3
Tess was his littlest
girl. She was four. Because of the heat she wore a pair of ribbed
summer drawers. Her sister Eloise was asleep. Tess was at the
doorway, giving Griff a hug he had to bend down to get. Her body
was hot and damp and as always she felt almost frighteningly
fragile in his arms. He kissed her blue eyes and her pink lips and
then he hugged her, feeling the doll cradled in her arm press
against him.
“Will you kiss Betty,
too?”
“Kind of hot for a
kiss, isn’t it?” Griff said playfully.
“You kissed me,
Daddy. Can’t you kiss her?”
Griff looked over at
his wife in the rattan rocker and winked. “Oh, I guess I
could.”
So he picked Betty up
and kissed her on the forehead and handed her back.
‘“Night, punkin’,” he
said, bending down and holding Tess to his leg. She was so small,
she scarcely touched his thigh.
“Will you bring me
ice cream?”
“I’m afraid I can’t
tonight, hon.”
“How come?”
“I have some business
to take care of.”
“What kind of
business?”
He laughed. “Dora,
don’t you think it’s time you put your little girl to bed?”
Dora got up from the
rocker and came over. She leaned down and picked up Tess. Tess held
tight to Betty.
Dora said, “How about
a kiss for me, too?”
Griff obliged. He
held her longer than he meant to and he closed his eyes as he
kissed her. He knew that she knew something was wrong. He’d told
her that Kittredge wanted to talk to him about some haying later on
in the fall, that the hay man wanted an answer tomorrow morning.
But she knew. All during dinner he’d felt her eyes on him. Gray,
loving, gentle eyes. Now, holding their youngest, she touched him
and the feel of her fingers on his forearm made him feel weak, as
if he were caught up in some kind of reverie. He wanted to be
younger, back before the holdup and the little girl getting killed.
How stupid it all seemed now, being so concerned about not having a
job, feeling so afraid that he’d been pushed to such extremes.
Hell, he didn’t have nearly as good a job even now but they were
making it and making it fine.
“You don’t have to
go, you know,” Dora said. A tall woman, not pretty but handsome in
her clean purposeful way, she tugged on his shirtsleeve much as
Tess had done earlier. “You could always tell Kittredge you just
weren’t interested.”
“Could be some good
money. You never can tell.”
She said, “Is Carlyle
going to be there?”
“Carlyle? Why would
he be there? I haven’t seen Carlyle in a long time.”
“It just feels funny,
tonight.”
“What’s ‘feel funny,’
Momma?” Tess said.
He leaned in and
kissed them both again. “I won’t be too long,” he said, and then he
was gone.
***
Long before there was
a brick-and-steel bridge near the dam, Griff used to go there as a
boy and throw his fishing line in and spend the day. He’d always
bring an apple, a piece of jerky, and enough water to last the long
hot day. Other boys would come but
Griff always managed
to stay alone, liking it better that way. But much as he liked it
during the day, he liked it even better at night, when the water
over the dam fell silver in the moonlight, and when fishermen in
boats downriver could be seen standing up against the golden circle
of the moon, casting out their lines and waiting, waiting for their
smallmouth bass and catfish and sheepshead and northern pike. In
the war, where he’d served in the Eleventh Infantry under General
Ord during the siege of Corinth and the occupation of Bolivar, he’d
lain awake nights thinking of his fishing spot, and the firefly
darkness, and the rush and roar of the dam, and rain-clouds passing
the moon.
He was hoping to be a
little early tonight so he could appreciate all this before
Kittredge and Carlyle got there, but as soon as he left the main
path over by the swings he saw two figures outlined against the sky
and he knew that tonight there wouldn’t be even that much
peace.
Kittredge said, “Good
thing you got here now. Carlyle’s gone crazy.”
“Crazy, hell,”
Carlyle said. “I’m just sayin’ we should take care of him before he
takes care of us.”
Griff sighed. Things
hadn’t changed any in the years the men had been apart. Kittredge
and Carlyle had never gotten along; it had always been up to Griff
to keep things smooth between them. Tonight was especially bad.
Even from several feet away, Griff could see and smell that Carlyle
was drunk.
“Plus we’ve got some
complications,” Kittredge said. “And I don’t mean just the little
girl’s father.”
“What’re you talking
about?”
So Kittredge
explained how Sheriff Dodds had come into the roundhouse tavern and
pretty much said that he knew the three men had stuck up the bank
and killed the little girl-maybe not killed her on purpose but
killed her nonetheless-and that if he, Dodds, had to choose fates,
he’d take his chances with the law instead of with some crazy man
with a Winchester.
“That’s why I say we
kill Ryan,” Carlyle said, “before he kills us.”
“Shut up,” Griff
said.
They stood downslope
from the dam so they cold talk over the roar. Griff rolled himself
a cigarette, taking the smoke deep into his lungs, savoring the
burning. He said, “Maybe we should take it to a vote.”
“Take what to a
vote?” Carlyle said.
“What the sheriff
said.”
“You mean turning
ourselves in?” Kittredge said.
“Yup,” Griff said.
“Maybe that’s the easiest way to do things.”
“That what you want
to do, Griff?” Carlyle said.
“I didn’t say one way
or the other; all I said was that maybe we should take it to a
vote.”
“I been in Fort
Madison,” Carlyle said. “I’d never last in there again. I’m too god
damn old for prison.”
“So you’re voting
against it?” Griff said.
“God damn right I’m
votin’ against it.”
“Kittredge? What do
you think we should do?”
Kittredge ran a hand
across his face, turned slightly to look out at the water over the
grassy hump of the slope, then spat into the earth. He turned back
to his partners. “You think he’d listen to our side of it?”
“Who?” Griff
said.
“Ryan.”
“Doubt it,” Griff
said. “Put yourself in his place. Your daughter gets killed by
three men and they come and try and tell you their side. Would you
listen to them?”
Kittredge thought a
moment. Then, “Maybe there’s a third way, instead of turnin’
ourselves in or just waitin’ for Ryan to shoot us.”
“What would that be?”
Griff said.
“What Carlyle
said.”
“Damn right,” Carlyle
said. “What I said.”
“Shoot Ryan, you
mean?” Griff said.
“Yes.”
“Damn right,” Carlyle
said again. “Let’s vote right now.”
Griff paid him no
attention. He turned to Kittredge. “That’s the tempting way, I
know. But think about it. You said the sheriff pretty much believes
we’re the men involved in the robbery. But maybe he doesn’t have
hard evidence.”
“So what?” Carlyle
said.
Griff kept talking
straight to Kittredge, even though Kittredge wasn’t responding. “So
if Ryan gets killed, who do you think the sheriff’s going to blame?
Us.” He paused. “There’s at least some possibility that the sheriff
will never be able to prove we had a part in that robbery. But if
we go after Ryan ourselves-”
“I want a damn vote,”
Carlyle said.
“He’s right,
Carlyle,” Kittredge said.
“What?” Carlyle
said.
“He’s right. Griff
is. By goin’ after Ryan, we’d just be admitting that we were
guilty.”
“You votin’ with him,
then?”
“Yes,” Kittredge
said. “I am.”
Griff allowed himself
a small sigh. “We wait.”
“We what?”
“We wait, Carlyle. We
see what Ryan’s going to do next. That’s the only way we stay out
of trouble.”
“What if he tries to
kill us?” Carlyle said.
“Then we have the
sheriff take care of him. You know how Dodds is. He won’t allow
anybody to start shooting people. He’ll either run Ryan in or run
him out of town. Either way, he takes care of our problem for
us.”
“You make it sound
pretty god damn simple,” Carlyle said. “It’s a lot simpler than
shooting somebody,” Griff said, anger in his voice now. “You seem
to forget something, Carlyle. We’re not killers. Hell, we’re not
even thieves. We didn’t get any money at all from that robbery. We
killed a little girl by accident and we’re going to fry in hell for
what we did. But that still don’t make us killers. That still don’t
mean we could pick up a gun and kill a man in cold blood.” He
nodded to Kittredge. “At least Kittredge and I couldn’t.” He turned
back to Carlyle. “And I don’t think you could, either. Not when you
came right down to it. You like your hootch and you like your
whores but that’s a long damn way from bein’ a killer.”
“You didn’t see his
eyes this afternoon,” Carlyle said.
“We killed his little
girl. How do you think he’d look?” Griff said.
“So we wait?”
Kittredge said.
“Yes,” Griff said,
“we just wait and see what happens.”
“Shit,” Carlyle said,
and pulled away from the two men, wobbling drunkenly over to a huge
elm tree. In the darkness they could hear him splashing piss
against the tree.
“He’s gets crazier
the older he gets,” Kittredge said.
Griff nodded. “The
way I see it, we’ve got two problems.”
“Two?”
“Ryan and Carlyle.
Either one of them could do something crazy. Damn crazy.”
Kittredge sighed. “My
stomach’s in knots. I couldn’t eat tonight.”
“We’ll keep an eye on
him,” Griff said, “and we’ll be alright.”
But he couldn’t
muster much conviction in his voice. All he could do was just stand
there and watch Carlyle come wobbling back, zipping up his pants as
he moved through the grass.
Griff just wanted to
be home in bed with his wife and have his daughters come laughing
in just after dawn, ready for a new day. But he had the terrible
feeling that that simple pleasure was beyond him now. Maybe
forever.
“I still want a god
damn vote on the subject,” Carlyle said as he swerved up to the two
men.
Which was when Griff
slapped him hard across the mouth. Slapped him as hard as he could,
hard enough to knock him to his knees.
“Maybe you shouldn’t
have done that,” Kittredge said, sounding tense.
Griff nodded. “Maybe
I shouldn’t have.”
“You sonofabitch, you
sonofabitch,” Carlyle said, furious but drunk enough that he could
not get easily to his feet. “You sonofabitch.”
Griff walked away
from the other two men. He went over and stood by the dam, the
silver foaming water falling in the mosquito-thick night air.
Thirty years ago, the boy he’d been had stood here all filled with
great unbounded hope. How could he have known that all these long
years later he would be standing here, the killer of a little girl,
and the little girl’s father come to pay him back?
He shook his head and
stared with great sorrow at the roaring, tumbling water.
Then he went back to
tell Carlyle he was sorry for slapping him.