Since Jesus dropped out of school I had a reading session with him every day for an hour and a half. He’d read to me out loud for forty-five minutes and then we’d talk, or he’d write about what he’d read for another forty-five. If either of us missed a day, we had to make it up on the weekend.
After hearing about books on sails, Jesus sat up straight and made conversation. He was a good boy. At seventeen he was a better man than I.
I WENT TO WORK on Friday. We had no principal since Hiram Newgate’s attempted suicide. He was now bedridden, mostly paralyzed. I checked out the work of my custodians. I had to get on Mrs. Plates, because she didn’t empty the big cans in the main hall of the Language Arts building.
“I’m just a woman, Mr. Rawlins,” she complained. “You cain’t expect me to lift them big heavy things.”
One year before I arrived at Truth, a man came on the campus without any business. Mrs. Plates asked him to leave, and he cursed at her. A fistfight ensued, and the man had to be taken away in an ambulance. Helen Plates was stronger than most of the men who worked for me. But I couldn’t say that to her. She was a woman, and therefore had to be treated more delicately.
“Well,” I said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll get Ace to empty your cans, and then you can do all his toilets.”
“Toilets!”
“Yeah. No heavy liftin’ in toilets.”
“Mr. Rawlins, you know three little cans ain’t worf two floors of toilets.”
“I know,” I said. “But Ace got to come all the way up to the upper campus to unload them things for you.”
Helen sighed heavily. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll empty the cans. But if I hurt my back, the school board gonna have to pay my disability.”
* * *
SATURDAY THE KIDS and I went to the tar pits and the art museum. I found a book on ancient sailboats that Jesus and I read that night. On Sunday we went to the marina, where Jesus pointed out all kinds of boats to Feather and me.
THE CALL CAME a little before nine o’clock Sunday night.
“Mr. Rawlins?” a young woman’s voice asked.
“Who is this?”
“Etheline Teaman.”
“Oh. Hello, Miss Teaman. Thank you for calling.”
“I didn’t understand your note,” she said. But she did. She was insinuating that she didn’t want me to put her business out there at the church.
“You know my friend—Jackson Blue,” I said.
“Um. I don’t think I know anybody with that name.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “You know him. He used to come and see you at Piney’s.”
“What do want from me, Mr. Rawlins?” Her voice had turned cold.
“Before you left Richmond and came down here, you met a man named Ray.”
“What if I did?”
“Did he have gray eyes?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. They were light, I remember that.”
“Did he have a last name?”
“If he did I don’t know it.”
“How about a nickname?”
“Some people used to call him Mr. Slick ’cause he was always so well dressed.”
“Where was he from?”
“I don’t know.” She was getting tired of my questions.
“Did he have a Southern accent?”
“Maybe. But not real deep like country or somethin’ like that.”
“Listen, Etheline,” I said. “I’m tryin’ to find out if this man you knew was my friend. Can you describe him?”
“Hell,” she said. “I could show you a picture if that would get you to leave me alone.”
“A photograph?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. I got it in my trunk, with all the rest’a my letters and stuff.”
“Honey, I sure would like to see that.”
“You said somethin’ in that note you gave to Miss Bristol about money?”
“I’ll give you a hundred dollars just to have a look at that photograph.”
I could have offered twenty; that was a lot of money. But I wanted to pay what the picture was worth to me. I guess it was a little superstition on my part. I felt that if I tried to skimp on the value of her gift, somehow things
