Lay Down My Sword and Shield by James Lee Burke Page A

stretch tight from the swelling in my temple, watered in the hard yellow light. The deputy and I went down the corridor and up the stairs to the sheriff’s office. The fat in his hips and stomach flopped inside his shirt each time he took a step. His black hair was oiled and pasted down flat across his balding pate, and he used the handrail on the staircase as though he were pulling a massive weight uphill.
    The sheriff sat behind his desk with a hand-rolled cigarette between his lips, and my billfold, pocketknife, and muddy boots in front of him. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, and his ears peeled out from the sides of his head. His face was full of red knots and bumps, a large brown mole on his chin, and his gray hair was mowed right into the scalp, but his flat blue eyes cut through the rest of it like a welder’s torch. He put the cigarette out between his fingers in the wastebasket, and started to roll another one from a package of Virginia Extra in his pocket. The tips of his teeth were rotted with nicotine. He curved the cigarette paper under his forefinger and didn’t look at me when he spoke.
    “My deputy wanted to charge you with attempted assault on a law officer, but I ain’t going to do that,” he said. He spread the tobacco evenly in the paper and licked down the edge. “I’m just going to ask you to go down the road, and that’ll be the end of it.”
    “Your man is pretty good with his feet and a billy.”
    “I reckon that’s what happens when you threaten a law officer, don’t it?” He put the cigarette in his mouth and turned toward me in his swivel chair.
    “I don’t suppose that I could bring a charge against him here, but I have a feeling the F.B.I. might be interested in a civil rights violation.”
    “You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying, Mr. Holland. I got my deputy’s report right here, cosigned by a city patrolman, and it says you were drunk, resisting arrest, and swinging at an officer with your fists. Now maybe you think that don’t mean anything because you’re an Austin lawyer, but that ain’t worth piss on a rock around here.”
    “You’re not dealing with a wetback or a college kid, either.” My head felt as though it were filled with water. Through the window I could see the sun striking across the treetops.
    “I know exactly what I’m dealing with. I been sheriff here seven years and I seen them like you by the truckload. You come in from the outside and walk around like your shit don’t stink. I don’t know what you’re doing with them union people, and I don’t really give a goddamn, but you better keep out of my jail. The deputy went easy with you last night, and that’s pretty hard for him to do when he runs up against your kind. But the next time I’m going to turn him loose.”
    “You might also tell your trained sonofabitch that he won’t catch me drunk on my hands and knees again, and in the meantime he ought to contact a public defender because I have a notion that he’ll need one soon.”
    The sheriff struck a match on the arm of the chair and lit his cigarette. He puffed on it several times and flicked the match toward the spittoon. The knots and bumps on his face had turned a deeper red.
    “I’m just about to take you back to lockdown and leave you there till you find some other smart-ass lawyer to get you out.”
    “No, you’re not, because you’ve already been through my wallet and you saw a couple of cards in there with names of men who could have a sheriff dropped right off the party ticket.”
    “I’ll tell you something. Tonight I’m going out on patrol myself, and if I catch you anywhere in the county you’re going to get educated downstairs and piss blood before you’re through. Pick up your stuff and get out of here.”
    “What’s the bail on the others?”
    “Twenty-five dollars a head, and you can have all the niggers and pepper-bellies and hippies you want. Then I’ll get my trusties to hose down the cells.”
    I