Also they're gonna want to know who was buried in Timmy Baterman's box, if he wasn't. ' "Well, you can see what kind of a mess it was, Louis. We sat there most of an hour, drinking iced tea and talking it over. Norma asked us if we wanted sandwidges, but no one did.
"We talked it around and talked it around, and finally we decided we had to go out there to the Baterman place. I'll never forget that night, not if I live to be twice as old's I am now. It was hot, hotter than the hinges of hell, with the sun going down like a bucket of guts behind the clouds. There was none of us wanted to go, but we had to. Norma knew it before any of us. She got me inside on some pretext or other and said, 'Don't you let them dither around and put this off, Judson. You got to get this taken care of. It's an abomination."
Jud measured Louis evenly with his eyes.
"That was what she called it, Louis. It was her word. Abomination. And she kind of whispers in my ear, 'If anything happens, Jud, you just run. Never mind these others; they'll have to look out for themselves. You remember me and bust your hump right out of there if anything happens. ' "We drove over in Hannibal Benson's car-that son of a bitch got all the A-coupons he wanted, I don't know how. Nobody said much, but all four of us was smokin like chimblies. We was scared, Louis, just as scared as we could be. But the only one who really said anything was Alan Purinton. He says to George, 'Bill Baterman has been up to dickens in that woods north of Route 15, and I'll put my warrant to that. ' Nobody answered, but I remember George noddin his head.
"Well, we got there, and Alan knocked, but nobody answered, so we went around to the back and there the two of them were. Bill Baterman was sitting there on his back stoop with a pitcher of beer, and Timmy was at the back of the yard, just staring up at that red, bloody sun as it went down. His whole face was orange with it, like he'd been flayed alive. And Bill... he looked like the devil had gotten him after his seven years of highfalutin. He was floatin in his clothes, and I judged he'd lost forty pounds. His eyes had gone back in their sockets until they were like little animals in a pair of caves... and his mouth kep goin tick-tick-tick on the left side."
Jud paused, seemed to consider, and then nodded imperceptibly. "Louis, he looked damned.
"Timmy looked around at us and grinned. Just seeing him grin made you want to scream. Then he turned and went back to looking at the sun go down. Bill says, 'I didn't hear you boys knock,' which was a bald-faced lie, of course, since Alan laid on that door loud enough to wake the... to wake up a deaf man.
"No one seemed like they was going to say anything, so I says, 'Bill, I heard your boy was killed over in Italy. ' "That was a mistake,' he says, looking right at me.
"Was it?' I says.
"You see him standin right there, don't you?' he says.
"So who do you reckon was in that coffin you had buried out at Pleasantview?' Alan Purinton asks him.
"'Be damned if I know,' Bill says, 'and be damned if I care. ' He goes to get a cigarette and spills them all over the back porch, then breaks two or three trying to pick them up.
"Probably have to be an exhumation,' Hannibal says. 'You know that, don't you? I had a call from the goddam War Department, Bill. They are going to want to know if they buried some other mother's son under Timmy's name. ' "Well, what in the hell of it?' Bill says in a loud voice. 'That's nothing to me, is it? I got my boy. Timmy come home the other day. He's been shell-shocked or something. He's a little strange now, but he'll come around. ' "Let's quit this, Bill,' I says, and all at once I was pretty mad at him. 'If and when they dig up that army coffin, they're gonna find it dead empty, unless you went to the trouble of filling it up with rocks after you took your boy out of it, and I don't think you did. I know what happened, Hannibal and George and Alan here know what happened, and you know what happened too. You been foolin around up in the woods, Bill, and you have caused yourself and this town a lot of trouble. ' "You fellas know your way out, I guess,' he says. 'I don't have to explain myself to you, or justify myself to you, or nothing. When I got that telegram, the life ran right out of me. I felt her go, just like piss down the inside of my leg. Well, I got my boy back. They had no right to take my boy. He was only seventeen. He was all I had left of his dear mother, and it was illfuckinlegal.
So f**k the army, and f**k the War Department, and f**k the United States of America, and f**k you boys too. I got him back. He'll come around. And that's all I got to say. Now you all just march your boots back where you came from. ' "And his mouth is tick-tick-tickin, and there's sweat all over his forehead in big drops, and that was when I saw he was crazy. It would have driven me crazy too. Living with that... that thing."
Louis was feeling sick to his stomach. He had drunk too much beer too fast.