Prayers the Devil Answers by Sharyn McCrumb Page A

who thought that if the government was allowing people to go hungry then they had a lot of damn gall asking for a cut of some poor fellow’s hard-earned profits. Neither the whisky tax nor the Depression was the sheriff’s fault, of course. Sheriffs didn’t make the laws; they only carried out the orders of those that did, but maybe a sheriff ought to keep himself busy chasing the railroad tramps who stole chickens from honest folks, or looking into deaths that were a little too convenient for somebody. Bravery was only a virtue if you were doing something that needed doing, which, in their view, persecuting local bootleggers was not. They all said it was a shame that Sheriff Tyler got shot in the line of duty, but some of them also said that maybe the moonshiners had acted in self-defense, trying to protect what was theirs. I could see both sides of the argument, but nobody asked me what I thought, and I didn’t tell them.
    When Buck Tyler was killed, the county elections were less than two months away, and he had been up for reelection. With so little time left before the vote, the county officials granted Albert’s request to serve as the acting sheriff until Mr. Tyler’s term expired. The county’s other deputies voiced no objection to that, not when they had just seen the last sheriff shot dead and buried. Between the danger and thepaperwork, none of them much wanted the job, even for a few extra dollars a month in their paychecks.
    Albert wanted the job, though. The first reason he gave was that he thought it might be better to take on the job rather than having to be under the direction of somebody new. With our boys eating like wolves and outgrowing their clothes at every whipstitch, he said we could use the extra money, and, danger or no danger, I couldn’t argue with that. Most of all, though, I suspected that Albert wanted the job to acquire the respect and importance that came along with it. The paperwork might be difficult for him at first, but he said he reckoned that anybody could learn to do it if they put their mind to it. I think he was counting on help from me with that too.
    Albert wasn’t afraid of hard work. In fact, the thought of being out of work, being unable to feed his family, terrified him. So with the blessing of everyone in the department and in the county government, he took over the job of sheriff, and hired an eager young fellow named Falcon Wallace to take his old job.
    By election time, Albert had worked as hard as he could, and he had proved to everyone’s satisfaction that he could do the job. Maybe it was mostly good fortune that nothing terrible happened in those few weeks before election, but Albert got the credit for it. Besides that, he hadn’t ruffled anyone’s feathers or made a nuisance of himself. He was always soft-spoken, but he was also resolute and fair. When he let it be known that he wanted to keep the job by being duly elected, nobody objected. Being a newcomer to town, Albert was not burdened with any old family loyalties that might be troublesome in delicate situations.
    With the support of the county officials, the local business leaders, and his fellow deputies, and with votes from his old workmates at the railroad yard, newcomer Albert Robbins ran for sheriff and won the election. I think he found that campaigning was harder than the job. Even in a small town like this he had to do a bit of glad-handingto campaign for office, conversing with strangers and asking for the favor of their vote, but he wanted the job bad enough to work to get it. I stood by his side—as the dutiful little woman, living testimony that the candidate was a solid family man—and I made myself smile and look as if I enjoyed talking to people.
    Albert went to local civic meetings and visited a different church every week. The role of politician’s wife put me in the path of strangers and I dreaded every occasion, but for Albert’s