“It didn’t for Jeffrey.”
“That is not lost on me,” he says, trying for the tricky B7 chord.
“I leave tomorrow,” Sigrid says.
“I know.”
“I’m going to take a shower. How about you bring that guitar into the bathroom and sing your song to me?”
“You won’t regret it,” says Irv.
Faith
The next morning, at the station, Sigrid makes her rounds and shakes the hands of various officers by way of good-bye as Melinda leads them to the jail cell in the back, which smells like peanuts on account of the pad thai. Melinda explains that Sigrid’s mentorship has meant a lot to her and has really changed her thinking about investigation, her own career path, women in the police, and how best not to lose people in bathrooms. Melinda says she wants to be like Sigrid when she gets “old” and she hopes they can stay in touch. Sigrid makes her rounds and shakes the hands of various officers.
In the back, Marcus is sitting on his mattress with his feet up and arms crossed and does not stand when the cell door is opened.
“You are free to go. According to the sheriff you are not provably guilty and should go away. And never return.”
Marcus looks to Sigrid, who explains that they do indeed have tickets for Norway and should now go. And they need to get moving because they have to take a bus and then three planes.
“You’re carrying the guitar,” she says to him.
“Everything here is the same as it was when I was by the lake. Nothing’s changed. If they release me, now that they have me, there will be riots.”
“The sheriff and Mr. Green have a plan to solve all of that.”
“What kind of a plan?”
“A good one.”
“How do you know?”
“The sheriff stopped talking for a while and was really listening.”
Irv waits in the parking lot for Reverend Fred Green. They both decided, this morning, that it would be best if they rode in Fred’s car for a change. A sensible light blue Toyota Camry pulls up beside Irv, who is dressed in his sheriff’s outfit but without his sidearm. It may be a violation of a rule not to carry it while on duty. Luckily he doesn’t care.
Irv pops open the door and settles into the passenger seat. The interior smells like Newports and aftershave.
“Is this a 2005?” Irv asks.
“No, 2004,” Fred says. “Same front end.”
“Toy-o-ta,” Irv says to the passing trees outside as they head toward the church.
They drive without the static of the police radio or the pleasure of the stereo. At a long light Irv chases the quiet away by pointing to a CD sticking its silver tongue out of the slot.
“What are you feeding that thing?”
“Bill Withers.”
“Did you know,” Irv says, “that ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ is only a touch over two minutes long? That’s half the length of your average pop song.”
“Goes to show what a man can do in two minutes if he does it right,” says Fred Green.
“I was just making small talk, Fred.”
“You should be thinking about what you’re going to say.”
“It’ll come to me.”
“I’m not playing, Sheriff.”
“I know perfectly well what I’m going to say, Reverend. I just don’t know how I’m going to say it. It’ll come to me. Always does.”
Sunday Services at First Baptist are scheduled for nine-thirty in the morning with a Bible study class at eleven. Normally these early-morning services draw around fifty people unless there is an occasion. Today, with a few calls from Fred to key people in the community, there are more than triple that number.
Jeffrey Simmons and Lydia Jones were both baptized here and both laid to rest here too; beside each other in the cemetery three and a half miles to the northeast. Lydia’s parents had bought plots for themselves years ago to save money. Their daughter and grandson used them instead.
Fred and Irv crunch into the reverend’s personal parking space by the door. They are forty minutes early but the parking lot is already a third full. Irv sits in the car and looks out at the entirely black congregation making their way inside past a half-dozen men, smartly dressed and smoking like high-schoolers by the trash can. Others mill around outside talking. There is a thick pane of glass between Irv and what they are saying to each other.
“A lot of kids,” Irv says, more to himself than the reverend.
“It’s a church, Sheriff.”
“Yeah, I know—I just had this picture in my head of a room full of adults with stern faces ready for a serious discussion about politics or something.”
“Maybe the pictures in your head need to be adjusted.”
Irv whistles. “Wow. Did you and my ex-wife attend the same course or something? I mean . . . damn, Fred.”
“All those kids out there, Irv. You’re their sheriff. Go meet them.”
Irv looks at them running around, skidding about on the tiny pebbles of the parking lot, their shirttails coming out and their mothers trying to tuck them back in while they’re on the move.
“They’re all so short,” Irv says.
Fred Green leads Irv inside, and together they sit in the pastor’s office as the parishioners file in and silence themselves. The reverend leads the service as Irving sits to the side in the chancel like a choirboy. While Irv waits for his turn to speak it occurs to him—the proverbial pebble dropping—that perhaps he should have prepared what he was going to say and maybe Fred was right.
A lot of people do that, he’s read. Prepared people. People who go home afterward feeling good about themselves for what they’d said rather than what they might have said, which they think about to avoid the actual memory of what they did say. As Fred speaks to the congregation,
