Free The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell

weather and ignore it, foul or fair, and stare always with such emphasis that his presence was felt and eyes were drawn toward his figure.
    Adderly again and again approached him slowly and attempted a conversation along these lines, “Somethin’ here draws us back over and over, don’t you think?”
    “Something does indeed.”
    “Say? How’s that burn scar of yours doin’ these days?”
    “That’s three times you’ve asked that, Shot.”
    “And three times you don’t answer.”
    “Good evening.”
    Preacher Isaiah Willard did on occasion arrive at the pit to spear those assembled in hurt with flung condemnation, blaming the dead and their damnable desires for their own deaths, bellowing that the gospel truth was now made obvious to even the blind and most unrepentant among them—sin here and sin there if you please, fools, but know God’s wrath will find you even as you jerk about to pagan sounds and bounce reveling in said wickedness. They who perished here in a sudden burst only received that which had been earned by them, yea, verily, by their own will and wicked ways, and … Shot Adderly did twice warn Willard that forbearance in regards to this broad loss mightn’t be the chief virtue of the citizenry hereabouts, and as he understood it the Lord didn’t hate polite silence altogether, and Willard gave his retort, which was, In the face of idolatry and sloth and sin He does. Don’t tell me He doesn’t, as when others sleep I hear Him direct while alone in darkest hours, and remain fearless in His embrace and at His command.
    Leo Adderly, Jr., Shot’s middle child, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Arbor Dance Hall blast, said to a sophomore daughter who reported it in
Ridgepath
, the student magazine, “Papa, in secret, had a real dislike for being ordered around by the big cheeses in our midst. Told to say something wrong was really okay because the drunk kid came from a good family, or the silverware thief was an important so-and-so’s wife, all that run of thing. About half of what a sheriff does is to bend laws a little to keep the right people
out
of jail—he knew that from the start, and it’s an elected job. He generally bent the law when he had to bend it, Papa was not slow thinking, but on the dance hall deal he intended to settle that hash so honest and direct there’d be no doubts left about what was what, who was who, where the blame fell. He wouldn’t let himself be turned left if the trail turned right, not by anybody, and if he had to leave town after he’d got the truth, he’d leave, and leave well pleased. I’d guess he was awful pesky to deal with. Of course he didn’t get to see it through. And the main thing he ever said about the whole deal was that he’d been at a meeting in an office above the square, and had three or four of the biggest cheeses suggest to him that he back off, look somewhere else and don’t find nothing. He said they put it to him just this straight: ‘Some calamities are best left unexplained, Sheriff. Aren’t the fish biting on the Twin Forks?’”

B uster Dunahew did when flush smoke Helmar Turkish cigarettes. (Most of his days he’d resorted to discarded butts of any make found on the floor, sidewalk, barroom ashtrays, sometimes shadowed on the street those citizens who favored his brand and graciously littered.) He stood in the vacant lot across from the rental cabin at the Current River ferry, leaning against a blackish Model T sedan, and lit a virgin factory smoke. He always tried to park far enough away that he wouldn’t hear his sister-in-law moan and yip, groan and succumb, talk dirty or tell lies. This cabin was a favorite, and the pole-driven, rope-pulled, one-man ferry across the Current was seldom in heavy use. Forest erupted springtime-green rose unbroken on the slopes to a high vee, and blocked from view all but a split of blue sky and the river. The water had a clarity that would in afternoon light allow Buster to admire