Yonder Stands Your Orphan

EPILOGUE

TWO MONTHS LATER FACETTO PULLED OUT THE ELECTION over “Who” Hooks, mainly because even the slow caught on to Hooks’ own private hysteria toward the end, wherein he fired off a Glock automatic during a rally for crime-fighting. This was too ardent, and Facetto began looking sane.

Melanie was not in love with the man anymore and considered him an inept coward. She was annoyed by his breathy dramatic pauses and rises when he told her about arresting Mortimer and taking a deposition from Wren. This community’s nightmare treated as if it were some trivial dramatic work that had floated past a theater workshop he was in. She told him he was childish and she did not want a child in the house anymore.

Sheriff Facetto was more than disconsolate. He ceased being.

On the complaint of the body-shop man Ronny, Facetto’s deputy Bernard arrested Man Mortimer at his junkyard. Mortimer was looking for something among the wrecked cars. He told Bernard this arrest was impossible, since the whole county worked for him. Yet he was led away in cuffs as his father and Peden looked on.

Mortimer began telling his whole story then and would not be quiet.

Facetto would not look at his face during his confessions at the station. Looking at the ceiling, the sheriff at last told him to please be quiet, please.

“Nobody is listening to you anymore,” said Facetto.

“But I am, sir,” said Bernard.

“We’ve got plenty. Make him quit talking.”

Facetto soon left town for a far, far state.

Mortimer would not stop talking in Parchman Prison, either. Nobody wanted him near them. The thing that was hardly anything but a big head with a mass of white hair on it kept reciting his misdeeds. And further, the discourtesy and irony you found so widely practiced. In all his years at the prison, he never got up to the death of his mother or walking through all that lead until he freed Gene and Penny. Nor Penny’s death. The new sheriff was willing to accept the town’s certainty that Mortimer was the killer and left it at that.

John Roman and Max Raymond drew closer together, but Roman did not want anybody talking with him while he fished, and he did not like talking God at all. His wife Bernice was well. He loved God cautiously. He did not know how long this love would last.

Harvard and Melanie were married by Peden on the pleasure barge. Their marriage was that of pals after a fight and long silence. It had become too late in time for fights, and often even memories. They clung.