The Missing

“Indeed I am.”

“My name’s Sam Simoneaux. A man I know, a telegrapher for the railroad, told me you might be able to help me find a family back in these parts.”

“Is it Sam Kivens?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, of course. It’s old Bob McFadden.”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“What railroad?”

“Y &MV.”

Soner narrowed his eyes. “Doug Friar? Mac Divitts? Hazel Tugovich? Barry Ofel?”

“His name’s Morris Hightower.”

Soner seemed surprised. “I don’t know him, son. But I imagine that he knows one of the others I named and obtained my location from them.” He looked Sam over carefully for hints of who he was, and then turned stiffly, like a man with back trouble. “Come on in and have a seat.”

As soon as he closed the door, the front room went dark as a tu

“This is some collection, all right. Where’d you get ’em all?”

Soner’s expression didn’t change. “There’s many of them to be had in this world.”

“You’re well protected, that’s for sure.”

“They’re all loaded.” Here he smiled. “Back here in the woods, I need options.”

“Yes, sir. I won’t take much of your time.” He made an effort to see if in Soner’s eyes there were any traces of madness.

“Take all the time you wish. Can I get you a glass of water? It’s pure, though warm.”

“That’d be nice.”

When Soner returned from the back room, walking stiffly with the glass held out, he stopped behind him and held the tall glass to the left. When Sam reached out with his left hand, Soner’s right hand ghosted from behind and plucked the.45 from its shoulder holster. He held the big pistol high in the air with two fingers as he returned to his seat. “Just a precaution. I don’t know your character.”

Sam gulped the water. “Well…all right, then.”

“I’ve been the law back in here ever since I was a boy, more or less. You’d think it was just writing permits and solving little neighborly fights. Serving papers. Things like that.”

“I hadn’t thought about it much.”

“Even back in here there are what you might call earth-shaking matters.”

Sam looked at the top of the window to his right. The light was fading, and he wondered if he could stay around long enough to sleep in the barn. He might even get up in the morning and drive back to Helena. “You know everybody around here, then.”

“I know their animals, too.”

“I’m looking for a family named Cloat.”

The constable’s expression froze. In the dim room his eyes, deep set and dark, glimmered like two stars reflected in a narrow well. “I have the feeling you’ve got a story to tell me.”

“That’s right.” He took several swallows of water, which had no taste at all, and said what there was to say. He ended by explaining that each year he thought more about the missing pieces of his life, and that talking to the Cloats, maybe just seeing them, might help him fill in the blank areas. When he finished his story, the space in the window was lavender sky.

“You think that by looking at them you’ll figure them out?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you look at a mountain, can you tell what’s inside all that rock?”

“Sir?”

“I’m sorry.” Soner made a dismissive motion with his hand. “You going back there to kill some of them?”

“I hope not.”

“Why else would anyone look up a Cloat?”

“To find out things.”

Soner nodded. “Yes, of course. You’re on a quest for knowledge only. That makes you lucky.”

Sam blinked. “How’s that?”

“The Cloats go through life incurious about anything at all, whether history or music or the well-being of their own blood.”

“Maybe they’re the lucky ones.”

Soner shook his head. “No. They’re like animals, interested only in what’s in front of them at the moment. But there’s one thing that makes them different from animals.”

“And what’s that?”

“Revenge.” The constable was quiet for a long time. Then he reached out and lit a Rayo lamp with a match. “Come on,” he said, hoisting the lamp. “Let’s fix supper.”

They went into a long rear kitchen and lit more lamps. Sam got the kerosene stove hot and found a skillet while Soner brought in eggs and a smoked ham and snap beans from his garden. There was a pitcher of buttermilk under a cheesecloth and some hard bread. The little stove cooked slow, but within an hour they sat down to eat, and Soner said a blessing. He asked Sam to tell him about his work on the Ambassador and listened to the long story about why he hired out on the boat in the first place.

After the dishes were put away, the constable poured them some old sour mash in glasses of the good water and they went out and sat on the porch in rush-bottom rockers. The dark was so total the mosquitoes couldn’t find them.

“Mr. Simoneaux, you can spend the night in the upstairs bedroom. It should be cool enough for sleep in about an hour. But do not for any reason come down before daylight. There’s a chamber pot under the bed. Do you understand?”

Sam nodded. “What’s your bedside firearm?”

He heard Soner take a long draw from his glass and then a knocking sound as he set it on the floor. “An eight-gauge Greener double-barrel. I loaded the shells myself.”

“Good Lord. What’s in them, buckshot?”

Soner chuckled. “My father was a watchmaker in Memphis. He died when I was young, and I was left for years with boxes of used watch parts, little steel gears, balance wheels, winding stems, case-hardened screws. I loaded a whole box of eight-gauge shells with the stuff, jammed it in tight.”

“Damn. You ever fire one off?”

“No. I call it my time machine. You know, when somebody dies their soul travels one of two ways-back where they came from or forward toward what they deserve, and whoever comes against my Greener will make the journey.”

“Is it something everybody around here knows about?”

“Oh, yes. Even the clan of Cloats you want to find.”

“I’d like to drive out and meet some of them.”

A little laugh came out of the darkness as Soner reached down for his drink. “I think ‘meet’ is too nice a word, son.”

“I figured they’d be a bad bunch.”

“The family has fallen off considerably in the past twenty years. When your family experienced their unfortunate meeting they were in their heyday. Usually, a meeting with a Cloat entailed a straight razor across the throat or a.45 slug in the back of one’s cranium. If you were a man. Women dealt with other initial penetrations. The Cloats aren’t your ordinary bad-seed murderers. Even on a cold day they stink like whoresex. They violate their animals. If they kill someone in their camp, they’ll feed his carcass to their hogs. But nowadays, well, I hear less and less about them as the years go on. But still there’s not a lawman in a hundred miles who would go in to find them. They came into this part of the world in the 1830s, run out of Georgia, I believe, along about the time Island Sixty-five began to form in the big river. They worked up and down the Natchez Trace cutting throats before crossing the river over to this side. Some settled back in the inland swamps for a time, but by the war they’d all moved out on the island.”