by Stephen King
“Poppa,” Henry said. He spoke in a low voice.
I looked at him.
“If he finds out, we can’t do anything else. I can lie, but there can’t be anymore killing.”
“All right,” I said. That was a short conversation, but one I have pondered often in the eight years since.
Sheriff Jones came back, buttoning his fly.
“Go in and get the Sheriff a glass,” I told Henry.
Henry went. Jones finished with his fly, took off his hat, brushed back his hair some more, and reset the hat. His badge glittered in the early-afternoon sun. The gun on his hip was a big one, and although Jones was too old to have been in the Great War, the holster looked like AEF property. Maybe it was his son’s. His son had died over there.
“Sweet-smelling privy,” he said. “Always nice on a hot day.”
“Arlette used to put the quicklime to it pretty constantly,” I said. “I’ll try to keep up the practice if she stays away. Come on up to the porch and we’ll sit in the shade.”
“Shade sounds good, but I believe I’ll stand. Need to stretch out my spine.”
I sat in my rocker with the PA cushion on it. He stood beside me, looking down. I didn’t like being in that position but tried to bear up patiently. Henry came out with a glass. Sheriff Jones poured his own lemonade, tasted, then gulped most of it down at a go and smacked his lips.
“Good, isn’t it? Not too sour, not too sweet, just right.” He laughed. “I’m like Goldilocks, aren’t I?” He drank the rest, but shook his head when Henry offered to refill his glass. “You want me pissing on every fencepost on the way back to Hemingford Home? And then all the way to Hemingford City after that?”
“Have you moved your office?” I asked. “I thought you were right there in the Home.”
“I am, aren’t I? The day they make me move the Sheriff’s Office to the county seat is the day I resign and let Hap Birdwell take over, like he wants to. No, no, it’s just a court hearing up to the City. Amounts to no more than paperwork, but there it is. And you know how Judge Cripps is … or no, I guess you don’t, being a law-abiding sort. He’s bad-tempered, and if a fellow isn’t on time, his temper gets worse. So even though it comes down to just saying so help me God and then signing my name to a bunch of legal folderol, I have to hurry right along with my business out here, don’t I? And hope my God damned Maxie doesn’t break down on the way back.”
I said nothing to this. He didn’t talk like a man who was in a hurry, but perhaps that was just his way.
He took his hat off and brushed his hair back some more, but this time he didn’t put the hat back on. He looked at me earnestly, then at Henry, then back at me again. “Guess you know I’m not out here on my own hook. I believe that doings between a man and his wife are their own business. It has to be that way, doesn’t it? Bible says the man is the head of a woman, and that if a woman should learn any thing, it should be taught by her husband at home. Book of Corinthians. If the Bible was my only boss, I’d do things the Bible’s way and life would be simpler.”
“I’m surprised Mr. Lester’s not out here with you,” I said.
“Oh, he wanted to come, but I put the kye-bosh on that. He also wanted me to get a search warrant, but I told him I didn’t need one. I said you’d either let me look around or you wouldn’t.” He shrugged. His face was placid, but the eyes were keen and always in motion: peeking and prying, prying and peeking.
When Henry asked me about the well, I’d said, We’ll watch him and decide how sharp he is. If he’s sharp, we’ll show him ourselves. We can’t look as if we have anything to hide. If you see me flick my thumb, that means I think we have to take the chance. But we have to agree, Hank. If I don’t see you flick yours back, I’ll keep my mouth shut.
I raised my glass and drank the last of my lemonade. When I saw Henry looking at me, I flicked my thumb. Just a little. It could have been a muscle twitch.
“What does that Lester think?” Henry asked, sounding indignant. “That we’ve got her tied up in the cellar?” His own hands stayed at his sides, not moving.
Sheriff Jones laughed heartily, his big belly shaking behind his belt. “I don’t know what he’s thinking, do I? I don’t care much, either. Lawyers are fleas on the hide of human nature. I can say that, because I’ve worked for ’em—and against ’em, that too—my whole adult life. But …” The keen eyes fastened on mine. “I wouldn’t mind a look, just because you wouldn’t let him look. He’s pretty hot under the collar about that.”
Henry scratched his arm. His thumb flicked twice as he did it.
“I didn’t let him in the house because I took against him,” I said. “Although to be fair, I guess I would have taken against John the Apostle if he came out here batting for Cole Farrington’s team.”
Sheriff Jones laughed big at that: Haw, haw, haw! But his eyes didn’t laugh.
I stood up. It was a relief to be on my feet. Standing, I had three or four inches on Jones. “You can look to your heart’s content.”
“I appreciate that. It’ll make my life a lot easier, won’t it? I’ve got Judge Cripps to deal with when I go back, and that’s enough. Don’t need to listen to one of Farrington’s legal beagles yapping at me, not if I can help it.”
We went into the house with me leading and Henry bringing up the rear. After a few complimentary remarks about how neat the sitting room was and how tidy the kitchen was, we walked down the hall. Sheriff Jones had a perfunctory peek into Henry’s room, and then we arrived at the main attraction. I pushed open the door to our bedroom with a queer sense of certainty: the blood would be back. It would be pooled on the floor, splashed on the walls, and soaking into the new mattress. Sheriff Jones would look. Then he would turn to me, remove the handcuffs that sat on his meaty hip across from his revolver, and say: I’m arresting you for the murder of Arlette James, aren’t I?
There was no blood and no smell of blood, because the room had had days to air out. The bed was made, although not the way Arlette made it; my way was more Army-style, although my feet had kept me out of the war that had taken the Sheriff’s son. Can’t go kill Krauts if you have flat feet. Men with flat feet can only kill wives.
“Lovely room,” Sheriff Jones remarked. “Gets the early light, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “And stays cool most afternoons, even in summer, because the sun’s over on the other side.” I went to the closet and opened it. That sense of certainty returned, stronger than ever. Where’s the quilt? he’d say. The one that belongs there in the middle of the top shelf?
He didn’t, of course, but he came forward with alacrity when I invited him to. His sharp eyes—bright green, almost feline—went here, there, and everywhere. “Lot o’ duds,” he said.
“Yes,” I admitted, “Arlette liked clothes and she liked the mail-order catalogues. But since she only took the one valise—we have two, and the other one’s still there, see it in the back corner?—I’d have to say she only took the ones she liked the best. And the ones that were practical, I suppose. She had two pairs of slacks and a pair of blue denims, and those are gone, even though she didn’t care for pants.”
“Pants’re good for traveling in, though, aren’t they? Man or woman, pants are good for traveling. And a woman might choose them. If she was in a hurry, that is.”
“I suppose.”
“She took her good jewelry and her picture of Nana and Pop-Pop,” Henry said from behind us. I jumped a little; I’d almost forgotten he was there.
“Did she, now? Well, I suppose she would.”
He took another flick through the clothes, then closed the closet door. “Nice room,” he said, trudging back toward the hall with his Stetson in his hands. “Nice house. Woman’d have to be crazy to leave a nice room and a nice house like this.”
“Mama talked about the city a lot,” Henry said, and sighed. “She had the idea of opening some kind of shop.”
“Did she?” Sheriff Jones regarded him brightly with
his green cat’s eyes. “Well! But a thing like that takes money, doesn’t it?”
“She’s got those acres from her father,” I said.
“Yes, yes.” Smiling bashfully, as if he’d forgotten those acres. “And maybe it’s for the best. ‘Better to be living in a wasteland than with a bitter-tongued, angry woman.’ Book of Proverbs. Are you glad she’s gone, Son?”
“No,” Henry said, and tears overspilled his eyes. I blessed each one.
Sheriff Jones said, “There-there.” And after offering that perfunctory comfort, he bent down with his hands braced on his pudgy knees, and looked under the bed. “Appears to be a pair of woman’s shoes under there. Broke in, too. The kind that would be good for walking. Don’t suppose she ran away barefooty, do you?”
“She wore her canvas shoes,” I said. “Those are the ones that are gone.”
They were, too. The faded green ones she used to call her gardening shoes. I’d remembered them just before starting to fill in the well.
“Ah!” he said. “Another mystery solved.” He pulled a silver-plated watch from his vest pocket and consulted it. “Well, I’d better get on the roll. Tempus is fugiting right along.”
We went back through the house, Henry bringing up the rear, perhaps so he could swipe his eyes dry in privacy. We walked with the Sheriff toward his Maxwell sedan with the star on the door. I was about to ask him if he wanted to see the well—I even knew what I was going to call it—when he stopped and gave my son a look of frightening kindness.
“I stopped at the Cotteries’,” he said.
“Oh?” Henry said. “Did you?”
“Told you these days I have to water just about every bush, but I’ll use a privy anytime there’s one handy, always assuming folks keep it clean and I don’t have to worry about wasps while I’m waiting for my dingus to drip a little water. And the Cotteries are clean folks. Pretty daughter, too. Just about your age, isn’t she?”
“Yes, sir,” Henry said, lifting his voice just a tiny bit on the sir.
“Kind of sweet on her, I guess? And her on you, from what her mama says.”
“Did she say that?” Henry asked. He sounded surprised, but pleased, too.
“Yes. Mrs. Cotterie said you were troubled about your own mama, and that Shannon had told her something you said on that subject. I asked her what it was, and she said it wasn’t her place to tell, but I could ask Shannon. So I did.”
Henry looked at his feet. “I told her to keep it to herself.”
“You aren’t going to hold it against her, are you?” Sheriff Jones asked. “I mean, when a big man like me with a star on his chest asks a little thing like her what she knows, it’s kind of hard for the little thing to keep mum, isn’t it? She just about has to tell, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said, still looking down. “Probably.” He wasn’t just acting unhappiness; he was unhappy. Even though it was going just the way we had hoped it would.
“Shannon says your ma and your pop here had a big fight about selling those hundred acres, and when you came down on your poppa’s side, Missus James slapped you up pretty good.”
“Yes,” Henry said colorlessly. “She’d had too much to drink.”
Sheriff Jones turned to me. “Was she drunk or just tiddly?”
“Somewhere in between,” I said. “If she’d been all the way to drunk, she would have slept all night instead of getting up and packing a grip and creeping away like a thief.”
“Thought she’d come back once she sobered up, did you?”
“I did. It’s over four miles out to the tarvy. I thought for sure she’d come back. Someone must have come along and given her a ride before her head cleared. A trucker on the Lincoln-Omaha run would be my guess.”
“Yep, yep, that’d be mine, too. You’ll hear from her when she contacts Mr. Lester, I’m sure. If she means to stay out on her own, if she’s got that in her head, she’ll need money to do it.”
So he knew that, too.
His eyes sharpened. “Did she have any money at all, Mr. James?”
“Well …”
“Don’t be shy. Confession’s good for the soul. The Catholics have got hold of something there, don’t they?”
“I kept a box in my dresser. There was 200 dollars put by in it, to help pay the pickers when they start next month.”
“And Mr. Cotterie,” Henry reminded. To Sheriff Jones, he said: “Mr. Cotterie has a corn harvester. A Harris Giant. Almost new. It’s a pip.”
“Yep, yep, saw it in his dooryard. Big bastid, isn’t it? Pardon my Polish. Money all gone out’n that box, was it?”
I smiled sourly—only it wasn’t really me making that smile; the Conniving Man had been in charge ever since Sheriff Jones pulled up by the chopping block. “She left twenty. Very generous of her. But twenty’s all Harlan Cotterie will ever take for the use of his harvester, so that’s all right. And when it comes to the pickers, I guess Stoppenhauser at the bank’ll advance me a shortie loan. Unless he owes favors to the Farrington Company, that is. Either way, I’ve got my best farmhand right here.”
I tried to ruffle Henry’s hair. He ducked away, embarrassed.
“Well, I’ve got a good budget of news to tell Mr. Lester, don’t I? He won’t like any of it, but if he’s as smart as he thinks he is, I guess he’ll know enough to expect her in his office, and sooner rather than later. People have a way of turning up when they’re short on folding green, don’t they?”
“That’s been my experience,” I said. “If we’re done here, Sheriff, my boy and I better get back to work. That useless well should have been filled in three years ago. An old cow of mine—”
“Elphis.” Henry spoke like a boy in a dream. “Her name was Elphis.”
“Elphis,” I agreed. “She got out of the barn and decided to take a stroll on the cap, and it gave way. Didn’t have the good grace to die on her own, either. I had to shoot her. Come around the back of the barn I’ll show you the wages of laziness with its damn feet sticking up. We’re going to bury her right where she lies, and from now on I’m going to call that old well Wilfred’s Folly.”
“Well, I would, wouldn’t I? It’d be somethin’ to see. But I’ve got that bad-tempered old judge to contend with. Another time.” He hoisted himself into the car, grunting as he did so. “Thank you for the lemonade, and for bein’ so gracious. You could have been a lot less so, considering who sent me out here.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “We all have our jobs.”
“And our crosses to bear.” His sharp eyes fastened on Henry again. “Son, Mr. Lester told me you were hidin’ something. He was sure of it. And you were, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Henry said in his colorless and somehow awful voice. As if all his emotions had flown away, like those things in Pandora’s jar when she opened it. But there was no Elphis for Henry and me; our Elphis was dead in the well.
“If he asks me, I’ll tell him he was wrong,” Sheriff Jones said. “A company lawyer don’t need to know that a boy’s mother put her hand to him while she was in drink.” He groped under his seat, came up with a long Sshaped tool I knew well, and held it out to Henry. “Would you save an old man’s back and shoulder, son?”
“Yes, sir, happy to.” Henry took the crank and went around to the front of the Maxwell.
“Mind your wrist!” Jones hollered. “She kicks like a bull!” Then he turned to me. The inquisitive glitter had gone out of his eyes. So had the green. They looked dull and gray and hard, like lake water on a cloudy day. It was the face of a man who could beat a railroad bum within an inch of his life and never lose a minute’s sleep over it. “Mr. James,” he said. “I need to ask you something. Man to man.”
“All right,” I said. I tried to brace myself for what I felt sure was coming next: Is there another cow in yonder well? One named Arlette? But I was wrong.
“I can put her name and description out on the telegraph wire, if you want. She won’t have gone no furthe
r than Omaha, will she? Not on just a hundred and eighty smackers. And a woman who’s spent most of her life keepin’ house has no idea of how to hide out. She’ll like as not be in a rooming house over on the east side, where they run cheap. I could have her brought back. Dragged back by the hair of the head, if you want.”
“That’s a generous offer, but—”
The dull gray eyes surveyed me. “Think it over before you say yea or nay. Sometimes a fee-male needs talking to by hand, if you take my meaning, and after that they’re all right. A good whacking has a way of sweetening some gals up. Think it over.”
“I will.”
The Maxwell’s engine exploded into life. I stuck out my hand—the one that had cut her throat—but Sheriff Jones didn’t notice. He was busy retarding the Maxwell’s spark and adjusting her throttle.
Two minutes later he was no more than a diminishing boil of dust on the farm road.
“He never even wanted to look,” Henry marveled.
“No.”
And that turned out to be a very good thing.
*
We had shoveled hard and fast when we saw him coming, and nothing stuck up now but one of Elphis’s lower legs. The hoof was about four feet below the lip of the well. Flies circled it in a cloud. The Sheriff would have marveled, all right, and he would have marveled even more when the dirt in front of that protruding hoof began to pulse up and down.
Henry dropped his shovel and grabbed my arm. The afternoon was hot, but his hand was ice-cold. “It’s her!” he whispered. His face seemed to be nothing but eyes. “She’s trying to get out!”
“Stop being such a God damned ninny,” I said, but I couldn’t take my eyes off that circle of heaving dirt. It was as if the well were alive, and we were seeing the beating of its hidden heart.
Then dirt and pebbles sprayed to either side and a rat surfaced. The eyes, black as beads of oil, blinked in the sunshine. It was almost as big as a full-grown cat. Caught in its whiskers was a shred of bloodstained brown burlap.
“Oh you fuck!” Henry screamed.
