After Eli (14 page)

Garnett pushed his hat back on his head and looked at Michael as he would examine a patient. His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened.

“I won’t say anything,” he said. “I don’t give a damn if you sit up on some fence post and crow every morning, if you know what you’re doing yourself.” He turned to the door of the jail. “C’mon, let’s look at this fellow,” he added. He opened the door and walked inside.

MICHAEL SWEPT THE jail with his eyes and memorized it.

The building was made of rock and mortar and heavy timbers, and it was square—perhaps twenty-five feet. In the far right corner from where he stood at the front door, there was a single cell, also square; ten feet, he judged. The steel bars were dark and close, like a cold curtain. There was one small window in the cell, cut high in the back wall. The window was also covered with bars. Across from the cell, in the left corner, was a storeroom, built in the exact dimensions of the cell. The hallway that divided the cell from the storeroom led to a back door that had been nailed closed by a braced framework of two-by-six boards.

The rest of the jail was open. A wooden bench and three ladderback chairs were to the right of the front door. To the left, in front of the storeroom, were a rocker, a desk chair, and a rolltop desk pushed against the inside wall of the storeroom. A gunrack holding two shotguns and a rifle was bolted to the wall beside the rolltop desk. A framed picture of Franklin Roosevelt was on the wall beside the gunrack. And there was one odd piece of furniture: an ancient chifforobe with an ornate facing and round, protruding doors. It was in the corner of the room, to the left of the door. To Michael, the chifforobe seemed out of place in the jail. It belonged in a house, a very fine house.

A deputy whose name was George English slumped sleepily
in a chair, his feet propped comfortably across the shelf of the rolltop desk. He was young, in his early thirties, and impressively tall. His hair was thick and curled in tight, oily knots around his neck, and his face was pockmarked from smallpox.

George smiled happily at the introduction of Michael.

“Heard tell about you workin’ on that fence up at the Pettit place,” he said. “If I’d of known you’d be over at the café tonight, I’d of walked over.”

“And you’d have the sheriff’s boot up your ass,” Garnett snapped.

George giggled. He said, “Hell, Doc, don’t see why this man’s got to be treated any different’n anybody else. Shape he’s in, he ain’t goin’ nowhere, even if he could break out. But ain’t nobody done that since—” He paused and laughed. “Now, this is somethin’, ain’t it?” he said. “Last man to break out of here was Eli, best I can remember it, and that was on some damn bet with the old sheriff. Turned hisself in the same day. That’s why they nailed up the back door. Anyway, it was Eli, and here comes his own flesh and kin, from what I hear.”

“Distant flesh,” corrected Michael. “Distant flesh.”

“Don’t matter. Kin’s kin,” George said nonchalantly, smiling. He turned to Garnett. “You gonna give him another look, Doc?” he asked.

“Soon as you get up the energy to open the door, George. In your own good time, though. Wouldn’t want to rush it.”

George grinned again. He said, “Doc, you some kind of smartass, you know that?” He lifted the key ring from the rolltop desk and strolled to the door of the cell and unlocked it.

“Hey, Benton,” he called, “you got company. Ol’ Doc’s back. Had his hands all over some woman up in the hollow and he’s gonna give you a smell, boy. Gonna make you forget you locked up in here. Ain’t that right, Doc?”

“Shut up, George,” Garnett ordered. He stepped inside the cell and walked cautiously to the frail figure cowering like a
whipped animal in the deep shadows of the bare room. The man was sitting in the corner on a quilt that had been torn and soiled by years of use. The quilt smelled of urine.

“Goddamnit, George,” Garnett said angrily, gagging on the odor. “I told you to get this quilt out of here and wash it out in the river.”

“Now, Doc, you watch it,” George warned. “They come in here pissin’ all over the place, it ain’t my job to clean up after ’em. Let ’im wallow in it and he’ll stop it.”

“Dammit, he can’t help it,” Garnett sighed. “I told you that.”

“Help it if he don’t want to sleep in it,” George said authoritatively.

Garnett shook his head slowly. He was perspiring and he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. Then he bent forward, toward the still, frightened figure.

“Boy, don’t be afraid of me,” he said quietly. “I’m not here to hit you.”

Michael watched from outside the cell, standing beside George. The figure moved slightly against the rock wall. One hand rose helplessly in front of his face and the face—indistinguishable in the dark—rolled away.

“I’m the doctor,” Garnett said. “You know me. I came in earlier. Put some medicine on those cuts. Bandaged you up. You remember me?”

The figure did not move.

“Well, I’m just going to take another look at those bandages. See if they need anything before morning.”

Garnett knelt slowly, as if kneeling before something wild and dangerous. He reached for the man, who jerked away instinctively, bashing his head into the rock wall.

“Goddamnit,” Garnett muttered. “O’Rear, get in here,” he commanded.

Michael stepped inside the cell.

“Hold him, but watch his head and chest,” instructed the
doctor. “No telling what’s broken and what’s not. He’s scared. Not much older than a boy.”

Michael caught the trembling man by the arms, at the shoulders. The body was bones, emaciated and weak. The man froze at Michael’s touch.

“Dear God,” Michael whispered in surprise. “He must be near to death.”

“Not far,” replied Garnett. “Pull him out to the light.”

Michael eased his arm around the stiff, unmoving man and pulled him gently from the corner of the cell into the light. He looked into the man’s face. The doctor was right: He was barely more than a boy. His face had the gaunt look of starvation and it had been savagely beaten.

“Who did it?” Michael asked.

Garnett ignored the question. His fingers moved expertly over the man’s body and his eyes squinted in a judgment that Michael recognized as a hard calculation of the degrees of life and death. He could feel the doctor’s mind clicking off assets and liabilities, tabulating the mathematical chances of repair and survival, as though the man before him were a machine in need of spare pieces of equipment. Michael was amazed by the doctor’s concentration, by his reading touch. What he did was not coldness, Michael thought. Not a meaningless litany in a recital of his practice. It was the physician at work, and his mind raced through the blueprints of the anatomy like an engineer. It was the exercise of a gift—his gift. There was only one thing that was curious about Garnett Cannon, thought Michael: He held his breath as he examined the man. And Michael realized it was not because of the stench of the quilt; it was something the doctor always did, a habit.

Garnett stood suddenly and breathed deeply. “He’ll be all right,” he said flatly. “Just lay him back down where he is. It’ll keep him away from the wall.”

“On the floor?” asked Michael.

“On the floor.”

Garnett reached and pulled the quilt from beneath the man, wadded it angrily, and threw it against the bars of the cell.

“Let’s go,” he said to Michael. “I can’t stand the smell of piss.”

He whirled on his heel and walked to the door of the cell, where George stood blocking the opening.

“Get the hell out of the way, George,” he said in an even, steel voice. George stepped aside and Garnett walked to the rolltop desk and leaned against it and glared at the deputy.

“Dammit, Doc,” George stammered pitifully, “I don’t mean to go bein’ shitty, or nothin’ like that. It’s just that I ain’t gonna clean up after a man pissin’ on hisself. They ain’t never paid me enough for that.”

“George,” Garnett replied coolly, “if that man dies because you didn’t do something you were told to do, you’ll be wishing to hell you’d changed his diapers every hour on the hour. Do you hear me?”

George shifted his weight. He lowered his head and looked at the floor.

“When I come in here in the morning, this place will smell like a lye soap factory,” Garnett continued. His voice was low and direct and unafraid.

George nodded.

“You heard the sheriff say that nothing on God’s earth will happen to that man, and it won’t,” Garnett added.

“Doc, ain’t nothin’ gonna happen,” George whined desperately.

“All right,” Garnett said. “One more thing. Keep it quiet. Nobody knows he’s here and we want to keep it that way for the time being, and that’s an order.” He stared hard at George, then he said to Michael, “Let’s go.” He turned and walked out of the jail.

“Good to meet you,” Michael whispered to George. “Don’t worry about the doctor. He’s a bit tired.”

“Yeah.”

“See you at the café one night, I’d guess,” Michael added.

“Yeah. Maybe so,” George mumbled.

* * *

Garnett said nothing as they crossed the street to his car, and Michael did not question him. He had impressed Michael with his authority. He had not bargained with George English; he had issued orders and George had listened and would obey. Michael wondered if anyone ever disobeyed the doctor when he was angry.

The Ford rumbled slowly down the paved highway leading north out of Yale. Garnett drove with both hands on the steering wheel, with his body leaning forward. His face was furrowed in thinking and Michael knew he would speak when he was ready.

A mile outside Yale, Garnett turned left onto the eroded dirt road leading to the Pettit farm. He drove beyond the bridge crossing Deepstep Creek and then pulled the car to the side of the road and turned off the motor.

“Let’s stand out and get some air,” he said to Michael.

“It’s a night for it,” replied Michael. “It’s one of the things I like about the mountains, more than the sea. You can stand right out in the middle of the mountains.”

The two men got out of the car and walked to the front fenders and leaned against them. It was cool. The night was as clear and clean as polished glass.

“Irishman,” Garnett said at last, “I’m about to tell you something that nobody knows but me and the sheriff and I expect it to stay among the three of us.”

“You have my word,” promised Michael. “And it’s the word of a gentleman.”

Garnett glanced at Michael. His eyes were bright, cold dots in the night. He said, “It had better be.” He crossed his arms and looked into the high half-moon, pale gold against the sky.

“That man we just saw—that boy—was beaten by his
daddy,” Garnett explained. “Curtis—Curtis Hill, he’s the sheriff—picked him up this morning. The boy’s name is Owen Benton. They live ten or twelve miles up in the mountain. Curtis was just by there and stopped in, and found him.”

“What’d the boy do?” Michael asked quietly.

“Do?” Garnett replied. He laughed sarcastically. “He was born Frank Benton’s son, that’s what he did. Frank’s never had reason for beating his children, at least not in the past few years. Never saw a man that brutal. Ran off one of his girls—she was the oldest, I guess—because she spoke to some man in town one day. Just said ‘hello,’ but Frank went crazy. Started beating her right there in the street, calling her a whore, not worth living.” He paused and smiled. “Funny thing,” he continued, “that’s what she became. Ran off that night and went to Atlanta and took to whoring. Heard it from some of my medical friends. They said she was the best in the business and there’s two or three of them who know whores the way the French know wines.”

“It’s a sad thing,” Michael said in a sigh. “A man beatin’ his own flesh. It’s a madman who’d do such a thing.”

Garnett spat on the ground and kicked dirt over the phlegm with the toe of his shoe. He was thinking of Michael’s performance in the café.

“Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe it is madness. I don’t know. It’s a sickness, at the very least. But you’d have to know Frank. He wasn’t always that way. I remember when he was outgoing and well, hell, even warm-hearted. He began to change after his wife died. If you listen to the people around here it’s because of his own father. Seems his father was a preacher of some sort, started his own cult up in the hills. Had a fair number of people that believed in him.” He laughed and shook his head slowly. “One of the things he believed in, they say, was raising people from the dead,” he continued. “God knows, I envy that.” He laughed again. “Anyway, they say Frank never believed in any of it until his wife died and something snapped in him. Grief
can do that. I’ve seen it. He tried to raise his wife from her coffin and his children dragged him away from the body. Frank got it in his mind that it was the Devil working in the children. He changed after that. Everything they did, he watched, and every chance he’s had, he’s punished them.” He looked at Michael. “Madness, Irishman? Hell, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know what can be done about it. All I know is the boy’s in bad shape. We don’t even know why Frank did it. I don’t think the boy will die, but he’s in bad shape.”

“The sheriff jailed him to keep him away from his father?” asked Michael.

Garnett’s eyes narrowed on Michael. His mouth opened and closed. His head nodded sadly.

“You could say that,” he answered. “The boy’d been unconscious for a day. His sister was getting ready to come to town to get us. She’s younger by a few years, but I guess she knew.”