“Sure.”
A young man brought in cuffs and they were handcuffed with their wrists behind their backs. The chain of the cuffs went down around one leg of their stools so they could not move forward or away.
“Now then,” said the sheriff. He rolled his sleeves up, again revealing the raw brand on his arm, the snake eating itself. “Now then. I know that you boys aren’t alone. No sir, not a chance. So there’s some other boys out there running around and, well, I’d like to chat with them, too. Are they chatty folk? Are they personable?”
No one said anything. The sheriff paced around them, walked behind Pike, then Roosevelt, then Connelly. Connelly tried to turn to see the little man but he could not. Suddenly there was a fierce pain in his wrist and he groaned and slid forward and tried to twist it in his cuffs. He could not see what the man had done but he felt sure his wrist was broken.
“Oh, relax, son,” said the sheriff. “It’s barely a hairline. Barely a hairline, if that.”
Roosevelt muttered something.
“What was that? What?”
“I said, you can’t do this,” said Roosevelt.
“Can’t do what?”
“Can’t just haul up some fellas and cuff them to the floor and beat the hell out of them and not have a reason for doing it.”
“I do have a reason. You boys killed some men on a train. Some good men. Killed them dead, like they were animals.”
“We didn’t do any such thing.”
The sheriff looked at them, eyes flat and dead and distant. They looked alien on such a quaint little old man. “Yes you did.”
“You can’t do this,” said Roosevelt. “Can’t beat on prisoners. There are laws. This is America.”
“What is?” said the sheriff.
“Huh? This is. All this is.”
“This?” said the sheriff, and waved at the bland, gray room.
“No, this… this country. We’re… we’re in America, right now. There are laws.”
“Show me,” said the sheriff.
“What?”
The sheriff grinned. “Show me America.”
“I don’t… I…”
“If it’s going to tell me what to do and what not to do, it better be on hand. You know?”
Roosevelt frowned.
“Show me a law,” the sheriff demanded. “Pick it up and show it to me. Show me a part of America. What, is it this country? This is just dirt we’re standing on, son. Dirt and stone. Ain’t no lines in the earth, no directions saying what I can and can’t do. Show me a right. Pick it up and hold it in your hands and put it beneath my ever- loving nose and show me a thing that says I cannot do what I am doing now. Show me that this is forbidden.”
“This is America,” insisted Roosevelt.
“America is back east,” said the sheriff. “Rights are back east. You’re out on your own out here. And no one gives a damn about any such thing. See?” He sidearmed Roosevelt across the neck with the pipe. Roosevelt gagged and cried out and spittle hung from his lips in streams.
The sheriff crouched and smiled into Roosevelt’s face. “All this stuff you talking about,” said the sheriff. “All this stuff. Well. You take it out here and you see it’s just made up. Imaginary. Santy Claus. It’s only real if you and everyone else shuts your eyes and pretends with every inch your pretty little hearts. And no one out here’s willing to do that, son. Now,” he whispered. “Now, now. You want to see what is real?”
The sheriff smiled, then reached behind him and held up the lead pipe, like a lawyer presenting evidence. He laid it on the cement floor in front of them. Then he took out his gun, the metal wicked black and lustrous, and laid it in front of Roosevelt. All of them watched it, their eyes following its movements.
“Argue with that as you would a law,” he said. “Argue your rights with that. Go on. Do it.”
None of them spoke.
The sheriff smiled. “With things like that a fella makes a place far more… I don’t know,
Pike’s cold stare moved to the sheriff. “Laws are made by men,” said Pike. “I serve a higher power. A power higher than any butchery you have in your hands and heart.”
The sheriff laughed. “If God wants to come on down and give me a yell about what I’m doing, I—”
“I bet if the scarred man came out here and said not to, you’d jump,” interrupted Connelly.
The sheriff froze and turned to look at him, eyes thin with fury. “What?”
“You’re his man, aren’t you?” said Connelly. “He’s put some cash in your pocket to scoop us up. Isn’t that it?”
The sheriff stared at him a long while, then stooped and picked up the gun and held it to Connelly’s head. Connelly felt the muzzle bite into the patch of scalp behind his ear, felt it grinding into his skull, felt the sheriff’s hand quivering with rage and felt Pike’s and Roosevelt’s stares. He shut his eyes and waited for the mindless lump of metal to enter his head and push everything that made him what he was out the other side onto the cement floor to be washed down into the drain with God knows what else that had met its end in that room.
“Say that again, boy,” said the sheriff softly. “You just say that again.”
Connelly did nothing.
“You say it!”
He still did not move. The sheriff let the gun fall and he walked around and pressed the gun under Connelly’s chin, forcing him to look up at the sheriff’s face. “He says I can’t kill you,” said the sheriff. “You know that? I said, did you know that?”
“No,” said Connelly.
“What do you think about that?”
“I-I guess I’d say that’s mighty polite of him,” he said, confused.
“No!” shouted the sheriff, and cracked Connelly with the handle, then placed the gun under his chin once more. “Not like that. The Mithras-man says… says you’re unkillable, boy. Like even if I tried it wouldn’t stick. You think that’s true?”
“No,” Connelly said honestly.
“No,” echoed the sheriff. “No. Me neither. I don’t believe that at all, boy.” He took the gun away, inspected it. Wiped off the small flecks of blood. “Not at all. Reynolds?”
“Yes?” said the young man.
“Get these men out of here. Make sure to rig up the big fella’s cell nice and good.” He stayed focused on the gun, cleaning it over and over again. “Nice and good, you hear me? Nice and good.”
“Yes, Sheriff,” said the young man, and opened the door.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They tossed Connelly back into his cell a little more than ten minutes later. He looked up and inspected the walls, the ceiling, the floor. He did not know what they had meant by rigging up his cell. It seemed just as damp and uncomfortable as before. His sick was still pooling in the corner.
Except it was a little different. The light felt different, like the source had changed, but he could see the sunlight still streaming through the window at the top. Yet it seemed greasier, oilier, like water tainted and fouled by some foreign contaminant. Connelly dismissed it. Surely a man who had taken as many beatings as he had over the past days was allowed some confusion. He felt ill as well. There was a constant ringing in his ears that would
