I cannot go back to that town, one man alone, and take on a mob of professional gunmen, gangsters and crooked politicians.
My life is before me. I commemorate my dead by going on and having a good life.
He instructed himself in all these lessons hard as he was able, searching for a kind of numbness that would permit him to go on.
He tried to tell himself his wife and child needed him, this was over and finished.
But the road, darkening quickly, kept taking him back.
And maybe it was the hard truth he’d told the boy about his father.
He couldn’t keep his mind in the present. His mind kept changing gears and he remembered that other night in 1942, his father dead in the seat next to him, much later, much darker at night, driving this same road toward Mount Ida, his mind racing, trying to figure out what to do, how to do it, feeling both cheated and relieved, wanting nothing now except to get over this thing, dump the old bastard and get back to the United States Marine Corps.
Then, as now, Mount Ida finally slid into sight, after such a long time, but then it was quiet; now it was much earlier and Turner’s general store and liquor store were still open for business and some old boys stood or sat out on the porch before the old buildings.
Earl realized he had a thirst, and pulled off the road.
He walked up to the porch and heard the boys talking.
“Howdy,” he said.
“Howdy, there, mister,” came a reply.
“Got a Coca-Cola inside? A nice cold one? Got a long drive ahead.”
“Yes sir. You go on in, and Ike’ll git you a Coke.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“My pleasure, sir,” said the man.
Earl walked in, found an old store with sagging shelves but well stocked, probably the only store this deep in the Ouachita forest, and folks from all around must have come here. He went to a red Coke machine, opened it up, and reached for a nickel. He didn’t have one. He had only quarters.
He went up to the counter, asked a boy there for change, got it, went on back to the machine, and got his Coke. He was walking out and to his car when he heard one of the boys on the porch saying, “They say this’ll make Fred Becker the governor.”
“I thought that boy’s all finished,” said another. “But he beat ’em. He beat them Grumleys fair and square.”
It took a second for this to register. At first Earl had the impression it was another Fred Becker they were talking about and that it was another batch of Grumleys, but then he realized that couldn’t be the truth.
“ ’Scuse me,” he said, “don’t mean to butt in. But what’s all that about Fred Becker and the Grumleys?”
“You from Hot Springs, sir?”
“Well, I done some work there. That’s all finished and I’m heading on to Fort Smith.”
“Hell, there’s been a war there,” said the man. “Fred Becker led a bunch of fellers against the gangsters in Hot Springs.”
“B’lieve I heard something about that, yes sir,” said Earl.
“Well,” said the fellow, “today, he wrapped it up. Done arrested the gangster king himself, Owney Maddox, the big boss of Hot Springs.”
“Arrested him?”
“That Fred done it by himself. Say, there’s a fellow with some sand to him. They say he shot it out with the Grumleys at Mary Jane’s and today he walked up big as life and arrested Owney Maddox.”
“On what?”
“You must not have been listening to your radio. No sir, it’s all over the radio. They’re saying Fred’s going to be the next damn governor. He got Owney Maddox on the charge of an art theft, for some kind of painting, and they searched Owney’s apartment and they found some payroll slips from Alcoa, so they think Owney done masterminded that job. It’s all falling apart on Owney Maddox. He’s in jail and he’s going to stay there and all them damn Grumleys he got working for him are squirreled good.”
“Art theft?” said Earl.
“Some old picture he had. It was stolen, and Fred digged it out, and called the feds and made the arrest. Don’t that beat all? It’s just like with Al Capone. He’s a bad man, but everybody’s scared to go agin him, so they finally get him on tax evasion. So they get that Owney on art theft!”
“Ah,” said Earl, as if he’d just learned something new.
“You okay, mister?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“ ’Cause you just look like a haunt walked through you.”
“Nah, I’m fine,” said Earl. He turned and went to his car.
He climbed in, but couldn’t find the strength to turn the key. The Coke suddenly didn’t interest him at all.
Fred Becker, hero? Fred Becker, the next governor? Hey, isn’t it great about Fred Becker, how he got Owney Maddox?
He sat there, breathing hard.
What about them boys? What about that old man? They believed in their job and they risked their lives for it, and they got cut down in the night and nobody said Jack about it and a few days later it was as if it hadn’t happened and nobody remembered a goddamn thing now that Fred Becker was a big hero.
In his head, one bitterness slid into and was absorbed by another. It was just like the war. All the boys go out onto the islands and they fight in battles so horrible it scars a man just to think about it. And they die, and by the time you get back everydamnbody’s forgotten all about it and some joker’s up front acting like a hero and he had nothing to do with it, not a goddamned thing.
He shook his head. The anger came over him so bad he could hardly stand it. He wanted to fight, to smash something, to howl at the moon, to kill something, to see it bleed and twitch out. It was a killing anger, a hurting anger.
He wanted to go back to Hot Springs and start shooting. But shoot who? They were all gone. Owney was locked up and whoever it was had hit the boys in the train yard, presumably that Johnny Spanish fellow, was off in some gangster hideout.
There was no one to kill. It was the same rage he felt when he went to beat his father and his father was already dying.
Earl got out of the car.
“You didn’t drink that Coke up, mister.”
“No, I didn’t. Feel a need for something else tonight.”
“You all right?”
“I am fine, sir.”
He walked past them, but this time not into the general store but into the little liquor store next to it. There, in an old frame, was the front page of the Blue Eye newspaper with its story of the death of the great Charles Swagger, sheriff of Polk County, who’d died stopping a burglary over in Montgomery County, at Turner’s liquor store, this very place.
“They never caught ’em,” said the liquor store clerk, who was actually the same Ike who’d just stepped through a door.
“So I heard,” said Earl.
“Hard to figure, that old guy fighting to save my uncle a few dollars’ worth of beer.”
“He wore the badge,” said Earl. “He knew what he’d signed up for. Don’t waste no time worrying about him.”
“So what’s your poison, sir?”
“You got that Boone County bourbon? Ain’t had a lick of that in a time.”
“You want the pint or the fifth.”
Earl got out his wallet. He had seven dollars left and nothing else coming in soon.
“How much the fifth?”
“That’d be three dollar.”
“Give me two fifths then. And keep the change, sonny.”
54
Nobody could believe how well Frenchy shot. Some of them were serious people. Some were ex-paratroopers, many ex-cops or FBI agents, some ex-Marines, all of whom who’d been in it, one way or the other. But Frenchy outshot them all, two-handed to boot.
“Son, who taught you to shoot like that?”
“An old guy, been in a lot of stuff. Worked it out, this system.”
“It’s not doctrine, but damn, it’s so fast and accurate I don’t see a point in changing it. Never wo
uld have believed it could be so fast, two hands and everything.”
“You get used to it. It’s rock steady.”
“Wish I’d had you along on my team in Market Garden.”
“Yeah, well, I was a little young for that.”
“You ever in the for-real?”
“I was a cop in the South. I was in some for-real stuff. In it deep.”
“Where?”
“Oh, the South.”
“Oh, it’s that way, is it? Sure, kid. You are a good hand.”
“I was taught by the best,” Frenchy said.
He was D.A.’s best pupil, really. The gun came from his holster so fast nobody could see it, was clapped by the other hand and outthrust even as his eyes clamped to the front sight and bangbang, he’d slap two holes in the kill zone, rotate to another, bangbang, and on to another, with the seventh round saved for just in case. These .45s had not been worked on like the ones D.A. had tricked up by Griffin & Howe, they were just old sloppy twenty-seventh-hand service Ithacas and Singers and IBMs, with an old Colt thrown in here and there for good measure, but they went pop every time the trigger was jacked and they felt familiar to Frenchy.
It was the shooting week of CIG training class 004, Clandestine Techniques, up on Catoctin Mountain in Maryland, where the old OSS had trained, a place called Camp Ritchie, maybe fifty miles outside of D.C. It still had a lot of World War II feeling to it, with the old LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS and INVEST IN INVASION BUY WAR BONDS posters turning yellow and tatty, the wooden barracks thick with the odor of men having lived in close quarters, all of it nestled safely behind barbed wire and guarded by Marines.
And of course Frenchy was just as good with anything; he could shoot the Thompson, the BAR and the carbine with extraordinary skill. It just seemed to come naturally to him, and it filled him with confidence, so that when the field problems arose, he seemed always to be the one who solved them fastest, even among men who’d been in combat. Soon he was an acting team leader, and he led after Earl’s techniques, giving his boys nicknames (that is, nicknaming men who were ten years older than he was, Harvard and Yale graduates, and combat veterans), teasing them, cajoling them, always putting himself out front and when it came time to work, outworking them. He had a funny tic when he explained things to them: he’d listen, then say, “See, here’s the thing,” then gently point out the way it should be done.
Finally, toward the end of the course, an instructor drew him aside.
“You’ve done damned well, Short. You’ve impressed some people.”
“Thanks.”
“Now many of these guys will go under embassy cover to various spots around the world where they’ll run agents, or recruit locals, or make reports. Some others will stay here, this’ll be their only taste of the actual, and they’ll be sent to headquarters, where they’ll mainly be analysts.”
“Both those sound pretty boring to me.”
“Yeah, I thought so. You have a cowboy look to you. Are you a cowboy, Tex?”
“No sir.”
“But you have a field operator’s brain, I can tell. And real good shooting skills. Real good.”
“Yes sir.”
“You’ve been mentioned for Plans.”
“Plans?” said Frenchy. “That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“One thing you have to learn, Short, is that in this business nothing is what it sounds like. Okay?”
“Yes sir.”
“Mr. Dulles sees Plans as a kind of action unit.”
“Like a raid team?”
“Yeah, exactly. It’ll be working in military or guerrilla-warfare situations, sometimes behind the lines, running operations. Probably high-contact work. Lots of bangbang. Lots of sentry-knifing, dog-killing, bomb-planting, border-crossing. That sound like your cup of tea?”
“Does it ever!”
“You have a problem with Army Jump School?”
“No sir.”
“You have a problem with a commando tour with the Brits? Good training.”
“Sounds good.”
“You have a problem with language studies?”
“Ah—I speak French and passable German.”
“Think about Chinese, Short. Or Indochinese. Or Greek. Or Korean. Or Russian, if the big one ever comes.”
“Yes sir,” said Frenchy.
“Good man,” said the instructor.
And so Frenchy’s course was set. He was to become a specialist in doing the necessary, not out of sentiment but out of hard, rational thought, carefully measured risk, a burglar’s guts and a killer’s decisiveness. But at this point he envisioned one more moment in his career with the Garland County raid team, a kind of a last thing that he owed himself. It came some months ahead in the week after he graduated from Clandestine Techniques OO4 at the head of his class and before he reported to Fort Benning for Jump School. He spent it in Washington, D.C., and for several days he roamed the city, looking for out-of-town newsstands, for copies of the Little Rock Arkansas Gazette or Democrat. He had no luck. But then he went to the Library of Congress and ordered up a batch of backdated New York Times and in that way, buried on a back page, learned of the fates of D.A. and the boys. EX-FBI AGENT SLAIN IN ACCIDENTAL GUNFIGHT. He did note that Earl’s name was not listed among the dead, nor was Carlo Henderson’s, so he assumed that somehow they had survived. It figured. You couldn’t kill the cowboy. Maybe Bugsy Siegel would, as Johnny Spanish had predicted, but Owney hadn’t been able to, not even with Frenchy’s treacherous help.
If you saw him sitting there, in that vast, domed room on Capitol Hill behind the Congress, you would have seen a grave, calm young man, brimming with health and vitality, but already picking up a warrior’s kind of melancholy aloofness from the workaday world around him. And at least at that moment—for he had not yet entirely mastered the art of completely stifling his emotions—you might have seen some regret too. Maybe even some sorrow.
55
Earl started drinking almost immediately. The bourbon lit like a flare out beyond the wire and fell down his gullet, popping sparks of illumination, floating, drifting, pulling him ever so gently toward where he hoped the numbness was. No such goddamned luck. He drank only to forget, but of course the only thing the bourbon did was make him remember more, so he drank more, which made him remember yet more again.
He wasn’t headed west on 270 toward Y City, which would take him over to 71 for the pull up toward Fort Smith and Camp Chaffee, where his wife and unborn child, his new life or whatever, awaited. He couldn’t do that, somehow. He was in no state to face them and the emotions that he had controlled so masterfully for four days now seemed dangerously near explosion. He knew he was rocky. He turned south, down 27 out of Mount Ida, to 8, and then west on 8. He knew exactly where he was headed even if he couldn’t say it or acknowledge it.
By the time he pulled into Board Camp it was nearly midnight. Wasn’t much to be seen at all. It was never even as much as Mount Ida. He drove through the little town and there, a few miles beyond toward the county seat of Blue Eye, off on the right, he saw the old mailbox. SWAGGER it said, same as it always had.
He turned right, sank as the dirt road plunged off the highway, watched his light beams lance out in the darkness until at last they illuminated the house where he grew up, where his family lived, where his father lived, where his brother died. The light beams hit the house.
They illuminated broken windows, knocked-out boards, ragged weeds, a garden gone to ruin, peeling paint, the nothingness of abandonment. After his father died, his mother had simply given up and moved to town. He never saw her again; he was in the hospital after Tarawa when the news came that she had died.
Earl pulled into the barnyard and when his lights crossed that structure, he saw that it too had fallen into total disrepair. It needed paint and was lost in a sea of ragweed and unkempt grass. Daddy would shit if he saw it now. Daddy always kept it so nice. Or rather, Daddy directed that it be kept nice. It had to be perfect, an
d it was one of Earl’s chores to mow the lawn and lord help him if he forgot it, or he didn’t do it well enough. The lawn had to be perfect, the garden well cultivated, the whole thing upstanding and pretty, as befits an important man.
Earl turned off the lights. He opened the door. Crickets tweedled in the dark and the soft rush of the wind filled the Arkansas night, with maybe just a hint of fall in the air. The house was big, with four bedrooms up on the second floor. Once it had been the leading house in the eastern half of Polk County, maintained by a lot of good land, but somehow, some Swagger granddad or other back in the last century had gotten out of the farming business before really getting into it and committed to the law enforcement business, because the Swagger men were always hunters, always had a kind of natural instinct for the rifle, and a gift for reading the terrain. No one knew where it came from, but they’d been soldiers and hunters for as long as anyone could remember, just as long as they’d lived in these parts. They were never farmers.
Earl tipped the bottle up and felt the bourbon clog his throat and with a mighty gulp he took down two more harsh swallows. The illumination rounds went off in his guts, lighting the target. It made his eyes water. He stood, wobbling just a little, and faced the big house.
It scared him still. It was a house of fear. You walked softly in that house because you didn’t want to upset Daddy. Daddy ruled that house as he ruled so much of the known world. Daddy’s hugeness was something he could feel even now, his presence, looming and feary and cold and mad, that man who even to this day stalked the corridors of Earl’s mind, always whispering to him.
“Goddamn you, Daddy, goddamn your black soul! Come out and fight!” Earl screamed.
But Daddy didn’t.
Earl saw that he had finished the bottle. He returned to the car, now glad he’d bought a second one. He found it. He had some trouble with the cap because he was so damned drunk his fingers barely worked, but in a little bit, it came free. By now the bourbon had lost its taste. He swallowed, swallowed some more, and pitched forward. He passed out in the front yard.
• • •
Sometime later in the night, Earl awoke, still drunk but shivery in the cold. He was wet; he’d pissed his pants. No, no, it was dew, dampening him through his suit coat. He pulled himself up, shuddered mightily in the cold, seized the bottle and took another couple of pulls. But he didn’t pass out. Instead he rose, and in the blurry darkness of his vision made out the car. He wobbled back toward it, unsteadily as hell, and made it all the way, falling only once.