“Dad told me about it.”
“I know your dad. He’s not a bad-looking old man.”
“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear it.”
“Judence and Dinkins. They’re real pieces of work, those two, but they’ve been good for news, and when Judence comes to make his speech, that’ll be a hot news day for this little town.”
“Wouldn’t it be a better idea to get some other preacher for the rebuttal? Someone screwed down a little tighter.”
“Dinkins is the celebrity, kid,” she said. “That’s who we’ll go with. It’ll spike paper sales and show we aren’t godless heathens. Except for you.”
“All right,” I said. “Let him go at it.”
“I was going to. Oh, that column on the missing girl. Not bad.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“A little fluffy, so I figure you’re holding the good stuff back for a later column, or for a shot at a bigger article somewhere else.”
I didn’t say anything to contradict her remark. She might be an asshole, but she was damn savvy.
“Well, keep your powder dry,” she said.
Mrs. Timpson got off my desk and went over to Oswald’s desk, most likely to discuss his writing of the sports, or perhaps to offer her insights into the running and football-tossing abilities of the colored.
Belinda came over with a handful of mail. I knew some of it would be letters about my column. There might even be something nice in one of them. Mixed in with the mail was a FedEx envelope. There wasn’t any address on it. Not the newspaper’s address, not the sender’s. It just had my name written on it.
I said, “How’d you get this?”
“It was in front of the door when they opened up this morning.”
“It didn’t really come from FedEx,” I said, and showed her the envelope.
“I guess it’s a hand-delivered fan letter,” she said.
“It didn’t quite make it to my hand, though, or anyone else’s. So I figure, since it’s a drop-off, it’s not all that positive.”
“Maybe they were just shy.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I could use a fan letter.”
She patted the letters and the package she had put on my desk. “All this for you, and me I’m lucky if I get anything other than a water bill. Of course, that might be because I’m not a reporter.”
“You’ll get your shot.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Belinda turned to go.
“Belinda?”
She stopped and looked back at me. “Maybe,” I said, “someday soon, we could go get a cup of coffee after work. If we’re feeling rowdy, a Diet Coke?”
She gave me a slow, braces-shiny smile. “I’ll think it over,” she said.
“Just a little conversation. Nothing serious.”
“I guess we can swing that.”
“Soon then?”
She smiled at me again. I was beginning to really like that smile, grillwork and all. “I’d love that,” she said.
“Great. Then we’ll call it a future plan.”
“Certainly,” she said.
When she was back to her place, I felt a little self-satisfied. That was good, Cason, old boy, I thought. You’re moving on. Or at least you’re trying.
I started in on the mail by opening the FedEx package. There was a DVD inside, enclosed in a plastic case. There was also a note written on cardboard with a black marker. It read: “YOU WILL WANT TO SEE THIS.”
I studied the package again, but didn’t come up with any new results. Anyone could get a FedEx envelope, just had to drive by one of the boxes where they kept the supplies. I read the note again, but it didn’t say anything different.
I sat and tried to work for a while, but the DVD was bothering me, lying there on my desk unseen, calling to me like a siren. My guess was it was some Christian propaganda sent to me because of my column on Noah’s ark or stem cell research. I finally picked it up and left.
12
I had recently bought myself a police scanner for the car and had rented a little apartment not far from where Mom and Dad lived.
I was on the bottom floor of a duplex. Nothing cute, nothing fancy. Just cheap rent. I pushed against the moisture-swollen door and made my way inside. It smelled as if a rat had died in the walls; it had held that smell for the entire week I had lived there. In the morning it was at its weakest, but as the day wore on and it became hot, Mr. Dead Rat, or so I assumed it was, heated up in the walls and gave off an odor that could grab you by the collar and toss you out the door. I remembered a story I had read by Mark Twain about a cheese that had stunk so bad that he gave it military promotions. It was the same with my dead rat. He was a private in the morning, but by the afternoon I had promoted him to general. It was almost that strong now, but not quite. He was at about a captain’s level.
I put the DVD in the player and turned on my little TV and sat down in a comfortable chair with only a bit of the stuffing leaking out. At first I thought the DVD was blank, but suddenly it sputtered to life. And then my heart was in my mouth. There were two people in it. Nude. One of them, the woman, was immediately recognizable to me. It was Caroline Allison. On a bed. She looked like a movie star. A porn star. Her long brown legs moved sensuously over the man’s back, her heels rubbing his buttocks. The man’s face was turned away from me. He lifted up, supported himself above her on his hands so that he could thrust, and I could see the side of his face then, and that’s all I needed to see.
I stood up from my chair without meaning to. The dead rat smell filled my nostrils. I felt dizzy. My stomach clenched like a fist. I walked around my chair, glanced at the television, watched as the man gently shifted and guided the woman into another position.
I could see more than the side of his face now. A lot more than I wanted to see. And there was no mistake.
I felt as if I couldn’t swallow. As if I couldn’t breathe.
The man making love to Caroline Allison was my brother, Jimmy.
I started to turn off the DVD, but couldn’t. I walked around my chair and watched the TV with glances. When the DVD finished and went black, I stood there with my hands on the back of my chair, leaning forward, looking at the dark screen, as if waiting for some sort of revelation.
I went around and sat in my chair for a while. Finally I had enough strength to get up and turn off the set, eject the DVD. I robotically put the DVD back in its container, took it and slid it between two books in my bookcase,
I took the FedEx package and put it in the trash. I took the note and read it again and put it between the two books with the DVD.
I got my cell phone out of my pocket and called Jimmy’s cell. He didn’t answer. He would most likely be in class, or having office hours. I took a deep breath and went downstairs and got in my car and drove around town, and finally out to the spot where the town almost ended, headed to where the old Siegel house sat and parked down the hill from it. The hill was specked with gangly pines and all around it the grass was the color of sandpaper, but in front of the house, and on the right and left sides, was a thick carpet of crawling kudzu that wound its way up in twists and twirls and eventually became a huge emerald wad at the top. The wad would be the Siegel house,
