Nick shook his head indignantly. "I'm twenty-two," he wrote. "I can have a couple of beers without getting beaten up & robbed for them, can't I?"
Baker read this with a sourly amused look on his face. "It don't appear you can in Shoyo. What you doing here, kid?"
Nick tore the first sheet off the memo pad, crumpled it in a ball, dropped it on the floor. Before he could begin to write his reply, an arm shot through the bars and a steel hand clutched his shoulder. Nick's head jerked up.
"My wife neatens these cells," Baker said, "and I don't see any need for you to litter yours up. Go throw that in the john."
Nick bent over, wincing at the pain in his back, and fished the ball of paper off the floor. He took it over to the toilet, tossed it in, and then looked up at Baker with his eyebrows raised. Baker nodded.
Nick came back. This time he wrote longer, pencil flying over the paper. Baker reflected that teaching a deaf-mute kid to read and write was probably quite a trick, and this Nick Andros must have some pretty good equipment upstairs to have caught the hang of it. There were fellows here in Shoyo, Arkansas, who had never properly caught the hang of it, and more than a few of them hung out in Zack's. But he supposed you couldn't expect a kid who just blew into town to know that.
Nick handed the pad through the bars.
"I've been traveling around but I'm not a vag. Spent today working for a man named Rich Ellerton about 6 miles west of here. I cleaned his barn & put up a load of hay in his loft., Last week I was in Watts, Okla., running fence. The men who beat me up got my week's pay."
"You sure it was Rich Ellerton you was working for? I can check that, you know." Baker had torn off Nick's explanation, folded it to wallet-photo size, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
Nick nodded.
"You see his dog?"
Nick nodded.
"What kind was it?"
Nick gestured for the pad. "Big Doberman," he wrote. "But nice. Not mean."
Baker nodded, turned away, and went back into his office. Nick stood at the bars, watching anxiously. A moment later, Baker returned with a big keyring, unlocked the holding cell, and pushed it back on its track.
"Come on in the office," Baker said. "You want some breakfast?"
Nick shook his head, then made pouring and drinking motions.
"Coffee? Got that. You take cream and sugar?"
Nick shook his head.
"Take it like a man, huh?" Baker laughed. "Come on."
Baker started up the hallway, and although he was speaking, Nick was unable to hear what he was saying with his back turned and his lips hidden. "I don't mind the company. I got insomnia. It's got so I can't sleep more'n three or four hours most nights. M'wife wants me to go see some big-shot doctor up in Pine Bluff. If it keeps on, I just might do it. I mean, looka this - here I am, five in the morning, not even light out, and there I sit eatin aigs and greazy home fries from the truck stop up the road."
He turned on the last phrase and Nick caught "... truck stop up the road." He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders to indicate his puzzlement.
"Don't matter," Baker said. "Not to a young kid like you, anyway."
In the outer office, Baker poured him a cup of black coffee out of a huge thermos. The sheriff's half-finished breakfast plate stood on his desk blotter, and he pulled it back to himself. Nick sipped the coffee. It hurt his mouth, but it was good.
He tapped Baker on the shoulder, and when he looked up, Nick pointed to the coffee, rubbed his stomach, and winked soberly.
Baker smiled. "You better say it's good. My wife Jane puts it up." He tucked half a hard-fried egg into his mouth, chewed, and then pointed at Nick with his fork. "You're pretty good. Just like one of those pantomimers. Bet you don't have much trouble makin yourself understood, huh?"
Nick made a seesawing gesture with his hand in midair. Comme ?i, comme ?a.
"I ain't gonna hold you," Baker said, mopping up grease with a slice of toasted Wonder Bread, "but I tell you what. If you stick around, maybe we can get the guys who did this to you. You game?"
Nick nodded and wrote: "You think I can get my week's pay back?"
"Not a chance," Baker said flatly. "I'm just a hick sheriff, boy. For somethin like that, you'd be wantin Oral Roberts."
Nick nodded and shrugged. Putting his hands together, he made a bird flying away.
"Yeah, like that. How many were there?"
Nick held up four fingers, shrugged, then held up five.
"Think you could identify any of them?"
Nick held up one finger and wrote: "Big & blond. Your size, maybe a little heavier. Gray shirt & pants. He was wearing a big ring. 3rd finger right hand. Purple stone. That's what cut me."
As Baker read this, a change came over his face. First concern, then anger. Nick, thinking the anger was directed against him, became frightened again.
"Oh Jesus Christ," Baker said. "This here's a full commode slopping over for sure. You sure?"
Nick nodded reluctantly.
"Anything else? You see anything else?"