Again I wait for Sheriff Irlene to say something more. I wait for her to wonder after why Joseph Carl would ask for the nearest water and was it deep enough to wade in when Joseph Carl had grown up with the Lone Fork and the sycamores and already knew the answer to every one of those questions.
Dale asked the man where he’d come from and how far had he traveled. He asked the man real polite, but the man didn’t take notice of Dale or his questions and asked again where he’d find that water.
That is the next surprising thing about Juna’s story. Folks don’t ignore Dale. They might have started to whisper about him being awfully soft for a Crowley boy, but they all love him. The church ladies will smooth his hair for him. The fellows might give him a lure or a penny or maybe an old cane pole they don’t so much need anymore. Folks never ignore Dale because he makes them smile.
The man next stopped in the middle of the road, yanked off his hat, and ran a hand over his fair hair. The knot in his throat bobbed up and down as he spoke, and his eyes focused on the ground at Dale’s feet. Those eyes were trimmed with fine, pale lashes, and his skin, instead of tanned to a leather hide by the sun, was pink.
There wasn’t much interesting about the man. His trousers were cut from denim that had gone soft, and his white shirt was buttoned at the cuffs and at his throat. Strangest thing about the fellow was how clean and white his shirt was. Only other interesting thing about him was the bend in his nose. Someone must have broke it for him. Juna thought it might be a story worth hearing to have the man tell how he happened upon a shirt as white as the one he wore and a nose as crooked as the one on his face.
Can’t miss it, is what Juna told the fellow, and she stretched out her hoe, lifted it a few feet, and slapped it to the ground. You’ll hear that water before you see it.
“It was a clumsy thing, what the man done next,” Juna says, staring at Daddy, her head laid off to the side in that way of hers. “He took a few more long steps that led him right up to Dale. Put them almost nose to nose. And then the fellow asked had Dale ever seen a deck of cards.”
Up close, Juna could see the man’s shirt was something that belonged in a church and was meant for a larger man because the sleeves ballooned and the shoulder seams sagged down each arm. The man didn’t say anything else. He should have pulled a deck of cards from his back pocket, Juna figured, since he made mention of them, but instead he kept on staring at the ground beneath Dale’s feet.
“Dale asked the man if he had any,” Juna says. “Asked did the man have a deck of cards to show.”
I have always figured, because it’s what Daddy has always said, that Juna and I are the ones in danger when one of those fellows happens by. I would have never thought such a man would want Dale. Juna must have thought about it.
“He sure was interested in Dale,” she says, staring at the closed door now instead of Daddy.
The room is dark except for the lantern sitting in the middle of the table. It burns just bright enough to light up the lower half of each face.
Good cool water, is the last thing Juna said to the man. You’ll hear it before you see it.
And then he took Dale.
? ? ?
SHERIFF IRLENE SITS in a ladder-back chair pushed up against the front door of the sheriff’s office, her black boots planted flat. Folks say she started wearing them on the day her husband died. They belonged to him, and she must surely stuff the toes with newspaper to keep them from slipping and giving her blisters. Folks say she wears them to keep her husband close and to remind folks Kentucky’s own governor said she’s sheriff now.
A fire burns in the box stove. A silver coffeepot sits on top and has boiled dry by now. Every time the fire starts to dwindle and the room takes on a chill, John Holleran taps on the front door with the butt of his shotgun so Abraham, who has taken up watch on the front porch, will gather more wood. The last batch he set inside was too damp, and now the fire hisses and smokes. If not for that smoke, we’d smell burned coffee. Sheriff Irlene will have to soak that pot for a good long while and scrub at it with a piece of steel wool.
When the sobs coming from behind the closed door stop, Sheriff Irlene walks from lantern to lantern, putting a match to the wicks and rolling the knobs until the flame is to her liking. Each lantern has a slender chimney and a low-footed brass collar. She’s brought them from home, where they probably once lit the parlor. The sound of Daddy’s leather gloves slapping against some part of Joseph Carl and the sobs that follow stop Sheriff Irlene. One hand on the third lantern, she lets the other hang limp at her side.