Starr County Line Read online

  “Kiss my ass,” Franklin told him.

  JD cleared a spot of old newspapers on the couch and took a seat. He looked at the pictures hanging on the wood paneling. Franklin in Europe in WWII. Franklin with a group of Texas Rangers, looking oddly out of place in his Sheriff’s Department uniform.

  “That from that task force you was a part of?” JD asked.

  Franklin flicked his tongue in and out of his thin lips, trying to spit something out of his mouth. When he was satisfied he’d done it, he took another puff on his cigarette.

  “Yeah. Early 50’s,” he said. “Seems a hundred year ago.”

  “That’s on account you don’t do nothin but set there in that chair all day and smoke cigarettes,” JD told him.

  “You can get on back down the road,” Franklin said, “if all you’re gonna do is pass judgment, JD McKinnon.”

  “Just funnin you,” JD told him. He shifted uncomfortably on the old couch. “Go on, tell it,” he said.

  The old man gave him a mean look. JD had heard the story a hundred times over the years and knew Franklin would be deeply insulted if he didn’t indulge him one more time. Franklin had no family, not within a thousand miles anyway, and JD was just about the only regular visitor he had since he’d retired from the Sheriff’s Department ten years ago.

  “Rustlin cattle,” Franklin said, “was just about the only serious thing goin on round here back then. I’d been up near Uvalde with the Rangers, one of the first ‘joint efforts’ they called em back then. They used to like to make me sit in the back seat and ask me questions about all the locals. Try to make me tell em which ones I thought might be involved. Course, I didn’t think none of the locals was involved.”

  “Was you wrong?” JD asked.

  “I was,” Franklin told him. “I didn’t want to think it, but they was involved all right. Truth be told, JD, there was just too much easy money in it. Think of that money back then. Couple thousand dollars in your pocket for gettin a few cows in your trailer and takin em somewhere else.”

  JD shook his head.

  “I was on my way back,” Franklin went on, “Mexican boy in the backseat in irons, givin me dirty looks in the rearview. Got just after dark by the time we got back to Pinto. I pulled into old Coke Hardy’s, you remember his place? Out on 83?”

  JD nodded.

  “I pult up in the space right front of the door,” Franklin said, “and I could see they was a boy inside, yellin at the cashier.”

  “He wasn’t yellin at him though was he?” JD asked.

  “No,” Franklin answered, “he wasn’t. He was robbin him. He had one of them old .22’s pointed at him. I had one of the Department Issues myself back then. I took the cruiser out of gear and got out, pulled my piece. Thought on goin in, but I decided it’d be better if I was to just stand outside and wait.”

  “He was gonna have to come out,” JD said.

  “Well, least that’s what I figured anyways,” Franklin said. “So I just set there behind the door of the cruiser and waited. Sure enough, he got his handful of money from the Coke’s boy and out he come. He kindly just stood there for a minute, lookin down the road towards town. Then he set his eyes on me.”

  “And here we go,” JD said.

  “I told him to drop the gun,” Franklin said. “He looked at me like he didn’t understand what I was a sayin. I told him again, almost a shoutin at him. He wasn’t even lookin at my gun. He was just lookin at me. He kindly had the gun pointed this a way.”

  He placed his right forearm in front of his chest.

  “Then he moved it towards me,” Franklin said.

  “What’d you do?” JD asked.

  Franklin took another drag on the cigarette and held the smoke in.

  “I shot him,” he replied. JD shook his head.

  “Wasn’t but about twenty feet away,” Franklin said. “Bullet went through, glanced off a bone on the way out, hit the old clock on the wall over the soda fountain.”

  Franklin stood from his chair with great effort. JD almost rose to help him, but thought better of it. Franklin walked off the paces across the floor, like he was back in front of Coke’s store.

  “I got out from behind the car door,” Franklin said, “Kindly shakin all over, you know? This old boy he just looks down at the little hole in his shirt and sat down on the curb. He tried to open his shirt, it was one of them snap button shirts, but he couldn’t do it. After a little bit, his head just dropped down.”

  Franklin walked over to a vacant spot in the room and JD knew he was living the moment all over again.

  “I reached down to grab a handful of his hair,” Franklin went on, his voice beginning to waiver, “and pull his head back so I could take a look at him. You know I’d shot and killed him before I realized it was Hollis’ boy.”

  “Lord,” JD said. Franklin ambled back over to the recliner and sat. He reached for a cigarette, found the pack empty and tossed it into a nearby pile. He took another from the carton beside his chair, unwrapped it, took out a smoke and lit it.

  “Tell you what,” he told JD. “That Mexican boy in the backseat spilled everything he knew. We made six more arrests. When it was over, that’s when that picture got took.”

  JD laughed a bit. Franklin knew the only way to deal with a ghost was to tell it you didn’t take it too seriously.

  “You did what you had to do today, JD,” Franklin said. “These boys runnin out here now ain’t like the ones that was here when I was sheriff. Hell, they ain’t like the any ones we’ve ever seen. Theys different. A different breed.”

  “I hear what you’re sayin,” JD told him.

  “That boy woulda killed you if you hadn’t shot him,” Franklin said. “Same as old Hollis’s boy woulda killed me. I knowed it from the look on his face. Same as you did.”

  JD nodded his head.

  “Don’t you go feelin sorry for yourself,” Franklin told him. “Ain’t no place in the job for it. I did it for five years. Wouldn’t drive by Hollis’s house. Tried not to look at him when I was up on Main Street. Bullshit. Hollis knew his boy wasn’t no good. He knew I did what I had to do and if I could go back, I’d do it again.”

  “You wouldn’t change nothin?” JD asked.

  “Hell no, boy,” Franklin spat. “You pull on a south Texas sheriff, you better be ready to pay up, on account it’s a right expensive dance. Expensive as hell.”

  “How’re you set for food these days, Franklin?” JD asked.

  Franklin thought it over.

  “Christmas, I guess,” Franklin told him, “Kendall come by and give me some beef he’d butchered. Church ladies come by in April and give me some peas and green beans for the deep freeze. I reckon I’m eatin pretty good.”

  “I could always get Ange to come by here,” JD said.

  “Naw, boy, I’m fine,” Franklin said. “You and Ange don’t need to be seein about me.”

  JD got up and walked around the room. Franklin’s shooting trophies from the 60’s were on a small shelf. Two medals from the state in a frame sat beside them. A few medals from WWII.

  “I brung in twenty-six POW’s,” Franklin said, pointing at the medals.

  “They was just walkin down some road,” JD followed. “Hands in the air, ain’t that how you told it?”

  They both laughed for a minute.

  “You know, JD,” Franklin said, “Europe weren’t nothin like you boys had it over in the Pacific. Hell, it was over in Europe by the time I got there. I served in two world wars and never killed a man. Not in France in WWI and not in Germany in WWII. Sometimes I lay awake at night wonderin how that figures.”

  “It don’t,” JD said. “You was lucky and you should just leave it at that and be thankful.”

  The room was quiet. JD wished the TV were louder. He wished he hadn’t said what he’d said.

  “I’m sorry, Franklin,” JD said. The old man waved him off. He walked around the room some more. He went into the kitchen and took a stack of plates fr
om the drying rack and put them in the cabinet. He looked in the deep freeze at stacks of plastic quart containers. He walked back into the living room and found the old man starting to fall asleep.

  “Why’d you really retire, Franklin?” JD asked.

  Franklin’s eyes popped open and he seemed to think it over carefully for a minute.

  “It was time, JD,” he said slowly. “I knew it was the end. I kept thinkin to myself I was gonna go through one too many doors and one of these old boys out here was gonna shoot me dead. Back when I started, you know I didn’t even have to carry a gun?”

  JD nodded.

  “Remember when you first hired on?” Franklin asked. “I gave you that old .22 and you carried it for how many years?”

  “Five,” JD answered.

  “Now,” Franklin said, “Lookit what you got on your hip. Goddamn cannon.”

  JD looked at the big clock on the wall. He glanced at the yellowed copy of the Dallas Times Herald, announcing in bold print that the Cowboys had won Super Bowl VI.

  “I got to go, Von,” he told him.

  “I know you do, JD,” Franklin said. “Glad you could stop by.”

  He put on his hat and walked out the door.

  He drove home. When Ange finished her shift at the Wagon Wheel, he went and picked her up and they drove to the lake. They walked the shore and skipped rocks as the sun set. They held hands and hugged one another beneath a tall tree. He pointed out whitetail deer track and a cottonmouth gliding silently across the top of the water. They drove along 83 and parked and leaned against the hood and watched the moon rise. It was a thin sliver, on the wane.

  “Why do you want to marry me?” she asked.

  “Because I love you,” he told her.

  She squeezed his hand. She put her head in the crook of his arm and the world felt right. It made him acutely aware of just how easy it would be to upset that perfect balance. His heart beat a little faster with the anxiety of the realization.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m all right,” he told her.

  He rolled over the backroads blacktops the next morning, listening to the sound of the radials and the fenceposts as they blurred by. He’d checked in at the station house, stopped by Flores’ to take one more look at the man Bannon and decided to take a long drive and clear his head. He liked driving through the unincorporated parts of the county. It made it easier for him to imagine what it was like before people came along. Before he knew it, he’d been driving around the better part of the day. The radio crackled shortly after five o’clock and a boy’s voice came over the speaker.

  “Sheriff McKinnon,” the voice said.

  He grabbed the mike and keyed it up.

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  “Bobby Jesuit,” the boy answered.

  Bobby Jesuit was fourteen years old and the oldest of six Jesuit children who lived with their parents, high school sweethearts, out on the northern fringes of Starr County.

  “Bobby,” JD said, “Your daddy talked to you about bein on the radio.”

  “I know he did, Sheriff,” Bobby called back. “He’s in Conroe. I was ridin the northwest fences today and seen two trucks in one of our old barns.”

  “How long ago was that, Bobby?” JD asked.

  “Just an hour ago,” Bobby told him.

  “All right, Bobby,” JD said, “you set tight. Me and Roe will be on out directly.”

  He told Roe to meet him at the Jesuit farm, which was about six miles north of town on a vast parcel of land that had been in their family for seventy years.

  “Pick up Flores,” he told Roe before dropping the mike.

  He rolled over the cattle guard twenty minutes later and could see Roe had already arrived. He and Flores were talking to the six Jesuit children, who were all gathered in the yard. He parked behind Roe’s cruiser and got out.

  “Well,” he said, “haven’t seen you all in a while.”

  A small girl walked over to him. She wore a flower print dress and white shoes. He guessed she was maybe seven years old.

  “I’m Jenna Jesuit,” she said proudly, sticking her hand out. “My daddy is Carter Jesuit.”

  He bent to shake her hand.

  “I know who your daddy is,” he told her. “Can you do me a favor?”

  She looked around and thought it over.

  “Mmm hmmm,” she said, nodding her head.

  “You get all the little ones like you and take em inside,” he said.

  “Yessir, Sheriff,” she said.

  He watched her march her four younger siblings into the house, leaving only Bobby and Roe and Flores in the front yard. He unsnapped the strap on the Magnum and walked over. Bobby Jesuit was holding his daddy’s Mossberg shotgun.

  “Tell you what, Bobby,” he said, “why don’t you just set this one out.”

  Bobby thought it over for a moment and nodded his head.

  “You stand on that porch,” JD told him, “and watch for Albert. I called him on my way. You tell him where we’re at. Let’s go, boys.”

  The three men piled into the Blazer and headed northwest across the yellowed landscape.

  “Flores,” JD called to the backseat, “when we get out here, I want you to talk to these people.”

  “Sheriff,” Roe said, “how do we know they ain’t armed and lookin for trouble?”

  “We don’t,” JD told him. “I’m gonna put my faith in human kindness for a bit and we’ll see what happens.”

  “What if that don’t work?” Roe asked.

  “You’ll be carryin that,” JD said, pointing at the shotgun.

  JD eased off the accelerator about fifty yards from the barn and applied the brakes. He put it in park and the three men left the vehicle and fanned out. They’d gone nearly four miles from the main house. This wasn’t the middle of nowhere, JD thought, but it sure was on the same stretch of map.

  The old barn had once been the central hub of the Jesuit beef business when it was founded in 1911. Now, it wasn’t serviceable for much of anything besides a bonfire. The wood was old and rotten and the structure sagged and leaned badly. It still had the old family business sign nailed to the side of it, though it could hardly be read.

  “Roe, you got the back,” he ordered. “If they try to break in them vehicles, shoot out the tires.”

  “Yessir,” Roe said. He took the shotgun and headed towards the back of the old barn.

  “Flores,” JD said, “you come with me.”

  They walked up the cowpath until they were standing just in front of the barn. JD could see through the slats in the wood there were two vehicles inside. They backed off a few yards. He wondered why they hadn’t tried to flee. Best he could figure it, one of them was dead or their vehicles had broken down.

  “Call out to em,” he told Flores.

  “Hola,” Flores said loudly, cupping his hands together. JD pushed him in the back with one hand, almost knocking him down.

  “Don’t say hello, you jackass,” he told him. “Tell em the Sheriff’s Department is here and the Border Patrol’s on their way. Tell em ain’t no way out. Tell em the backdoor’s covered. Tell em I want to see them keys out here on the dirt in two minutes. Then I want em marchin out here one by one, hands high.”

  He listened as Flores yelled his instructions in Spanish to the occupants of the barn. Flores looked back at him.

  “Aren’t you concerned about standing out here in the open?” Flores asked.

  “No,” JD said, “are you?”

  “Yes,” Flores told him.

  “Well, get on over there then,” JD said, pointing to the nearby bales of hay. “Ain’t nowhere to hide out here anyway. You think a hay bale will stop a bullet?”

  JD could see someone inside the barn was moving towards the door. Almost automatically, he eased the Magnum from the holster and pointed it at the barn entrance. He rested his thumb on the hammer. Flores jogged over to the round hay bale and squatted, his fingers in hi
s ears.

  JD aimed the gun as he saw a hand, then an arm appear between the barn doors. The hand dangled a set of keys and threw them a short distance from the doors. The hand produced another set and threw them as well. He didn’t lower the gun. He trained it carefully on the doors as they slowly opened and the occupants of the barn emerged, one by one in single file with their hands high.

  Four men of varying ages came out first, two older and two younger. They were followed by four small children, who were followed by four women, one of whom was very pregnant. She waddled towards him with great difficulty, her hands roaming over her swollen belly. The men clutched empty water jugs. He could see why they hadn’t fled. There was nowhere to go.

  “Flores, get over here,” JD called out. Flores stood and walked from behind the hay bale.

  “Tell em to set down crosslegged and put their hands behind their heads,” he told him. “Except that pregnant woman. Tell her to wait right there.”

  He walked back to the Blazer and fired it up and drove over. He parked near the immigrants and got out, leaving the door open. He walked over to the expecting mother and held out his hands. She put her small, dirty hands in his and he led her to the Blazer and helped her sit in the passenger seat. He walked around to the driver’s side and reached in and turned the engine over and flipped on the AC. He nodded to her and she nodded back.

  He stood with Flores in the late day sun, the yellow fireball sinking in the west. They waited for Albert and the Border Patrol. He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched as the agents arrived and bound each immigrant’s wrists with zip ties. A young agent walked over to get the pregnant woman from the Blazer. JD watched him shove her hands behind her back to bind them and she cried out. JD rushed over and shoved the man back.

  “That ain’t necessary,” JD spat at him. “She can’t be ridin anywhere like that.”

  The young man shot JD a nasty look.

  “Come on boy,” JD said, sticking his chin out, “I’ll give you first one.”

  The young agent clenched his fists and thought it over but remained still. JD walked up on him and stood just inches from the man’s face.