His wife leaned out of the kitchen window like an engineer from the cab of a locomotive and called, 'Kids! Cookies are ready!' She turned to me. 'Would you like an oatmeal-raisin cookie, Mr. Edgecombe?'
'I'm sure they're delicious, ma'am, but I'll take a pass this time.'
'All right,' she said, and drew her head back inside.
'Have you seen the scars on him?' Hammersmith asked abruptly. He was still watching his kids, who couldn't quite bring themselves to abandon the pleasures of the swing - not even for oatmeal-raisin cookies.
'Yes.' But I was surprised he had.
He saw my reaction and laughed. 'The defense attorney's one big victory was getting Coffey to take off his shirt and show those scars to the jury. The prosecutor, George Peterson, objected like hell, but the judge allowed it. Old George could have saved, his breath - juries around these parts don't buy all that psychology crap about how people who've been mistreated just can't help themselves. They believe people can help themselves. It's a point of view I have a lot of sympathy for... but those scars were pretty ghastly, just the same. Notice anything about them, Edgecombe?'
I had seen the man naked in the shower, and I'd noticed, all right; I knew just what he was talking about. 'They're all broken up. Latticed, almost.'
'You know what that means?'
'Somebody whopped the living hell out of him when he was a kid,' I said. 'Before he grew.'
'But they didn't manage to whop the devil out of him, did they, Edgecombe? Should have spared the rod and just drowned him in the river like a stray kitten, don't you think?'
I suppose it would have been politic to simply agree and get out of there, but I couldn't. I'd seen him. And I'd felt him, as well. Felt the touch of his hands.
'He's... strange,' I said. 'But there doesn't seem to be any real violence in him. I know how he was found, and it's hard to jibe that with what I see, day in and day out, on the block. I know violent men, Mr. Hammersmith.' It was Wharton I was thinking about, of course, Wharton strangling Dean Stanton with his wrist-chain and bellowing Whoooee, boys! Ain't this a party, now?
He was looking at me closely now, and smiling a little, incredulous smile that I didn't care for very much. 'You didn't come up here to get an idea about whether or not he might have killed some other little girls somewhere else,' he said. 'You came up here to see if I think he did it at all. That's it, isn't it? 'Fess up, Edgecombe.'
I swallowed the last of my cold drink, put the bottle down on the little table, and said: 'Well? Do you?'
'Kids!' he called down the hill, leaning forward a little in his chair to do it. 'Y'all come on up here now n get your cookies!' Then he leaned back in his chair again and looked at me. That little smile - the one I didn't much care for - had reappeared.
'Tell you something,' he said. 'You want to listen close, too, because this might just be something you need to know.'
'I'm listening.'
'We had us a dog named Sir Galahad,' he said, and cocked a thumb at the doghouse. 'A good dog. No particular breed, but gentle. Calm. Ready to lick your hand or fetch a stick. There are plenty of mongrel dogs like him, wouldn't you say?'
I shrugged, nodded.
'In many ways, a good mongrel dog is like your negro,' he said. 'You get to know it, and often you grow to love it. It is of no particular use, but you keep it around because you think it loves you. If you're lucky, Mr. Edgecombe, you never have to find out any different. Cynthia and I, we were not lucky.' He sighed - a long and somehow skeletal sound, like the wind rummaging through fallen leaves. He pointed toward the doghouse again, and I wondered how I had missed its general air of abandonment earlier, or the fact that many of the turds had grown whitish and powdery at their tops.
'I used to clean up after him,' Hammersmith said, 'and keep the roof of his house repaired against the rain. In that way also Sir Galahad was like your Southern negro, who will not do those things for himself. Now I don't touch it, I haven't been near it since the accident - if you can call it an accident. I went over there with my rifle and shot him, but I haven't been over there since. I can't bring myself to. I suppose I will, in time. I'll clean up his messes and tear down his house.'
Here came the kids, and all at once I didn't want them to come; all at once that was the last thing on earth I wanted. The little girl was all right, but the boy -
They pounded up the steps, looked at me, giggled, then went on toward the kitchen door.
'Caleb,' Hammersmith said. 'Come here. Just for a second.'