and suits under a spreading elm tree. A minister seemed to commandeer the most artention; the casket was aligned next to the hole in the ground under the tree where it would go. At least Daddy had some shade. A marine honor guard stood on the right, ramrod boys with no hair and severely raked white dress hats, bills low over their eyes, their gloves white, the high-necked dress coats severe as any Puritan’s frock. Bob glanced at what the picture showed of himself, and saw only pudge and softness, as if he were out of focus, which he was. He could barely even remember the event itself, though the photo brought something back: his mother would not stop crying, though by this time he himself had been fully cried out. It was hot, the speeches seemed to go on forever. Someone called Miss Connie was like the dowager empress of the event, the Mother Courage who took over and got everything organized and done. He remembered her smell and beauty and how strong she’d seemed. But she was not in the picture.
Bob put the clipping down, passed through what little was left. Letters of condolence, official and otherwise, testifying to his father’s greatness, from, among others, the commandant of the United States Marine Corps, two men in the platoon who could write that day only because his actions had saved their lives, one on Iwo, one Tarawa, testimonials in inflated language from the commanding officer of the Arkansas State Police and the governor of Arkansas and a final crude letter from someone called Lucille Parker, telling his mother what a wonderful white man Earl Swagger had been, the only white man who’d listened to her pain over her daughter, Shirelle, and pledged to help. What on earth could that mean?
So many mysteries, so many unconnected elements, unfinished bits of business, the stuff of his father’s life. Not much to show for forty-five years on a planet where you’d done so much good work, and only a shoe box was left to testify to your existence.
That was it? Would the boy find such material interesting? Possibly. Bob made his mind up that in the morning he’d call the boy and arrange to let him borrow the stuff. Possibly some good would come out of it, after all.
There was a last scrap of paper. Bob picked it up, curious. It took some effort to get it figured out. It was the last page of what may have been an autopsy or a hearing report. In fact, lodged under the staple at the left top was the mulch of other pages that had been torn away. Bob understood that it had been the necessary, clinical, appallingly unemotional and excessively professional description of the wounds his father had suffered. A copy had been sent to his mother and when she discovered its meanings—Bob guessed it would have read something like “translateral passageway from under left nipple at 43-degree angle to sternum led to severe and catastrophic destruction of left ventricle” or some such—she’d just been unable to face it and had ripped it up and destroyed it. Why had this page survived? He couldn’t guess; it couldn’t be explained. Maybe she’d gone back and pulled it out of the garbage can and remorsefully tucked it away in the box. Her own sad decline had just been initiated; she would not live much longer herself, bent under grief and regret and finally alcoholism.
So this alone remained. Bob glanced at it and saw that it was a partial list of exhibits pertaining to the ballistics evidence of the hearing or autopsy or whatever. Because he knew a great deal of such matters, he read onward and saw what state police detectives had recovered at the scene.
“1) Colt .38 Super Government model, serial number 2645, with staghorn grips, four cartridges left in the magazine in the pistol.” That was Jimmy’s gun, slick, flashy Colt automatic shooting high-velocity bullets, vest- penetrating, shock-inducing, meant only to kill. Very professional choice.
“2) Fourteen cartridge cases bearing headstamp COLT .38 SUPER—WW,” the spent casings that Jimmy had ejected in the fight, meaning he’d fired fourteen times, he’d reloaded once and was halfway through the reloaded mag when his father took him out. He was a shooter, that boy. Bob wondered which of the fourteen rounds had been the fatal one, whether his father took it early or late. He shook his head. A fleeting wish came to him that he could reach back through time and deflect that bullet or maybe improve Earl’s aim just a bit on an earlier round; who knew how differently it might have turned out? But no: Jimmy fired the last round; he killed Earl even as Earl was killing him.
“3) Smith & Wesson 1926 Model .44 Special, SN 130465, with six unfired WW .44 Special rounds in the cylinder.” Bub’s gun, Bob guessed. Unfired. Hadn’t got a shot off.
“4) Colt Trooper .357 Magnum, SN 6351, with three loaded cartridges and three empty in the cylinder.” His father’s gun. Bob had seen his father clean that big piece of machinery once a week and after every firing session. Most of his memories of his father, in fact, were connected with firearms and his father teaching him how to shoot, how to hunt, how to clean, care for and respect the firearm. They were the lessons he’d never forgotten.
“5) Six cartridge casings bearing headstamp REMINGTON .357.” His father had reloaded himself, a speed reload under heavy fire from a guy with a semiauto and plenty of ammo. Good work, he thought, the best kind there is.
Only one label remained on the sheet. It bore the depressing title “Bullets Recovered” and he knew it meant recovered from bodies. The coroner’s last connection to the physical mechanism of death.
Did he have the courage to read on? With a sigh, he discovered he did. There were three “exhibits,” that is, bodies, and under each of them was listed the items recovered. Nothing in it surprised him, except that he learned that Bub had a bullet in him from Jimmy’s gun, probably delivered in the excitement of the action, a friendly-fire accident of the kind that was distressingly common in battle.
At last he read of the bullets taken from his father.
There were three.
“Two (2) misshapen (calibration impossible to determine) bullets, copper clad, weighing 130.2 grains and 130.1 grains.”
Then “One (1) misshapen (calibration impossible to determine) bullet, metal clad, weight 109.8 grains.”
Bob looked at it, not quite sure what he was reading, then he read it again and a third time. It did not go away. 109.8 grains.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Julie said.
He turned, startled.
“Yeah, here I am. Going back through it.”
“Bob, you ought to help that boy. It would help
“I’m going to do more than face it,” he said.
8
The news was not good at all. The state detectives had not been able to get to the Shirelle Parker site yet and wouldn’t make it until the morning. Only a one-man shift from the Polk County Sheriff’s Department could be assigned to secure the crime area overnight, though a coroner’s assistant had come out to make a preliminary investigation.
“How long was he there?” Earl asked over the radio.
“Ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes!” Earl exploded to the sheriff’s dispatcher. “How the hell could he learn anything in ten minutes?”
“Come on, Earl, you know we goin’ to go to Niggertown tomorrow when all this about Jimmy is settled, and sooner or later someone goin’ to talk to us. That’s how it works down there. Them people can’t keep no secrets.”
Earl thought: Suppose it was a white person who killed Shirelle?
“Okay. Tell them I’ll be out there first thing in the morning, and to keep the site as clean as possible. I hate to think of that little girl lying out there all alone another night.”
“It don’t matter to her none, Earl.”
Earl signed off.
All sorts of things weighed on his mind; he tried to will them away.
