The Tree of Forgetfulness by Pam Durban

and he cut through two vacant lots and sprinted across Park Avenue to beat the car to the courthouse so that he could be the first to shake hands with the man in the tweed suit who slid out from behind the wheel. “J. P. Gibson?” he said. He’d heard that Governor Arthur McCormick’s investigator was en route at last, now that Barrett’s badgering presence and the stories that appeared in almost every edition of the
State
and the
Charleston News and Courier
had made it too embarrassing for the governor to ignore what he called “the situation” down in Aiken.
    The man’s uncovered eye looked back, a feral shade of golden amber. His hand was pudgy and soft, but his grip was strong, and heheld on as he leaned toward Barrett as though he had a secret to tell. “Correct,” he said. The word seemed fired from him, and the force of it lifted him onto the balls of his feet then set him down again.
    In New York men like J. P. Gibson were his allies: private eyes, house dicks, and police detectives, bodyguards and men who stood at the speakeasy doors; they were skillful with a blackjack, indifferent to fear, some of them veterans like himself. Barrett was so happy he whistled all the way from the courthouse to the depot, where he wired Swope: “Dam cracks. Hoping for flood. More to follow.”
    He waited two days before he went to see the sheriff again, allowing enough time for J. P. Gibson to rattle the lawman’s chain, allowing him time to think through his own strategy. The jail was situated in back of the courthouse, surrounded by a high stone wall. He went in through a gate at one end of the wall, crossed the sandy yard, whistling, and stepped up onto the limestone stoop. The sheriff’s back was to the door; he and the jailer, Robert Bates, sat across from each other at a table in mid-room, reading newspapers. When he knocked, the sheriff didn’t turn.
    â€œCome on in the house, Mr. Barrett,” he said, sounding bored.
    â€œHow’d you guess?” Barrett stepped inside and waited for his eyes to adjust. The only light came from one bare bulb hanging by a frayed cord.
    â€œIt’s my job to know who’s coming up behind me,” the sheriff said. “I know your walk and your whistle and your knock.”
    â€œOf course you do,” he said. This morning Zeke had told him that the sheriff was a veteran too, and that made him a different kind of adversary, one who grasped the logic of survival as well as he did: If it comes down to me or you, it’s going to be me. The sheriff stood up from the table and turned around. Barrett had never seen gravity so hard at work on a living man. His eyes, mouth, the flesh of his face itself, all trended south. He wore a black suit coat and dark trousers, a shirt with a tight, narrow collar band buttoned all the way up to his chin, round eyeglasses.
    â€œLook who’s here, Robert,” the sheriff said out of the corner of his mouth. “This Yankee reporter can’t get enough of us. I’d shake your hand,” he said, holding up two bundles of bandages, “but I won’t.”
    Robert Bates snickered, shrugged, hunched lower over his paper.
    â€œRobert, go see that those prisoners get fed,” the sheriff said without shifting his eyes from Barrett’s face.
    When Robert was gone, the sheriff looked somber, as though he had weighty news to tell. “I sent my jailer away so we can talk in private,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Barrett, and I want you to write this down.” He watched like a hungry man eyeing food as Barrett retrieved notebook and pencil from his jacket pocket and laid them on the table. “You know,” he said, “when a man has been trying to administer the law the best way he can and them dirty political dogs say things, it’s tough, I can tell you. All the time I’ve been sheriff, I’ve been giving the