Читать книгу The Marble Orchard - Alex Taylor - Страница 10

III

WEDNESDAY

From his porch, Loat watched the cruiser slip under the awning of hackberry boughs and then climb the slight rise of his driveway, rocking over the washed out ruts in the gravel before it came to a stop in the muddy yard. He held a neon orange hardhat in his lap and sat spooning soggy cornflakes out of it, milk slipping off his chin onto the porch boards. As the sheriff and two state troopers came through the yard, he stowed the makeshift cereal bowl under his chair, folded his hands over his belly and snorted. Behind him, Presto Geary came through the screen door. His weight made the wooden floor groan, and Loat smelled his stink, a mixture of underarm and motor oil.

“What do they want?” Presto asked.

Loat leaned back in the nylon camp chair he was sitting in. “Same thing they been wanting all week, I’d guess,” he said.

Elvis and the two officers crossed through the yard’s scant grass. When they reached the porch, the sheriff put a boot on the bottom step and looked up at Loat and Presto as they were paired under the slanted roof of the house with its peeling blue paint, their faces creased and turned by the early gray light to a hard bruised color.

“Morning,” said Loat.

Elvis nodded, then gestured to the men behind him. “Loat, this is Officer Donaldson and Officer Pretshue,” he said. “State boys.”

“I can see what kind of uniforms they’re wearing.” Loat wiped a hand over his mouth and snorted again. “Y’all come looking for that one you lost out of Eddyville, the story’s same now as it’s ever going to be. He’s not been here and I ain’t heard a thing from him.”

Elvis scraped the water from his cheeks and dried his hand against his trousers. “We think we found him,” he said. “In the river.”

Loat leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. His light gray hair was spackled like grout to his forehead and he brushed it back over his scalp and sat drawing thin breaths through the tiny slits of his nostrils. Many had remarked on the smallness of his nose, which was no more than a pink bump beneath his putty-colored eyes, and at times it caused his breath to emit a high adenoidal whistle that sounded like the grate and squeak of old water piping. Now, as he sat staring at the sheriff, his nostrils dilated and flexed as if he’d caught the aroma of something unpleasant in the air.

“You think you found Paul?” he asked.

Elvis nodded. “Just this morning.” He rested a hand on the stoop railing, the sleeve of his poncho dripping strings of water over the wet footstones.

With his poncho and flushed cheeks, Loat thought the man resembled a shrink-wrapped cut of butcher’s work. “Y’all come on up here out of the weather,” he said. “Then you can tell me the rest of it.”

Elvis moved on up the stoop and the two troopers followed and they all clustered under the eaves. The water dripping from them made a dark halo on the porch boards.

Loat studied the troopers closely, as he’d not seen either of them before. The one named Donaldson was older and once on the porch he lit a cigarette and stood smoking, his rheumy eyes watching the rain spit and shatter in the yard weeds. He seemed almost drowsy, and Loat figured him not far from retirement. Pretshue was younger and kept staring at Loat as if in direct challenge, his chapped lips pressed tightly against his teeth, which Loat imagined were quite straight and white. He pictured the man with all his teeth smashed out by a ball-peen hammer, his mouth only a bleeding hole, and winked at him. The trooper blinked and his lips jerked oddly before he composed himself and resumed his staring.

“Say you found Paul?” Loat asked, turning to Elvis.

Elvis nodded. “We need you to come down to the morgue, make an I.D. on the body.”

Loat resettled the hardhat in his lap and looked at the three policemen. Wrapped in their plastic raingear, they appeared hapless and bungling, and he felt a bit embarrassed for them. Especially Elvis, whom Loat had known for years, ever since his election to county sheriff. He’d always struck Loat as a dainty kind of fellow not suited for the rough work of law enforcement.

Whatever shame he felt for these lawmen and their ineptitude soon grew into ripe disgust, though, and he raised his leg and let a long loose fart ripple out.

The lawmen gazed at him in mute shock. None of them moved or spoke.

“You hear something?” Loat said, turning to Presto, who was leaning against the front door of the house with his arms folded over his chest. Presto’s wide gray lips broke into a flabby grin and he slowly swayed back and forth, scratching his back against the wooden doorframe.

Loat turned back to the lawmen. “I believe I heard something,” he said. Again, he farted, the bottom of the camp chair flapping beneath him. “There it went again,” he said, in mock surprise. “What the hell is that?” He looked about him as if searching for the source of the noise and then put his eyes back on the lawmen. “Whatever it is, it stinks,” he said.

“Smells like genuine pig shit, don’t it?” said Presto.

“I believe you’re right,” Loat said, staring coldly at the three men. “I believe there’s been a few pigs rooting around and shitting on the place here lately.”

Elvis took a step back and rested his hands on his hips. Donaldson and Pretshue exchanged brief glances until Pretshue came forward, slinging his poncho aside so that Loat could see the revolver that rode his hip. “Listen,” he said, “if all you’re going to do is sit up here and fart all day then we need to be getting on. But if you want to come to town and identify the body of your son, then we’ll give you a ride.”

Loat stared at Pretshue. His cheeks were ashen, which likely meant he was afraid, but Loat knew he was also young enough to call the fear something else and not recognize it for what it truly was, and this made him dangerous. Paul had had the same careless streak in him. If tempered by age and circumstance, Loat knew it made a man into a lethal being who strode over the earth at will and brooked no compromise because none was required. Left unchecked, it usually led one down a dim path of ruin.

“I bet you still remember what your mama’s titty tastes like, don’t you?” Loat said.

Pretshue’s spine straightened as if he’d just be struck in the face. His cheeks flushed and he was about to offer some kind of retort when Donaldson stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Go easy on us, Loat,” the older man said. “We ain’t here to arrest you. All we want is you to come down to the morgue and tell us whether or not it’s your son we pulled out of the river.”

Loat sighed and placed the hardhat beneath his chair once more. Then he stood and brushed the front of his shirt and looked past the men at the rain.

“Do you want a poncho?” Elvis asked.

Loat looked at the sheriff as if he were a bit touched. “I don’t mind getting wet,” he said. He turned to Presto standing behind him. “Mind the dogs,” he said. Then he walked down the stoop and out into the rain, moving through the muddy yard toward the idling cruiser, Elvis and the two troopers following behind him.