The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [198]
At ten o’clock his mother and Sarah Ham left the house.
At four he heard the car wheels on the gravel and rushed to the window. As the car stopped, the dog stood up, alert, shaking.
He seemed unable to take the first step that would set him walking to the closet in the hall to look for the suitcase. He was like a man handed a knife and told to operate on himself if he wished to live. His huge hands clenched helplessly. His expression was a turmoil of indecision and outrage. His pale blue eyes seemed to sweat in his broiling face. He closed them for a moment and on the back of his lids, his father’s image leered at him. Idiot! the old man hissed, idiot! The criminal slut stole your gun! See the sheriff! See the sheriff!
It was a moment before Thomas opened his eyes. He seemed newly stunned. He stood where he was for at least three minutes, then he turned slowly like a large vessel reversing its direction and faced the door. He stood there a moment longer, then he left, his face set to see the ordeal through.
He did not know where he would find the sheriff. The man made his own rules and kept his own hours. Thomas stopped first at the jail where his office was, but he was not in it. He went to the courthouse and was told by a clerk that the sheriff had gone to barbershop across the street. “Yonder’s the deppity,” the clerk said and pointed out the window to the large figure of a man in a checkered shirt, who was leaning against the side of a police car, looking into space.
“It has to be the sheriff,” Thomas said and left for the barbershop. As little as he wanted anything to do with the sheriff, he realized that the man was at least intelligent and not simply a mound of sweating flesh.
The barber said the sheriff had just left. Thomas started back to the courthouse and as he stepped on to the sidewalk from the street, he saw a lean, slightly stooped figure gesticulating angrily at the deputy.
Thomas approached with an aggressiveness brought on by nervous agitation. He stopped abruptly three feet away and said in an over-loud voice, “Can I have a word with you?” without adding the sheriff’s name, which was Farebrother.
Farebrother turned his sharp creased face just enough to take Thomas in, and the deputy did likewise, but neither spoke. The sheriff removed a very small piece of cigarette from his lip and dropped it at his feet. “I told you what to do,” he said to the deputy. Then he moved off with a slight nod that indicated Thomas could follow him if he wanted to see him. The deputy slunk around the front of the police car and got inside.
Farebrother, with Thomas following, headed across the courthouse square and stopped beneath a tree that shaded a quarter of the front lawn. He waited, leaning slightly forward, and lit another cigarette.
Thomas began to blurt out his business. As he had not had time to prepare his words, he was barely coherent. By repeating the same thing over several times, he managed at length to get out what he wanted to say. When he finished, the sheriff was still leaning slightly forward, at an angle to him, his eyes on nothing in particular. He remained that way without speaking. Thomas began again, slower and in a lamer voice, and Farebrother let him continue for some time before he said, ‘We had her oncet.” He then allowed himself a slow, creased, all-knowing, quarter smile.
“I had nothing to do with that,” Thomas said. “That was my mother.”
Farebrother squatted.
“She was trying to help the girl,” Thomas said. “She didn’t know she couldn’t be helped.”
“Bit off more than she could chew, I reckon,” the voice below him mused.
“She has nothing to do with this,” Thomas said. “She doesn’t know I’m here. The girl is dangerous with that gun.”
“He,” the sheriff said, “never let anything grow under his feet. Particularly nothing a woman planted.”
“She might kill somebody with that gun,” Thomas said weakly, looking down at the round top of the Texas type hat.
There was a long