That was all I could get from Dixie. I gave her six twenty-dollar bills. I’d charge it to Nancy Root. Dixie folded the bills, slipped them into her shirt pocket and said, “Thanks,” and then, to Darrell, “I meant it about coming back here. Bring your mother.”
“She won’t be trusting you. She’ll say you must want something and she got nothing to give.”
“Bring her,” said Dixie. “I’ll grill cheese sandwiches and we’ll surf for all kinds of good stuff.”
Ames, Darrell and I left and went to the car.
“You wondering what I’m wondering?” I asked Ames.
“Yes.”
“Why did he leave a tenured job at a university for an untenured one at a community college?”
“Maybe pushed out,” he said.
“Or maybe he was running away,” I said.
“People do it,” he said. “Something happens. They run.”
He meant me.
“Want to go to Welles’s house?” Ames said.
“What’d he do?” asked Darrell from the backseat.
“Something he seems to feel very sorry about,” I said. “We’ll get him away from the house, at the talk.”
Ames nodded.
I drove back to the DQ five minutes away, and got Darrell and myself medium chocolate cherry Blizzards and a Dilly Bar for Ames. We sat at one of the metal tables in front of the DQ the sky rumbling and dark but the rain not yet falling.
“Never had one of these,” Darrell said, working on his Blizzard. “It’s good.”
I’m not sure what I was going to say. My eyes were following the cars flowing by; my thoughts were following not much of anything.
A big truck with RED RIVER CITRUS written on its side over the picture of an orange rumbled by and jerked over a bump.
A blob of my Blizzard fell in my lap. The truck was gone. Another blob fell but I moved my legs in time. I looked at the cup in my hand. It had a small round hole on one side and another one on the other side.
“I think someone just shot at me,” I said.
“Shit,” said Darrell. “You’re dripping.”
“Yes,” I said.
Ames was up, right hand under his slicker as he looked up and down the street. There were three people in the DQ line. No one was walking down the street.
“You all right?” he asked, not looking at me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Someone really shot at you?” asked Darrell.
I put the Blizzard down. The dripping had slowed. The holes were now above the drink line.
“Welles,” Ames said.
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t move.
“Sure you’re all right?” Ames repeated.
I wasn’t all right. I was numb. It didn’t seem real. Reality is noise, a car skidding toward me, a punch or a doctor telling someone he has a year to live. This had been noiseless.
“You callin’ the cops?” Darrell asked.
“No. Let’s go,” I said.
“Where?” asked Darrell, excited.
“To see some very old people,” I said.
“Shit, that’s no fun.”
“One of them has a pet alligator.”
“One of those baby things?” asked Darrell.
“A big one,” said Ames.
“Name’s Jerry Lee,” I said.
“Could have hit the boy,” Ames said in a husky whisper, following me to the car.
“Yes.”
Ames went silent as we got in and closed the doors. I looked at him. His face was rigid, the muscles of his jaw twitching slightly.
“Yes,” I said.
“I get my barrels on him, I’m pulling,” he said.
“Maybe we can come up with an alternative,” I said.
Ames just shook his head once. It was a definite no. Ames rode at my side with the shotgun in his lap and his eyes scanning the faces of the people in every car that passed us.
At the stoplight at Hillview we pulled up next to a big, yellow Lincoln with a tiny bespectacled woman driver with curly white hair. She turned her head toward us and found herself looking into the eyes of Ames McKinney. She turned her eyes forward again, watching the traffic light.
When we got to the Seaside, Ames motioned for us to stay in the car. He got out, shotgun under his slicker, and looked around before motioning us to get out.
“Where’s the gator?” asked Darrell, looking around.
“Behind the building,” I said.
“We gonna look at it?”
“Maybe,” I said, leading the way through the glass doors of the Seaside, which slid open automatically.
The office doors to our right were closed for the weekend. We made our way to the nursing station, where a tiny black woman in a blue nursing smock was dispensing medicine to an ancient old man with a large freckled bald head. The man took some pills on his tongue, accepted a small plastic cup of water from the nurse and washed down the medicine with a quick gulp.
The man looked at the three of us, blinked and said, “Is there a carnival in town?”
“John,” the little nurse admonished, taking back the plastic cup.
“Well, I mean it,” John said. “Look at them. I worked a carnival summers when I was a kid. We had a couple of Negro midgets.”
“I ain’t no midget,” said Darrell.
“You ain’t?” John said, looking astonished. “You fooled me. This other fella, though,” he went on, pointing a bony arthritic finger at Ames, “definitely runs a shooting gallery.”
“John,” the nurse warned wearily.
“He’s carrying a gun right under that yellow raincoat,” John said.
“John likes his little jokes,” said the nurse, who looked beyond tired.
“I like a good bowel movement too from time to time,” he said. “I don’t ask much.”
With that John turned his back and shuffled down the hall.
“Can I help you?” the nurse said, turning to us. She was black, thin, in her mid-forties and obviously tired.
I read the name tag on her uniform. It said EMMIE.
“You’re the night nurse,” I said.
“Most nights,” she said.
“You were here the night Dorothy Cgnozic reported that someone had been murdered.”
“I was,” she said. “My first night on the job, people checking out, woman tells me she saw a murder. Crazy night. Who are you?”
“Friends of Dorothy’s,” I said.
“Sometime I’d like to hear the story of how that friendship began, but not today. I’m on my second straight shift. Can you believe two nurses came down with some kind of flu? I’ve been on almost fourteen hours.”
“Sorry,” I said.
She shrugged and said, “Time and a half. I’m not complaining, not with two-year-old twins to raise, just tired.”
