Catfish snorted. “They got an earful.”
“Oh, here’s a good part: ‘If you can block off a place, call it a Reservation, and license licentiousness, why don’t you reserve a few blocks where a man can commit murder and go unpunished?’”
Catfish shook his head. “This is a town of only twenty-seven thousand folks, but we’ve got about thirty-five churches, almost fifty saloons, and over sixty sporting houses. It’s the only place in the state where City Hall blesses all of ’em. You lob a firebrand evangelist into that tinder, and sparks’ll fly. Maybe even a blazing fire.”
“A conflagration in Satan’s Stronghold.”
A fine day for Satan.
There was a flash of movement in the mirror as a Western Union messenger boy on a bicycle rattled over the threshold. The colonel’s head popped up. The boy dropped his bicycle on its side and rushed up to Catfish.
“Mr. Catfish, telegram for you.” The boy was breathless. “Miss Peach said you were here.”
“Thanks, Billy.” He tipped him, and the boy left.
Catfish popped his pince-nez spectacles back onto his nose and unfolded the telegram: CATFISH. NEED HELP. SON CICERO DISAPPEARED. SENDING ROOMMATE YOUR OFFICE. HENRY SWEET.
It had been such a fine day.
Chapter 3
Jasper was downright scaryfied. He’d finally had to tell Professor Charlton that Cicero hadn’t come back, but he hadn’t said any more than that. He told the professor he didn’t know where Cicero was at that very minute, and that was true. But even that stirred up a hornet’s nest. Before long, a deputy sheriff showed up at the dorm, but Jasper didn’t tell him much neither.
He was worried about Cicero mostly, but he was scared for his own self too. If anybody found out he’d went to a whorehouse to drink beer, they’d boot him straight out of Baylor before he could spit. His family would be shamed. Them folks at his church back home in Fayette County had put offerings in the plate just so he could go off to college. His parents didn’t ask them to. Folks just did it on their own because it was the neighborly thing to do, like helping with a barn raising. Momma and Daddy found out about it that Sunday morning at the same time he did, when the preacher announced it from the pulpit. Momma cried. Money was hard to come by for sharecroppers, especially those days.
Momma worried about him all the time, even when he was back home. She said “Watch for snakes” when he took off for the woods more times than Papa said grace. When he left home for college, his first time being away from home, they both give him a talking-to about city things to be wary of. Beer was one. And Momma said, “Don’t let some girl talk you into doing something you shouldn’t be doing.” Reckon he’d figured out now what she was talking about. If she heard about all this trouble he’d gotten into in the city, she’d be disappointed in him. Daddy too. In fact, he’d be awful sore.
Once the deputy left, Jasper had breathed easier, but then Professor Charlton told him they had to go downtown to some lawyer office. He just knew they was on to him. He ain’t never been in no lawyer office. In fact, he didn’t recollect ever even laying eyes on a lawyer before. As far as he knowed, there wasn’t none in Flatonia, but they probably had two or three over in the county seat. He wondered if they wore wigs like that lawyer Buzfuz in the book he’d read in English class. He hoped they wouldn’t talk as much as the folks in that book.
The office was next door to the Old Corner Drug. A gold-painted sign on the front door said Calloway & Calloway, Attorneys. Professor Charlton said they was father and son. He followed the professor into a front room, where a nice lady was working on one of them letter-typing machines he’d seen at Baylor. It rattled like rain on a tin chicken shed. She took them into a bigger room that was longer than it was wide, with a high ceiling and fans dangling from long shafts. They was humming and going round and round, but it was still awful warm in there. Jasper felt like he had before his first class at Baylor, waiting for the professor in a classroom full of boys and girls he didn’t know and was too shy to meet.
The lady asked him and Professor Charlton to have a seat at a long table in the middle of the room. Other tables was around the room, stacked with books and papers and such. Against the left wall, right in the middle of the room, was a big ol’ rolltop desk like the postmaster had back home, with papers sticking out of pigeonholes and a stack of papers with blue wrappers and red ribbons. Heavy-looking books was stacked on the top. Another desk was across the room on the opposite wall. Electric lights was hanging from the ceiling. Maybe someday his family could get an electric light for the house. It would sure help Momma with her mending at night after supper, but for now they couldn’t even afford enough oil for the lamp. They made do with candles.
They waited not more than ten minutes before a man arrived, and then another one not long after. They was both tall. The older one seemed to run things.
