Child of God

  Ain't you cold?

  What the hell is it to you?

  It ain't a damn thing to me.

  Ballard had risen and stood above her with the rifle.

  Where's your clothes at?

  She rose up and staggered backwards and sat down hard in the leaves. Then she got up again. She stood there weaving and glaring at him with her puffed and heavylidded eyes. Son of a bitch, she said. Her eyes were casting about. Spying a rock, she lunged and scrabbled it up and stood him off with it.

  Ballard's eyes narrowed. You better put down that rock, he said.

  You make me.

  I said to put it down.

  She drew the rock back menacingly. He took a step forward. She heaved the rock and hit him in the chest with it and then covered her face with her hands. He slapped her so hard it spun her back around facing him. She said: I knowed you'd do me thisaway.

  Ballard touched his hand to his chest and glanced down quickly to check for blood but there was none. She had her face buried in her hands. He took hold of the strap of her gown and gave it a good yank. The thin material parted to the waist. She turned loose of her face and grabbed at the gown. Her nipples were hard and bluelooking with the cold. Quit, she said.

  Ballard seized a fistful of the wispy rayon and snatched it. Her feet came from under her and she sat in the trampled frozen weeds. He folded the garment under his arm and stepped back. Then he turned and went on down the road. She sat stark naked on the ground and watched him go, calling various names after him, none his.

  FATE'S ALL RIGHT. HE'S plainspoken but I like him. I've rode with him a lot of times. I remember one night up on the Frog Mountain at the turnaround there they was a car parked up there and Fate put the lights on em and walked on up there. The old boy in the car was all yessir and nosir. Had this girl with him. He ast the old boy for his license and the old boy scratched around for the longest time, couldn't find his pocketbook nor nothin. Fate finally told him, said: Step out here. Said the old girl settin there was white as a sheet. Well, the old boy opened the door and out he steps. Fate looked at him and then he hollered at me, said: John, come here and see this.

  I went on up there and the old boy is standin by the side of the car lookin down and the sheriff is lookin down, got the light on him. We're all standin there lookin down at this old boy and he's got his britches on inside out. Pockets hangin outside all around. Looked crazier'n hell. Sheriff just told him to go on. Ast him if he could drive like that. That's the kind of feller he is.

  WHEN BALLARD CAME OUT onto the porch there was a thin man with a collapsed jaw squatting in the yard waiting for him.

  What say Darfuzzle, said Ballard.

  What say Lester.

  He sounded like a man with a mouthful of marbles, articulating his goatbone underjaw laboriously, the original one having been shot away.

  Ballard squatted on his heels in the yard opposite the visitor. They looked like constipated gargoyles.

  Say you found that old gal up on the turnaround?

  Ballard sniffed. What gal? he said.

  Thatn was left up yonder. Had on a nightgown.

  Ballard pulled at the loose sole of his shoe. I seen her, he said.

  She's went to the sheriff.

  She has?

  The other man turned and spat and looked back toward Ballard. They done arrested Pless.

  That's your all's lookout. I didn't have nothin to do with her.

  She says you did.

  She's a lyin sack of green shit.

  The visitor rose. I just thought I'd tell ye, he said. You do what you want.

  THE HIGH SHERIFF OF SEVIER County came out through the courthouse doors and stood on the portico surveying the gray lawn below with the benches and the Sevier County pocketknife society that convened there to whittle and mutter and spit. He rolled a cigarette and replaced the package of tobacco in the breast pocket of his tailored shirt and lit the cigarette and descended the stairs, a proprietary squint to his eyes as he studied the morning aspect of this small upland county seat.

  A man opened the door and called down to him and the sheriff turned.

  Mr Gibson's huntin you, the man said.

  You don't know where I'm at.

  Okay.

  And where the hell is Cotton?

  He's went to get the car.

  He better get his ass on up here.

  Yonder he comes now, Sheriff.

  The sheriff turned and went on out to the street.

  Mornin Sheriff.

  Mornin.

  Mornin Sheriff.

  Hey. How you.

  He flipped the cigarette into the street and stepped into the car and pulled the door to. Mornin Sheriff, said the driver.

  Let's go get the little fucker, said the sheriff.

  Me and Bill Parsons was goin to go birdhuntin this mornin but I don't reckon we will now.

  Bill Parsons eh?

  He's got a couple of good dogs.

  O yeah. He always has the best dogs. I remember a dog he had one time named Suzie he said was a hellatious bird dog. He let her out of the trunk and I looked at her and I said: I don't believe Suzie's feelin too good. He looked at her and felt her nose and all. Said she looked all right to him. I told him, said: I just don't believe she's real well today. We set out and hunted all afternoon and killed one bird. Started walk-in back to the car and he says to me, Bill says: You know, it's funny you noticin old Suzie was not feelin good today. The way you spotted it. I said: Well, Suzie was sick today. He said yes, she was. I said: Suzie was sick yesterday. Suzie has always been sick. Suzie will always be sick. Suzie is a sick dog.

  HE WATCHED THE SHERIFF stop out on the road a quarter mile away and he watched him ford the sheer wall of dried briers and weeds at the edge of the road and come on with arms and elbows aloft, treading down the brush. When he got to the house his pressed and tailored chinos were dusty and wilted and he was covered with dead beggarlice and burrs and he was not happy.

  Ballard stood on the porch.

  Let's go, said the sheriff.

  Where to?

  You better get your ass down off that porch.

  Ballard spat and unleaned himself from the porch-post. You got it all, he said. He came down the steps, his hands in the rear pockets of his jeans.

  Man of leisure like yourself, the sheriff said. You oughtn't to mind helpin us workers unscramble a little misunderstandin. This way, mister.

  This way, said Ballard. They's a path if you don't know it.

  BALLARD IN A VARNISHED oak swivelchair. HE leans back. The door is pebblegrain glass. Shadows loom upon it. The door opens. A deputy comes in and turns around. There is a woman behind him. When she sees Ballard she starts to laugh. Ballard is craning his neck to see her. She comes through the door and stands looking at him. He looks down at his knee. He begins to scratch his knee.

  The sheriff got up from his desk. Shut the door, Cotton.

  This son of a bitch here, the woman said, pointing at Ballard. Where the hell did you find him at?

  Is he not the one?

  Well. Yes. He's the one, the one ... It's them other two sons of bitches I want jailed. This son of a bitch here ... She threw up her hands in disgust.

  Ballard scuffed one heel along the floor. I ain't done nothin, he said.

  Did you want to make a charge against this man or not?

  Hell yes I do.

  What did you want to charge him with?

  Rape, by god.

  Ballard laughed woodenly.

  Salt and battery too, you son of a bitch.

  She ain't nothin but a goddamned old whore.

  The old whore slapped Ballard's mouth. Ballard came up from the swivelchair and began to choke her. She brought her knee up into his groin. They grappled. They fell backward upsetting a tin wastebasket. A halltree toppled with its load of coats. The sheriff's deputy seized Ballard by the collar. Ballard wheeled. The woman was screaming. The three of them crashed to the floor.

&n
bsp; The deputy jerked Ballard's arm up behind him. He was livid.

  You goddamned bitch, Ballard said.

  Get her, the sheriff said. Get ...

  The deputy had one knee in the small of Ballard's back. The woman had risen. She cocked her elbows and drew back her foot and kicked Ballard in the side of the head.

  Here now, said the deputy. She kicked again. He grabbed her foot and she sat down in the floor. Goddamn it Sheriff, he said, get her or him one, will ye?

  You sons of bitches, said Ballard. He was almost crying. Goddamn all of ye.

  Bet me, said the woman. I'll kick his goddamned cods off. The son of a bitch.

  NINE DAYS AND NIGHTS in the Sevier County jail. Whitebeans with fatback and boiled greens and baloney sandwiches on light-bread. Ballard thought the fare not bad. He even liked the coffee.

  They had a nigger in the cell opposite and the nigger used to sing all the time. He was being held on a fugitive warrant. After a day or two Ballard fell into talking with him. He said: What's your name?

  John, said the nigger. Nigger John.

  Where you from. You a fugitive ain't ye?

  I'm from Pine Bluff Arkansas and I'm a fugitive from the ways of this world. I'd be a fugitive from my mind if I had me some snow.

  What you in for?

  I cut a motherfucker's head off with a pocketknife.

  Ballard waited to be asked his own crime but he wasn't asked. After a while he said: I was supposed to of raped this old girl. She wasn't nothin but a whore to start with.

  White pussy is nothin but trouble.

  Ballard agreed that it was. He guessed he'd thought so but he'd never heard it put that way.

  The black sat on his cot and rocked back and forth. He crooned:

  Flyin home

  Fly like a motherfucker

  Flyin home

  All the trouble I ever was in, said Ballard, was caused by whiskey or women or both. He'd often heard men say as much.

  All the trouble I ever was in was caused by gettin caught, said the black.

  After a week the sheriff came down the corridor one day and took the nigger away. Flyin home, sang the nigger.

  You'll be flyin all right, said the sheriff. Home to your maker.

  Fly like a motherfucker, sang the nigger.

  Take it easy, called Ballard.

  The nigger didn't say if he would or wouldn't.

  The next day the sheriff came again and stopped in front of Ballard's cage and peered in at him. Ballard peered back. The sheriff had a straw in his teeth and he took it out to speak. He said: Where was that woman from?

  What woman?

  That one you raped.

  You mean that old whore?

  All right. That old whore.

  I don't know. How the hell would I know where she was from?

  Was she from Sevier County?

  I don't know, damn it.

  The sheriff looked at him and put the straw back in his teeth and went away.

  They came for Ballard the next morning, turnkey and bailiff.

  Ballard, the turnkey said.

  Yeah.

  He followed the bailiff down the corridor. The turnkey followed. They went downstairs, Ballard easing himself along the iron bannister pipe. They went outside and across a parking lot to the courthouse.

  They sat him in a chair in an empty room. He could see a thin strip of color and movement through the gap of the double doors and he listened vaguely to legal proceedings. After an hour or so the bailiff came in and crooked his finger at Ballard. Ballard rose and went through the doors and sat in a church-bench behind a little rail.

  He heard his name. He closed his eyes. He opened them again. A man in a white shirt at the desk looked at him and looked at some papers and then he looked at the sheriff. Since when? he said.

  It's been a week or better.

  Well tell him to get on out of here.

  The bailiff came over and opened the gate and leaned toward Ballard. You can go, he said.

  Ballard stood up and went through the gate and across the room toward a door with daylight in it and across a hall and out through the front door of the Sevier County courthouse. No one called him back. A drooling man at the door held out a greasy hat at him and mumbled something. Ballard went down the steps and crossed the street.

  Uptown he walked around in the stores. He went into the postoffice and looked through the sheaves of posters. The wanted stared back with surly eyes. Men of many names. Their tattoos. Legends of dead loves inscribed on perishable flesh. A prevalence of blue panthers.

  He was standing in the street with his hands in his back pockets when the sheriff walked up.

  What's your plans now? said the sheriff.

  Go home, said Ballard.

  And what then. What sort of meanness have you got laid out for next.

  I ain't got any laid out.

  I figure you ought to give us a clue. Make it more fair. Let's see: failure to comply with a court order, public disturbance, assault and battery, public drunk, rape. I guess murder is next on the list ain't it? Or what things is it you've done that we ain't found out yet.

  I ain't done nothin, Ballard said. You just got it in for me.

  The sheriff had his arms folded and he was rocking slightly on his heels, studying the sullen reprobate before him. Well, he said. I guess you better get your ass on home. These people here in town won't put up with your shit.

  I ain't ast nothin from nobody in this chickenshit town.

  You better get your ass on home, Ballard.

  Ain't a goddamn thing keepin me here cept you goin on at the mouth.

  The sheriff stepped from in front of him. Ballard went on by and up the street. About halfway along the block he looked back. The sheriff was still watching him.

  You kindly got henhouse ways yourself, Sheriff, he said.

  HE HAD THAT RIFLE FROM when he was just almost a boy. He worked for old man Whaley settin fenceposts at eight cents a post to buy it. Told me he quit midmornin right in the middle of the field the day he got enough money. I don't remember what he give for it but I think it come to over seven hundred posts.

  I'll say one thing. He could by god shoot it. Hit anything he could see. I seen him shoot a spider out of a web in the top of a big redoak one time and we was far from the tree as from here to the road yonder.

  They run him off out at the fair one time. Wouldn't let him shoot no more.

  I remember back a number of years, talkin about fairs, they had a old boy come through would shoot live pigeons with ye. Him with a rifle and you with a shotgun. Or anything else. He must of had a truckload of pigeons. Had a boy out in the middle of a field with a crateful and he'd holler and the boy'd let one slip and he'd raise his rifle and blam, he'd dust it. Misters, he could strictly make the feathers fly. We'd never seen the like of shootin. They was a bunch of us pretty hotshot birdhunters lost our money out there fore we got it figured out. What he was doin, this boy was loadin the old pigeons up the ass with them little firecrackers. They'd take off like they was home free and get up about so high and blam, it'd blow their asses out. He'd just shoot directly he seen the feathers fly. You couldn't tell it. Or I take that back, somebody did finally. I don't remember who it was. Reached and grabbed the rifle out of the old boy's hand fore he could shoot and the old pigeon just went blam anyways. They like to tarred and feathered him over it.

  That reminds me of this carnival they had up in Newport one time. They was a feller up there had this ape or gorilla, ever what it was, stood about so high. It was nigh tall as Jimmy yonder. They had it to where you could put on boxin gloves and get in this ring with it and if you could stay in there with him three minutes they'd give ye fifty dollars.

  Well, these old boys I was with they kept at me and kept at me. I had this little old gal on my arm kept lookin up at me about like a poleaxed calf. These old boys eggin me on. I think we'd drunk a little whiskey too, I disremember. Anyways I got to studyin this here ape and I th
ought: Well hell. He ain't big as me. They had him up there on a chain. I remember he was settin on a stool eatin a head of red cabbage. Directly I said: Shit. Raised my old hand and told the feller I'd try it one time.

  Well, they got us back there and got the gloves on me and all, and this feller that owned the ape, he told me, said: Now don't hit him too hard out there cause if you do you'll make him mad and you'll be in some real trouble. I thought to myself: Well he's tryin to save his ape a whippin is what he's tryin to do. Tryin to protect his investment.

  Anyways, I come out and climbed in the ring there. Felt pretty much a fool, all my buddies out there a hollerin and goin on and I looked down at this little gal I was with and give her a big wink and about that time they brought the old ape out. Had a muzzle on him. He kindly looked me over. Well, they called out our names and everthing, I forget what the old ape's name was, and this old boy rung a big dinner bell and I stepped out and circled the old ape. Showed him a little footwork there. He didn't look like he was goin to do nothin much so I reached out and busted him one. He just kindly looked at me. Well, I didn't do nothin but square off and hit him again. Popped him right in the side of the head. When I done that his old head jerked back and his eyes went kindly funny and I said: Well, well, how sweet it is. I'd done spent the fifty dollars. I ducked around and went to hit him again and about that time he jumped right on top of my head and crammed his foot in my mouth and like to tore my jaw off. I couldn't even holler for help. I thought they never would get that thing off of me.

  BALLARD AMONG THE FAIRGOERS stepping gingerly through the mud. Down sawdust lanes among the pitchtents and lights and cones of cottoncandy and past painted stalls with tiers of prizes and dolls and animals dangling from guyropes. A ferriswheel stood against the sky like a gaudy bracelet and little hawkwinged goatsuckers shuttled among the upflung strobes of light with gape mouths and weird cries.