“Not today with me here he don’t.”
“I’ve got to load the cart.”
“You can drag it in yourself and hitch him back up when you come out.”
“What’s the problem with the dog?” I said.
“Are you with him?” Bunny said.
“Yeah,” I said, even though it wasn’t strictly so.
“I don’t like the way that dog looks,” Bunny said. “Like he has the rabies. It’s all over the county. Raccoons and coyotes is full of it. It’s this damn heat. So get him the hell away from me.”
“I’ll watch the dog while you’re inside,” I said to Shawn.
“No, you go, Robert. It’ll be better if I stay out here with him.”
“Okay, I’ll get both of our stuff,” I said.
“Lookit, here,” Bunny said and paused to spit to the side. “However you two work this out, just get that damn dog away from my shack.”
“He doesn’t have rabies,” Shawn said, letting a little too much disdain creep into his voice.
“How do you know?”
“I’m with him all day long.”
“He’s foaming at the mouth.”
“It’s the breed. They slobber a lot.”
“You just take him over to there right now,” Bunny said with mounting impatience and pointed at a maple tree down by the road. Like all our maples, it had a lot of dead branches. We didn’t know whether it was the heat or a disease, but they weren’t getting on well and sugaring was way off. We went down to the tree with the dog.
“What did you need, then?” I asked Shawn.
“Fifty pounds of roofing nails,” he said. He took a roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off a thousand dollars in fifties and twenties. “Take the cart in, why don’t you.”
Shawn unhitched the dog and held onto it by its leather harness. A hot breeze rattled the dry leaves above us. He took a seat on the ground against the dying tree and the big dog lay down peacefully beside him. I pulled the cart by its harness up to Bunny’s guard shack. He raised up the gate, and I entered the general.
Wayne Karp himself was back behind the long counter in the store. I was surprised to see him there. He didn’t often work the customer end of his establishment. That was usually left to an underling. He was sitting in a battered easy chair in a tranquil pool of dimness, sorting through a splint basket of steel springs. In a peculiar way, he was about the only person who qualified as a celebrity anymore in our locality, more potent in his remoteness from things than in his actual presence, larger than life when he wasn’t around. In reality, he was physically unassuming, wiry, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, droopy mustache, and a goatee. You wouldn’t pick him out of a crowd as a natural leader. His left eyelid was a little droopy from an old motorcycle accident, it was said, but he had a set of wings tattooed over his eyebrows that sort of evened out the look of them. I suppose it was designed for that purpose, and it set a fashion trend for those under his sway. He didn’t get up when I entered, or more than glance my way.
Wayne had access to things you hardly ever saw anymore. His crew came up with all kinds of stuff scavenging, and being their boss he often got the pick of their gleanings. This day he had on a pair of blue jeans that looked well broken in but not raggedy, while his camouflage T-shirt might have come off the shelf at the Wal-Mart the day before yesterday, if Wal-Mart had still existed. The short sleeves were rolled up so as to display his lumpy biceps. He wore a pair of red clip-on suspenders too, apparently to emphasize the bulge of his pectorals, not to hold his pants up. He was well nourished and fit and renowned as a fighter for defeating men much larger than himself. On the rare occasions when I saw Wayne, the phrase with his bare hands always echoed in my mind. I waited for him to indicate that he was aware of me standing there, but he seemed oblivious, so I spoke up.
“When you’ve got a moment,” I said.
He held a spring up to the window as if sizing it up in the light.
“Time passes slowly these days, don’t it?” he eventually said.
“The pace is different,” I said.
“Move slower, you live longer, I always say.”
“I’m not in any tearing rush, but I’ve got things to do.”
He finally looked over my way.
“You’re the fiddler, ain’t you?” he said, and chucked the spring in a wooden box, which was actually an old drawer.
“That’s right.”
“I seen you fiddle last fall one time up in Belchertown, didn’t I? Some levee up there.”
“That would have been their harvest ball.”
“Those plowboys can party.”
“Yes they can.”
“It’s a harsh life, though. I wouldn’t want it.”
“Well, you’ve got a situation for yourself, after all.”
“That’s true,” he said. “We all got ourselves a situation, don’t we?”
“It’s not what I expected of life earlier on.”
“Me neither, but you play the hand that’s dealt to you. Say, you remember Charlie Daniels?”
“Yup.”
“He was a hell of a fiddler.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You said you remembered him.”
“I remember the name. I never listened to his records, though.”
“Never listened to Charlie Daniels? And you call yourself a fiddler?” Wayne finally got up and took a winding way to the counter, as though he were trying to elongate the trip as much as possible so I might observe how he moved. He did have a sinuous way of carrying himself. It was obviously intended to be intimidating. “Too bad,” he said. “Those recordings are hard to find nowadays.”
“Well, the electricity’s hardly on anyway.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that. Remember Guns n’ Roses?”
“Never listened to them either.”
“What the hell did you listen to?” He finally looked straight at me.
“Mostly old-time. String band stuff. What they used to call folk music.”
“You just plain folks?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
“What’d you do back in the real world?”
“Computers.”
“Oh? Well that shit’s down for the count, ain’t it?”
“Looks like it.”
“Funny how the old times came back with a vengeance.”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“Well, I just miss rock and roll like crazy, I do,” Wayne said. “Things have got a little too old-time for me in every way. I suppose you came in here for a reason today, Fiddler. What do you need?”
“To start with: fifty pounds of roofing nails and ten of ten-penny common, galvanized if possible. You got any mason jar lids?”
“By the dozen.”
“I’ll take two dozen.”
“We can do that. Let’s say thirteen hunnert altogether. What did you have against Guns n’ Roses, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“They made my ears hurt,” I said. While I was counting out the bills three gunshots rang out sharply from outside. My heart flew into my throat.
NINE
We rushed out of the store and down to the gate area, Shawn lay crumpled facedown with his right arm twisted unnaturally behind his head and bright arterial blood spilling out of him, actually raising tiny spumes of dust as it ran downhill, like fingers clawing the ground. The dog lay a few feet away with his head facing uphill. One of his eyes was shot out and he was motionless, with blood puddling around the margins of his deep fur.
“Oh, what the hell now, Bunny!” Wayne said as we arrived on the scene. He repeated himself several times with increasing anger until he was shouting at the much larger man, who seemed to draw inward trying to make himself look smaller.
I was so overcome with fright that I started hyperventilating. I kneeled down just uphill of Shawn’s head. The truth was I could barely remain upright and had to kneel to keep from passing out. I tried
to straighten Shawn’s arm out, as if that would help. I soon understood that both Shawn and the dog were dead.
“You shit-for-brains!” Wayne said and smacked Bunny in the head. “What the hell happened here?” A revolver still dangled from Bunny’s right hand.
“He fell asleep,” Bunny said, “and his dog come up on me.”
“Asleep! Who goes to sleep in the middle of the road!” Wayne shouted and smacked Bunny again.
“No, down by that tree,” Bunny said.
By now, the other men working back in the dump had ventured down to the front of the general and gathered around us in a semicircle.
“If he was sleeping down there, how in hell did you happen to shoot him up here?” Wayne said.
“I shot the damn dog and then he woke up and he come up on me.”
“What’d you shoot the got-damn dog for?”
“He got the rabies. Lookit how he’s frothing at the damn mouth!”
“He just needed some water is all,” I said.
“What the got-damn hell you know what the dog needed or didn’t need, got-dammit,” Wayne said and then turned wrathfully back to Bunny. “Gimme that got-damn gun!” He wrenched it right out of Bunny’s huge fingers and then brandished it at him. “You’re lucky I don’t put a bullet in your got-damn brainpan, you stupid sonofabitch. And I’ll tell you something else: this is the last time you’ll ever draw shack duty.”
The other men mumbled among themselves.
“Shut up,” Wayne said to them. “That your cart up by the office?” he said to me.
“It was his,” I said.
“Go get that cart,” Wayne said to one of the other men.
He hopped to and trundled the cart down in short order.
“Load him in there,” Wayne said.
Several of the men picked up Shawn’s body and put him in the cart faceup, but with his arms dangling. One of them got blood all over his hands and tried to rub it off on Shawn’s shirt. You could see part of Shawn’s jaw was shot off.
“Fix him right, damn you,” Wayne said, and the men got Shawn’s arms tucked inside.
“Why are you putting him in that?” I asked.
“Because you’re going to take him back.”
“What about that team and wagon up there?”
“It’s staying put.”
Wayne and the rest of the men stared blankly at me. Flies began landing on Shawn’s wounds. My clothes were soaking wet. I was trembling as though it were a winter day, while sweat dripped off the end of my nose.
“I guess you plan to pretend this didn’t happen here?” I said.
“I’m truly sorry. It’s mostly a downgrade to town from here,” Wayne said. “You’ll get there by and by.”
“You expect me to say anything other than what really happened?”
“I don’t expect nothing. You say what you will. It’ll be word against word.”
“It was a accident,” Bunny said.
“Did I ax you?” Wayne shouted. “Here,” he said, suddenly turning to me with an air of disgusted resignation and held out the big pistol, as if for me to take it. “You do us all a favor and shoot this stupid sonofabitch.”
“Look . . .”
“He was your friend, wasn’t he? You got any doubt who done it?”
“For Pete’s sake, Wayne . . .” Bunny said.
“I’ll just . . . leave,” I said.
“We’ll all swear it was self-defense,” Wayne said. “Won’t we boys?”
A few of them mumbled something, but they didn’t seem all that enthusiastic.
“Go on, take it,” Wayne said. “Take the got-damn pistola, amigo.”
“Forget it.”
“You pass up this chance for justice, it might not come again.”
“I’m not an executioner.”
“Well, you take this iron anyways.” Wayne grabbed my hand and literally pressed the pistol into it.
I tossed it back down in the dirt.
“I don’t think you understand,” Wayne said. He picked it up and jammed it into the waist of my pants. “This piece ain’t staying round here. Let’s not argue. Wally, go up to the store and get me a length of stout rope.” Wally jogged briskly away. “We’re going to fix this cart so you can tow on it.”
“People back in town are going to want to know what happened here,” I said.
“I know they are. You go with it, Fiddler. Tell your story, whatever you think you understand about this unfortunate accident. Give them the weapon if you feel like it. Whatever you need to do. We’ll do what we need to do.” He came closer and pushed me a few yards away so the others were out of earshot. “Lookit, we both know who done this. It was a reckless act of stupidity, and I will tell you so straight up this one time only. But it’s done and nothing I can do will bring this young man back to life. This will all come out in the wash, I promise you. But don’t expect too much from the law. The truth is, we’re our own law in these times, like it or not. Apart from all that, I’m personally sorry this has happened, and I wish you luck in dealing with it. Who was he anyway? I know I seen him.”
“He was a hand on Mr. Schmidt’s farm. Shawn Watling.”
“Watling? I once bought a double lot from that Watling agency.”
“That was his parents. They’re dead.”
“Well God bless us the living, anyway.”
Wally returned with a length of rope and was rigging it to the harness so I could pull it more easily. Then there was nothing to do but leave with Shawn’s body. It was a substantial load. As I pulled the cart away from the general, all I could think about was whether they would eat the dog.
TEN
The day had turned deathly hot with no breeze. On the first steep downgrade, I had to turn the cart around to keep it from running away on me, only to confront Shawn’s face with the flies darting at the terrible wound. When we got to a flatter stretch, I stopped the cart and put my shirt over his head so I wouldn’t have to look at him. The rest of the way I endlessly replayed what might have occurred between Shawn and Bunny Willman, trying to imagine the part that I hadn’t seen. It occurred to me that I had put Shawn in a bad mood earlier, which perhaps had made him say or do something reckless . . .
I brooded over what I would do with the gun. There were still plenty of guns around, but manufactured ammunition was nearly impossible to get, and Wayne was the sole supplier anywhere near our town. Three rounds remained in the cylinder. I looked. I decided to hide it along the road, somewhere I could find it in the future if I had to. I wasn’t going to bring it into town with me because, for all I knew, people might draw the wrong conclusion. There could be some kind of legal proceeding, I thought, an inquest, a grand jury, some effort to pretend that we were still civilized because a human life still mattered. There hadn’t been an incident like this in our town—the killing of one person by another under any circumstances —as long as I could remember. Even back in his heyday running the dope trade, Wayne hadn’t killed anybody, though his boys had roughed people up and lighted some fires. Perhaps Wayne could influence the outcome of a proceeding, maybe even shift the blame to me. Stephen Bullock, the wealthiest farmer in our area, and a friend of mine, was the magistrate, but nobody knew what to expect of him because he’d declined the honor of serving.
I parked the cart, with Shawn in it, among the daylilies along the road at the Black Creek Bridge where we’d met up earlier that day, and climbed down under the bridge and tucked the gun up along one of the old steel girders underneath where the swallows made their nests. It was dim under there even with the sun blazing like an ingot in the sky. I doubted anybody would find it.
The Schmidt farm lay more than a mile up the junction there, uphill the whole way, and I didn’t want to leave Shawn in the cart, drawing flies in the lilies while I went up for help, so I decided to get him the rest of the way to town myself. I couldn’t imagine just bringing the body directly to his house and presenting it to his wife and child. Freer’s funeral
home was long shuttered because both Freer brothers were carried off by encephalitis and nobody took up their business, so I couldn’t bring Shawn there. Besides, there was no refrigeration in their morgue with the electricity off. In recent years, most of our funerals took place in the church. There hadn’t been a police department for years and Heath Rucker, the constable, didn’t have an office and was a useless drunk on top of that. I decided to take Shawn’s body directly to Dr. Copeland’s house, since he might be called upon to act as a medical examiner in any legal proceeding.
As I passed by the old high school, nobody was left out in the garden in the midday heat, nor was the roofing crew still at work. I assumed they were inside at lunch, or prayer, or just preserving their energy for the cooler hours of the day. The streets of town were deserted too, though I heard the sound of hammer blows from Doug Sweetland’s wheel shop and saw Linda Allison hanging wash in her yard. The smell of something sweet emanated from Russo’s bakery. It nauseated me in the heat. Finally, I hauled the cart up behind what had once been the driveway to Dr. Copeland’s office, formerly a carriage house and garage. I left Shawn beside the yew hedge there and went in to find the doctor.
He had no patients in his waiting room. I called out and his voice said come into the back. He had a lab behind his examining room. He was in there pouring off a jug of grain alcohol into an odd lot of smaller bottles and jars. He had become an adept herbalist through the years. He had to make his own antiseptic, like everything else. The room was heavy with fumes.
“Heat getting you, Robert?” he said without looking at me.
“There’s been a terrible accident, Jerry.”
He looked up, peering over the rim of his eyeglasses while he managed to finish filling an old soda pop bottle without spilling a drop.
“What sort of accident?”
“Shawn Watling got shot up at the general supply.”
“That doesn’t sound like an accident.”
“I’ve got him in a cart outside.”
Jerry, lean and lithe at thirty-nine, slipped past me and I followed. He knelt beside the cart. He had the shirt off Shawn’s face and was studying him, feeling for a pulse on his neck, though anyone could see that he was beyond saving. Pretty soon, Jerry began cursing, saying “goddammit, goddammit” over and over in a harsh whisper. Sweat dripped off the end of his nose onto Shawn’s chest. “You didn’t say he was dead.”
World Made by Hand Page 5
