Go ahead, Ellie.”
Dwight sat as he was directed and gave his attention to the girl, who carefully pointed to Florida and explained how she and her parents and her two sisters had driven all the way down to Disney World from Shaysville over the Christmas holidays. She traced the route with her pointer and named each state in turn, then held up some of the souvenirs she had bought with her allowance.
“Thank you, Ellie,” said the teacher. “Cal? You want to be next?”
The boy nodded shyly and walked over to Dwight, took him by the hand, and led him to the front of the room.
“My name is Calvin Shay Bryant and this is my father.
His name is Major Dwight Avery Bryant. He’s the chief deputy for the sheriff of Colleton County down in North Carolina. Show ’em your badge, Dad.”
Before Dwight could move, Cal flipped back the left side of his jacket to show the badge on his belt.
“Show ’em your gun, Dad.” He pulled back the right side of Dwight’s jacket to reveal the gun holstered there.
“Show ’em your handcuffs, Dad.” He gave Dwight a half-turn and flipped up his jacket. “That’s what he uses when he arrests somebody.”
Another half-turn and “Show ’em your Kubaton, Dad.”
Dwight kept his face perfectly straight as his son twirled him around, pointing out each piece of equipment and explaining what it was for. When Cal finished, he turned to his teacher. “My name is Calvin Shay Bryant and this is my show-and-tell.” His brown eyes shone as he looked up at Dwight.
“Thanks, Dad,” he said and returned to his seat.
Miss Jackson said, “Jeremy, you’re up next, so be thinking what you want to say.”
She held open the door for Dwight and followed him out into the hall. “What a nice surprise it was when Cal told me this morning that you were coming today, Major Bryant. I know this meant a lot to him.”
Puzzled, Dwight said, “He didn’t mention me till this morning?”
“Oh, he talks about you all the time, Major, but not that you were going to be his show-and-tell.” She smiled and easy laugh lines crinkled around her hazel eyes. “This is a first for us. We never had a parent as our topic before.”
“Any chance I could speak to him a minute?” Dwight asked.
“Sure. I’ll send him right out and if you’d like to have lunch with him, we go to the cafeteria at eleven-forty- five.”
At eight, Cal was still young enough to lack self-consciousness about showing affection, and Dwight felt a primal surge of love as his son launched himself straight up into his arms for an off-the-floor hug.
With his arms laced around Dwight’s neck, he leaned back and grinned happily. “That was so cool, Dad! Did you see Jeremy’s eyes when he saw your gun? All he has is that same dumb snake he brought for show-and-tell last year.”
Dwight set him back on the floor and squatted down beside him. Every time he saw Cal, the boy seemed to have grown another inch and to have matured more in his speech and comprehension. He decided not to ask about the discrepancy between what Cal had said last night and what Miss Jackson had just told him, but damned if he wasn’t going to ask Jonna to let him have Cal for the whole summer. If she balked this year, he was ready to take her back to court and get the custody agreement amended. No way was he going to let himself be sidelined from his son’s childhood.
“You’re not going back right now, are you?” Cal asked.
“Miss Jackson said I could have lunch with you,”
Dwight said reassuringly. “So you’d better get in there and see if that snake’s learned any new tricks since last year.”
Cal giggled. “Snakes don’t do tricks,” he said, but he gave Dwight another hug and scampered back to his classroom.
To kill the next hour, Dwight drove over to the local police station. The Shaysville chief was an old Army buddy from D.C. and Dwight liked to touch base whenever he was in town.
“Hey, bo! Long time, no see,” said Paul Radcliff when Dwight appeared in the doorway of his office. Like Dwight, he was dressed in casual civvies. He was almost as tall as Dwight, but his hair was completely white and his belly strained against his gray wool shirt.
“How’s it going?” Dwight said.
“Slow as molasses. The only arrests we’ve made all week were two D-and-Ds and a woman who got in a fight with her sister over a lottery ticket. How ’bout you?
Jimmy says you gave Cal a new stepmother for Christmas.”
Radcliff’s youngest was on the same Pop Warner team as Cal.
“A judge was what I heard. That right?”
Dwight admitted that it was.
“Got a picture?”
He obligingly pulled out a snapshot Deborah’s niece had taken of them at the wedding.
“Another looker,” Paul said with an admiring shake of his head. “And this one even sounds smart. I don’t know
