When Ghosts Come Home(68)

“Maybe they’ll stay out of your neighborhood if you stay out of theirs,” Winston said. He walked past Frye without waiting for him to respond. He reached for his flashlight and clicked it on again, raised its beam once he was close enough to Frye’s truck.

“What are you talking about?” Frye asked.

“Why are you even out here this time of night?” Winston asked. “You been out trick-or-treating?”

“Checking on my property,” Frye said. “Somebody’s got to keep it safe. Y’all ain’t going to do it.”

Winston shone the flashlight on Frye’s truck, peered in its windows. “Where do you put them?” he asked.

“Put what?” Frye said, then, “Stay away from my truck. You don’t have the right to look at it.”

Winston laughed. “Oh, Brad, you’ve got a lot to learn about the law before they swear you in. You’d better start studying.” He tapped the toolbox in the bed of Frye’s truck with the end of his flashlight, heard the echo inside. “Is this where you keep your battle flags when you’re not flying them?” Winston looked back at Frye, and then he continued moving the flashlight’s beam around Frye’s truck until he found what he was looking for: a bracket made to hold a flag had been fastened to the back of the truck’s cab just below the back windshield. Winston looked at Frye where he still stood in the yard, his light steady on the bracket. “Is this where you put it?”

“Put what?”

“Your little rebel flag. The one you fly when you’re trying to scare Black folks into believing you’re a tough guy.”

“Get away from my truck,” Frye said, pounding down through the yard toward Winston. He grabbed Winston’s arm that held the flashlight, causing it to clatter to the asphalt.

Winston took hold of Frye’s left arm and spun his body so that his back slammed against the passenger’s-side door. He splayed Frye’s legs with his knee, and he threw his left forearm under Frye’s chin to keep him pinned there. The men’s faces were inches apart, and Winston could hear Frye’s breathing and feel his pulse pounding in his neck and smell beer on his breath.

“Boy, never put your hands on an officer,” Winston said. “Never.”

He felt Frye’s right hand flick toward the gun he had holstered on his hip, but Winston was faster, and before Frye was able to get ahold of his pistol Winston had his pressed against the soft skin below Frye’s chin. He held it there, his mind thinking things that shocked him. Did he want to shoot Bradley Frye? Could he? How would he explain it, and could he get away with it? These thoughts passed through Winston’s mind in the time it would’ve taken a bullet to leave his gun and enter Frye’s head, which ended up being enough time for Winston to check himself. Instead of squeezing the trigger, he lowered his left hand and unholstered Frye’s pistol and tossed it onto the dirt behind him. He wondered if drinking had made Frye braver and stupider than he otherwise was.

“I told you to leave that weapon at home,” Winston said. He took a step back toward the house and lowered his pistol.

Frye stood up straight and ran his hands over his clothes like he was either grooming himself or checking his body for bullet holes.

“Do that in a couple of months and you’ll be holding a gun on the high sheriff of Brunswick County.”

“That’ll be fine,” Winston said. “I’ll still be the faster draw.”

“You going to shoot me now?” Frye asked. “First, you shot one in Gastonia and now a white boy down here. It’d be a hell of a way to end your career. Go from shooting criminals to shooting heroes.”

“No,” Winston said. He sighed, holstered his pistol. “I’m not going to shoot you. I’m not even going to kick your ass, especially not without an audience because you’d just lie about it anyway.” Winston kept his eyes on Frye and walked backward in the yard until he stood over Frye’s weapon. He bent down and picked up the gun and cracked the cylinder, turning it up so the bullets slipped out. He closed his hands around them, but he held the unloaded gun out to Frye, who took it and slid it back into his holster. “And you’re not a hero, Brad. You’re a soft-handed daddy’s boy who grew up with money and mistook it for brains. If you become sheriff it won’t make you any smarter or any braver than you were when you were a punk-ass kid ganging up on Black kids because you thought it would make your daddy proud.”

“You keep my daddy’s name out of your mouth.”

“You keep out of the Grove, Brad, unless you’re invited, and I can’t imagine a soul there wanting to see your face. Those people have been through enough.”

“Those people are drug dealers and vandals. You saw what happened to Rodney Bellamy. And now they’re setting these houses on fire.”

“We don’t know what happened to Rodney Bellamy,” Winston said. “And we don’t know who set this fire. It could have been you. Stay out of the Grove, Brad.” Winston, his fist still closed around the bullets, lifted his hand. “I’m going to hold on to these. Why don’t you head home. My office will reach out to you tomorrow for a statement, maybe call you back out here to look around in the daylight.”

“I’ve seen all I need to see to know what happened,” Frye said.