Feast for Thieves (26 page)

At the end of day shift at the plant, the fellas in my tree-cutting Bible study all came in to visit as a bunch. Hoss and Cash and Slim and Stitch; Tick and Harry and Hank and Boone.
Breakfast at the Pine Oak Café would be lonesome without me if I didn’t get out of there real soon, they all said. We talked about the rising prices of beef cattle and about a piece of new machinery they was putting in at the Murray, and Slim said somebody should pray for me seeing how I was in the slammer and all, and Tick said to Slim, “Well why don’t you pray for him yourself, ya knucklehead?” So they started a fistfight right there in the jailhouse, until Hoss jumped in the middle and knocked their heads together. Then they prayed for me as a group, all except Slim, who was out cold on the floor.

After the fellas left, the barmaids from the tavern, the cleanup crew, and most of the working girls filed in little by little. There was Trixie and Dolly, Opal and Marlis, Zelda and Sal. Marlis was excited to tell me about a new correspondence course in bookkeeping she was taking. Trixie was leaving the business too, starting a new housecleaning service that she hoped to market throughout the town. Zelda was reading Deuteronomy and having trouble with all those long lists of this and that. I didn’t know what to do there, but maybe Bobbie had an answer.

Mert stayed away all that day. She was at home caring for her husband, explained the gal at the front desk just before she clocked out. Clay Cahoon was still ailing something fierce, although news had flown all around town at his miraculous operation and the lucky break Mert had by winning that encyclopedia sweepstakes. True, I’d told the sheriff all about my story, but I’d kept that bit of information under wraps still. It was Mert and Clay’s story to tell, when the time was right, not mine.

Around 6:30 p.m. Halligan brought me dinner. Beef stew and biscuits. Coffee. Another piece of apple pie. The doc came and checked in on me about 8 p.m., and then I lay back down again and stared at the ceiling and sorted out my mind.

I was feeling good about seeing the folks who’d come and visited me, most of them anyway, particularly how so many had
stopped in to wish me well. It felt like I was becoming a part of this backwoods town, it did, and a twinge of new and unusual forlornness bounced its way up and down my spine. No, the Cut Eye Community Church wasn’t perfect. Far from so. But I came to see that this church and its strange town with its many peculiar ways was reaching into my heart in ways I’d never imagined. Funny but how a man starts wishing he had a job, some stability, some respect maybe, if he’s lucky. In my case, the want of a job was only so I could get my daughter out of a bad spot. Then time goes on and the same man starts realizing the job and stability and respect are all part of something larger he wishes for but never knew how to articulate before then. What he longs for is a community of folks he calls his friends and neighbors. That’s what Cut Eye was becoming to me.

Still, by day’s end I was feeling sad. That’s what it was. Here I was in jail again, and the option of me settling in at Cut Eye for the long run wasn’t looking like much of any possibility at the moment. I needed to think about that a spell, I did. Because when the sheriff first dealt me into my job as reverend I couldn’t imagine myself in the role for long. Being a reverend was so foreign to me. Yet now maybe I could. Or maybe that new thought was in my mind so strongly because all day there was one person I kept wishing hard would turn up to visit. One person I wanted to see most of all, and yet she hadn’t come. No, I didn’t want Sunny to see her father while I was in jail, so banged up and locked up as I was. I loved my daughter deep and strong, but it wasn’t her. Not just here. It was someone else I wanted to see. Yes sir, it was.

I fell asleep about 10 p.m. and slept all night. My sleep was peaceful for the most part. I didn’t know the future, although I was fairly certain it wasn’t good. I knew I hadn’t killed anyone, and that my crimes could be explained away, which sometimes yields leniency when standing before a judge. But I was still an accessory to two armed bank robberies, that was for certain, and this was
Texas. I’d probably get thirty years to life.

Halligan brought me breakfast again the next morning. A court-appointed lawyer was coming into town that day and the sheriff wanted me to walk him through the whole story too—at least the bit about Rancho Springs. The sheriff let me out of the cell so I could go next door to his house and shower and shave, which I could barely do on account of my face being so broken up. A fresh set of clothes was laid out for me and I put them on and headed back over to my cell. All the rest of that morning I stared at the ceiling.

Lunch consisted of a cold ham-and-cheese sandwich and another thermos of coffee. Then the lawyer came. He was a ruddy-faced fellow and was hard to understand on account of him talking with a thick lisp, but he seemed to know his law and told me not to worry—he was reasonably certain he could get my sentence reduced to ten years in prison. Twenty years at the most.

After he left I did some push-ups on the concrete floor of the jailhouse and chewed on the thought of a long stretch of time behind bars. The gal at the front desk brought me over a Bible and I read through the first letter to the Corinthians, finished it, and started in on the second. By then it was dinnertime, chicken tortillas with a side of peas. I was glad to be eating, but it was nothing like when Augusta was at the helm.

At 10 p.m. I did another few sets of push-ups, then went to bed. Thursday was over, and still the person I wanted to see most hadn’t come.

At 6 a.m. the next morning Bobbie came into the jailhouse.

It was Friday, and a clear, bright sky already showed through the windows. The gal at the front desk wasn’t in yet. Neither was the sheriff or Deputy Roy, so it was just Bobbie and me alone together, although I reckoned a few other rough men would be
thrown in the clink by day’s end, this being the start of the weekend and all.

Bobbie stood in front of the bars for a long while without saying anything. I kept my eyes to the floor. She wasn’t sitting and she wasn’t pacing. She just stood there looking at me, and I feared she was eyeing me with wariness, like a human eyes a leopard in a cage at the zoo.

Finally she spoke.

“
He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, And say ‘Tomorrow is Saint Crispian.’ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’ Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember, with advantages, What feats he did that day.”

She looked to be finished, so I raised my head and asked, “Shakespeare?”

She nodded. “Do you know what that poem is about, Rowdy?”

I shook my head.

“It’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, from
Henry V
. The poem is talking about the glory of noble actions, about remembering deeds past when men fought for what mattered. I think you know something about doing that, Rowdy.
If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor
. Do you get what it means yet?”

I shook my head but tried to smile. “If I live a thousand years, I’ll never understand why you persist in talking in such riddles, Bobbie. You’re right full of sassafras, aren’t you?”

The girl grinned.

“How’s Sunny?” I asked.

“She’s beautiful.” Bobbie reached into her pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and held it out to me between the bars. “She drew pictures and colored a get-well card for you.” Bobbie coughed. “It’s for her uncle.”

I nodded then looked away.

“My sister’s taking good care of her. You don’t need to worry about a thing. Emma does really well with children, and already the child’s learned a few words. How old is she now, about five?”

I nodded.

Bobbie coughed again. The girl went to the side wall, pulled over a chair in front of the cell, and sat down. “She’s not your niece, is she?”

A hard lump went down my throat and I whispered, “How can you tell?”

“It’s her colorings,” Bobbie said. “Her cheekbones. The way her eyes are set. She looks exactly like you.” The girl chuckled. “That is—when your face isn’t so messed up.” There was kindness in her voice, not sass.

“Sunny’s my doing,” I said. “She’s my blood and kin. I hardly know her, but I love her with all my heart.”

Bobbie pointed to the card. “She drew you a sunflower. There’s a packet of red licorice whips next to it in the picture and a yellow ribbon. Do you know what it all means?”

Dang it all.

A tear slid out of my eye and down my cheek. I never cry. Not ever. I jumped out of a C-47 into a hail of gunfire in Normandy. I took a bullet in Holland. I spent time in the hospital ward, looking around at all the spent men. One with his leg blown off. One with no jaw. Another burned so badly he hardly looked human. All that time I never cried. But when I thought of my daughter growing up without her daddy, a hard swallow went down my throat. It wasn’t me I was crying for. It was for her. Every daughter needs her father. Maybe she could come see me in the state pen sometimes. Maybe Halligan would bring her by. Maybe even Bobbie would, if she thought to visit.

“Thank you, Bobbie,” I said. “Thank you for being so kind.”

The girl smiled. “You just said my name. You don’t say my name enough. I like to hear you say it.”

“I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment,” I said. “I truly am.”

She was gone after that. There was nothing more to say between us, I reckoned. Nothing more that could be spoken by words. I was who I was and I did what I did. A fella could never truly change, could he?

TWENTY-THREE

W
ell, in two weeks’ time I appeared before a judge. It was only a preliminary hearing and he established a date far in the future for a full trial for my misdeeds in the Rancho Springs transgression—Thursday, March 6, 1947, which would be one week exactly before the end of my year as preacher in Cut Eye.

My bail was set at ten thousand dollars. Halligan spoke up for me and promised I was no flight risk and that he was personally vouching for my character, so the judge lowered the bail to five hundred bucks, which Halligan wrote a check for right then and there.

Halligan drove me back to Cut Eye, and I found that free air blowing in the window mighty easy to breathe. We stopped first at Gummer’s filling station. Clay Cahoon drove an old 1932 Chevy pickup truck, which Mert said he wouldn’t need for a while. It was mine to use in the meantime. The Chevy ran okay and had those fine swooped fenders coming off the front, and Gummer already had it filled up with gasoline. The windshield was cleaned so it shined spotless, and the level of air in the tires was just plump.

The sheriff took me over to the jailhouse after that. We went inside his office, he closed the door, and we had a long talk. “A bargain’s a bargain,” he said, and the original deal between him and I still stood. He understood how life had spiraled downward for me and how it made sense that I got tangled up in blowing up
the bank in Rancho Springs. Nevertheless, a good excuse didn’t forgive my actions none, and for my part in the Rancho Springs transgression, the law would indeed need to sort out what to do with me come March 6.

In regards to my first crime—robbing the bank in Cut Eye—Halligan admitted he wavered on how best to proceed there. On one hand, he was obliged to uphold the law, and now since I’d told him the truth, the whole story, and nothing but the truth, the duty of his badge mandated him turning me in. He scratched his head and explained how it was his duty as a peace-loving community member of Cut Eye, however, that kept him from pulling the trigger on me.

Many of the men in the town of Cut Eye were seeing better days thanks to my work as preacher, Halligan said, and he still had hopes that I might fulfill my year and help turn the town around once and for good. I’d returned all the money for the Cut Eye bank robbery besides, so there was no harm–no foul, and no one except him was wise to my unlawful behavior. He looked me steady in the eye when he said this, adding that he was fixing to keep his mouth shut, at least until my year was up. In the meantime, “Keep proving your worth around here,” he said. “You’re not doing as bad as you think,” and he shook my hand.