Deep in the Heart of Me (24 page)

I expect to get to the station and find Fat Ned with his feet on the desk. I expect to have to pull this gun from the back of my pants and level it on his fat nose to find out where Sheriff has gone with Sobe.

But I get another big shock when we round the corner to the station and there, big as you please sits Sheriff's automobile.

"Now look cousin," Pat is saying as he drives the truck alongside the Ford, "you might want to think about it a bit. You go flying in there he might be waiting."

I think to have that gun in my hand, but if he's going to shoot me, I want one more look into Sobe's eyes so I can leave this world knowing if she betrayed me willfully or by force.

I get out of that truck and bee-line for the door, and I burst in there.

"Oh Tonio," Sobe says from the cell, her hands on the bars. "Don't come in here. Don't come in," she says.

It's Sheriff at the desk, feet up there and ankles crossed even and arms folded. He has his hat and coat on and so does Sobe, so I don't think I'm far behind. But Sheriff is holding his gun in one hand and a bottle in the other.

"What is this?" I say. He's locked up his own daughter?

"Run Tonio. Run…." Sobe starts again.

I am quickly crossing the floor to her, but Sheriff says, "Stop right there." His feet come down on the floor. "Right there," he says standing with that gun.

He is rounding his desk same time Pat shows up in the doorway.

I put my hand up that Pat should stop, and Sheriff shoots him.

Sobe screams and Pat falls back, and he's groaning.

"What the…?" I pull my own gun then and put it on Sheriff.

"Look at that," Sheriff says. "What I tell you about this one?" he says to Sobe. "That's right boy. You think you're gonna take my daughter and shoot me?"

"Oh God," Sobe says. "Let him go, Dad. Oh God."

"You go for his father," Sheriff says to Pat like he's not laying there shot. "That's how we do it round here."

Sheriff motions me toward the other cell, the one Tillo, and Utz occupied last time I was a guest here.

"Let me take Sobe home," I say. "I'll take Sobe home then I'll take Pat to the doctor, and you can go," I say.

"You take my daughter? You arrogant son of a bitch!" he says.

"Dad no. Tonio is good. He's good!" Sobe yells. "Put that gun down. Don't you hurt him. Dad!"

He nods toward that cell once more. "Get in there."

"Dad, stop. You have to stop. Pat needs the doctor. Let Tonio go. Let him help Pat. I'll go with you. We'll leave," Sobe says frantic.

We're at a standstill. "You gonna shoot me?" he says cocking that revolver. He's got an ugly smile.

If I lower my gun, I'm not sure what he'll do to Sobe.

He takes his gun off me and opens his arms wide. "You gonna shoot me, boy? You think you're man enough? Gonna take my daughter? Kidnap her? Take my little girl?"

"Dad…," Sobe says. "Put the gun down. Put it down and we'll go. Let's just go."

"Pat?" I say because he's gotten quiet. I can't afford to look at him. I'm watching Sheriff.

Pat doesn't answer.

"Dad," Sobe cries.

"Put the gun down like she says," I try to reason, two hands on the gun now because I'm shaking. If I shoot his leg, he'll shoot me.

I shoot his arm. His gun goes flying.

Sobe screams, "Dad."

I hurry closer to him. "Hang on Sheriff," I say. I'm so sick I'm breathing hard.

He reaches up with his strong hand and pulls my pistol by the barrel smack against his forehead. He wants me to shoot him.

I'm struggling to keep the gun. He's a strong son of a bitch, and he uses his body, he kicks and kicks, and it hurts like hell, and he's trying to bring me to the bloody floor, and I'm there before I know how it happened, and we're just fighting for my gun now. I never been against it like this and I'm fighting with all I got.

Sobe is screaming, and we're struggling. He's yelling and grunting, and he gets on me, and now I got his weight, and it goes off, and I'm not sure how or who.

He stops struggling.

I get him off, and he's on his back, his arms wide. I'm sitting up, that gun still in my hand and Sheriff bleeding from the chest and staring up, mouth open and eyes open and it takes Sobe's screams to bring me around.

I am over him. "God, God," I whisper, putting my hands over that pumping red.

His face is death, and I am there, and then I fall to my butt and sit there, his blood on me, on my hands.

I am trying to breathe, and she is calling my name, and I look at her, and she's on her knees, holding the bars, her mouth wide and she's calling me, I hear it at the end of a long tunnel seems like.

I try to shake that off and get on my feet. Got to get on my feet.

Sobe's father is dead. I can see that. A child could see it. Sobe is on her knees in that cell, and she's saying things that aren't quite words.

I have to turn my back on her. I half crawl my way to the door and Pat.

He is breathing. He's coming around. He hit his head when he fell I think, or it's blood from his wound seeping onto the back of his hair. He's shot in his shoulder. The pain is setting in.

Sobe is yelling, and I say, "He's all right." But I'm startled by my own voice, and I don't know if she's worried over Pat or the other…one. I just don't know.

My hands are running over Pat. I have to get my knife and cut his clothes off his shoulder.

He tries to argue it, but I say, "They are shot through!"

I end up ripping off my jacket, then my shirt so I can bind his wound.

Sobe is talking and I can't follow it, can't listen. But I am feeling her upset, feeling all of it.

I tear my bloody shirt and make a thickness and tie up Pat's wound. My hands are shaking, but it makes me nail myself down--doing this for Pat.

I'm speaking to Pat. I say hang on.

"Is it bad?" he asks.

"I killed him," I say it like I'm crying. I'm not I don't think, but my voice is.

"Is he dead?"

"I killed him," I say again. I might keep saying it and saying it.

"Shut up," he says. "Don't say it again."

"Sobe," I yell to let her know I'm here. But I keep looking at Pat. I'm watching him because I don't know if he'll die. I can't let him. I don't know what to do.

Just like that people arrive. Jim and his dad. They heard the shots. Jim's dad goes past me into the station. "Oh God," he says. "Stay out Jim."

Jim drops to his knees by Pat. "What happened?"

Sobe is yelling. I should go to her, but Sheriff…I know she is safe in that cell. I don't know how to get her out. I'd have to find the key. I'd have to…but I don't know if it's safe. I know it is. But she's safe in that cell.

I ain't thinking right. I have to go to her. "You okay?" I say to Pat, but he don't look okay. Jim's dad is back. "What the hell you do in there boy? You need to go in there and lock yourself up until Ned gets here."

"I didn't…."

"Who did this?" he means Pat.

"Sheriff," I say.

"You two come to kill him?" he says.

"No," Pat says. He's barely talking now, but he gets that out just fine.

He sees me this way—killer. They all will.

"We just walked in. He went…he was crazy," I say. Well, I ain't happy saying anything.

"You are in trouble boy," he says. "Get him in the Ford." He means Pat needs to get taken to the hospital now.

In no time, we are pulling all of Sobe and Sheriff's things from the backseat and putting Pat in Sheriff's car, and he's being taken to the hospital, same place he took Shaun.

I want to go, but I can't leave Sobe. Jim's dad tells me to get in the station and hurry.

"Get in there," he says. He's got my own stolen pistol on me.

"I ain't running," I say.

"Go on," he says, and I am nervous because I don't doubt he's green enough with a pistol to plug me.

I go in then, in my bloody undershirt. Sobe is gripping the bars to her cell like a caged animal. "He didn't do anything," she's yelling on my behalf.

Jim's dad is firm. I need to get in that cell.

I curse and go in. The longer I dally, the longer Pat waits for the doctor.

I go in that cell, and he slams the door.

"Ned will figure this," he says then he's out.

Then I hear that Ford drive away, and he's left us, me and Sobe jailed, across from one another, but in between laying on the bloody floor, the damn Red Sea…her father.

"Sobe did he hurt you?" I say. I don't know what I'll do if she tells me.

"He tried to kill you. He tried to…Tonio," she says.

"I'm all right."

We are looking at each other. I feel so much I can't name it.

But others have come along by now, seems like most of the men in town are pouring over here from the tavern. It is Friday night. Some are the ones Pat was going to meet after he took Sobe and me to the river.

"What happened?" they are asking me. "What happened?"

Mike is with them. "What's Dad's truck doing sitting out there with the door open? Where the hell is Pat?"

They've trampled the blood on the stoop. I tell him then. Sheriff shot Pat, and they took him to the hospital. I have to explain he's all right. Least I hope so. It's in the shoulder.

Mike says he'll go for Dad and Uncle John.

I take to shaking so badly I can barely stand. I'm in my undershirt, and someone passes my jacket through the bars, and I put that on. My legs hurt, my shoulders, my ribs. It don't matter.

"Let us out," Sobe yells. "Let us out of these cells." She's saying where the keys are, she's demanding we be let out.

"How you get in there?" someone asks. They are debating that they should do anything before Ned comes. "It's Tonio. He's not going anywhere."

"Hellion that kid," another says.

"Blew up Smith's," someone else says.

"Got Shaun killed, now Pat."

"Don't let the womenfolk in here," someone says.

They want to know how I got locked up.

"It was self-defense. It was self-defense," Sobe yells trying to shake bars that won't move, so shaking herself instead.

Someone finds the keys, and she whips the blanket from her bed and soon as that door opens she's out, and she puts a blanket over him, carefully covering his face.

Then they part, and she comes to me. "I thought he'd kill you. He locked me…I thought he'd kill you Tonio."

She's up against the bars, and I have my arms around her, and I hold her with the hard bars between us.

I don't know how she might feel about me. I have his blood on me. And Pat's. I am thick with it. "Sobe," I say, that strange choking voice. I realize I hurt. My body hurts. I felt in him…not just the anger of fighting…like with my brothers…or Tillo or Utz. Not even like Big Belly. This was something else…something so beyond me, I don't know the words to tell it.

"Tonio," she says and it's dry and strong, "thank God you're alive." She demands the keys, demands they let me out.

"This was self-defense," she says. "Innocent until proven guilty." She has the keys, and she's unlocking my cell.

"She shouldn't do that."

"Who killed the sheriff?"

"Him from the looks of it."

"Keep him in there."

"My day we'd get us a rope," someone says.

I step out of that cage.

Besides the blood, I can smell the drink on them.

"Get back from him," someone says sternly.

I know that voice.

"Dad," I say looking around. Then more loudly, "Dad."

And they part for him, and Ned comes in behind my dad. My Dad's face when he sees Sheriff, he looks from him to me.

He looks at Sobe.

She goes limp then.

She's fainted. From strong and angry to this silence with her eyes still open like she's died.

I don't feel strong at all, but I catch her before she crumples to the floor.

I don't know if I can lift her, but I do.

I go to the nearest thing and lay her on the desk, but I keep hold of her. I hate them gawking at her. She's wearing a beautiful dress, and I try to keep it pulled around her knees.

"Put her on one of the cots," Dad says.

"What happened here?" Ned is asking.

They are telling Ned broken bits of the story he doesn't know.

"If you've nothing to say, get out," he's saying loudly.

I lift Sobe and take her into the cell, lay her on the cot I'd napped on that day Sheriff brought us here and locked us up.

That day those million years ago.

I kneel at the side of the cot. "Sobe," I say. And words just flood me.

Her eyes flutter open. "Tonio," she says. She rolls on her side and draws her knees. "I'm sick."

I look around for that bucket and scramble for it and get it to the side of her bed, and she's sick in it.

I sit on the edge near her and smooth her hair back with my bloody bruised hand. "Did he hurt you?" I ask her, but she's crying now.

I am pulled onto my feet. It's my dad. Ned is talking close, and he pushes my dad aside. He takes me firmly by the arm and away from her bed, and out of her cell, and across the floor and the cell I already know, and he pushes me in and closes that door. He's telling my father it's as much for me as anyone.

"I'm taking him home, and we'll sort this out," my father says.

"I can't let you do that," Ned says. "You know same as me he has to stay here while we sort it. We've got a dead sheriff," Ned says, and there's a tremble in his voice.

He starts to clear the floor of stragglers then. Everyone out. Everyone but my dad and the woman who has worked her way in-Miss Pat Rivers.

She is staring at the blanket and the blood stain that has soaked its middle.

Well
,
we all are.