about the mutilation, and don’t say “crucifixion” or “Jewish”.’
By now it was well past noon, and I thought about Danny. We’d planned to meet at the Auction Barn steak-house for their once-a-month skillet lunch special, but my appetite was gone, and I had at least one good reason for not expecting it back any time soon.
THREE
Like a lot of things that had completely and permanently changed my life, it hadn’t seemed like much at the start: the day after Braxton Bragg’s Homecoming – I’d just walked into the Skillet, looking back when I thought I heard somebody call to me and almost bumped into a girl I didn’t recognise under the orange and white GO TIGERS! banner spread across the wall.
‘Hey, you’re number twenty-two, aren’t you?’ she said, holding out her thin warm hand to shake. ‘I’m Kat Dreyfus. I watched you play last night!’ I could see the name Katherine engraved in flowery loops on the gold ID bracelet she was wearing. In her loose-fitting khakis and baggy white cotton sweater, she looked like a little girl lost in her big brother’s hand-me-downs. But there was nothing little-girl about her clear, bottomless sea-green eyes, shining black hair, and lips that looked almost as if she were about to blow me a kiss. ‘It was hard to hear the announcer,’ she said, ‘but it sounded like he was calling you Jay Bonham.’ Her accent was strange, like something from a movie, the sound of far places and unknown worlds.
‘It’s James, but everybody calls me Biscuit,’ I said. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Boston.’
‘Sorry I didn’t see you last night.’
‘You had other things on your mind,’ she said. ‘Come on, sit with us.’
At the table she introduced me to Ronnie Geddes, a pale, thin-faced guy about our age with curly blond hair and very little to say, and Father Beane, a redheaded man in his thirties wearing jeans and a white polo shirt, probably a tennis player, I thought – or maybe in Boston it was squash or something.
‘Father Beane’s our supervisor,’ Kat said. ‘He’s a Jesuit.’
He was cheerful-looking, but I could sense that under the surface he was sure of himself and had a certain kind of controlled toughness, his eyes intelligent and quick. I had the same thought I always had about Roman Catholic priests: how could their job mean more to them than sex? Which probably tells you something about the state of my knowledge at the time.
He reached out to shake, saying, ‘Pleased to meet you, Biscuit. That was some unbelievable running you did last night.’ His hand was soft but strong.
‘Thanks, Father.’
‘Call me Al.’
We talked football and the playoffs for a while until the waitress came with her order pad and a paper bag full of carrot tops and apple trimmings, Saturday being beef stew and apple pie day at the Skillet. She took my order for a Coke, stuck the pencil in her hair and went back behind the counter while Kat eyed the sack.
‘Any scholarship prospects?’ asked Al, sipping from his drink.
‘Yes, sir. A couple of scouts have been down.’
‘Where are you going to college?’ Kat asked.
‘TCU, probably. How about you?’
‘I’m already enrolled, at Wellesley. But I’m taking my first year off for this.’
‘What’s this?’
‘VISTA,’ said Rick, looking at Kat with some expression or other.
She said, ‘It’s to keep poor and black kids in school down here, get people registered to vote, help them find better jobs, stuff like that.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘Zion Hope Church.’
Zion Hope was the little black COGIC church out toward Spoon Bottom on Elam Road, where the pastor, a retired felon whose name I remembered as something like George Washington Hooks, could be heard from at least a quarter of a mile away when the windows were open and he was in the spirit. Visualising white faces scattered through Spoon Bottom like dimes in a dark pool, I said, ‘We’re cooking out tonight – why don’t y’all come over?’
Al shook his head. ‘Too much paperwork, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a meeting at eight.’
‘Thanks a lot, but I think I’ll pass,’ Rick said in an accent from somewhere farther west than Boston. Halfway smiling, he looked me up and down in a way that made it clear he and Kat were not together.
Kat was watching me and thinking, her ocean-coloured eyes seeming to radiate a delicious heat at me.
‘It’s just me and my folks,’ I said. ‘We’re gonna barbecue burgers out at the horse farm.’ The Flying S was really more of a ranch, but it was called a farm because we grew crops on it and because its main purpose was breeding quarter horses.
‘Horse farm!’ Kat said. ‘That’s what the scraps are for, the horses! Hey, c’mon, Al, how about it?’
Al looked at Kat, then me, thinking it over. Finally he nodded to her. ‘Bed check at twelve,’ he said.
My old sunblasted red and used-to-be-white Ford pickup sat at the curb just outside the Skillet, the antenna lopping over a little and the rear fender rusted through in a couple of places. I walked to the passenger side, kicked the back corner of the door with the heel of my boot and opened it for her. Sliding in behind the wheel, I cranked the engine and we rattled up through the gears and out to the Lone Oak road, heading north toward the farm and my family.
Now, turning my collar up against the rain, imagining I could still smell the old Ford’s permanent bouquet of gasoline and exhaust fumes after all these years, I tried without much success to picture Dr Gold as part of a family, or as anybody’s wife. But I knew she had been; the last I’d heard she was married to a guy who owned a local data-services company called QuikCom. After a few seconds his name came to me: Andy Jamison.
The rain actually seemed to be getting colder, and the body looked more bedraggled than ever, causing me to wonder if this was going to create any additional problems at the autopsy.
Again remembering my lunch date with Danny Ridout at the Auction Barn, but still having no appetite, I called him to ask for a rain check.
‘That must be what the learned among us refer to as a “wisecrack”,’ he said.
‘It was a waggery.’
‘Naw, you’re thinkin’ of a whim-wham there.’
I went around checking the name tags of the uniformed cops I didn’t know until I found Hardy, Jason L. and asked him what he’d seen when he got here.
He glanced over at the body with a focused but not self-important expression, organising his recollections. ‘Naturally the first thing I noticed was her, just like she is now,’ he said. ‘I gloved up and checked for a carotid pulse, but it was obvious there wasn’t gonna be one. About a dozen civilians milling around, so I was thinking
