Glenn Smith was easy. He was a heavy drinker. Watching him, I found out he spent a lot of time in the Parokeet Tavern. He had a habit of parking his car on the street behind it, then walking up a narrow alley to the Parokeet's back door. Sometimes he was still in uniform.
He came back down the alley late one night, staggering a little. I took him from behind, and I lumped him good. I kicked in a few of his ribs, finally, and left him crawling on the ground like a wingless beetle. He never even got a look at me. I left the dimly lit alley, and I felt good all the way home.
The next morning Chief Mullen came to school and got me out of my history class. We went outside and sat in his car, where he talked for a long time. He didn't accuse me of anything directly. I knew he couldn't, because Glenn Smith hadn't seen me when he could recognize anyone.
The chief went on about the idiocy of people who attempted to take the law into their own hands. He talked like a damn fool. I'd. taken the law into my own hands, and I didn't feel like an idiot. I liked the feeling. When the chief saw the expression on my face, he stopped talking and opened his car door. I went back into the classroom.
Walter Cummin's took longer. Better than a month later I discovered his twice-a-week visits to a married woman's home a mile out of town. When I had his visits clocked reliably, I caught him coming out of her back door one night. I smothered him in wet potato sacking, and I got him down.
After they found him, an ambulance brought him into town.
Chief Mullen was at our house before breakfast the next morning. He was really warm under the collar. He asked me point-blank what I knew about Cummin's. My father saved me the trouble of lying. He jumped in and wanted to know if the chief was accusing me of anything. Either make a charge you can support, my father told Chief Mullen, or get out of my house. The chief hesitated, then left, red in the face. I almost laughed. My father didn't ask me anything afterward. He didn't seem comfortable with me.
Two down and one to go.
I smiled at Sergeant Edwards every time I passed him on the street. Every time I smiled, he scowled. He knew. I wanted him to know. His scowls were intended to let me know he wasn't letting his nerves get jumped up by any crackpot kid. lie watched himself, though. He watched himself so well I couldn't get anywhere near him with the right leverage. v
School finished and I graduated, barely. My college entrance credits were all shot. I'd have to pass exams to get in. I didn't take the exams. I hung around all summer, into the fall. My father, exasperated, twice demanded that I get a job if I had no intention of continuing my education. I paid no attention. I had a job. A job I had to do before I could look for another one.
Harry Coombs cornered me late one Saturday night when I was coming out of a cafe on his beat. He herded me to one side. "I suppose I'm lucky they sent me away before they went into the cell with you that day?" he inquired. prodding me in the chest with his nightstick.
I gunned at him without answering. "They're going to sit you down in a square-looking chair one of these days, kid," he told me. "They'll turn on the juice, and there'll be a sizzling noise while they burn your ass up, but you won't hear it. Think it over." He walked away from me.
Harry Coombs and his predictions didn't bother me either.
By October I knew more about Sergeant Edwards than his wife did, but he never gave me an opening. I began to get restless. I didn't know what I was going to do after I got through with him, but I wanted to get it over with and find out.
Then early in November we had an unexpected sleet and ice-storm. Edwards mounted his porch steps that night, careful of the slippery footing, his chin shrunken into his coat collar. He never saw the piece of iron pipe I got him with before he reached his front door. When I finished with the pipe, I rolled him back down his porch steps and went home. Edwards was lucky. Someone found him before he froze to death.
I didn't find that out until morning. At least the clock said it was morning, but it was still dark outside. A police cruiser came by for my father and me. They hardly gave us time to dress. My father kept asking them what had happened. They wouldn't say anything, and my father kept sneaking looks at me from the corner of his eye.
At the station Chief Mullen really gave me a going-over. He tried to scare answers out of me. He should have known better by that time. I sat there for twenty solid minutes and smiled at him. It was no effort to smile; I really felt like smiling. My father horned in finally and asked Mullen what basis he had for his unfounded accusations.
That really flipped the chief. He went into orbit. He shook a finger under my father's startled nose. You've got a wild animal running loose in this town, Mullen told my father. So you've got a choice. Cage him, or leave town. Leave town, Mullen repeated with emphasis. It would be better all around.
I nearly laughed until I saw the stricken look on my father's face. I couldn't understand it. The chief couldn't do anything. Nobody could do anything. I didn't give a damn what they thought they knew about me. They couldn't prove anything, so they couldn't do anything.
On the way home my father said tiredly he hoped some day I'd realize it was necessary to live with people. I didn't understand him. He said a lot of other things that made me feel sorry for him, because he just couldn't stand up to a situation.
I couldn't believe it when the "For Sale" sign went up on our front lawn. I was completely disgusted. My father was letting them bluff him right out of the game. They couldn't make him do a thing he didn't agree to do. I simply couldn't understand it, but my father was a weakling.
Still, I couldn't let his spinelessness affect my mother and sisters. I left home that same night. I knew I could manage, and obviously my father couldn't.
I left, and I never went back.
I had to switch cars.
The minute my potbellied Mexican guide's tongue came unlatched, the police would get a description of the Ford and me from the motel. It didn't matter a damn that they wouldn't know why they were looking for me. It was up to me to change the appearance of what they'd be looking for.
Highway 80 east out of HI Paso is a long, straight, dark stretch of road. Nobody palled me, and not many headlights came at me. Ground fog, began to drift in from the fields on either side of the highway. It began to close in over the road. I wanted to make time, and if this kept up I couldn't do it.
Must of the gas stations I passed were closed. When I came upon a lighted one, I slowed down, tempted. I finally hit the gas again and went on by. Grabbing the attendant's car or one he was fixing wouldn't solve anything. Unless I buried him in his greasepit he'd pass on the word that would tie me to the new car. The presence of the abandoned Ford would put another collar around my neck.
I needed a setup that would let me run the Ford over a cliff, or the equivalent. Even more I needed to get off Highway 80. The john in a girl's dorm doesn't get much more action than that damn highway, even with the addition of the newer Interstates.
I went over it in my mind. Van Horn is a hundred-twenty-odd miles east of El Paso. A dozen miles the other side of Van Horn Highway 80 continues east, but Highway 90 heads south. It seemed a better choice. I couldn't count on Jimmy's keeping the covers over his head forever. The police could even be out looking for the pistol-packing turista already.