That’s what Sudley thinks of you, O’Leary.”
The loose gravel peppered Spig’s legs as the car shot forward. He stood there staring at the sign he’d taken for granted was the sign for the County Fair. He shut his eyes and opened them again. There was no mistake. There it was—and with it an empty hollow where his stomach had been.
“For Sale. For Industrial Development. 600 Acres. 2000 Feet of River Frontage. See H. Sudley, 19 Church Street, Devonport.”
Spig O’Leary stood staring at it, the bottom dropping out of everything important to him in Devon County. That was Sudley’s answer to the people on Eden’s Neck and the petition for some kind of law to protect their homes. It was so stupefying that the people waiting to get to the gas pumps had to sound their horn twice before he heard it and moved.
The green and gold of the winter wheat and the flower-embroidered tapestry of the pastures behind the white ribbons of mile-long fences were a blur on either side of him. He drove slowly, still a little dazed. That’s what Sudley thinks of you, O’Leary. But there was nothing he’d said nor anything he’d done that could possibly be taken as a personal attack on Sudley. He came to the end of the fences where the highway curved gently into the woods of Eden, fifty feet from the side of Sudley’s tobacco fields stretching down to the river-front behind the shallow arc of beeches and willow oaks that they were going to give the State. He turned left into the cross-way, half-way to the bridge, and waited for the traffic to clear for him to go across into the gravelled side road marked “Plumtree Cove” that ran between the back woods of Plumtree and Miss Fairlie’s fields in her section of the bridge approach. The narrow strip for the roadside park, behind him as he waited in the cross-way, was the only thing he could think of that could have offended Sudley as deeply as Yerby said he was offended. Having the whole side of his place bottled up behind a lousy fifty feet, with no access out to the bridge and its approach, might be what had infuriated him. There was nothing else, certainly.
A sudden flush of adrenalin made the blood tingle at the back of his neck. He crossed over into the gravelled road, jerked to a stop at the mail box and got out a letter to Tip from the county agent and the evening papers. The sound of a tractor was coming from Miss Fairlie’s field. He drove on around the bend and jammed his brakes on to keep from hitting a green truck standing tail-on in the middle of the road. It was Sudley’s truck and his tractor up in the field, with his seventeen-year-old boy Charlie at the gears. Sudley himself was leaning on the fence in front of the truck.
He turned as Spig opened his car door and got out. For an instant his pale blue eyes were not shuttered. The sudden, naked violence in them was so intense that Spig stopped motionless. It was Sudley who spoke first.
“Good evening, Mr. O’Leary.” His eyes were shuttered again, his voice soft as it always was. He turned back to the fence, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Keep your contours smoother, son!” he shouted. “Narrower in the dip!” He dropped his hands to the fence rail. “I like a pretty field. Miss Fairlie’s tractor’s in the shop, so I thought I’d help her out. Gives the boy extra for that car he wants. His mother wants to give it to him—he’s her baby, spoiled rotten. I say he’s got to earn it.”
Across the field Sprig could see the boy swinging the red tractor in a graceful arc to narrow the dip in the rib of the contour. His face was taut, his full mouth sullen, his dark eyes stormy with resentment as he whipped the tractor back up the field.
“Fine boy you’ve got, Mr. O’Leary,” Sudley said. “Glad I don’t raise vegetables—he’d run me out of business. Tells me he’s eleven. That’s the kind of boy I like to see.”
“Tip’s okay,” Spig said shortly. He tried to keep his voice as even and as affable as Sudley’s. “Look. I just saw this sign of yours.”
“I figured you’d see it.” Sudley interrupted him calmly. “And I figured you wouldn’t like it, Mr. O’Leary. I know you and Mr. Ashton got the idea nobody’s got a right to sell land—except you and Mr. Ashton.”
Watch it, Mac. He’s needling you. “Ashton and I aren’t selling any land, Mr. Sudley,” Spig said quietly. “We’re giving the State that little strip along your fence.”
“I’ve heard you say that.”
“You wouldn’t be calling me a liar, by any chance, would you?”
“You’re putting it that way, Mr. O’Leary.” Sudley’s eyes met his steadily. “We’ve got different ways, here in Devon. You new people here on Eden’s Neck—you’ve got fine ideas. But you’ve got jobs in Washington, or money so you don’t need jobs. We find it sort of hard to tell people in debt with no money they can’t sell a mite of worn-out tobacco land when they’re offered a big price for it. Or tell a widow with five kids she can’t sell beer and soft crab. As long as it’s beer and soft crab she’s selling, Mr. O’Leary. We don’t much go for double dealing, here in Devon.”
Watch it, O’Leary . . . watch it. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Sudley. It isn’t because we never gave you access to the bridge road, is it? Or are you really opposed to a couple of picnic tables under a beech tree?”
“Did I ever ask you for access to the bridge road, Mr. O’Leary?” Sudley asked. “And I’m not opposed to picnic tables under the beeches. I’m opposed to people who talk about picnic tables on one side of the bridge to cover up the deal they’re making on the other side . . . with an outfit I wouldn’t touch with a fork I used to spread manure.”
“Stan Ashton’s the only person who could make any kind of a deal this side of the bridge,” Spig said quietly. “And he’s the one person you could count on not to make a deal.”
“Mr. O’Leary!” There was a sudden flash of anger in Sudley’s eyes. “Do you think any big-time gambling outfit comes into a small county like this without sounding out the county commissioners, cutting them in on building and maintenance contracts, to grease the wheels and keep the sheriff off their necks? Maybe you and Mr. Stanley Ashton didn’t know that, Mr. O’Leary. Why, that fellow in the blue silk suit sitting right behind you at the meeting the other night—what do you think they sent him down here for? I saw him shaking your hand, congratulating you on a fine speech. Sure, he’s all for zoning . . . once his outfit’s in. But he’d already talked to us, Mr. O’Leary—about the four acres Mr. Stanley Ashton was selling them, for what they call a ‘beach club’ on the Devon.”
He got in his truck. Spig O’Leary stood there too stunned to move, his face going from an angry flush to pale to flinty grey-white. The truck moved towards him and stopped. Sudley’s voice was charged with passion.
“Maybe you didn’t know, Mr. O’Leary. Buck Yerby says you didn’t. But I’ll tell you this. I hate gambling and everything that goes with it. I love my land and I love this river. All I wanted the Plumtree tract for was to take care of Miss Fairlie and the road and my river. But by God I’ll sell every inch of land I’ve got, I’ll drive every one of you people out of this place, before I’ll see your cotton-mouth brother-in-law defile it. You tell him. And tell him to keep out of my way. Tell him I’ll kill him if he doesn’t. Sure as you’re born I’ll kill him.”
The truck moved on. Spig O’Leary stood there blindly, a smoky red haze all around him. “Oh, no. You won’t kill him.” It seemed to him he was almost shouting it. “You won’t have to. I’ll do it. The little swine . . . I’ll kill him myself, if it’s true.”
CHAPTER IV
OH NO. You won’t
