The Right Side of Wrong (13 page)

Grandpa grunted. “I know it.”

It made me think to check my own hook. The bait was gone. Sometimes little bream will nip a worm off your hook without moving the bobber. I reeled it in and reached toward the coffee can full of worms, when Mr. Bell threw a holler at me.

“Hey, son, have you thought about using chewing tobacco for bait?”

I hadn't heard that one. Once I caught a crappie on a piece of pink bubble gum, but that was all. “No, sir.”

“Well, you might want to think about it. Course you'll need a club for that technique. You want to try?”

“Sure.”

“Find you a thick stick, and I'll cut you a piece of this Day's Work plug here in my pocket.”

Limbs were on the ground all around us. Everybody concentrated on their fishing while I put down my rod and went to find a good one. Pepper joined me, because we were about to learn something new. When I passed Grandpa, I saw he was staring hard at the men across the creek.

We found a stout limb on the other side of Miss Becky and carried it to Mr. Bell. He had a chunk of fresh tobacco in his hand. “Here, drop this in close to my bobber.”

I followed his instructions and we squatted down. I watched the line leading down into the water. “What now?”

“Why, you wait.”

“For what?”

“In a little bit those fish are going find that chew, then you give them a few more minutes.”

Pepper frowned. “Then what.”

“Why Little Missy, when that catfish comes up to spit, you whack him ‘tween the eyes with your club.”

That must have been the funniest thing the adults had ever heard. I knew we'd been had, but it was Pepper that threw a fit. She stomped off toward the woods, cussing under her breath.

“Pepper,” Uncle Cody called. “Stay close by.”

She was as sulled up as a possum. “Why?”

“You might slip into the water and drown.”

She still didn't get it, so I had to explain it to her. “He don't trust those two guys over there, you dope.”

“Kiss my ass,” she mouthed.

“Tom, I swear,” Grandpa shook his head and snickered. “I'd a thought they'd heard that before. That joke's older'n both of us put together.”

“Ain't it the truth,” Mr. Bell said, and then set the hook on the biggest catfish we caught all day.

I was starting to feel guilty about what we'd done to Mr. Bell, what with sneaking in his house and peeking into his trunk, when a stick snapped behind us. Uncle Cody threw his rod on the ground and spun. In a flash the .45 appeared in his hand, pointed at Mr. Washington who was picking his way down the trail to where we were.

He pretended not to see the pistol that Uncle Cody put back under his shirt pretty quick. “Howdy, everbody.”

Grandpa was surprised. “John, what's the matter? What are you doing here?”

“I been lookin' for y'all. I knew you said you's going fishing, and I knowed you likes this stretch of the creek, so I come on down when I couldn't raise neither of y'all on the radio. We got a phone call said a body was found hanging in a barn out here. Mr. O.C. sent me out to tell y'all, and to help.”

“My lands!” Miss Becky put her hand on her chest like she was having a heart attack. “Do you know who it is?”

“Yessum. Howdy, Miss Becky, Miss Norma, sorry I didn't speak when I got here.” He was embarrassed he'd forgotten his manners.

“No need to apologize, John.” Miss Becky stood straight, waiting for the bad news. “Who is it?”

He cleared his throat. Grandpa knew why Mr. John was hesitating. “Go on. You can say.”

“It's Benjamin Winters.”

Miss Becky gasped. “My Lord, kinfolk.”

Grandpa shook his head. “Which one? There's two, the daddy and his boy.”

“They didn't say anything on the radio but Benjamin.”

“Well, let's go, then. Y'all get in your lines.”

I was numb. I'd been in Uncle Ben's house only days before, and now one of them was hung. I wondered if Grandpa had told Miss Becky about Aunt Sylvia leaving, but knew enough not to say anything myself.

While we hurried to gather everything up, Mr. John noticed them men across the creek, but it wasn't much more than a glance.

Their voices rang clear across the water. “Now that's a cryin' shame. It's a good thing them nigger lovers are leaving.”

Uncle Cody answered Mr. John's unspoken question. “We don't know who they are.” He spun on his heel and headed in their direction. Even though the creek was between us, both men stood up as he stomped down the bank. They might have been expecting a cuss fight, because they ducked their heads when he got close enough to talk to 'em casual-like across the water.

“You men got something to say to us?”

The meanest-looking one answered around a juicy chew. “Naw, not much.”

“Well, give me what there is, then.”

The other one had slit eyes. “Y'all need to watch yourselves. Don't get into nothin' that don't concern you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“
You
know what I mean. We're supposed to say if y'all back off, you might find a fat envelope waitin' for you under the seat in that fancy El Camino you drive.”

Uncle Cody stiffened. “You sonsabitches better stay away from my family,
and
my car, or I'll bury you somewhere only God can find you. I don't want nothin' from trash like you.”

Mr. Bell joined them and the men looked afraid. They didn't answer. Instead, they left their poles and hurried up the bank and into the trees.

Uncle Cody was madder'n a wet hen from the set of his jaw, but he didn't say anything else. He motioned for Norma Faye to follow and led the way back to the cars. Mr. Bell stayed where he was, without moving, as if waiting for a charge across the creek.

Mr. John lifted the heavy stringer of fish like it didn't weight nothing. He took Miss Becky's folding chair, and followed with me and Pepper in tow. Grandpa and Mr. Bell were the last to leave the creek.

I stopped at the top of the steep bank to see what would happen next. Them two strangers stood just inside the edge of the trees, watching. Grandpa had his hand in the pocket of his overalls, studying them.

I knew one hand rested on the little .38 he carried in there.

Without another word, he pointed his left index finger at the men. First one, then the other. That gesture said more than a whole set of World Book encyclopedias.

We were in the car by the time he climbed the bank and joined us.

“Did you say anything else?” Uncle Cody asked.

Mr. Bell snorted. “Didn't need to.”

***

They didn't get home from Uncle Ben's house until nearly dark, and by that time, Miss Becky had the fish cleaned and the grease hot. We had us a fish fry that night. Uncle James and Aunt Ida Belle joined us and they laughed at the stories, but the adults weren't as bright as they would have been, because of the death.

I sure was proud Mr. Bell got Pepper's goat, and went to sleep long after dark, expecting to dream of catching big turtles and grinning, tobacco-chewing catfish.

Instead I dreamed of a hanging man who was dangling in a cloud of smoke and talking to me in a language I couldn't make out, because he was on the other side of the creek. It sure sounded like them Choctaw words Miss Becky teaches us every now and then, when we're sitting under the Mimosa tree after supper.

Along about two in the morning, all them fish I ate started calling for water. I got out of bed and took a good, long drink from the water bucket in the kitchen. When I went back to bed, I had another dream and forgot the first one until several days later.

Chapter Nineteen

Ned drove to Ben Winter's house in a rising south wind. It wasn't but a mile as the crow flies, but they had to zig zag along the gravel country roads leading around one pasture, then another.

He parked in the yard already crowded with agitated people. At least a dozen cars were in the way, and more were pulled off to the side of the road against the bar ditch in front of the house.

“Son of a
bitch
!” Ned killed the engine and climbed out, building a head of steam. “They've tromped on everything between here and the barn.”

Isaac Reader was standing with a group of men near the front porch. Seeing Ned's Chevrolet, the jerky little man hurried across the yard, already talking well out of earshot.

“Ned, listen, listen. It weren't me that found nothin' this time. I's up at the store and heard Benjamin been found hung and I rode over here with the Wilson boys.”

Cody stifled a grin, knowing Reader wore on Ned's last nerve with his talking. Within the last year, Isaac seemed to have acquired a penchant for being the bearer of bad news. It was Isaac who found Cody's brutally mutilated bird dog that set off a chain of related animal mutilations leading to a killer living in their midst.

He also found the murdered bodies of Josh Brooks and his entire family only months later.

Ned waited until the nervous little farmer was close enough for comfortable conversation in the high wind. “Isaac, do you know who found him? Which one is it?”

Ike's Adam's apple traveled for a moment. “Listen, I was told it's Benjamin, but I didn't know for sure 'til I got there.”

“Well, who found him?”

“Ben.”

“I'god, Ike, conversation with you wears me out. One of 'em's alive, which one is it and where's he at?”

A look of surprise crossed Reader's face. He had no idea why Ned was so upset with him. “Ben's in the house with the Wilson boys.”

“I'god, which one is still drawin' air? Big Ben or Little Ben.”

“Why Big Ben, like I said.”

“All right then.” Ned clumped up the porch, nodding to the men gathered there. He grabbed the handle of the screen door and heard women sniffling inside.

Isaac stayed in the yard. “Listen, listen Cody. He's hung in the barn, not the house.”

“I know Ike, we'll get out there in a minute.”

Ned let the door slap behind him and called back through the screen. “Y'all stay out here for a minute, and everybody keep out of the barn.”

Benjamin senior sat on a horsehair divan between two of his sisters. His eyes were wet and red, and he didn't have his teeth in. Though it was sunny outside, the interior seemed dimmer than the last time Ned was there. All the windows were open, and the thin homemade curtains flapped in the dry breeze coming through rusty screens.

He expected to see Sylvia, but she wasn't there.

His question was answered for sure. Little Benjamin was the one they'd come for. Without a word, Ned nodded and passed on through the house, the kitchen, and out the back door. Cody fell in behind after resting his hand briefly on the weeping man's shoulder.

John was already at the barn, fifty yards behind the house. Massive arms crossed over his chest, he stood guard at the doors. Only the Wilson boys named after famous baseball players Ty Cobb and Jimmy Foxx were there talking to him. They always showed up when something was going on, like they had some sixth sense for adventure or trouble.

“I guaran-damn-tee-you he didn't hang hisself.” Ty Cobb picked at a crusty in his nose. “That boy wouldn't do nothing of the kind.”

Jimmy Foxx rubbed his own nose in sympathy. “I bet he got crossways with some bad folks don't live around here. There's a lot of meanness these days. That's why I carry a pistol everywhere I go, and Ty Cobb does too.” He raised his shirt tail to reveal the butt of a revolver.

The sagging clothesline wires hung empty. A sow with a ring in her nose grunted from the ramshackle hog pen, hoping for a bucket of slop. No one noticed the thick aroma of soured mud.

A rusty piece of loose sheet iron serving as the roof on the hog shed was loose in the rising wind. The sharp screech was more than an annoyance to Cody. The sound of flapping sheet iron always made him feel sad and melancholy, especially if it was on an uncomfortably warm day and he was alone in a pasture somewhere.

The warped barn doors were closed. Ned pulled one open, and then spoke over his shoulder to the increasing crowd of men. “Y'all stay out here until one of us calls for you.”

It was too late, of course. There had been a steady stream of horrified people through the doors, but he didn't want to deal with their questions right at that moment.

The small barn was rich with the smells of alfalfa, feed, and cow shit. Stalls and feed bins lined both sides of the hall, and rafters crossed high overhead. Light beams filled with dust motes stirred by the wind gave more than enough illumination for the grisly sight.

Little Benjamin hung from the center rafter by a grass rope that cut deeply into his contorted neck. His grotesquely protruding eyes, purplish black face, and bulging tongue proclaimed that slow strangulation was the cause of death. Hands and wrists dark with pooled blood hung at his sides.

Flies buzzed in a busy cloud around the suspended body.

The sight of the rope cutting into his distorted neck was shocking, even to Ned. “Lord God.”

“How could anybody do that to themselves,” Cody said aloud to himself, staring upward at a big yellow jacket nest. After his first glance, he didn't want to look at the young man.

Ned examined the dirt floor beneath the body. A straight-back cane-bottom wooden chair lay on its side. After several long moments, he surveyed the rafters overhead and the rope as it looped over the rough-sawn oak. He noticed it was tied off with a roping knot on a stall door.

“Something's wrong.”

“What's that?”

“Look how high he is.”

“I still don't know what you're talking about.”

There was no need to worry about disturbing the soft dust at their feet. Dozens of tracks from the gawkers had obscured any tracks left by Big Ben or anyone else. Ned circled the body.

“Looky here.”

He knelt near the corpse's feet. Two of the four impressions from the sharp chair legs were still clear on the floor. He picked it up and carefully repositioned the legs in the two holes.

“Now do you see?”

Cody tilted his hat back. “I must be thick.”

“Nope, you're not seeing. You don't have much experience with such things. The difference between the soles of his shoes and this chair don't match up. I'd expect him to be hanging a little lower from the stretch of the rope. Might near to the ground.”

“I get it now. His feet are an inch or so higher than the seat, even with his weight on the rope. He must have stood on the back.”

Ned slipped his hands into the pockets of his overalls. “You cain't do it. Nobody has that kind of balance.”

“So you're saying he didn't hang himself.”

“Right. Somebody done it for him. I hope he was dead when they hauled him up there.” He stepped around the corpse, squinting upward.

The barn door opened a crack. Light spilled across the body. John stuck his head inside. “Mr. Ned, the ambulance is here.”

“Good. Send 'em in.”

Carlton Evans, the oldest and most experienced ambulance driver from McGinnes Brothers Funeral Home, and his partner Harvey Glasscock, tugged a stretcher on reluctant wheels through the soft sand. Neither reacted to the sight of the body. They'd seen that, and worse, in their business.

Carlton stopped several feet away. “Howdy, Mr. Ned. Can we get him down?”

“Sure, go ahead on.”

Harvey went directly to where the rope was tied off on the gate. “John, can you help me here?”

The big deputy was already moving, because he realized the two of them were needed to gently lower the body into the other man's arms. While the heavy attendant grasped the taut rope and braced himself, John yanked the long end of the release knot free with a sharp snap.

Cody stepped in to help lay Little Ben on the ground. Rigor mortis had already set in, so he was difficult to manage as respectfully as they'd preferred.

“Looky here, Cody.” Ned bent over and raised one stiff arm. “Look at his hands.”

“The skin is peeled off. Some fingernails are missing. It looks like rope burns.”

“They are,” Carlton said. “I've seen that before with people who've hung themselves. They change their minds when they don't die right away. For some reason they think everything will go black the instant the rope tightens.” He pointed at the peeled palms. “This happens when they can't get air and try to hold themselves up, but it's impossible.”

Ned spoke to himself. “It also looks the same when someone is hauled up by their neck, too.”

“You saying he didn't do it on his own?”

Frustrated that his habit of talking to himself had let something slip, Ned waved a finger. “I didn't say nothin' of the sort, and don't y'all be telling anybody I did. I‘m thinking here, that's all.”

Cody checked Benjamin's pockets and came up empty. The barn door opened and Ned reared up over the intrusion, until he recognized the justice of the peace, Buck Johnson, who had come to pronounce the body.

Buck joined the little cluster of men. “Damn that wind.” He stared down at Benjamin's body. “O.C. rode out here with me, but he elected not to look at another body, and I don't blame him. Not much to say, is there?”

“Not a thing.”

“He's dead. All right boys, you can load him up.”

“Wait a minute.” They waited for Ned. “Turn him so's I can see the back of his head.”

The attendants rolled the stiff body face down.

Ned knelt on one knee to get a better look. Hands on his knees, Cody bent forward.

Buck joined him. “What is it?”

“Look at the dried blood on the back of his head. He didn't do that while he hung there.”

Carlton spoke up. “I've seen that a time or two when someone hung themselves and the rope broke, or the knot didn't hold. They fell, split their heads, and had to do it all over again.”

Buck straightened, twisting momentarily to make his back pop. “Yeah, 'bout twenty-year ago there was a feller determined to kill himself come hell or high water. He used a lamp cord, but it broke and he fell. He had a big split on his forehead that bled like a stuck hog. Then he went to sawing at his wrists, but the knife was dull and it must have hurt too much, so he went and got a pistol and stuck it in his mouth. That did the trick.”

Ned rose with a grunt and slapped the dust off his knee. “All right.”

John cut off all but three feet of the rope with his sharp pocketknife and left the noose around Little Ben's neck for the autopsy. The attendants wrestled the corpse onto the stretcher, covered him with a sheet, and with much difficulty, rolled him out the door.

Ned replaced the chair on its side, exactly where it had been.

Buck examined the dusty barn. “What a helluva place to leave for Heaven from, with a slip knot around your neck.”

They trailed him outside, surprised to find Sheriff Donald Griffin getting out of his car. Donald Griffin had been sheriff for nearly twenty years. He came to Chisum from Dallas, eager to get away from the city's crime and politics. He found a home in the small town, but Ned Parker had little use for the man who was as territorial as a junk yard dog. Ned felt Griffin had something crooked going on.

The two of them tended to lock horns every time they met, and O.C. usually had to referee for them when he was around, even though he disliked the man himself. Griffin liked to try and tell O.C. how to conduct his business, but the judge refused to bend. He'd handled his side of the law in his own way for years, and he didn't intend to let a drugstore sheriff get in his way.

The beefy sheriff affected the appearance of a Texas lawman from his Stetson hat, crows-feet in the corners of his eyes, and a heavy gray mustache. He carried a pearl handled Colt .45 revolver on his hip that gave rise to hidden giggles and smirks behind his back from men who preferred the simpler things in life.

“Constable Parker, this is now my case.”

Ned squinted. “Which Parker you talking to, Griffin? I'm sure it ain't me, because this is my precinct and you're
wayyy
out of bounds to come out here and tell me what to do. You're a
part
of this, but not all of it.”

It tickled Cody to watch the two men spar. He'd learned to dislike Griffin after the incident at the Cotton Exchange months before. The pompous, arrogant lawman caused nearly as many problems as he solved. Cody recognized Griffin's driver from the incident at the Cotton Exchange and gave him a tentative wave.

Deputy Carlton White had been in Chisum's newly created K-9 unit until his dog partner, Shep, was killed during the assault on the Exchange. Overcome by grief, White refused to train another dog and instead, became Griffin's driver. It was a decision he already regretted.

Griffin scowled at O.C., who was standing idly nearby. The judge hadn't said a word, but Griffin knew O.C. and Ned were inseparable, and he'd just as well talk to them both at the same time. “This is a murder, and I am fully empowered as a peace officer with county-wide jurisdiction, which means, Parker, that I am in charge in this unincorporated part of the county.”

O.C. raised his eyebrows at the exchange. He knew Ned was about to lose, and it galled him.

Ned stepped closer to speak quietly without being overheard. “You call me by my last name one more time and it'll be just you and me out behind this here barn when everyone leaves. I know the law, but I know these people, too. I can find out more in ten minutes than you will in a week, the way you bull around. You take that boy out there on the stretcher, and you do your investigating, but I'm asking questions, too, and you cain't do a thing about it.”