Chapter 13 XII

ILL WAKE LORETTA UP just bein awake myself. Be layin there and shell say my name. Like askin me if Im there. Sometimes Ill go in the kitchen and get her a ginger ale and well set there in the dark. ease about things. The world Ive seen has not made me a spiritual person. Not like her. She worries about me, too. I see it. I reckon I thought that because I was older and the man that she would learn from me and in many respects she has. But I know where the debt lies. I think I know where were headed. Were bein bought with our own money. And it aint just the drugs. There is fortunes bein accumulated out there that they dont nobody even know about. What do we think is goin to come of that money? Money that can buy whole countries. It done has. Can it buy this one? I dont think so. But it will put you in bed with people you ought not to be there with. Its not even a law enforcement problem.

I doubt that it ever was. Theres always been narcotics. But people dont just up and decide to dope themselves for no reason. By the millions. I dont have no answer about that. I told a reporter here a while back — young girl, seemed nice enough. She was just tryin to be a reporter. She said: Sheriff how come you to let crime get so out of hand in your county? Sounded like a fair question I reckon. Maybe it was a fair question. Anyway I told her, I said: It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Any time you quit hearin Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight. It reaches into ever strata. You've heard about that aint you? Ever strata? You finally get into the sort of breakdown in mercury ethics that leaves people settin around out in the desert dead in their vehicles and by then its just too late.

She give me kindly a funny look. So the last thing I told her, and maybe I shouldn't of said it, I told her that you cant have a dope business without dopers. A lot of em are well dressed and holdin down goodpayin jobs too .I said: You might even know some yourself The other thing is the old people, and I keep comin back to them. They look at me its always a question. Years back I dont remember that. back in the fifties. You see em and they dont even look confused. They just look crazy. That bothers me. Its like they woke up and they dont know how they got where theyre at. Well, in a manner of speakin they dont.

At supper this evenin she told me shed been readin St John. The Revelations. Any time I get to talkin about how things are shell find somethin in the bible so I asked her if Revelations had anything to say about the shape things was takin and she said shed let me know. I asked her if there was anything in there about green hair and nosebones and she said not in so many words there wasn't. I dont know if thats a good sign or not. Then she come around behind my chair and put her arms around my neck and bit me on the ear. Shes a very young woman in a lot of ways. If I didnt have her I dont know what I would have. Well, yes I do . You wouldn't need a box to put it in, neither.

It was a cold blustery day when he walked out of the courthouse for the last time. Some men could put their arms around a crying woman but it never felt natural to him. He walked down the steps and out the back door and got in his truck and sat there. He couldnt name the feeling. It was sadness but it was something else besides. And the something else besides was what had him sitting there instead of starting the truck. Hed felt like this before but not in a long time and when he said that, then he knew what it was. It was defeat. It was being beaten. More bitter to him than death. You need to get over that, he said. Then he started the truck.