Town Burning (40 page)

The wind had died away altogether, and from the yard the voices of the men were confidently level, where before short yells and curses had been distorted by emergency. They could hear the chink of coffee mugs being washed and stacked in the kitchen. The stagnant air was sweet and heavy with the smell of fire, and as he moved his hand slowly over her soft thighs and belly another heady sweetness gathered and pressed, grew in him as if the incense of the burning trees, her liquid readiness, the ominous respite of the wind, all worked his blood to urgent heat. She moved, lovely and alive, to welcome him.

Later they heard, as they lay quietly together, the hurried sounds of disorder and pursuit—a car being over-revved, gravel whicking tinny fenders, a scraping crash below in the yard, shouts, and another car, siren whining, coming up the hill after.

John went to the window, and as he recognized Junior’s salt-rotted old car, now jammed against Sam’s pickup, he heard Junior’s voice below, in the house. Chief Atmon and Joe Beaupre jumped from the Leah police car, guns in their hands, and ran across the yard toward the kitchen.

“What is it?” Jane asked as she hurriedly dressed.

“Atmon and Beaupre chasing Junior.”

“Oh, my God! What’s he done now?”

Junior’s hoarse roar came from the foot of the stairs. “Janie! Janie!” a desperate, yet irritated yell.
“Janie!”
and they heard him running heavily up the stairs, out of breath and sobbing hoarsely. “God damn it!” He opened and slammed several doors until he found the right one, then stood silent, struck motionless by the instantly understandable scene: Jane slipping her bra around after hooking it, John with one leg in his pants and his chest bare, the rumpled bed suggestively behind them. For a moment, as this interesting evidence went through Junior’s mind, he stood with a reflective cast to his big red face, his immediate problems forced into the background—even though Atmon’s brutal and righteous bellow at Mrs. Pettibone in the downstairs hall hung in the air:
“Where did he hide?”

“Yeah!” Joe Beaupre yelled. “Never mind what he done! Where is he?”

Junior stepped inside and shut the door. “What are you doing here?” he asked John ominously.

“What are you doing here, is more like it,” Jane said. More screams from downstairs as Atmon and Beaupre found Mrs. Pettibone intractable.

“Get dressed!” Junior said to Jane, who was obviously getting dressed. John, who fought with an annoying and nearly uncontrollable desire to laugh, had reached a hard knot in his bootlace. He gave it up and reached for his sooty shirt.

“I ought to…” Junior began with exaggerated iciness. Jane took one step and slapped him across the face. He nearly fell down.

“Now let’s mind your business,” she said. “You’re in trouble and you came to me for help.”

And as if Junior’s try at being the protector of his sister’s purity had been a kind of hysteria, her slap shocked him out of it. He sat dispiritedly on the bed (but with one purposeful hand pulled the spread up over its revealing disarray), put his head in his hands and asked, “Is everybody going nuts?” in an exhausted voice. Jane put a comforting hand on the back of his neck.

John held back his laughter for a grave and admiring moment. What a woman! He was struck sober by a somewhat frightening, yet strangely erotic, sense of her great value. Now he would scheme for permanence and availability, do his best to lose his freedom in the pursuit of happiness. He sat down against the wall and laughed out loud.

“What’s so goddam funny?” Junior asked.

“I just had to be convinced, Janie,” John said. “Oh, dear! Oh! Oh!” He laughed and laughed as they watched him. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’m sorry, Junior. Is it about your fight in the fire-house?”

“You had to be convinced?” Jane asked. At this, Junior looked hurt—jealous—and John could not blame him. Junior’s plight seemed the most pressing thing at the moment. The heavy feet of the law marched up the stairs.

“That I won’t ever run away from you, Janie.”

“No!” Junior yelled. “They say I killed Bemis, for Christ’s sake!” Now, having said it, and having thus invited Atmon and Beaupre into the room, Junior was terribly afraid. He stood up and backed against the far wall, his big hands limp at his sides, his face turned away from the door.

Joe Beaupre burst in, ran across the room and struck Junior on the face with the barrel of his revolver. Blood appeared, rich and dark. Junior didn’t raise his arms. Beaupre struck again, and Atmon came for his share. He punched Junior in the chest.

“O.K.!” John found himself shouting at the busy backs of the police. They crowded each other, trying to get in the best licks, but Junior wouldn’t go down.

“That’s enough!” John shouted. They wouldn’t hear him. Their breath hissed, they grunted and worked. He thought of boars, brute and powerful, mounted in maniac lust upon the backs of pummeled sows. They would not stop. They would not stop. Jane tried to pull Atmon away, but he shrugged her off and went on pounding. She slipped and went down on her knees. Seeing her there, helpless as is frail love in the presence of brute force, John felt his arms grow strong and willed himself berserk.

Willed himself, but the blue cloth of authority stretched with an invincible sheen across those bulky shoulders. He would as soon attack a priest as violate this bluer cloth. It was not in his character to do what it would be necessary to do, and this character he had defined over the years spoke only flight and disappearance to him. In order to fight them he would have to assume the authority of his burning town.

He never knew what decided for him—the necessity of one unavoidable action, Jane upon her knees crying, “Stop!” or the soft
smack smack
of fists and metal against Junior’s flesh. He searched for a weapon, and a measure of his control was that he did not choose Bruce’s pistol, but the narrow bed table. He forced himself between their arms and Junior, held the table defensively against their blows and raged at them, his voice bloated, megaphonic in his own ears: DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?

Their lustful faces showed no recognition. They tried to move him aside, but he pushed the table edge hard against their faces until it hurt them. Joe Beaupre cracked his hand against the wood and dropped his revolver. As he bent to pick it up John kicked it under the bed.

As if he had been awakened from deep sleep, Chief Atmon showed surprise. “Hey!” he said sternly, and then was even more surprised. Sam Stevens’ big arms circled him and held him still.

“Git his gun, John,” Sam said. As John took Atmon’s big revolver from its holster, Junior fainted. His wrecked face, jaw distended, torn by the sharp front sight of Beaupre’s gun, pressed gently against Atmon’s chest and left a nest of blood there as he fell.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Atmon said. Joe Beaupre was out of it. With a vacant expression on his pale, sweaty young face, he waited. The doorway was full of other waiting faces—Salvation Army women and men just back from the fireline. Jane and Mrs. Pettibone knelt and put their hands to Junior’s wounds.

Sam nodded to John, his blue eyes cold and tired.

“Give me back that gun!” Atmon demanded.

“You’re under arrest,” John said.

“
You’re
under arrest!” Atmon shouted.

“No, you are.”

“Junior Stevens is under arrest! You’re
all
under arrest!” But a nervous shifting of his eyes—Sam still held him absolutely in place—showed that a fearful reorganization was taking place in Chief Atmon’s scheme of things. John took the shiny handcuffs from the holder on Atmon’s belt and fastened Atmon’s right hand to Joe Beaupre’s apathetic left one.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Atmon said, rubbing his imprisoned wrist. John had forced his hand into the cuff, and this surprising strength in John Cotter had further unnerved the chief.

“I asked you that,” John said calmly, “but I’ll tell you. I’m the man who just arrested the chief of police. In fact I just arrested the whole goddam police force.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Don’t you feel that you’re under arrest? Try to get out of here.”

Atmon was silent. He looked desperately around the room—as far around as Sam would let him turn—but everyone watched John Cotter. No one met Atmon’s eye. John saw this, and evidently Sam did, too. He released Atmon and went to Junior.

“Stand over there,” John said, and it was still amazing to him that the two policemen did as they were told. A familiar fear came over him: the descent of responsibility upon his unready shoulders. It seemed to him that everyone waited for the chance to shift responsibility upon him.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The words were learned at a time in his life when the custodians could damn’ well solve their own problems. Well,
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
John
Cotter?

Sam Stevens picked up Junior and placed him gently on the bed. Junior breathed wetly through his mouth. Little bubbles of blood formed at his lips and ran down one side of his chin on a slow, forked stream. His nose was bent and plugged. Women were running for water and clean cloth.

Sam came back to Atmon and bent over to look him in the face. After a time he said: “I knew you was a fool, Atmon. I knew you was a nasty fool. But I figured you wouldn’t do no harm since nothing much ever happened in Leah anyways. I was wrong.” He grabbed Atmon’s arm and pulled him violently toward the bed, dragging Joe Beaupre along too. “Look what you done,” Sam said, forcing Atmon down toward Junior’s mangled face.

“You don’t know it, but you’re headed for big trouble,” Atmon mumbled.

“Don’t hurt him, Sam,” John said. Sam gave him a narrow glance, then pushed the police away.

“Reckon there’s been enough butchering done,” Sam said, “but I’m going to see you in jail, both of you. You can’t get away with what you done in Leah! Where in God’s name did you think you was, you goddam fools? On television? Ain’t you from
Leah?
You think we’re going to let anybody git by with being that lousy mean in
Leah?”
The old man’s anger filled the room; in the presence of his gigantic wrath the legality of Atmon’s and Beaupre’s arrest would not be questioned.

“He’s having trouble breathing. We’d better get him to a doctor,” Jane said. Mrs. Pettibone ran for the telephone.

“Sam, I guess we better get the state police in on this,” John said. “I’m not too sure what a citizen has to do to arrest a policeman.”

“We’ll make it good and legal,” Sam said, staring meaningfully at Atmon.

“You’re going to be in big trouble,” Atmon said.

“WHAT?” Sam crowded Atmon to the wall and raised his huge arms over Atmon’s head. “WHAT?”

“I ain’t scared of you,” Atmon said unconvincingly.

“Don’t hurt him, Sam,” John said.

Sam watched Atmon closely, then nodded, apparently satisfied. “The hell you ain’t,” he said, and turned to Joe Beaupre. “I always thought you was a decent boy, Joe,” he said sadly. “Now what got into you, anyways?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Stevens. He was running away.”

“What for?”

Joe looked up with new, though faint, hope in his eyes. “He killed Charlie Bemis and tried to burn down the Town Hall, that’s what he done.”

Sam thought this over. “Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. That don’t change nothing in your case, though, Joe. You was just beating on him for the fun of it.”

“He was running away,” Joe said.

“We got eleventeen witnesses to say he wasn’t, Joe. You better set on that one. He just run home, Joe, and you know that. He just run home. He didn’t aim to run nowheres. You know he used to live here, and the minute you see him turn up my road you knew damn’ well he wan’t going anywheres.”

Junior began to moan. Jane dabbed at a white lump as big as half an egg on his forehead. The watchers stood about the bed, their hands waving as if to help her, or to keep her fingers from touching the most painful parts.

John went downstairs and found Mrs. Pettibone, her connection made, stuttering and sobbing incoherently into the telephone. He took it from her and found that she had called a wrong number.

“They won’t come!” she cried, her sallow face translucent about the brown hollows of her eyes, her maloccluded teeth grinding on brown lips. He led her to the kitchen and sat her down, hoping that among her dishes she might find her night meaningful again.

“We’ll take him to the hospital in Northlee, Mrs. Pettibone. He’ll be fine. Don’t you worry, now.”

“Oh, John Cotter!”

“It’s all right now, Mrs. Pettibone.”

She tried to smile, and even tried to hide her teeth from him. “They beat him so!” she said, and then bent down to cry again. “He’s such a baby.” Her rough hands circled her forehead as if to shade her eyes from strong light. He knew she shaded her unfortunate face from his eyes. “You never liked him anyways,” she said. “But you saved him. I see you. You got right in between them and him and saved him. You done it.”

I done it all right, he thought. The state police had come back, and he went out to meet them. Two troopers he didn’t know stood in the light from their car’s headlights and spotlight, examining Junior’s car. Their brightly trimmed-green uniforms, always able to make him a little more alert, a little more nervous, now made him hesitant. He didn’t stop, however. It was too late for that.

“Did they get him?” one of the troopers asked.

“They got him, all right. We’re going to take him to the hospital. We’ve got Atmon and Beaupre,” John said.

“You what?” Both of the tall young men turned and examined him closely.

“We’ve disarmed them and arrested them. Right now they’re under citizen’s arrest.”

“What the hell is that?” one asked.

“Oh, Christ, you know,” the other said. “What did Atmon do now?”

“Junior Stevens wasn’t offering any resistance, but they cornered him and nearly beat him to death. We had to arrest them to stop it,” John said. He tried to fill his voice with as much calm authority as he could find.

“Can they do that?” one trooper asked.

“Yeah. It’s in the goddam Constitution,” the other said.

“You mean some lousy civilian could arrest
me?”