Unspeakable (19 page)

Every morning a cluster of old men gathered at the cafe. The names and faces changed with each generation, same as the topics under discussion. Wars had been waged, won, and lost. Controversies had arisen and been forgotten. Statesmen and celebrities had been lauded, lambasted, and laid to rest. But the ritual gathering endured. It was as though once a man reached a certain age, his attendance at the Busy Bee became mandatory. As soon as one passed away, another moved in to fill the gap. Upholding the tradition was essential to Blewer's social order. Retirees for the most part, with a surplus of time on their hands, they were sometimes still there at lunchtime, having switched from coffee to iced tea, irascibly asserting their points of view. Ezzy had always regarded these old men as rather pathetic. They had nothing better to do than spout their unsolicited opinions about issues that didn't concern them to people no better informed than they. They were human relics, trying to convince themselves that they were vital, contributing components of the society that was forced to subsidize and tolerate them until they died.

Greeting them now, he realized that most were younger than he.

"What brings you out this A.M.?" one asked.

"Coffee, please, Lucy," he told the waitress before addressing the question. "Cora's sister out in Abilene is sick. She went to stay with her for a spell."

Even more than he hated old men who loitered in the coffee shop voicing viewpoints that nobody gave a damn about, Ezzy hated liars. No matter what, he was never going to join the group at the Busy Bee. He had, however, become a liar. Even to himself. Especially to himself. He could polish it up any way he liked, but the plain and simple truth was that after fifty years of marriage, Cora had left him. He had watched her pack her suitcase, place it in her car along with a few pictures of their kids and granddaughters, and drive away. She was gone. But he kept telling himself that the separation was temporary. He couldn't live the rest of his life without her.

"So you're baching it these days?"

"Seems like," he replied.

"Want some breakfast to go with that coffee, Ezzy?"

He had known Lucy since grade school. He'd played high school football with the husband she lost to a log skidder in a horrible accident. He had attended the funeral of their son, who had died for his country in 'Nam.

Through the decades Lucy's hips had gotten broader and her hairdo higher, but underneath the heavy makeup she used to conceal heartache and the ravages of age, she was the same Lucy he had taught to climb a tree in third grade.

He had eaten cornflakes for two mornings in a row. The smell of hot food had made his mouth water. "Got any biscuits and gravy this morning?"

"Don't I always?"

He took a stool at the counter, putting his back to the table of men in the hope of discouraging inclusion in their conversation. It didn't work.

"You hear about that kidnapping and killing, Ezzy?"

"How could he keep from hearing about it? It's all over the TV and radio this morning."

"Was I talking to you?" the first asked cantankerously. "How 'bout it, Ezzy? As a former lawman, what's your read on it?"

"It was a terrible crime, all right." His eyes silently thanked Lucy for the plate of food she served him. He had always suspected she had a crush on him. She had never outright flirted. He was married, and she wasn't the type to go after another woman's husband. For his part, he had certainly never said or done anything to encourage her. It was just a feeling he got because of the way she always seemed to perk up a little when he came into the cafe. She gave him preferential service, extra helpings, little favors like that. Like now; there were two fat patties of pork sausage on his plate.

"You think it was Herbold that did it?"

Ezzy's focus remained on his breakfast. "I wouldn't venture to guess. Happened over in Louisiana. Way out of my jurisdiction."

"You can almost see why they killed the man," one mused aloud. "They was robbing him."

"It's the little girl that's the real tragedy."

"For once you're right, Clem. Why'd they have to go and do that?"

"They said on TV her privates was all tore up."

"For heaven's sake!" Lucy exclaimed. "Do y'all have to talk about that? It's disrespectful of the dead."

"Don't go getting riled, Lucy. All I'm saying is that who-ever did that to her was mean. He did it for mea'ness' sake and that's the only reason." He stabbed the tabletop with his index finger.

"Mea'ness."

"Just like that McCorkle girl. Lord o' mercy. How long ago was that? You remember that, Ezzy?"

He had been thinking how superior Cora's sausage gravy was to the Busy Bee's, letting the conversation eddy around him. hearing it but not really listening. Then all of a sudden it seemed that a thousand fishhooks sank into him at once and that he was being dragged from the cool, shady waters of private rumination up to the surface, where survival meant struggling for every breath.

" 'Course he remembers," one said scornfully. Then to Ezzy, "You never did get to prove it was the Herbolds that killed her. You never really knew what happened to that girl, did you, Ezzy?" He cleared his throat, took a sip of coffee. "Nope, never did."

"Only the river knows the secret," said Lucy.

Ezzy looked up at her, surprised. He had been reading a twenty-two-year-old newspaper clipping just last night, the very one from which she had quoted.

She blushed and seemed embarrassed to have remembered his statement word for word. "I remember reading in the paper that you said that."

One of the Busy Bee's regulars relieved her of the awkward moment by remarking, "Bound to have been those boys. Last anybody saw her alive, she was with them."

"Yeah, but she could've dropped them off somewhere and picked up another fellow."

"Like who?" his friend scoffed.

"Like anybody. She was wild, they say."

"Well, I say that's a damn slim possibility. Everybody knows they were involved."

"Then how'd they get to Arkansas so fast? Tell me that. You ever figure that out, Ezzy? Wasn't that business in Arkadelphia their alibi?"

"That's right." Leaving the rest of his breakfast unfinished, he stepped off the counter stool.

"How much do I owe you, Lucy?"

She tallied up his bill, and it was so ridiculously low that he doubled the amount and tucked it beneath his plate.

"Thanks, Ezzy." She gave him a smile that revealed a gold jaw tooth.

"You know," said one of the men behind him, "I was just thinking—"

"That's a switch."

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on."

"Hey, boys, watch the language," Lucy remonstrated. "You know the house rules."

"Sorry, Lucy. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted..." Ezzy didn't hear any more. He opened the door, causing the little bell above it to jingle, and let himself out. He pulled on his hat to shade his eyes against the morning sun. The concrete sidewalk was hot beneath his boots as he made his way to the Lincoln. The Stars and Stripes on the pole in front of the courthouse was already drooping from the heat and lack of wind. A lawn sprinkler was clackety-clacking on the plot of grass in front of the Confederate cannon, shooting out a feeble spray that evaporated before the water could find the ground. Ezzy's car felt like a furnace when he got in. He turned on the ignition to get the air conditioner started. The first sound out of the radio was the morning news report. An intensified manhunt was still underway for Carl Herbold and Myron Hutts, recent escapees from the maximumsecurity prison in Tucker. Arkansas. They were now suspects in the murders of a gas-station owner and his daughter.

"...leaving a trail of victims in their wake, starting with two prison guards. They're now implicated in a double murder that took place overnight in the small town of Hemp, Louisiana." Ezzy turned down the sound. He didn't want to hear about the rape and murder of a fourteenyear-old girl again. Earlier he had watched the story on TV. The man had been discovered dead at his place of business by his wife. She'd gone looking for him when he and his daughter failed to return home from an evening softball tournament in a neighboring town. The missing girl's body wasn't found until daylight. A Frito-Lay truck driver on the first leg of his route had seen her lying in a ditch. Initial reports were that she had been sexually assaulted before being killed by a gunshot to the back of her head.

Ezzy cruised the streets of the town, disinclined to return to his empty house. He wondered if Carl had killed that man and his daughter and, if he had, whether he was as proud of it as he had been when Ezzy interviewed him in that Arkansas jail more than twenty years ago.

"Well, Ezzy, aren't you a Good Samaritan?" Carl had mocked from behind bars. "Did you travel all this way just to pay me a call?"

Wearing a bright orange jumpsuit, he had looked as handsome as ever. If anything, his smile appeared more dashing than before. Maybe committing murder had added that extra panache. Ezzy had refused to be baited by his false charm. "You're sinking in a tub of shit, Carl, and there's an anchor around your neck."

"Yeah, well, I'll grant you I've had better days, Sheriff. They've got some piss-poor jails up here in Arkansas, let me tell you. Food sucks. Toilet stinks. Mattress is lumpy. No fun at all."

"I'm afraid you'd better get used to it, Carl."

"Naw, I've got me a good lawyer. He's a freebie, but sharp as a tack. From up north someplace. Has himself a ponytail and an earring. Hates the system. Especially down here in good-ol'-boy country. Thinks all the officials are stupid and corrupt, and I think he's right. He says they might get me for the holdup, but he's pleading me out of that killing. It was an accident."

"Is that right?"

"Look, the guy could've killed my big brother. I had to pop him first or watch Cecil die."

"Save it for the jury, Carl,"

Carl's face had turned hard and angry. Brown eyes blazed. "I'm not going to prison for murder, Sheriff. You can write that down. I didn't go into that store to kill anybody."

"Well, even if these fellas here in Arkansas don't nail you, you're going away for a long time."

"How do you figure?"

"If you walk out of this, I'm hauling your sorry ass back to Texas to answer for Patsy McCorkle."

"That chunky girl? Ugly gal?"

A horn blasted Ezzy out of his recollection. Realizing that the traffic light had turned green, he waved an apology to the other driver. With nowhere else to go, he headed for the residential neighborhood where he and Cora had lived nearly all their married life. He hated the hollow feel of the house as he let himself in. Cora was a small woman; strange that her absence could create such a vacuum. He removed his hat and hung it on a peg near the back door. He went into the kitchen and noticed that he had left the coffeemaker on. He turned it off. Then, moving into the hallway, he considered what to do with the rest of the day. Watch TV? He had his choice of inane soap operas, inane talk shows, or inane infomercials. Work in the yard?

Too hot. And he wasn't good at it anyway. Cora claimed that plants saw him coming and committed suicide before he could kill them.

This interior debate was all for show, a balm for his stinging conscience, because he already knew what he was going to do.

Fighting the allure no longer, he went into the den and sat down behind a massive rolltop desk that he'd inherited from his daddy. He'd been a railroad man and had used this desk every day of his career. Considering it an heirloom, Cora protected the oak finish with weekly polishing. Ezzy unlocked the slatted top and pushed it open. Lying front and center on the desk was the Patsy McCorkle file.

He opened it and stared at her senior picture. He remembered how obscene it had seemed to him when Carl Herbold casually referred to her as an "ugly gal."

"Before you and Cecil came up here to rob that convenience store and kill yourselves an off-duty policeman, you left Patsy McCorkle down by the river, dead."

Carl had stared at him through the bars of his cell, looking for all the world like an innocent man. Finally he threw back his head and laughed. "I don't know what you've been smoking, Ezzy, but you're fucking crazy."

"Everybody who was at the Wagon Wheel that night saw y'all leave with her. I've got dozens of witnesses."

"You've got shit," Carl had shot back angrily.

"You and Cecil weren't with her?"

"Yeah, we were with her. Or more like it, she was with us. She latched on soon as we walked in. She was drunk. We were getting there. We had some laughs. So what?"

"I've heard y'all were having more than laughs, Carl, that you were putting on quite a sex show." Carl had grinned and winked at him. "You sound sorry you missed it, Sheriff. Wish we'd've known you were interested. Cecil and me would have shared Patsy with you. Isn't Mrs. Hardge giving you any pussy at home?"

If Ezzy could have reached him through the bars, he might have killed Carl then and saved the State of Arkansas the expense of putting him on trial and keeping him in their prison system for years. Thankfully, he had quelled his temper and left Carl laughing at his back. He had hoped to get more out of Cecil, who wasn't nearly as cocksure as his younger brother. But Cecil had corroborated Carl's story. "Yeah, we were dancing with Patsy and all, Sheriff Hardge, but we didn't go to the river with her. We drove a good part of the night, held up that store at seven-twenty in the morning."