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  His spending spree had cost him all of fifty cents, with the twin Jacksons lying in the depths of his pocket undiminished. He managed to scrounge a cigarette off a passing stranger, and he sat on a bench near the town square taking his time whittling it down and watching all who passed by in front of him. There was prosperity in the air, comingling with those clearly in economic despair. But those on that woeful side of the equation would no doubt work hard to get to the “other side” with all due speed, rising to the mountaintop to look down on others scrambling madly for their piece of the pie. And that, to Archer, was the fledgling American dream in a nutshell, particularly after a war that had knocked the stuffing out of just about everyone.

  Archer had good reason to soak in as much of Poca City as he possibly could. This would be his home, at least for the foreseeable future, and he had made friendly with as many folks as he could on his walking tour, at the same time foraging for information to the extent he could without raising their suspicions. He had learned that some had short fuses, and he was not looking to make enemies of any sort.

  Like Dill, many had heard of Mr. Hank Pittleman, though the opinions of these folks varied greatly. He was either a devil or a benefactor, with not one commentator occupying the middle ground. Archer took in all this with a grain of salt and let it marinate as he smoked. Many had also heard of Lucas Tuttle. He was described as a farmer of fierce devotion to the soil and a provocateur of skilled debate. He was also a seasoned hunter, as comfortable with firearms as he was skewering, with his impressive vocabulary and agile wits, those who did not align with his points of view on myriad subjects. These ranged from local crop rotation theories to the efficacy of the Marshall Plan to the question of the gold standard versus all other benchmarks.

  A curious combination and perhaps the earmarks of a formidable person from whom to collect a debt. This was possibly why all efforts heretofore employed by Mr. Pittleman had suffered failure in their execution, with perhaps the stark execution of the poor debt collector having followed.

  On this very point, Archer said to one man, wearing an aged Hoover collar, a greasy felt hat, and an intense expression, “Tell me something, has this man Tuttle ever killed anybody in a dispute?”

  “Well,” said the fellow, his teeth gnawing at his top lip. “If he has, it never reached a court of law. And that’s a fact. For I am a member of the local bar and would be in a position to know of such.”

  “Would you reasonably expect that it would have reached a court of law?” Archer had persisted.

  “I would expect that in Poca City, all results are possible, except for consistent rain and politicians who keep their promises. And a man with influence can achieve things unavailable to the rabble. I trust you recognize the both of us as part of that unfortunate clan, mister.”

  Archer could not doubt that the man spoke the bold truth.

  After his smoke, Archer flicked a shard of tobacco off his tongue, made a decision, rose, and set out to the west at a steady pace, his long legs energetically eating up distance. He wanted to explore new territory. It was in his blood.

  After he’d gotten out of the Army, someone had asked him if he was good, bad, or indifferent to having once been a person fighting a world war now consigned to a normal existence. Archer had answered that he was all of those things, or could be, depending on the opportunity.

  “You mean the circumstance,” the man had corrected.

  “No, I think I got it right the first time,” Archer had re-corrected.

  And his thinking in Poca City had not been changed by recent events.

  It led him to march out to the road he’d taken the prison stop bus in on and lift his thumb to the sky. In the Army, he’d often served as a scout, going ahead to see where the enemy might be and what sort of killing assets they might have. It was rough going and dangerous because he often found himself behind enemy lines outnumbered forty to one. But in his opinion, it was always better to know than not know. Which was why he was standing on a dusty road with a cloudless sky overhead and his thumb pointed to Heaven. Or at least in the kingdom’s vicinity. Archer never seemed to know the exact location of God, because the fellow never seemed to stay still long enough to allow Archer to make his acquaintance.

  The beanpole, ginger-haired farmer in the truck who stopped to pick him up made no inquiries other than to ask where Archer was headed. He told him, the man nodded, pointed to the rear, shifted his gears, and they set off. Archer rode in the back with a bale of hay and a baby goat curled up asleep on a pile of rags.

  The air remained intensely dry. Archer had it on good authority from at least a half-dozen folks in town that Poca City saw rain about as often as one viewed a rich man in a soup line.

  “You telling me it never rains here?” he’d asked one bright-eyed citizen.

  “No, it does. But if you’re asleep when it commences, there might not be any evidence of it remaining the next morning when you wake up and make inquiries.”

  “But don’t they grow crops here?”

  “Absolutely,” the same gent had volunteered. “But just the kind that fertilizes itself on wind and dust, of which we have an abundance.”

  The ride took nearly an hour, and as soon as he bid the farmer, the hay bale, and the still-sleeping baby goat adieu, Archer wondered how he was going to get back. But like most things, he decided he would tackle that when the time came and not before. He was a man who lived each moment as though it would surely be his last. War just did that to you. And prison had piled on that notion, forcing it bone deep into Archer. He figured he would never be free of it now.

  He eyed the name on the mailbox that leaned toward the road, like it was giving an edge to the postman coming.

  L. TUTTLE.

  The farm stretched as far as Archer could see. He didn’t know if that qualified it as a big farm or not; he was not versed in such matters. He’d grown up far from here, in a home of glass, brick, and vertical quality. Grass had not been included in the deal. There was not a cow that he knew of within twenty miles of his birthplace. Here, though, the bovines were everywhere, dotting the land like a foraging army bivouacked for a stretch till the time for fighting would come along.

  He saw the gravel road that led out of sight and figured the home of L. Tuttle would be just along that way. He eyed the sky, and the sun told him it was now nearer to four than three. He checked his watch, although he trusted the sky more than he did his windup.

  He saw dust kicking up in the distance: either a tornado, or a tractor working away. As he squinted, Archer could make out it was the latter. He took off his hat, slapped it against his pants leg to dispel the dust that clung to every bit of him, and headed up the road.

  He’d been right; the one road branched off, like the sweep of a river, to three o’clock, and a quarter mile down this fork he saw the house and the outbuildings.

  It occurred to him that Tuttle was a prosperous man, which made the matter of the debt more problematic, at least in his mind. But a promissory note signed, with collateral laid against it, was a serious thing, he was finding. While perhaps some would see it as a small issue, the fact was, if debts remained unpaid, whatever followed would genuinely be the collapse of civilization as any of them would know it, Archer included. And he and millions of others had just fought a world war to ensure that neither anarchy nor fascism nor anything else would replace the reasonable screwing over of people without money by those who possessed damn near all of it.

  Archer had come back from the war feeling lucky to be alive. He had not come back to seek a fortune. He wanted his share, to be sure, but it constituted a small ambition, and would not move mountains or deprive others of theirs. He had undertaken a years-long, small detour due to a profound lack of judgment over a concern that he had no sooner deemed of little importance, when it rose up and smote him with the power of a king and his legions crossing the Rubicon. And that mistake had caused his ass to be dragged right to Carderock Prison.

&nb
sp; His two years of college had included readings in ancient history. He didn’t know that material would have applied so readily to him in the year 1949.

  He picked up his pace as he went in search of Lucas Tuttle. He had a plan. Whether it would work or not was anyone’s guess. But something tickled at the back of his head, same as when he was a scout looking first for Italians and later for Germans. He had found the Italians the far easier of the pair. They didn’t really want to fight, he reckoned, because every time he’d run into some, they were either drunk or eating their dinner. He wasn’t surprised they’d turned on Mussolini and stuck his head up on a pike. They probably wanted to simply get back to their pasta and bottles of wine and their women. The Germans, on the other hand, seemed to like killing about as much as Dickie Dill liked strangling folks or smashing hogs in the head just so till they died. Archer had never ventured to the Pacific Theater, but he’d heard the Japanese were worse than the Germans.

  As he drew closer, he saw that the house was a large, neat, one-story made of stained plank siding, with quarry stone chimneys, plenty of windows, and a wide porch on which sat two rocking chairs. The thing looked well built, trim and tight as a drum. He supposed there was no dust inside.

  He rapped on the single door with his knuckles. He could hear the footsteps coming. Something was about to happen. And you couldn’t ask more from life than that.

  Chapter 6

  THE FRONT DOOR swung wide open in an inviting way, until the twin barrels of the Remington twelve-gauge over-under greeted Archer; they were aimed at his belly and he could see no easy way around that.

  He looked at the fellow holding the advantage on him.

  He was around fifty-five with about as interesting a face as Archer had ever beheld. The large head was topped by a great crown of white hair that toppled downward like a snow avalanche off a mountaintop. The tanned brow was thickly furrowed, and the chin was a V of bone, while the jutting jaw seemed a flesh-and-blood version of the over-under’s muzzle. But what really caught his attention were the green eyes hovering in stark contrast to the tumble of white hair. They occupied their sockets with the intensity of twin machine guns in a bunker. The impression was mesmerizing and appalling to Archer all at the same time.

  “Can I help you, mister?” the man said politely, belying the ominous threat held in his hands.

  “Are you Mr. Lucas Tuttle?”

  “What do you want, pray tell?” His benign look hardened several notches, the eyes now seemed an emerald fire. “And you might indeed want to start praying, son.”

  “Well, right now, all I want is some separation from me and that Remington.”

  “Oh, no. That may well be premature. State your business or your belly will grow quite familiar with the intrinsic purpose of this firearm.”

  “I was hired by Hank Pittleman to come here and relieve you of your 1947 dark green Cadillac sedan.”

  The machine gun eyes narrowed a bit. “You are not endearing yourself to me, stranger. You seem like a fine young man, though a bit rough around the edges. It would be a shame to end things for you right here and now.”

  “I had determined to come out here at night when you were asleep and see if I could take back your Cadillac without you knowing. But then I decided to approach the matter on a more direct footing.”

  The muzzle lowered to a part of Archer’s anatomy that was even more precious to him than his stomach.

  “To answer your query, I am Lucas Tuttle, sir. Now explain yourself further, but you best tell me your full, legal name first. That way it can go on the tombstone properly.”

  “Aloysius Archer, but just call me Archer.”

  Tuttle looked him up and down with a practiced stare. “You’re the right age. And you look like a tough cookie, for sure. Did you serve, Archer? Did you do your patriotic duty?”

  Archer thought this an odd departure, but if it kept the man’s mind off the Remington? “I did my bit. Over three years in Europe.”

  “Who under?”

  “For most of the war, the Fifth Army, General Mark Clark. I was part of Second Corps, Thirty-Fourth Infantry Division.”

  “That was the Mediterranean Theater, was it not?”

  “Yes, sir. Salerno, Bologna, Genoa, Milan, the Barbara, Volturno and Gustav Lines, Anzio Beach. Names I couldn’t say before, and places I never thought I’d be. And I truly have no desire to go back.”

  “That was some fierce fighting, I understand.”

  “You could say. The Fifth had over a hundred thousand casualties when all was said and done. Lost a lot of good men and good friends.”

  “Were you wounded, Archer, fighting?”

  “Most everybody was wounded, Mr. Tuttle, and I was no exception.”

  “Your medals, sir? Did you distinguish yourself? Be detailed.”

  Now Archer’s features set firm, like cement going from fluid to hard. “I killed folks I didn’t know, because they were trying to kill me. I left the Army with metal inside me I didn’t start out life with. I got a box of medals and ribbons somewhere, and they don’t amount to a hill of beans now. That’s my piece, so you can just pull the damn trigger if you got to and be done with it.”

  The muzzle dropped a shade lower but then held on Archer’s knees.

  “I like your spirit, Archer. What I do not understand is your alliance with that scoundrel Pittleman.”

  “I needed a job and he gave me one. A hundred dollars if I deliver the Cadillac to him. He advanced me forty dollars with the rest to come on him getting that car.”

  “He has sent others before you.”

  “That I’ve heard.”

  “They came at night. They did not wish to face me.”

  Archer eyed the over-under. “I can see why they might have done it that way.”

  “Trespassing is a crime hereabouts, as it should be in every democratic union that holds property rights as sacred. Thus, I furnished them exactly what they deserved.”

  “Okay. I’m one who doesn’t think property is worth a man’s life, but that may just be me.”

  The emerald eyes blazed at this comment. “However, you, sir, show up in broad daylight and knock on my door and admit your mission to my face. Explain yourself.”

  “Pretty simple. I wanted you to tell me to my face whether you owe that debt or not.”

  “Why is that important to you?”

  “Well, if you don’t owe it, I have no further business here.”

  “And if I do owe the debt?”

  Archer said nothing.

  Tuttle appraised him, running his gaze from the top of the hat to the heels of the shoes.

  “Come on inside, Archer, and let’s talk.”

  He moved aside so Archer could enter and led him down a long, tiled hallway to a small, plainly furnished room with wood paneling and a plank floor with a colorful rug laid over it.

  “Sit down over there,” he said, motioning with his shotgun to a chair.

  Tuttle took the chair opposite, his shotgun muzzle pointed to the floor.

  “I borrowed the money from Hank Pittleman. I had need to do so at the time.”

  “Do you owe the man five thousand dollars plus interest?”

  “Yes. And it’s also true that I gave my 1947 Cadillac as collateral for that loan.”

  “Why’d you do that? Seems like you have a good deal of prosperity going on here.”

  “Prosperity sometimes does not equal folding money, Archer. And my suppliers do not barter in wishful thinking.”

  “So you owe the debt but won’t pay it back?”

  “Do you think life is that simple?”

  “Life has never struck me as being simple unless you’re determined to make it so.”

  “Pittleman has stolen from me. That is why I have not repaid the money.”

  “What’s he taken from you?”

  “Something far more precious than the sum of five thousand dollars.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

 
“He has taken my daughter.”

  That was a new one on Archer, and his face showed it to be so. “How’s that exactly?”

  “He has convinced my beautiful daughter that she should no longer be a part of her father’s life. She has fallen in with his evil and sick ways. For all of her life, I saw her sweet face every day. Now, I have not seen her for over a year.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  “By giving her things, Archer. By turning her head with materialistic offers. By introducing her to the shallow pleasures of his hedonistic lifestyle. And he treats her roughly, or so I have been told.”

  “What’s her name?” Archer asked, though he was reasonably confident of the answer.

  “Jackie.”

  “I’ve met her.”

  “Indeed? And she was no doubt in the company of this heathen.”

  “Then you won’t pay back the debt because he’s turned your daughter against you?”

  “You said before that property is not worth a man’s life. Well, why is a debt, though legally owed, more important than a father’s love for his daughter?”

  “And you said you hadn’t seen her for over a year?”

  “That is so.”

  “Well, why not try talking to her?”

  “I can’t, Archer. She refuses to see me.”

  “Why?”

  “That is my business.”

  “When I saw her, she didn’t act like she was being held against her will. And you’re talking to a man who has seen that up close and personal.”