Chapter 7 - The Gathering at the Ditch
By six o’clock, the light had turned the color of bruised plums over the pine ridges to the west.
The heat didn't break; it just sank into the earth, heavy and wet with river fog that began to crawl out of the blackberries along the ditch line.
Across the square, the two gray sedans had not left. They were parked nose-to-nose with Carl Ledbetter’s cruiser now. Through the glass doors of the sheriff’s office, you could see the lights were on in the back interrogation room—the small room without windows where Carl had spent twenty years convincing drunk drivers to sign their vehicles over to the county impound lot.
Three more state cars had arrived from the post in Williamston. They sat in the center of Main Street with their amber running lights on, cutting off the square from the river road.
In our back lot, the crowd had grown.
There were twenty men now, sitting on the oak baulks on Jesse’s flatbed or leaning against the massive tires of Dale Miller’s five-ton. Nobody was shouting. Nobody was drinking. They were men with dirt under their nails and grease in their shirt collars, men who had spent their entire lives being told that Wade Rusk’s grandfather had bought this land from the king of England and there was nothing to be done about the timber prices.
Abel Tuck was back. He was sitting on an overturned five-gallon grease tub, holding an old double-barreled Stevens twelve-gauge across his knees. The gun was broken open, the two brass heads of low-brass birdshot shells gleaming in the chambers like two small, dull pennies.
"You don't need that, Abel," I said, walking down the steps from the back scullery.
Abel didn't look up. He rubbed his thumb over the rusted case-hardening of the receiver.
"My daddy carried this gun when the Klan tried to run the colored haulers out of the lime quarry back in thirty-six, Quinn," he said. "He didn't shoot nobody. He just sat on the scale house porch until they decided they had somewhere else to be. I'm seventy-nine years old. I ain't got many porches left to sit on."
Down the road, through the gathering river mist, two pairs of headlights appeared.
They weren't state cars. They were high, wide, halogen beams that cut through the gray fog like white knives: Wade Rusk’s silver Lincoln Navigator and the black GMC pickup belonging to his son.
They didn't stop at the street barricade. The state troopers had closed Main Street, but River Road entered the back alley through an old agricultural easement that had no gate.
The two trucks came down the ditch track slow, their tires churning the crushed marl until the dust rose up around the hoods like white steam.
They stopped thirty yards short of the five-ton truck.
The driver’s door of the Lincoln opened with a heavy, expensive thud.
Wade Rusk got out.
He had changed out of his charcoal wool suit. He was wearing an olive-drab Barbour field coat with a brown corduroy collar, clean whipcord trousers, and leather shooting boots that were laced up to his calves. He looked like an English squire who had come out to inspect a broken hedge on his home farm.
Behind him, Dalton got out of the GMC.
Dalton had a white bandage taped across the knuckles of his right hand—the hand that had struck my mother. He didn't look confident now. His face was gray around the mouth, his eyes darting between the twenty men sitting on the oak logs and the high, square silhouette of the military truck blocking his way.
Wade walked toward the pink surveyor stakes. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his silver hair catching the amber light from the five-ton’s running lamps.
He stopped three inches from the line.
"Quinn," Wade said. His voice was quiet, musical, entirely without haste. "I understand you’ve created a bit of a theatrical production in our square this afternoon."
I stood on our side of the ditch, my arms hanging loose at my sides, my mother’s apron strings fluttering slightly in the cold river draft that was beginning to rise through the weeds.
"The production is just starting, Wade," I said.
Wade looked at the men on the flatbed. He looked at Jesse. He looked at Dale Miller sitting on the bumper of the tactical truck.
"Jesse," Wade said, his voice dropping into that gentle, chiding tone a man uses with an old dog that has barked at the wrong postman. "Your brother’s timber lease on the upper swamp is up for renewal on the fifteenth. Did you remember that before you brought your truck down here to sit in Miss Lottie’s weeds?"
Jesse didn't spit. He didn't move the crowbar.
"My brother died in January, Wade," Jesse said, his voice whistling through his missing teeth. "And the timber on that swamp was cut out two years ago. Ain't nothing up there now but sweetgum and briars. You can keep the lease."
Wade didn't blink. His gray eyes moved slowly down the line of men, taking their measure, looking for the weak link, the mortgage that was overdue, the son who needed a county road job, the daughter who had gotten caught with two pills behind the high school gym.
He looked at Dale Miller.
"Dale," Wade said. "The county contract for the school bus maintenance is forty-four thousand dollars a year. That’s about sixty percent of your gross margin, isn't it?"
Dale took a slow bite of his apple.
"School board voted to renew that contract yesterday morning at eight, Wade," Dale said. "Before Carl went into the diner to eat his eggs. Signed by the superintendent. It’s a three-year binding covenant with the state transportation department. You can't break it without a judicial hearing in Raleigh, and the last time you went to Raleigh, the ethics commission made you pay back two hundred thousand on that bypass right-of-way."
Wade’s lips thinned. It was the first time I had ever seen the bone structure of his jaw show through the smooth, well-fed skin of his cheeks.
He looked back at me.
"You think you’re very clever, Quinn," he said. "You think because you got Marcus Vance down here with a couple of tape recorders that you’ve changed the way this county works. My family has held the deed to this river landing since seventeen-eighty-four. We were here before the railroad came through. We were here before your people came out of the mountains with nothing in their pockets but a pair of work boots and a cast-iron skillet."
"My people built the road you drove in on, Wade," I said.
"And my people own the dirt it sits on," he said.
He reached into the pocket of his Barbour coat and pulled out a long, narrow strip of white paper.
"This is an injunction from the senior resident superior court judge," Wade said, holding it out between his two fingers like a bank note. "Signed twenty minutes ago in his chambers in Beaufort. It restrains any interference with the drainage improvements on this parcel. It authorizes the sheriff to use all necessary force to clear obstructions from the dedicated access way."
He looked toward the mouth of the alleyway, as if he expected Carl Ledbetter’s cruiser to come roaring through the dust with the blue lights flashing.
Nothing came down the alley.
The only sound was the frogs starting up in the ditch and the dull, rhythmic idle of the Cummins diesel in Dale Miller’s five-ton.
Wade frowned. He lowered the paper an inch.
"Carl!" he called out, his voice sharp now, losing that smooth river cadence. "Carl, get these people off this line!"
The mist in the alley didn't break for a cruiser.
It broke for four men walking on foot.
Special Agent Marcus Vance came first, his blue blazer unbuttoned, his gold shield catching the amber headlights. Behind him were two state troopers in gray campaign hats, carrying short twelve-gauge shotguns at low ready.
And between the troopers walked Sheriff Carl Ledbetter.
Carl didn't have his Stetson on. His silver hair was wild, plastered to his forehead with sweat that had run down into his eyebrows. His tan uniform shirt was open at the collar, the gold six-point star unpinned, leaving two small, torn holes in the pocket flap. His hands were cuffed behind his back with double-locked steel bracelets that clicked with every step he took through the gravel.
Behind them came Tommy Ledbetter, carrying his uncle’s heavy leather duty belt with the Glock and the magazines wrapped up in a brown paper evidence bag.
The four men stopped ten feet behind Wade Rusk.
Wade didn't turn around immediately. He stood there for three seconds, his back straight, his leather shooting boots planted in the marl, as if he believed that if he didn't look at them, they would turn back into mist and blow down the river.
Then he turned.
He looked at Carl Ledbetter’s wrists. He looked at the two torn holes in Carl’s pocket flap where the sheriff’s badge had sat for nineteen years.
"Carl," Wade whispered.
Carl didn't look at Wade. He looked at the gravel between his boots. His face was the color of a wet cardboard box that had spent three days in a ditch.
"They got the federal warrant, Wade," Carl said. His voice was cracked, barely loud enough to reach over the frogs. "The US Attorney issued it out of New Bern twenty minutes ago. Conspiracy against rights. Tampering with an ongoing federal investigation. Obstruction of justice."
He raised his head then. His pale, watery eyes looked at Dalton, who was standing by the front bumper of the GMC with his mouth open like a gaffed catfish.
"They got the video from the pie case, Wade," Carl said. "They got all forty-seven seconds. The sound is clean. You can hear you telling me to look the other way when Dalton hit her."
Wade Rusk didn't shout. He didn't drop the paper in his hand.
He looked at Marcus Vance.
"My attorney will have this dismissed before nine o'clock tomorrow morning, Agent Vance," Wade said. His voice was cold, perfectly balanced, the voice of a man who still believed the world was an auction where the gavel only fell when he nodded. "You have exceeded your statutory authority. The SBI has no jurisdiction over a municipal property dispute."
"We’re not here for the property, Mr. Rusk," Vance said.
He stepped past Carl Ledbetter, reached into his blazer, and pulled out a second white paper with a red seal on the margin.
"Wade Rusk," Vance said, his voice ringing out across the ditch, clear and flat as an axe striking an oak log. "I have a warrant for your arrest issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The charges are Title eighteen, United States Code, Section two-forty-one: conspiracy to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights under color of law. And Title eighteen, Section fifteen-twelve: tampering with a witness by means of physical force and intimidation."
He nodded to the two troopers.
The troopers didn't look at Wade’s Barbour coat. They didn't look at his four-hundred-dollar boots.
One of them took Wade’s left wrist, twisted it behind his back with the quick, mechanical efficiency of a man handling a steer at an auction, and clicked the steel cuff shut over the gold watch.
The second cuff went on with a sharp, double clack.
Dalton backed up two steps, his boots hitting the rear tire of the GMC. "Daddy!" he screamed. "Daddy, tell 'em! Call Harlan! Call Harlan at the courthouse!"
Agent Vance didn't even look at Dalton. He nodded to the second trooper.
"Get the boy, too," Vance said. "Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The magistrate set his bond at half a million dollars, cash only. No corporate sureties. No property liens."
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The trooper stepped toward Dalton.
Dalton didn't fight. He didn't swing his arm like he had behind the counter of Braddock’s Diner. When the trooper’s hand hit his shoulder, Dalton’s knees gave way under him like green pine twigs, and he went down into the marl dust on his knees, his Carhartt overalls gray with dirt, crying into his bandanna like a seven-year-old child whose pony had been led out of the barn.
