The Clan of the Cats

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Rocking slightly from the amounts of beer he had poured down his throat since he had gotten off work at the sand and gravel quarry, the big, rawboned man stalked up the bar, his fists clenched and cocked, the light of joyful sadism shining from his pale, bloodshot eyes.

“Now, goddammitall, Bubba,” the bartender half-shouted, “you and them leave Billy alone, you hear? He’s a disabled vet’run, he cain’t fight you even was you to fight fair, one on one, and you knows it, too.

“You jest tend to your own fuckin’ bizness, Chester,” said the big man, echoed by the two now coming in his wake. “ ’Lest we hev to whup your fat ass, too. Thet lil gal I useta fuck down in D.C., she tol’ me all bout these fuckin’ baby-burners and all. And I ain’t gone have none the fuckers drinkin’ in any bar I drinks in, hear?

“You know how poorly I was for a long time, how plumb bad I felt when the fuckin’ jarheads wouldn’t take a big whole man like me, but took that gawdam little skinny pissant of a fuckin’ half-breed injun, there? The fuckers, they said I was soniethin’ like moshunly unstable or suthin’. But I’m fuckin’ glad them bastids didn’t take me, now, ’r the fuckin’ army neither, too, ’cause then they’d be calling me a fuckin’ baby-burner, too.”

The bartender headed purposefully toward the far end of the bar, one hand in a pocket that jingled with change. But one of the two following the instigator turned, anticipating, and ripped the wire of the coin phone’s handset loose from the box. Grinning at the thus-stymied bartender, he headed back toward the helpless victim awaiting them.

Standing, Milo stepped into the path of the trio of toughs. “If you’re so anxious to use those knuckles, you overgrown ape, why not try them on a man closer to your size, a man who isn’t crippled and can fight you back? Or do you lack the guts? No wonder the army and the marines wouldn’t accept you, you oversized, gutless cretin,” he remarked in a conversational tone, smiling the while.

“You git the hell out’n my way, mister,” ordered Bubba, his face reddening with anger. “I’ll stomp you soon’s I’se done with this fuckin’ baby-burner. I’ll stomp your ass good, too.”

“Just what is your moronic definition of ‘baby-burner,’ you pig?” demanded Milo. still smiling and seemingly friendly, “Or have you ever troubled your pea-brain enough to define it?”

The big man stopped then, still red-faced and with clenched, cocked fists, but now with his forehead wrinkling up. “Wal, it’s like thet gal I useta fuck down ta D.C. useta say, anybody as was in the in … naw, unjust war over to Vietnam was bound to be one them damn baby-burners, what burnt up lil babies alive jest for fun.”

“And you never once wondered at whether or not this nameless woman was telling the truth or even was of sound mind? Consider, any woman who would willingly have sex with such a thing as you would have to be a mental basket case, as emotionally unstable as the Marine Corps and U.S. Army found you to be, you hulking lunatic,” said Milo, ignoring what sounded like a low moan from the fat, trembling bartender.

Milo’s friendly smile suddenly became a mocking grin as he asked, “Or did she actually have sex with you at all, Bubba? I, for one, would doubt it. Things like you usually have three kinds of sex: what you buy from cheap whores, what you think about and what you talk about, generally out of the whole cloth, the lies that lead others to think you far more of a man than you really are or will ever be.

“So, isn’t that it, Bubba? Didn’t you lie about this little gal in D.C.? Or was it really a little boy, eh? The men who talk the most about their vast and varied female conquests amazingly often turn out to be closet faggots. Is that what you are, Bubba? Do you get your jollies going to dark moviehouses on Saturday afternoons to jerk off little boys in the dark? Isn’t that the—”

With a roar of pure rage from a wide-open mouth in a livid face that also now contained eyes filled with bloodlust, the huge man swung a big, knobby fist at Milo’s mocking face. Milo easily ducked the roundhouse swing and, as the man’s own force spun him half about, gave him the toe of one shoe in the right kidney.

The roar abruptly became a gasping whine of agony, and that was when the man who had disabled the telephone slipped behind Milo and held him with a full nelson, crowing, “I got the fucker now, Bubba. You and Abner paste him good.”

The one called Abner, almost as big as the still-suffering Bubba, made to do as bid, but Milo—using the support of the man who was holding him—slammed both feet with all his force into the midriff of the advancing attacker, sending him tumbling back onto one of the tables, which collapsed under his weight. An elbow in his erstwhile captor’s ribs quickly freed him of any restraint and left him ready to eagerly meet the recovered Bubba with enough of his best antique, bare-knuckle boxing blows to send him back bloody and reeling until he tripped over the still-retching Abner and crashed down atop both him and the wrecked table.

“Gawdam you, you muthafuckuh!” yelled the man who had been trying to hold him for a beating. “I’ll fix yo’ ass!”

Milo whirled to find the man holding a barstool above his head. Reaching up with both hands, he caught and held the unwieldy weapon while stepping close enough to knee-lift the man. Gurgling, his eyes looked to pop from out their sockets, the man let go the barstool to sink down onto the floor, holding his crotch and gagging.

Seeing this, the three locals still seated up the bar all stood and turned purposefully toward Milo, looks of grim determination on their unshaven faces.

Turning his head toward the scarred man, Milo said hurriedly, “Gyrene, get to hell out of here. Go next door and tell them to get the cops here before I have to kill somebody.”

The scarred man shook his head. “You the one better get out of here, buddy. And you don’t want any part of no cops, either, not around here, leastways. That bastid whose balls you just rearranged, he’s the sher’ff’s younger brother. It’s Sher’ff Chamberlin owns thishere bar, you know.”

Then there was no time for talking. Having been witness to all that had so quickly befallen their friends, the three men spread out as widely as the space permitted, to come at Milo from three directions but more or less concerted.

“Field expedients.” Milo muttered as he picked up the double shot still untasted and flung the strong whisky accurately into the eyes of the closest attacker, then hurled the thick-bottomed glass at the one farthest away. The middlemost man came in at an uncertain crouch, chin tucked behind left shoulder, fists held low … and Milo savate-kicked him long before he could reach jabbing distance, following the left foot to the belly with a right foot to the face that sent the man stumbling for a moment before he sprawled backward, his head hitting the floor with a solid, painful-sounding thump.

The splash of whisky had rendered its target entirely hors de combat, he was leaning against the bar rubbing at his eyes and alternately moaning and shrieking that he was blinded.

But the third and largest man, despite a heavily bleeding cut under one eye from the hurled glass, had brought out from someplace about his person a big jackknife, opened it and was coming toward Milo at a knife fighter’s crouch, muttering under his breath something concerning “damn-yankee chit’lins all over the floor.”

“I just may have to hurt this one seriously,” thought Milo. “The fucker looks like he knows what he’s doing, has done it all before.” Stepping away from the bar, he glanced down to be sure of his footing. He knew of old just how much knife wounds hurt, and he did not care for another.

The fat bartender had disappeared, at least Milo could not see him anywhere, though he could not have gotten out the only visible door without having been seen.

Both moving cautiously on flexed legs, Milo and the knifeman circled each other warily, slowly drawing incrementally closer one to the other. The man held his empty left hand out, ready to strike or grab or claw, but the right fist holding the shiny honed blade stayed safely down just below his hip level, winking now and again as it reflected errant beams of light. Although his lips moved from time to time, he made no threats, and this worried Milo, for he well knew the implicit dangers of silent fighters.

Both rapt in the deadly dance, neither man’s mind registered the shrieking of tires in the parking lot or even the stomping of heavy feet up to the door, not even the opening of that door with some force. But only a deaf man could have ignored the baritone roar of unquestioned authority from the doorway.

“Damn your ass, Doug, you drop that knife this minnit or I’ll crease your thick skull again like I done last time. You hear me, you fucker you?”

As the knife clattered onto the floor, Milo first extended a leg to kick it from out the easy reach of its owner, then turned about to confront the man at the door.

The man in the khaki uniform was taller than Milo and big, bigger even than the now groaning Bubba. Below an iron-grey brush cut and trimmed eyebrows of a slightly darker hue, his face was craggy … and oddly familiar, though Milo could not call up a name to go with it, just then. His nose was canted and a little flattened, while the knuckles of the hand that gripped the highly polished billy club were extensively scarred. A gleaming holster was secured to an equally gleaming Sam Browne belt and held a big revolver; a five-pointed star that gleamed like pure gold was pinned over the big man’s heart.

“Who the hell are you, mister?” he demanded of Milo. “What the hell you mean comin’ into my bar in my county and beatin’ up on a bunch of my customers and friends?”

Before Milo could answer, the former Marine spoke up.

“It’s my fault, Sher’ff. Bubba and Abner and your brother, Wally, they was setting for to hurt me agin and this gentleman, he got up and took them on his own self is all.”

“Wally?” demanded the lawman, taking another long step into the room. “Where’s my brother, Wally? What’d he do to Wally?”

Hearing his name repeated, the unshaven man looked up from where he still crouched in agony, half propped against the bar, his eyes swimming and his day’s growth of stubble wet with tears, his chin still dripping vomitus onto his now soaked and filthy shirt. “Sher … Sherwood,” he gasped, sobbing, “thishere fucker, he kneed me, kneed me raht in the bawls, too … and … and I thank he done busted one my ribs, too. Bash him, bash him good.”

“Did you do whut my brother claims you done to him, mister?” demanded the lawman, slowly raising his billy, his blue eyes now cold and hard-looking as agates.

Milo shrugged “Sheriff, I had no option, no choice; it was either let him smash a barstool over my head, kill him, or hurt him enough to put him down for a while. Would you rather I’d killed him, then? And I hereby serve you fair warning, too: while I own the greatest respect for legally designated authority, you try to use that baton on me and I’ll clobber you, too.” He said it all bluntly, matter-of-factly and with patent sincerity.

“Who the hell are you, anyway, mister?” snapped the lawman. “You got guts, I’ll say thet much, you got you ten miles of guts, to take on a half a dozen the toughest brawlers in the whole county, then offerin’ to go after me, too. Seems to me I seen you somewhere, heard you, too. What’s yore name? Whatall do you fer a livin’, huh?”

“My name is Mile Moray,” answered Milo. “I’m a retired army officer.”

“Wal, gawdam-I-rackun!” the lawman swore feelingly. “I’s in the army during the World War Two with a captain name of Milo Moray. You mus’ be, got to be his son.”

It suddenly all clicked together, into place and proper order in Milo’s mind. “No, I’m not my son, Master Sergeant Chamberlin, I’m me, Milo Moray. I was your platoon sergeant, then your platoon leader, then your company commander, before I got transferred to an operation in Munich, back in ’forty-five.”

The lawman just stared, goggle-eyed for a moment, then he declared, “Milo? Hell, no, you cain’t be Milo, the old sarge. Man, he was as old’s I wuz or some older, and didn’t look no older then then you do now, mister. So you his son, really, and jest been tryin’ to josh me, right?”

It took some doing, quite a bit more facts and dredged-up incidents and long-forgotten names of men living and dead, but at last Milo won Sheriff Sherwood Chamberlin’s full belief as to his identity. Tears in his eyes, the big lawman impulsively lapped his long, brawny arms about his old comrade-in-arms and hugged him with a strength of which a grizzly would not have been ashamed.

Stepping back, dabbing embarrassedly at his eyes with his big knuckles, he all at once became again aware of the sprawled and still or moaning, bleeding men lying on the scuffed, stained floor amid smashed furniture. “Chester?” he shouted. “Chester, you go nex’ door and tell Sampson I said to call the fuckin’ rescue squad. Tell the fuckers I said best send two meat wagons, anyhow.”

Looking up at his elder brother, the man Milo had kneed swallowed a sob, then whined petulantly, “You ain’t gone bash him, are you, Sherwood? All he done done to me, yore own baby brother, and you ain’t gone bash him evun oncet, are you?”

Leaning over, the lawman reached out for a handful of his brother’s shirt, thought better of it and instead grasped him by his lank, greasy hair, growling, “No, I ain’t, Wally, ’cause you had it comin’, see. I ’spect you had it comin’ more’n just oncet, too, whin I bashed mens for you. You keep follering the lead of that crazy, no-count Bubba, you gone wind up daid, someday soon. Hear me?”

From beside the door, the fat bartender piped up, “Won’t none Bubba’s fault, this time, Sher’ff. That damn swell, he stuck his nose in where won’t none his bizness, see. And he said plumb terr’ble things to my pore cousin Bubba, too. He called him some really common things, said he went to the movies and all jest to jack off lil boys is all. And—”

“Gawdam you anyhow, Chester,” roared the lawman, “dint I jest thishere minnit git though tellin’ you whut to go do? You don’t go do whutall I tol’ you, you gone need another meat wagon all to yomse’f. Hear me?”

While they awaited the arrival of the rescue squad, the sheriff went from casualty to casualty, squatting beside each of them and critically examining their injuries, commenting upon them. “Damn, Milo, you done some kinda first-rate fuckin’ job on ole Bubba, here; he ain’t dead, don’t worry none about that, he’s jest done passed out agin’ is all. Two, mebbe three, his front tooths is gone, broke off, it’s purely a wonder you dint cut the holy livin’ fuck outen your knuckles, too. His damn nose is broke for sure and his jaw may be, too, and you can bet your fuckin’ ass his cheekbones is cracked all to hellangone. Tomorra, he gone look like Sam Potter’s whole fuckin’ herd of cows run over him … probly feel like it, too. Mebbe it’ll take some the meanness outen him for a while, but don’t put no money on’t.”

Ungently, he proded at his brother’s thorax with the tip of his billy until he produced a thick scream of pain. He nodded, then, “Yup, Wally’s got one, mebbe two cracked ribs; too bad won’t his fuckin’ shithead. Now, Wally, I done tol’ you time after time to keep ’way from that fuckin’ looney Bubba Rigny. ain’t I? He’s got the kinda crazinesses rubs off on other people, and sometime me or somebody is gonna have to kill him and, like as not, some of whoever’s with him then, too. I don’t want one them to be my baby brother, Wally, is all. If you’d minded me ’fore this, you wouldn’t be there covered in puke with cracked ribs and a dang ball-big fulla scrambled eggs atween yore legs, neither.

“Jerry,” he admonished the man in whose face Milo had flung the whisky, “you ain’t gone go blind jest ’cause you got likker in yore eyes. But you don’t stop rubbin’ and clawin’ a ’em. you jest might wind up with a white cane and a police dawg, yet.”

As he moved onto squat by another body, his peripheral vision registered the sly movement toward the door of the knife fighter, and he commented warningly, “Doug Wilkes, I ain’t give you leave for to go, yet. You get your sad ass back here and put it in a fuckin’ chair, till I says diffrunt. I have to come after you, you gone wish I’d let Milo here work on you, too.”

Lifting the head of an unconscious man by its dirty red hair, he used calloused fingertips to explore the egg-sized lump on the back of it, grunted, then let it go to thump back on the hard floor, turning his attention to the swelling, already-discolored face. “Milo, what the fuck you clobber Eugene Fitzger’ld here with, enyhow, a fuckin’ maul? He’s another good ole boy’s gone be drinkin’ his fuckin’ beer though a fuckin’ straw for a while, I figgers. Thanks to you, old buddy, things is gone be dang quiet and peaceful round abouts thishere county till this bunch gets done healin’ up, I’d say. Layin’ here is five the bigges’ troublemakers I got to plague me … an’ it’s gone be six if one Doug Wilkes don’t quit tryin’ to snag thet fuckin’ knife with his fuckin’ toe.”

Still not looking around, he said. “Billy, take the cuffs outn the pouch on the back of my belt here, and put ’em on Doug; cuff him to that chair, he ain’t trustable. Then step out to my cruiser and git Hannibal on the radio, hear? Tell him I said for to send car number three over here and pick Doug up, book him for ADW and thow him in the fuckin’ lockup there to wait on Judge Daniels. He done drawed that fuckin’ fancy-ass spic shiv of his one time too many, to my way of thinkin’. I think some time on the road gang’d make a whole world of diffrunce in him.”

With the prisoner securely cuffed and sitting glumly in the chair, Chamberlin, still at a squat, turned to face Milo and said, “Damn, but I wish I could git that boy, Billy Crawford, to come to work for me, be one my deppities. He come back from Vietnam with a whole pisspot full of medals, you know, and he allus was a real bright boy, and Lord knows he could use the money, too, him and his lil wife. But he ain’t got him but one and a half legs, no more, see, and he says he might not be able to do ever’thing a whole depity could do, and he’s proud, won’t take nothin’ looks like no kind of char’ty. But if I had a real sharp boy like Billy to run the desk and office and all, I could put that cornball shitheaded Hannibal out in one the cars and …” He broke off as the slight man limped back into the bar.

“Sher’ff,” said the scarred man, “Depity Gregory said that he’d get a car here as quick as he could and he said to tell you he couldn’t find no paper on anybody named Milo Moray, neither.”

“Who the hell ast him to?” demanded Chamberlin, his craggy face darkening. “I needs wants and warrants, it’ll be me asts for wants and warrants!”

The scarred man shuffled a bit uneasily. “Well … he did say Chester had been on yore car radio to him … ?”

Chamberlin nodded shortly. “Figgers. Bubba’s his cousin and he didn’ like watchin’ him get beat to a frazzle here. But it none of it wouldn’t of come down if he’d done like I tol’ him and jest kept Bubba and his crowd of fuckers outen thishere bar of mine. Wal, Mr. Chester’s done had the course, this time ’round, that’s for sure, that’s for dang sure. I’ll have Sampson find me a new bartender as ain’t a fuckin’ relative of nobody in this county, and Chester can start workin’ off his fuckin’ fat ass and beergut out the gravel pits agin.

“Oh, speakin’ of Sampson, Billy, would you step over there and tell him to set up the private room for me and you and Milo to have dinner in tonight? Tell him steaks and lobsters. That sound a’right to you, Milo?”

Later, seated across the table from Chamberlin in the lavishly appointed private dining room of the restaurant, sipping whisky and packing his old, battered pipe, Milo asked. “What ever happened after I left the company, the battalion, there in Delitzsch? Did you all really get into the Bavarian Alps to hunt SS?”

“Aw, naw, Milo.” Chamberlin shook his head, his cornpone speech lessening noticeably, for some reason.

“Seems like the minnit the fuckin’ war ended, ever SS and Nazi and his fuckin’ brother was doin’ his fuckin’ danmedest for to get the hell out of Germany or elst cover his ass so it looked like he hadn’t never been nothing but a pore, rear-rank private or Gefreite or suthin’ in the fuckin’ Wehnnacht or a swabby in the Kriegsmarine or best a pore fuckin’ civilian. Them Oberkommando bugtits might’ve set plans to fight up there to the last bullet, but with old Hitler dead, won’t nobody was willin’ to do no such thing when push come to shove. So the battalion jest squatted right where we was for a while, gettin’ fat and sassy on hot A-rations and all the hootch we could find to liberate, getting in replacements and equipment and all, learnin’ what it felt like to be clean and wear clean clothes agin, standing chickenshit inspections ever now and then and even doing fuckin’ close-order drill, for Chrissakes, and route marches and compass problems, too.

“Right after you left, that fuckin’ John Saxon, he twisted my pore balls some kind of fierce till I let him commission me, then upped me to first looey and give me the comp’ny. He done the same thing to Bernie Cohen and made him my exec. That horny old bastid was a piss-cutter, he was, God bless his old soul.”

“John’s dead, then?” asked Milo sadly. “Do you know when, Chamberlin, or how?”

The lawman nodded. “Yeah happens I do, Milo. The official version goes that while he was at some kinda conference in Paris, he died of a heart attack in his sleep one night.”

“And the unofficial story?” prodded Milo.

Despite his solemnity, Chamberlin could not repress a grin. “John was a BG, by then, you know, and he and a bunch of other division officers had done gone down to Paris to whoop it up some. Story goes, John died in bed, a’right, but not in his damn sleep, not no way. His heart gave out while he was humpin’, hot-shaggin’ some French whore, he was. Died in the saddle, he did, and if you gotta go, damn if that ain’t the way to go—chock full of good food and strong booze and balls-deep inside of a redhot pussy. Bernie and me thought old John would’ve chose that way, if it’d been for him to choose, you know.”

“What about Bernie?” asked Milo, his clearest memory of the man being the sight of him belly-crawling out of the company CP on the day the Hitler Jugend snipers killed Jethro Stiles and Sergeant Webber, with a carbine, a bazooka and two rockets for it.

Chanierlin shrugged. “He made out real good, Milo. Back as early as the first, real Sixtieth Division reunion, back in ’fifty-five, he was running one his fambly’s two men’s stores in Richmond, Virginia. He went back and really did marry that lil gal he all the time was talkin’ about, and by ’fifty-five, he had him five kids and anothern on the way. I didn’t get to no more of the reunions till the big one, down to D.C., back in ’sixty-two, and by then Bernie’d done parlayed his two stores into near twenny in three states and had got to nine kids before him and his wife had figured enough was enough. We ain’t seen each other since then, we use to write to each other now and then, but I jest ain’t got no time anymore, with all the pies I got my fingers into, and I guess he don’t either.”

It was at that point that the scarred man—who had insisted on phoning up a neighbor with a phone, then had had to wait while his wife was fetched to talk to him—returned to the room, saying, “Sher’ff, Depity Fontaine wants you to call him and so does Dr. Kilpatrick over to the hospital.”

With a brusque “Thank’y, Billy; be back fast as I can, Milo,” the big man departed.

Sipping at a beer—he did not smoke and had politely declined any of the whisky—Billy Crawford proved a veritable fountain of information about Sheriff Sherwood Chamberlin, and there was, Milo soon became aware, much to tell of his sometime comrade-in-arms.

“My paw and Sher’ff Chamberlin, they come back to the county from the war ’bout the same time, Mr. Moray, sir. They both went back to work out to the gravel pits, but the sher’ff, he didn’t stay long, for all that Mr. Royal, hisself, offered for to up his pay and make him a supervisor if he would stay. Naw, he moved down to D.C. and went on the cops, there, found out he liked cop work and commenced at taking college courses in it.

“He’d married Betty Wading within a year of coming home, but she just couldn’t seem to get to like living in D.C., so he took a little house out on Yellow Creek Road for her and come out here as often as he could to be with her. Long about ’fifty-two or -three, I think it was, old Sher’ff Quinn, his car blowed a tire on a wet road and rolled over three, four times and burnt up with him in it.

“He’d been sher’ff since way back when, and at his fun’ral, old Mr. Royal took Sher’ff Chamberlin aside and tol’ him he wanted him to come back to the county and be sher’ff.”

“To run for sheriff, Billy?” inquired Milo. “To leave a secure job and run for sheriff?”

“No, sir, Mr. Moray, sir; you don’t unnerstand. See, back then, Mr. Royal, he owned this county—lock, stock and barr’l—just like his paw afore him, and his grandpaw and all. Aw, it was elections and all, for the looks of things, but everbody knowed that whosomever Mr. Royal was for, he was gone win whatever he was runnin’ for. And all the sher’ff would tell him, they say, was he’d think on it and pray on it and let him know ’bout it.”

Milo chuckled. “That sounds just like the Chamberlin I knew, years back, Billy, damned if it doesn’t.”

“Wal,” continued Crawford, “after a couple of months had gone on and the depities as was running things had fucked up real good and proper a Couple times and the fuckin’ state police had had to be called into the county one those times and still no word from the sher’ff, old Mr. Royal, he had hisself drove into D.C., had him a confab with some of the big shots the sher’ff worked for, then, then talked to the sher’ff.

“I hear tell the sher’ff wouldn’t talk to Mr. Royal alone, naw, had a couple his D.C. officers with him and he laid it on the line to Mr. Royal, too, they say. He told the old man that was he to come out here and be sher’ff, he was gone be sher’ff of all the folks in the county, not just a fuckin’ errand boy for the Royal fambly, and that Mr. Royal had best get that straight up front and be ready to sign a witnessed contract that would say that and some other things or he could go back and make one his depities the sher’ff.

“And what happened then, Billy?” asked Milo.

The slight man grinned, took a sip of beer and shook his scar-shiny head once. “Wal, Mr. Royal, he won’t no way use to being talked to that way by hardly nobody and he invited the sher’ff to hell in a fuckin’ leaky bucket and stomped out and drove back out here, is what. But then that very next month, the guvamint mens, they caught a passel of moonshiners in the fuckin’ act … and two of them was county depities. The nextest day after he heard ’bout all that fuckin’ shit, Mr. Royal, he went back into D.C. and ate him a heapin’ helpin’ of crow. He signed ever’thing he was told to sign and when he come back, the sher’ff come with him.”

Crawford took a real swallow of the beer, refilled his glass from the bottle and went on. “The sher’ff, he went th’ough his inher’ted hashup like a dose of salts, Mr. Moray, sir. Of the three depities was left, one was prosecuted and sent to jail for stealing from the county and the other two jest lit out for parts unknown. He brung in three retired D.C. cops to help him hold things down, then got Mr. Royal to twist enough tails to get the state police to take on my paw and four other fellers in the next trooper training class they run.

“He made Mr. Royal buy custom police cruisers with lights and sireens and all, got radios put in them and in the office, laid out reg’lar p’trol patterns on a county map and talked Mr. Royal round to paying the depities enough so’s they didn’t feel ’bliged to steal and take payoffs from roadhouses and cook moonshine jest to make ends meet, no more. Got so, they use to say, ever time the sher’ff he’d call in for another ’pointment for to talk to Mr. Royal, the old man would take to pounding his desk and th’owing things and slamming doors and all and yelling that the sher’ff was out to plumb bankrupt him … but he allus saw the sherff and talked to him and most allus done whatall the sher’ff wanted, too.

“Mr. Royal’s kids had all died before him. His eldest boy was kicked by a hoss and kilt while he was playing polo at some ritzy place in Upper Marlboro, back in the thirties. His next-oldest boy was a bomber pilot that was lost in Europe, somewheres in World War Two, and his youngest boy was kilt in training right at the tag end of that war. His daughter, after she’d got loose from two no-count men she’d married, took to drinking so heavy she’d done had to be locked up in some private sanitarium till she kilt herself one night. Old Miz Royal, she took sick and died ’long bout nineteen and fifty, too, so Mr. Royal didn’ have no close relatives nowhere, and ever’body just figgered when he come to die, too, it was gonna be some kinda bad shake-up all over the county.

“I tell you, Mr. Moray, sir, it was some damn fuckin’ shocked and flat flabbergasted folks here’bouts when his will was read, I tell you, sir. For all he’d spent a lot of time in his last ten or so years yellin’ to ever’body could hear him ’bout how the sher’ff was the worstest mistake he’d ever made, was drownedin’ him and his corporation and the county in red ink, was mollycoddlin’ his damn depities and ridin’ roughshod over the better folks in the county, it was none other than Sher’ff Sherwood Chamberlin he left his controllin’ int’rest in all three his corporations to.”

Milo whistled and shook his head. “So now Chamberlin owns this county, huh?”

“Not really, naw, sir, Mr. Moray,” replied Crawford. “He could, and no fuckin’ mistake about er, was he a mind. But no more’n a week or so after he’d inher’ted ever’thing, he drove down to D.C. and talked to a lot of folks and then talked to folks the first bunch had sent him to and come back up here with a bunch more, one of them a perfessional county manager and the rest either from the state guvamint or the U.S. guvamint. He ’lowed as how it weren’t right and proper for no man to die and jest give a whole county and ever’thing in it to another’n, said it won’t democratic and that he’d fought a war for democracy and was willing to fight as many more as he had to, come to that. He ’lowed as how nobody should be sher’ff for life, neither, and said the next elections was gonna be honest to God real elections with no fixes on nuthin’ or there’d be hell to pay.”

“And yet, I see he’s still county sheriff,” said Milo, puffing at his old pipe.

“All he’s done and seen done for thishere county and all, Mr. Moray, sir,” said Crawford, with feeling, “it jest plumb ain’t no livin’ man anybody’d have for sher’ff but him, Sherwood Chamberlin.”

As if on cue, Sherwood Chamberlin opened the door and came back into the private dining room. His face was solemn and his voice, when he spoke, grim. “Milo, Billy, I just got through talkin’ to Dr. Kilpatrick, over to County Gen’rul. Bubba Rigny was a DOA—dead on arrival at the emergency room.”