Billy Bob Walker Got Married Read online

  "Now just a minute," Bud protested, rising a little. J. C. pushed him back down in the chair hastily.

  "That's the one, Your Honor," the lawyer said agreeably. "Anyhow, Billy Bob here busted it up to the tune of—" J. C. fumbled for a memo on the table before him and held it up to read off painstakingly, "2431.64. Bud's demanding repayment of that, plus another five hundred dollars for pain and suffering because he got two fingers broke when Billy Bob stepped on em."

  There was a ripple of laughter before Toy called out from his position on the side wall, "That ain't it. All that pain and sufferin' he went through was 'cause Billy took his girl that night, and then Bud didn't have nobody to warm his bed. Ain't that right, Bud?"

  In the shout of laughter that arose, and across Vinia's shocked, "Well, I never, I never," Bud called pugnaciously, his face even redder than usual, "You shut up, Toy. You hear me?"

  Judge Sewell's gavel slammed down viciously, and his voice rang across the room. "That will be enough. From all of you."

  When things subsided, Sewell said in a more controlled tone, "Toy Baker, you may leave the room."

  "But, sir, he's one of Bud's witnesses," J. C. put in quickly.

  "I should have known as much," Sewell answered in disgust. "All right. Call him. But I want everyone here to know that I consider everything about this case tawdry."

  "Tawdry?" Bud whispered questioningly to J. C, who brushed it aside.

  "Never mind, Bud, never mind."

  So Toy told his story, remembering with relish that it had been one of the best fights he'd seen in years.

  Bud aired his grievance and showed the splints still on his broken fingers.

  J. C. presented a stack of repair bills both to Bud and the Country Palace.

  Through it all, Sewell sat stone-faced.

  "All right, Mr. Walker," he said at last. "Let's hear this argument of yours that's so marvelous you don't even need an attorney to present it."

  Billy Bob rose to his full height.

  Sewell pointed the gavel at him as if it were a gun. "Take that cap off."

  Billy did as he was instructed, raking his fingers through the heavy blond mass. The front of it was cut and layered, as short there as it was long in back.

  "Me, I'm not arguing anything," he said peacefully, in the waiting silence.

  There was an even longer pause.

  "Would you care to explain, then, why you have taken up this Court's valuable time?" Sewell demanded dangerously at last.

  "Oh, I guess I just wanted to take a real close look at you," Billy Bob returned, and there was a lick of fire through his otherwise calm voice.

  The room hushed again; Sewell's face flushed furiously.

  "Since you have no argument—"

  "Oh, well, now"—Billy motioned outward with his cap—"I reckon I do need to say that I didn't step on Bud's fingers. I just knocked over a table, and it fell on 'em. Oh, and I didn't start the fight. He took the first swing at me because his girlfriend preferred my company to his."

  "That's a damn lie!" This time Bud exploded from his seat like a fat green stick of dynamite. "You put a rush on her, Billy. I told you the next time you did it to one of my lady friends, I'd punch your face in. If you—"

  "Sir down!" The judge's voice was a roar.

  Bud subsided again, still muttering low, dire threats.

  "No one—do you understand me?—no one will make a mockery or a three-ring circus out of my courtroom,"

  Sewell told the room furiously. "And I don't care to hear even one more detail of this case."

  His pale blue eyes met the darker blue ones of the younger man across from him.

  "How old are you, Mr. Walker?"

  Billy Bob's chin came up, and for the first time, there was a touch of surprised wariness in his face and voice.

  "You know," he said at last, flatly.

  "If I knew, I wouldn't be asking, now, would I? I said, how old?"

  "Twenty-seven."

  "Is that all? It seems to me that you should be at least a hundred," Sewell snapped. "You've done enough in this town, in this county, to make trouble for a man four times your age."

  "Thank you," Billy drawled laconically.

  "How many fights have you been in? Just since you hit adulthood?" Sewell demanded, relish creeping into his voice. The judge was clearly settling down to a satisfying enjoyment of his task.

  "I don't know."

  "No, I'm sure you don't. But your reputation precedes you into the courtroom. My fellow judges know you well, because you've been in front of many of them."

  Billy Bob shrugged. "It's good to know you've been keepin' track of me—Your Honor."

  Sewell flushed. "It's not hard for any judge to do, with somebody like you. And I guess it's all pretty funny to you, all the hell-raising you've become known for. You've run wild over this county for the last few years, with little or no respect for the law or decency."

  Each of Billy Bob's cheeks had a hot red stain on it, but when he spoke, his voice was taut and controlled.

  "You don't know the first thing about me," he retorted. "You've got no call to act like you do, either, nor to judge me on decency. You least of all."

  "Stay silent until I tell you to speak. I'm going to sentence you to exactly what you deserve in this case against Allen. You will pay him every penny of what he is asking, plus court costs."

  Billy Bob stood stiff as a ramrod, a nerve jerking in his jaw.

  "Is that all?" he managed at last, and Clancy had to give him credit—Billy Bob was hanging tough, each word an insolent slap in the face to Sewell.

  The judge let a flash of temper show, then said smoothly, "No, it is not, now that I think about it. I sentence you additionally to spend the next fifteen days in Sweetwater's jail for disturbing the peace and fighting in a public place."

  There was pure, undiluted triumph in Sewell's countenance for the split second before he controlled it, and in the quick murmur of surprised sound that washed over the court, even J.C.'s mouth dropped open.

  He half rose to protest, "Your Honor, we're not askin' that Billy Bob go to jail."

  "Sit down, J. C," interrupted Sewell. "Everyone agreed that I should hear this case. Now I intend to sentence Walker as I see fit."

  "But this is not—" Billy Bob said involuntarily, then forced himself to cut off the words. His neck was stained with red now, as well as his cheeks.

  "You have something else you want to say?" Sewell stood up behind the bench so that he was taller than Billy Bob across from him, and his voice dared the other man to challenge him again. Billy Bob never flinched from Sewell's stare but he swallowed harshly.

  "No," he got out finally, his hands clenching and unclenching, mutilating the brim of the cap. "Except... I should have expected it from you."

  Judge Robert Sewell was not in control of himself. As if the words were dragged from him, as the courtroom sat transfixed, he asked hoarsely, "And what does that mean?"

  Billy Bob got the last shot. "There's not a whole lot of mercy in you, is there? It's what my mama always said. You remember her, don't you? Ellen Walker."

  "Fifteen more days," Sewell gasped out harshly, his nearly translucent skin gone as white as Billy's had red. "Fifteen more or another five hundred dollars in fines— for contempt. And you say one more word and you will rot in jail, and no amount of money will get you out."

  After a stark hiatus of sound and movement, Billy put his cap back on, and his hand shook when he lowered it to his pocket again. "Yes . . . sir."

  They faced each other like ancient gladiators, and the likeness between the two of them was undeniable.

  In profile, they had the same straight noses, the same jutting chins, the same firm lips.

  Past the turmoil, outside the courtroom, Bud said unwillingly to J. C, "This ain't right, this deal you set up. I got plenty mad at Billy Bob, but hell, it wasn't nothing to warrant this."

  J. C. answered with his own tinge of regret, "It's too late
now. Look at it this way—Billy Bob was asking for it. He could have had another judge if he'd fussed a little. He wanted to get next to Sewell. To get his attention. And he did. Maybe it was worth it to him."

  "Yeah, but I feel—"

  J. C. didn't believe in having scruples; it wasn't good

  for his chosen profession. So he straightened his paisley tie and interrupted with a brisk dismissiveness, "Look, Bud, just take the money and run. After you pay me. Forget this whole mess. None of it had anything to do with you. It was personal, between the judge and Billy Bob. A family thing that's been brewing for years."

  He swatted the fly that had been buzzing around his head ever since it had quit bothering Clancy, and wiped the sweat off his face.

  "You want to blame something for all this, Bud, blame the weather. It's hot."

  2

  That same too-warm, early heat wave blew the cherry-red Porsche right up to the stop sign on the east side of the square, where the car sat throbbing for the tiny space of three heartbeats before its tires squealed to the left as it pulled out. But the screaming, impetuous path the Porsche blazed was hardly worth the effort because halfway up the quiet little block, it stopped abruptly, then pulled into the narrow entrance of the tunnel like road that separated the bank from Boyd's Drugstore.

  Three men watched the car's flamboyant display before it settled down to a deceptive meekness, just as its red rear end disappeared jauntily down the road beside the bank. Two of the men—one white, one black, but both old, both overalled, and both open-mouthed— stared after it with mild interest.

  The red Porsche and its comings and goings always made their day that much more interesting out on the bench in the courthouse yard.

  But the third, a tall, balding man whose slight paunch disrupted the neatness of the brown uniform he wore, was not so amused. He came up off the bench in one slow surge, frowning fiercely at the vanishing vehicle, and the way he stood—arms akimbo, hands on hips, feet spread aggressively—made one of the old farmers punch the other one in the ribs and give him a sly wink.

  "Girl drives too fast," remarked Cotton Jones, the farmer who'd winked. He sat whittling down a fat, round piece of walnut into a pile of nothingness. Just a heap of worthless slivers that would eventually cover his Red Man workboots completely, that was what the thick brown cord of wood would become before the day was over.

  The man standing, the one who wore the badge and the uniform that proclaimed him to be Sweetwater's version of law and order, didn't answer Cotton, but his frown deepened, and his right ear twitched—once, twice.

  Yep, he was aggravated.

  "She's got brass, you gotta give her that," Cotton went on casually, and his bone-handled knife took another long, slow, smooth-as-butter strip off the walnut stick. He paused to eject a quick stream of amber toward the old tin can that sat beside him. It had once been a large container of Van Camp's Pork'n'Beans; now it made a handy, personal spittoon—on the rare occasion that Cotton hit it when he aimed for it. "She's that much like her old man." He wiped his whiskery mouth with the back of his hand. "But you never would'a knowed it until lately. She used to be quiet as a mouse."

  "Wonder what she's been up to this time?" the other old man speculated idly; then he tilted up the Coke can he'd been holding on his knee to pull a burning draft of sugar and carbonation into his throat, one that made his eyes water. He said aahh loud and long before he spoke. "My granddaughter Marie—y'know, the one that works there"—he jerked his head toward the white-columned building up the road from them, the one whose brick facade was broken halfway up with a New Orleans-style balcony and a heavy, gold-lettered sign that read People's Bank of Sweetwater—"she says Sam Pennington made that girl start as a cashier at his little branch bank in Dover, and he don't call her home to this'n during workin' hours 'less he's madder'n hell about something."

  Both the old men waited expectantly for the sheriff to put in his two cents. He didn't.

  "Seems like a waste of all them years she was off at college, if you ask me," Cotton told Jackson, the one enjoying the Coke. "He's give her ever'thing else. Clothes, car, that big education off in Tennessee, like Mississippi wudn't good enough for her. He might as well go ahead and make her a big shot at his bank. He means to, anyway, someday. I reckon she gets just about what she pleases."

  "He'd better let up on her, that's what."

  The words came at last in a frustrated growl from the throat of the man Cotton had been verbally gouging—the sheriff. His name was T-Tommy Farley—and he had the added distinction of being related to the driver of the red Porsche. He was a second cousin to her father.

  "What's he on to her about this time?" Cotton asked innocently, squinting at the end of his stick.

  "Does he need anything new?" T-Tommy turned away from the bank, shifting instead to face the ugly yellow brick of the courthouse. Its square, four-sided, three-story body sat like an aging, passive Buddha there in the dead-center of Sweetwater, softened by the sprawling trees that wrapped their limbs about its corners. Spring lent beauty to the lawns. Just now, the grass was green and growing; hot pink azaleas blazed along the edges of the sidewalks, mingling with the purples and reds and whites of newly planted petunias; and rich green shadows lay all around them, compliments of the ancient, shiny-leaved southern magnolia tree under which the old wooden slat-backed bench sat.

  T-Tommy said flatly, "Shiloh's getting too old to keep on taking it, or his orders. She's twenty-one. Or is it twenty-two?"

  "Never live to see thirty if she keeps on drivin' like a bat out of hell," Cotton commented pointedly. "Somebody's gonna have to say somethin' to her."

  T-Tommy glared at the cherubic face of his potbellied adviser. "I reckon that means me."

  "You're the law. You're the only relative she's got besides the old man and Laura. So you better speak up, even if Sam Pennington might chop you off at the knees for interferin'," Cotton answered matter-of-factly. " 'Course, we all figure you do pretty much what he tells you to do. I reckon that's just being smart."

  "Don't push me, Cotton. I ain't afraid of Sam, if that's what you mean," T-Tommy snapped defensively, and his fingers fumbled about his left breast pocket, trying to unhook the aviator sunglasses hanging there.

  "I reckon I am," remarked Jackson mildly. "Scared of Sam, I mean."

  "What d'you say he was mad at her about this time?" Cotton returned to his original purpose with the question.

  T-Tommy gave him a smug, satisfied smirk. "I didn't." He didn't see any point in telling them that he didn't know what had brought the Porsche in to town.

  Then he slid on the sunglasses. "Well, I got things to do. And it's gettin' along toward lunch. I better head on over to the jail and see what's cookin'. Besides, I got Billy Bob for nearly three more weeks, and he's already gettin' mighty restless all cooped up like that. He might need my company for a while, just to stay straight. I'll see you boys."

  Just as the sheriff turned to leave, Cotton took another shot at the tin can, and T-Tommy paused, grinning.

  "Hey, Cotton, you're gonna have to get a better aim, or I'm gonna lock you up for defacing public property."

  The two old men watched T-Tommy stroll off whistling, the midmorning sunshine glinting off his silver badge, the rims of his glasses, and his bald spot all at the same time.

  "Smart aleck," Cotton muttered, for once laying down his knife.

  "Yep," agreed Jackson amiably, one big, weathered black hand scratching his jaw. "But you know what? I ain't never seen a cop yet that didn't have a streak of it somewhere in him. Must be in that uniform."

  Just past the bank and the drugstore, the little narrow road suddenly turned into a square paved parking lot with a big red-and-white sign that said authoritatively, Bank Employees Only. The red Porsche nosed along inquiringly, but every spot along the front row was full.

  The car seemed to hesitate for a second at the place where a long, sleek, creamy white Coupe de Ville Cadillac sat, right where another s
ign indicated in bold black letters that this prime piece of parking real estate belonged exclusively to Sam Pennington, Pres.

  Then the Porsche made a quick, dicing, on-a-dime right turn and headed for the only available parking spots, all along the back row, finally maneuvering into a tight little area down at the end.

  Inside the car, Shiloh Pennington sat gripping the steering wheel, trying hard to fight down nerves and apprehension and the little licks of rebelliousness that were springing up inside her. On the phone when Sam had ordered her to leave the bank at Dover and get to Sweetwater, he'd said it had something to do with paperwork she'd failed to complete.

  And that was an out-and-out lie, she told herself fiercely.

  This was about Michael. She knew it already. The weasel had come crawling to Sam; it had taken him twelve hours to do his worst. She should have beat him to it, she told herself in angry self-recrimination, instead of hiding in her room and dreading the confrontation. And say what? she jeered back at herself. Even if she'd had the nerve, Sam wouldn't have believed her.

  He thought the sun rose and set in Michael.

  But it had come down to this: Now she had to tell the truth and face the music, like it or not.

  Thrusting herself out of the car in one violent rush, she winced as her left side brushed roughly against the door frame, and her fingers went in sudden remembrance to the top of her left breast. She shuddered with a wave of revulsion as memory swept over her, and shut her eyes for a moment to block out an internal vision of strong white teeth.

  It wasn't her fault.

  On the thought, her eyes abruptly opened and she looked around at the bright day and the sunshine sparkling hotly off the multicolored cars here in the parking lot. She was fine. She was safe. She was right.

  There was no reason to shake in her shoes—her white, ridiculously high-heeled designer shoes—as if she were a scared kid again, trying to please and soothe an impossible man who had the roar of a bull ape when he was angry—or hurting.