One of them made a cracking sound. It was most pleasurable to hear. He made a pitiful noise in his throat.
“Where’re the snakes?”
“What?”
“The rattlers. Where are they?”
“Out back-a the garage, why?”
“We’re going to pay them a visit.”
“What you’re up to, McCain?”
His voice now had real pain in it. I decided I hadn’t broken anything, after all.
Just moved things around a little. I stepped down even harder.
“You’re going to tell me that you bought strychnine at Clymer’s two days after Muldaur was murdered and then planted it in Sara Hall’s garage.”
“I’m not gonna tell you anything.”
“Which leads me to believe that you didn’t kill Muldaur or Courtney. But somebody you care about did. And now you’re protecting her.”
I took my foot off his hand.
“Get up.”
He didn’t, of course. He just kind of lay there wriggling his hurting hand around, working it like a piece of equipment that was on the fritz.
Then I went and stepped on it again.
He clearly wanted to deny me the satisfaction of giving me the big dramatic scream. But he did make one of those real strange throat noises.
“Get up.”
This time he did, using his good hand to swat away some of the floor dirt he’d gotten on his Osh Kosh overalls.
We’d just left the shadows of the garage when Pam Oates opened the screen door at the back of the house and said, “You all right, Bill?”
“You just go on inside, woman,” he snapped.
“You ever think I worry about you, Bill?”
“Were you worried about me those times you were with Muldaur?”
This was a long way from the home life depicted on “Father Knows Best” every week. Oates hated her and loved her. He needed to forgive her and it was obvious he couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe someday.
Sometimes, something happens that you can’t forgive. And it kills you because you can’t forgive. You drag it along with you your whole life and remember it at odd moments and no matter how old you get, that one thing still retains its fresh and vital pain.
And a part of you knows that the other person has gone on and probably never thinks about it at all.
She closed the screen door quietly and disappeared behind it.
“She killed him,” I said, “because she wanted to end it and he didn’t. And then she tried to blackmail Courtney-give you two enough money to go on the run-but he said no and she got mad and stabbed him.”
“You should write books, McCain.”
Moving, all the time moving. Along the side of the garage in the blistering, bleaching sun.
The rattlers were getting loud now. My mental picture of them was getting clearer and clearer.
We reached the back edge of the garage and there they were. Same cage. Same number of rattlers. Out there in the scathing sun. As much as I could, I felt sorry for the damned things.
I prodded Oates forward with the barrel of my. 45.
“Now we’re going to find out how holy you are, Mr. Oates.”
“What’re you talking about, McCain?”
“I noticed that you never handle the snakes yourself. Not the night Muldaur died, not the time you tried to force me to shove my hand into the cage. Now it’s your turn.”
“Oh, no. I ain’t stickin’ my hand in there.”
“Sure you are, Oates. Or I’m going to shoot you in the arm. And if you still won’t do it, I’m going to shoot you in the leg. And I’m gonna tell Cliffie I did it in self-defense. He hates you people even more than he hates me. So he’ll go along.”
“No,” he said. “No. You can’t do this.”
All his mountain swagger was gone.
He glanced over his shoulder at me.
“I have nightmares about these snakes, McCain. I really do.”
“I thought you were so holy.”
“Nobody’s holy, McCain.”
“Then how do some people handle these snakes?”
“They’re just lucky, I guess. Please don’t make me handle them, all right?”
“Then tell me the truth about the strychnine.”
“I can’t do that, McCain. No matter what.
Just please don’t-”
This could’ve been a briar-patch routine.
Please don’t throw me in that briar patch, oh, my, don’t. But I doubted it. His eyes were starting to look frantic, the stigma of real bowel-wrenching fear.
Looked like he was going to tell me all the things I wanted to hear.
We reached the cage.
The rattlers didn’t look any prettier or any friendlier.
“Reach down and open the lid.”
“I-c’t do it, McCain.”
“Well, you’ll have to do one or the other.”
He just shook his head.
I surprised both of us by firing a shot that missed his head by about three inches.
He jerked, sobbed. He was too fierce for jerking and sobbing. Or so I’d thought. You want bad guys to be bad in every way and that included not responding to stress the way we common folk do.
This wasn’t any briar patch.
Between my bullet and the snakes and the burden of holding his secrets, he was in a bad, bad way.
I clubbed him on the side of the head with my. 45. Got him hard on the ear. And then I changed gun hands and planted a fist into his stomach. What he did was puke. Not a lot. But his whole stomach, not so much from my punch but from all the tension he was feeling, backed up on him.
This time when I hit him on the side of the head, he dropped to his knees right next to the snake cage, which is where I’d wanted him in the first place.
“Open it,” I said.
The snakes were as crazy at this moment as he was, and he knew it.
“No.”
I kicked him in the hip.
“Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you.” He was starting in with the Bible again. He was begging the Lord to get him out of here and I couldn’t really blame him.
“Open it up, Oates.”
“For thou hast been to me a fortress and a refuge in my day of distress.”
“Open it up, Oates.”
Either he’d run out of Bible quotes or he’d finally realized that he didn’t have much choice here.
He put his long, shaking hand to the lid of the cage.
And that was when somebody shoved a metal rod into the base of my back.
“I want you off our land, Mr. McCain.
You don’t have no call to treat a man like you’re treating him.”
“You should’ve seen the way he treated me, Mrs. Oates.”
