"Who's that down the hall? I know that voice."

"That's Mr. Reuben."

"They picked up every club owner in town."

"He ain't in here for that. He's a witness. They figured he better be kept in a cage."

"Who's he testifying against?"

The old card dealer leaned against the mop handle and smiled big at him, a big old Amos-and-Andy smile, and said: "He's testifyin' 'gainst you and Mr. Arch. Ain't you heard nothin'?"

Fuller jumped from the bunk and reached his hands around the bars, grabbing the old man by the throat, and shook him, rattling the entire cage. The old nigger on the other side of the bars didn't do nothing but laugh and laugh.

"Go ahead and grin it up, nigger," Fuller said. "Judgment Day will come soon enough."

"I ain't scareda you no more," the man said.

"But you'll still work for that dollar."

"Bet your ass."

Fuller let go of the man and walked back to the bunk, where he tore the title page out from Man of the West, with a simple black illustration of two cowboys riding along on their horses, a sketch of mountains in the background. He wrote beneath them a simple note and handed it back to the old man.

"You call this number here and you repeat what you just told me. There's twenty dollars in it for you."

"Sez who?"

"It's an honest bet on just a goddamn dime."

I LOANED REUBEN AN OLD SUNDAY SUIT BEFORE HE GAVE his testimony to the grand jury that afternoon, with Bernard Sykes leading him - no kind of cross-examination - and with me waiting for him in the courthouse hall when he got done. The suit was brown with wide lapels, and his shirtsleeves cuffed well into the palm of his hand. He nodded to me, and we walked together down the hallway.

"This the best you could do?"

"I didn't have time to get you a tailor."

"I look like a corpse."

"You did real good today," I said.

"I bet your daddy is finally proud of you now," Reuben said. "I remember how much he hated you bein' a fighter."

"Proud for what?" I asked.

"Being sheriff."

"Are you kidding?"

Reuben looked at me.

"The first thing he said to me was, 'How low can you go?'"

"What's his problem?"

"He thinks it's a redneck job."

"Well." Reuben smiled and shrugged. "You got anything more to eat?"

"Joyce dropped off some leftovers. You can have them if you want them."

"No, that's all right. She didn't mean them for me."

"I'm not all that hungry."

"No, I couldn't."

"Would you please shut up, Reuben. I'll get Quinnie to bring it in."

"Lamar, please excuse me for being ungrateful. I mean the food is really good, please thank Joyce for that, she's always been good to me, but I really can't stand to be in this shithole anymore. I haven't talked to my boy in a week. I don't know what's going on out at my place."

Ten minutes later, I drove slow out into the country, turning off the paved road, the unpainted farmhouse growing in the windshield. I wheeled around and parked along a gully, and he wandered out ahead of me, dead leaves from a big shade oak twisting and scattering in the light breeze.

I watched him walk and heard the hard thwap of the screen door close. I waited there in the car and looked at the unpainted house with its rusted tin roof, the lean-to nearby that Reuben's father used as a smokehouse. There was an outhouse, a burned-out shed, and a rotten barn. An old skinny tire, like they used to use on Model Ts, hung from a knotted rope from a pecan tree.

I didn't see Billy and heard no sounds coming from the house.

I knew of the boy's mother, a woman Reuben had met in California before the war, and had heard how she had left in '48, tired of Alabama, or perhaps tired of this new man who had returned with a limp from the Philippines. A man she'd heard had been dead for two years.

But she'd left with little else but a suitcase, the boy thinking his mother would return and perhaps still believing it.

I stared at the unpainted house again and the antique tire swinging in the wind. Reuben came back with a few things wrapped up in some fresh shirts, and I started the car and drove back to Phenix City.

"How long am I gonna have to keep this up?"

"Till the trial."

"When will that be?"

"Couple months."

"Could they at least get me a hotel or a damn television? You ever watch the Red Buttons Show? That sonofabitch sure makes me laugh. You ever see that dumb boxer he does? Rocky Buttons? I never wanted to end up like that with half your brains left out there on the canvas. Maybe it was a good thing the war happened."

"You don't mean that."

"Sure I do. Listen, what about the German? What's his name, Keeglefarven? That one makes me laugh, too. You know, on Red Buttons's show."

"I'll see what I can do."

"This is funny, ain't it?" he asked. "Us ending up this way. You ever see that cartoon with the sheepdog and the wolf?"

REUBEN COULDN'T STAND THE CELL. EVEN THOUGH THAT big Jack Black kept the door unlocked and he could use the real bathroom and shower and shave in the same room as the deputies and could even get free Coca-Colas from the courthouse, the damn place made him itch. After a few weeks, just about Christmastime, Quinnie or Jack and even sometimes Lamar would let him walk downtown and have lunch at the Elite or Smitty's and just kind of stretch his legs. He wasn't a prisoner, and they knew it was his own decision to live at the jail. An old B-girl he used to see stopped by every day and brought him cigarettes and sometimes a jar of peanut butter and Hershey's bars. He got letters in the mail from some of the women who'd worked for him, one card was even postmarked from Havana.

But he never could get dry, not even inside, and would drink himself to sleep every night, the deputies knowing he kept the hooch under the bunk but not really caring. It was on a cold day, sky dark as hell, that he'd just about run out and walked to the sheriff's desk to have Lamar drive him to the liquor store. But Lamar was out.

He asked some new fat boy to call him on the radio. But the boy said Lamar was in Montgomery.

Reuben headed out the back door and walked out the chain-link gates, out and around the jail and the courthouse and up to Fourteenth to Chad's Rose Room, a clip joint that had gone legit. Reuben sat there at the bar and drank down a couple Budweisers and ate a bowl of chili. He punched up some Ernest Tubb on the jukebox, listening to "Slippin' Around," "Filipino Baby," and "Merry Texas Christmas, You All!" He liked the last one so much, he played it again.

He had another couple beers and tried to call Billy. He hadn't seen him since he'd been in jail. There was silver tinsel all along the bar, with Christmas lights that winked.

He drank another beer and called the jail, asking for Lamar, who was still out.

He played "Merry Texas Christmas, You All!" twice more. And then the cook asked him to leave, and Reuben said that was fine 'cause he wouldn't pay for chili that tasted like dog shit.

He walked down to the river, past all the old joints boarded up. The front door to Club Lasso boarded up with a CLOSURE notice, compliments of the Guard. He didn't have a jacket, and his teeth chattered as he looked over the Chattahoochee churn for a while and then turned back up the hill, the street pretty much closed up and dead, making leaning shadows, trash piled up in big bunches along the road, and then wandered down Fifth Avenue, where some sonofabitch had hung candy canes from streetlamps, and the pharmacy, fake snow sprayed on the window, not fooling a soul.

His teeth chattered more as he walked by the Palace Theater, noting there was a new movie on called Atomic Man, along with White Christmas. He stepped inside to get warm and asked the usher if he'd seen a boy that looked like Billy. The teenager looked at Reuben like he was just some crazy drunk, and Reuben told the usher that he looked like a monkey in that bow tie, and that he bet White Christmas was a crock a shit, that Bing Crosby had never been no GI.

As he walked, it almost startled him that it had grown dark, seeming to close Phenix City in a little curtain. The taillights on the Hudsons, Nashes, Fords, and Chevys glowing bright red up and down Fourteenth.

He kept moving past the courthouse, not feeling like stepping back in that cell, and gave a two-finger salute to some of the Guard boys, stepping around them, down by a bus stop by the railroad tracks and Niggertown, thinking that maybe someone would have some 'shine down there.

That's when he was greeted by something that struck him downright funny. A troop of Boy Scouts standing across from the courthouse, all duded up in their green uniforms, yellow bandannas around their necks. They marched behind a man who was dressed just like those kids, and the sight of him made Reuben really giggle. A grown man dressed up like a Boy Scout, having to march right by them Guard troops.

He stood as they passed by and he kept the salute to all of them, laughing a little bit, before turning toward the railroad tracks that cut Phenix City in half and down under a little trestle, where he found a couple of old negro men sitting on their old rotten porch eyeing him like he was about to steal one of the bald tires they had out in their yard.

"Excuse me, preacher," Reuben said, "could I ask you a question?"

With a jelly jar full of hooch and it coming up on night, Reuben was ready to go back to the cell and maybe play a game of cards with Quinnie. How he loved playing cards with Quinnie. If the boy had any more tells on him, he'd be a damn dictionary.

The car came out of nowhere, skidding to a stop, the door popping open and a man jumping out, Reuben's eyes having to focus and shift on the man's face.

He saw those big choppers first as the man smiled. "Howdy."

Reuben searched for something to say, but that was right when Johnnie reached into his coat pocket, popped open the switchblade, and gouged it into his throat.

21.

REUBEN LAY THERE on that street corner, holding his throat, his face turning pale as a bleached sheet, as the Boy Scouts ran to him, circling him, the troop master pressing his bandanna to Reuben's bloodied neck. Some of the boys ran for the courthouse, yelling, and Reuben lay there looking up at the sky, not moving his eyes or blinking and twice trying to talk but his voice unable to work right. He finally gathered it in a sputtering, bloody gag, and he asked for the sheriff. He asked for me twice more, before a woman walking down the road, a stripper who had worked for him at Club Lasso, spotted his cowboy boots hanging off the curb. And she ran to him, wobbling on the big red high heels that matched her tight red dress, and she dropped to her knees, taking Reuben's head in her lap and calling out for help, and being told the boys were finding it.

And she cried and held him there on the street corner, more people gathering around, circling Reuben, the curious sight of him and the buxom woman holding him in her lap and crying. His face grown whiter now, still calling out for me, and another boy running off when they knew he'd meant Sheriff Murphy. A short man in a suit said the man on the ground had just testified in the Patterson murder, and the crowd all started talking and whispering while Reuben spit up more blood, hearing a siren in the distance.

Reuben's eyes shifted for a moment, his body shook, and he smiled up at the girl, recognizing her face, and croaked, "Howdy, Birmingham."

She smoothed back the hair from his forehead and cried, screaming for everyone to clear away, and then a path opened, Jack Black pushing his way through and kneeling down to see Reuben and yelling for more room so they could all breathe.

Reuben waited, his arms splayed out open, Texas show boots crossed at the ankle and a smile on his bloody lips. "I bet I sure look like shit."

The stripper held the Boy Scout bandanna, not gold now but soaked in blood, and men rushed from an ambulance and spoke to Jack Black and then hoisted Reuben onto a gurney, taking him to Homer C. Cobb.

I didn't learn what had happened until I drove back into Phenix City and was met at my house by Quinnie Kelley, who drove me to the hospital. Reuben had already had a blood transfusion by that time, and I sent Quinnie out to look for Billy, but, by midnight, Quinnie had returned alone.

It was about that time a nurse told me that Reuben had called for me, and I left the waiting room where I was staying with Joyce and walked back to his room. Reuben was there, his neck bandaged, two nurses working on him, and I half expected him to sit up and make a joke about ladies in white. But he just lay there, eyes closed, shirt off, but still wearing blue jeans and muddy boots.

He opened his eyes, asking for Billy, and I had to kneel down and tell him that he was on his way. And Reuben nodded and closed his eyes and jerked a bit like you do nodding off while trying to stay awake. The nurse pushed me out of the room and wheeled him fast around the corner.

I followed, a door with a circular window slamming in my face.

Not five minutes later, the door swung back open, and a doctor gripped my upper arm, a man I knew from church, and he told me he wanted me in surgery.

"I'm fine right here."

"You don't understand," he said. "I know who this man is and what he did today. If something happens, I want you to watch as a witness."

I was hustled into a bleached smock and told to stand back from the operating table, up on a wooden apple crate. I watched them fill Reuben's pale chest and throat with tubes, opening up the gash below his chin, more fresh blood being pumped into his body.

He lay there, out cold, with his slicked hair and closed, droopy eyes and what looked like a smile. An honest-to-God smile. I watched his face, trying to figure out the smile, the last joke on all of this, just as the sound of cracking startled me, the doctor sawing into Reuben's chest. My head jerked back, as if hearing the report of a rifle, and I watched as the doctor held Reuben's heart in his simple human hands and tried to massage him back to life, only to give up minutes later and check the watch on his wrist.

"HOW MANY MORE OF US HAVE TO GET KILLED BEFORE someone will make a damn decision?"

John Patterson was outside by the hospital fountain, yelling at Bernard Sykes, who just stood there taking it but shaking his head in disagreement. I joined them, listening, John telling Sykes to present the grand jury with everything, don't hold a piece back on Fuller or Ferrell or they'd never indict. But Sykes shook his head, saying they'd have to wait for the grand jury.

"It's a slow process," Sykes said. "We have to build the case."

"This case is going to be taken away from you. Don't you know that?"

"They're going to indict."

"Not a word of his testimony can be used in court," Patterson said. "The defense can't cross-examine a dead man."

Patterson rubbed his neck, exhausted, and looked at Sykes and then back at me. He shook his head in defeat, before walking back out into the shadows.

IT WAS TWO A.M. WHEN BILLY ARRIVED AT THE HOSPITAL, walked in by Jack Black and Quinnie. He moved slow through the lobby, the older people there watching him, seeing if he knew, how he would react, would he fall or keep upright.

I put my arm around him, not saying a word.

He'd been told.

In a back hospital room, Reuben lay on the gurney, covered up to the chin by a white sheet, the stripper sitting near him, as if guarding his body. In a chair, she shined his boots with a cloth and mug of soapy water.

"Who are you?" Billy asked.