Ghost Story

'Inside.'

Hardesty, scowling, was probing the carcass. 'You want the vet for this, Elmer, not me.' His hands moved to the animal's neck. 'Uh oh.'

'What?' said Scales, almost leaping with anticipation.

Instead of answering, Hardesty crab-walked to the next nearest sheep and thrust his hands deep into the wool at its neck.

'You might have seen this for yourself,' he said, and gripping its nose and mouth pulled back the sheep's head.

'Jesus,' said Scales; the two lawyers were silent. Ricky looked down at the exposed wound: like a wide mouth, the long slash in the animal's neck.

'A neat job,' Hardesty said. 'A very neat job of work. Okay, Elmer. You proved your point. Let's get back inside.' He wiped his fingers in the snow.

'Jesus,' Elmer repeated. 'Their throats are cut? All of 'em?'

Wearily Hardesty yanked back the heads of each remaining animal. 'All of them.'

Old voices spoke clearly in Ricky's mind. He and Sears looked at each other, looked away.

'I'll sue the heart out of whoever did this!' Elmer screeched. 'Shit! I knew something was funny! I knew it! Shit!'

Hardesty was now looking around at the empty field. 'You sure you went up here once, and then went straight back?'

'Uh huh.'

'How did you know something was wrong?'

'Because I saw 'em up here this morning from the window. Normally when I'm washin' my face at my window them stupid animals is the first thing I see. See?' He pointed across the fields to his house. The shining pane of the kitchen window faced them. 'There's grass under here. They just walk around all day, stuffin' themselves. When the snow gets real bad I pen 'em up in the barn. I just looked out an' I saw 'em, like they are now. Something sure was wrong, so I put on my coat and my boots and came up. Then I called you and my lawyers. I want to sue, and I want you to arrest whoever done this.'

'There aren't any tracks besides ours,' Hardesty said, smoothing his mustache.

'I know,' said Scales. 'He brushed 'em out.'

'Could be. But you can usually tell, on unbroken snow.'

Jesus she moved she can't she's dead.

'And there's another thing,' said Ricky, breaking into the suspicious silence which had developed between the two men and interrupting the lunatic voice in his mind. 'There's no blood.'

For a moment all four men stared down at the sheep and the fresh snow. It was true.

'Can we get off this steppe now?' Sears said.

Elmer was still staring down at the snow, swallowing. Sears began to move across the field, and soon they were all following.

'All right kids, out of the kitchen. Get upstairs,' Scales shouted as they came into the house and removed their coats. 'We gotta talk in private. Go on, git.' He shooed his hands at some of the children who were clustered in the hallway, staring at Walter Hardesty's pistol. 'Sarah! Mitchell! Upstairs, now.' He led them into the kitchen and a woman as thin as Elmer shot up out of a chair, clasping her hands. 'Mr. James, Mr. Hawthorne,' she said. 'Could you use some coffee?'

'Kitchen toweling, if you please, Mrs. Scales,' Sears said. 'Then coffee.'

'Kitchen…'

'To wipe my shoes. Mr. Hawthorne undoubtedly requires the same service.'

The woman looked down in dismay at the lawyer's shoes. 'Oh, good heavens. Here, let me help you…' She took a roll of paper toweling from a cupboard, tore off a long section, and made as if to kneel at Sears's feet. 'That won't be necessary,' Sears said, taking the wadded paper from her hands. Only Ricky knew that Sears was disturbed, not merely rude.

'Mr. Hawthorne…?' A bit rattled by Sears's coldness, the woman turned to Ricky.

'Yes, thank you, Mrs. Scales,' he said. 'That's very kind of you.' He too accepted several sections of the toweling.

'Their throats were cut,' Elmer said to his wife. 'What did I tell you? Some crazyman's been out here. And-' his voice rose '-a crazyman who can fly, because he didn't leave no prints.'

'Tell them,' his wife said. Elmer looked at her sharply, and she hurried off to put the coffee together.

Hardesty asked, 'Tell us what?' No longer in the Wyatt Earp costume, the sheriff was restored to his proper age of fifty. He's hitting the bottle worse than ever, Ricky thought, seeing the broken veins in Hardesty's face, the deepening irresolution. For the truth was that, despite his Texas Ranger appearance, the hawk nose, lined cheeks and gunslinger blue eyes, Walt Hardesty was too lazy to be a good sheriff. It was typical of him that he had had to be told to look at the second pair of sheep. And Elmer Scales was right; he should have taken notes.

Now the farmer was preening himself, about to deliver his bombshell. Stringy cords stood out in his neck; his bat ears went a deeper shade of red. 'Well hell, I saw him, didn't I?' His mouth dropped comically, and he surveyed each of them in turn.

'Him,' his wife said in ironic counterpoint behind him.

'Shit, woman, what else?' Scales thumped the table. 'Get that coffee ready and stop interrupting.' He turned back to the three men. 'As big as me! Bigger! Starin' at me! Damnedest thing you ever saw!' Enjoying his moment, he spread his arms. 'Right outside!

Just a little further than that away from me. How's them apples?'

'Did you recognize him?' Hardesty asked.

'Didn't see him that well. Now I'll tell you how it was.' He was moving around the kitchen, unable to contain himself, and Ricky was reminded of an old perception, that 'Our Vergil' wrote poetry because he was too volatile to believe he was not capable of it. 'I was in here last night, late. Couldn't sleep, never could.'

'Never could,' echoed his wife.

Screeches, thumps came from overhead. 'Forget the coffee and get on upstairs, straighten 'em out,' Scales said. He paused while she left the room. Soon another voice joined the cacophony above; then the noises ceased.

'Like I said. I was in here, readin' through a couple-two-three equipment and seed catalogues. Then! I hears something from out near the barn. Prowler! Damn! I jumps up and looks out the window. Seen it was snowin'. Uh oh, work to do tomorrow, I says to myself. Then I seen him. By the barn. Well, between the barn and the house.'

'What did he look like?' Hardesty said, still not taking notes.

'Couldn't tell! Too dark!' Now his voice had soared from alto to soprano. 'Just saw him there, starin'!'

'You saw him in the dark?' Sears asked in a bored voice. 'Were your yard lights on?'

'Mr. Lawyer, you gotta be kidding, with electric bills the way they are. No, but I saw him and I knew he was big.'

'Now, how did you know that, Elmer?' asked Hardesty. Mrs. Scales was coming down the uncarpeted stairs- thump thump thump, hard shoes hitting the wooden risers. Ricky sneezed. A child began to whistle, and abruptly ceased as the footsteps paused.

'Because I saw his eyes! Didn't I? Just starin' out at me! About six feet above the ground.'

'You just saw his eyes?' asked Hardesty, incredulous.

'What the hell did this guy's eyes do, Elmer, shine in the dark?'

'You said it,' Elmer replied.

Ricky jerked his head to look at Elmer, who regarded them all with evident satisfaction, and then without meaning to, looked across the table at Sears. He had gone tense and immobile at Hardesty's last question, trying to let nothing show on his face, and on Sears's round face he saw the same intention. Sears too. It means something to him too.

'Now I expect you to get him, Walt, and you two lawyers of mine to sue his ass from here to summer,' Elmer said conclusively. 'Excuse my language, honey.' His wife was coming into the little kitchen again, and she nodded at