Beautiful Dreamer (15 page)

He got up and stood in the doorway. Then he spun around and went back in. He found what he was looking for almost straight away. A box of shells, only there were no more than half a dozen. And why didn't he take more than that, he asked himself, answering the question by seeing in his mind a man running off in panic, grabbing what he could, abandoning the food left in the pot. He stepped outside again, wondering to himself which direction he might have gone. And as he stared, unseeing, as you might have thought, trying to figure where he would have gone if he had been in the same fix, he saw where the grass had got pushed down and scuffed up no more than a dozen paces away.

He walked across to it, wondering what might have caused it, crouching down finally, noticing right away the blood smeared on the grass. And no more than half a dozen paces further on, he found more of the same and parallel gouges where someone had been dragged a little before being lifted up. So, two people shot. But who the hell were they? Was it the two who had set off to get away but left it too late, or was it some others? And if it was, then who the hell might they be? He walked around the clearing to see if there were any more marks, to see if anyone had maybe dragged the bodies, if bodies there were, off into the scrub. But there was nothing to be seen, nothing he could see.

He went back to the trampled area and sat down beside it, trying to see in his mind what might have happened there. Two people inside, with a shotgun and two shots fired. Not, he now thought, to kill a rabbit, as who would need two blasts from a shotgun to do that and what would be left, assuming that someone had? So, two shots for something else. And were they fired from there? He got up and went back inside the kitchen, turning round and looking out to where he had been. It was possible, he could see, though more likely you would have to step outside. But that would mean that those who did the shooting were those trying to flee, which meant the man, because the boy could never have done that, would not have been trusted with a gun, unless the man was incapable of such.

On the other hand, wasn't it more likely that those doing the shooting would be those who had sought them out? And if they had known there was a nigger there — he caught himself using the word, who would not have used it until he came here to find a place where it was used as you would call a tree a tree — well, then, they would have been doubly sure to shoot him down. Hence the two shell cases. Because maybe there was no shotgun in the house. Maybe the shotgun belonged to those that came this far out to finish the job, discovering that they could finish two jobs at the same time. Except there was a box of shells and it wasn't likely that anyone would have brought such along, and if they had, unlikely they would have left them where he found them. Were they killed inside, then? He looked around, carefully this time, searching every wall, running his fingers over the pictures peeling from the bedroom wall, looking everywhere that shotgun pellets might have hit, convincing himself, finally, that whoever had fired had done so outside in that there was no sign it had been in here.

He knew he was missing something. There was a story and he didn't know what it might be. He was going to have to come at this some other way. He flipped another cigarette out of the pack and snapped a match with his fingernail, lighting it as the flare died down.

Now who would be visiting out here, who would be coming looking to maybe kill this man or at least to do him further harm? That was an easy question to answer. There was one family that was behind this as they were behind most things that needed a twisted mind. One thing was sure, it wasn't the storekeeper, who would have been scared to set foot in the woods, who would have been content for someone else to do his business. So that meant he had another visit to make, another place to go before the pieces would maybe come into some kind of pattern.

He flicked his cigarette outside and then thought better of it and walked across and crushed it into the earth, picking it up afterwards and putting it in his pocket. Enough of his training had stayed with him that he was going to be sure to keep the crime scene clean. He set off down the track, thinking to himself that this was better than sitting in a fly-blown office and listening to the fan whirl round, turning slowly so that you only got cool once every thirty seconds or so. He walked, feeling the earth springing beneath his feet, until he saw his Ford sitting there in the shade but with a flash of brightness coming back to him from where a patch of sun made its way through the trees. It made him feel good to have the Ford and it made him feel good to be thinking again, trying to figure out what had happened from what he could find, using his brain again as most of the time he did not.

He drove back to the highway, if you could call it a highway, that crumbled at the edges and had a slope that could pull you into the ditch, did pull many a car and truck into the ditch, especially when its driver was too drunk to care over much where it went. From there, he set out for the one place he could maybe make some sense of all the pieces that were floating around in his head.

They were torturing him, maybe getting ready to do more. That's what he had been told and, even though he hadn't believed it, coming as it did from a young man who had been known to stretch the truth somewhat, he had gone on out and found evidence that someone had at least bled a little, that at least two shots had been fired from a shotgun that wasn't there any more, and that someone or something had been dragged a way before being lifted, and if it was bodies, they didn't appear to have been buried, at least not so far as he could see. Which left … what? It left the Steadmans, or at least a visit there to see if they would deny everything, which was what they usually did, even when you had got them plumb centre and with evidence dropping out of the sky. But who was dead? Was anybody dead?

There was no sign on the track he took, not least because no one would care to go where he was going unless invited, and even not then, because who would trust an invitation from the Steadmans? Not a girl in the neighbourhood would be seen even talking to them, which raised the question of how they managed to keep on coming, there being no shortage of Steadmans, no shortage at all. He had seen them come into town in a truck that had no business on the road, crawling with Steadmans of every age. Well, it was pretty clear that if no girl would be seen with them, they were generating it all by themselves. Each year a new one would turn up at the school. They would even stay a year or two, as if they were sent there just to keep them out of the way. Then they would leave, not a whit wiser than when they arrived but having corrupted a kid or two so that it took years to get them back on track again. Then, twelve months later would come another one, looking just the same, only sorrier and stupider than the last.

There was a mailbox a hundred yards or so along the track, but they never got any mail, except the summonses that were issued on a regular basis and which they paid no more attention to than they would a man from Mars who thought to land at their place. And if it came to such an encounter, he knew which side he would put his money on. To tell the truth, no one ever went up against the Steadmans and came out on top, or even came out at all, it was thought. Even the sheriff's uniform didn't make much sense to them. The best he had managed was to throw them in jail when they got drunk and smashed things up in the bar that was tolerated on the edge of town, though regularly denounced from the pulpit of the church. But that was how things were thereabouts. This was a dry county if you cared to read the statutes, but nobody was reading them and the Steadmans couldn't if they tried, despite the regulation two years they spent at school, ruining others who might have made something of themselves, or more probably not.

No one knew how many of them there were. There were censuses, of course, when everyone was supposed to tell you about themselves, but no census taker had ever ventured out to see them, more than one form being faked by the man assigned to ask them what they did and with whom and for why.

He swung round the corner and there it was. There wasn't just the one place, but a cluster of buildings no one of which could really be called a house. Most looked as though they were put up for animals, which didn't seem so far from the truth. There were several kids playing in the mud and though here he was, driving a brand new Ford, not one of them looked up to see who this might be. He banged his horn in irritation and a mule wandered out in front of him, as though seeing a chance for suicide that would relieve him of the suffering that was doubtless his lot. He stopped and a swirl of dust temporarily shrouded him. He waited for it to clear. It took time in the still air. The sun had already burned off the previous day's rain. At last it settled, filming his bright paintwork. He winced and reached for a cigarette, lighting it with a snap and flicking the match out on to the ground where it could do no harm, there not being a single blade of grass it could catch light to. He got out, wearily, not knowing quite where he would begin. He guessed they would know it was about the lynching, but would they know about what seemed to have followed? Was it them that did it, whatever it turned out to be?

Even if it was not, he felt sure they would know and equally sure that they wouldn't say a thing. Not saying a thing to the law was the one lesson they learned and that before they were sent off to school, in case they encountered the law there and let on before they had been taught all the rules of the tribe. He waited to see if anyone would appear. They did not, so he made his way up on to what must once have been a porch but had evidently decided to slide down into the ground, one end tilting toward him. He climbed the steps, splintering beneath him. The outer door was open. What once had been a screen was now no more than a rusty mesh, torn and holed like the stockings of some old woman down on her luck.

‘How you do'en?' he said to the man who came to the door, a man whose age he could never have guessed to the nearest twenty.

‘What you'm want?'

‘Boys around?'

‘What boys?'

‘Oldest.'

‘What you'm want them for?'

‘Ask some questions?'

‘They don't know nothing.'

‘About what?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Nothing? Know their names?'

‘What you'm want?'

It was as though he were stuck in a whirlpool. The man's eyes seemed blank, just staring at him, waiting for the next question not to answer. Something was wrong, though what it was he couldn't say.

‘There's been some trouble.'

‘None of mine.'

‘Trouble the other night. Now trouble again.' Then something hit him. The dogs. The last time he had come, carrying a summons, the others having been torn up as he supposed, there had been dogs everywhere.

‘Where're the dogs?'

‘You want dogs?'

‘No, I don't want dogs. Where are they?'

‘Out.'

‘Where?'

‘With the boys.'

‘Where are they?'

‘Out.'

The day stretched ahead of him and he could see how he might be spending most of it like this.

‘When will they be back?'

‘The dogs?'

‘The boys.'

‘Can't say.'

‘You had any trouble here?'

‘What kind of trouble?'

‘Anyone get hurt?'

‘No trouble.'

‘Why d'you ask what kind?'

‘What?'

‘Come in?'

‘What?'

‘Can I come in?'

The old man edged across to block the door.

‘What you want to come in fer?'

‘It's hot out here.'

‘Don't run no café. Come back when it cooler.' Then, as an afterthought, ‘Or don't come back at all.' He grinned, baring his broken teeth.

Then the sheriff heard a sound from inside, a whimpering, like a dog that has been whipped.

‘What's that?'

‘What?'

‘That noise.'

‘The wife.'

‘The wife?'

‘What I said.'

‘Why she crying?'

‘Damn knows. Why do women do anything?'

The sheriff did what he knew he would have to do. He stepped toward the man and pushed him aside with his arm.

‘Here. Where you'm going? This my place. You get on out.'

He stepped into the hallway. There were no boards, just compacted earth, hard and cracked. He heard the sound again and moved toward it.

‘You get out of here. I'll call the boys.'

‘I thought they were out,' he said back over his shoulder.

‘I got more'n them,' he said, but not that many, the sheriff realized as he stepped through a doorway into another room. Not as many as he had had, because there, on a trestle table, were the bodies of two of them and beside them an old woman, looking as like the man as you can while being a different sex, crying into a handkerchief that was mostly black and somewhat other colours as well.

‘So,' said the sheriff. ‘Who killed them?'

‘Don't you worry about them. We get them for sure. Ain't nobody goin a do this and live. No, sir, that they ain't. Quit bawling. Ain't nothing to be done except kill they bastards.'

‘More than one of them, then.'

‘I ain't talking to you. You no business here. This my home and they my boys, now get yourself out or I'll get you out myself.'

‘There's a crime been committed here and I'm not moving till I find out what happened.'

‘What happened is that some bastard killed my boys and now they getting killed. They getting hunted down and they getting killed and ain't none of your business neither. Now get.'

The sheriff turned around and stepped out into the sun. Everything was as before. After a moment the old man reappeared, holding a rifle.

‘Git,' he said.

‘I'm gonna say you never did that, since you've suffered bereavement, but if you don't put that down, you're going to jail.'