Zeke and Ned (9 page)

Zeke was relieved by that news, and he saw the Judge's point about the marshals. If they ran into him on the Mountain, or caught him at home, they'd probably just kill him, unless he killed them first. But he still did not savour the notion of being in the Tahlequah jail for any length of time. He had been in it once or twice for minor scrapes, and knew it to be a drafty place with hard bunks. He missed Becca, Liza, and the triplets, and wanted to get home to them as soon as possible. Becca would be worried, and the triplets would be more than a handful, with only Liza to help.

Charley and Zeke went out. Ned started to follow them, but when he took a step toward the door, the Judge looked up and frowned. Ned stopped—he had great respect for the law that emanated from Judge Sixkiller.

“Are you in a hurry, Mr. Christie?” the Judge asked.

“No, I'm just here with Zeke,” Ned replied. Being in the presence of Judge Sixkiller made him feel solemn, for some reason.

“I see you're fully armed,” the Judge observed.

“Yes sir,” Ned said.

“It's better to live in peace with your neighbours and not be shooting at them,” the Judge said.

“I ain't shooting at 'em,” Ned said.

“A man who carries three guns is likely to end up shooting at somebody, sooner or later,” the Judge observed. “A peaceable man ought to be content with fewer guns.”

“I was afraid there'd be trouble with the Becks or the Squirrels,” Ned informed him.

The Judge ignored this reasoning. He looked out the window, and saw that Sheriff Bobtail and Zeke Proctor had yet to make it to the jail. They were standing in the street talking, which was incorrect procedure, and a distraction from the matter at hand.

“You married my granddaughter. Why'd you do it?” the Judge demanded to know, in the tone he might use with a felon.

Ned was so taken aback by the question that for a moment he lost his bearings. Judge Sixkiller was looking stern. Ned was at a loss for what to say, his mind having suddenly gone blank. Why
had
he married Jewel? Ned felt like he would rather be in jail with Zeke than to face Judge Sixkiller and his questions about his new wife.

He paused a moment, and took a deep breath.

“Jewel was of a marrying age,” Ned said carefully. “She seemed a fine girl. I believe she'll make a good wife.”

“Of course she'll make a good wife,” the Judge said with a hint of indignation in his voice. “Do you think you have it in you to make a good husband, Mr. Christie? That's a better question.”

Ned had every intention of being a good husband to Jewel. He had been a good husband so far, and he saw no reason why he could not continue to be one. But how was he to convince Judge Sixkiller of that? Just looking at the stern old man with the curly white eyebrows made him feel tongue-tied.

“I aim to be good to Jewel,” Ned said, finally. “I believe I can be good to her.”

“I hope you
are
good to her,” the Judge said. “I will not have Jewel
mistreated. She wouldn't have married you unless she meant to be a good wife to you, and I imagine she expects you to stay alive and help her raise your children.”

“Why, I aim to stay alive,” Ned said. “I aim to grow old with Jewel.”

“Then stop piling on the pistols,” the Judge said. “You look like a gun rack. There's too much wanton shooting in the District, and I mean to curb it. I have not felt the need to carry a weapon in more than thirty years. When I was a circuit judge, I rode all over this District with nothing on me but a pocketknife. If you do the same, you'll live longer, and my granddaughter might escape the sorrow of being a widow.”

The Judge looked out the window. Sheriff Bobtail and his prisoner were still milling around in the street. Zeke seemed to be smoking a cigar, which was vexatious behaviour in a man who was supposed to be incarcerated.

“Go out there, Mr. Christie, and tell Sheriff Bobtail to proceed to the jail immediately and lock up that prisoner,” the Judge said. “Who told him to lag?”

“Well, I didn't,” Ned said, glad to have a reason to leave. Splitting logs with a hatchet would be preferable employment to having to address Judge B. H. Sixkiller. He did not feel that he had acquitted himself very well in the conversation, either.

“I have nothing but the best intentions where my wife is concerned,” Ned said, before he went out the door.

The Judge did not reply. He was staring out the window, across the wide street, and he looked galled.

“Y
OU EVIDENTLY NEED TO CLEAN OUT YOUR EARS
, M
R
. B
ECK
,” J
UDGE
Isaac Parker said emphatically. “They must be clogged up with earwax or filth of some kind. I've told you three times that I'd take the matter under advisement. Three times is more times than I care to repeat myself. It's time for you to head home.”

Willy Beck did not budge. He was planted right in front of the Judge, and he meant to stay there until he got some firm guarantees. So far, Judge Parker had failed to produce any.

“My sister's dead and buried,” he said. “Zeke Proctor shot her in
broad daylight, her husband was a witness. I don't want to hear no talk of advisement. I want you to send a marshal over to get him. Then let him be tried and hung.”

“As you well know, the culprit is already incarcerated,” Judge Parker said. As soon as he could locate Chilly Stufflebean, his bailiff, he meant to dock his wages fifty cents for having let Willy Beck get past him and into the Judge's office. Part of the bailiff's job was to keep people with grievances as far toward the front of the courthouse as possible. Once they got back down the hall toward the Judge's chambers, they were apt to prove hard to dislodge—Willy Beck, the man standing in front of him, was a case in point.

“He's in an Indian jail, and if they bring him to trial it'll be in an Indian court and with an Indian jury,” Willy said. “Our brother's lost a wife to foul play, and our brother's white. We want that damn killer tried in your court. Then we want him hung.”

“Was your sister a pure woman?” the Judge asked, suddenly. He looked out the window and saw Chilly making his way back from the outhouse. Chilly's main drawback as a bailiff was his unstable gut. All too often, he was visiting the outhouse when he ought to have been keeping people like Willy Beck from interfering with the work of the court. Judge Parker was the court, and he suffered plenty of fools in the course of his work. But he did not suffer them gladly, and Willy Beck was no exception.

“What?” Willy asked, when the Judge made the inquiry about Polly.

“Was your sister a pure woman?” the Judge asked, again.

“Of course she was pure—she was my sister,” Willy replied. “Zeke Proctor had no business going over to the mill bothering her. He was fair warned.”

“Pure women don't let rascals bother them—I'd like to see some scoundrel try and bother
my
wife,” the Judge said. “If there's botherment to a level that the wife can't handle, then it's the husband's place to chastise whoever it is that's doing the bothering. It ain't the court's place. You couldn't recruit enough marshals between here and Memphis to hold down that kind of botherment.”

“But there was a killing!” Willy Beck insisted.

“Yes—a woman—your sister,” the Judge replied, just as Chilly walked in the door. Chilly was shivering, although it was a warm day: thus his nickname.

“I'll take it under advisement. Now get this man out of here, Chilly,” the Judge ordered. “I have several warrants to issue.”

“Then issue one for Zeke Proctor, while you're issuing!” Willy Beck retorted. Judge Isaac Parker was proving a big disappointment. He was supposed to be the hanging judge, but he did not seem very interested in the fact that a murder had been committed, or convinced that Zeke Proctor needed hanging.

“Not today, sir, don't forget to clean out your ears when you get home,” the Judge said. “You may experience deafness later in life if you don't swab the wax out once in a while.”

Chilly was skinny but tall. The height was an advantage when it came to ushering folks out of the Judge's chambers before they had finished having their say. Few people ever got out their say with Judge Parker.

“That's what court's for, Chilly,” Judge Parker frequently informed him. “If I let them have their say before the trial, what it generally means is that I have to listen to a bunch of lies twice.”

“They ain't supposed to lie when the court's in session, they're under oath,” Chilly reminded the Judge.

“Dogs ain't supposed to suck eggs, either, but they do,” Judge Parker replied.

C
HILLY
S
TUFFLEBEAN, TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD, DID NOT INTEND
to be a bailiff all his life.

He wanted to be a judge like his idol, Isaac Parker. The Judge had given him an old book of statutes, which he kept under his bailiff's chair, to pore over in idle moments. Chilly had been told by a local doctor that he had insufficient blood in his body, the result being that he was skinny and much prone to the shivers. He kept a blanket draped over his chair to wrap up in. The old courthouse in Fort Smith was cold and dank, but it was Chilly's home. Both his parents had died of lung infections when he was eleven, at which age Judge Parker took him in to do the sweeping and empty the spittoons.

Chilly slept on a bench in the courtroom, wrapped in his blanket. Out the window, he could see the Arkansas River; sometimes the moon shone on the water, but more often the river would be wrapped in mist.

Chilly loved the river. When his father was alive, they had a small boat to fish from, and Chilly liked to sit in the boat and watch the creatures of the river. He tried to imagine what it would be like to have a life beneath the water, as turtles did, and muskrats and snakes and fish. His father, Logan Stufflebean, had been a fine fisherman. Once he had hooked a catfish that weighed over one hundred pounds—they hung it up and weighed it on a scale at the hardware store.

Chilly had cared deeply for his father. Sometimes, Chilly dreamed that his father was still alive. When the dream ended and he had to face the fact that his father was dead, the disappointment was so keen that he wiped tears off his cheeks.

The thing Chilly liked to think about most was the law, a force he only dimly understood. The law did not exist in any one place or any one time, like the catfish his father had caught, or the mist that lay on the Arkansas River in the mornings. Judge Parker had nearly fifty books in his chambers, all of them crammed with law. The courthouse where Chilly worked and lived had been built because of the law. Judge Parker, the man he looked up to most, worked day and night, year in and year out, seeing that the law got enforced among the people. The law was everywhere, like air, but on court days it collected itself inside the courthouse, as mist collected itself on the surface of the river.

Since Chilly lived in the courthouse and had for many years, he had come to feel that the Fort Smith courthouse was where most of the law belonged. He knew there were other courts—Indian courts, for example—but he could not imagine that there could be much better law than they had in Fort Smith, or a better judge than
the
Judge: Isaac Parker.

Thus, he was a little puzzled that the Judge had seemed reluctant to send marshals up to Tahlequah to bring back Zeke Proctor. Chilly had seen Zeke Proctor twice, both times when Zeke was riding in horseraces. Zeke was a fine rider, and had won both races, but that did not excuse him from the strictures of the law. If he shot a woman, he needed to face Judge Parker and make his case. Chilly, who ushered people in and out of the Judge's chambers every day, resented the fact that people referred to Judge Parker as the hanging judge. It was most unfair, in Chilly's view: the Judge had tried hundreds of men, and only hung seventy. If people could see the riffraff that came in and out of
the courthouse, day after day, they would realize Judge Parker was actually picky about whom he chose to hang.

Judge Parker liked to whittle, and kept a sharp pocketknife on his desk, just for that purpose. Part of Chilly's job was to sweep up the shavings the Judge would have under his chair at the end of the day, willow shavings, mostly. Judge Parker preferred to whittle willow sticks. He liked the way willow wood smelled, and kept a good supply of whittling sticks in his desk drawer.

In his eagerness to understand the law, Chilly would sometimes venture to ask the Judge a few questions, if the Judge had time and seemed receptive to inquiry. After ushering Willy Beck to the street, Chilly went back to the Judge's chambers to see if there were errands that needed running. The Judge, who used no tobacco, was peeling a willow stick the way a cook peels a potato.

“Are the Becks gone?” the Judge asked.

“No,” Chilly replied. “They're just standing outside the courthouse. I expect they're hopin' you'll change your mind and send a marshal off after Zeke.”

Judge Parker kept on peeling. “I can't change my mind because I haven't made it up yet,” he said. “You can't pay attention to family sentiment when you're doing this job, Chilly.”

“No sir,” Chilly agreed. In his experience, families were the most troublesome part of law work. Mainly it was wives, thinking up reasons why their husbands should be let out of jail. But if it was not wives, it was mothers—and if it was not mothers, it was apt to be brothers. Nobody wanted to admit they had plain, simple criminals in their families. Chilly supposed he would have been the same way, if he had been lucky enough to have a family. He did hope someday to have a wife, but at present it was only a remote dream, more remote, almost, than his dream of being a judge. There were no schools handy where he might learn judging, and no women who had shown the least bit of interest in being his wife. Chilly cast fond glances at a girl named June Lawton, whose father was a preacher, but so far June had not cast many fond glances back. As far as Chilly could predict, he was very apt to go through life being a bailiff. At least he had a solid bench to sleep on at night.