Chiefs (34 page)

Sonny stood without moving on the sidewalk and waited for her to drive away. As he heard the car pull out, he said, “You black son of a bitch. You’re mine now.” His eyes flicked over Marshall’s shoulder, and Charley hit Marshall hard from behind with his blackjack. Marshall staggered forward, reaching for Sonny, then fell to his knees.

“C’mon, Charley! Get the goddam cuffs on him before he comes around. We can’t do this on Main Street, for crissakes!”

Annie drove as fast as she dared and tried to keep calm, but her breath was coming rapidly and in gasps. She made it home in little more than five minutes and ran for the door, leaving her packages in the car. She grabbed the telephone book and searched it fruitlessly. Then she remembered that the Lee number would not yet be in the book. She snatched up the receiver.

“Operator.”

“Please, ma’am, can you give me Colonel Lee’s telephone number out to his new house?”

“Sure, Annie,”—the operators knew everybody—“they’re still in the trailer out there. The number is 120-W. You want me to ring it for you?”

“Oh, yes, please ma’am.”

The phone rang, then rang again. Annie stamped her foot in impatience. Five rings. No answer.

“No answer, Annie, but they could be over in the new house. They’ve got a loud bell outside the trailer. I’ll ring a few more times.”

The phone rang ten times, fifteen.

“Looks like they’re not at home, Annie. Billy’s probably out campaigning somewhere. Better try later.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Annie collapsed into a chair and tried to think. Then, in rapid succession, she tried Hugh Holmes’s and Brooks Peters’s numbers. No answer from either of them. In desperation she ran for the car and started back to town.

Marshall Parker came to, face down on the back seat floor of the police car, his hands handcuffed behind him, Sonny Butts’s foot on his neck. The car squealed to a halt, and Marshall heard the front door open and close. In a moment the two policemen were dragging him roughly from the car.

He was still dazed, but he knew he was at the police station.

Billy and Patricia Lee were returning from Talbotton, where Holmes had arranged a barbecue at the home of a supporter. Patricia was driving and had pulled ahead of the Holmeses shortly after leaving the event.

Billy was slumped in the passenger seat, tired, but not sleepy. “What do you think of all this campaigning, all these country people?”

“Well, it’s hardly a new experience, you know. Nobody loves politics better than the Irish. Being the candidate’s wife is new, though, gives one a different perspective.”

“How so?”

“I’d never thought much about the differences in the ways people react to politics. At home, everybody talked about it, and some were more interested than others, but standing next to you at these gatherings, like tonight, I can see the differences.”

“Go on.”

“Some are just there for the fun of it, for the party. Others support you personally, maybe because you’re a veteran or because they knew your father or your family, or because you’re Hugh Holmes’s candidate. Others want something. They’re putting their support in the bank now, and they’re going to want to have something in return later. I wonder how much of a problem that will be for you.”

“I’ve talked about that with Mr. Holmes. Most of those who want something later don’t have anything definite in mind, now. They want to have an in just in case, and the things they want will be small—help with some state department, something like that. They’ll be easy to accommodate.”

“What about the ones with larger expectations?”

“I don’t know how large their expectations can get with a state senator. If I were running for governor, they might want all sorts of things. Still, I’ll help them if I can,. I guess, unless they want something they’re clearly not entitled to, and then I guess I’ll turn them down.”

“I’m going to remind you that you said that one of these days.”

He grinned. “Okay.”

“By the way, have you thought about what we’ll be doing on election night?”

“Lord, no. You think we ought to have a victory celebration or something?”

She laughed. “Well, if Mr. Holmes’s concerns about the election mean anything, planning a victory celebration might be presumptuous.”

“You’ve got a point, there. Still, he thinks we can pull it off without too much trouble. He just doesn’t want to say it out loud for fear of making me cocky.”

“Why don’t we have a housewarming, an open house?”

He straightened in his seat. “Are you really that far along with the place?”

“Not far enough along for a proper housewarming, but the work will be essentially finished by then. We can clean out the place and wait until afterwards to finish the floors. That way, everybody will get a good look at the house, and we won’t have to worry about their tracking mud in. We can have the refreshments outside and let them wander around the house at will. If it rains, we can all go inside and stand around.”

“Sounds good to me. Maybe we can get somebody to phone in the results from each district during the evening.” He lay back again.

They were over the mountain now, and driving through town. Patricia saw a car, apparently in a hurry, run a stop sign ahead of her, crossing the street on which she was driving.

“That looked like Annie Parker,” she said.

Billy lifted his head, but the car was gone.

“Just Annie,” she said. “I didn’t see Marshall.”

Billy lay back again. “Yeah, well, she’s probably picking him up somewhere.” He looked at his watch. “The stores might still be open. I’ll bet Mr. Fowler is.”

Patricia laughed. “I’ll bet he is, too.”

They continued toward home.

Brooks Peters and his wife left the Rialto Theater after seeing a rerelease of
Guadalcanal Diary
. At the entrance they ran into Dr. Tom Mudter, who was alone. They walked together for a block, before separating to go to their respective homes.

“You were in the Pacific, weren’t you, Tom?” Peters asked.

“Yeah. Hospital ships during the island invasions, then when we had essential control of an island, regimental field hospitals ashore.”

“Was it bad?”

He nodded. “A lot worse than in that picture. I don’t think anybody can ever make a picture that’ll show it as bad as it really was.”

“You get shot at any?”

“We had kamikazes on the ships, and a strafing once in a while ashore, usually a single plane, but nothing like the guys on the beaches took. It amazes me to this day that troops could go up a beach like that. It was both inspiring and frightening. I still don’t think that people at home have any idea of the resistance those boys met. The Japanese simply would not give up, wouldn’t surrender. We’d invade an island with twenty or twenty-five thousand Jap troops on it and end up taking two or three hundred prisoners. It was unbelievable.”

“I expect your experience out there has got something to do with your enthusiasm for veterans’ rights.”

“Sure has. I figure that after what those boys went through— and that’s what they were, boys—they’re entitled to the best their country can give them.”

They said good night at a corner and parted.

Annie Parker drove slowly past the police station, then turned around and parked. The police car was there, so she knew, at least, they hadn’t taken Marshall out in the woods someplace and shot him. She tried to think what to do. She had already called everybody she could think of except Marshall’s father, Jim, and she didn’t want to frighten him. What could he do, anyway, that she couldn’t? She decided to go into the station.

There was no one in the station room, and she stood, uncertain what to do. She was afraid to go looking around a jailhouse. Then she saw a button and a sign asking visitors to ring. She pressed the button and heard the bell answer somewhere at the back of the station. There was silence for a minute or two, and as she was about to press the button again, she heard a door slam down a hallway and footsteps approaching.

Charley Ward rounded a comer and stopped as he saw her. He was sweating heavily, and his uniform was wet around the collar and under the arms. “What do you want, Annie?” He was nervous, she thought.

“I came to get Marshall,” she said, her voice trembling.

Charley laughed. “Shoot, Annie, Marshall’s already asleep. We got to talk to him some more in the morning. He ought to be home for Sunday dinner. You go on home, now. We’ll bring him home in the morning/’

“What you have to talk to him tonight for? Why’s it have to be on Saturday night?” She was gaining courage now.

But Charley suddenly turned ugly. “Listen, I told you to get yourself home, didn’t I? Now, unless you want to get locked up for obstructing an officer, you just get on home, right now.”

She nearly took him up on it, insisted on being locked up with Marshall, but if they were both in jail, who would know where they were? Who would help them? She turned and went out of the station.

Back in the car she decided to go home and get on the telephone again. Those folks had to come home sometime. She’d call all night if she had to.

Chapter 17.

DR. TOM MUDTER felt the intense exhaustion that depression brings. The film had brought back too much of his war; he should never have gone to see it, but he had been lonely. He was a bachelor, there was a shortage of women his age in Delano, and there were times when he just could not spend the evening alone in his liny garage apartment behind his father’s house and clinic. He was about ready to begin building his own clinic, and he looked forward to the activity. His parents were old now, and his father was looking forward to retirement. Dr. Frank had only kept the practice going so that Tom could have it after the war.

Half asleep already, Tom got slowly into his pajamas. He switched off the bedside lamp and stretched out on the bed with a groan of relief. It was a warm night, but a breeze blew through the open windows. As he was about to lapse into unconsciousness, he heard a car door slam, then another, then voices from the street. He held himself back from the brink of sleep and hoped against hope that the voices would go to the house next door or the one across. He did not think he could face a Saturday night cutting or such, not the way he felt.

The loud buzzer brought him immediately upright. It always had that effect on him, even when he was expecting it. He had installed the buzzer in his apartment, led from a button at the clinic door, so that he could take night calls without disturbing his father. He pressed a button beside his bed which lit a small sign at the clinic door saying “doctor coming” and struggled into his clothes. Perhaps three minutes passed before he could dress, let himself in through the back door, walk through the darkened clinic, switch on the front-porch light, and open the door.

The three figures who stood at the door were blacklighted by the porch light, and for a moment he did not recognize any of them. The one in the middle was bent half over and was being supported by the other two. One of the others was dressed in a khaki uniform, without a hat, and for a moment he thought the man was a soldier, but then he recognized Charley Ward.

“Evening, Doc.” The voice belonged to Sonny Butts, who was not in uniform. “We got a customer for you here.”

The man in the middle gave a grunt and threw his head back, and the light fell on the nearly unrecognizable face of Marshall Parker. Both eyes were swollen nearly shut, and there were cuts on his forehead and cheeks. His nose was broken.

“Good God!” The doctor took an involuntary step backward, then recovered himself. “Bring him this way.” He walked rapidly down the dark hallway and switched on the lights in the examination room, thinking ahead. If the man was that badly beaten he probably had internal injuries, as well.

Tom went immediately to the sink and started to scrub his hands. The two white men struggled into the room with their charge. “Put him on that table,” the doctor called over his shoulder. “What happened?”

“We were questioning him, and he started fighting with us,” Sonny said quickly. “Then he tried to grab a knife that we had taken off another prisoner, and Charlie had to shoot him.”

Tom whirled around. “Shoot him?” He walked quickly to the table and ripped open Marshall’s shirt. “Jesus Christ in heaven.”

“Hell, Doc, I had to do it,” Charley Ward whined. “He woulda killed Sonny.”

“Yeah,” said Sonny, “he was fighting like hell.” He pulled up his shirt to reveal a large bruise over a kidney. “Look what he did to me. He kicked me in the nuts, too. You wanta see the damage?”

“I’ve got all the damage I can handle right here. Now both of you get the hell out of here.” He turned back to his patient, who was unconscious, and felt for a pulse. Weak and thready. Profuse sweating. He cranked on the table to elevate the lower body. The man was clearly already in shock.

Sonny came and looked over his shoulder. “How bad is he hurt?”

Tom turned and shoved him backwards with his elbows, trying to keep his hands clean. “I told you to get out of here you stupid son of a bitch, now move it! Get all the way out of my clinic, goddam you, and shut the door behind you! This is out of your hands now.” As he pushed them into the hallway and shut the door, he caught a strong whiff of alcohol.