“You take care now.”
The Wagon Wheel was five and a half miles south of Prairie. It was just about what you’d expect, the kind of place folks used to call a juke joint or a roadhouse. There was a lot full of dusty pickups when he turned in. A lot more than you’d normally see, unless it was the play-offs or there was live music like they sometimes had whenever the T-birds or some other band was passing through on the way to somewhere else.
Franklin pulled up and parked next to Homer’s cruiser. He noticed the front door was open and the motor was still running. Looked like he’d been in a hurry and felt the need of bringing the Mossburg shotgun too. He made his way through a covey of big Harleys parked near the entrance, taking note of a couple of bikes he’d not seen before. New Mexico tags.
His boots crunched on broken glass when he walked through the door. He saw Homer with his back up against the bar, blood on his face. Two men were holding his arms out to the sides while another one worked on his midsection with the butt end of a busted pool cue, shouting at the top of his lungs, his voice full of rage and spittle. The man with the cue stick was Mr. J.T.Rawls. His face was bright red and his eyes were blazing in the miraculously unbroken mirror behind the bar.
“Why didn’t you shoot me when you had the chance, you little fuckin’ shitbritches?” J.T. asked. “Huh? Answer me! You want some more? Awright, you—”
“That’s enough of that,” Franklin said, raising his voice just enough to be heard above all the TV football noise and the music and shouting going on inside. Every head swiveled in his direction and he was conscious of how he must look to them. He was wearing what he wore every day of his life including Sundays. Dress trousers, a starched white shirt, and a necktie representing Old Glory. His badge was clipped to one side of his belt, his sidearm clipped to the other.
“Enough of what?” Rawls said, turning drunkenly toward the doorway on one heel of his boot.
It got quiet fast.
“J.T., put down that stick. You two boys let Homer go.”
“Or, what?” Rawls said.
“Yeah!” somebody shouted. “Or, what?”
It became a kind of a liquor chant, “Or, what?” did, everybody focused on him now, saying it over and over, and Homer slumping to the floor. Homer’s shotgun, Franklin saw, was lying on top of the bar in a puddle of beer. There was movement now, as the men formed up close on J.T.’s flanks. A couple of men he didn’t recognize stepped in, putting themselves between him and the rancher. They were the motorcycle owners, wearing leather chaps and vests. Big fellas with prison tats on their biceps.
“I got to see about my deputy,” Franklin said, walking toward them so they had to step aside.
He waded through the mess of angry men toward Rawls and his deputy, resisting the temptation to put his hand on his sidearm. He was just determined to keep moving forward and that’s what he did. Suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed his shoulder and hung on.
“Let me go, Davis,” he said to the wild-eyed man. There were tears in the man’s eyes. Davis Pike’s son Tyler had been a member of the posse. After a couple of seconds of staring at each other, the man looked away and let go. He just looked broken and lost.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Franklin said, and kept moving.
Franklin figured there was about fifty of them in the place. Most if not all of them were drunk as skunks and past all caring which way this thing went. And a lot of them had weapons. He saw some .357s stuck in the waistbands of jeans and a couple of rifles here and there.
When he got to J.T., he stopped about two feet in front of the man. Rawls’s chest was heaving, shallowlike, and his eyes had a methamphetamine glitter to them. Suddenly Rawls reached around behind him and grabbed Homer’s shotgun off the bar.
“Give me that gun, J.T.,” Franklin said softly.
“Yeah. Both barrels, killer,” he said, too wasted to notice the Mossburg was a single.
“I am not a killer. I never did kill anybody didn’t need killing.”
“No? What about my son? What about all them poor boys you sent to their deaths? What about them? You got ’em scalped! What about all the daughters of men here? You know? They’re gone, ain’t they? Might as well be dead! You know what I think? I think we’ll have us a trial by jury right here. I think we can find twelve angry men in this room.”
“Good one, J.T.!” someone said.
“Who wants to be on the jury? Say ‘aye.’ ”
A chorus of “ayes” rang out. The men pressed forward making a tight circle around Rawls and the sheriff and the downed deputy.
“Put the gun down now,” Franklin said, taking a step forward.
Rawls backed off and raised the gun to his shoulder and aimed it square at Franklin’s heart. Franklin thought he was going to pull the trigger right then. Then he stepped forward until the muzzle of the gun was pressed against the sheriff’s breastbone.
“Guilty,” Rawls said, trying to shove Franklin backwards with the Mossburg. But suddenly, Rawls was going down hard like he didn’t have legs anymore. Homer, still on the ground, had somehow managed to kick J.T.’s feet out from under him.
Franklin knocked the shotgun barrel aside and knelt beside Homer. The boy’s eyelids were fluttering and he looked up and smiled.
“I appreciate that, son,” the sheriff said to his deputy. “You got a little kick left in you.”
“Howdy, Sheriff. Glad you made it.”
“Yeah. Come on. We’re going to take you over to the emergency at Southwest Medical.”
“You ain’t going nowhere but Hell,” Rawls said from the floor. He fired the weapon about six inches above the sheriff’s head and blew a jagged hole in the veneer of the bar about a pie plate wide.
Franklin grabbed the muzzle and swung it away before the man could fire again. He tried to pull it downward so that if J.T. fired again he wouldn’t hit anybody and then there was a muzzle flash and he felt a searing pain in his forearm. He ripped the gun from the man’s hands and swung on him. Rawls caught it on the side of his head and fell back, blood pouring from the wound. He tried to stay sitting upright but he went down. Out cold by the look of him.
The sheriff threw the gun behind the bar and turned toward the mob pressing in on him now, all around him, sensing blood.
Dixon stood his ground.
“It’s all over, boys. Time for everybody to go home.”
“Hell if it’s all over,” one of the big Harley fellas said, coming right up in Franklin’s face. “I’ll be damned if it’s all over, you sonofabitch. Why, I’m going to kick your—”
“Sheriff, come quick!” a man said above the murmurs and angry cries. He was standing in the doorway, just a silhouette with the blazing sun falling to the ridge behind him. Something about the way he called out made them all stop, freeze in fact, and look at him. It was Joe Beers. He stepped inside a bit, looking at the mess and Homer on the floor and all, taking the whole of it in and immediately understanding what was going on.
He stepped forward, pushing men aside, and took Sheriff Dixon’s hand, pumping it up and down. The man was laughing and crying at the same time.
“I seen your car out there on my way into town, Sheriff. Lord, I’m glad to find you here. I was going to the courthouse. Everbody’s there, the whole town. They all want to thank you for getting all our little girls back home safe.”
“You mean to say they’re all back?” one of the semidrunk fellas nearest the door said.
The bar went dead quiet.
“He’s lying,” Rawls said. “Don’t believe a word of it.”
“All of them. Ever last one. Heck, my wife just called my cell and told me. An old moving van pulled up at the courthouse here not ten minutes ago and dropped them off. All five of ’em is what I hear. It’s a miracle is what it is. My wife Sherry’s there with Charlotte already. I got to go hug my daughter.”
“Are they all right?” Franklin said. “Unharmed?”
“Yes, sir. I asked. Sherry says they’re all physically unharmed as far as she can tell. She already called the Southwestern EMS and it’s on the way. Check everybody out, make sure they’re all right.”
