Stateline (15 page)

U
nbeknownst to me at the time, as I was driving down 50, Deputy Louis Perdie was five miles further on the same road, heading to the county sheriff’s complex in Placerville. When he arrived forty-five minutes later, he eased himself out of the car, yawned and stretched, passed gas loudly, and hitched his pants up. A crooked smile creased one side of his face as he walked into the building.

A tall, shirtless man with a scraggly blond beard was struggling with two deputies in the lobby. The deputies were red-faced and straining mightily to cuff the bigger man, whose eyes were dilated and wild with adrenaline. “Get your dirty hands off me, pigs,” he shouted, as the trio spun around the lobby area, banging against the walls, knocking a potted plant off a table. Two more uniformed cops jumped into the fray, and one was kicked hard in the knee and went down with a yelp of pain.

Perdie removed his baton from its holder, waited for the right moment, then swung with a quick chopping motion across the blond man’s jaw. The man’s eyes rolled back, and he dropped to the floor, jerked momentarily, then lay still as a corpse. The deputies stood panting over him.

“My god, Louis,” said one cop.

“This man’s seriously injured,” said another. “That was unnecessary. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic. We would have restrained him in a minute.” The shirtless man lay in a pile, a pool of blood forming under his mouth, which looked oddly deformed.

“Probably got a broken jaw,” Perdie said. “Teach him to mess with Placerville’s finest. Clean up the mess, boys.” Perdie smiled again and walked through a glass door into the interior of the building.

Sheriff Conrad Pace sat at his desk, idly considering a local neighborhood petition for increased patrol at a park that had been overrun by truant teenagers. He tossed the paperwork aside when Perdie knocked and let himself in.

“What’s shakin’, Cuz?” Perdie said.

“The usual, Louis,” Pace said. “Mothers Against Drunk Drivers want checkpoints set up nightly in front of the bars on Main Street, a twenty-year-old woman claims she got raped at a house party last night, a senile old man took a chainsaw to a hundred-year-old pine in his front yard and dropped it on his neighbor’s garage, and we busted some hippies running a meth lab in a shack up in the hills behind Adler Street.”

Perdie laughed. “These mountain folk just know how to party, huh?”

“Damn hippies up here are just as bad as the blackies back home, Louis.” Pace stood and lit a cigar.

“Another year then we heads back South?” Perdie said.

“Sooner than that. This climate ain’t to my liking. I don’t aim on spending another winter here.”

“That’s music to my ears, Cuz.”

“You catch up to that private eye this morning?”

“Yes sir. I do believe he’s an ornery one.”

“You played it the way I said, right?”

Perdie leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out. “Sure did. I just had me some breakfast and let Raneswich do the talking. But the private eye didn’t seem too interested in backing off.”

“Well, we ain’t done much to discourage him.”

“Not so far,” Perdie said. He shrugged, his eyes widened, and his lips seemed to purse and smile at the same time. It was an innocent expression, as if he was saying, “Who, me?” and it created the impression he was a slightly confused country boy. It was a look Pace knew well. Pace remembered seeing the same expression when Perdie was twelve years old, when the Pace family adopted him and brought him into their home.

When Pace’s father had let Perdie sleep in their barn that rainy night forty years ago, Conrad was perplexed. Vernon Pace was a ruthless sharecropper, and he treated the people in his life, including his family, not much differently than his livestock. But he had seemingly taken pity on the soaking-wet, skinny boy, who was trying to fashion a shelter under a pecan tree on the boundary of the property. Louis Perdie was fed, given dry clothes, and put to work on the Pace farm. And he worked hard, happy to escape the horrors of his past, horrors that eventually Conrad would learn about, and then he would grow to understand why Louis Perdie could smile harmlessly and a moment later inflict physical damage on a human being that would leave scars for life.

“Let’s just watch him for now, Louis.”

“You’re the boss, Cuz,” Perdie said, smiling crookedly, but his eyes were as hard and flat as iron rivets.

Back in Louisiana all those years ago, Pace realized Perdie could easily outwork him in the field. It took a special kind of person who needed so little and accepted the grueling hours of labor as a perfectly acceptable condition. Pace wasn’t like that himself. He wanted more out of life. He wanted to be like the wealthy men he’d see in New Orleans on the occasions his father took him to town in their old Packard truck. They’d pick up goods that weren’t available in the parish’s general store, and then Vernon Pace would typically spend a couple hours in a saloon on Bourbon Street, while Conrad waited outside, a sixteen-year-old kid in overalls and an old straw hat. He’d stand and watch the people of the city while his father drank. He saw men in fine suits of silk and wool, sporting gold pocket watches and driving shiny sedans. These men were finely groomed and manicured, and they walked with their shoulders back while people on the sidewalk made way for them. Conrad watched them and knew that he would have everything they had some day. It was just a matter of taking it from them.

One afternoon Vernon Pace came out of the bar, and Conrad knew something wasn’t right. His father’s face was unnaturally red, and his eyes were hot and bulbous, as if a furnace roared beneath the sockets. A man with slicked-back hair and a white shirt stumbled out from the saloon behind him. He held a towel to his mouth, and there was blood flecked on his shirt.

“You’ll pay what you owe all right,” he yelled. His lip was bleeding and swollen. Vernon Pace turned back and strode toward the man as if powered by an inner storm.

“You say another word, you won’t have any teeth left.”

“Pox on you, Pace. You’re a welsher and a crook,” the man said, but he moved back into the doorway.

Vernon sprung forward and kicked the man in the stomach, as if he were kicking a door down. Conrad stood on the sidewalk and saw the man fly back into the saloon. Inside there was a crash and loud voices. A moment later two large men walked out of the bar. One had thick arms covered with tattoos, and the other had a chest like a barrel and an ugly scar under his eye. They moved toward Vernon with a steady purpose.

“Peckerwood shit like you thinks he can make his own rules, eh?” said the one with the tattoos. The second man didn’t break stride. He put his hand on Conrad’s face and shoved him away, then snorted like a bull and threw a quick right jab at Vernon Pace. Conrad watched from the gutter as his father ducked the punch and moved laterally, a blade now gleaming in his hand.

The tattooed man stepped up, suddenly holding a two-foot piece of dowel stock. He swung it rapidly with one hand, back and forth, forcing Vernon Pace to the middle of the street. People stopped and stared from the sidewalks as Pace and the man circled each other. Conrad rushed toward the man wielding the stick, but the barrel-chested man stopped him with a fist to the side of the head. Stunned, Conrad dropped to his knees, and watched his father move in close and take a hard shot to the ribs, then lash out viciously with his knife. The freshly sharpened blade whipped across the tattooed man’s eyes, and he staggered back holding his face, blood streaming down his fingers. Then Vernon drove the knife up to the hilt in the man’s side, beneath the rib cage.

The street was silent. The barrel-chested man held out his hands and slowly retreated. Vernon stood in the street, holding the bloody knife over the dying tattooed man. Then Vernon and Conrad Pace ran for their truck.

Conrad never forgot the drive home that day. The sights from the window of the truck were the same ones he’d seen so often they’d become as mundane as a dirty plate. But now he stared out the window in wonder; everything seemed fresh and new, as if the landscape had been reborn. The thick grasses that rose beside the highway, the rotted timber littering the swamplands, the wisps of pink clouds in the soft hue of the sky—it was all brand new and sharp as a fresh razor. He felt as if his senses were tuned to a dimension he never knew existed.

He looked at his father, amazed at the pride bursting in his heart. His father stared out the windshield, his gnarled fingers clamped like vices on the wheel. “Dad,” Conrad said, “that was truly…” The words died in Conrad’s mouth when Vernon Pace hit the brakes and yanked the truck to the side of the road. “You think there’s something to smile about?” Vernon said. Then he got out of the truck and walked around to the passenger side. “Get out,” he said. Conrad climbed halfway out of the seat before his father grabbed his forearm and flung him into the soggy weeds that lined the road. Conrad stared mutely as his father got in the truck and spun the tires back out onto the highway. A hot blast of sand and grit rose to Conrad’s face. He stared at the truck, watching it become smaller and smaller.

• • •

The black car arrived at the Pace house early that night, shortly after Conrad had made it home, his feet blistered from the ten mile walk. The sun hung just over the horizon, and the night air was dense with humidity. It was the type of evening that offered no respite from the heat of the day.

“He’s gone,” Conrad told the man who climbed out of the sedan, which had come to a stop in the dirt between the house and the Pace’s barn. The man was huge, his fat hanging off his body in slabs. He leaned against the car, his thumbs hitched in his belt, and looked down at Conrad Pace. Two Negro men sat in the backseat of the car, staring forward, their eyes pale as milk against their skin.

“You wouldn’t lie to me, now would you, boy?” the man said.

“How in hell would I know where he is?” Conrad said.

The man rolled a toothpick around his mouth on his tongue, which looked red and obscene against the white of his face. “He’s your daddy,” he said, his smile tiny, like a half moon punched into a ball of dough.

“My pa’s gone, I told you.”

The man sighed, and when he spoke he looked away from Conrad and gazed out over the farmland, as if he was enjoying the scenery. “That’s very noble of you, defending your father, boy. I suppose I’d do the same. Now I’m gonna make this real simple for you. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It’s your choice. Where is he?” His eyes fell back to Conrad.

“And you’re full of shit too,” said Louis Perdie, who had quietly walked up behind Conrad. At thirteen years old, he was close to six feet already, with veined forearms and scarred hands. He held a pitchfork at his side.

“Well, lookee here,” the man said.

“Get off my property, mister,” Conrad said. He stared hard at the man’s face.

The man swung his arm lazily backward and rapped his knuckles against the car window.

The two black men climbed out, wearing blank expressions.

“This boy needs some learnin’,” the man said, pointing at Louis Perdie. “Take him to the barn.”

“My ass,” Perdie said, gripping the pitchfork.

“You catch on quick,” the man said. One of the black men, stout and blunt as an ox, feinted to the right, and the second Negro rushed at Perdie from the left, and a moment later the pitchfork was clattering across the dirt, and the men had Perdie’s arms pinned behind his back.

“He ain’t involved in this. Let him go. He’s just a farmhand,” Conrad said.

“It ain’t too late to stop what’s gonna happen to him in that barn,” the fat man said. “You just tell me where to find Vernon Pace.”

“I already told you, mister, I got no idea where he’s gone.”

“Well, that’s a shame, it really is,” the fat man said, and waved his arm at the Negros, who lifted Perdie, swearing and writhing like a snake, and carried him to the barn. Conrad scrambled toward the pitchfork but froze when a shot rang out, dust exploding at his feet.

“Might as well make yourself comfortable,” the man said, the black revolver shining in his bloated hand. “We got all night here.” Conrad sat on the ground, and a minute later the screams from the barn began. “You want it to stop, you just say when,” the man said, leaning against his car, the gun hanging from his fingers. “Just remember, you’re next.”

Conrad looked up at the man, let his eyebrows droop, and slowly stood up. “I’ll tell you where he is,” he said, his voice resigned, his head hanging.

“Out with it then,” the man said.

Conrad shuffled forward, his shoulders slumped, his arms limp. But he kept his eyes on the gun. “He’s gone to Baton Rouge. He’s…” The fat man’s eyes gleamed in expectation. Then Conrad leapt forward like a coiled spring, his foot kicking out at the man’s hand. He felt the man’s fingers crumble, and the revolver flew over the hood of the car like a wounded bird. “Sonofabitch,” the man shouted. He started after the gun, but Conrad leaped past him and pounced on it in an instant. The man tried to get back into the car, but his girth hampered him, then he felt his shoulder explode in a flash of white-hot pain. He fell over, moaning, and looked up from the ground at Conrad Pace.

“You shot me, boy,” the man rasped, his fleshy face wet with perspiration. “You done it now. I’m the law—I’m Sheriff Bode. Call an ambulance.”

“Sheriff, huh?” Conrad said. He opened the door to the black sedan and found a set of handcuffs on the passenger seat. “Maybe you are,” he said, and snapped a cuff around the man’s injured arm. He yelped in pain as Conrad yanked the cuffs, and blood was soaking all down the front of his shirt, making it cling to his belly like wet paint. “You done it now, boy,” the man said again. “But you call the ambulance and–”

“Sit up, you sack of pus,” Conrad said, and leveled the gun at his head. The man pushed himself up, and Conrad pulled the handcuffs through the car door handle and closed a cuff around the man’s other wrist. “You can sit here and bleed for a while,” Conrad said, then he grabbed the pitchfork and ran for the barn.

Inside, Conrad Pace froze at the sight of his friend, his pants around his ankles, and what one Negro was doing to him while the other held his arms stretched over the low railing of a horse stall. The one holding Louis Perdie looked up, his eyes met Conrad Pace’s, and then the revolver bucked in Conrad’s hand. The Negro’s face jolted, blood pumping from his forehead, and he fell over as if his legs had been kicked out beneath him. The second man stepped back, his face startled, his genitals glistening and engorged. Conrad pulled the trigger, and a hole no larger than a penny appeared on the man’s stomach. The Negro stood and watched the blood flow from the wound, and looked up at Conrad with a quizzical expression. Conrad smiled at him and handed the pitchfork to Louis. And then Conrad had to cover his ears and leave the barn, and even the horses recoiled when Louis Perdie started in on his rapist with the pitchfork.