Where You Once Belonged(45)

So the local phenomenon was home again. The native son had returned. Only he was behind bars now, locked up in a cell where he couldn’t get out, and people were glad that he was. They began to talk about him immediately. They told one another they would get something satisfactory out of Jack Burdette yet.

As for Jessie and me, we heard about it that same evening, on the Saturday of his return. We were in her apartment in the old Fenner house at the edge of town, watching a movie on television with TJ and Bobby. It was eight o’clock by that time. Jessie had come home tired from work so we had decided not to go out. Then the phone rang.

Jessie went out to the kitchen to answer it. When she came back she said it was for me.

“Who is it?”

“I think it’s Bud Sealy.”

“What does he want? They were just getting to the good part in this movie.”

“Should I tell him you’ll call him back?”

“No. I’ll talk to him.”

I walked out to the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Bud, is that you?”

Bud Sealy sounded grim and official. “Listen, Arbuckle,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something first. Then you can tell her yourself if you want to.”

“Tell her what?”

“You’re not going to like it. I don’t like it much myself.”

“What is it?”

“Her husband’s back in town.”

“What? You mean Burdette’s here in Holt?”

“That’s right. The son of a bitch come back. You ought to see him. I got him locked up in jail.”

“Jesus Christ. What’s he doing back here?”

“Hell if I know. He isn’t saying.”

There was silence for a moment.

“You still there?” Bud said.

“I’m still here.”

“Yeah. Well, I thought you ought to know. There’s going to be a hell of a mess about this.”

We hung up then. I stood looking out the kitchen window into the backyard. It was dark outside and the trees looked black and still. Then while I stood at the window it all began to race in my mind. Everything was changed now.

I was still standing at the kitchen window when Jessie came out to see what was taking me so long. She put her arm around my waist. “Is something wrong?” she said.

“Yes. I’m afraid so.”

“What is it?”

“Oh Christ,” I said, “Jessie.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Sit down, please. Will you?”

I pulled out a chair for her at the table and sat down beside her. Jessie watched me steadily while I talked. She did not seem to be greatly upset, nor even much at a loss by what I said. And in the months that have passed since that night I have had time to think about it and I believe that it was not so much that she expected him to come back any more than the rest of us did. It was more, I think, that she had managed to achieve a kind of distance and poise of her own, a perspective from which she no longer allowed herself to worry about things she couldn’t control. She had been made to suffer so much that spring after he had left, she had had to endure so much that in the end when she had survived it all she was stronger than she had been before and now she saw things differently than the rest of us do. She would no longer permit herself to worry about someone who was supposed to be a thousand miles away—even if he was suddenly back in Holt, a short five-minute drive across town.

Nevertheless when I had finished talking she said she didn’t want to see him again. She did not want to have anything more to do with him.

“No. You won’t have to see him again,” I said.

“And I don’t want TJ and Bobby to see him.”

“No. But I’ll have to. There needs to be something written for the paper about this.”

“Will they put him on trial?”

“I don’t know. They will want to. It depends on what evidence they still have.”

She stared at the white enamel on the kitchen table. After a while she said: “I need to tell TJ and Bobby.”

“Yes.”

“I better tell them now.”

She went back into the front room. She turned the television off and I could hear her talking to them; I could hear the questions they asked and then her quiet voice talking again, reassuring them. I sat at the table thinking about it all.

That was on Saturday night. On Monday I went over to the courthouse to see Jack Burdette. Jessie had called in at work and she had kept the boys home from school. We thought it would be better to let some time pass. The boys were frightened and upset. Nevertheless they went back to school and Jessie went back to work the next day. They were not trying to avoid things indefinitely.

On that Monday afternoon when I got to the courthouse there was a group of men, hangers-on and old local men retired from work, standing around in the parking lot in their adjustable caps and their long-sleeved shirts looking at Burdette’s car. The police had moved it from Main Street on Sunday morning and it stood now, long and shiny and red, gleaming in the lot behind the courthouse. Parked beside the cars from town, it looked an affront. The men were talking and gesturing to one another.

“We ought to take a torch and cut this goddamn thing into pieces,” one of them said.