Kings of the Earth: A Novel by Jon Clinch Page A

weigh half of what he does, but he shrugs and says there’s nothing to it. Then he puts it down on the floor and goes off to fetch the screws from where Preston left them on the table, just as cool as you please.

Audie
    T HE TROOPER CAME and took my brother in the car. It was pretty early in the day but we were finished milking and we had a minute just to sit. The cows were back up in the pasture and the truck from the co-op would be along soon, so I had a minute. You don’t get a lot of time to yourself. I had a field to plow but I didn’t want to get out there and have to come back when the truck came. I would have gone if Vernon was there to stay behind but he wasn’t. So I just sat on the porch waiting for the truck. I was carving some. Then here came that trooper up the road with that big blue car of his throwing up dust. He got out and he was full of questions and he took my brother off.

Preston
    V ERNON WASN’T EVEN IN the ground when they started after Creed. I don’t believe that’s right. I don’t believe that’s any way to do things. A man should have an opportunity to put his own brother in the ground before the authorities start giving him the third degree about it.
    How can anybody hope to get a straight answer from a man whose brother isn’t even in the ground? A man who isn’t even given time to grieve his own brother has been punished enough.
    When I picture it I see Creed sitting at a table in a dark room with a hundred-watt bulb hung right over his head, and even though I guess that’s not the way they do it outside the movies it’s still what I see when I think about it. Poor Creed. I’ll bet that’s how it seemed in his mind too. Like he was getting the third degree in some cop show.
    Tell you the truth, the first thing I thought when I saw them go was it might have been Creed’s idea. The way he was just walking along there behind Graham like a puppy. Docile, I’d call it. Like the two of them were going on a fishing trip. That’s how it looked. Like Andy and Opie. Every morning since I quit work I go downtown and have breakfast, a bunch of us drink coffee and shoot the breeze and what have you, and I was just coming out of the garage to go when I saw them out there like that. One behind the other, going toward the car.
    I said a puppy, but a lamb to the slaughter is what I should have said.
    I pulled up alongside the car and I got out. I said my good-mornings to Creed and Graham both, but they were pretty quiet right back. Audie was up on the porch. His head was faced our way and his hands were shaking. He had his knife in one hand and a piece of wood in the other and I wished that he’d calm down. I was hoping the wind would come up and start those whirligigs turning. That’d been the best thing for him. I don’t believe he could see Creed going from up there but he knew he was going. His eyes looked black and kind of shaded over and his lip jumped a little under his beard. It wasn’t like he was going to cry but more like he was going to come apart. I guess Creed wasn’t the only fuse they lit that day.

Del
    W HEN I DROVE OUT to talk with the Proctor brothers I didn’t have any fixed idea about bringing either one of them back to the barracks with me. It just turned out that way. We sat on the porch and I asked both of them some questions, but not many. What they’d seen, what they remembered. What time they’d gone to bed that night and what time they’d woken up. What they’d watched on television the night before. They couldn’t agree if it was The Simpsons or Roseanne . I don’t know which of them was right about that since I don’t watch a lot of television myself, but I can check the papers. That’s easy enough. Maybe they watched both. It doesn’t mean anything anyhow. They were just a few questions I was asking.
    After a while I asked Creed if he would mind coming back to the barracks with me, and he said that he wouldn’t mind provided we didn’t take too