Bull Mountain(40)

“He don’t see it that way.”

“I don’t give a shit how he sees it.”

“All the more reason for me askin’, Clayton. You sure you want to go up there?”

“I’ll be fine, Mike.”

Mike narrowed his eyes at Clayton like he was trying to read something written on the sheriff’s forehead, then pushed himself back off the truck. “Let them through,” he yelled to the posse of gunmen up the road. They cleared a path for Clayton, and he put the Bronco back in gear. He looked out at Mike again and tipped his hat.

“Good to see you, Mike.”

“Yup. Yup.”

As the sheriff and his deputy rolled past the gathering of hard stares, dirty faces, and loaded weapons, Darby closed his eyes and got reacquainted with the Lord.





3.


“Jeez-us, Sheriff. This is bad. I just know it. You’re family to these people, but they could care less about me. Your brother will kill me just for being dressed like this.” He pulled at the deputy’s star pinned to his chest.

“Nobody is getting killed, Darby. He’s not as crazy as everyone says. It’s just what he wants people to think. It’s how he keeps people doing what he wants them to do. My deddy was the same way. Besides, he’ll be too busy with me to worry about you. Just stay in the car, and you’ll be fine.”

“Whatever you say, Sheriff, but I’m still not feeling good about it.”

The road opened up into a vast expanse of red dirt and pea gravel. Clayton counted at least ten more armed men watching as they approached, but with their guns pointed down. A few others too twitchy and haggard to be employees wandered about the yard and hovered around the corner of the house near the rain barrel. Clayton assumed they were local tweekers looking to score. There was a time when Halford would never have allowed scrounge like them anywhere near his home. He was getting either soft or sloppy. Either one was a good sign he might be open to a conversation like the one Clayton was there to bring him.

The man closest to the mouth of the drive was talking into a two-way radio connected to his gun strap with a length of paracord. Clayton had no doubt who was listening on the other end, and hoped it also explained why all the guns were lowered. Halford was being cordial—another good sign. Clayton wheeled the Bronco through the entourage and parked next to a variety of jacked-up, camouflaged pickup trucks, some brand-new and some as old as he was. He thought he recognized his deddy’s old Ford F-100. At least Halford had managed to keep that alive. A simple cabin made of cedar and pine stood in the middle of the clearing. To Clayton it looked frozen in time. If it was any different from the way he remembered it, he couldn’t tell. His old bedroom window faced east, and the same blue curtains he remembered from when he was a boy were still there. Two old men he didn’t recognize sat in rockers on the porch. One of them held a guitar in his lap but wasn’t playing. Two children about nine or ten sat with their legs dangling off the porch, neither of them wearing shoes. The blackened color of the soles of their feet made Clayton wonder if they ever had. One of the children held a hand-carved wooden train car. The other held a knife and was picking at a loose board on the porch. Neither of them looked up as Clayton got out of the truck and approached the front steps.

“That’s far enough, Sheriff,” a deep voice bellowed from behind the screen door. It was the man himself. Halford Burroughs stood every bit of six feet, four inches tall and took up the entirety of the doorway. He was as thick as a redwood but angular and solid like stacked cinder blocks. Clayton and Buckley had grown to resemble their father, naturally thin, cut, with ropey muscles, red hair, and fair skin—the kind that burned in the shade—but Halford retained their mother’s features. He was olive-skinned; his hair was a thick mound of dark brown ringlets that matched deep brown eyes that curved down at his cheeks. When they were kids, the girls on the mountain called them “sad eyes,” but Clayton never saw a hint of sadness in them. His beard was full and lush, streaked with gray and silver. He stood behind the screen door, unarmed, with a paper napkin draped down the front of a dark undershirt.

He pushed open the screen door, stepped out onto the porch, and let the door slam behind him. He squinted his eyes as they adjusted to the sunlight and pulled the napkin from his shirt collar. He wiped away what looked like gravy from the corners of his mouth and beard, then rolled the napkin into a ball between his palms and tossed it on the porch. The kid with the toy train scurried over, picked it up, and disappeared into the house. The screen door slammed again.

“Long time, Hal.”

“Not long enough. I don’t know what you’re thinking coming here, but it would be in your best interest to go ahead and get your ass gone.” Halford took a step forward and the porch creaked under his weight.

“If you really wanted me to leave, you wouldn’t have let me up here in the first place. We need to talk.”

“I don’t talk to cops. Even wannabe cops like you.”

“I’m not here as the law, Hal. I’m here as your brother.”

Hal laughed. It was cold and humorless. A yard full of ass-kissers joined in and Clayton gave a quick glance around, feeling uneasy. Halford took another step forward into the sunlight. “First of all, you ain’t the law up here. Hell, you ain’t hardly the law down in the Valley, from what I hear. But more important, the only brother I got done got himself killed by some friends of yours a little over a year ago.”