Justice (6 page)

Wesley and his friends leaned in, as though any face there could be known to them if they only stared hard enough. Every man and woman in the photograph stared impassively at the camera, their eyes as blank and dark as stones. Only because he had been told that Sheriff Cooke was in the picture could Wesley see any resemblance between the full-moon face in the picture and the man behind him.

Frank was the first to turn away from the wall. “I don't know anybody there.”

The sheriff chuckled softly, a sound a little like footsteps
creaking on snow. “Well, you might say you do. Yessir. You do.”

He tapped the photograph again. “Iron Hail is now George Tuttle. Took an American name when he became a citizen. Or they gave it to him. Whichever. Is there a date on there? This was in the
Bismarck Tribune
. Back in 1917. Of course they're all citizens now, whether they want to be or not. You boys can go sit back down.”

The sheriff returned to his chair and fell into another long pause. Wesley was most uneasy during these silences. He was afraid one of them would blurt out a confession. His father had often told them how, when some people were arrested, they would simply begin talking, even admitting to crimes with which they were not going to be charged. “They can't carry all that guilt,” his father would say, “and first chance they get they dump the whole load.”

Wesley understood. He felt that ache for release, and he had to clamp his jaw down hard. Talking was all he could do in this situation, and that was something he felt he could do tolerably well. Hadn't he been told for years, by his mother, his teachers, his grandmother, that he was a good boy, bright, polite, and well spoken? If he simply started talking he could explain everything—with a half-truth, half-lie concoction the sheriff would surely swallow—how they had the whiskey, where they got the cigars, why Tommy had a pistol in the Buffalo Cafe, what they wanted with those girls. But his father's words kept coming back. “If they'd keep their goddamn mouths shut, half these people would get off scot-free.”

Those
girls!
Oh Jesus! Beverly Tuttle. George Tuttle.

As if he were reading Wesley's thoughts, Sheriff Cooke said, “Yessir. Mr. Tuttle. That's the papa of the girl you knocked down over at the cafe.”

Tommy was quick to defend himself. “She,
fell!”

“Bloodied her up pretty good. Chipped a tooth. Cut her lip bad. Almost bit right through it.” Sheriff Cooke shuddered a little as though the thought of Beverly Tuttle's injury chilled him.

“How'd she get the scar?” The question sprang out of Wesley before he even knew it was near his tongue.

“She didn't need any more problems in that area, did she?” said the sheriff. “Poor gal. As I recall, she got that in a sledding accident. Went flying down a hill headed right toward a barbed wire fence. Tried laying back so she could squeak under it and a strand caught her by the lip.” He shuddered again. “Such a pretty gal.”

Frank added quickly, as though, the door finally open, everyone could contribute an explanation or excuse. “We didn't mean for her to get hurt.”

“She slipped,” Tommy repeated.

Sheriff Cooke leaned forward and twined his fingers as if he were going to pray. “Course you didn't mean for her to get hurt. Pretty gal like that. I'm sure you had other ideas.”

Frank interrupted him. “We didn't want that—”

“—and I believe you. I know where you're from. Montana's full of good people. But here you are now. In my jurisdiction. Waving guns around. Drinking whiskey. Bothering the gals here in town. Indian or not. What do you suppose the boys here think about you coming around after their gals?
They'd like to chase you down, I bet. You're lucky I got you here where they can't get to you.”

Lester spoke for the first time since they had entered the jail, and his voice had a pace and sonority that Wesley hadn't heard before. “We ain't scared.”

“Course you're not. No. You wouldn't be here if you were. But I'm thinking about another matter right now. Trying to figure out what I'm going to do.”

“You could just let us go,” suggested Tommy.

Wesley stared at the floor. He wished Tommy would keep quiet.

“Could. I could.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling as if he were deep in thought.

Frank was staring at Wesley, and Wesley raised his eyebrows to question what his brother wanted. Frank did not move, speak, or change his grave expression. Wesley mouthed the word, “What?” Frank looked away.

Sheriff Cooke carefully placed his palms on his desk and pushed himself up. “Tell you what. You boys go back there.” He pointed toward the jail area. “Wait on me back there. Just shut the door behind you. That's right. Right through there.”

The door they closed behind them was thick wood, so dark it looked fire blackened, and its heavy brass latch clicked shut like the lock on a gate. Each of the three open cells had an iron bunk and an overhead light socket in a wire cage, but there were no bulbs in any of the fixtures. The only light came from a corner in the back where a floor lamp stood. With its crenellated pedestal and opaque glass shade it looked like something that belonged in a parlor.

“Shit,” Lester said. “Now what?”

Wesley's father's jail usually smelled of disinfectant, but this area stank of urine and mold. The cement walls had large dark spots, permanent sweat stains from seeping moisture. “Feels like we're underground,” said Wesley.

“Why didn't you tell him who your old man is?” Tommy asked.

“What for?” Frank replied.

“Jesus. Maybe Sheriff Cooke might let us go, that's what for.”

“I don't think that would cut it with Mr. Cooke.”

“You don't think. You could tell him and see what happens.”

Lester wandered into one of the cells. “Fucking Indian bitches. What do you suppose they did? Hightail it over here first thing?”

“What would your old man do to us?” Tommy asked Wesley and Frank. “If we was in his county.”

Frank turned to his brother. “What do you think? Just shoot us and bury us, don't you reckon?”

“Probably wouldn't even bother with the burying.”

“I bet it was the boyfriend,” said Lester from the cell. “Couldn't fight his own battles so he runs to the sheriff.”

“Can you imagine,” Tommy said, “what your dad would do if we came to him to take care of our problems?”

Lester found a slop bucket, an enameled pot that he dragged out into the middle of the cell. He lifted the lid, spread his legs and urinated, the stream hissing and ringing off the metal. “But if he heard someone was waving a gun around
in Roller's Cafe he'd sure as hell come running.”

“That he would,” agreed Frank.

Lester covered the pot and slid it back under the bunk. He kept staring down at his fly, as if he weren't quite convinced he had buttoned it correctly. “Maybe you should've told him who your pa is though.”

Frank nodded at Tommy. “Maybe
he
should've kept that gun in his goddamn pocket.”

Wesley weighed in on his brother's side. “Maybe he should've left it in the goddamn room.”

Tommy aimed a listless kick in Wesley's direction, and as he did, Frank shoved him, sending Tommy stumbling into the wall. Tommy let himself be carried further than the push's actual force warranted. “Fine,” said Tommy. “I don't give a good goddamn. Go ahead and put this on me.”

“Nobody's putting it all on you,” Frank said. “We're just saying, you're the one had the gun.”

“Well, the sheriff didn't say too much about a gun.”

“Figures though, don't it,” added Lester.

Tommy rubbed the floor with the toe of his boot and then spit toward that spot. “Shit ass.”

Frank squatted against the wall, leaning his head back and trying to make himself as comfortable as he could. “And you can leave off that business, telling him who our dad is. We're not going to do it.”

Wesley sat next to his brother and looked at his companions.

Each stared at a far wall or into a dark corner as though he was waiting for something in the room's shadows to take
shape and lead them out of their predicament.

On the floor in front of Wesley was a small dark stain. He wondered if blood could have made that mark, and then he tried to push that thought away by concentrating on the stain's shape. Iowa? Was that its shape? Like the state of Iowa on a map of the United States? Their father originally came from Iowa, and whenever he looked at a map Wesley liked to estimate the distance between Iowa and Montana. Or maybe rust made that stain.

Wesley held his head very still, trying to determine if he was still feeling the whiskey. The stain didn't move, and neither did his head, even when a drop of icy nervous sweat fell from his armpit to his ribs. He was sober, for all the good it did him.

His shoulder still held the memory of Sheriff Cooke's hand resting there. His hand had felt warm, tender, and for the few seconds it rested on his shoulder Wesley could allow himself to believe that the sheriff meant them no harm.

None of the cells had windows, but there was a small high window at the other end of the jail. Wesley considered going down there, hoisting himself up, and looking out. What would he see? Another wall? Snow, certainly. Snow, snow, and more snow.

Three years ago in late December, right before Christmas, warm chinook winds rolled down the Rockies' eastern slopes, pushing temperatures into the forties and fifties. For five days the western winds blew, and when they stopped there wasn't a patch of snow left in northeast Montana. Women went coatless, men gathered in the streets in their shirtsleeves, and the
town skating rink turned into a pond of slush. Boys threw baseballs in the streets and their fathers went out to the golf course.

That Christmas Wesley was in love with Martha Woods, a girl in the class ahead of him at school. Martha didn't know of Wesley's feelings for her; in fact, they had no relationship at all beyond saying hello on the streets or in the halls of their school. Nevertheless, as that warm, gusty, snowless Christmas approached, Wesley felt he had to do something to declare his feelings for Martha. At Douglas's Rexall he bought her a gift, a perfumed powder puff and mirror set, and he took it to her house on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

As Wesley stood on the porch of the Woods home and waited for Martha to appear, he could hear the warm wind rattling the house's rain gutters and humming through the window casements. Snowmelt ran through the streets like bright new rivers.

At last Martha appeared, but she was with a friend, and the small speech Wesley had prepared could not be delivered in front of another listener. He thrust the package out to Martha, and he saw now how sloppily he had wrapped it—the uneven ends, the crumpled and creased paper, the drooping ribbon. He said, “For you, a Christmas gift”—a phrase that sounded ridiculously formal. No one talked that way! At least no one in Bentrock, Montana.

Martha took the package and she smiled at Wesley, a smile that told him in an instant exactly how she felt about him. She thought he was a foolish boy, and though she thanked him extravagantly, it was plain she received this offering the way a
mother or older sister would accept a gift from a five-year-old son or brother.

As soon as the package was out of his hands Wesley backed away, and he got off the porch quickly so he would not have to hear the laughter of Martha and her friend.

He trudged home, soaking his boots in the water and slush that filled the gutters and streets of Bentrock on Christmas of 1921.

He thought that day that he would never again experience a Christmas like those of his childhood—stealing his mother's cookies, opening the expensive gifts from his father, pushing through the crowd of friends and neighbors who often filled the house, listening to his mother play the piano and sing carols, sledding and skating with his brother—all that innocence and joy seemed to vanish with the melting snow.

But maybe those Christmases could come back if only the snow would return.... Since that day, snow never fell without Wesley thinking, at least for a moment, that it was a fulfillment of his wish.

Yet tonight Wesley and his brother and their friends sat in the McCoy jail because snow filled up the fields and sloughs, the hills and ravines, the highways and trails of Montana and North Dakota.

The jail's floor was not much warmer than the frozen ground the building sat upon, and the cold worked its way up Wesley's spine until his entire body was wired tight. Nevertheless, he stayed where he was; he was too tired to stand up and move around, and he'd be damned if he'd go into one of the cells, even if it did have a bunk to sit on.

“Anybody got a watch?” asked Lester. “How long we been in here?”

Wesley reached for the pocket where he usually kept his watch. Then he remembered Frank's instruction: on a hunting trip you leave your watch at home.

“I don't know. A couple hours,” Frank said.

“Maybe this is it,” suggested Tommy. “Maybe he's going to keep us here a while then let us go.”

“Maybe,” Frank replied.

“But you don't think so.”

“I didn't say that.”

“But do you,” Tommy pressed, “do you think he'll just let us go? I mean, we been here a while.”

“I don't have an opinion,” answered Frank. “Why the hell you keep asking me?”

“Because your old man's a sheriff!”

“Not here he ain't.” Frank's face was flushed with anger, and Tommy let the subject drop. Instead, he raised a new issue.