Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

reach it, but he could tell by the shape that it was a.38 Colt revolver, nickel-plated from the shine of it. Sam was careful to put things back the way he found them before he left the shed.

A couple of days later Sam was helping Dad untangle fishing line, when the older man in the black coat came up the driveway. Sam excused himself to go out back to the outhouse, and he went around the corner of the house toward the backyard. When he thought it was safe to peek around the corner, he saw the man go into the car shed and then drift back out and stroll back down the driveway. When Sam got back to the front steps, Black Coat was gone. So was the nickel-plated Colt when he checked the car shed the next day.

On Saturday Sandy Hair himself came up about suppertime. Dad was chopping stove wood, and Sandy Hair even took a turn or two with the ax while they were talking. Sam stayed still at his marble circle near the privet hedge, hoping nobody would notice him and chase him inside. He kept shooting aggies, pretending not to notice the visitor at all. He was too far away to hear what was said, but he kept watching for Sandy Hair to head for the car shed, and sure enough in a couple of minutes he did. He stayed around for a few more minutes, talking to Dad, and Sam thought he could see a bulge in his brown suit coat. When Mom came out on the steps to call them in for supper, Sandy nodded to her and strolled away. It was Sunday morning before Sam had a chance to check out the shed again. The family was getting ready to go to church, so Sam got himself ready in a hurry and said he’d wait for everybody outside. He slipped into the shed and went straight to the tackle box. The floats were back in place, and the Smith & Wesson was gone.

That afternoon the family piled into the Ford and took the dirt road across the mountains to Pigeon Roost. After Grammaw Hemrick’s Sunday dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and new peas, Sam got to sit out on the porch with Dad and all the uncles, and Dad told the story about the day they hanged the elephant. Sam waited for him to tell the new story, the one about the duel and the hidden gun, but he never did. Dad never did tell that story, and finally Sam came to understand why.

More than twenty years later, Sam would come home from the Pacific with captain’s bars and medals for what he did in the Philippines. He’d talk about the war anytime his children asked about it, but always just the one story: about a little monkey he’d found orphaned in the jungle, and made a pet of. Just the one story, over and over.

NOT ALL BRIDES ARE BEAUTIFUL

THEY SAY THAT all brides are beautiful, but I didn’t like the look of this one. She came into the prison reception area wearing a lavender suit and a little black hat with a veil. Her figure was okay, but when she went up to Tracer and that other photographer from the wire service, there was a hard look about her, despite that spun-sugar smile. I knew it would be easy to get an interview-she’d insist on it-but that didn’t mean I was going to enjoy talking to her.

“Is it true you’re going to marry Kenny Budrell?” I called out.

She redirected her smile at me, and her dark eyes lit up like miners’ lamps.

“You’re here for the wedding, honey?” she purred. “Have you got something I could borrow? I already have something old, and new, and blue.”

Just a regular old folksy wedding. I was about to tell her what I’d like to lend her when I felt a nudge in my side. Tracer-reminding me that good reporters get stories any way they can. I managed a faint smile. “Sure, I’ll see what I can find. Why don’t we go into the ladies’ room and get acquainted?”

She smiled back. “This is my day to get acquainted.”

“That’s right,” said Tracer. “You’ve never met the groom, have you?”

Kenny Budrell had been a newsroom byword since before I joined the paper. By the time he was eighteen, his clip file in the newspaper morgue was an inch thick: car theft, assault and battery, attempted murder. He did some time in the state penitentiary about the same time I was at the university, and it seems we both graduated with honors. The next news of Kenny was that he’d robbed a local convenience store and taken the female clerk hostage. Tracer was the photographer on assignment when they found her body; he says it’s one of the few times he’s been sick on duty. It took three more robberies, each followed by the brutal murder of a hostage, before the police finally caught up with Kenny. He didn’t make it through the roadblock and took a bullet in the shoulder trying to shoot his way past.

The trial took a couple of weeks. The paper sent Rudy Carr, a much more seasoned reporter than I, to cover it, but I followed the coverage and listened to the office gossip. The defense had rounded up a psychologist who said Kenny must have been temporarily insane, and he never did confess to the killings, but the jury had been looking at that cold, dead face of Kenny’s for two weeks and they didn’t buy it. They found him guilty in record time, and the judge obliged with a death sentence.

After that, the only clippings added to Kenny’s file were routine one-column stories about his appeal to the State Supreme Court, and then to Washington. That route having failed, it was official: in six weeks Kenny Budrell would go to the electric chair.

That’s when she turned up.

Varnee Sumner-sometime journalist and activist, full-time opportunist. In between her ecological-feminist poetry readings and her grant proposals, Varnee had found time to strike up a correspondence with Kenny. The first we heard of it was when the warden sent out a press release saying that Kenny Budrell had been granted permission to get married two weeks before his execution.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that Varnee Sumner wanted to be pals-that’s probably what my city editor was counting on when he assigned me to cover the story.

“What’s your name?” she asked me as she applied fuchsia lipstick to her small, tight mouth.

“Lillian Robillard. Tell me-are you nervous?” I decided against taking notes. That might make her more careful about what she said.

She smoothed her hair. “Nervous? Why should I be nervous? It’s true I’ve never met Kenny, but we’ve become real close through our letters-I’ve come to know his soul.”

I winced. Kenny Budrell’s soul should come with a Surgeon General’s warning. Maybe she wasn’t nervous about marrying a mass murderer, but I would have been.

My thoughts must have been obvious, because she said, “Besides, they’re not going to let him come near me, you know. Even during the wedding ceremony he’ll be on one side of a wire screen and we’ll be on the other.”

“Will they let you spend time alone with him?”

That question did faze her. “Lord, I hope-” I’d swear she was going to say not, but she caught herself and said, “Perhaps we’ll have a quiet talk through the screen-Honey, would you like to be my maid of honor?”

“I’d love to,” I said. “And would you like to give me an exclusive pre-wedding interview?”

“I wish I could,” she said, “but I’ve promised the story to Personal World for ten thousand dollars.” She straightened her skirt and edged past me and out the door.

I didn’t think it was possible, but I was beginning to feel sorry for Kenny Budrell.

* * *

“You looked real good out there as maid of honor,” Tracer told me as we left the prison. “I got a good shot of you and the warden congratulating the bride.”

“Well, if I looked happy for them, pictures do lie.” The television crews had arrived just as we were leaving and Varnee was granting interviews right and left, talking about Kenny’s beautiful soul and how she was going to write to the President about his case. “You know why she’s doing this, don’t you?”

Tracer gave me a sad smile. “Well, I ruled out love early on.”

“It’s a con game. She stays married to him for two weeks, after which the state conveniently executes him, and she’s a widow who stands to make a fortune on movie rights and book contracts. I Was a Killer’s Bride!”

“Maybe they deserve each other,” said Tracer mildly. “Kenny Budrell is no choirboy.”

I pulled open the outside door fiercely. “He grew up poor and tough, and for all I know he