IT HAD TAKEN HOURS of thrashing, but I’d finally gotten to sleep, and deeply, too. I could tell because it felt like I was swimming up from the bottom of an ocean of molasses toward a distant sound that turned out to be my bedside telephone.
“Huh-llo,” I mumbled.
“Doc?” The voice on the other end of the line was thick and slurred. “ ’S me.”
“Me,” as best I could tell, was a drunken Tom Kitchings. “Sheriff? What time is it?”
“Dunno. Pretty late. Probly real late. Sorry ’bout that.”
“You got some emergency, Sheriff?” I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. The blue-green numbers read 3:17.
“Not ezactly.”
“Have you been drinking, Sheriff?”
“Have been. Still am. Went looking for some peace of mind. Found me some Southern Comfort instead. Get it, Doc?”
I did. I wasn’t a drinker myself—intoxication was too much like vertigo to appeal to me—but I’d spent enough time around students to know that Southern Comfort was a sweet, cheap liqueur, notorious for brutal hangovers. “What’s keeping you up and driving you to drink, Sheriff?”
“I just can’t hardly figger out this case, Doc. ’S a damn mystery, you know?”
“Well, that’s how most cases start out,” I said. “That’s why we need sheriffs and detectives and forensic scientists.”
“Aw, hell, that ain’t what I mean. I’m talkin’ ’bout the misery of hisery. I mean, mystery of history. Family history. I b’lieved for thirty years that Leena run off. Been told that for thirty years. Somewheres; nobody knew where. We didn’t talk about it—it was one of them things you just knew you wasn’t s’posed to talk about.” He paused, and I heard a swish and a swallow. “You got family, Doc?”
I said that I had a son—a die-hard UT fan, and a big admirer of Kitchings’s college career—and that my wife had died two years ago.
“Goddamn, Doc, I’m sorry to hear that. Real sorry.”
“Thanks. I still miss her. A lot. Not much to do but carry on.” A pause. “You ever been married, Sheriff?”
“Naw. Engaged once, back when I was a big football star. She was a cheerleader and a sorority girl. Memphis debutante, too. Heady stuff for a redneck from Cooke County. She busted up with me right after I busted up my knee. Thing is, she kinda spoilt me for these Cooke County girls, you know what I mean?” That was a shame, I said; life gets mighty lonely without a wife. He seemed to mull that over for a while. When he spoke again, I wasn’t sure whether he was still thinking about love or was broaching a new subject.
“People in Cooke County don’t have a lot, Doc,” he said. “A few of us got halfway decent jobs, but most folks up here live hand to mouth most of the time. Hell, the Kitchings clan been living hand to mouth near as long as I can remember. Maybe that’s why family’s so important to us. Even when your back’s to the wall—’specially when your back’s to the wall—your family’ll stick by you. Thick or thin.”
“Right or wrong?”
“Right or wrong. That’s the code. They’s your blood.”
I thought about that. Would my son, Jeff, stick by me, right or wrong? What if I disgraced him—what if I were fired for misconduct with an underage female student? Would Jeff, my blood, follow the code? What about Art, my closest friend? He’d certainly stuck his neck out for me today. Would I do the same for him, if push came to shove?
“Must be nice to know you can count on that.”
“Mostly.” He paused. “Not always.”
“I can see how it might complicate things for a sheriff sometimes.”
I heard another swallow, though it didn’t seem to be preceded by the sound of a swig. “Ever’thing seems tangled up right now, Doc. See, Leena—she was family, too. She was blood, too. Seems like somebody needs to stick by her, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, it does. Her baby, too—seems like that baby could also use some good folks in its corner.”
Liquid gurgled into the sheriff’s mouth. “Doc, you ever raise your head and look around and wonder what happened?”
“How do you mean?”
“Wonder how the hell you ended up where you’re at, dealing with the shit you’re dealing with? ’Scuse me.” I waited for him to continue. “This sure ain’t what I pictured for myself, you know? Man, back when I was playin’ ball, I had my ticket out of here. I was gonna shake the dust of Cooke County offa my cleats.” Even from my brief time in his jurisdiction, I could imagine how thrilling that prospect must have seemed. “And then I got sent sprawling back home. Crawling back home.” He exhaled loudly. “Hell of it is, I been trying to do a good job. Which ain’t always easy to do up here. Lots easier to do a bad job, you know? Now, I ain’t even sure what a good job is anymore.”
“Well, don’t give up. Maybe it’ll get clearer before long. Like your coach used to tell you, look for daylight and run like hell.”
“Did he say that?” He pondered. “Daylight. Yeah. Maybe.” He drew another long breath, like he was winding up to something. “Doc, I trust you, and that’s more’n I can say ’bout a lot of people. I was outta line when I tried to shoot you, and I ’pologize.”