"Well, I wasn't exactly-"
"You were afraid for your life, in fact."
"I don't think it was-"
"Terrified. Believe it, Sylvester. You were shitting nickels."
Lloyd frowned at his lawyer. It was the frown of a lad who wants to be a good student but is having a serious problem grasping the lesson.
"Don't let me lead you, Lloyd," Devins said. "I don't want to do that. You might think I was suggesting that Poke was stoned almost all the time-"
"He was! We both was!"
"No. You weren't, but he was. And he got crazy when he got stoned-"
"Boy, you're not shitting." In the halls of Lloyd's memory, the ghost of Poke Freeman cried Whoop! Whoop! merrily and shot the woman in the Burrack general store.
"And he held a gun on you at several points in time-"
"No, he never-"
"Yes he did. You just forgot for a while. In fact, he once threatened to kill you if you didn't back his play."
"Well, I had a gun-"
"I believe," Devins said, eyeing him closely, "that if you search your memory, you'll remember Poke telling you that your gun was loaded with blanks. Do you remember that?"
"Now that you mention it-"
"And nobody was more surprised than you when it actually started firing real bullets, right?"
"Sure," Lloyd said. He nodded vigorously. "I bout damn near had a hemorrhage."
"And you were about to turn that gun on Poke Freeman when he was cut down, saving you the trouble."
Lloyd regarded his lawyer with dawning hope in his eyes.
"Mr. Devins," he said with great sincerity, "that's just the way the shit went down."
He was in the exercise yard later that morning, watching a softball game and mulling over everything Devins had told him, when a large inmate named Mathers came over and yanked him up by the collar. Mathers's head was shaved bald, à la Telly Savalas, and it gleamed benignly in the hot desert air.
"Now wait a minute," Lloyd said. "My lawyer counted every one of my teeth. Seventeen. So if you-"
"Yeah, that's what Shockley said," Mathers said. "So, he told me to-"
Mathers's knee came up squarely in Lloyd's crotch, and blinding pain exploded there, so excruciating that he could not even scream. He collapsed in a hunching, writhing pile, clutching his testicles, which felt crushed. The world was a reddish fog of agony.
After a while, who knew how long, he was able to look up. Mathers was still looking at him, and his bald head was still gleaming. The guards were pointedly looking elsewhere. Lloyd moaned and writhed, tears squirting out of his eyes, a red-hot ball of lead in his belly.
"Nothing personal," Mathers said sincerely. "Just business, you understand. Myself, I hope you make out. That Markham law's a bitch."
He strode away and Lloyd saw the door-guard standing atop the ramp in the truck-loading bay on the other side of the exercise yard. His thumbs were hooked in his Sam Browne belt and he was grinning at Lloyd. When he saw he had Lloyd's complete, undivided attention, the door-guard shot him the bird with the middle fingers of both hands. Mathers strolled over to the wall, and the door-guard threw him a pack of Tareytons. Mathers put them in his breast pocket, sketched a salute, and walked away. Lloyd lay on the ground, his knees drawn up to his chest, hands clutching his cramping belly, and Devins's words echoed in his brain: It's a tough old world, Lloyd, it's a tough old world.
Right.
Chapter 25
Nick Andros pushed aside one of the curtains and looked out into the street. From here, on the second story of the late John Baker's house, you could see all of downtown Shoyo by looking left, and by looking right you could see Route 63 going out of town. Main Street was utterly deserted. The shades of the business establishments were drawn. A sick-looking dog sat in the middle of the road, head down, sides bellowsing, white foam dripping from its muzzle to the heat-shimmering pavement. In the gutter half a block down, another dog lay dead.
The woman behind him moaned in a low, guttural way, but Nick did not hear her. He dosed the curtain, rubbed his eyes for a moment, and then went to the woman, who had awakened. Jane Baker was bundled up with blankets because she had been cold a couple of hours ago. Now sweat was streaming from her face and she had kicked off the blankets-he saw with embarrassment that she had sweated her thin nightgown into transparency in some places. But she was not seeing him, and at this point he doubted her semi-nakedness mattered. She was dying.
"Johnny, bring the basin. I think I'm going to throw up!" she cried.
He brought the basin out from under the bed and put it beside her, but she thrashed and knocked it onto the floor with a hollow bonging sound which he also couldn't hear. He picked it up and just held it, watching her.
"Johnny!" she screamed. "I can't find my sewing box! It isn't in the closet!"
He poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand and held it to her lips but she thrashed again and almost knocked it from his grasp. He set it back down where it would be in reach if she quieted.
He had never been so bitterly aware of his muteness as the last two days had made him. The Methodist minister, Braceman, had been with her on the twenty-third when Nick came over. He was Bible-reading with her in the living room, but he looked nervous and anxious to get away. Nick could guess why. Her fever had given her a rosy, girlish glow that went jarringly with her bereavement. Perhaps the minister had been afraid she was going to make a pass at him. More likely, though, he had been anxious to gather up his family and melt away over the fields. News travels fast in a small town, and others had already decided to get out of Shoyo.
Since the time Braceman had left the Baker living room some forty-eight hours ago, everything had turned into a waking nightmare. Mrs. Baker had gotten worse, so much worse that Nick had feared she would die before the sun went down.
Worse, he couldn't sit with her constantly. He had gone down to the truck-stop to get his three prisoners lunch, but Vince Hogan hadn't been able to eat. He was delirious. Mike Childress and Billy Warner wanted out, but Nick couldn't bring himself to do it. It wasn't fear; he didn't believe they would waste any time working him over to settle their grievance; they would want to make fast tracks away from Shoyo, like the others. But he had a responsibility. He had made a promise to a man who was now dead. Surely, sooner or later the State Patrol would get things in hand and come to take them away.
He found a .45 rolled up in its holster in the bottom drawer of Baker's desk, and after a few moments of debate he put it on. Looking down and seeing the woodgrip butt of the gun lying against his skinny hip had made him feel ridiculous-but its weight was comforting.
He had opened Vince's cell on the afternoon of the twenty-third and had put makeshift icepacks on the man's forehead, chest, and neck. Vince had opened his eyes and looked at Nick with such silent, miserable appeal that Nick wished he could say anything-as he wished it now, two days later, with Mrs. Baker-anything that would give the man a moment's comfort. Just You'll be okay or I think the fever's breaking would be enough.
All the time he was tending to Vince, Billy and Mike were yelling at him. While he was bent over the sick man they didn't matter, but he saw their scared faces every time he looked up, their lips forming words that all came down to the same thing: Please let us out. Nick was careful to keep away from them. He wasn't grown, but he, was old enough to know that panic makes men dangerous.
That afternoon he had shuttled back and forth on nearly empty streets, always expecting to find Vince Hogan dead on one end or Jane Baker dead on the other. He looked for Dr. Soames's car but didn't see it. That afternoon a few of the shops had still been open, and the Texaco, but he became more and more convinced that the town was emptying out. People were taking paths through the woods, logging roads, maybe even wading up Shoyo Stream, which passed through Smackover and eventually came out in the town of Mount Holly. More would leave after dark, Nick thought.
The sun had just gone down when he arrived at the Baker house to find Jane moving shakily around the kitchen in her bathrobe, brewing tea. She looked at Nick gratefully when he came in, and he saw her fever was gone.
"I want to thank you for watching after me," she said calmly. "I feel ever so much better. Would you like a cup of tea?" And then she burst into tears.
He went to her, afraid she might faint and fall against the hot stove.
She held his arm to steady herself and laid her head against him, her hair a dark flood against the light blue robe.
"Johnny," she said in the darkening kitchen. "Oh, my poor Johnny."
If he could speak, Nick thought unhappily. But he could only hold her, and guide her across the kitchen to a chair by the table.
"The tea-"
He pointed to himself and then made her sit down.
"All right," she said. "I do feel better. Remarkably so. It's just that … just … " She put her hands over her face.
Nick made them hot tea and brought it to the table. They drank for a while without speaking. She held her cup in both hands, like a child. At last she put her cup down and said: "How many in town have this, Nick?"