by Stuart Woods
The following afternoon Mrs. Butts came to the jail in a taxi and told Will Henry she would not press any charge against her husband. She would not listen to any argument. Will Henry let the man out of his cell, and the couple went home together in the taxi. Will Henry was furious.
11
ON MONDAY MORNING Will Henry rose, bathed, shaved, and, for the first time, dressed in his uniform. Carrie had cuffed the trouser bottoms and pressed everything. He pinned the large badge to his shirt and affixed a second one to his cap. He had not worn a badge before, but he had kept the small gold one in his pocket.
“You look real handsome,” Carrie said when he came down to breakfast. She handed him a small gift-wrapped box. “Here’s a finishing touch to your uniform from the children and me.” The box contained a gold tie clasp adorned with a tiny replica of his badge.
“Now where on earth did you get a thing like that?”
“I ordered it from the same company in Atlanta that made your badges.” He kissed her and thought that the fine hand of T. T. Brown was evident here.
Will Henry arrived at the station at a quarter to eight and built a fire in the wood stove. He and Carrie had spent two hours after church the night before giving the place a final cleaning and putting it in order before its official opening. Idus Bray was the first to arrive, a few minutes before nine. He ambled in as though the thought had just struck him that he might stop by, and then he went over the building in minute detail. Finally, he seemed satisfied that the city’s money had been properly spent. “Phone working all right?” he asked, patting the instrument.
“Just fine, Idus. Had our first call Saturday night, before we were even officially open for business.”
“Yeah, heard about that. Man ought not to beat his wife like that. Still, seems like something our police force shouldn’t have to spend its time on.”
“Well, I guess that comes under the heading of keeping the peace. Can’t let folks go beating each other up, even in their own homes.”
Bray grunted what seemed agreement.
The other council members wandered in over the next hour, and a number of passers-by stopped in. All complimented Will Henry and Holmes on the thoroughness with which the station had been planned and equipped. Skeeter Willis put his stamp of approval on the jail and admired Will Henry’s new uniform, much to Will Henry’s embarrassment. He wondered how long it would take for him to become used to wearing it.
Finally, they returned to their businesses, and Will Henry was left alone. George Pittman, the postman, came by with the mail, peeked into the jailroom, and fled as if afraid that he would be held there if he stayed too long. Will Henry sat down and started to open the mail.
He heard the sound of someone vigorously opening the door and wiping his feet on the doormat just inside. He looked up from the mail in time to see Foxy Funderburke marching through his office toward the jailroom. He got up and followed. Foxy marched briskly in and out of each of the four cells, felt the mattresses, flushed the toilets, stamped on the floor, looked under the bunks, and tested the strength of the bars.
“Morning, Foxy.”
“Lee.”
Foxy stood in the aisle between the cells and looked about. He seemed irritated because he had found nothing amiss. He stalked past Henry into his office and gave the place a cursory glance. Will Henry was annoyed. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee, Foxy?” He could think of nothing else to say.
“Never drink the stuff. Eat your insides out.” Will Henry felt as if he had spoken above his rank.
Foxy stared at him fixedly for half a minute without speaking. Will Henry felt forced to look away. He went to his desk and began shuffling through the mail.
“You’re not the man for this job, Lee.”
Will Henry looked blankly at Foxy, startled by the statement. “I’ll do the best I can, Foxy. Look, I hope there’s no hard feelings between us because I got this job. I—”
“You’ll never survive. Somebody’s going to kill you.”
There was a brief silence while the two men stared at each other. Finally Will Henry spoke. “Well, if you hear about anybody planning to do that, I wish you’d tell me about it.” Foxy stared coldly at him for another ten seconds, then executed a nearly military turn to the right and stamped out of the station.
Will Henry was baffled by the exchange. He was not accustomed to dealing with people who did not make sense, and there was something about Foxy which transcended the silly eccentricity most people ascribed to him. There was something angry and—menacing. It made Will Henry uneasy.
12
APART FROM the incident of the inept bank robbers, Will Henry’s first month as Chief had been free of any serious demands upon him as a policeman. He had had a period of adjustment, an opportunity to ease into the job, to begin to feel comfortable in it, without the pressure of major incident. On the Wednesday following the opening of the police station his period of adjustment came to an end.
He arrived at the police station on the stroke of eight, to find a young boy sitting on the doorstep, clutching a hound dog and weeping as though the end of the world were at hand. Will Henry knew the boy from church. He was called Brother, as his sister was called Sister.
“Good morning, Brother,” Will Henry said as casually as he could. He didn’t want to show too much concern for fear of increasing the weeping; it was a technique he used when his children came to him with stubbed toes. “What can I do for you? What’s the problem?” Brother almost collapsed with relief, but every time he began a sentence his sobbing and gasping overtook his speech. Will Henry sat down beside him on the steps. “Now, just take it easy. Take your time and get your breath back. I’ve got all day, no need to rush.” Brother gradually collected himself enough to speak.
“There’s this fellow out in the woods.” He stopped.
“Out in the woods.”
“Yessir, right next to the Scout hut, right at the bottom of Hodo’s Bluff.”
“What’s this fellow doing, Brother?”
“He’s not doing nothing, sir. He’s dead.”
Will Henry took a quick breath. “You ever seen a dead person, Brother?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, how do you know he’s dead?” Will Henry thought maybe the boy had come upon a bum sleeping in the woods.
“Well, he’s nekkid, sir. And there’s ants in his eyes.”
Brother Maynard had awakened with a start at exactly six o’clock on that morning. He did not need an alarm clock. He brushed his teeth and dressed, and then went to the kitchen. He fried an egg and two strips of bacon and made a sandwich of them, wrapping the sandwich carefully in waxed paper. His dog, Buster, who was almost a purebred beagle, watched with interest and earned a scrap of bread for his attention. Brother’s name was John, but his parents had called him Brother and his sister Sister for all of their lives, and so had everyone else. Brother was fourteen.
He dressed warmly and rode his bicycle to the M&B depot, Buster trotting alongside. At near enough to six-thirty, the Atlanta train pulled into the station and dropped off 400 Atlanta Constitutions. Brother counted out 172 and folded each of them into a tight three-cornered hat, warming himself next to the potbellied stove in the stationmaster’s office. He placed the papers in neat rows in the large grocery bike basket, then pedaled around virtually the entire “town” (as opposed to “mill town”) side of the railroad tracks, tossing papers accurately onto front porch after front porch. He rarely tossed a paper onto a roof or under a porch any more. Finally, he pedaled laboriously up Broad Street, up the mountainside, where there were eleven more subscribers. He always saved this part until last, so that he could enjoy the ride down the mountain. His final delivery was invariably to the solitary mailbox which Foxy Funderburke had erected at the crest of the mountain, exactly on the city limit, so that he would not have to come all the way into Delano for his paper. Foxy’s house was a mile further along, on the Talbot County side of the mountain.
When Brother had delivered Foxy’s Constitution, he turned off the road onto the footpath the Boy Scouts had built from the crest of the mountain, past the Scout hut to the end of Fourth Street. The path was wide and smooth enough for his bicycle, and Brother relished the thought of the long, steep, practically straight coast down the mountainside. The sun had risen now, and half the mountain was in bright new sunlight, the other half in cold blue shadow. Brother began his descent, and his speed increased rapidly. He had never been able to bring himself to make the whole coast without once using his brakes, but this morning he was determined. The bicycle went faster and faster. Buster began to drop back on the path, too winded to bark more than once or twice. Brother’s eyes were almost closed from the force of the wind. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His hands grew numb as the wind rushed through his woolen mittens. His forehead, cheeks, and the bridge of his nose hurt furiously from the cold. It occurred to him that if he struck a stone or a fallen limb his battered body would probably not stop rolling until it reached the Scout hut.
There was a jolt as the path turned slightly uphill, then leveled off as it approached the hut. Finally, he applied the brakes and brought the bike to a halt at the foot of Hodo’s Bluff, which rose nearly a hundred feet straight up the mountainside. He leaned the bike against a tree and flopped down in the leaves and pine needles, his heart pounding wildly. Buster trotted up and dropped beside him like a stone. They both panted for a minute, before Brother regained enough strength to open his sandwich. Buster wolfed down his small piece and hoped against all odds for more.
Brother pushed back until he was resting against the foot of the bluff. He munched his sandwich and looked lazily around him. The early morning sun filtered through the pines and the haze. Everything more than a few feet away had a fuzzy, out-of-focus quality that Brother found particularly pretty. He especially liked the way the sunlight struck the smooth faces of a number of granite boulders which were embedded in the earth and pine needles around him. The low angle of the light and the smoothness of the stones gave them the texture of the hides of fallen beasts—elephants, maybe, felled by the gun of some mighty hunter. The texture of one smaller boulder in particular caught his eye. It was whiter than the others, probably from a covering of dead, gray moss. As he chewed his sandwich and stared at the rock it seemed to change in texture, as if his eyes had suddenly reappraised an optical illusion. There was something familiar about that texture, something he had seen only this morning. He recalled with an unpleasant jolt that it was the texture of his own skin, which he had inspected while dressing before the mirror that morning, longing for a summer tan.
He got slowly to his feet and approached the stone. He stopped chewing the sandwich. An acidic foreboding crept into his bowels. As he walked toward the boulder it became, unmistakably, a buttock, and as he drew closer the new angle revealed part of a back and a shoulder and, finally, a closely cropped head, turned sharply to the right. The nose and jaw were covered by leaves, but there was an eye, and it was open. A column of ants wound in and out of it. Buster came over and sniffed at the corpse. Brother dropped his sandwich and ran. Buster collected the sandwich before following.
Will Henry thought fast as he listened to Brother’s story. He didn’t want to spread news of this sort on the telephone. He might as well go to Atlanta and put it on WSB. “Tell you what, Brother. You run over to the funeral home and tell Mr. Maddox I said for him to come out to the Scout hut with his ambulance. I’ll go pick up Dr. Mudter, and we’ll meet you there in a couple of minutes. He’s right at the foot of Hodo’s Bluff, you say?”
“You say he’s naked? In this weather?” Frank Mudter huddled down into his overcoat and put his hand under the dash of the police car to see whether any heat was coming out.
“That’s what Brother said. He was pretty shook up, of course. He said something about the fellow having ants in his eyes, too. Sounds like he might be imagining the whole thing. I hope so.”
Will Henry stopped the car as close as he could get to the Scout hut, and they walked the rest of the way.
Dr. Mudter knelt beside the corpse. “Well, Brother was right. He’s sure naked. Right about the ants, too.” Will Henry shuddered. “Give me a hand, Will Henry, let’s turn him over.” Will Henry was horrified at touching the cold flesh but tried not to show it. “Nothing but superficial wounds. No gunshot or stab wounds that I can see.” A car door slammed in the distance. Dr. Mudter stood up.
“How did he die, then, Frank? Did he fall off the bluff?”
“I don’t think there’s any question about that, Will Henry. Question is, what happened to him before he fell down here? What was he doing running around up there naked as a jaybird?”
“Well, first thing comes to my mind is, there’s only one thing around here that’s bizarre enough to go with this.”
“Klan?”
Will Henry nodded. “They horsewhipped a man up at Greenville two years ago. White man fooling around with a colored girl. But this is just a boy. What would you say, eighteen, nineteen?”
Will Henry glanced at the corpse involuntarily. “Yes, I guess so. How long would you say he’s been dead?”
“Well, the rigor’s still there. Less than twenty-four hours, maybe less than twelve. We can take his body temperature as soon as we can get him back. That might help. Temperature was in the twenties last night. Can’t be more than twenty-five right now, and he’s not frozen. Tell you the truth, Will Henry, this isn’t my line of work. I generally get to ‘em before they go, you know?”
“Well, Frank, I’ve almost certainly got a criminal case on my hands. I mean, this doesn’t look like any kind of accident to me, not like I’ve ever heard of, anyway. There’s going to have to be a thorough investigation of this, and it ought to start with a medical examination. Hadn’t we better get somebody down here from Atlanta to see about this? You know anybody?”
Lamar Maddox came striding through the leaves carrying one end of a stretcher. Brother Maynard trotted along behind with the other end, followed by Buster.
“Morning, Frank, Will Henry. What we got here?”
“You know as much as we do, Lamar. We just got here. I was just asking Frank if he knows somebody in Atlanta, an expert, who could do a thorough medical examination.”
Brother interrupted. “‘Scuse me, Chief, but I’m already fifteen minutes late for school. Can I go now, please?”
“Sure, Brother, and thanks for letting me know about this. You did the right thing.”
“Uh, Chief, could you give me a note or something? You have to bring a note if you’re late.”
Will Henry took out his notebook and wrote, “To whom it may concern: Brother Maynard is late for school this morning because he was helping the police with a confidential matter. If there is any further question, please telephone me.” He signed and dated the note and gave it to the boy.
“Listen, Brother. We don’t know yet what’s happened here. Word’ll get around about this sooner or later, but right now I don’t want any talk about it, all right? I don’t want you to tell anybody about this until—until you read about it in the paper, all right?” Will Henry thought for a moment. “And even then, I don’t want you to tell anybody, and I mean anybody, about his not having any clothes on. That could be very important, and nobody’s to know about it but us, all right?”
“Yessir, I promise.” Brother hopped on his bicycle and rode off to school.
“You think he’ll keep this to himself?” Frank Mudter asked.
“Lord, I hope so. Frank, you and Lamar have got to help me keep this thing under control. For the time being, when it comes up, let’s just say that it looks like a fellow got lost and fell off the bluff. This is going to be hard enough to handle without a lot of hysteria. All right?”
Both men nodded. Frank Mudter looked thoughtful. “Will Henry, I’ve got an old med-school friend in Columbus who’s pretty much of a’ hotshot pathologist. He’s done a job now and then for the Columbus police.
I could call him up and ask him if he’ll drive up here and do a postmortem. His fee could run to twenty-five or thirty dollars if you figure he’s got to travel, but I think the council will sit still for that.”
“That sounds good to me, Frank. Is there any reason we shouldn’t move him now?”
“I don’t think so. You reckon we can get him on the stretcher and in your hearse like he is, Lamar?”
“No problem, Frank.” Lamar Maddox was, by profession, a stoic.
At the funeral parlor, Dr. Mudter telephoned Columbus. He came back into the workroom, where Will Henry was eyeing the syringes and tubing uneasily. “Well, I had to promise him a fried-chicken supper—he’s a bachelor—but he’s coming as soon as he can get away from the hospital. He figures to be here about four. In the meantime we’re to take the temperature and then keep the body as cool as possible. Lamar, could we put him in your storage room and open a window?”
“Sure, I guess so. What are you going to take the temperature with? I don’t get much call for thermometers from my customers.”
“I guess I better run back to the office and get an anal thermometer.”
Will Henry spoke up. “Frank, I don’t think there’s any more I can do here. I better check in at the station and see if anything’s happening, then I’ve got some investigating to do, I guess.”
“Why don’t you come back here about four. He’ll do his postmortem first, and then we’ll have supper at my house. I’ll get Martha and the children to go down and have supper with Carrie, and Nellie can leave as soon as she’s cooked. That way we can talk about this by ourselves.”
“Fine. Maybe I’ll know a bit more myself by then.”
13
WILL HENRY sat down at his desk and took a pad and pencil from a drawer. He noticed that his hand was trembling. He was filled with the most curious mixture of emotions. He was angry that someone had caused the boy to die; he was sickened by the thought of the boy wandering, probably pursued, through the woods; and he was terribly excited. He felt guilty about it, but he was excited that he suddenly had a major crime to investigate, to solve, so soon in his new job. He had no doubt that he could do it. He thought that a professional soldier must feel the same way about a declaration of war; regretful, but eager. He began to list the things that must be done.
