Growing Up Dead in Texas (23 page)

She is.

But this can’t last forever.

Cue the woman Jonas never sees, on the other side of the crowd, just singing all at once the way happens at funerals, some song so beautiful and perfect it leaves his memory as he hears it. Stacy Monahans peaceful in her casket there, no brothers or sisters left behind. Just her. This distant shoot of the King family, snipped short.

Cue Pete Manson, grinding his cigarette out in the gravel then stepping forward, easing his hat off and trying— failing, like all the men—to smooth his thin hair down, look presentable.

Cue Rob King, after eye contact with Belinda— goodbye?— stepping forward through the mourners, to Earl, to be in the way should the Sheriff want to tap anybody on the shoulder of their nice jacket.

Cue Arthur King, parked close in his truck and sitting in it still, in his suit, Cecilia beside him, not to be trusted at solemn events these days but there as close as she can be anyway, her hat pinned to her hair, her hand to the dash like a child, to lean forward, see all this. People she remembers as other people, thirty years ago; forty.

Cue Tommy Moore, standing awkwardly from his mother’s car, the first time he’s been seen in weeks. It washes over the crowd, his presence. Like Hank Jr., he’s in chrome sunglasses, a low-pulled hat, his face mostly hidden. Jonas looks up to Belinda so he can know how to react, and there’s parentheses around her eyes, like she’s hurting for Tommy Moore. It travels down her arm to her hand somehow, goes right to Jonas. Stays there.

Cue a row of birds diving in formation from the telephone wire when it shudders from some errant gust up there, the utility pole swaying with it. The birds fall into the breeze, spread their wings and turn as one, sweep low over the headstones.

Cue Jonas King, tracking the Sheriff.

Instead of taking his hat off like everybody else, he’s making his casual way around the back of the crowd.

To Pete Manson’s truck.

Not Earl’s? Isn’t that who he was asking after?

“Mom,” Jonas whispers.

Belinda King looks up from the prayer—it was to be the year of prayers—sees the Sheriff too. And Pete Manson, looking right back at them.

She turns back to the burial. To the backs of everybody, her face set now.

“Mom,” Jonas says again, pulling at her hand, a kid again, not really old enough to have been given a program like an adult.

Belinda King is watching her husband, though, and Rob King—he can see what’s he done, now. To Tommy Moore.

But the Sheriff.

He’s the one to pay attention to here.

Just doing his job.

Yeah.

Because Pete Manson’s done with it, is leaving it behind, the Sheriff pinches his uniform pants up, squats down to retrieve the ground-out cigarette butt.

He holds it to his face, inspects it from one angle, from another.

It’s probable cause. Close enough for West Texas.

He stands, stuffing the ashy butt into his shirt pocket, and reaches in through Pete’s open window, for the crumpled cellophane pack on the dash, C
HESTERFIELD
there for the jury, so they won’t have to look at blown-up photographs to know the brand, make the connection.

Except then that wall of birds, they swoop up, past. Not at the Sheriff or Pete Manson’s truck, his flashy mirrors, just a random stupid thing—birds—but it’s close enough.

The Sheriff flinches, drops the crumpled pack into Pete Manson’s floorboard.

What he probably says here, during the prayer: “Shit.”

Now it’s not just Jonas King watching him.

For the first time, Larry Monahans’ wide Stetson is turned to the side, a felt satellite dish.

Because he’s the conductor here, everybody else turns to look as well, even the preacher, his Bible closed over his thumb now, to hold his place.

And Pete Manson?

He chuckles, shakes his head.

“Anything you need there, Jim?” he asks. The first name, not the office. Because this isn’t Midland County, maybe. But still.

“Just this,” the Sheriff has to say now, going ahead and just opening the door, pawing down in the floorboard for the Chesterfield pack.

Except.

This is where it happens.

Because it’s bright outside, and he’s got sunglasses on anyway, has to feel in the dark floorboard instead of really look, what the Sheriff’s hand lucks onto isn’t the pack, but a stock.

When he stands again, what he’s got directed up into the sky—not at Geoff Koenig anymore is the push—is the most beautiful little .22 rifle. A Browning, the kind you load through the stock, so that whole balance of the gun is changed.

A murmur makes its way through the crowd, and Pete Manson has room now.

“Just shopping?” he says, “or you looking to make a purchase there?” The whole time just watching the Sheriff, not Larry Monahans, making his steady way through the mourners. The mourners parting before he’s even there, like they’ve been rehearsing this all week, know their roles.

The only reason Pete Manson looks around, even, sees this coming, it’s Gwen. What she says, already clamping her own hand over her mouth, it’s “no.”

It’s too late, though.

Arthur King steps down from his truck, stands behind his door, the wind picking up now like it knows what’s going down.

“We don’t have to do this here,” the Sheriff says then.

This is funny to Pete Manson. Like everything.

“Just a plinker,” he says back, about the Browning. “Everybody here’s got one, Sheriff.”

By this time Larry’s there, and the two of them: everything Pete Manson isn’t, or ever will be, it’s standing there over him now. Standing over him and accusing him of firing the shot that got his daughter to borrow that crap car, to try and drive later than she should have.

Pete smiles, taps his cigarette pack twice against his wrist and flicks his eyes straight to Belinda, Jonas thinks.

“This isn’t about me, hoss,” he says to Larry. “You know I don’t mean to—”

He never gets to finish.

Larry’s fist comes in high and fast from the outside, might as well be packed with dimes.

The only reason it doesn’t connect: Rob King.

Larry’s roundhouse pulls Rob into Larry—Rob rides it into him anyway—and Larry turns fast on him, has a look in his eyes Jonas King will see again years later, on Adam Moore, in a hundred parking lots.

Now the rest of the men are stepping forward, because Rob only has one arm, and this is Larry Monahans; there might not even
be
enough men here.

The Sheriff doesn’t stop them, makes his way instead to Pete Manson. “For your own good,” he says, turning Pete around for the cuffs.

Pete shakes his head in disbelief, looks to Belinda again, maybe, then to Larry Monahans and Rob King, then to the sea of black suits, all the serious faces.

“Check the trucks,” he mumbles to the Sheriff, “everybody carries one, it’s no damn crime, last I checked.”

The Sheriff just ratchets the cuffs on, does a cursory pat-down, coming up with the pack of Chesterfields from Pete’s shirt pocket, since the others are back in the truck.

“It’s not the damn gun,” he says, face-to-face with Pete now, “it’s this.”

What he means here is the pack of cigarettes, but what he and the rest of the funeral gets is something heavy and wrong and dark sliding down out of that cellophane sleeve, onto the grass.

The Sheriff and Pete and everybody look down, and then some Lamesa kid, maybe all of seven years old, probably grown up and selling life insurance now, or grinding the lenses of eyeglasses, he steps forward in his handed-down suit, picks up what dropped, passes it over.

What it is is a little lead slug, a magic bullet all deformed, stretched out like a finger.

Pete Manson thins his lips, shakes his head no.

“Pete Manson,” the Sheriff starts, his tone slipping down into Miranda gear, but now Pete’s dislodging him, shaking him off like nothing. Taking a full step away from the rights he’s being read here.

“I didn’t do it!” he says, no joke now, no smile, kind of blubbering, even.

Silence.

Nothing but.

Just the basketball team, stepping in front of Geoff Koenig, probably not even aware what they’re doing.

“I didn’t,” Pete says again, looking around again at all the faces, his jury for today, and settling on one in particular, her eyes hot back at him, her hand too tight around her son’s, and then she breathes in and steps forward, her voice not cracking at all, because she’s been practicing as well: “He didn’t,” she says. “He was with me that morning.”

Belinda King.

A whole different kind of silence now.

The Sheriff looks over at her.

“You sure, Lindy?” he says. “Haven’t got your dates messed around there?”

Because it doesn’t make sense, her giving alibi for Pete Manson, when Pete Manson can take her son’s place on the gallows. To her son, it especially doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t she
want
everybody looking to Pete for the fire? That way nobody’s looking to Jonas for Geoff Koenig. It’s stupid. He wants to tug her arm and tell her, to press her hand like during a prayer, to make eyes. To run away.

When he looks up to her, though, she pulls her hand away. She wants to be alone in this crowd.

Or she doesn’t want to take anybody down with her.

Across from her, Pete Manson, smiling.

“What about this?” the Sheriff says, holding the slug up.

“A present for her,” Pete says, nodding to Belinda, and now she closes her eyes, doesn’t even open them when Rob King steps forward, finishes what Larry Monahans started, slamming his cast into Pete Manson’s face.

Surgery three, yeah.

Because he’s cuffed, Pete Manson can’t stand up, just rolls on the ground and bellows, dirt all in his face, his hair.

Rob King steps forward to follow Pete down but now Larry Monahans is stopping him. Blood blooming on the white cast. Larry Monahans gives Rob King his hat, and Rob King sets it back on with his left hand, the dust rising from it as he does, his breath coming in heaves.

“You stupid shit,” the Sheriff says to him then, to Rob King.

Rob King doesn’t hear, is only looking to Belinda, who’s not looking anywhere anymore, just down. Into her eyelids. Into a whole different decade.

Somebody helps Pete Manson up and he shrugs them off, says it so everybody knows what he’s going to do here— “Robert!”—and charges headfirst forward for Rob King but there’s too many people now, enough that they don’t hear Jonas King at first. Just his voice, still high like a kid’s.

What’s he saying? Trying to say?

Again, the quiet.

Everybody looking down to him.

“Say again, son?” the Sheriff offers.

Jonas King looks side to side, blinks long, then opens his eyes, looks to his dad, and opens his mouth—

“I did it.”

It doesn’t come from Jonas King’s mouth.

The crowd parts again.

At the end of that hall of bodies is Earl Holbrook, worrying his hat in his hands. He’s staring at Jonas. “I did it,” he says again, nodding over to Geoff Koenig.

“Bullshit.” This from Larry Monahans.

Earl nods, won’t look to Larry or his sister. Just Jonas.

“No,” Jonas says, the shriek rising in his voice now, “no! It couldn’t have—he’s just—”

Earl shrugs it true, though.

Holds his wrists out, for the cuffs still on Pete.

Later, in court, his story will be that he didn’t mean to, that he had been out in the field, was just holding the gun on that moving bus, saying what if, the crosshairs of his scope on no player in particular, no side glass at all, but then the gun went off somehow, just bucked in his hand. It wasn’t a .22 at all either, like the first hole in the window suggested, but a .22
-250
, a centerfire round that’s been around since 1937, was popularized just in time for World War II, and didn’t need animation at all to punch through a bus.

As to why the jury will believe Earl Holbrook when he says all this: his two modules, his thirty or so bales there, they were the only ones uninsured.

He was gin manager, sure, but that was just until he could get it back together again farming-wise. Something he’d never be able to do now with this hit, this fire. And the land he was paying a quarter of his crop for? By rights, it should have been his wife’s by inheritance, should have been his. He shouldn’t have to be out scrapping, living on a shoestring.

It doesn’t mean he pulled that trigger on purpose, though.

Just that he had reason to.

It’ll be enough. Twice over.

“Earlybird?” Larry Monahans says across the crowd to Earl, and Earl just nods, once: yes, he killed Stacy Monahans. Your daughter, your only one. Yes, yes, yes.

Larry Monahans shakes his head no, no, it couldn’t have been, it can’t be, and the first step he takes forward like he has to, because he is who he is, Rob King’s already there holding him back, but this time it takes all the suits, and more besides, until finally a shotgun blast silences them all.