Ozzy sat in the rattling boxcar paring his toenails with a Buck pocketknife. He would occasionally rest from his work and look out at the desolate landscape.

Dust choked everything. Fine as face powder it drifted everywhere like a deadly brown snow. Ozzy had watched mile after mile of dead corn stalks poking brown and desiccated heads from the drifts of dust. Past scarecrow farmhouses empty and staring, beaten by the sun and the wind. It was hot in the boxcar but he was used to heat and the artificial wind generated by a train doing forty miles an hour kept him comfortable enough. This country though, looked pounded by the sun and lay under it like a corpse mummified and abandoned.

Occasionally Ozzy would see people come out of the dust-baked houses and watch the train go by, a look of fear and deadly grief on their faces mixed, he imagined, with a longing to be away, to escape on the train with him. For Ozzy the hoboing life was the only clean life for a decent man and he felt sorry for them. He felt genuine compassion for the men entombed by a house and a dead patch of dirt choked into its grave by the dust. He gave no thought to the women. For him, women were furniture in the house like the beds and the chairs. Entrapments, snares, chains.

Ozzy pulled out his harmonica, his only real possession other than his bindle and the cloths he stood up in, and played a sad song for the men chained in those dusty tombs. When he was so moved he lowered the harmonica and sang words from his heart about the misfortune of men and the hard baked earth. He had more than a hundred songs stored up in his head. He made up new ones when the songs of other men didn't say what he needed them to say.

He fell asleep after a while, but his hobo's instincts woke him when the train slowed down.



Last Sunday Matt Johnson had told the Judge to go to hell. Matt was one of the Judge's sharecroppers. This summer had been bad, just like most of the summers had been since about 1928. But the Summer of '35 was the worst yet. Nothing came out of the ground but dust and stunted crops. The Judge had asked for his share of Matt's meager harvest and Matt had told him where to go. This morning Matt was still alive, but just barely.

Joe tossed a nickel down on the counter and waited for Lloyd to fish a soda pop out of the ice box.

"You know, it's September 12th, the weather owes us a cool day," said Joe. He leaned against the counter and gazed out the big front window to the shimmering hot blacktop of State Highway 59, which was Main Street and the only paved street in town. Out in the west part of the state dust storms blackened the skies. Even here, a couple of times this summer, when the wind was blowing hard, the sky turned an ugly orange and fine silt settled over everything. This time of year they could hope for cooler weather, but it had not yet materialized. High ceiling fans kept the store reasonably cool most days but this week they just stirred the thick, hot air around.

"Well, it owes us something," said Lloyd. "It was one hundred one yesterday at two o'clock."

"Yep. You got any ice cream back in the freezer?"

"Freezer's busticated. Got a fella coming out next week to take a look at it."

Joe nodded stoically and drank his grape Nehi, staring out at the empty street.

"You been to see Matt?" Lloyd asked. His broad and ruddy face wore a half smile. He was one of the few men in town still scraping by in these hard times. He had inherited the post office, the general store and the gas pump out front from his Dad.

"Yep," said Joe. "He's beat up pretty bad but he'll pull through." Joe didn't want to talk about what had happened to Matt, but Lloyd was not the kind of man to keep quiet about something.

"One of these days Judge Cooper'll kill somebody and you'll have to arrest him, Joe."

"I know," Joseph sighed and didn't say anything else, just poured the cold soda down his throat.

Both of them knew that's what it would take. Judge Bill Cooper was the meanest man in the county and the richest. He was mayor of the town because nobody had the guts to stand up to him. Everything went to hell in '29 and nobody could get any decent price for their crops, so for the last two years the Judge had been paying the deputy sheriff's salary--Joe's salary--out of his own pocket. This had two positive effects from the Judge's point of view. The town got a deputy sheriff without having to pay for it and the Judge--who had never actually worked in a courtroom as far as anybody knew--could be above the law.

Yesterday had nearly been the day the Judge killed his first man. When Matt told the Judge to go to hell he'd knocked Matt down and viciously kicked him with steel-toed boots until he was unconscious. He was still kicking him when Joseph drove up. The Judge had grinned at Joe, his face flushed scarlet and his eyes sparkling with delight. The Reverend Dooly, had tried to wade in and now lay on the ground with his mouth bleeding. Everyone else stood around Matt, not daring to bend down and help him, a circle of faces frozen with horror. They looked at Joseph hopelessly knowing the deputy sheriff would do nothing.

The Judge knew it too. His compact muscular body trembled with keen excitement as Joseph walked up. He stood there grinning and then, before Joseph could say anything, the Judge walked over to his shiny black Packard and drove off. It wasn't the first time it had happened. The first man the Judge had nearly beaten to death had been a black man over in Rosedale and nobody was going to say a word about that. The second time was Jim Gore. He was so bad hurt he still walked with a limp and maybe always would. But Jim had thrown the first punch so people said he deserved it.

Everybody knew Joseph wasn't going to arrest the Judge even though he'd nearly killed Matt Johnson in the churchyard in front of twenty witnesses. Might have even done it in front of his wife Barbara but she ran inside with the other women as soon as the trouble started. Barbara was a soft, pretty woman who somehow managed to withstand her husband's rages. When she was younger the Judge would show her off like his new cars and flashy cufflinks. Older now, she wore his wealth in public and he bragged about that instead. But far from envying Barbara, most people felt sorry for her. There were rumors that the Judge knocked her around sometimes.

Joseph sipped his soda and thought about Matt looking like a pile of bloody rags, more dead than alive. The Judge deserved thirty days in jail over that. Could get the sentence easy with as many witnesses as there were. And then in thirty days Joseph would be fired. His wife and three-year-old son would starve while he joined the millions of men begging for work, any kind of work, all over the country. The New Deal would be No Deal for a man on the bad side of Judge Cooper.

Joseph sipped his soda and watched Woody run up Main street and into the sheriff's office. Joseph waited. Woody would come here next. When the deputy sheriff's office was empty and his old Ford truck was parked out front, everybody knew Joseph would be sitting in the general store across the street where it was at least ten degrees cooler.

Sure enough, Woody ran back out of the sheriff's office a few seconds later and bolted across the street. "Sheriff!" he called. "Sheriff Joe!" Joseph set the bottle down and strode toward the door.

"What is it?" he yelled.

"Somebody shot Judge Cooper!"

"Christ Almighty!" Lloyd exploded.

Woody burst in, his face beet red, breathing hard. "Somebody shot him!" he yelled. "He's dead over at the garage!" The Judge owned the local garage. He liked to do his drinking and card playing in the back room. Joseph played poker with him there on command about once a month. He was expected to lose.

"You sure he's dead?" said Joseph, fear grabbing his midsection. "How do you know?"

Woody worked at the garage and opened up every morning. He was stocky and muscular and kept a pack of Camels rolled up in the sleeve of his dingy t-shirt. Permanent black half-moons of grime under his nails attested to his trade. Just now he was panting, leaned over holding his knees and drawing great gulps of air. Obviously he had run the whole way.

"He's dead as dead. Can't be more dead! Got no face, just blowed right off," he said between gasps.

"You sure it's him?"

"Who else got boots like that?"

"Come on then," said Joseph. Joe drove the half-mile to the garage with Woody standing on the running board. The Judge's Packard was parked out front. The door to the garage hung open like the mouth of a crypt. Joseph's heart pounded. He didn't want to go in there.

The garage smelled like old grease, gasoline and blood. At first Joe didn't see anything. The garage was empty except for the Woody's rusty Pierce-Arrow that had been sitting there since he'd bought it for five dollars meaning to fix it up and have a really nice car. After a half-dozen years, he still tinkered on it occasionally and still walked everywhere.

Joseph saw the silver toe of a boot lopped over on one side. When he saw it, the gas and grease smell faded and now he could smell only blood and his own sweat.

In life Judge Cooper had always seemed like a big man. Big and muscular and hard. Now in death he seemed small and deflated. His face was only about half blown off. You didn't need the steel-toed boots to tell who it was.

Joseph couldn't stop Judge Cooper's rampage through life. Joe was sorry about that, sorry he couldn't bring him to justice. Cooper was a man who had needed killing, but Joseph would never have done it. He didn't even want to see Cooper dead now.

The body lay slightly twisted. His clothes were torn and dusty and were splattered with rusty spots of dried blood. He looked like he'd been dead since sometime last night. Joseph knelt on one knee and did a quick head to toe examination. The knuckles of Cooper's right hand were scraped and had bled some. He had red blotches on his neck. Scattered around the body were what must have been the contents of his pockets--his wallet, various bits of paper, small change, a ring of keys, a pocket knife. If there had been currency in the wallet it was gone. Also gone were the ruby pinky ring he always wore and his wedding ring.

"Woody, get something to put the Judge's effects in. I'll make the phone calls."

Joseph called the county sheriff's office and gave his secretary the news. Then he called Henry Dobbs, the undertaker over in Purcell, to come get the body. He deliberately put off calling Barbara. When the other calls were done, he stood staring at the black wall phone for a minute. Barbara was a soft woman. Joe thought she liked the money and high status the Judge gave her, but it seemed like Barbara was somebody else the Judge liked to hurt. Even so, it was plain that Barbara was crazy about the Judge and now he was dead. Joe figured she'd cry, maybe go into hysterics. He didn't want to be the one to tell her. Finally Joe called Reverend Dooly. The Reverend took the news of the Judge's death pretty well, Joe thought. He sounded almost pleased. A lot of people were going to be pleased. Joe wasn't pleased. The Judge had given him a check last Friday for last month's wages and Joe knew it would be the last.

"Reverend, I need you to call Mrs. Cooper and tell her the news. I think it would be better coming from you."

"I understand. She's going to be pretty broke up about it, knowing Barbara," he said.

"Yes." Joe paused for a second. "But between you and me I think it's for her own good. To be shut of him, I mean."

The reverend sighed deeply. "I agree." A brief silence fell. "I'll go over there now and talk to her," he said. Joseph thanked him and hung up.

Woody was crouched over the body with an old nail sack he'd been putting the Judge's things into. Joe sent him off to find something to cover the body with and Woody seemed relieved to be given something else to do. Joe squatted beside the body, not wanting to touch what was left of the Judge. It wasn't the first body he had to deal with, but there hadn't been many. There wasn't much crime this far out in the sticks, certainly not much that got people killed.

Joe looked the body over again from head to toe. He wished for a camera, but as far as he knew, there was not a camera rig closer than the county seat over in Purcell. He also didn't think to bring pencil and paper with him, so he was forced to study the body and try to remember every detail. It was hot in the garage and flies already crawled over the Judge's exposed skin, especially around the broken skin on his knuckles and the blast wound that had taken away part of his face. Joe waved the flies away. The wounds on the Judge's hands looked fresh. That meant he'd been fighting sometime in the day before he died. He didn't have any bruises on what was left of his face.

Joe steeled himself and pushed his hand into the Judge's pants pocket. The thief had been pretty thorough. There were only a few pennies and a book of matches in the right hand pocket. Joe tucked the matches in the pocket of his shirt and checked the Judge's left pants pocket. Nothing. Also nothing in either outside coat pockets and nothing in the right inside pocket, but in the left was a torn piece of grocery sack. Words scrawled in block letters said "Stay away from me n mine. You dirty bastard." Joe studied it for a moment and then he looked down at the Judge's ruined face. It had been hard to believe that the meanest man in town had been killed by a thief. That note meant he didn't have to pretend it was a casual killing for a few greenbacks. The Judge would have laughed at that crudely scrawled note. He would have considered it a challenge to make as much trouble as he could.

Joe stood when Woody returned with an old horse blanket tossed over his shoulder. Together they spread the blanket over the Judge's body.

"What ya gonna do, Joe?" Woody looked at him, his face seemed to be carefully blank of expression. Joe knew everybody thought he was a coward. Joe showed him the note and watched Woody read it with widening eyes. Then he took it back, folded it carefully and put it in the breast pocket of his shirt

"This wasn't a robbery," said Joe slowly. "They took his money trying to make it look like one. A lot of people wanted him dead. Now it looks like someone in particular wanted him dead. I guess I'd better go see Matt again."

Woody looked down at the covered form. "Judge Cooper needed killin'" said Woody to the ground, not looking back up. "He was pure mean. He'd cheat a man of his last dime and beat him to a pulp if he said anything. He did a lot of bad stuff I won't talk about. Stuff with women. Somebody was bound to kill him sooner or later. If you don't find out who did it, nobody's gonna much mind."

"You think Matt did it," said Joe. He did too, suddenly with regret. Matt was a decent man.

Woody darted a look up at him and then back down. The look said "yes" louder than his voice. "No," he said. "Matt was too bad hurt to do something like this."

"I saw him yesterday afternoon. He was pretty broke up, but he was on his feet."

"Shit," Woody whispered.

"If you can wait here for Henry Dobbs, I'd be much obliged," said Joe. "Tell him I need a time of death if he can give me one." Woody nodded reluctant agreement and hung his head with a sick look on his face.

Joe went back out to his truck. If Matt went to the electric chair for this it would be the last mean thing the Judge ever did. He would have enjoyed the fact that he could still hurt people after he was dead. Joe climbed into his truck and drove out onto the street, headed for the county line road.

A bank of clouds smudged the north west. He stared at them hopelessly. The heat and dust beat in on him. He wanted to go home. Adele's soft face would smile at him and she would smell like fresh soap and dried grass and hand him a glass of lemonade. They would sit on the back porch and watch their little son build forts with the blocks Joe had made for him last Christmas. He wanted to enjoy the time they had together before the money ran out.