Where You Once Belonged (15 page)

So in time Withers grew hot. He began to shout, to curse: “Goddamn you, Burdette. Goddamn you.”

And Jack Burdette still seemed utterly uninterested, as if he couldn’t be bothered by any of this. Finally he did manage to rouse himself a little, however. He raised his head. “Withers,” he said. “I wish you’d shut your goddamn mouth.”

“By god—” Withers said.

“I never came back here to hear about your goddamn elevator. Leave me alone. You’re starting to get on my nerves.”

Arch Withers went a little crazy then. He began to shake the bars, shouting for Sealy to come forward and unlock the cell so he could go inside. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch,” he shouted. “I’ll kill him.”

“Sealy,” Burdette called. “Get him out of here. I heard enough of this.”

“I’ll kill him.”

“I don’t have to listen to this, Sealy.”

“Unlock this thing.”

“Sealy, you hear me?”

It went on in that way, a violent refrain, until at last Bud Sealy moved down the alleyway toward Withers and tried to lead him away. “Come on, Arch,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“I’ll kill him.”

“No. You had your say.”

“By god—”

“Let’s go. Come on now.”

Suddenly Withers began to struggle. He fought Bud Sealy in the alleyway of the jail, shouting still, swinging his arms. Sealy shoved him against the bars of the cell, pinning him there, his heavy forearm under Withers’ chin, and then he pushed him out of the jail back into the office. Withers stood before him, panting.

“Goddamn it, Arch. What in hell you think you’re doing? You want me to arrest you too? I had enough of this.”

“He’s not even sorry,” Withers said.

“What did you expect? Did you think he would be?”

“He don’t even care about any of us.”

“Listen, go home now, Arch. You’re through here. Understand? Go on home.”

But Withers seemed too exhausted to move. He appeared to be spent and defeated. It was as if he had been waiting for years for just this moment and now it had meant nothing at all: Burdette wasn’t even sorry. Finally Sealy had to take Withers by the sleeve and walk him out of the office and up the stairs toward the exit.

Outside, next to the courthouse, the local men were still standing in the shade in the November afternoon. When Withers appeared in the doorway they wanted to know what had happened. But he wouldn’t talk to them. He walked slowly past them, down the sidewalk. Their heads turned to follow his progress across the parking lot, past Burdette’s Cadillac and on toward his black pickup. They watched as he climbed into the vehicle and shut the door.

When he was gone one of them asked: “What happened down there, Bud?”

“Nothing happened.”

“But didn’t Withers talk to him?”

“Maybe. But Burdette wasn’t listening to him.”

“What’d he talk about?”

“What do you think he would talk about?”

“Of course. Well, he’s had enough time to think about it anyway. I bet he made a little speech to him, didn’t he?”

Sealy studied him for a moment, studied them all. “Look,” he said. “You boys better go on home too. There ain’t nothing going to happen here. Go on home and see if the wife’s got dinner yet. I seen enough of you for one day.”

A
fter that nothing did happen for a while. For the rest of the week Burdette stayed in jail, lying on the cot in his cell, waiting, sleeping much of the time, his plaid shirt and his dark pants growing daily more rank and wrinkled, while in town along Main Street people talked endlessly about him, at the tables in the bakery and across the street in the tavern, and everyone seemed to know something about it.

But by the end of the week it became clear that something had been occurring elsewhere. Over in Sterling in the district attorney’s office something significant had been going on: the wheels of Colorado state law had been turning and what they had turned up was proof that Burdette was right. He couldn’t be held; the statute of limitations had run out. If he had been out of the state for five years, and if an additional three years had passed, he couldn’t be prosecuted. He was free to go.

Bob Witkowski, the district attorney, called Bud Sealy on Friday afternoon to inform him of that fact.

“What?” Sealy said. “What’s this? You mean, here that son of a bitch stole a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from people and now you’re telling me I can’t hold him?”

“That’s right. That’s what it amounts to.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You’d better believe it. That’s the law. And you’ll be breaking it if you keep him. You’ve already been acting illegally by locking him up for a week.”

“So you’re telling me now I have to let him go? That’s how the law reads?”

“That’s right. Release him, Bud.”

“Well, Jesus Christ Almighty. That son of a bitch. He knew all along.”

Sealy slammed the phone down and stared at the wall.

B
y nightfall, though, Bud Sealy had gathered his senses and had decided to act intelligently. To avoid any possibility of interference from people in town—there were a number of hotheads in Holt who might drink enough to think they ought to try something, and it was just the beginning of pheasant season so there were plenty of shotguns available in the racks behind the seats in the pickups—he and Dale Willard secretly moved Jack Burdette out of his cell and drove him out to the county line. It was long after dark. Sealy had handcuffed Burdette again and had shoved him into the backseat of the police car behind the protective grille. Burdette had objected, had cursed and shouted, thinking that Sealy was going to ride him out into the sandhills and kill him. But Sealy had told him to shut up and finally he had. Behind the police car Dale Willard followed in Burdette’s red Cadillac.

When they were across the county line they turned off onto a gravel road. Sealy got out and unlocked the back door. “Get out,” he said.

“Bud. Now listen.”

“Get out, you son of a bitch.”

“Bud. Listen to me. You better listen.”

“Goddamn you.” Sealy withdrew his gun and shoved it under Burdette’s chin. “Move.”

Burdette slid slowly out of the car and stood up onto the road. He began to rave. “Willard,” he said. “Willard, you’re here. You know that. You’re going to be involved if you let this happen. You know that, Willard.”

“Shut up,” Sealy said. “We’re all involved. Now turn around.”

“Willard. Don’t let this happen, Willard.”

“Unlock him,” Sealy said.

Willard removed the handcuffs. He handed them to the sheriff.

“Now,” Sealy said, “get the hell out of here, you son of a bitch. And don’t you ever come back.”

“What?”

“I’m letting you go. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

“What? So you found out. You can’t hold me.”

“Something like that.”

“I knew you couldn’t. I told you—”

“Shut up.”

Burdette stared at him.

“And don’t you ever come back here again,” Sealy said. “You hear me? I’m warning you. Don’t you ever come back here. By god, you won’t be so lucky the next time.”

Jack Burdette looked once more at the sheriff, then again at Willard. He walked over to his car. The engine was still running. He got in and backed the Cadillac onto the highway. Then he honked once, in apparent farewell, a kind of final affront, and roared away. It was not quite midnight then.

T
he next morning there was a new, even more intense feeling of public outrage in Holt when people discovered that the red Cadillac was gone and that Burdette had been allowed to leave. For a long while that morning groups of men and boys stood in the parking lot at the courthouse where the shiny red car had stood all week. They swore to one another that they would do something yet; they would take some action. But no one could think what it should be.

Meanwhile Bud Sealy sat in his basement office looking out at them from behind his barred window. For several hours they stood there talking impotently and disgusted; finally about noon they began to disperse, to wander home for lunch. After everyone had gone, Sealy called his wife and told her to bring him some coffee and a sandwich. He didn’t want to leave, he said; he expected them to come back. And after the noon meal many of them did. They began to talk again, to gesture and swear. In the end, however, nothing happened. It was too late for the local men to do anything about it.

Throughout that morning, though, there had been the fear that something might occur, that someone might be crazy enough to attempt something violent. So about midmorning I suggested to Jessie that we leave town for a couple of days. I had been staying at her apartment all week, out of a sense of protectiveness, and now we decided to take the boys and drive to Denver, to stay in a motel, and drive up into the mountains somewhere. The aspen would have already turned but it would be pleasant in the mountains, I told her, and quiet. She thought that would be a good idea. She called the cafe and told them she wouldn’t be coming in. Then we packed and left.

In Denver we took a couple of rooms at a motel on Interstate 70 near Stapleton Airport. There was an indoor swimming pool connected to the motel and the boys swam for awhile, practicing their dives, while Jessie and I watched them and had a drink. There was also a couple from Texas swimming in the pool who said they were on their honeymoon from Nacogdoches. They seemed very young and happy. The girl was plump, with a pretty round-cheeked face, and her husband kept pulling her into the water and squeezing her and whispering into her ear; then she would splash him and laugh and swim away. Later they climbed out and walked back to their motel room, with his arm around her waist, and we didn’t see them again.

When TJ and Bobby were finished swimming they took a shower and we ate an early supper in the motel restaurant. Afterward we went out to a movie. We drove across town to a theater in a shopping mall and had popcorn and Cokes and sat in the dark theater watching the screen. But I couldn’t keep my mind on the story. They had done what they could to make it seem plausible that an Amish girl would fall in love with a city detective and there were many dramatic scenes and wonderful photography, with a growing sense of something ominous about to happen, but when the violence came it seemed too far away for me to believe it. I sat beside Jessie with my arm over her thin shoulders and watched her face. When we were outside again she and the boys thought it was a good movie. Probably it was. But I couldn’t be interested just then in somebody else’s unhappiness.

Later that night in bed in the motel room with Bobby and TJ asleep in the room next to ours, I told Jessie some of what I’d been worrying about.

“I know,” she said. “But don’t you see it’ll be all right now? Isn’t that what you said? That it was the best thing for him just to leave?”

“That was this morning. When I first heard about it. I felt surer then.”

“But nothing’s happened to make you change your mind, has it?”

“Not that I know of.”

“And there isn’t anything we can do about it now, even if there is something?”

“No.”

“Then will you please put your arm around me and hold me? It doesn’t do any good to worry about it.”

“I know.”

“And you know I love you.”

“I just don’t want anything to change.”

“Move your arm so I can come closer. There,” she said, “isn’t that better?”

“Yes. That’s much better.”

“I thought you’d see reason finally.”

We were lying very close together. She felt warm and silky beside me and I began to make love to her then in the dark motel room, with just the dim light showing through the curtains and the sounds of traffic going by outside on the interstate. But everything seemed different now and uncertain. Afterward when we were quiet once more, we lay close together and Jessie went to sleep immediately.

The next morning we got up late and ate breakfast. Then we checked out of the motel. We had decided to spend the day driving over to Boulder and across the mountain to Estes Park. The tourist season was over and skiing hadn’t started yet, so it would be quiet and peaceful in the mountains.

When we got to Estes Park in the afternoon we stopped and walked along the streets, looking at Big Thompson River where it went through town and peered in at the shop windows at the pottery and pewter and the expensive brand-name clothes. We bought some locally made chocolate and also some cheese and fruit and sliced ham and dark bread so we could have an evening picnic; then we walked back to the car and drove north out of town along the back way toward Loveland, winding narrowly down to Glen Haven and Drake, and finally pulled off the highway at a place where there were picnic tables beside the creek. It was late in the afternoon then; the canyon was all in shade. We put our coats on and TJ and Bobby climbed among the rocks beside the creek and dropped pebbles into the pools and floated pinecones through the narrow rapids, running alongside to follow the pinecones as they swirled and bobbed on the top of the water. Then we had supper ready, set out on the picnic table. “Do you want to call them?” Jessie said.

I called them but they couldn’t hear me because of the noise of the creek. So I walked down to where they were. One of the pinecones had gotten hung up on a snag and they were poking at it with a stick. The stick wasn’t long enough and they couldn’t quite reach it. “You try,” Bobby said.

I took the stick and poked and made a sweeping motion, but couldn’t reach it, and leaned farther out and suddenly lost my footing so that I stepped down into the water and filled both shoes. “Jesus,” I said. “Christ, that’s cold.” The boys giggled and pointed at my feet. I was standing in the water with my good shoes on. “You bums,” I said. “You lousy bums.” I poked the stick again and dislodged the pinecone and it floated away. Then I stepped back onto the bank and, suddenly making a grab, took both boys around the head, wrestling with them against my chest.

“So. You think that’s funny, do you? Making a man get his feet wet? You think that’s funny?”

“Yes. We do.” They were still giggling.

I squeezed them a little bit. “You think so?”

“Yes.”