'I'm on a leave of absence, Sheriff.'
'Okay. Not quite the way they put it, but close enough. Explains the lack of a warrant or any other paperwork. You're here, they were careful to point out-a number of times-in no official capacity.'
Baxter smiled.
'So,' I said.
'So?'
'So it begins to look personal.' He took a long sip of his bourbon before responding. 'It is, but not the way you think. Back in town I definitely got the feeling that you weren't eager to help.'
'I had no information for you.'
'Come on, Sheriff. You were just shining me on, didn't even want to talk to me.'
'In which case, you acted in a manner that assured I would.'
'Yeah, well. I've been doing this a long time. Whatever works.'
'What do you have against Eldon Brown?'
Baxter shook his head. 'Not him. My concern is Ron Nabors, the detective who nailed him for it and wouldn't hear otherwise. Still won't, for that matter.'
'You have reason to believe this Nabors was involved?'
'Laziness and habit, more like.'
'But you're looking to what? Take him down?'
'Not going to happen. And not that I'd want to. But your friend had nothing to do with the murder, and Big Ron's gotten away with too much for too long. Hell, we all have.'
I was not only a psychologist of sorts, I was a cop who had seen some of the worst mankind had to offer and an ex-con who had been privy to society's best, gnarled efforts at greatheartedness and manipulation. Altruism gets handed to me, I'm automatically peeling back the label, looking to see what's underneath. But I didn't say anything.
Baxter held the bottle up and, when I shook my head, poured what remained into his cup.
'I just want this set right, Sheriff. Came here hoping I might persuade Eldon Brown to go back with me, turn himself in. Nothing more to it. This point, I'm not expecting a lot more from life. Small wins. Small rewards. And most of those for someone else.'
CHAPTER NINE
'A man is slumped against a tree trunk in the jungle,' Cy, my old mentor, said that one time we met, 'or the side of an overpass, or a building smack in the heart of ritzy downtown-and he's dying. What he's thinking is, I'll never be able to tell Gladys how much I loved her, now I won't even get to try. What do you say?'
'I'm there?'
'For the benefit of the exercise, you are.'
'I'm not your student anymore, Cy.'
'Habit. So tell me: What do you, as a trained professional, say?'
'I say… ' I began, and foundered.
'Exactly. You don't say anything. You listen.' Cy got up to leave. 'And that's the most important thing I can ever tell you. A small, simple thing-like most great secrets. You just listen.'
Strange how, as we age, our lives turn to metaphor. Memories flood in often and with little provocation, to the point that everything starts to remind us of something else. We, our actions, our lives, become representational. We imagine that the world is deeper, richer; in fact, it is simply more abstract. We tell ourselves that now we pay attention only to what's important. But sadly, what's important turns out to be keeping our routine.
Much like the town back there behind us.
Billy, it turned out, was going to be okay. He'd thrown a major clot, but it lodged in a leg vein and they managed to excise it surgically before it hit lungs or heart. Lonnie's description of the procedure when I spoke to him on the phone just before we left made it sound a lot like pulling a worm out of its skin. Except for all the fancy tools, equipment, and degrees, of course.
And now Jed Baxter and I were hiking up-country through the heaviest growth, four or five hollows and a long hill or two away from Isaiah's colony. Morning sunlight fell. at a slant through the trees, struck the ground, and slid away into undergrowth without much purchase. Bird calls everywhere, growing silent as we approached, starting up again behind us. The barky, lisping chatter of squirrels.
The colony was looking good. The townspeople did a great job rebuilding, and the kids had done an equally great follow-up. Kids-I still thought of them as that, though none of them were, and most hadn't been for some time. The old sign-HIER IST KEIN WARUM-was back up, over the common hall now. They'd left the scorched edges and glued the ragged crack running lengthwise down its middle. At the far end of the compound, they'd built a playground worthy of the swankest inner-city park: animal-shaped swings, treehouse, wooden jungle gym, tunnels made from crates, pint-size barn and corral. One of the colony's newer members had been a woodworker, custom stairways, door casings, and the like for a builder back in San Francisco. The swing in the shape of a horse bore an elaborate swirl of hand-carved mane; delicate whorls ran into its ears.
The group was having its morning meal outside at one of the tables. Moira spotted us first, lifting a hand high in what served as both alert and greeting. The others turned, Isaiah came to meet us just inside the clearing, and nothing would do, of course, but that we eat with them. Fresh-baked bread, elderberry preserves, a kind of farmer's cheese made (Moira signed, with one of the children interpreting) by curdling milk with lemon juice.
I'd told Baxter what to expect, but you could tell it was a reach for him, taking all this in, accepting it for what it was. After we'd finished eating, he and Eldon stood nearby playing horseshoes (horseshoes! how long had it been since I'd seen horseshoes?) and talking. We had helped clear the table and attempted to help more, but Moira and the others held up hands and pushed us away in pantomime, mugging in mock terror as though we were an invading army.
Isaiah and I sat beneath a pecan tree at a table splattered with dried bird shit. Isaiah wiped what he could of it away with his hand, then bent down to wipe his hand on grass. He'd come a long way for a city boy.
'It's his brother's diary, from the last days,' Isaiah said of the package I'd brought him. 'The only other person, besides me, that Merle was ever close to. Thomas was dying from cancer, this weird kind that doesn't metastasize but recurs. First time, they pulled a tumor out of his stomach that weighed eleven pounds. Called it Gertrude-and Merle sent a birth announcement instead of a get-well card. Everything fine, then a little over a year later it was back, bigger this time, with more organ involvement. With the fourth one, Thomas refused further surgery.'
Isaiah leaned back against the tree.
'Remember when I told you about my grandmother, how she was the start of all this? How I was with her there at the end? Well, it wasn't like that with Thomas and Merle. Merle wasn't there with him, he was three states away, trying to save a marriage that had been too far gone for far too long. He was at work when the call came. A patient was going bad, a transplant that came in an hour or so before. They insisted the call was urgent, so Merle took it. It was the hospice telling him that Thomas had died that morning. Merle thanked them for letting him know and went back to work just as a code was called on the transplant patient. He was in charge that day, and ran it.'
You just listen.
'Merle was never one to show emotion much. Part of that was what he did, part of it simply who he was. But Thomas's death hit him hard. He'd call some nights and we'd exchange three or four sentences the whole time, he'd just be there on the phone, six, eight hundred miles away.'
I had to ask; old habits die hard. 'How long ago was this?'
'Little over a year.'
'So he was still depressed?'
'Why do you ask?'
I hesitated. 'To all appearances he was coming here to give you the diary.'
