SLOW FALL
Edgar Warren Williams
Copyright 2014 Edgar Warren Williams
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1
Sheriff Homer Beane pushed through his office door, grunted, and tossed a plastic bag onto his desk. The contents, dark and heavy, thudded to the center. The Sheriff dropped into a swivel chair behind the desk.
“Fact is, boy, J.B. just up and killed himself. There just aint no more to it.”
He looked down at the translucent plastic, then up and across to the tall man who settled awkwardly into the wooden chair opposite. The tall man's name was Bodie Pickett, his face long and ashen below fine sandy hair. Blue shadows below his hazel eyes suggested fatigue. The Sheriff glared at him for a moment before his eyes shifted back to the object on his desk.
“It aint pretty, I know. But J.B. just stuck this here gun in his mouth and pulled the god damn trigger.”
“Uh-uh. He had powder burns all over his face.”
“It's his gun, boy.”
“Yeah, Homer…”
“It was in his hand and his prints was on it.”
“And God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.”
“Now don't you try and tell me what—”
“Je-sus, Homer… A guy shoots himself in the temple maybe. Or holds a shotgun between his legs and pulls the trigger with his toe or something. Nobody's gonna hold a gun out in front of his face and shoot himself in the mouth.”
“Where you been, boy? They do it all the time.”
“That's just it. They do it in the mouth so they can steady the gun. Hold the muzzle between their teeth, for chrissake. No burns that way. You tell me, Homer, who the hell would hold a gun out six inches in front of their face—”
“I'll tell you who, smart ass—a drunk, that's who. A drunk got a boy too damn busy for his old man, too damn busy being a big city cop or whatever the hell he does to even drop his daddy a line now and again, much less drop by. Nosirree, not no b-i-g city cop like you. Shoot, you aint even got the interest to come see him now and again, now have you? See whether your daddy's dead drunk or just plain dead…”
“Knock it off.”
“Don't you knock-it-off me!”
“Christ.” Pickett looked down and brushed absently at his crumpled trousers. “Why do you think I left?” A blue-grey seersucker suit hung from his narrow frame like a drop cloth over idle machinery. “Five years, Homer. Five years. Aint that enough? I put up with it for as long as I could stand it. No kid oughta have to deal with that, Homer. Not—”
“Don't give me none a that. I'll tell you what a kid oughta do—ever kid. He oughta take care of his own, that's what he oughta do.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing, boy! I don't want nothing from you. And you can believe that! But if you gone talk about J.B. in this office, you gone do it with some respect. You understand me, boy?”
Pickett lowered his eyes and smiled.
Rage colored the Sheriff's face. His chin set. But before he could speak his eyes found the plastic shrouded steel on his desk. He picked it up, turned it over and around as if uncertain what it was or what to do with it. Between his massive hands, it looked tiny. His shoulders fell with his features. And Sheriff Homer Beane melted back into his chair seemingly a much smaller man.
“He like to drink himself dead a hundred times over. Wouldn't take no help neither. God damn pig-headed… Shoot.” He spun the swivel chair to the jalousied window behind him and stared out. The warm air stirred. Palmetto fingers, black against the dirty grey sky, played at the screen, their dry rasp lost in the clatter of the cricket's pre-dawn song.
“It's not right, Homer. You know it's not. Makes no sense.”
“Now I don't want no more a that, boy.” Sheriff Beane pushed back around. “And don't you come around here telling me what's right, boy—not you. Now you may be hot stuff down in Miama, and we all know you a big city cop—”
“Was.”
“Huh?”
“Was. Quit a year ago.”
“Quit?” Beane looked at Pickett in disbelief. “Why the hell you go and do that?”
“Dunno. Burnt out, I guess. Something.”
“Well burnt out just won't cut it, boy, will it?” Disbelief became contempt. “Shoot, I been sheriff of Wekiwa County since before you was born and I aint burnt out once—not nearly.”
Pickett looked up. He pulled one corner of his mouth to the side.
“That's fine, Homer, real fine. Sure the folks of Wekiwa County's proud as punch.”
“Goddammit, boy—” Sheriff Beane shot up from his chair and leaned across the desk and leveled a finger the size of parsnip at the thin man on the other side.
“I knew your daddy before your mama did. Hell, the last five year I was the only one knew him—and that includes kin. You understand me, boy? You weren't round then, were you? Not when your daddy drunk hisself so sick he couldn't remember who he was and needed someone to clean him up an put him down? It was near on ever day like that come the last few months. Who the hell you think did that for your daddy, boy? It weren't no god damn ex-big-city-cop come round to tell us poor crackers what's what and who's who.”
“For Chrissake, Homer—”
“It weren't you, boy—that's for god damn sure! It was me.” Sheriff Beane thumped his barreled chest. “Me. And don't you never tell me what your daddy'd do or not do. You hear me, boy?”
“Course I hear you, Homer, I'm not deaf.”
“Never, god damn you! You don't—” Sheriff Beane looked away. “Shoot.” He straightened. “Now get, boy. Go take care a your daddy, you hear? You do it right, too. You don't come close, boy… You—” He pushed out of the chair and turned away from Pickett back to the window. “Damn.” He stuffed thick hands into his chinos and glared into the early morning haze.
The light slanted through the live oaks now, the breeze dead before the morning sun. Spanish moss hung dusky and limp.
Pickett stared at the back of the sheriff's thick neck, brown and cracked like baked clay. Spikes of yellow-grey hair hung down over it. Dark stains spread beneath the broad shoulders. The sheriff sighed.
“In the end… Hell, I guess he just figured the liquor weren't fast enough.” He sank back into his chair, spun around, looked at the gun, then up. “J.B.'s on the bottle for what, fifteen, twenty year?”
Pickett's eyebrows rose with his shoulders.
“Since your mama died, anyways. Good woman, your mama. Good woman.”
“J.B. fixed that.”
The Sheriff straightened. “What'd you say, boy?”
“I said, J.B. fixed her. He did, didn't he.”
“Wha—”
“He killed her, Homer. You know that better than anyone.” Pickett stared past the sheriff and through the window, his face blank.
“What you talking about?”
“J.B. never forgave himself. That's why he drank.” Pickett's hazel eyes met the Sheriff's, but appeared to see nothing but whatever hid behind them. The Sheriff pulled away, as if from that hidden thing.
“That's enough a that.”
“He killed her sure as if he put that gun to her head.”
“Come on now… . Your mama died in Belle Haven Memorial. And that's a fact. Doctor said it was—well, I can't rightly remember… . But it was whatever the hell they said it was.”
“But you and I both know what did it.”
“Now, boy—”
“No, Homer—I was there. I know. And J.B. knew. And it wasn't in a hospital.
”
“Now, you can't go holding J.B. responsible for that. It was—well…”
“Did you know, Homer?”
“Know?”
“Christ, Homer, they're both dead. I just wanna know. Did you know about J.B. and that woman—what was her name?”
Sheriff Homer Beane looked down and sighed, deeply.
“Hudgins. Betty Hudgins. Yeah, I knew. But it weren't nothing, son,…”
“Nothing? It killed Mama.”
“You aint gone blame your daddy for that now, boy.”
“No?”
“A man can't help himself sometimes, son. And that Hudgins woman… I mean, boy, she sure as hell had something to do with—”
“Hell, Homer… She was just trying to make a buck best way she could. Her husband got himself killed in Korea or something. Had a couple of kids, I heard later. Hell…”
“Now don't go putting it all off on your daddy. Liquor'll do all sorts of things to a man.”
“J.B. hardly drank before that, and you know it, Homer. Christ, he hardly did anything else afterwards.”
“Shoot,” said the Sheriff under his breath. He placed the bag on the desk, then pushed it to one side. His thick fingers flexed on the blotter. “Look… Now, if it was his fault—and I aint saying it was—he must of been packing a whole heap of guilt around these last few years. Tween that and the whiskey, a bullet might a seemed pretty near on like Heaven itself.”
“No.”
The Sheriff started at the vehemence of the other's voice.
“No,” Pickett repeated, the mask of indifference suddenly fallen away, “he would have told me first. He would have had to tell me, to admit it, tell me it was his fault. He never once mentioned it. Never. He—he owed me that. He couldn't have just—”
A large object fell against the glass partition.
“Hold on, now,” cried someone on the other side now, “He got someone in there!”
The door burst open and a conservatively dressed man with a flushed face stumbled in, dragging a deputy behind him.
“I told him to wait, Sheriff. I—”
Homer slapped both palms down flat on his desk. “Well don't this just make my day. Must be a full moon or something.”
The flushed man breathed hard. He glanced at Bodie Pickett, then back to Sheriff Beane. Then at Pickett again.
Pickett looked mildly amused.
“Sheriff Beane—” The flushed man drew himself up to almost six feet. “I am a tax-paying citizen of this county, and—”
“And if you got family problems you take them down the hall to H.R.S., you don't come pestering me. They aint nothing I can do for you. I told you that the last hundred times you come in here. Now get.”
“I…” The man's eyes moved nervously between Pickett and the Sheriff as if attempting to lock on to a target. They settled on the sheriff. “I demand,” he demanded, “that you do something!”
Homer Beane leapt to his feet. The tendons in his neck stood out like girders. “You don't demand squat, friend! Je-sus—” He looked to the deputy and waved his hand toward the flushed man. “Will you get him out of here, Skeeter?” He flicked his head at Pickett. “That one too. Hell. Like I aint got enough to do as it is. . .”
Pickett laughed out loud. “And what's that, Homer?”
“I tell you, boy, I got enough crack come into Wekiwa County to fry your brain just thinking about it. And I aint got no more time to waste with the likes of you—Jesus, Skeeter, get them outta here. Both of them.”
The deputy called Skeeter moved toward Pickett; but then, as Pickett's eyes narrowed and his chin rose, he changed his mind and took the flushed man's arm. The man started. He shook the deputy off and backed out of the office, all the while fixing the Sheriff with a stare of outraged dignity.
The deputy called Skeeter followed, snickering. “Come again, Rog.”
Scattered guffaws mingled with the clack of typewriters as the flushed man marched through the Sheriff Department Annex.
Bodie Pickett followed the man out a steel door into the parking lot behind the courthouse. Two white patrol cars waited there, solar ovens pre-heating for the afternoon shift. The flushed man stopped between them and put a hand to his forehead.
Pickett walked past into the sun. He stopped, shuffled his feet on the hot asphalt. “Nice fella, Homer Beane. Real nice.”
The flushed man looked up. “Bo?” He leaned forward, staring. “Good Lord—Bodie Pickett!”
Pickett looked back over his shoulder, his face blank.
“I'll be damned… Roger—” The flushed man tapped his chest. “Roger Mooring. Remember?”
Pickett looked down at the pavement, breathed deeply, then turned, extending a long thin hand. “Yeah, sure. How are you?”
“God,” said Roger, grabbing the hand with both of his own. “How long's it been?”
“Been awhile. A good long while.”
Roger's face suddenly fell. “Gosh, I'm sure sorry about your dad. It was in the morning paper… Must have been horrible.”
Roger paused.
When Pickett didn't tell him how horrible it was, Roger showed his teeth again, threw his arm over Pickett's shoulder, looked embarrassed, took it off again, and said:
“God, it's good to see you, Bo, it truly is.”
He sounded as though he meant it. Pickett looked down at his shoes, then back to Roger.
Bodie Pickett smiled too.
2
“Look, she's all I got.”
Roger Mooring stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to Bodie Pickett. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief pulled from his blue double-knit blazer. “I'm pretty much a failure as a father, I know that. But, jeez—I can tell when something's wrong. And something's wrong. Something serious.”
Pickett leaned his narrow shoulders into a wood framed glass door. It read, J. B. PICKETT—ATTORNEY AT LAW. On the wall between the door and the display window of the 5-and-10 next door, a tarnished metal plaque read: DELEON BUILDING/A.D. 1943.
“Maybe she's just growing up,” said Pickett.
Roger walked past him into the dark and started up the stairs. “She's seventeen,” he said, as if that made all the difference.
Pickett glanced back out into the sunlight. He took a deep breath, turned and followed the other up the dark stairs. At the top, the two turned into a narrow hall. A frosted glass door opened into an old-fashioned waiting room. An inner door stood open to a dark office. Pickett dropped to a leather couch across from the office door. He stretched out his long legs, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared at his toes.
Roger glanced into the dark office.
“Is, uh, that where it happened. I-I mean where your Dad—”
“Yeah. He was sitting at the desk there.”
Roger glanced nervously from Pickett back into the office at the dark stain on the wall behind the desk. He started to say something when Pickett said: “You're talking about her like she's a kid, Rog.” Pickett shrugged. “She isn't.”
Roger opened his mouth again, but said nothing. He stood facing the other, staring. After a moment he started nervously, looked behind him at a leather easy chair that matched the couch and sat down. His hands lay in his lap. He stared at them as though they were no longer his.
“You, uh, you're still with Miami P.D.?”
“No, I quit a year ago.”
“Oh. Are you still in… Police work?”
Pickett sighed, bent his legs and hung one over the other. He draped a long arm along the back of the sofa.
“Repo's, skip traces—insurance work mostly. Some divorce, but not much. Not much divorce anymore. It's that damn no-fault law—”
“You're a private investigator then.”
“What? Yeah, that's what the license says, anyway.”
Roger's gaze wavered under the other's sharp hazel eyes. He said nothing. Pickett exhaled slowly.
“Roger, what is it you want?”
Roger started.
“Well, I want you to—I mean, well, I want to hire you to find out what the problem is. With my daughter, I mean.”
Pickett opened his mouth, but Roger cut in.
“It's something serious, and, well, it—it…” Roger stopped and knitted his brow at the other.
Pickett shrugged.
Roger began a long story.
Pickett leaned back and watched the tarnished brass paddle fan turn slowly, stirring the cobwebs in the shadowed corners. His eyes moved past Roger to the office door.
Roger talked on.
In the narrowing light behind J.B.'s desk, death stained the wall brown.