Page 66 of The River We Remember

“So, you heard.” She glanced where Del had gone, then back to Scott. “Yes, Noah Bluestone.”

MURDERER, SCOTT THOUGHT as he walked with the tray toward the county jail, and he wondered exactly what that meant. He’d seen John Wayne and Audie Murphy kill Indians and Japanese and Germans by the thousands on the screen at the Rialto, but that wasn’t called murder. There was glory in what they did, or pretended to do, for the camera. Noah Bluestone had killed only one man, the kind of man who, when speaking about him, a lot of good people used a lot of bad language. Yet Noah Bluestone was locked up behind bars. In cold blood, Del had said about the killing. What did that mean? And he wondered, as he walked along the storefronts, his reflection keeping him company, what it felt like to kill someone. Did what you feel depend on the reason for the killing? John Wayne seemed pretty happy with himself. Was that how Noah Bluestone felt?

His wondering was interrupted by an amiable greeting.

“Hello there, Scott.”

He looked up and found Mr. Wicklow standing in front of the Clarion office, smiling down at him.

“Hi,” Scott replied.

The newspaperman nodded toward the tray in Scott’s hand. “For Noah Bluestone?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wicklow stroked his beard and shook his head, as if he found something unacceptable, but Scott wasn’t sure what that might be.

“Mind if I walk with you a bit?”

“That would be okay,” Scott said.

The newspaperman fell in step beside him. Wicklow moved with an odd, rhythmic gait, a normal stride followed by the stiff swing of his artificial leg. Scott had never seen that leg, and now it was a part of his wondering. He wanted to ask the man about it, about what had happened in the war that caused him to lose it, about what it felt like to be torn apart and put back together.

“Terrible business,” Wicklow said.

Business? An odd word, Scott thought, for something that dealt with one man killing another. It was a word that suggested handshakes and agreements and civil exchanges, not the giving and receiving of a load of buckshot.

“Yes,” Scott said with his most serious voice. “Are you going to write a story about it?”

“Absolutely. Several probably. Nothing quite like this has ever happened in Black Earth County. It’s news with a capital N, Scott.”

“Why did he do it?”

“I don’t know that he did.”

“Sheriff Dern arrested him.”

“You know the phrase ‘innocent until proven guilty’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s how we operate here. Until a jury of his peers finds him guilty, we should presume that Noah Bluestone is innocent.”

Which was the way it was supposed to work, Scott knew, but listening to Del and hearing what Creasy said, he figured that wasn’t the way it really was.

“I heard Mr. Bluestone was a professional soldier,” Scott said.

“Career Marine, yes.”

“And he fought in World War Two and Korea both.”

“That’s right.”

“He must’ve killed a lot of men.”

“I don’t know that he did, Scott, but if so, that’s a very different situation. A soldier kills because—” Wicklow stopped suddenly and looked where the sun was just about to set in the west. His face was orange with the glow, and he closed his eyes nearly shut against that last flaring of the light. “A soldier kills…” he said slowly, as if it was something he’d never really thought about before, as if he was only just now working out the reason. He thought some more and finally looked down at Scott, and the boy could see along his jawline under the hair of his beard the jagged scars where his exploded skin had been sewn back together. “In the end, a soldier kills because all the circumstances of a moment drive him to it. It isn’t for freedom or God or for the people back home. It’s because he has no choice but to kill. And in that moment, he’s not thinking of it as a good thing or a bad thing. He’s not thinking about ethics. He’s thinking about keeping himself alive and keeping his comrades alive. And in all that mess, the only thing he wants is for it to end and for him to be alive to see that end.”

Wicklow peered deeply into Scott’s face, and the boy understood that the man felt he’d communicated something important, some truth that was essential to Scott’s grasp not just of Bluestone’s situation but of what it was to be a man, to be a soldier. And those scars on his face and his missing leg were all testaments to his ability to bear witness to that truth.