The Shining Badge by Gilbert Morris Read Free Book Online Page B

they put the cuffs on the big man and forced him into the backseat of the car. Deputy Merle Arp stopped long enough to run his eyes up and down her figure and said, “I’ll be seein’ you, sweetie. I think you and me would go pretty well together.”
    “You’ll see me all right, but it’ll be in court! I’ll be there to testify to what you two did.”
    The two deputies grinned at each other, and then Arlie Pender winked at her. “You just do all you want to, Yankee lady.”
    The car pulled out, and Jenny turned to the black woman. “I saw it all,” she said. “I’ll go see the sheriff about it. My name’s Jenny Winslow. I live down the road.”
    “I’m Hattie. Noah’s mama.” A deep sadness revealed itself in the woman’s large brown eyes. She was a strong woman but bowed by time and trouble. “It won’t do no good. That sheriff, he hates my boy just ’cause he got in trouble one time.”
    “What did he do?”
    “He sold some moonshine whiskey, and he had to go to the pen, but he found the good Lord while he was there. Heserved his time, and ever since he’s been helpin’ me raise these chil’uns. They daddy’s dead.”
    “It’ll be all right, Hattie. They can’t do anything to him because I saw it all.”
    “You don’t know this place, Miss Winslow. A black man ain’t got no defense against a white man’s word.”
    Jenny, at that moment, felt a surge of rage such as she had rarely experienced. Her life before the stock market crash had been smooth and relatively uneventful. She had not experienced things like this in New York City, but now standing in front of the pitiful shack with the sorrowing mother in front of her, a resolution formed itself. She nodded and said, “I’ll go see the sheriff right away, Hattie. Don’t worry about it. The Lord will take care of you.”
    “The good Lord will have to because there ain’t nobody else. But I thank you, miss, for your kindness.”
    Jenny went back, got into the truck, and left. As she pulled out onto the highway, she took one glance and saw Hattie Valentine staring at her, the children gathered about her. They made a sad tableau to her, and the resolution to help Noah Valentine grew into something stronger than she had ever known before.
    ****
    Dr. Harrison Peturis was enjoying a rare moment of rest. He was one of the few doctors in the county that would go outside the city limits to treat patients, and as a result he kept a busy schedule. He leaned back in his chair reading from his favorite book, Paradise Lost. He always read the book aloud, and his voice rolled as he seemed to chew on the words and brought them out in full-throated tones:
    “At certain revolutions all the damned
    Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
    Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
    From beds of raging fire to starve in ice
    Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
    Immovable, infixed, and frozen round
    Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.”
    “Now there’s a punishment for you.” Peturis got up and read the lines again, filling his office with the sound of his powerful voice. He was a big man, built like a huge stump. Everything about him was thick—his arms, his legs, his body, his neck. He had coarse salt-and-pepper hair, a clipped black beard, and snapping brown eyes. As he continued to read from the poem with obvious enjoyment, he stopped only to puff on the thin cheroot that he kept clamped between his jaws like a bulldog. White ash from the cigar covered the front of his vest, and some flakes even showed in the blackness of his beard.
    The door opened, and Peturis looked up to see his nurse, Geraldine Sweeting, enter. She was tall and rail thin, with a voice surprisingly deep for a woman. “Doctor, Jenny Winslow’s here.”
    Tossing the book on his desk, Peturis turned and nodded. “Must be time for that baby.” He walked out of the office and found Jenny standing in the waiting room. Without preamble, Jenny