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Show 3 3> Buck shrugged. "Why does somebody have to be guilty? Seems to me it was just e of those things." I was so caught by Buck's question that I almost missed the J.P. telling him that :re were other ways of settling a dispute rather than hitting back. If Veme had isunderstood him, why didn't Buck just tell him so? "The way he hit me? An' him comin' after me? Why, sh- Why, shucks, Judge, I'da stayed on the ground he'da kicked me to pieces. An' if I'da got up any way itswingin' he'da knocked my head off." About that time the Chief hung up and swiveled around and my father reached r his wallet. Then I realized that of course it would cost him twice as much to re a man to take my place on the farm, but he pulled out his wallet as if it was the ost distasteful act he'd ever been forced to do. As if he was not only condoning il but contributing to it. And I was innocent, innocent and getting socked, and tere was that damned Buck talking his way right out of it. But I had misjudged the forces of law and order, because then I heard the J.P. ill Buck that he was going to find him guilty. "When he hit me first!" "I'm gonna find him guilty too, don't you bother yourself about that. You boys've otta learn you can't just go around swinging on each other and not pay for it. •hat's not the way things work, Buck; you should know that by this time." He gave him ten days at hard labor and, while my father waited for his receipt, luck came back into the office. At his sentence he had shrugged and now I saw that e had never expected anything else. He'd known his sentence had been determined efore his hearing just as surely as Verne's was, but there he was, still with that mpudent toothless grin on his face, undiminished. And this time when he winked t me, I winked back. I thought it was over. I thought a little bit of my father's money had settled iverything and so I was willing to let that be the end of all I had seen and heard in hat court. I should have known better. Because my father still had that clamped jaw, ike a sheriff escorting his prisoner back to the jail, and as soon as we got out onto he highway he started his lecture about menaces to life and property, and responsibility and growing up-at least the J.P. had spared me that. And then the sentenc-ng: "I think you can just stay home for the next month and not leave the place. ['11 find plenty for you to do, don't you worry about that, and you'll have plenty 3f time to think things over." So, this way I got thirty days at hard labor, but though I could see the irony of it, [ wasn't laughing. I felt sick. Sick of myself, because that ten dollars was only a fraction of what my labor had earned my father and still I felt as guilty about it as if I'd wiped him out. And though I hadn't really stepped out of line, the J.P. and my father hitting me so hard to knock me back in made me feel as criminal as Cain. Yes, I was the stupid one all right, had been all along. I'd thought evil was down at Sid's Cesspool, there in the Garden of Eden, and instead it was in my house and My Father's Money 221 |