Where You Once Belonged(49)

“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.

The 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.