I paid the May rent on the West Neely Street apartment even though I needed to start watching my dollars and had no concrete reason to do so. All I had was an unformed but strong feeling that I should keep a base of operations in Dallas.
Two days before the Kentucky Derby ran, I drove to Greenville Avenue, fully intending to put down five hundred dollars on Chateaugay to place. That, I reasoned, would be less memorable than betting on the nag to win. I parked four blocks down from Faith Financial and locked my car, a necessary precaution in that part of town even at eleven in the morning. I walked briskly at first, but then—once more for no concrete reason—my steps began to lag.
Half a block from the betting parlor masquerading as a streetfront loan operation, I came to a full stop. Once again I could see the bookie—sans eyeshade this forenoon—leaning in the doorway of his establishment and smoking a cigarette. Standing there in a strong flood of sunlight, bracketed by the sharp shadows of the doorway, he looked like a figure in an Edward Hopper painting. There was no chance he saw me that day, because he was staring at a car parked across the street. It was a cream-colored Lincoln with a green license plate. Above the numbers were the wordsSUNSHINE STATE. Which did not mean it was a harmonic. Whichcertainlydidn’t mean it belonged to Eduardo Gutierrez of Tampa, the bookie who used to smile and sayHere comes my Yanqui from Yankeeland.The one who had almost certainly had my beachfront house burned down.
All the same, I turned and walked back to my car with the five hundred I’d intended to bet still in my pocket.
Hunch-think.
CHAPTER 24
1
Given history’s penchant for repeating itself, at least around me, you won’t be surprised to find out that Mike Coslaw’s plan for paying Sadie’s bills was a return engagement of theJodie Jamboree.He said he thought he could get the original participants to reprise their roles, as long as we scheduled it for midsummer, and he was as good as his word—almost all of them came on board. Ellie even agreed to encore her sturdy performances of “Camptown Races” and “Clinch Mountain Breakdown” on the banjo, although she claimed her fingers were still sore from the previous go-round. We picked the twelfth and thirteenth of July, but for awhile the issue was in some doubt.
The first obstacle to be surmounted was Sadie herself, who was horrified at the idea. She called it “taking charity.”
“That sounds like something you might have learned at your mother’s knee,” I said.
She glared at me for a moment, then looked down and began stroking her hair against the bad side of her face. “What if it was? Does that make it wrong?”
“Jeez, let me think. You’re talking about a life-lesson from the woman whose biggest concern after finding out her daughter had been mutilated and almost killed was her church affiliation.”
“It’s demeaning,” she said in a low voice. “Throwing yourself on the mercy of the town is demeaning.”
“You didn’t feel that way when it was Bobbi Jill.”
“You’re hounding me, Jake. Please don’t do that.”
I sat down beside her and took her hand. She pulled it away. I took it again. This time she let me hold it.
“I know this isn’t easy for you, honey. But there’s a time to take as well as a time to give. I don’t know if that one’s in the Book of Ecclesiastes, but it’s true, just the same. Your health insurance is a joke. Dr. Ellerton’s giving us a break on his fee—”
“I never asked—”
“Hush, Sadie. Please. It’s called pro bono work and he wants to do it. But there are other surgeons involved here. The bills for your surgeries are going to be enormous, and my resources will only stretch so far.”
“I almost wish he’d killed me,” she whispered.
“Don’t you ever say that.” She shrank from the anger in my voice, and the tears started. She could only cry from one eye now. “Hon, people want to do this for you. Let them. I know your mother lives in your head—almost everyone’s mother does, I guess—but you can’t let her have her way on this one.”
“Those doctors can’t fix it, anyway. It’ll never be the way it was. Ellerton told me so.”
“They can fix a lot of it.” Which sounded marginally better thanthey can fix some of it.
She sighed. “You’re braver than I am, Jake.”
“You’re plenty brave. Will you do this?”
“The Sadie Dunhill Charity Show. My mother would shit a brick if she found out.”
“All the more reason, I’d say. We’ll send her some stills.”
That made her smile, but only for a moment. She lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled slightly, then began to smooth the hair against the side of her face again. “Would I have to be there? Let them see what their dollars are buying? Sort of like an American Berkshire pig on the auction block?”
“Of course not. Although I doubt if anyone would faint. Most folks around here have seen worse.” As members of the faculty ina farming and ranching area, we had seen worse ourselves—Britta Carlson, for instance, who had been badly burned in a housefire, or Duffy Hendrickson, who had a left hand that looked like a hoof after a chainfall holding a truck motor slipped in his father’s garage.
“I’m not ready for that kind of inspection. I don’t think I ever will be.”
