AROUND SIX O’CLOCK in the morning, Jeffrey rolled out of bed and fell onto the floor. He sat up, groaning at the pain in his head as he tried to remember where he was. The trip to Sylacauga had taken him six long hours last night, and he had tumbled into the twin bed without even bothering to take off his clothes. His dress shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves pushed up well past his elbows. His pants were creased in four different places.
Jeffrey yawned as he looked around his boyhood room. His mother had not changed a thing since he had left for Auburn over twenty years ago. A poster of a cherry-red 1967 Mustang convertible with a white top was on the back of the door. Six pairs of worn-out sneakers were on the floor of the closet. His football jersey from Sylacauga High was tacked to the wall over the bed. A box of cassette tapes was stacked high under the room’s only window.
He lifted the mattress and saw a stack of Playboy s that he had started stockpiling at the age of fourteen. A much-loved copy of Penthouse, purloined from the local store down the street, was still on the top. Jeffrey sat back on his heels, thumbing through the magazine. There had been a time in his life when he had known every page of the Penthouse by heart, from the cartoons to the articles to the lovely ladies in provocative poses that had been the focus of his sexual fantasies for months on end.
“Jesus,” he sighed, thinking some of the women were probably old enough to be grandmothers now. Christ, some of them were probably eligible for social security.
Jeffrey groaned as he slid the mattress back into place, trying not to push the magazines out on the other side. He wondered if his mother had ever found his stash. Wondered, too, what she must have thought of it. Knowing May Tolliver, she had ignored them, or made up an excuse that allowed her to block out the fact that her son had enough pornography under his mattress to wallpaper the entire house. His mother was good at not seeing things she did not want to see, but then most mothers were.
Jeffrey thought about Dottie Weaver, and how she had missed all the signs with her daughter. He put his hand to his stomach, thinking about Jenny Weaver standing in the parking lot at Skatie’s. The image was like a Polaroid etched into his eyelids, and he could see the little girl standing there, the gun in her hand trained on Mark Patterson. Mark was more defined in Jeffrey’s memory now, and he could pick out details about the boy: the way he stood with his arms out to his sides, the way his knees bent a little as he stared at Jenny. The whole time, Mark had never really looked at Jeffrey. Even after Jeffrey had shot her, Mark had stood there, staring down at the ground where she lay.
Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, trying to push out this image. He let his gaze travel back to the Mustang, taking it in the way he had every morning of his teenage life. The car had represented so much to him when he was growing up, chief among these things being freedom. As a teenager, he had sometimes sat in bed, his eyes closed, imagining getting in that car and taking off across country. Jeffrey had wanted so much to get away, to leave Sylacauga and his mother’s house, to be something other than his father’s son.
Jimmy Tolliver had been a petty thief in every sense of the term. He never stole big, which was a point in his favor, because he always got caught. Jeffrey’s mother liked to say that Jimmy couldn’t break wind in a crowded building without getting caught. He just had that look of guilt about him, and he liked to talk. Jimmy’s mouth was his biggest downfall; he couldn’t stand not taking credit for the jobs he pulled. Jimmy Tolliver was the only person who was surprised when he had ended up dying in prison, serving out a life term for armed robbery.
By the time he was ten years old, Jeffrey knew practically every man on the Sylacauga police force by name, because at some time or another, one or all of them had come to the house, looking for Jimmy. To their credit, the patrol cops knew Jeffrey, too, and they always made a point of taking him aside whenever they saw him. At the time, being singled out by the police had annoyed Jeffrey. He had considered it harassment. Now, as a policeman himself, Jeffrey knew the cops had been taking time with him as insurance. They did not want to waste their time chasing down another Tolliver for stealing lawn mowers and weed whackers out of his neighbors’ yards.
Jeffrey owed these cops a lot, not least of all his career. Watching the fear in his father’s eyes that last time the cops had come to the house and slapped the cuffs on Jimmy, Jeffrey had known then and there that he wanted to be a cop. Jimmy Tolliver had been a drunk, and a mean one at that. To the town, he was a bumbling crook and a sloppy drunk, to Jeffrey and his mother, he was a violent asshole who terrified his family.
Jeffrey stretched his hands up to the ceiling, his palms flat against the warm wood. As he padded to the bathroom, he noticed that even his socks were wrinkled. The heel had slid around sometime during the night. Jeffrey was balancing on one foot, trying to twist it back, when he heard his cell phone ringing in the other room.
“Dammit,” he cursed, bumping his shoulder into the wall as he turned the corner to his room. The house seemed so much smaller now than it had when he was growing up.
He picked up the phone on the fourth ring, just before the voice mail came on. “Hello?”
“Jeff?” Sara asked, a bit of concern in her voice.
He let it linger in his ear before saying, “Hey, babe.”
She laughed at the name. “Less than ten hours in Alabama and you’re calling me ‘babe’?” She waited a beat. “Are you alone?”
He felt irritated, because he knew part of her was not joking. “Of course I’m alone,” he shot back. “Jesus Christ, Sara.”
“I meant your mother,” she told him, though he could tell from her lack of conviction that she was covering.
He let it pass. “No, they kept her overnight in the hospital.” He sat on the bed, trying to get his sock to twist back into place. “She fell down somehow. Broke her foot.”
“Did she fall at home?” Sara asked, something more than curiosity in her tone. He knew what she was getting at, and it was the same reason Jeffrey had come to Alabama himself in the middle of a case instead of just making a phone call. He wanted to see if his mother’s drinking was finally getting out of hand. May Tolliver had always been what was politely called a functional alcoholic. If she had crossed the line into hopeless drunk, Jeffrey would have to do something. He had no idea what this would be, but knew instinctively that it would not be easy.
Jeffrey tried to redirect her interest. “I talked with the doctor. I haven’t really seen her to find out what happened.” He waited for her to get the message. “I’ll see her today, see what’s going on.”
“She’ll probably be on crutches,” Sara told him. He could hear a tapping noise, and assumed she was at her office. He looked at his watch, wondering why she was there so early, but then he remembered the time change. Sara was an hour ahead of him.
“Ms. Harris across the street will look in on her,” Jeffrey volunteered, knowing that Jean Harris would do whatever she could to help a neighbor. She worked as a dietician at the local hospital, and had often waved Jeffrey over after school to make sure he had a hot meal. Sitting at the table with her three lovely daughters had been a bit more enticing than Ms. Harris’s chicken pot pie, but Jeffrey had appreciated both at the time.
Sara said, “You need to tell her to be very careful not to mix her pain meds with alcohol. Or tell her doctor that. Okay?”
He looked at his sock, realizing it was still backward. He twisted it the other way, asking, “Is that why you called?”
“I got your message about Mark Patterson. What am I pulling a sample for?”
“Paternity,” he told her, not liking the image the word brought to his mind.
Sara was silent, then asked, “Are you sure?”
“No,” he told her. “Not at all. I just thought I should look at everything I could.”
“How’d you get a court order so fast?”
“No order. His father’s sending him in voluntarily.”
She was still incredulous. “Without a lawyer?”
Jeffrey sighed. “Sara, I left all of this on your machine last night. Is something going on?”
“No,” she answered in a softer tone. Then, “Yes, actually.”
He waited. “Yeah?”
“I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Sarcasm came, because that was all he could muster in light of her question. “Other than waking up knowing I killed a thirteen-year-old little girl, I guess I’m just peachy.”
She was quiet, and he let the silence continue, not knowing what to say to her. Sara had not called him in a long time, not even for county-related matters. In the past, she had faxed him documents on cases, or sent Carlos, her assistant, over with sensitive information. Since the divorce, personal calls were out of the question, and even when they had started back kind of dating, Jeffrey had always been the one to pick up the phone.
“Jeff?” Sara asked.
“I was just thinking,” he said, then, to change the subject, he asked, “Tell me a little bit more about Lacey.”
“I told you yesterday. She’s a good kid,” Sara said, and he could hear something off in her tone. He knew she was feeling responsible for Jenny Weaver, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Sara continued, “She’s bright, funny. Just like Jenny in a lot of ways.”
“Were you close to her?”
“As close as you can be to a kid you only see a few times a year.” Sara paused, then said, “Yeah. Some of them you connect with. I connected with Lacey. I think she has a little crush on me.”
“That’s weird,” he said.
“Not really,” Sara told him. “Lots of kids get crushes on adults. It’s not a sexual thing, they just want to impress them, to make them laugh.”
“I’m still not following.”
“They get to be a certain age and their parents can’t be cool anymore. Some kids, not all of them, can transfer their feelings onto another adult. It’s perfectly natural. They just want someone to look up to, and at that point in their lives it can’t be their parents.”
“So, she looked up to you?”
“It felt that way,” Sara said, and he could hear the sadness in her voice.
“You think she would’ve told you if something was going on?”
“Who knows?” Sara replied. “Something happens to them when they get into middle school. They get a lot more quiet.”
“That’s what Grace Patterson said. That they keep secrets.”
“That’s true,” Sara agreed. “I just chalked up the change to puberty. All those hormones, all those new feelings. They’ve got a lot to think about, and the only thing they’re certain of is that adults have no way of understanding what they’re going through.”
“Still,” Jeffrey countered, “don’t you think she would’ve talked to you if something was wrong?”
“I’d like to think so, but the truth is, she’d have to have her mother drive her here. I can’t kick the mother out of the room without causing some suspicion.”
“You think Grace would have been reluctant to leave y’all alone?”
“I think she would’ve been worried. She’s a good mother. She takes an interest in her kids and what they’re doing.”
“That’s what Brad said.”
“What does Brad have to do with this?” Sara asked.
“He’s the youth minister at Crescent Baptist.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Sara said, making the connection. “He must’ve been on the retreat.”
“Yeah,” Jeffrey told her. “There were eight kids from the church: three boys, five girls.”
“That doesn’t sound like a lot of kids.”
“It’s a small church,” Jeffrey reminded her. “Plus, skiing is expensive. Not a lot of people have that kind of money to begin with, especially around the holidays.”
“That’s true,” she agreed. “But it was just Brad chaperoning?”
“The church secretary was supposed to help out with the girls, but she got sick at the last minute.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“She had some kind of stroke. She was only fifty-eight years old,” he said, thinking that when he had been a kid, fifty-eight had seemed ancient. “She moved down to Florida so her kids could take care of her.”
“So, what did Brad say about Jenny and Lacey?”
“Nothing specific. He said Lacey and Jenny pretty much stayed by themselves while the rest of the kids were off skiing and having fun.”
“That’s not uncommon for girls that age. They tend to form tight little groups.”
“Yeah,” Jeffrey sighed, feeling yesterday’s frustrations settling into his gut. “Brad went over to Jenny’s house when she stopped coming to church. She pretty much burst into tears the minute she saw him and wouldn’t talk.”
“What’d he do?”
“Left with his hat in his hands. He asked Dave Fine to check in on her, but Dave got the same treatment.”
“Did you talk to Dave about it?”
“Briefly. He was about to go into a therapy session.” Jeffrey felt a flash of guilt, thinking about Lena. He should not have allowed her to use her therapy appointment to interview Fine. Jeffrey had given in too easily because it was convenient.
“Jeffrey?” Sara said, her tone indicating she had asked him a question and was waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, sorry,” Jeffrey apologized.
“What did Fine say?”
“The same as Brad. He offered to come in tomorrow and talk some more, but neither one of them seem like they’re going to be much help.” Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, trying to think of any straw he could grasp. “What about Mark Patterson?” he finally asked. “Does he seem kind of weird to you?”
“Weird how?”
“Weird like…” Jeffrey tried to find the words. He did not really want to go into the Patterson interview with Sara, mostly because of what had happened with Lena. There had been something between her and the boy, something that set his teeth on edge. They both worked off each other somehow. “Weird like I don’t know.”
Sara laughed. “I don’t think I can answer that.”
“Sexual,” he said, because that was a good word to describe Mark Patterson. “He seemed really sexual.”
“Well,” Sara began, and he could hear the confusion in her voice. “He’s a good-looking kid. I imagine he’s been sexually active for a very long time.”
“He just turned sixteen.”
“Jeffrey,” Sara said, as if she were talking to an idiot. “I’ve got ten-year-old girls who haven’t even started their periods asking me about birth control.”
“Jesus,” he sighed. “It’s way too early in the morning to hear that kind of thing.”
“Welcome to my world,” she told him.
“Yeah.” He stared at the jersey on his wall, trying to remember what it had felt like to be Mark Patterson’s age and have the world in the palm of his hand. Though, Mark Patterson did not seem to feel that way.
Jeffrey did not like this helpless feeling. He should be back in Grant, trying to figure this out. At the very least, he should be keeping an eye on Lena. For a while Jeffrey had felt she was on the edge, but not until yesterday did he realize that she was closer to falling than keeping herself balanced.
“Jeff?” Sara asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m worried about Lena,” he told her, and the words felt familiar to him. He had been worried about Lena since he hired her ten years ago. First, he was worried that she was so aggressive on patrol, taking every collar like her life depended on it. Then, he had worried that she put herself in danger too often as a detective, pushing suspects to their breaking point, pushing herself to her own breaking point. And now he worried that she was about to lose it. There was no question in his mind that she would explode soon. It was just a matter of when. With a start, he realized this had been his fear from the beginning: When would Lena finally break in two?
“I think you should be worried about her,” Sara said. “Why won’t you take her off active duty?”
“Because it would kill her,” he answered, and he knew this was true. Lena needed her job like other people needed air.
“Is there something else?”
Jeffrey thought about the conversation he’d had with Lena in the car. She had not been exactly sure of herself when she told him the shot was clean. “I, uh,” he began, not knowing how to say this. “When I talked to Lena yesterday…,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“She didn’t seem too sure about what had happened.”
“About the shooting?” Sara demanded, obviously irritated. “What exactly did she say?”
“It wasn’t what she said so much as how she said it.”
Sara mumbled something that sounded like a curse. “She’s just playing with you to get back at me.”
“Lena’s not like that.”
“Of course she is,” Sara shot back. “She’s always been like that.”
Jeffrey shook his head, not accepting this. “I think she’s just not sure.”
Sara mumbled a curse under her breath. “That’s just great.”
“Sara,” Jeffrey said, trying to calm her down. “Don’t say anything to her, okay? It’ll only make it worse.”
“Why would I say anything to her?”
“Sara…” He rubbed sleep from his eyes, thinking he did not want to talk about this now. “Listen, I was just fixin’ to go to the hospital—”
“This really ticks me off.”
“I know that,” he said. “You’ve made it clear.”
“I just—”
“Sara,” he interrupted. “I really need to go.”
“Actually,” she said, moderating her tone, “I was calling for a reason, if you’ve got a minute?”
“Sure,” he managed, feeling a sense of trepidation. “What’s up?”
He heard her take a deep breath, as if she were about to jump off a cliff. “I was wondering if you’ll be back tonight.”
“Late, probably.”
“Well, then, how about tomorrow night?”
“If I come back tonight, I won’t have to come back tomorrow night.”
“Are you being dense on purpose?”
He played back their conversation in his mind, smiling when he realized that Sara was trying to ask him over. Jeffrey wondered if she had ever done something like this in her life.
He said, “I’ve never been very bright.”
“No,” she agreed, but she was laughing.
“So?”
“So…,” Sara began, then she sighed. He heard her mumble, “Oh, this is so stupid.”
“What’s that?”
“I said,” she started again, then stopped. “I’m not doing anything tomorrow night.”
Jeffrey rubbed his whiskers, feeling the grin on his face. He wondered if there had ever been a time in this room when he had felt happier. Maybe the day he got the call from Auburn, saying he could go to college for free in exchange for getting the shit beaten out of him on the football field every Saturday.
He said, “Hey, me neither.”
“So…” Sara was obviously hoping he would fill things in for her. Jeffrey sat back down on the bed, thinking hell would freeze over before he helped her out.
“Come over to my house,” she finally said. “Around seven or so, okay?”
“Why?”
He could hear her chair squeak as she sat back. Jeffrey imagined she probably had her hand over her eyes.
“God, you are not going to make this easy, are you?”
“Why should I?”
“I want to see you,” she told him. “Come at seven. I’ll make supper.”
“Wait a minute—”
She obviously anticipated his problem with this. Sara was not exactly a good cook. She offered, “I’ll order something from Alfredo’s.”
Jeffrey smiled again. “I’ll see you at seven.”
AS a boy, Jeffrey had done his share of stupid things. His two best friends from elementary school to high school had lived down the street from him, and between Jerry Long, a boy with a curiosity about fireworks, and Bobby Blankenship, a boy who liked to hear things explode, they had managed to risk their lives any number of times before puberty took hold and girls became more important than blowing things up.
At the age of eleven, the three had discovered the pleasure of exploding bottle rockets in a steel drum behind Jeffrey’s house. By the time they were twelve, the drum was as dented and pockmarked as Bobby “Spot” Blankenship’s face. By the time they were thirteen, Jerry Long had been given the name “Possum” because, when the drum had finally exploded, a piece of shrapnel had nearly sliced off the top of his head, and he had lain in Jeffrey’s backyard like a possum until Jean Harris had called an ambulance to take him to the hospital, and the police to scare the bejesus out of Jeffrey and Spot.
Jeffrey had not earned his nickname until later, when he had started to notice girls and, more important, they had started to notice him. Like Possum and Spot, he was on the football team, and they were pretty popular in school because the team was winning that year. Jeffrey was the first of the trio to kiss a girl, the first to get to second base, and the first to finally lose his virginity. For these accomplishments, he was given the nickname “Slick.”
The first time Jeffrey had taken Sara to Sylacauga, he had been so nervous that his hands would not stop sweating. They had just started dating, and Jeffrey had been under the impression that Sara was a little too socially elevated for Possum and Spot, and more than likely for ol’ Slick as well. Sylacauga was the epitome of a small Southern town. Unlike Heartsdale, there was no college up the street, and no professors in town to add some diversity to the mix. Most of the people who lived here worked in some kind of industry, whether it was for the textile mill or the marble quarry. Jeffrey was not saying they were all backward, inbred hicks, but they were not the kind of people he thought Sara would be comfortable hanging around.
Sara wasn’t just what the locals would call “book learned,” but a medical doctor, and her family might have been blue collar, but Eddie Linton was the kind of man who knew how to manage a dollar. The family owned property up and down the lake, and even had some rental units in Florida. On top of that, Sara was sharp, and not just about books. She had a cutting wit, and wasn’t the kind of woman who would have his slippers and a hot meal waiting for him when he got home from work. If anything, Sara would expect Jeffrey to have these things ready for her.
About six miles from the Tolliver house, there was a general store called Cat’s that Jeffrey and everyone else had frequented growing up. It was the kind of place where you could buy milk, tobacco, gasoline, and bait. The floor was made from hand-hewn lumber and there were enough gashes and scars in it to trip you up if you did not watch where you were walking. The ceiling was low, and yellowed from nicotine and water stains. Freezers packed with ice and Coca-Colas lined the entranceway, and a large Moon Pie display was up by the cash register. The gas pumps outside dinged with every gallon pumped.
While Jeffrey was at Auburn, Cat had passed away, and Possum, who worked at the store, had taken over for Cat’s widow. Six years later, Possum had bought out the widow Cat, and changed the name to “Possum’s Cat’s.” When Sara had first seen the sign over the dilapidated building, she had been delighted, and made reference to the Eliot poem. Jeffrey had fought the urge to crawl under the car and hide, but Sara had laughed when she found out the truth. As a matter of fact, she had enjoyed herself that weekend, and by the second day there, Sara was lying out by the pool with Possum and his wife, laughing at stories about Jeffrey’s errant youth.
Now, Jeffrey could smile at the memory, though at the time he had been slightly annoyed to be the butt of their jokes. Sara was the first woman who had made fun of him like that, and, truth be told, that was probably the point at which she had hooked him. His mother liked to say that he liked a challenge.
Jeffrey was thinking about this, thinking that Sara Linton was, if anything, a challenge, as he turned into the parking lot of Possum’s Cat’s. The place had changed a lot since Cat had owned it, and even more since the last time Jeffrey had been in town. The only thing that remained the same was the big Auburn University emblem over the door. Alabama was a state divided by its two universities, Auburn and Alabama, and there was only one important question every native asked the other: “Who are you for?” Jeffrey had seen fights break out when someone gave the wrong answer in the wrong part of town.
A day care was to the right of the store, a new addition since the last time Jeffrey had visited. On the left was Madam Bell’s, which was run by Possum’s wife, Darnell. Like Cat, Madam Bell had passed a long time ago. Jeffrey thought that Nell ran the place just to give her something to do while the kids were at school. He had dated Nell off and on in high school until Possum had gotten serious about her. Jeffrey could not imagine that same restless girl being happy with this kind of life, but stranger things have happened. Besides, Nell had been three months pregnant the week they all graduated from school. It wasn’t like she had been given a lot of choices.
So he wouldn’t take up one of the spaces in front of the store, Jeffrey let the car idle outside Bell’s, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” playing softly on the car’s speakers. He had found the tape in the box under the window in his room, and experienced a bit of nostalgia when the first chords of what was one of his favorite songs reached his ears. It was odd how you could love something so much, but forget about it when it wasn’t right under your nose. He felt that way about this town, and his friends here. Being around Possum and Nell again would be like nothing had changed in the last twenty years. Jeffrey did not know how he felt about that.
What he did know was that seeing his mother in the hospital ten minutes ago had made him want to get back to Grant as fast as he could. There was something suffocating about the way she held on to him when she hugged him, and the way she let her voice trail off, saying things by leaving them unsaid. May Tolliver had never been a happy woman, and part of Jeffrey thought his father had been such a bumbling crook so that he would get caught and taken off to jail, where his miserable wife could not nag him every day about what a disappointment he was. Like Jimmy, May was a mean drunk, and though she had never raised her hand to Jeffrey, she could cut him in two with her words faster than anyone he had ever met. Thankfully, she still seemed to be functioning, even with enough alcohol in her to fuel a tractor for sixty miles. If May could be believed, a feral cat from under the neighbor’s house had startled her and she had fallen down the steps. Since Jeffrey had heard some cats over there this morning, he had to give his mother the benefit of the doubt. He did not want to admit to anyone, let alone to himself, how grateful he was that his mother did not need further intervention.
Jeffrey stepped out of the car, his foot sliding a little on the gravel drive. He had changed into jeans and a polo shirt back at his mother’s house, and he felt odd being clothed so casually in the middle of the week. He had even considered wearing his dress shoes, but had changed his mind when he caught a glance of himself in the mirror. He slipped on his sunglasses, looking around as he walked toward Madam Bell’s.
The fortune-teller’s building was more like a shack, and the screen door groaned when Jeffrey opened it. He knocked on the front door, stepping into the small front parlor. The place looked just as it had when he was a boy. Spot had once dared Jeffrey to go in and have his palm read by Madam Bell. He had not liked what she had to say, and never stepped foot back in the place again.
Jeffrey craned his head around the door, looking into the shack’s only other room. Nell sat at a table with a deck of tarot cards in front of her. The television was on low, or maybe the air conditioner in the window was drowning out the sound. She was knitting something as she watched her show, her body leaning forward as if to make sure she caught every word.
Jeffrey said, “Boo.”
“Oh, my God,” Nell jumped, dropping her knitting. She stood from the table, patting her palm against her chest. “Slick, you ’bout scared me half to death.”
“Don’t let that happen twice,” he laughed, pulling her into a hug. She was a small woman, but nice and curvy through the hips. He stepped back to get a good look at her. Nell had not changed much since high school. Her black hair was the same, if not a little gray, straight and long enough to reach her waist, but pulled back in a ponytail, probably to fight the heat.
“You been over to Possum’s?” she asked, sitting back down at the table. “What’re you doing here? Is it about your mama?”
Jeffrey smiled, sitting across from her. Nell had always talked a hundred miles an hour. “No and yes.”
“She was drunk,” Nell said in her usual abrupt way. Her candor was one of the reasons Jeffrey had stopped dating her. She called things the way she saw them, and at eighteen Jeffrey had hardly been introspective.
Nell said, “Her liquor bills ’bout kept us afloat last winter.”
“I know,” Jeffrey answered, crossing his arms. He had paid his mother’s utility bills for some time now just to keep her in liquor. It was pointless to argue with the old woman about it, and at least this way he knew she would stay at home and drink instead of going out to do something about it.
He said, “I just came from the hospital. They gave her a shot of vodka while I was standing there.”
Nell picked up the cards and started to shuffle them. “Old biddy’d go into the DTs if they didn’t.”
Jeffrey shrugged. The doctor had said the same thing in the hospital.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” Nell asked him, and Jeffrey smiled, realizing that he had been staring at her. What he had been thinking was that it was easier to talk to Nell about his mother’s alcoholism than it was to talk to Sara about it. He could not begin to understand why this was. Maybe it was because Nell had grown up with it. With Sara, Jeffrey tended to get embarrassed, then ashamed, then finally angry.
“How is it you get prettier every time I come see you?” he teased her.
“Slick, Slick, Slick,” Nell said, clucking her tongue. She laid a couple of cards face up on the table, asking, “So, why’d Sara divorce you?”
Jeffrey startled, asking, “You see that in the cards?”
She smiled mischievously. “Christmas cards. Sara’s had ‘Linton’ on the return address.” She put another card down on the table. “What’d you do, cheat on her?”
He indicated the cards. “Why don’t you tell me?”
She nodded, laying down a couple more. “I’d guess you cheated on her and got caught.”
“What?”
Nell laughed. “Just ’cause she don’t talk to you don’t mean she don’t talk to me.”
He shook his head, not understanding.
“We’ve got a phone, too, puppy,” she told him. “I talk to Sara every now and then, just to catch up.”
“Well, then you must know I’ve been seeing her again,” he said, aware he was sounding like the cocky old Slick he had been, but unable to stop it. “What do your cards say about that?”
She turned a couple more over and studied them for a few seconds, a frown tugging her lips down. Finally, she scooped the cards back into a deck. “These stupid things don’t tell you nothing anyway,” she mumbled. “Let’s get over to Possum’s. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”
She held her hand out to him, and he hesitated, wondering if he should push her on the reading. Not that Jeffrey believed Nell had the gift, or that anyone did for that matter, but it set his teeth on edge that she would not at least make something up so that he would feel better.
“Come on,” she said, tugging at his sleeve.
He acquiesced, letting her lead him out of the shack and back into the unrelenting Alabama heat. There were no trees in the gravel parking lot, and Jeffrey could feel the sun baking the top of his head as they crossed toward the gas station.
Nell looped her hand through his arm, saying, “I like Sara.”
“I do, too,” he told her.
“I mean, I really like her, Jeffrey.”
He stopped, because she seldom called him “Jeffrey.”
She said, “If she’s giving you another chance, don’t fuck it up.”
“I don’t plan to.”
“I mean it, Slick,” she said, tugging him toward the store. “She’s too good for you, and God knows she’s too smart.” She waited at the door so he could open it. “Just don’t fuck it up.”
“Your faith in me is inspiring.”
“I just don’t want Little Jeffrey messing things up for you again.”
“‘Little?’” he repeated, opening the door. “Your memory giving out on you?”
Jeffrey could tell she was going to answer him, but Possum’s booming voice drowned out everything.
“That Slick?” Possum yelled as if Jeffrey had just gone out for a walk instead of been away for years. Jeffrey watched as the other man edged over the counter. His belly got in the way, but he landed on his feet despite the laws of physics.
“Damn,” Jeffrey told him, rubbing the other man’s large gut. “Nell, why didn’t you tell me you got another one on the way?”
Possum laughed good naturedly, rubbing his belly. “We’re gonna call it Bud if it’s a boy, Dewars if it’s a girl.” He put his arm around Jeffrey, leading him into the store. “How you been, boy?”
Without thinking, Jeffrey delivered his standard response. “I ain’t been a boy since I was your size.”
Possum laughed, throwing back his head. “Wish we had Spot around. How long you gonna be in town?”
“Not long,” Jeffrey told him. “I’m actually on my way out.” He turned around to see that Nell had left them alone.
“Good woman,” Possum said.
“I can’t believe she’s still with you.”
“I take away her keys at night before I go to sleep,” he told Jeffrey, giving him a wink. “Wanna beer?”
Jeffrey looked at the clock on the wall. “I usually don’t drink until at least noon.”
“Oh, right, right, right,” he answered. “How about a Co-Cola?” He scooped a couple out of an ice chest without waiting for a response.
“Hot out,” Jeffrey said.
“Yep,” Possum agreed, popping the bottles open on the side of the chest. “I guess you dropped by to ask me to keep an eye on your mama.”
“I’ve got a case back home,” he said, and it felt good that home meant Grant now. “If you don’t mind.”
“Shit,” he waved this off, handing Jeffrey a Coke. “Don’t worry about that. She’s still just right down the street.”
“Thanks,” Jeffrey said. He watched as Possum took a bag of peanuts off the rack and ripped it open with his teeth. He offered some to Jeffrey, but Jeffrey shook his head no.
“Damn shame her falling,” Possum said, funneling some peanuts into the open neck of his Coke bottle. “Been real hot lately. Guess she just got dizzy in this heat.”
Jeffrey took a swig of Coke. Possum was doing what he had always done, and that was covering for May Tolliver. Jerry Long didn’t just get his nickname from playing dead that day in Jeffrey’s backyard. If there was one thing Possum was good at, it was ignoring what was right in front of his face.
The heavy baseline from a rap song shook the front windows, and Jeffrey turned around in time to see a large burgundy colored pickup truck pull into a space in front of the store. Rap music blared, a cacophony of missed beats, before the engine was cut and a surly-looking teenager got out of the cab and walked into the store.
He was dressed in a shirt that matched the color of his truck, with the words ROLL TIDE emblazoned in white over a rampaging elephant. His hair was what got Jeffrey’s immediate attention, though. It was corn rowed with little crimson colored barrettes at the end, and they snapped against each other as he walked. The boy was wearing black-and-gray camouflage pants that were cut off at the knee, but his socks and sneakers were colored the Crimson Tide. Jeffrey realized with a start that the kid was dressed head to toe in the colors of Alabama University.
“Hey, Dad,” the boy said, meaning Possum.
Jeffrey exchanged a look with his friend, then turned back to the boy. “Jared?” he asked, certain this could not be Possum and Nell’s sweet little kid. He looked like a motorcycle thug dressed for an Alabama gang.
“Hey, Uncle Slick,” Jared mumbled, shuffling his feet across the floor. He walked right past Jeffrey and his father and into the room behind the counter.
“Man,” Jeffrey said. “That has got to be embarrassing.”
Possum nodded. “We’re hoping he changes his mind.” Possum shrugged. “He likes animals. Everybody knows Auburn’s got a better vet school than Alabama.”
Jeffrey kept his teeth clamped so he would not laugh.
“I’ll be back,” Possum said, going after the boy. “Help yourself to anything you want.”
Jeffrey finished his Coke in one swallow, then walked to the back of the store to see what kind of bait Possum had stocked. There were wire-meshed cages with crickets chirping up a storm as well as a large plastic barrel filled with wet dirt that probably had a thousand or so worms in it. A small tank of minnows was over the cricket stands, with a net and some buckets in which to transport the bait. Sara liked to fish, and Jeffrey thought about getting her some worms before he considered what a hassle it would be, taking live bait back in his car. He would probably have to stop outside of Atlanta for something to eat, and it wasn’t like Jeffrey could leave the worms to fry in the heat of his car. Besides, there were plenty of bait stands in Grant.
He dropped the empty Coke bottle into a box that looked like it was used for recycling and glanced out the window at the day-care center beside the store. Obviously, it was time for recess, and kids were running around, screaming their heads off. Jeffrey wondered if Jenny Weaver had ever felt that free. He could not imagine the overweight girl running around for any reason. She seemed more like the type to sit in the shade reading a book, waiting for the bell to ring so she could go back to class, where she felt more comfortable.
“You work here?” someone asked.
Jeffrey turned around, startled. A thirtyish-looking man was standing behind him at the bait display. He was what Jeffrey always thought of as a typical redneck: skinny and soft-looking with razor burns from shaving too close. His arms seemed to be well-developed, probably from working construction. A cigarette dangled from his lips.
“No,” Jeffrey said, feeling a little embarrassed to be caught staring so aimlessly out the window. “I was looking at the kids.”
“Yeah,” the man said, taking a step toward Jeffrey. “They’re usually out this time of day.”
“You got one over there?” Jeffrey asked.
The man gave him a strange look, as if to assess him. His hand went to his mouth, and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. With a start, Jeffrey noticed a tattoo on the webbing between the man’s thumb and index finger. It was the same tattoo Mark Patterson had on his hand.
Jeffrey turned away, trying to think this through. He stared out the window, and he could make out the man’s partial reflection in the glass.
“Nice tattoo,” Jeffrey said.
The man’s voice was a low, conspiratorial whisper. “You got one?”
Jeffrey kept his lips pressed together, shaking his head no.
“Why not?” the man asked.
Jeffrey said, “Work,” trying to keep his tone even. He had a bad feeling about this, like part of his mind was working something out, but not sharing it with him.
“Not many people know what it means,” the man said, fisting his hand. He looked at the tattoo on the webbing, a slight smile at his lips.
“I’ve seen it on a kid,” Jeffrey told him. “Not like them,” he nodded toward the day care. “Older.”
The man’s smile broke out wider. “You like ’em older?”
Jeffrey looked back over the man’s shoulder to see where Possum was.
“He won’t come back for a while,” the man assured him. “That boy of his gets hisself into trouble most every day.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” the man said.
Jeffrey turned back to the window, looking at the children running around the yard in a different light. They no longer seemed young and carefree. They seemed vulnerable and in jeopardy.
The man took a step toward Jeffrey and used the hand with the tattoo to point out the window. “See that one there?” he asked. “Little one with the book?”
Jeffrey followed the man’s direction and found a little girl sitting under the tree in the middle of the yard. She was reading a book, much the way Jeffrey had imagined Jenny Weaver would.
The man said, “That one’s mine.”
Jeffrey felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. The way the man said the words made it clear he was not referring to the girl as his daughter. There was something proprietary to his tone, and under that, something unmistakably sexual.
The man said, “You can’t tell from this far, but up close, she’s got herself the prettiest little mouth.”
Jeffrey turned around slowly, trying to hide his disgust. He said, “Why don’t we go somewhere else where we can talk about this?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with here?”
“Here makes me nervous,” Jeffrey said, making himself smile.
The man stared at him for a long while, then gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and he started walking toward the door, tossing a look over his shoulder about every five feet to make sure Jeffrey was still there.
Behind the building, the man started to turn, but Jeffrey kicked him in the back of his knees so that he fell to the ground.
“Oh, Jesus,” the man said, pulling himself into a ball.
“Shut up,” Jeffrey ordered, raising his foot. He kicked the man in the thigh hard enough to let him know there was no use trying to stand.
The man just stayed there, curled into a ball, waiting for Jeffrey to beat him. There was something at once pathetic and disgusting about his behavior, as if he understood why someone might want to do this, and was accepting his punishment.
Jeffrey looked around, making sure no one could see him. He wanted to do this man some serious harm for threatening the child, but part of his resolve was lost when faced with the pathetic, whimpering lump lying on the ground in front of him. It was one thing to kick the shit out of somebody who fought back, quite another to harm what was basically a defenseless man.
“Stand up,” Jeffrey said.
The man looked out between his crossed arms, trying to gauge if this was a trick. When Jeffrey took a step back, the man slowly uncurled himself and stood. Dust kicked up around them, and Jeffrey coughed to clear his throat.
“What do you want?” the man asked, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. They were crushed, and the one he put in his mouth bent at an angle. His hands shook as he tried to light the tip.
Jeffrey fought the urge to slap the cigarette out of his mouth. “What’s that tattoo for?”
The man shrugged, some surliness slipping into his posture.
Jeffrey asked, “Is that for some kind of club you’re in?”
“Yeah, the freak club,” the man said. “The club that likes little girls. That what you’re going after?”
“So, other people have this?”
“I dunno,” he said. “I don’t got no names, if that’s what you want. It’s from the Internet. We’re all anonymous.”
Jeffrey hissed a sigh. Among other things, the Internet fed child molesters and pedophiles, linking them together to share stories, fantasies, and sometimes children. Jeffrey had taken a law enforcement class on this very thing. There had been some spectacular busts in recent history, but even the FBI could not work fast enough to track down these people.
“What does it stand for?” Jeffrey asked.
The man gave him a hard look. “What the fuck you think it stands for?”
“Tell me,” Jeffrey said through clenched teeth, “unless you want to be back on that ground trying to figure out why your intestines are coming out of your asshole.”
The man nodded, taking a drag on the cigarette. He blew smoke out through his mouth and nose in a slow stream.
“The heart,” the man began, pointing to his hand. “The big heart is black.”
Jeffrey nodded.
“But, inside, there’s this little heart, right?” The man looked at the tattoo with something like love in his eyes. “The little heart is white. It’s pure.”
“Pure?” Jeffrey asked, remembering that word from somewhere. “What do you mean, pure?”
“Like a child is pure, man.” He allowed a smile. “The white heart makes just a little part of the black heart pure, you know? It’s love, man. It’s nothing but love.”
Jeffrey tried to do something with his hands other than beat the man into the ground. He held out his palm, saying, “Give me your wallet.”
The man did not hesitate to do as he was told, nor did he protest when Jeffrey took a small spiral notebook out of his pocket and recorded the information.
“Here,” Jeffrey said, throwing the wallet so hard at the man that it popped off his chest before he could catch it. “I’ve got your name now, and your address. You ever come back in this store again, or even think about hanging around that day care, my friend in there will beat the shit out of you.” Jeffrey waited a beat. “You understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, his eyes on the ground.
“What’s this Web site?” he asked.
The man kept staring at the ground. Jeffrey started to take a step toward him, but the man backed up, holding up his hands.
“It’s a girl-lovers newsgroup,” he said. “It moves around sometimes. You gotta search for it.”
Jeffrey wrote down the phrase, though he was familiar with it from the class.
The man took another drag on his cigarette, holding the smoke in for a second. He finally let it go, asking, “That all?”
“That kid,” Jeffrey began, trying to keep his composure. “You ever hurt that kid…”
The man said, “I’ve never even been with one, okay? I just like looking.” He kicked at a rock with his shoe. “They’re just so sweet, you know? I mean, how could you hurt something that was so sweet?”
Without thinking, Jeffrey slammed his fist into the man’s mouth. A tooth went flying, followed by a stream of blood. The man dropped to the ground again, prepared to take a beating.
Jeffrey walked back to the store, a sickening feeling washing over him.