consumed by vines, lying gray and silent in the belly of the green.
I drove around to the old clay road that led behind the houses. It was narrower than I remembered. Perhaps the grass had grown up closer on either side of the road. Maybe it was that old problem about being away for so long you remembered all things as bigger and wider and deeper and greater. Like lost love.
Driving up the road, I bumped into some big holes where it had washed out, tooled to the top of the hill and parked behind the vine-covered house on a gravel rise where the kudzu had been unable to make purchase. But at the back of the house were the vines. They grew along the outside walls of the house, covering some of the back door and all the windows except for a rare wink of glass.
I sat there for a long time and thought about Jimmy and Trixie. I had thought they had the perfect life. I wondered what in the world Jimmy had been thinking. Well, hell, I knew what he had been thinking. But why had he let it get the better of him? It was like me to let it get the better of me. I was the one who did stupid things, but not Jimmy. No wonder he was nervous the night I spoke to him about Caroline. No wonder he wanted to change the subject.
My God, I thought. He couldn’t have had anything to do with her missing. He just couldn’t have. Jimmy wasn’t like that. He didn’t have it in him. But where had the DVD come from? Why had it been sent to me? And by whom? And had Jimmy known he was being filmed?
A ton of questions fell down on top of me, but I didn’t receive so much as an ounce of answers.
I sat up there on the hill with my window rolled down and the hot air not stirring even a little bit. I started the engine and rolled up the window and turned the air conditioner on full blast and sat there for a while longer. Then I put the car in gear and coasted back down the hill and out to the road. I drove slowly by the old railway station below, as if I thought Caroline’s car might still be parked there and the law had overlooked the fact she had just gone out for a walk, was about to show up again, eat her fast-food dinner, put on her shoes and drive away.
I drifted back into town and got a parking pass at the campus police station, drove over to a lot behind the history department. I locked up and walked over to the building that housed the department, turned and looked at the clock tower. I could see the big, ragged gears through the face of the clock; they were silver now, not gold, because the light was different. The dark hands of the clock lay flat against the outside of the glass. I looked at my watch. I was either five minutes fast or the clock was five minutes slow.
Entering the building, I rode the elevator up to the third floor. When I got off the halls were silent except for a janitor pushing a squeaky trash cart. Summer classes aren’t as busy as spring or fall, so there’s not much excitement that time of the year. The janitor squeaked on by.
I had no idea if Jimmy was teaching or in his office. Maybe he had another coed locked in there and he was doing with her what he had done with Caroline. Maybe he was filming it?
There were a couple of hallways and there were offices on either side of the hallways, and I walked along looking at the name plaques beside the office doors, trying to find the one that belonged to Jimmy.
A man with a nose like a pink cucumber, a beard and about four strands of reluctant hair pasted down across the top of his head was sitting in an office with his door open. Behind him, through the window, I could see the university plaza, and beyond that, the parking garage.
I introduced myself and Cucumber Nose told me his name was Thomas Burke. I asked him about Jimmy, and he told me where to find him. I went there. It was an office two doors down from Burke’s place. The door was locked. There was a schedule on the wall by the door, but I was so nervous I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. I might as well have been reading Sanskrit, the way my mind was working.
“Cason,” a voice called.
I turned. It was Jimmy. He had a stack of books under his arm and was walking toward me, smiling. When he saw the expression on my face, he quit smiling, said, “Mom and Dad okay?”
I nodded.
“Trixie?”
I nodded again. “Brother,” I said. “We have to talk.”
Jimmy unlocked his office door and went inside and put his stack of books on his desk, turned and looked at me.
“You look like your dog just committed suicide,” he said.
“Actually, I think my brother just fucked himself.”
He gave me a puzzled look. I couldn’t hold his gaze. I turned and looked out his window and took in a new vantage point on the plaza and the parking garage, the clock. I walked over to the window for a better view. It was an old-style window that cranked open. It was part of the original building, constructed back in the 1930s. Back when it was an all-women’s teacher’s college. I felt like I wanted to crank it open and get a taste of the warm fresh air. Anything to clear my head.
“The clock,” Jimmy said. “All that money for it, and it doesn’t keep good time…What exactly do you want to talk about?”
“There might be a better place to discuss it than here.”
13
Jimmy’s last class for the day was over, so we walked out to my car together. I drove us out of there, on out Highway 7, and then off of it and down a long winding road that had once, many moons ago, been a major highway. The sun was falling into the trees and it looked like a peeled red plum coming apart. A flock of black birds was moving from one tree to the other as my car startled them. They moved so well in tight formation they appeared to be a wind blown cloud of crude oil. Finally they had had enough and broke over the trees and flew into the face of the dying sun, black freckles on a bright red face. Jimmy sat silent, his head turned a little toward me. I could tell he was nervous, and I wanted to relieve him of it, but I hadn’t found a way to say what I needed to say, and a part of me, pissed, wanted to make him squirm. “Jimmy,” I finally said, “what about Caroline Allison?”
“What?”
“I can tell by the expression on your face that you know damn well what I’m talking about.”
“No. No, I don’t. What is wrong with you, Cason?”
I found myself pushing on the gas a little heavy. I let off.
“I got something in the mail today,” I said. “It was curious. It was a DVD.”
“Oh.”
I glanced at Jimmy. His face had fallen and gone white, and in that one moment, he looked sixty, not thirty.
“You know then?” I said.
There was a slight hesitation. “I got one yesterday.”
“And you’ve seen it?”
Jimmy nodded.
I came to a rest stop, and without really thinking about it, pulled in there and parked the car under the shade of some trees, rolled down the windows with the electric switches and killed the engine.
“Can we cut the crap now?” I said.
Jimmy nodded. “Yeah.”
“Why?” I said.
“Why what?”
“Why you and her?”
He sucked in some air and let it out heavily. “You saw her. She was a goddess.”
“That’s it? She was good-looking? You’d throw away everything you’ve accomplished, your marriage, your wife, for someone who was good-looking? It’s not like Trixie is a fishwife. And there’s always someone better- looking somewhere. I mean, for Christ sakes, that’s your reasoning? Trixie is smart as a whip and loyal and everything a woman ought to be.”
“You think?”
“Fuck you, Jimmy. You know she is.”
“Don’t be so sanctimonious. You had some business with a married woman. Not to mention her daughter.
