Child of God(14)

She looked at him blankly, then she reddened. I ain't got nothin for you to see, she said. Ballard took a few wooden steps toward the sofa and then stopped in the middle of the floor. Why don't you show me them nice titties, he said hoarsely. She stood up and pointed at the door. You get out of here, she said. Right now. Come on, Ballard wheezed. I won't ast ye nothin else. Lester Ballard, when Daddy comes home he's goin to kill you. Now I said get out of here and I mean it. She stamped her foot. Ballard looked at her. All right, he said. If that's the way you want it. He went to the door and opened it and went out and shut the door behind him. He heard her latch it. The night out there was clear and cold and the moon sat in a great ring in the sky. Ballard's breath rose whitely toward the dark of the heavens. He turned and looked back at the house. She was watching from the corner of the window. He went on down the broken driveway to the road and crossed the ditch and went along the edge of the yard and crossed back up to the house. He picked up the rifle where he'd left it leaning against a crab apple tree and he went along the side of the house and stepped up onto a low wall of cinderblock and went along it past the clothesline and the coal pile to where he could see in the window there. He could see the back of her head above the sofa. He watched her for a while and then he raised the rifle and cocked it and laid the sights on her head. He had just done this when suddenly she rose from the sofa and turned facing the window. Ballard fired. The crack of the rifle was outrageously loud in the cold silence. Through the spidered glass he saw her slouch and stand again. He levered another shell into the chamber and raised the rifle and then she fell. He reached down and scrabbled about in the frozen mud for the empty shell but he could not find it. He raced around the house to the front and mounted the spindly steps and came up short against the door. You dumb son of a bitch, he said. You heard her lock it. He leaped to the ground and ran to the back of the house and entered a low screened porch and pushed open the kitchen door and went through and into the front room. She was lying in the floor but she was not dead. She was moving. She seemed to be trying to get up. A thin stream of blood ran across the yellow linoleum rug and seeped away darkly in the wood of the floor. Ballard gripped the rifle and watched her. Die, goddamn you, he said. She did. When she had ceased moving he went about the room gathering up newspapers and magazines and shredding them. The idiot watched mutely. Ballard ripped away the chicken wire from around the stove and pushed the stove over with his foot. The pipe crashed into the room in a cloud of coal soot. He snatched open the stove door and hot embers rolled out. He piled on papers. Soon a fire going in the middle of the room. Ballard raised up the dead girl. She was slick with blood. He got her onto his shoulder and looked around. The rifle. It was leaning against the sofa. He got it and looked about wildly. Already the ceiling of smoke and small fires licked along the bare wood floor at the edge of the linoleum. As he whirled about there in the kitchen door the last thing he saw through the smoke was the idiot child. It sat watching him, berry eyed filthy and frightless among the painted flames. BALLARD WAS WALKING THE road near the top of the mountain when the sheriff pulled up behind him in the car. The sheriff told Ballard to put the rifle down but BalIard didn't move. He stood there by the side of the road straight up and down with the rifle in one hand and he didn't even turn around to see who'd spoke. The sheriff reached his pistol out the window and cocked it. You could hear very clearly in the

cold air the click of the hammer and the click of the hand dropping into the cylinder locking notch. Boy, you better stick it in the ground, the sheriff said. Ballard stood the butt of the rifle in the road and let go of it. It fell into the roadside bushes. Turn around. Now come over here. Now just stand there a minute. Now get in here. Now hold your hands out. If you leave my rifle there somebody's goin to get it. I'll worry about your goddamned rifle. THE MAN BEHIND THE DESK had folded his hands in front of him as if about to pray. He gazed at Ballard across the tips of his fingers. Well, he said, if you hadn't done anything wrong what were you scoutin the bushes for that nobody could find you? I know how they do ye, Ballard muttered. Thow ye in jail and beat the shit out of ye. This man ever been mistreated down here, Sheriff? He knows better than that. They tell me you cussed deputy Walker. Well did you? What are you lookin over there for? I was just lookin. Mr Walker's not goin to tell you what to say. He might tell me what not to. Is it true that you burned down Mr Waldrop's house? No. You were living in it at the time that it burned. That's a ... I wasn't done it. I'd left out of there a long time fore that. It was quiet in the room. After a while the man behind the desk lowered-his hands and folded them in his lap. Mr Ballard, he said. You are either going to have to find some other way to live or some other place in the world to do it in. BALLARD ENTERED THE store and slammed the iron barred door behind him. The store was empty save for Mr Fox who nodded to this small and harried looking customer. The customer did not nod back. He went along the shelves picking and choosing among the goods, the cans all marshaled with their labels to the front, wrenching holes in their ordered rows and stacking them on the counter in front of the storekeeper. Finally he fetched up in front of the meat case. Mr Fox rose and donned a white apron, old bloodstains bleached light pink, tied it in the back and approached the meat case and switched on a light that illuminated rolls of baloney and rounds of cheese and a tray of thin sliced pork chops among the sausages and sousemeat. Slice me about a half pound of that there baloney, said Ballard. Mr Fox fetched it out and laid it on the butcher block and took up a knife and began to pare away thin slices. These he doled up one at a time onto a piece of butcher paper. When he had done he laid down the knife and placed the paper in the scales. He and BalIard watched the needle swing. What else now, said the storekeeper, tying up the package of meat with a string. Give me some of that there cheese.