“
Big Jim seemed to measure him. Then he nodded. “All right. But you must not be caught, or even seen.”
“Don’t worry. What do you want the… the earwitnesses to hear?”
Big Jim told him. Big Jim told him everything. It was good, Junior thought. He had to admit it: his dear old dad didn’t miss a trick.
15
When Junior went upstairs to “rest his leg,” Big Jim finished his sandwich, wiped the grease from his chin, then called Stewart Bowie’s cell. He began with the question everybody asks when calling a cell phone. “Where are you?”
Stewart said they were on their way to the funeral home for a drink. Knowing Big Jim’s feeling about alcoholic beverages, he said this with a workingman’s defiance:
“That’s all right, but make sure it’s only the one. You aren’t done for the night. Fern or Roger, either.”
Stewart protested strenuously.
After he’d finished having his say, Big Jim went on. “I want the three of you at the Middle School at nine- thirty. There’ll be some new officers there—including Roger’s boys, by the way—and I want you there, too.” An inspiration occurred. “In fact, I’m going to make you fellows sergeants in the Chester’s Mill Hometown Security Force.”
Stewart reminded Big Jim he and Fern had four new corpses to deal with. In his strong Yankee accent, the word came out
“Those folks from the McCains’ can wait,” Big Jim said. “They’re dead. We’ve got an emergency situation on our hands here, in case you didn’t notice. Until it’s over, we’ve all got to pull our weight. Do our bit. Support the team. Nine thirty at the Middle School. But I’ve got something else for you to do first. Won’t take long. Put Fern on.”
Stewart asked why Big Jim wanted to talk to Fern, whom he regarded—with some justification—as the Dumb Brother.
“None of your beeswax. Just put him on.”
Fern said hello. Big Jim didn’t bother.
“You used to be with the Volunteers, didn’t you? Until they were disbanded?”
Fern said he had indeed been with this unofficial adjunct to the Chester’s Mill FD, not adding that he had quit a year before the Vols had been disbanded (after the Selectmen recommended no money be allocated to them in the 2008 town budget). He also did not add that he found the Volunteers’ weekend fund-raising activities were cutting into his drinking time.
Big Jim said, “I want you go to the PD and get the key to the FD. Then see if those Indian pumps Burpee used yesterday are in the barn. I was told that was where he and the Perkins woman put them, and that better be right.”
Fern said he believed the Indian pumps had come from Burpee’s in the first place, which sort of made them Rommie’s property. The Volunteers had had a few, but sold them on eBay when the outfit disbanded.
“They might have
Fern said—cautiously—that he’d heard Rommie did a pretty good job putting out the contact fire on Little Bitch after the missiles hit.
“That wasn’t much more than cigarette butts smoldering in an ashtray,” Big Jim scoffed. A vein was pulsing in his temple and his heart was beating too hard. He knew he’d eaten too fast—again—but he just couldn’t help it. When he was hungry, he gobbled until whatever was in front of him was gone. It was his nature. “Anyone could have put it out.
Fern asked Big Jim what he, Fern, was supposed to do with the pumps.
“Just make sure they’re in the firebarn. Then come on over to the Middle School. We’ll be in the gym.”
Fern said Roger Killian wanted to say something.
Big Jim rolled his eyes but waited.
Roger wanted to know which of his boys was goin on the cops.
Big Jim sighed, scrabbled through the litter of papers on his desk, and found the one with the list of new officers on it. Most were high-schoolers, and all were male. The youngest, Mickey Wardlaw, was only fifteen, but he was a bruiser. Right tackle on the football team until he’d been kicked off for drinking. “Ricky and Randall.”
Roger protested that them was his oldest and the only ones who could be reliably counted on for chorin. Who, he asked, was going to help out with them chickens?
Big Jim closed his eyes and prayed to God for strength.
16
Sammy was very aware of the low, rolling pain in her stomach—like menstrual cramps—and much sharper twinges coming from lower down. They would have been hard to miss, because another one came with each step. Nevertheless, she kept plodding along 119 toward the Motton Road. She would keep on no matter how much it hurt. She had a destination in mind, and it wasn’t her trailer, either. What she wanted wasn’t in the trailer, but she knew where it could be found. She’d walk to it even if it took her all night. If the pain got really bad, she had five Percocet tablets in her jeans pocket and she could chew them up. They worked faster when you chewed them. Phil had told her that.
But the Reverend Libby had, and look what happened to her. Dislocated shoulder; dead dog.
Sammy thought she would hear that pig’s squealing, excited voice in her head until she died.
So she walked. Overhead the first pink stars glimmered, sparks seen through a dirty pane of glass.
Headlights appeared, making her shadow jump long on the road ahead. A clattery old farm truck pulled up and stopped. “Hey, there, climb in,” the man behind the wheel said. Only it came out
Nevertheless, Sammy climbed in—moving with an invalid’s care.
Alden didn’t appear to notice. There was a sixteen-ounce can of Bud between his legs and a half-empty case beside him. Empties rolled and rattled around Sammy’s feet. “Where you goin?” Alden asked. “Porrun? Bossum?” He laughed to show that, drunk or not, he could make a joke.
“Only out Motton Road, sir. Are you going that way?”
“Any way you want,” Alden said. “I’m just drivin. Drivin and thinkin bout my boy. He died on Sarraday.”
“I’m real sorry for your loss.”
He nodded and drank. “M’dad died las’ winner, you know it? Gasped himself to death, poor old fella. Empha- seeme. Spent the last year of his life on oxygen. Rory used to change his tanks. He loved that ol’ bassid.”
