Early's Fall

by Jerry Peterson

  One of the players twisted around. He saw Early and waved up to him, and Early waved back.

  “Know him, do ya?” Irving asked.

  “Yup. He's your son.”

  The old man said nothing. He made a business of looking away.

  “You gonna say something to him, Pop?” Early asked as he turned his attention to the bandage beneath his pant leg. He scratched around its edges.

  “What do ya want me to say?”

  “I don't know. I'm the man who made you, maybe?”

  Irving turned back from his inspection of the several clouds in the quadrant of sky south of the stadium. “I wouldn't of known him if ya hadn't of pointed him out. He was just a tyke when last I seen him. Good lookin' fella, though, huh?”

  “Cuts a swath with the girls, his sister tells me. Of course, Ronnie doesn't talk about it.”

  Irving nodded. “That's good. Some things a man ought to keep to himself.”

  The blue team—the team in front of Early and Irving—trotted out onto the field. They lined up to receive the kickoff, the one Irving now knew as his son in the front, toward the center of the formation. The gold team moved out to the other end of the field, on the forty-yard line. They held and waited, watching one of their players standing back on the thirty.

  A whistle released the gold player. He ran forward, toward the center of his line and the football. He kicked it high. Early followed the ball, but not Irving. He watched his son squat, then spring forward low and uproot a gold player racing his way. His son rolled to the side and knocked another gold man from his feet, wheeled and raced forward, ahead of the player who caught the ball. He rammed his shoulder into another gold man, careening him toward the sideline, and ran on hard, throwing himself into a flying block that tripped a fourth.

  Irving came up on his feet. He sucked his teeth, his face sheathed in worry. “He all right?”

  The play moved on down the field, but Early ignored it. He, too, watched Ronnie Irving, watched him push himself up, watched him pull off his helmet and run a hand over his head, watched other players in blue jerseys run up and pound him on the back.

  Early clapped Irving's shoulder. “Pop, if he can tackle the way he blocks, I'd bet the coach pulls him up to the varsity.”

  But neither the blue team nor the gold team repeated the spectacular opening play. They ground on one another, lines swaying forward one play, falling back the next, resulting in turnovers and short kicks that ended in fumbles. Irving picked at the threads in his bedroll each time his boy went down. “This sure don't look like much fun,” he said.

  A whistle blew and both teams backed away from the line.

  “What's that about?” Irving asked.

  “End of the first quarter.” Early pointed across the way. “The teams change ends of the field.”

  “But they're goin' off to the sides.”

  “Well, it's a water break too.”

  “How much longer is this thing?”

  “Another three quarters, maybe forty-five minutes.”

  “We gotta stay fer all of it?”

  “No,” Early said, “but after what I've been through, let's watch a couple more minutes. Your boy might break open a play.”

  As the two teams walked back out onto the field, to the opposite thirty-seven-yard line and hunkered down for the snap of the ball, a man in a cowboy hat in the bleachers opposite Early and Irving worked his way down to the field, to where the gold cheerleaders stood waiting for the play to begin. He picked up a megaphone. The man aimed it across the field and bellowed, “Hey, sheriff!”

  Early turned. He saw the man with the megaphone waving his hat at him, grinning.

  “Sumbitch.”

  Early pushed between two people sitting in front of him, then hopped from the bleachers to the grass. He leaped across the blue bench and raced out onto the field, pursuing the figure making his way up the bleachers on the opposite side. Early didn't hear the roar of the crowd, people yelling, nor did he see the football thrown his way. Running all out he found himself in a swirl of players trampling by, and him scrambling across the current, spinning, dodging, getting slammed by a passing gold or was it a blue man? Early lost his hat but raced on free. He hurdled the gold bench and clambered up through the bleachers, people parting as if they were the Red Sea. Midway, Early saw the man go over the top of a battlement and disappear.

  He pounded on up the bleachers. At the top, his chest heaving, Early looked over the outside wall and saw Sonny Estes sliding down a rope.

  When Estes hit the ground, he gazed up, hollering, “Hey sheriff, ain't this fun?” and hurtled off.

  Early yanked down a banner. He wrapped his hands in it, grabbed the rope Estes had used, and kicked over the side and out, the rope ripping at the banner's fabric and his hands as he slid down. Early hit the sod hard. His knees buckled, and he went down, rolling, holding his hands out, his fingers curled, burning. Early forced himself up. He tore a bicycle away from a collection leaning against the stadium wall and pedaled off in the direction he'd seen Estes run. Why wasn't the sumbitch hurting?

  And then it hit Early as he pedaled on. The bastard had gloves!

  A car horn sounded. Early swerved and his front wheel struck the curb, somersaulting him. He came down on his wounded shin and rolled once more, clutching his knee to his chest.

  Someone put a hand on Early's shoulder.

  “You all right?” came a voice cutting through his pain.

  Early forced his eyes open. “Sonny?”

  Estes patted Early's shoulder. “Yer all right if you kin recognize me, old pard.”

  “Sumbitch.”

  “Aw, now don't get upset on me. Somebody be by to hep ya, meantime you excuse me. I gotta skedaddle.” Estes pushed himself up and away. He grabbed a passing student, pointed him at Early. “Man needs help,” he said and dashed into the street where he grabbed the slats of a passing freight truck. Estes pulled himself aboard. And he waved his hat at the sheriff one last time.

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  August 26—Friday Evening

  Suppertime

  “Cactus, what the hell were you doing, sliding down a rope?” Doc Grafton asked as he daubed a disinfecting solution over the burns on Early's hands.

  “Trying to catch a bank robber.”

  “Was it worth it? Look what you did to yourself.”

  “Wasn't thinking.”

  “That's for damn sure, and you an old cowboy who ought to know a bean or two about working with rope.” Grafton brought out a sterile pad. He dabbed the solution away. “Look, I'm being hard on you so your lovely wife won't have to.”

  Thelma glanced over from where she sat at the side of Grafton's inner office, aimlessly turning the pages of a Saturday Evening Post. “Doc, I'm going to ding him and dent him good when I get him home. Can you imagine what that call did to me?”

  “I've got an idea.”

  “Alice telling me a city police car brought Jim to you, telling me I'd better get in here, and me carrying his child?”

  “And now you found out there wasn't much worth getting upset about. Your old bonehead of a husband here will heal up pretty well.” Grafton went to a shelf in a side cabinet. He brought back a small jar, opened it, and patted some of the contents over the burns. “Stinks a bit like a mouse had crawled in the back of your kitchen cabinet and died, but it's good stuff—a silver oxide salve.”

  “Wouldn't butter do as well?” Early asked, his nose wrinkling. He sneezed.

  “Bless you, my son. Bad business, butter. Got salt in it.”

  “And until his hands do heal?” Thelma asked, interrupting.

  “Old Cactus is going to find it a mite difficult to button and unbutton his pants.” Grafton brought out a roll of gauze. He began the tedious process of wrapping the sheriff's hands.

  “Can I say something?” Early asked.

  “A smart man wouldn't.” Grafton went to humming as he continued his ministrations. After h
e finished tying off the gauze, he hauled up on Early's pant leg. Grafton fingered around the bandage. “The patrolman said you were squalling about your leg. How'd you do this?”

  “Went through a rotten step. Granny Weichselbaum patched me up.”

  Grafton peeled the bandage away and went to prodding in a serious manner.

  Early grimaced.

  “Pretty sensitive, huh?” Grafton asked.

  “Yes. You have to do that?”

  “Scabbed over, that's good. Bandage probably kept your shin from getting tore up worse when you came down on it. . . . Got a bruise that'll go black on you. Cactus, you're damn lucky you didn't break your leg.” Grafton rummaged in the drawer beneath his examining table for a large gauze pad. He found one, tore it out of its sterile packaging, and laid the pad over Early's damaged shin. “Thelma, a couple days you throw this bandage away and let the skin heal in the air.”

  Early winced at the pain of Grafton slapping an adhesive strip across the pad. “You this rough on all your patients?”

  “Aww, Cactus, everybody calls me ‘the kindly old doc.’ ” He slapped down a second strip. “That'll hold ya. . . . Thelma, get him back in here next week. I want to look at those hands.”

  “Anything I should do for him?”

  Grafton went back to rummaging in his drawer. “We learned a few things about burns in the war. His aren't serious. I'd massage the tissues every night, make him work his fingers. It's going to hurt and he's going to complain something awful, but I want his fingers and hands flexible.”

  He brought out two packages of rolled gauze and several sterile pads. Grafton gave them to Thelma, and the disinfectant and the silver oxide.

  “After you give his hands a workout, clean the burns like I did, then salve him up, but just a light coating. You're not basting a turkey.” He gazed at Early, grinning at him. “Or maybe you are.”

  “Anything else?” Thelma asked.

  “Wrap his hands in the morning. It's just a little protection, but at night, I want his hands unwrapped. Air and rest are the best healers. A shot of whiskey would help him sleep.”

  Early gazed up from studying the wrappings on his hands. “I'll skip that part.”

  “The whiskey or the sleep?”

  “The whiskey.”

  “Your choice, Cactus. I'm only the doctor here.”

  Early held up his hands. “Thanks for what you've done.”

  “Yeah, well, why don't you get on out of here, so I can see me some paying customers?”

  Early leaned on the stair rail as he limped down the front steps of Grafton's office to the sidewalk, Thelma coming along beside him.

  “You can lean on me, Jimmy,” she said.

  “No, no, I gotta make my own way.”

  Gangly Hutch Tolliver, made taller by his tall Big-brim Alpine Stetson, waited for them at the end of the walk. The deputy pushed himself off the fender of his Jeep where he had parked his frame. “You all right, chief?” he asked.

  “Guess so. The doc didn't take me out back and shoot me.”

  Tolliver helped Thelma into the backseat, then waited while Early struggled into the front. “Office or home?” Tolliver asked.

  “Home,” Thelma said before Early could open his mouth.

  “Right it is.”Tolliver hustled around to the driver's side. After he got the engine started and the Jeep rolling, he took down the microphone that swung from the mirror at the top of the windshield. “Alice,” he said, pressing the transmit button.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I'm taking the boss and Thelma out to Keats.”

  “He all right?”

  “He's done with foot races and steer rassling for awhile.”

  Thelma touched Tolliver's shoulder as he turned the Jeep onto Anderson and headed out into the country and the Wildcat Valley, toward Keats some five miles out. “Tell Alice nobody's to call him tonight.”

  Tolliver pressed his transmit button again. “Alice?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Put up a note for the night dispatcher, would you? Nobody's to call the sheriff tonight. Call me instead.”

  “You get kind of owly when people wake you.”

  “I'll take my sweetness pills before I go to bed.”

  After they were well out into the valley's farming country, Early leaned in to Tolliver. “You find Pop Irving?”

  “Vanished, just like Sonny Estes.”

  “He can travel when he has to. Maybe he'll come back to the jail tonight for a free sleep.”

  “I'll have Benny call me if he shows up.”

  “That'd be good.”

  Early fumbled with his knife as he attempted to cut the slab of beef roast on his plate.

  “You want me to do that for you?” Thelma asked when she came by with a cup of coffee for him.

  “No, I can do it.” Earl sawed away. Then the knife slipped and the fork right after it, the implements scooting the beef off the plate and onto the table.

  Thelma set the cup in front of Early. Then, with his knife and fork, she hauled the meat back on his plate where, with a practiced hand, she diced it. “Would it hurt you so much to let people help you? Goodness gracious, James Early. Stubborn? You're worse than the mule my father had. Know what happened to him?”

  “Your father?”

  “The mule, knothead. Dad sent him to the glue factory.”

  “You gonna do that with me?”

  “It's tempting.” Thelma raked the dozen bite-sized chunks together before she held the fork out to Early. He took it and stabbed a piece of beef into his mouth. Early chewed in silence.

  Thelma took her seat across the table. She peered into his face after she picked up her own cup of coffee. She cradled it in her hands. “James Early, I have to teach my little kids to say thank you. Do I have to teach you?”

  “Huh? . . . I'm sorry. Look, my hands hurt, my leg hurts, I can't hear all too well, I'm just not thinking too good.”

  “We can agree on that. So are you going to say thank you?”

  Early released a lungful of air. His chin dropped to his chest. After a long moment, he peeked up and a thank you slipped from between his lips.

  Thelma blew on her coffee, cooling it. “Didn't kill you, did it?”

  “No. . . . Would you turn on the radio for the news? I can't do it with these fingers.”

  Thelma ignored him and went about ladling gravy into a depression in her mashed potatoes.

  “Well?” Early asked.

  “A companion word to thank you is please.” Thelma set the gravy bowl aside. She picked up a slice of raisin bread.

  “All right, please?”

  She swiveled around to the Zenith on the kitchen counter. “That didn't kill you either, did it?”Thelma said as she twiddled the knobs. “The Friendly Neighbor's off the air. How about WIBW?”

  “That'd be fine.”

  A crackle of static came from the speaker as she dialed in on the Topeka frequency, then a voice. And now from New York, Lowell Thomas with the news . . . A second voice followed. Good evening, everybody . . .

  “I like him,” Early said. “He's an old Colorado boy. Did you know that?”

  “No.” Thelma went to buttering her slice of bread.

  “World traveler. Back in the first war, he traipsed off into the Arabian desert and found that English fella, Lawrence, leading an army of nomads against the Turks. Became a big story.”

  “Jimmy, you aren't that old.”

  “I read about it. We had Thomas's book in our high school library.”

  . . . In Washington today, President Truman met with a delegation from the nation of Israel . . .

  “That reminds me,” Early said, waving his fork toward the radio, “you found Judith's diaries, a stack covering her growing up and school years and teaching time. Where are the books covering her time in the war and in Palestine? Were the books numbered?”

  Thelma set her knife aside. “No.”

  “If she was such a dedicated diar
ist, she wouldn't quit at such an important time in her life, would she?”

  “So you think we're missing some books?”

  “Gotta be.”

  “Could someone have taken them?”

  “Why wouldn't they have taken them all?” Early leaned back in his chair. He massaged a sideburn as his mind churned. “What could have been so important in those books that someone would want them?”

  “One thing's sure, Sherlock, you're not going to figure it out tonight, so finish your supper.”

  “No. No, my dad saved every letter I wrote home during the war. I didn't think they were much and my mother didn't either, but my dad kept them. When I came home, he brought out this box he'd made—polished walnut, tooled leather hinges—and he opened it and brought out all those letters for me to see. He even kept a scrapbook of stories he cut out of the Kansas City Star that took place where he thought I was. And he had this map of Europe where he marked when I was in this country and that. He had a real history there.”

  “I'd like to see that.”

  “You ask him, he'll bring it out. . . . Where's Judith's history?”

  Headlights flashed up into the hackberry tree in the backyard as someone drove in.

  “Who could that be?” Thelma asked when she saw the lights wink out. A neighbor's dog set to yapping. “Got to be a stranger for Huddy to go off like that.”

  Then came the sound of boots striding across the back-porch floor, and a sharp rapping at the doorjamb.

  Thelma left the table. She flicked on the porch light.

  The man on the other side of the screen door snatched off his campaign hat. “Trooper Plemmons,” he said. “Cactus here?”

  “Yes, but we're having supper.”

  “Kind of late for that, isn't it?”

  “Well, this has been a very odd day, but come in.” Thelma opened the door for the trooper. She stepped back, and Plemmons came in, blinking in the brighter light of the kitchen.

  “Would you like coffee, maybe have some pie with us?”

  “No thanks. I ate pretty hefty a couple hours ago, and coffee'd give me problems I don't need tonight. . . . Cactus,” Plemmons said in greeting Early, “you ready to do it?”

  Early pushed his chair back. When he struggled up, Plemmons gestured at the bandaged hands.