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I’VE BEEN SHERIFF OF MADISON COUNTY SINCE 1961; IT’LL BE twenty-five years next month. My granddaddy was a sheriff too. He worked out of Hendersonville, North Carolina, about an hour and a half south of here on the other side of Asheville. But places like those might as well be a world away. My daddy was an apple farmer in Flat Rock over in Henderson County. I reckon I grew up thinking I had to be like one of them, and I suppose I chose right. Serve and protect, I thought. That kind of thinking is what brought me up into these mountains. When I was sworn in as sheriff I replaced Jack Moseley, who was just fifty-seven years old, not an old man by any means, but maybe that’s just my own thinking after turning sixty myself. Before I took this job I asked Jack why he was leaving it, and he told me that he’d just gotten bored. He said didn’t much ever happen up here in Madison County, nothing much exciting anyway. He said he found the brook trout and his grandkids to be more interesting. He said I’d see. Said I’d get bored too, like he almost looked forward to hearing me tell him about it. But he died of a heart attack not long after I took the job, and I never had the chance to tell him just what I thought about this part of the country, these people.

But one thing I can say about people up here is that they’re different from folks in Buncombe or Henderson County or any other place in these mountains. Most people up here claim they’ve got Irish or Scottish or some kind of blood in them, and I think that’s probably true, especially if you listen to the folks who’ll drive up here from the universities to tell you all about the culture they say’s disappearing. Then they’ll go and knock on cabin doors looking to get Jack tales on their tape recorders, snoop through barns, flag elderly men down from tractors to ask them to sing a couple of the old-time reels.

I’d always heard that it’s a different world up here, and sometimes I wonder if it might just be. When I first came over from Henderson, I’d drive through this county and see signs and markers for towns like Mars Hill and places like Jupiter and all kinds of things like that, and I’d think, Jesus, Clem, how’d you end up here? But I’ll be damned if it’s not beautiful: these green fields where farms line the ridges and the spaces in between hide dark hollers and deep coves where the sunlight might not ever reach. Like I said, I’ve spent almost twenty-five years working this county, but I can guarantee you there’s places I’ve never seen, places that would seem just as strange to me now as they would’ve when I first stepped foot in Madison County. I’ve gotten right used to feeling that way, and sometimes, after you’ve lived in a place long enough, it becomes harder and harder to pick out the things about it that once seemed strange, even if most folks still consider you an outsider after two and a half decades just because you weren’t born here and raised up knowing everybody’s business.

But if I could talk to old Jack Moseley, I’d tell him that I haven’t been bored, even after all these years. Of course there’ve been particulars about calls and cases I can’t quite remember even when I try, but that’s due more to my years on the job than any kind of boredom. On the other hand, I’ve had those calls, those couple of cases that I won’t ever be able to forget no matter how hard I try or how old I get to be. This here is one of those.

I’D JUST CLOSED THE SLIDING GLASS DOOR AND STEPPED ONTO THE deck when I heard the kitchen telephone ring. It was a hot Sunday evening in early September, and, just like I do every day after dinner, I’d gone out to the deck to smoke my one cigarette of the day and listen to the crickets get started up for the night.

I shook a cigarette from the pack and fished the lighter out of my pocket, and once I had it lit, I turned and looked through the glass in time to see Sheila answer the telephone. She looked back at me where I stood in the floodlight by the door, and she listened to the voice on the other end of the line, and then she rolled her eyes. She raised her hand and motioned for me to come inside, and then she pointed to the telephone and mouthed the words “It’s for you.” I decided to make a show of her not letting me smoke in the house anymore, and I raised my cigarette up to where she could see it, and I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. She sat the phone on the counter and walked across the living room and slid the door open.

“I hate to interrupt your exercise,” she said, “but you’ve got a telephone call.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Robby,” she said. “Again.”

“Good Lord,” I said. “What does he want now? Can’t you take a message?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” she said. “Sounds like an emergency.” I flicked the end off my cigarette and dropped the butt into my breast pocket.

“It’s always an emergency,” I said. “Especially with him.”

“I told you he was nervous. And too young. You should’ve thought twice about deputizing him.” I walked into the house, and when I passed Sheila I squeezed her hand.

“I wanted to deputize you,” I said. “I just couldn’t get you to carry a damn gun.”

“We spend too much time together anyway,” she said, smiling. “Answer the phone.” I picked up the receiver and leaned against the kitchen counter. I made a show of clearing my throat like people do when they’re about to give a speech.

“Hello,” I said.

“Sheriff, it’s Robby down at the office. I just had a 911 call come over from Ben Hall up on Long Branch Road. He says his son’s been killed.”

That was about the last thing I expected Robby to call and tell me on a Sunday evening, and I stood up straight and put my hand in my pocket and raised my eyes to Sheila’s. It looked like she was waiting for me to tell her something funny that Robby might’ve said, but the longer I looked at her the more her face changed to resemble the same concern she probably saw on mine. “What happened?” she whispered. I lowered my eyes and looked at the tiles on the kitchen floor. My fingers fumbled with the lighter in my pocket.

“How’d it happen?” I asked.

“He don’t know,” Robby said. “His wife left the house about six thirty this evening to take their boys to church. And then, about eight o’clock, he got a call from Adelaide Lyle telling him his son was over at her house and that he’d died. He asked her what happened, and either she didn’t know or she wouldn’t say.”

“Did it happen at her house?” I asked.

“No, sir. It happened at the church.”

“Which one of his boys is it?”

“It’s the older one,” he said. “The slow one. The one they call ‘Stump.’”

“I’m going to head over there now,” I said. “Won’t take me but a second to get things together here.”

“All right,” Robby said. “Ben Hall’s on his way there right now. Sounds like his daddy’s back in town, like he might be going to drive him.” When I heard that my stomach dropped to the floor, and for a second I thought I might lose the dinner I’d just finished eating a few minutes before. “Sheriff?” Robby said. I looked at my watch. It was almost fifteen after eight. I knew I wouldn’t beat Ben and his daddy there, even if I left right then.

“I’m here,” I said, “but I’d better get going. There ain’t no telling what Ben will do to those church folks if any of them are at that house when he gets there, especially if his daddy’s with him.” I didn’t notice that Sheila had left the room until she walked back into the kitchen carrying my hat in one hand and my holster in the other. She laid them on the counter beside me.

“Miss Lyle’s address is 1404 River Road,” Robby said. “About two miles past that church on the right. You know where I’m talking about?”

“I do,” I said. I undid my belt and slid my holster onto it.

“You reckon I should meet you there, Sheriff?” he asked.