fifty-round drum and a vertical foregrip underneath the finned, compensated barrel, just like Al Capone’s.
“You scare me sometimes, Buddy,” said Earl. “If Jimmy makes it through fifty roadblocks and seventy miles, I know he’ll come in easy. Why don’t you put that thing in the trunk, before you hurt somebody with it?”
“Hell, Earl, ever since you won that goddamn medal, you think everybody else is common and you can boss ’em around.”
Earl never mentioned the medal and it irritated him when it was brought up to him. But he controlled the flare of anger he felt and spoke forcefully in his raspy, powerful voice.
“I done enough work with them guns in the war to know they ain’t so easy to run smooth. They jump all over the damn place. I don’t want to see you hurting anybody. And you don’t want that. Now put it in the trunk and move a spell on down the road. If Sheriff Jacks asks why, you tell him I told you so.”
Petulantly, Buddy did what he was ordered.
Earl climbed the porch and knocked once.
Connie herself answered.
“Earl, thank God.”
“Hello, Miss Connie,” he said. Connie Longacre originally came from Baltimore; she’d met Rance Longacre in the East, married him and come down and made Polk County and its biggest cattle spread her home. She and Rance lived the life of maharajas out here on the most beautiful spread in all Polk County, until Boss Harry bought the mountain some years back. But Connie Longacre never quite escaped death, which dogged her like a little black mutt. Rance died at forty-eight, and just last year her only child, Stephen, had died at twenty-four along with his pregnant wife. So much death: but the woman, in her fifties, was still beautiful, in a proud eastern way that no one in Polk County could ever quite define.
“You made that awful troglodyte go away?”
Earl wasn’t sure what “troglodyte” meant, but he got the gist of it.
“Yes, ma’am. He’s set up down the road now. How’s Edie?”
“Oh,” her voice trailed off. “Upset.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Earl, what on
“Miss Connie, I cain’t say. Jimmy, he—oh, Jimmy, you cain’t figure Jimmy out, what got to him.”
“I was never a great Jimmy believer, Earl. I’m old enough to look behind a pretty face.”
“He never had no father.”
“Yes, I know, Earl, but everyone always used that to
“I should have done more for him. I could have done more. But I had my own son.”
“Will they catch him?”
“Yes, they’ll catch him. And make him pay. He’ll have to pay. No other way.”
“It’s appropriate. I do feel sorry for his poor cousin.”
“Bub loves Jimmy too much. Jimmy’s easy to love, but dangerous. It ain’t been a very good day in Arkansas,” he said. “We found a poor colored girl this morning north of town. Somebody messed her up real good.”
“Oh my Lord. Who was it?”
“Shirelle Parker.”
“I know Shirelle. I know her mother. Oh, Earl, that’s terrible.”
It seemed to strike Miss Connie very hard.
“Those poor people,” she finally said. “Woe is always unto them.”
“They ain’t got no picnic, that’s for sure.”
“Some black boy, I assume?”
“I hope. I don’t know, though, Miss Connie. There’s some monkey business going on and it’s got me buffaloed.”
“Earl—”
He turned.
“Honey, you shouldn’t be up,” said Mrs. Longacre.
Earl looked at Edie White Pye, keeping his face blank as possible. He was not an emotional man, but he had feelings, all right. He just put them away and pounded a couple of nails into them to keep them there.
Edie had been Jimmy Pye’s best girl since 1950, when Jimmy had led Blue Eye High to a second-place finish in the state football classic; she was possibly the most beautiful young woman anyone had ever seen in Polk County. Her father died in the war, a few weeks after the Normandy invasion, smoked by a German Tiger in some French hedgerow. Her mother raised her alone, though not much raising had to be done with Edie. From the start, she was all right. Her nickname was Snow White, for that’s who she reminded many people of; Jimmy was her Prince Charming, and charming he could be, when he wasn’t being wild.
Earl drank her in for a moment and put his feelings even deeper and pounded three or four more nails into them.
“Oh, Mr. Earl,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Edie,” he said. “Jimmy made his own decisions. This is his damn fix. He’s got to face the music this time. I only hope no one else has to get shot.”
He imagined Jimmy running into someone like Buddy Till and his machine gun. There’d be hair and blood all over everything and God help anybody who got in between. He shivered.
“That damned boy,” said Connie Longacre. “He always was too handsome for his own good. He spent too much time looking in the mirror. I never trust a man who loves what he sees in the mirror more than what he sees outside it. Edie, you needed a solid man, a real man. It’s too bad Earl here is already married and has a boy. Rance used to say Earl Swagger’s the best man Polk County ever gave birth to. And that was
“Now, you stop that, Miss Connie,” said Earl. She loved to say provocative things and watch people’s jaws gape.
“Well, if I was a young woman, Earl’s the one I’d have gone after.”
“Edie, I have to talk to you. I have to ask you some official questions. They want me to stay here in case Jimmy heads this way.”
“That silly boy’s on his way to Hollywood if you ask me,” said Connie. “We won’t see him in these parts ever again. Well, I’ll leave you two alone for a bit. Have things to tend to. Go gentle with her, Earl.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Earl.
He and Edie went and sat by the window. Next to her he always felt cumbersome and awkward. He could feel his boots and his leather gun belt creaking. The Colt Trooper felt impossibly heavy.
He got out his notebook, turned past the ten pages of notes he’d taken on Shirelle Parker.
“Edie, has Jimmy been in contact?”
“No, Mr. Earl. The last time I spoke to him was three weeks ago. He seemed fine. He was looking forward to getting out. He was full of excitement. I got a very nice letter a week ago. He was full of excitement about the sawmill. Said he’d end up owning it before 1960!”
“He didn’t say nothing about making new friends in jail or anything?”
“No sir.”
“Sometimes a young guy like Jimmy, he can fall in with some hard cases and they can turn his mind. He didn’t mention anybody, a new friend or nothing?”
“No sir.”
“You should tell me, now. It ain’t a question of betraying. He’s killed some people. There’s a price to be paid. He has to pay it like a man. That’s the best that can be offered at this point. A safe surrender, a fair trial.”
“That’s what I want, Earl. I never,
“They say. At least four witnesses identified him. And Bub.”
Edie looked off, into the sunlight, across the fields.
“Poor Bub,” she finally said. “He couldn’t hurt a mouse.”
