world of gray light and silence. The dead. Let them alone, please. What good does it do, what good can it do? Why would this boy come before him, claiming to represent the dead. He knew so many of the dead too.
“So, goddammit, spit it out. A book? You do want to write a book.”
“I do want to write a book, yes. And yes, it’s about a great American hero and yes, he’s from Blue Eye, Arkansas, and yes, he’s the kind of man they don’t make anymore.”
“No books,” said Bob.
“Well, let me go on just a bit,” the boy said. “The great American hero is named—was named—Earl Swagger. He won the Medal of Honor on Iwo Jima, 22 February 1945, D plus two. He went home to America, where he became a state trooper in Arkansas. On July 23, 1955, he shot it out with two armed robbers named Jimmy and Bub Pye. He killed them both.”
Bob looked hard at the boy.
“And they killed him too. Your father. I want to do a book about your father.”
4
“You boys stay here till the detectives come. Pop, them dogs cool?”
“Cool as they can get in this weather, Mr. Earl,” said Pop.
“Good. You stay on station now, you hear.”
“I do,” said Pop.
Earl got into his cruiser, turned over the engine and flicked on the radio. The air was full of traffic as the state mobilized for the manhunt, led by the state police, all 111 officers of them, who would inherit responsibility for this job. He listened for a bit in disbelief, as if in disbelieving he could make it go away. But it would not go away.
“Ah, Dispatch, this is Car Two Niner, ah, we are now in blockade at 226 and I got two units arching down between 226 and 271, you got that, Dispatch?”
“Roger, Two Nine, we got the state Piper Cub working your area, trying to cover them back roads. He’s on another frequency, but if we get anything, we’ll git to you.”
“Got it, Dispatch, I’m holding here. Got three units, more coming in.”
“Wally, the colonel says you might want to send one of your units over toward Lavca. We got good military help out of Chaffee and I think they’re goin’ pitch in some airborne stuff.”
“Dispatch, I got a unit headed to Lavca.”
“Good work, and over, Two Niner.”
Earl recognized Two Niner as Bill Cole, a lieutenant in the Logan County barrack. Dispatch was talking for Major Don Benteen, second-in-command; Colonel Evers must have been calling the shots from somewhere in Little Rock, and was presumably on his way over to take area command.
Jimmy, you goddamned little fool, he thought with sudden passionate bitterness.
Where did we go wrong on you? What got into you, boy? How’d you turn out this way?
There were no answers, as there never had been for Jimmy Pye. Earl shook his head. He’d been as guilty as anybody of telling Jimmy Pye that it was okay. He’d always been there for the kid, easing the fall even as he recognized the remoteness in Jimmy and denied it, even as he began to see how different Jimmy was from poor old Lannie Pye.
He thought of Bub Pye, Jimmy’s cousin, a poor dim boy who no one ever thought would amount to much, so dreary in comparison to Jimmy. Earl couldn’t even bring Bub’s face up out of memory, even though he’d seen him just yesterday. There was something forgettable about Bub. What would happen to him? Bub had been a carpenter’s apprentice, but he just couldn’t get the hang of things, and they’d let him go. He’d never found another job. He was a decent boy but without much in the way of prospects: but he was no criminal. That goddamned Jimmy had made him a criminal.
Darkness crept into Earl’s mind. This poor dead colored child, Jimmy Pye, all in one goddamn day!
It was the worst day he’d had since Iwo Jima.
Reluctantly, he picked up the microphone and pushed the send button.
“Dispatch, this is Car One Four, I am ten-eight.”
“Earl, where you been?” It was the major, taking over for Dispatch.
“Been at that crime scene, Major, you copy and send units?”
“Negative, One Four. Earl, you got to let that nigger gal cool till we catch up with Jimmy Pye. I seen the record, he’s a Polk County boy, and you were his last A-O.”
“I know the family,” said Earl.
“Okay, good.”
“You want me on roadblock or sweeps, Major?”
“Negative, One Four. You go cover the family. Maybe he’ll make some contact with them. Don’t he have a wife, that’s what the records say.”
“Married her a week before he done his jail time,” said Earl.
“You check on her, then, Earl. You cover her and any other kin he might have there in Polk. You need help, you wire up with the sheriff’s boys.”
“Got you, Major. But when am I going to see that forensics team? I want them out here on the crime scene fast as possible.”
“Maybe by the late afternoon, Earl. Them boys got lots of work still to do at the Fort Smith IGA. It’s a bloodbath. He shot two boys in the office, a nigger outside, and he popped a city officer in a car. He’s bad news, Earl.”
Earl nodded bitterly, checking his Bulova.
Earl drove through Blue Eye’s Colored Town, on the west side, under the bulk of Rich Mountain. It was small and scabby; why couldn’t these lost people pick up their garbage, mow their lawns, tend their gardens? Everywhere he looked, he saw signs of decay and lassitude and disconnection from decent living. The children, barefoot and in rags, lolled on the porches of the shanties, staring at him with big eyes and slack faces. They wore ragamuffin clothes and their eyes were huge, unknowable pools as they stared at him, though when he rounded a corner and caught them unawares, he was able to see them playing games like jump rope and hide-and-seek with their natural exuberance; but when they saw the big black and white car and the white man in the Stetson with the harsh eyes, they immediately cooled way down and met him with those empty faces.
In time, he passed the most impressive building in Colored Town, Fuller’s Funeral Parlor, an old mansion from the days when white people lived in this end of town, nestled under elm trees; and a little farther down, the second most impressive building, a church, white clapboard; and then, finally, down a tree-shaded street where the small Negro middle class lived.
The Parker house was the third on the right, also clapboard, with a porch and a trellis hung with bright wisteria, tiny but neat and well tended. Mrs. Parker led the choir in the church; her husband, Ray, was a clerk for the gas company, the only colored man employed there.
Earl was both glad and sick to see no other police vehicles; that meant he could talk alone to the Parkers without the presence of a lot of bulky white men with badges and guns, which would quiet them down and scare them or at the least drive them into the guarded conditions Negroes affected in the presence of a lot of white people; but it also meant he would have to give them the news himself. Maybe he should have called that minister.
He parked, aware of eyes upon him. The girl’s mother stood on the porch. Her skin seemed not brown at all, but ashen; her features were drawn up as if she’d been stricken and she breathed heavily.
He took off his hat as he approached.
