GALT
GALT: Now we're into it. Now we're really into it, boys, and I don't know who's going to get out. I been a jailer a long time and the way I see it, we get two kinds of clients: the dangerous, who pass through once, and the regulars, who come and go like family. This Garland 's been one of those. Obnoxious, but not a threat— that's what I would have said. I guess I respected him, too, because he taught me back in school—civics and English. His mind was sharp as a tack then, and his tongue, too. Young and smart and powerful good-looking—already married with kids when the war came. But he joined up. Some folks said it was because the army'd called his brother Elias and the two wanted to go together. I don't know. Anyway, they weren't in the same unit. And Elias didn't come back. So Garland's had his share of grief. And he traded his family for a bottle, I know that. But I thought he wasn't hurting anybody but himself. Now I don't know. Soon as he quit wailing and shaking the bars last night, he commenced worrying about his bus. I thought he was just paranoid with the d.t.'s, but he kept saying he'd left the place unlocked and his whole life was in there. Wouldn't I just send somebody up Cade's Hill, he said, and not leave it open overnight? Hell, I thought, nobody'd steal books, 67 WITH A HAMMER FOR MY HEART but it might calm the critter down. So I dispatched Terry Sizemore. Thought he'd be back inside of an hour. I was getting right worried by the time he rolled in. Turned out the old man had reason to be afraid. Some Messer boys from up Hallspoint Road had not only got in the bus but built a fire in the middle of the skids. Feeding it with books and reading one, too. Hooting and carrying on, drinking whiskey they'd brought or found. Lucky for Garland he had water jugs at the back of the bus, so Terry doused the blaze. Then he brought the boys and their reading matter down to me. Now none of the Messers has phones, so after making the boys scrub a cell apiece, I had Terry haul them back to their daddy. The news was off by then, so I just sat down and flipped through Garland's book. Spiral, three sections, like he used to make us buy for class. First two sections was filled with whiskery writing. I looked at the pages the boys had been reading—you could tell by the smudges and drools. There was a whole page about how beans grow, about vines and veins and chromosomes . Shit, I thought, that's what happens when you live alone. Then came a part about black holes in space and then, I swear, two pages about his bus being a tank going to come down and save the town. From what? No wonder them boys was a-bellowing. But so far so good. I won't fault a man who thinks he's a pole bean or a rocket or a hero. It's batty, but if you want to live in a school bus with nothing to nurse but Ezra Brooks, that's your lookout. Then I flipped into section three. That's where I found it, boys, the part that burned off my eyelids, the part that's going to singe many an ear. Don't think I don't feel sorry for Howard Ingle. And his dirty daughter. I told him that on the phone. But what's putrid has to come out, I say, or there's no healing. And when it does, it could lock Garland in a jail a lot bigger than this. 68 ...
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