mountain to the east and lit up the desert and made the stars dimmer in comparison. Every now and then a sharp and short breath of wind kicked up the sand.
The men stood around and argued about what to do. They would fall silent, and the silence would drag out, and it would seem obvious that there was nothing to do but swallow the bitter injustice of it and head back to Phoenix. But they couldn’t bear it, and someone would say something, to break the spell, and they would start bickering again, blaming one another, proposing theories, discussing plans of action, anything to make it seem like they were in control.
Dick heard the rider and turned to the north, thinking it was one of the stragglers from their group. And then he saw who it was, riding up on them like the avatar of vengeance, and he said, “Oh hell.”
The others stopped talking at the sound of his voice and looked too.
The Winter Family Page 26
