A Land More Kind Than Home (20 page)

“I'm sorry, Sheriff,” somebody's voice said. I looked up and saw that a paramedic had left the group at the ambulance and was standing right over my shoulder. He looked like he might've been twenty-five, just a few years older than Jeff.

“You haven't called my wife.”

“No, sir.”

“Don't. Make sure nobody does.”

I picked up a few more handfuls of snow and rubbed it down the back of my neck and covered my eyes with my hands. My fingers burned from the cold. I held that snow to my cheeks until my face went numb.

When I stood up, my stomach jumped again and I turned my back to the tree line and spit in the snow. I looked down the road and saw three boys in coveralls and heavy coats smoking cigarettes and talking to Owens. He had a notepad in his hand and looked like he was asking them questions. I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my coat and nodded toward them.

“Who are they?”

“Part of the crew,” said the paramedic. “They're pretty shook up. One of them must have pulled him out of the road when he came off the line. He was lying under them bushes when we got here.”

I looked down and saw that the tracks that had been left from dragging Jeff out of the road were beginning to fill with snow, and my eyes followed them to where his body lay covered under that sheet. The line to the blown transformer ran through the trees overhead, and the wooden pole around the box was scorched black from the explosion. I looked at Jeff's body under the arbor, and then I turned and walked down the highway toward the ambulance. The boys saw me coming and put out their cigarettes in the snow with the toes of their boots. I didn't recognize any of them.

“All three of y'all work on this crew?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” said a short blond-headed boy. His hair was cropped close and sharp and made his ears look bigger than they probably were.

“Where's your foreman?” I asked.

He didn't have nothing to say to that question, and I faced him and squared my shoulders. His eyes were scared, and he looked like he was about to cry.

“Where is he?”

He looked to the two boys standing behind him for help, but they both lowered their eyes and I could tell they didn't want to say nothing either.

“He left before the ambulance got here,” the first boy said. “He took the service truck and told us to wait.”

“Was he drinking?”

He wanted one of the other boys to answer that question, but they wouldn't even look at him. One shook a cigarette from a pack and the other kept his eyes fixed on the road.

“Goddamn it, was he drinking!”

“Sheriff,” Owens said. He placed his hand on my arm like he was thinking about pulling me away from the boy, but I shrugged him off and stepped closer.

“Answer me!”

“I don't know,” the boy stammered. “I don't know for sure.”

I looked down the road where that blue sheet was just barely visible through the trees.

“Which one of you moved him out of the road?” I asked.

“Mr. Hall did,” the boy smoking the cigarette finally said.

I stared at him until he looked away, and then I pulled Owens aside and asked him what they'd had to say. He looked down at his notepad, but I could see that he hadn't written a thing.

“Jeff was on the line working the transformer,” he said. “They figure something must have made contact, maybe something on his tool belt. It wouldn't let him go. They had to wait for him to come off.”

“Jesus, Bill.” I turned away from him and put my hands over my eyes and then rubbed them across my face.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “You should go on home to Sheila. I can take care of this.”

“You can't take care of this,” I told him. “Nobody can take care of this.” I turned to walk back to my cruiser, but I stopped and faced him again. “I want you to find Jimmy Hall. I want you to radio me when you do.”

When I got back to the cruiser, I sat in the driver's seat and stared down the road and watched Owens talk to the boys. One of the paramedics had pulled the ambulance around and was backing it toward the woods.

I picked up the CB and radioed the office in Marshall and Eileen answered immediately.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I told her. “I haven't thought about it yet. I need you to call the house and tell Sheila that I'll be home late.”

“You need to be at home right now,” she said.

“I can't,” I said. “Jimmy Hall's done run off. I need you to telephone Sheila.”

I put the CB on the cradle, but then I thought better of it. I picked it up and radioed Marshall again. The static of Eileen's voice came back over the line.

“Eileen,” I said. “She doesn't know about any of this. Tell her I'm running late. That's all.”

It was getting dark, and the snow took on an eerie blue color against the clouds. I sat and watched the paramedics unfold the gurney out of the ambulance and roll it toward the shadows at the edge of the woods. I didn't want to be there when they carried Jeff away, so I cursed myself out loud and turned the car around in the road and drove north toward Gunter Mountain.

N
IGHT WAS FULL ON WHEN
I
KNOCKED THE CAR INTO FIRST GEAR
and headed up the mountain. There was already a set of tire tracks in the snow, and I eased the cruiser into them. The gravel heading up the mountain was warmer than the asphalt had been on the road, and I could feel my tires searching the snow for pieces of rock to catch the tread. There weren't any streetlights up there, and the trees rose up out of the darkness on both sides. Even though I couldn't see it, I knew the land fell away sharply on my right and rolled down toward the bottom of the cove. Had it been daylight, I could've searched through the trees and seen farms and houses tossed like shot across the valley floor.

It had been a couple years since I'd been out to Jimmy Hall's place, but I'd been out there enough to know exactly where it was. Ben was up at Western then, and Hall's wife had left him for good about three years before. Things had been quiet until now.

I turned my headlights off in front of Hall's place and pulled into the gravel drive. A light burned in the window, and a wisp of smoke escaped the chimney. I parked the cruiser by the house and opened the door slowly and sat there half out of the car and wondered what I was going to do.

The porch steps squeaked under my boots, and I stopped and listened like somebody else had made the sound. I undid the holster snap over my pistol and knocked on the door. There wasn't any noise from the inside, and I stood there and listened close to make sure. I imagined Hall behind the door with a hand cannon, drunk as hell and holding his breath, hoping I'd leave. I knocked again and didn't hear a sound. I gave the door a try, but it was locked.

I turned the car around in the gravel and headed back out to the road. My high beams fell into the trees across the way, and I could tell by the sagging limbs that the snow was getting heavy. I looked to my right and saw the tire tracks I'd followed coming up the mountain, but just as I was about to turn out of the driveway, I noticed another pair of tracks on the left that I hadn't seen on the way up.

Hot air gushed from the vents in the dash, and I sat there with it blowing in my face and I stared out at those tracks and wondered who could be at the top of that road. I didn't know what the hell I'd do if it was Jimmy Hall up there, but I knew either way I didn't have a choice but to go and take a look.

M
Y FRONT FENDERS MADE AWFUL SCRAPING SOUNDS AS THEY PLOWED
through the high snow. The ruts were deep, and my car had trouble on the inclines where the snow was packed hard and frozen solid. I held tight to the steering wheel and stared out at the headlights. Every now and then I looked out the windows and searched for tire tracks that led to side roads and switchbacks, but the light in front of my car made the darkness on either side seem that much darker.

I hit deep snow just before the crest of a hill and my car struggled, and I knew if I stopped I'd be stuck for sure, so I eased onto the gas. I didn't know the road at the top bore to the left, and I came over too fast and fought with the turn. My back end came around and threw me out of the tracks, and I slid sideways into a ditch. The car lurched like it was about to tip. I held my breath and waited for the car to flip and the roof to cave in and trap me inside.

But when the car came to a stop, I realized it wasn't going to flip, and I could tell that my right-side tires were a couple feet below the road, and, although I knew it wouldn't help, I pressed hard on the gas and listened as they dug themselves deeper into the gully. The left-side tires kicked up snow and mud onto my windows.

I killed the engine and sat there and stared at the CB. I picked it up and thought about radioing the station, but then I looked out at the tracks. They continued out of the reach of my headlights and climbed farther up the mountain. I shut off my lights and stepped out of the car and onto the road. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I could see that the snow was deep up here and still coming down. If it'd been fifteen degrees outside of Marshall, then I knew it couldn't be no more than ten up on Gunter. But I figured that if the tracks had been more than a few hours old, they'd have been covered by now. I pulled my coat tight around me and set out walking up the mountain.

I'
D BEEN FOLLOWING THE TIRE TRACKS FOR ABOUT TEN MINUTES
when I heard a muffled noise atop a crest in the road. It was a soft sound, and at first I couldn't make out what it was. I slowed down and crept up the hill in the hope that I'd see whoever was up there before they saw me.

Up ahead, parked just off the left side of the road, was the service truck one of the boys at the scene had mentioned. Even though I was a pretty good distance behind it, I could hear that the hushed noise was the sound of country music blaring from inside the cab.

I came up from behind the driver's window and saw Jimmy Hall sitting inside the truck with his head leaned against the steering wheel. I took a second and planted my feet firmly in the snow, and then I flung the door open and grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out. His feet kicked all along the floorboards, and empty beer cans and crushed cigarette packs tumbled out into the snow. A country song blasted from the radio, and I slammed the door and the music throbbed against the windows.

He struggled with me good for a minute, and he tried to pry my hand from around his collar, but he was too surprised and drunk to fight. I drug him around in front of the headlights and forced him to his knees in the snow. I pulled my gun out of my holster and whipped him across the face with the barrel. The sound was dull and heavy, like hitting a tree trunk with a bat. I whipped him again and heard the bridge of his nose crack. Blood came out heavy like tar, and I watched it run into his mouth and down the front of his coat. He chewed on it like it was a plug of tobacco he was trying his best not to swallow. He wanted to talk, but his words sounded like his tongue was thick. He looked up at me and tried to blink the heavy snowflakes out of his eyes.

“It was a goddamned accident,” he finally said. He tried to clear his throat, and he coughed and spattered blood onto my hand and my sleeve. “It was an accident,” he said again.

I held him by the collar and stared down at him until he quit talking. He rolled his head forward, and his body went limp like he'd passed out. I cocked the hammer on my pistol and put the barrel to his forehead. I raised his face to mine.

Sometimes, when I get to thinking about it, I wish I'd have blown his damn head off right there and left him laid up in the snow with his brains hanging up in the limbs of some old pine tree. I didn't do it, but I'll be damned if I don't think about it every day. Every single day. I'll be damned if I don't think about how easy it would've been just to take care of it all right there.

“Jesus,” he said.

We stayed like that for a while, me standing and Hall on his knees in the snow with the barrel of my gun against his head. It was quiet, but I could hear the heavy flakes light on the tree branches overhead, and I heard the hushed pulse of music coming from the stereo inside the truck. A baying dog wailed in the cove below us.

“Ask those boys,” he whispered.

I lifted my boot and pushed him onto his back and out of the beam of the headlights. I raised my pistol and squeezed the shot into the trees overhead. It rang through the woods and echoed across the valley. A screech owl flushed at the noise and swooped down from the darkness above. I turned in time to see it soar across the road and disappear into the snow-covered boughs of a pine.

Jimmy lay on the roadside breathing heavy. I walked over and stood above him. “Get up,” I said. He didn't move. I kicked him, but he still didn't move. I put my pistol back in the holster and reached down and grabbed his collar with both hands and pulled him to his feet. He had trouble standing up, and I leaned him against the front fender and rifled through his pockets.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “I thought you were going to kill me.”

“I ain't decided not to yet,” I said.