Indelible

Robert's shoulders slumped even more. "He shouldn't be doing that."

"He took out money against the store."

"Christ," Robert breathed. "Why'd he do that?"

"He couldn't see you staying here," Jeffrey said, trying to get Hoss's attention. The old man stared out at the parking lot. Jeffrey got the feeling he had interrupted something. "I've gotta say I'm not too crazy about it myself."

Robert said, "I'm okay."

Jeffrey waited for him to turn around, but he would not. "Bobby?"

He gave Jeffrey a quick glance, but that was enough to show that he had a black eye and a split lip. Jeffrey walked around the chair, trying to get a better look at him. Bruises peeked out of the top of his orange jail uniform and his left arm had a large bandage wrapped around it. Jeffrey's fists clenched without thinking about it, and he had trouble asking, "What happened?"

Hoss answered for him. "Got a little rowdy last night."

"Why wasn't he sequestered?" Jeffrey demanded.

"He didn't want special treatment."

"Special treatment?" Jeffrey repeated, not bothering to hide his outrage. "Good God, that's not special treatment, that's common sense."

"Don't question me, boy," Hoss warned, his finger pointed in Jeffrey's direction. "I can't make any man do what they don't want to do."

"That's bullshit!" Jeffrey countered. "He's a fucking inmate. You can make him sleep in his own shit if you want to."

"Well, I wasn't here to do it!" Hoss raged. "Goddammit, I wasn't here." He used the back of his hand to wipe his mouth, and Jeffrey could feel the misery radiating off him like a bad smell. Whatever Jeffrey was feeling at this moment, he knew that Hoss felt worse.

"Who did it?" Jeffrey asked Robert. "Was it Reggie Ray? If he's the one -"

Robert interrupted, "It wasn't Reggie's fault."

"If he -"

"I asked to be put in," Robert said. "I wanted to see what it was like."

Jeffrey still could not find the words to express himself.

Hoss shifted his belt much as Reggie had done. "I'm go

Jeffrey went to the source, asking Robert, "What happened?"

Robert shrugged, wincing as it caused him obvious pain. "I was sleeping. They woke me up and moved me into general population."

Jeffrey felt sick at the thought of cops doing this to one of their own. There was a code, and even now Robert was upholding it despite what the bastards had exposed him to.

"Why didn't you call for help?"

"From who?" Robert asked, a sadness in his tone. "They've all been waiting for something like this," he said, indicating the deputies in the station with a nod of his head. "It's the same as when we were kids, Jeffrey. Not a damn thing has changed. Every guy in here was just waiting for me to fuck up so they could throw me to the lions." He gave a sad laugh. And Jeffrey could only imagine how horrible his night had been. The other inmates had probably thought it was Christmas, having a cop to take out all their hostilities on for the night.

Robert continued, "All these years…I really thought some of those men were my friends, that I had proven myself." He paused, obviously trying to control his emotions. "I had a wife. I was part of a family. Hell, I even coached Little League. Did you know that? We got to the quad-A championship last year. Liked to won but one of the Thompson boys overthrew to home." He smiled at the memory. "Did you know that? We made it to the big stadium over in Birmingham."

Jeffrey shook his head. He had grown up with this man, spent every day of his boyhood with him, yet he knew nothing about his life as an adult.

"You just never know what people think about you, do you?" Robert asked. "You go to ballgames and picnics and watch their kids grow up and hear about their divorces and affairs and it doesn't mean shit. They smile to your face while they're stabbing you in the back."

"You should've called Hoss last night," Jeffrey said. "He would've come down and straightened all of this out."

"It'd just make things worse the next time."

"Worse?" Jeffrey said. "What's worse than getting the shit beat out of you?" His mind answered his own question, and he sunk down in the chair beside Robert before his knees gave out. "They didn't…?"

Robert's voice sounded like it was coming out of a dead man. "No."

Jeffrey put his hand to his stomach, a hot sickness churning in his belly. "Jesus…" he whispered, as close to a prayer as he had come in twenty years.

Robert's hands started to tremor, and Jeffrey noticed the handcuffs keeping them together. His fingers were as beaten up as his face, deep gashes on his knuckles where his fists had met something hard. He looked as if he had fought for his life last night.

Jeffrey asked, "Why are you cuffed?"

"I'm a dangerous criminal," Robert reminded him. "I've killed two people."

"You didn't," Jeffrey said. "Robert, I know you didn't do this. Why are you lying?"

"I can't do this," Robert said. "I thought I was strong enough, but I'm not."

Jeffrey put his hand on Robert's shoulder, but pulled it away when the other man flinched. He wondered if Robert was telling him the truth about last night, though if he really thought about it, Jeffrey did not want to know a damn thing.

Jeffrey said, "We'll get you a lawyer."

"I don't have any money," he said. "Jessie's family wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire."

"I'll pay for it," Jeffrey told him, even as he racked his brain to think of where he could find that kind of money. "I don't have enough equity in my house, but I've got a retirement plan I can cash out. It's not much, but it'll be a retainer. Between me and Possum, we can find a way to do this. I'll work security, get another job if I have to." He cast about for something concrete. "I can move back to Birmingham and drive down on the weekends."

"I can't let you do that."

"You don't have a choice," Jeffrey told him. "You can't spend another night in jail."

Robert shook his head, an overwhelming sadness filling the room. "I've never had much of a choice about anything, Jeffrey. I'm so sick of living this life. Just plain dog tired of everyone and everything in it." He closed his eyes. "Jessie's finished with me. She was finished with me a long time ago."

"Is this because of the miscarriage?" Jeffrey asked, thinking that was enough to put a strain on any relationship. There had to be a reason Jessie went out on her husband. People did not cheat for no reason.

"It goes back further than that," Robert said. "It goes back to that day Julia came to school, saying I raped her. She never trusted me. Not after that."

Jeffrey felt all of his senses strain. "Did you tell Jessie what happened?"

"She never asked," Robert said. "There's things she knows in her head, but she never asks the question. Why don't people ask the question?"

"Maybe they don't want to know the answers," Jeffrey told him, thinking he was just as bad as Jessie. Still, he said, "Jessie didn't believe those rumors. Nobody who really knew you believed it was true."

"They believed it about you," Robert said. He looked up at Jeffrey, his eyes watering. "I let them think that all this time."

"Think what?"

"That you raped Julia," he said, his eyes shifting around, like he wanted to take in every part of Jeffrey's reaction. "I let them think it was you in the woods. I let them think you raped her."

Jeffrey felt all the saliva in his mouth go dry.

"I was just protecting myself," Robert said. "You went away, but I had to stay here, had to live with them all bearing down on me, thinking they knew my nature." He looked away. "Every Sunday at church, I could feel Lane Kendall staring a hole into me, like she could see what was going on, like she knew what happened that day."