bloody Shiloh.’ Can’t you see the difference?”
“Only thing I see right now is an old man about to spend the rest of his commissioner term in the county courthouse jail unless he hands over his hardware. Now unload that goddamn thing and give it to me so I can do my best to keep you out of more trouble than you’re already in.”
Gerald sat there glaring for the better part of a minute, plumes of pipe smoke floating up around his head like vapor cusses. Reluctantly he worked the bolt, kicked out three fully jacketed brass rounds that thunked and rolled across the porch floorboards. Molly came over, sniffed at each one before she popped her heels in the air and danced briskly away, disappeared somewhere inside the cabin.
“Go get whatever you need to get done before we leave. I don’t think you’ll be back here today.”
The old man stood, removed his pipe, spat.
“Let’s get on. These animals can see to themselves.”
Kyle folded the rifle under his arm with the muzzle pointed at the ground and walked down with Gerald at his right shoulder. When they got to the edge of the road he called out that he had the gun and the old man was coming of his own volition. The deputies appeared from behind their positions of cover and concealment behind oak trees and cruiser doors. Sheriff Holston came forward and idly unholstered his service revolver. Finding it an odd and awkward piece in his hand, he just as idly returned it and waved them on with his empty hand, told them to hurry up and get the old sonofabitch into the back of his patrol car before somebody ended up properly shot and killed.
2
FROM HIS BEDROOM WINDOW GAVIN NOON HAD SEEN THE MAN when he had come off the mountain carrying the rifle, had watched when the three men he’d sent out had come to shake his hand and how he had spoken a few words to them but had not taken their offered hands. This would be something to deal with then. He turned at the sound of footsteps at his door. It was Harrison’s woman, Delilah.
“What the fuck we going to do about this, Gavin?”
He smiled, went to his dresser to look in the mirror and comb his hair. He watched her in the slight distortion of the glass. Despite the tattoos, the dark cropped hair and the stray leavings of brightwork pieced into her face, she remained attractive, if primitively so. She reminded him of a mean animal or a sharp knife. He knew that she enjoyed this fact about herself. Mistook it for an advantage.
“There will be ample time to make things right, Delilah. No one can say how time finds its channel. No one can steer it on their own.”
“Your men out there getting shot and you stand here at the bedroom window and talk high. That’s about what I’d expect out of you, you blind bastard. I think it’s time you got those glasses of yours checked. My man nearly died and all you have to say is something that sounds like it comes out of one of these goddamn books,” she said, waved her hand at the shelves jammed with volumes of Spinoza, Rockwell, Rosenberg, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Moore, Hitler. “You need to realize there’s more to this than a bunch of vocabulary. There’s people out here ready to die for something that matters. There’s people out here that . . .”
“Delilah, enough!”
She stilled as Harrison came in behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. Gavin could see where Harrison’s bandaged forearm seeped with the darkening of blood. He went to his desk and poured out a tumbler of Jack Daniels, handed it to him.
“Does it sting?” he asked.
Harrison shrugged, said, “Only glass.”
Gavin nodded, poured himself a tumbler for no other reason than to buy himself a moment to think.
“Delilah, I need to speak with Mr. Harrison alone for a few minutes if you think you might spare us the privacy.”
Harrison squeezed her shoulders and she left without a word.
“Is everyone alright?”
“Nothing they won’t get over. Nothing but a crazy old man anyway.”
Harrison strolled past Gavin, canted his shaven head to study the close rows of book titles pressed together. He was an impressively built man with developed muscles that belied a graceful carriage. The six years spent in the penitentiary had been time put to good use if it resulted in a body assembled into this kind of weaponry. He was exactly the kind of man Gavin needed. Exactly the kind this new nation deserved.
“Do you see anything that interests you?”
“I read this one when I was inside,” he said, pointed out the Nietzsche. “I liked it. I liked how it sounded like he wasn’t going to take shit from anybody for believing what he did.”
“You’re welcome to borrow any you like. I would enjoy hearing what you think of them.”
Harrison stood, took nothing, his colorless eyes staring into distance. A soldier awaiting instruction. Little more than what circumstances had made of him then. A pity.
“Could you do me a favor, Harrison? Once the tires have been replaced could you have Jonathan bring the car around. I believe I’ll need to go into town.”
His lieutenant nodded briskly, left the room, granted Gavin the silence that was his most welcome companion.
HE WORE a suit and tie and a brushed peacoat over that. A gray fedora with a black band. He liked the completion the hat lent. He would not have these people make a cartoon of him. There was too much of that already in the libelous media. The jackboots and fanatics let loose on the world to froth barbarously at the mouth. He meant to demonstrate the principles of his community and its democratic right to exist. It was time.
“Here, you can park on the street, Jonathan. I don’t believe it should be terribly long.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll keep the motor running.”
He stepped onto the neat sidewalk and gazed up at the quaint brick building with its pediment and tall columns. As apt a picture of the small-town courthouse as could be desired. It touched his own sentimental recollections of his boyhood Kentucky home. He remembered the small-town life that had been the only retreat from the slums of Vietnam-era America. The things that he’d watched in the living room with his mother. The televised horrors of war in the jungle with helicopters and machine guns and Agent Orange and of the more immediate war of blacks tearing themselves apart in northern cities like scavengers ripping apart the flanks of some great dying beast. His father had been a truck driver and would come home telling stories of what he had witnessed and how lucky they were to have a home apart from that failed experiment of racial integration. Gavin was afraid, yes, but thrilled too that his father ventured out among that hazard of men with their razors and cheap wine and women, seeing in his mind’s eye those black cities rife with crime.
He mounted the front steps and went on into the lobby, checked the directory board for the sheriff’s office listing, then went down the hall and entered the front office. A woman with salt-and-pepper hair and cat’s-eye glasses looked up from her desk and asked if she could help him with something. He touched his hat, smiled, said he’d like to speak to the sheriff if it were possible.
“I’ll be happy to take your name, sir,” she said, turned over an appointment book, started to write. “But it’s been busy today. Sheriff’s tied up at the moment.”
“I’m afraid I might be the cause of his busyness. Indirectly, at least. My business concerns the man who shot out the tires of my automobile.”
She laid her pen down, said, “Have a seat over there please, sir. I’ll step back there and see what I can manage.”
He sat against the wall, turned his hat in his hands as he watched her stride back to the sheriff’s private office. She leaned in, said something he couldn’t hear, then crossed the threshold and shut the door behind her. It was overheated in the waiting area and he loosened his tie. He hated being delayed, knew that the sheriff would have to see him and that making him wait was pointless. To kill