But I never caught them Lampson brothers at it. Others I have. There’s families in this country, where there’s a daughter or son and daughter — or perhaps even a young mother without children, or a widow — and they’re the ones that have forced my hand. I ain’t keen on nodding at the father or husband when it’s over, either. I don’t like to see a man who’s got to count heads all night — or who takes to going out himself.
But not the Lampson boys. No one ever even thought they had done one thing to shame us, at least not before the older married. And the younger’s record is still clear.
I used to know the younger well.
It’s not easy holding reins on people, keeping watch. There’s something about a single street, some houses and four or five hundred square miles of ground that seems to make them worse. A hand comes in off a ranch, yellowed, with his mouth still closed, and there’s no way of telling what he’s done. It takes hours to find out. I didn’t even meet the younger Lampson until the day his brother married. I went to that wedding.
But two years before, I saw the older.
In my job a man’s teeth start to grind, his jaws don’t seem to set well when he’s got to write up warrants and serve them too. It’s a day’s work to stop cars, take strangers by the elbow, and see public places closed on time. And I had to identify them. A man’s eyes burn, he ain’t too comfortable when he has got to stand in front of his own cell door, to stare at the one who is now inside and won’t even look you in the face. Or worse, wants to talk. Why, when a person has a visitor in town, harmless enough for some, perhaps, I’ve got to ask around if I hear about it. You never really know if they’re relatives or even friends. A different window burning in a house at night — anything could happen. You take to drinking coffee and know how full or empty the local courtroom is going to be before you even get there. And it’s often. A man gets kind of sick at the law when he don’t know who has come into town or left it.
But the day I saw him I was feeling good. Nothing could have bothered me when I first saw the older Lampson. I was just Deputy at the time. Just barely hanging onto and still learning about the harm that is done right in a kitchen or in an open field.
I took the call. And that cheered the day for me because it was only the voice of a little girl, and I suppose I thought to hear of a killing or of a man with his hand pierced on a fork. “Honey,” I told her, “I’ll come over.” If she had been grown, I would have considered more. It wasn’t far to drive. I think though of how far that little girl must have walked, in a bathing suit, and I don’t know as I could stand it now. Whoever owned that telephone didn’t even help her or else she just wanted to make the call herself.
It was twenty mile but I had my truck.
I remember a day like that. There was nothing really wrong; I found her at the roadside, standing bareheaded and with thin hair, in a sun as heavy as I ever saw. She wore one of them square bathing suits, pinched high like she had it awhile, with straight wide straps pulled across her shoulders. As soon as I parked the car and locked it, and without moving, she spoke: