“What if,” Sally says, stubbing out her smoke, “all the madness is buried in the language and you can’t get it out?”
He’s not sure what she means (that voice in the ditch?), but as he finds himself staring at her FAITH is BELIEVING WHAT you KNOW AIN’T so T-shirt, he says: “In lines like that, you mean?” She stretches the shirt out away from her tits as if reading it for the first time. No bra under there. The shirt collapses back over her nipples, which are the sexiest thing about her. If Angela were wearing it, to read it you’d have to walk those hills a letter at a time. Though she never would. Not much wit in that girl. “Where do you find those funky tees, Sal? Different one every time I see you.”
“I make them. But they don’t hold up well in the wash.”
“You made that up, too?” he asks, pointing.
“No, that’s Mark Twain. Or at least he got credit for it. Goes back to the Greeks, I imagine, or more likely the Babylonians. Or the guys before them who didn’t have anybody writing down what they said.”
“Great. Mark Twain. You’ve finally named someone I’ve read.”
“Huckleberry Finn?”
“No, I couldn’t get through that one. Tom Sawyer.”
“A kind of role model, I suppose.”
“I did think of him as pretty cool. And we had the same name. I especially liked the snuggle with what’s-her-name in the cave. Lights out, pissing herself with terror, ready for anything. When you’re ten years old, that’s pretty hot stuff.”
“You must have still been in your Tom Sawyer phase when you tried to scare the pants off me with that end-of-the-world line back in high school.”
“Did I? Hah. Did it work?”
“Yes, it got me to praying. I was still in my Aunt Polly phase.”
“You know, they always said that though Tom seemed like a rascal, really he was innocent. But that’s not true. Really he wasn’t.”
“No, neither was Becky. They were both just dumb.”
Ted pulls a chair up at the mayor’s table in Mick’s Bar & Grill and orders up the usual. Mumbled greetings around. His fellow civic leaders. They’re a sorry lot, for the most part, but they’re what he has to work with, and he somehow has to mold them into a team. Several of them are on the NOWC steering committee and he lets them know, over his bowl of thin flavorless soup and a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, about the meeting on Wednesday to work up new plans for the Fourth. “It’s not a sure thing, but Governor Kirkpatrick is out on the hustings that day and said he’d try to fit us in.” What the governor actually said was, “It’s an election year, Ted. You’ve got problems down there. I don’t want them to rub off on me.” But he also needs Ted’s annual contribution to his campaign fund, so he didn’t say no. Mort Whimple, the fire chief, wants to know what the hell hustings are, and Elliott from his perch at the bar says muddily that it’s where you graze sheep. “You know,” he sings, raising his highball glass of iced gin, “‘Home, home on the hustings…!’” Maury tells him Jim’s workweek is now down to an hour a day, and that one not worth much. “The governor offered up some ways the state might help us out and he would use the occasion to announce them.” What Kirk suggested was that they were looking for a location for a maximum security prison. It would take some selling. Doesn’t exactly enhance the neighborhood, but it adds jobs. Ted replied that this was a good place for it. There was an available work force and they could also help fill it.
When he mentions inviting the new prospective owners of the old West Condon Hotel to the celebrations on the Fourth, Mayor Maury Castle mashes out his cigar and growls in his P.A. system voice: “The Roma Historical Society. Who are those guys? I got a feeling it was the Roma Historical Society just got us our new cop.”
Whom Ted has seen this morning over at the police station. Vince Bonali’s loutish son Charlie. Billed hat down over his nose like a Marine sergeant’s, snapping his jaws and fingers, seemingly impatient with the slow pace of justice. Might be useful. Chief Romano is a weak man and things could get rough. Romano’s number two, Monk Wallace, has been on the force forever and is reliable enough, but a slow-moving sort who likes to just sit and chew and watch the world go by. The other two officers are ex-miners, post-disaster charity hires — Louie Testatonda, a soft beanbag of a fellow, and the night duty cop, Bo Bosticker, a drowsy dimwit. They might need a guy like Charlie. By the time Ted arrived this morning, all those arrested Saturday night had already been released by order of deputy sheriff Calvin Smith, pending further investigations by the district attorney. All but Abner Baxter. Romano is holding him on old charges from five years ago, including jumping bail on murder charges and the destructive assault on St. Stephen’s. Dee is still upset about that. Baxter could be heard railing at them from his cell, promising terrible retribution, if not in this world, then the next. When Ted asked what was going on out at the camp, the chief said that Baxter had been evicted a month or so ago over something involving his motorcycle son and his pals. That gang was gone, but the old man remained in the area and was still unloading his usual Bible-slapping crappola in the fields around. What happened Saturday night was apparently part of some kind of feud going on, and it has gotten to the point where they’ve started shooting at each other. One of the Coates boys ended up with buckshot in his backside and according to the sheriff a lot of shots were fired in both directions. Cause enough to close the camp down. If Puller won’t do it, maybe the state will. Ted promised Dee a prosecutorial brief from the city to give him adequate cause to hold Baxter. He’d like to keep the preacher penned up and is disappointed the others have been let out. He wonders if there’s some sort of discord in the sheriff’s office and if there’s some way to use it if there is.
Enos Beeker, the hardware store owner, asks him now if he’d heard about Pat Suggs’ brain attack, and he tells them he’s just come from the hospital. “He’s out of intensive care and into a private room, but he has taken a crippling hit.” When Doc Lewis emerged from Suggs’ private room, Ted caught a glimpse of his former home care nurse, Bernice Filbert, dressed something like a World War I battlefield nurse, at Suggs’ bedside. Bernice started when she saw him and hurried to close the door again. He glared at her, smiling coldly, as though to suggest she’s in for it. And she is. Without Suggs’ help, she’s headed to prison for embezzlement and grand larceny. Burly plaid-shirted man with a thick black beard in there, too. Maudie, a nurse he knew from his own high school days, passed by and told him that was Mr. Suggs’ strip mine boss, Ross McDaniel. “Hardshell libertarian,” she said, inventing another sect. A cute freckle-faced kid back in school with a nice body who put out generously, something of a legend at the Baptist summer church camps out at No-Name, now as wide as she is tall, her dry hair thinning out, her freckles spreading. Still cheerful, though, as she always was, with a flair for the soap-operatic. Learned from her about the Collins girl. “When they brought her in, she looked like a skeleton with tissue-paper skin stretched over, and she’s still bad off. She’s trying to die. Has to be force fed.”
He passes on some of this to the klatch in Mick’s. Not all of it. Shaping the news to his purposes. Including in, including out. The way newspapers and news magazines work, inventing history. Something Miller said, some years ago. Probably in here, over a charred hamburger. He sure did that, damn him. His invented history is still being spun out. Miller did what he could to ruin this town and should have been tarred and feathered on his way out. Ted sometimes misses him, though.