was meant as a monument to a father’s love of his home and a son’s love for his father.
“This Etheridge,” Russ asked, “is this the same guy that’s running for President? The guy that’s finishing third in all the primaries?”
“Same family,” Bob said. “The father was the big congressman. The son was a two-term senator. Handsomest man that ever lived. He thinks he can be the President.”
“He’ll need more than pretty looks,” said Russ.
“Umm,” grunted Bob, who had no opinions on politics, or particularly on Hollis Etheridge, who was only an Arkansas fellow by political convenience. He’d been raised in Washington, been to Harvard and Harvard Law School and only came back during symbolic trips with his father when he was a youngster. In Arkansas, he was a tribute to name recognition. His two terms in the Senate were marked by obedience to the rules, blandness, party-line votes, rumors of a flamboyant adultery habit (and if you saw his wife, you’d know why) and a great willingness to siphon funds back to the statewide political machine that had put him in office.
Whatever, the road he built got Bob and Russ to their destination in less than an hour where by the old twisty Route 71 it was a close-to-three-hour trip.
“That’s a hell of a road,” said Russ. “We don’t have anything in Oklahoma like that. Too bad it doesn’t
The end of the highway yielded a futuristic ramp that swirled in streamlined hurry to earth—but it was the earth of beat-up old Blue Eye, depositing them quickly enough in the regulation strip of fast-food joints: McDonald’s and Burger King but also some more obscure regional varieties. Bob noted there was a new place called Sonic, a classic fifties drive-in that boasted pennants snapping in the breeze, clearly a hot dog joint, but it didn’t look like it was doing too well otherwise. The Wal-Mart had moved across the street and become a Wal-Mart Super Saver, whatever the hell that was, and it looked like some kind of flat spaceship landed in the middle of a parking lot. A few blocks on they came to the same scabby, one-story town hall and across the square, the razed remains of the old courthouse, which had burned in 1994 and had simply been flattened and cemented over, until someone figured out what to do with the property. Some Confederate hero stood covered in pigeon shit and graffiti in the center of the square, saluting the empty space where the courthouse had been; Bob couldn’t remember the Reb’s name, if he ever knew. Off the main drag, the same grubby collection of stores, general merchandising, men’s and women’s clothing stores, the life sucked out of them by Mr. Sam’s Wal-Mart. A beauty parlor, a sporting goods store, a languishing tax accountant’s office. And, to the left, the professional office building where two doctors, two dentists and a chiropractor had an office, as did one old lawyer.
“We’ll start here,” Bob said. “Good to see this old dog again. Hope he can still hunt.”
“Is this the great Sam?” Russ asked.
“Yes, it is. They say he’s the smartest man in the county. For close to thirty years Sam Vincent was the county prosecutor. In those days, they called him Electrifying Sam, because he sent twenty-three men to the chair. He knew my daddy. I think he was assistant state’s attorney for Polk in 1955. We’ll see what he has to say. You let me do the talking.”
“He must be in his eighties!”
“He’s eighty-six now, I think.”
“Are you sure he’s even
“Oh, no. Sam hasn’t missed a day since he came back from the war in 1945. He’ll die here, happier than most.”
They parked and got out. Bob bent and reached behind the pickup’s seat and removed a cardboard box. Then he led Russ up a dark stairway between Wally’s Men’s Store and Milady’s Beauty Salon; at its top, they found an antiseptic green hallway that reminded Russ of some kind of private-eye movie from the forties; it should have been in black and white. The lettering on the opaque glass in one of the doorways read SAM VINC NT—Atto ney a L w.
Bob knocked and entered.
There was an anteroom, but no secretary. Dust lay everywhere; on a table between two shabby chairs for waiting clients lay two
“Who the hell is that?” a voice boomed out of the murk of the inner office.
“Sam, it’s Bob Lee Swagger.”
“Who the hell are you?”
They stepped into the darkness and dank fumes and only gradually did the shape of the speaker emerge. When Russ got his eyes focused, he saw a man who looked as if he were built out of feed bags piled on a fence post. Everything about him signaled the collapse of the ancient; the lines in his baggy face ran downward, pulled inexorably by gravity, and his old gray suit had lost all shape and shine. His teeth were yellowed and his eyes lost behind Coke-bottle lenses. He was crusty and unkempt, his rancid old fingers blackened from long years of loading and unloading both pipes and guns. A yellowed deer’s head hung above him, and next to it some kind of star on a ribbon and a couple of diplomas so dusty Russ couldn’t read the school names.
He squinted narrowly.
“Who the hell are you, mister? What business you got here?”
“Sam. It’s
“Earl. No, Earl ain’t here. Been dead for forty years. Some white-trash peckerwoods killed him, worst damn day this county’s ever seen. No, Earl ain’t here.”
“Jesus,” whispered Russ, “he’s lost it.”
“Sonny,” said Sam, “I ain’t lost a thing I can’t find soon enough to whip your scrawny ass. Go on, get out of here.
Bob just looked at him.
“Sam, I—”
“Sam, I
The old man narrowed his eyes again and scrutinized Bob up and down.
“By God,” he finally said. “Bob Lee Swagger.
He came around the desk and gave Bob a mighty hug, his face lit and animated with genuine delight.
“So there you are, big as life. You on vacation, son? You bring that wife of yours? And that little baby gal?”
It was a little awkward, the sudden return to clarity of the old man. But Bob pretended he hadn’t noticed, while Russ just looked at his feet.
“She ain’t so little anymore, Sam,” Bob said. “Nicki’s big as they come. No, I left ’em home. This is sort of a business trip.”
“Who the hell is this?” demanded Sam, looking over at Russ. “You pick up a long-lost son?”
“He ain’t my son,” Bob said, “he’s someone else’s.”
“My name’s Russ Pewtie,” said Russ, putting out a hand, which the old buzzard seized like carrion and crushed. Christ, he had a grip for a geezer!
Bob said, “Here’s the business part: this young man is a journalist.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Sam. “The last time anybody wrote about you I sued ’em for you and we made thirty-five thousand.”
“He says he isn’t going to write about me.”
“If you don’t have that on paper, you better get it there fast, so that when his book is published we can take him to the woodshed.”
“It’s not about Mr. Swagger,” said Russ. “It’s about his father. It’s about July 23, 1955.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Sam. “That was the longest goddamn day I ever lived through, and I include June 6, 1944, in that reckoning.”
“It was a terrible day,” said Russ. Leaving out the personal connection, he tried to explain his book but Bob had heard it and Sam appeared not to care much.
“So anyway,” he concluded, aware he had not impressed anyone and getting a headache from the plummy odor of the tobacco, “that’s why we’re here.”
