The pine trees grew up on both sides of the road and gave the impression that I was driving in a deep cavern. "He reminded me of me."
Me too.
I adjusted the air vent and tilted the steering wheel. "There's only one difference."
What's that?
"I did something for that boy that Rex never did for me."
Yes ?
In my mind, I studied the little boy. His hat tilted back, mouth stuffed with gum, empty wrappers spilling out his pockets, palms of both hands resting on the handles of his shiny six-shooters, skinned knees, dirt smeared on his right cheek, big, curious eyes. He was all boy. Good-looking too. "I made him smile."
Miss Ella was quiet for a moment. I could see her rocking back and forth in front of the fireplace, nodding, with a blanket spread across her knees and feet. And it was a good smile too.
I turned at the junction toward home, still an hour away, and crested a hill. Some ten miles north of Bessie's, I looked in the rearview mirror and noticed that the Volvo was sitting behind me in the fast lane.
Chapter 3
FREE-FLOATING ON BARNACLED PILINGS DRIVEN INTO the muck on the north side of Julington Creek, Clark's Fish Camp sat cedar-planked, tin-roofed, and cat-crawling. Framed between a cracked concrete boat ramp, a potholed and alignment-altering parking lot, and a cypress swamp teeming with snapper turtles and ten million fiddler crabs, Clark's was a Jacksonville staple that smelled of yesterday's grease and last week's fish scales, and served the hands-down best food south of heaven. Like the Maxwell House plant that brewed farther north along the river, the smell from the kitchen wafted downwind, delighting and drawing noses for miles.
Locals agreed that if there was one eating establishment in Jacksonville to which people were truly addicted, it was Clark's. The menu offered a plethora of items, but most folks didn't get caught up in the fine print. Clark's was best known for its shrimp and catfish, and despite what the menu said, preparation options were fried or fried. Although, if you wanted to hack off the cook or be written off as a Northerner, you could order it otherwise. The default beverage was beer, or if you were nursing, driving, or Baptist, iced tea-either sweet or sweet. Clark's believed that both the food and tea preparations were true to God's intentions.
Three hundred yards through the waves, lily pads, jet Ski wake, and the foam of a Ski Nautique, Mutt climbed out of the water looking little different than the rest of the local dock populace milling around their boats and Jet Skis. Except for the small fanny pack about his waist, he blended rather well with the fifteen other soaking wet and sunburned strangers. He walked down the dock and past the turtle food dispenser that looked a lot like a converted gumball machine stuffed with rabbit pellets.
Clark's had two seating areas-inside and out. The inside of Clark's looked like a museum. Apparently, the owner collected two things: china plates from all over the world and stuffed animals-deer, raccoons, alligators, and lions. They really had quite a collection, and they were proud of it too, because every square inch of wall space was covered with one or the other. It actually served a dual purpose. The wait time at Clark's rarely dipped under an hour, so the decorations kept both parents and children occupied while the minutes ticked by and names on the list above them got crossed off.
The outdoor patio was essentially a wooden deck built a foot or two over the water depending on the tide. At high tide, if a ski boat ignored the "No Wake" zone, its waves would actually ripple up through the deck, splashing the diners' feet. Everyone kept their eyes out for the kids with boats who were waiting for the tables to fill. The wooden tables were faded, dirty, and carved with all manner of promised love. Some initials were carved deeper than others, some had been crossed out completely, and some had one half crossed out with the new love notched in.
With the majority of the crowd dining inside, several outside tables were empty. Mutt shuffled through the maze, found a shaded table in the corner of the outdoor deck, and sat facing west looking down the creek onto Spiraling Oaks, State Road 13, and the river. When needed, Mutt could play sane; he had done it for years. He just couldn't play it for very long.
Mutt folded his hands while his eyes jumped shoulder to shoulder across the tables. Like an inmate released after seven years on death row, his mind soaked up every subtle twitch, faint sound, and glimmer of color. For a man who should have been flat-footing through the woods and thumbing a ride to the nearest train depot, Mutt swam in sensory overload as did Charlie in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
Within thirty seconds, a stout male waiter-covered in flour residue, splattered with grease, and guilty of eating one too many employee dinners-arrived with an enormous red plastic cup brimming with tea and decorated with a quarter wedge of lemon. He set it down, sloshing it across the table. Before the waiter could speak, Mutt grabbed the cup with two hands and throated five gulps, spilling two more down his chest. His slurping noises turned the heads at the next table.
"Hey, buddy," the waiter said, flipping through the night's orders to a clean sheet in his tablet and eyeing Mutt's wet clothes, "water looks warm. You know what you want?"
Mutt sized the man, swallowed loudly, wiped the tea dribble off his chin, and said, "I'd like two orders of fried shrimp, one order of catfish, three orders of grits, some French fries, and"-Mutt pointed at his glass-"some more tea."
"You got it." The waiter folded his tablet, tucked it behind his belt at the small of his back, and walked off. Two tables away, he turned and asked, "You eating alone or waiting on your girlfriend?"
The truth required too much explanation, so Mutt decided to keep it simple and pointed to himself. `Just what you see."
The waiter smiled and patted the tablet at the base of his back. "This is a lot of food. You sure you can eat all this?" Mutt nodded and the guy shrugged. "Okay, get ready. It's coming."
Neither the mosquitoes nor the no-see-ums were out tonight. As long as the breeze kept up, it would stay that way. But first falter of the breeze and the deck would vacate quickly. Mutt sipped his tea and let his eyes absorb the activity. A redheaded female waitress, with a bronze tan, no need for makeup, and sunglasses resting atop her head, was seating two tourists at the table next to him. The woman's short, high-heeled steps, tight lips, high chin, backward shoulders, "ILUV2SHOP" T-shirt accentuating fifteen-thousand-dollar breasts, and tanning-booth bronzed skin told Mutt this was the man's choice of restaurant. Poodles didn't eat here. She looked at the seat, turned up her nose, grabbed two napkins off an adjacent table, wiped off her seat, and then opened another napkin and sat on it-careful not to let her white shorts touch the wood. The waitress returned with two glasses of tea and then disappeared again, responding to a call from the kitchen.
The woman, caked with lipstick, squeezed her lemon carefully and properly-using the tip of her fork and two fingers. She extended her perfectly sculpted silicone lips to the cup, sipped with expectation, closed her lips then her eyes, hiccupped, and sprayed the tea over the edge of the deck. Looking as if she had just sipped sour milk, she unrolled her napkin, grabbed each end between thumb and index finger, and shoe-shined her tongue.
Mutt started people-watching years ago. Being asocial meant he rarely engaged people, but that did not mean he didn't like watching them. This one promised to be a good one. Mutt rested his head on his hand and watched the shoe-shine woman buff and polish her tongue. The female waitress saw the woman's disgust and left her post at the silverware and napkin station where she was rolling one into the other. Mutt watched the soft frayed edges of her cutoff jeans flitter over her lightly freckled legs as she hurried to the table. The twentysomething waitress set a pile of napkins on the table, covering up a deep and delicately carved "Bobby loves Suzie 4-Ever." The waitress, who wore a wide leather belt with the name "Dixie" on the back, said, "What's wrong, honey?"
The woman at the table barked, "Good Gawd! What did you put in this?" Elaborate cursive letters spelling "Missy," stamped out of thin gold and hanging from a sm
all gold necklace, rested in the seam of her breasts. Mutt watched the dog tag jiggle when she pulled against her leash.
Dixie never skipped a beat. She had dealt with this kind before. Maybe even enjoyed it. Mutt slouched further in the seat and almost forgot that people might be looking for him. Dixie picked up the glass, sniffed it, sipped a hefty mouthful, and swished the tea around her cheeks like mouthwash before swallowing. She wiped her lips on the sweatband covering her right wrist, and her stance changed from a tall and slender greyhound to a stout boxer. Dixie closed her eyes, smiled wider, slapped the table, and drew deeper on her Southern drawl. "Tastes good to me, honey." She set the glass in front of the woman, turning her own lipstick stain outward.
Missy was aghast, her jaw and shoulders dropping. She picked up the glass with two fingers and pitched it over the railing. After the splash, she turned to the man on her right. "Rocco!" she screamed. Rocco, wearing the best hair implants money could buy, was reading the menu and probably thinking about the alligator tail appetizer. Her high-pitched bark, though usual, was unwelcome. His pink silk shirt was unbuttoned down to his navel, where a dark carpet of chest hair spilled out and rose up to his neck. A thick gold chain, about the width of a dog collar, hung around his neck, and a diamond-studded Rolex accentuated his wrist. Mutt noticed that their watches matched. He wondered if Rocco had given it to her before or after he hung the rock on her finger that looked like something out of the Jurassic period.
Rocco looked up from the menu, took a deep breath, eyed the waitress, and made use of his extremely deep voice. "What's the problem, lady?"
Dixie stuck her red pencil through the middle of the red bun on top of her head, slid her small pad into the front of her apron, put her hand on her hip, and looked from Rocco to Miss Implants. She leaned over, letting her cutoff jeans ride a little too high up her thighs, and rested her elbows on the table. "Down here," she said with a sweet Southern smile and pointing straight down through the table, "iced tea is not a drink. It's not even a refreshment. And it's certainly not something that causes you to fall backwards into a pool." Dixie looked around and whispered in Rocco's direction, "It's a religion." She stood up, shrugged her shoulders, and said, And you either practice or you don't. Down here, there's no such thing as `unswate tay.' That's a myth propagated by people who don't come from 'round here. You can ask for it, but one of us might give you a funny look before we write you off as nothing but a couple of Yankees. Down here," she said, pointing again with both index fingers, "tea comes one way. `Swate. "' She eyed Rocco again and gave a nudge. "Like us." She put her hand on Rocco's shoulder and gently brushed his ear, making sure to dip the end of her finger just slightly into his ear canal. She said again, "Like us."
That got Rocco's attention, and a smirk slowly replaced his best mafioso impersonation. Dixie looked to Missy and continued, "On average, the best mixture is one-third sugar and two-thirds tea, but"-she looked to Rocco again-"like most things, the exact amount varies by locale and who's doing the sweetening. True sweet tea does not come in a powder or a plastic container with a screw-off cap. It comes in little bags that are boiled in hot water, then steeped for three to four hours in syrupy sugar water.
"It's the steeping that's the secret." At the thought of syrupy, sugary water and several hours of steeping, Rocco sat up, ran his fingers around his waistline, and gave Dixie's freckled legs and faded jean shorts another look. Dixie continued, "When dark enough, it's then mixed with more water from the faucet, maybe even a spigot or a hose, but"Dixie eyed the bottled water, stained with bright pink lipstick, sticking conspicuously out of Missy's purse-"never a bottle." She stood next to the table and pulled down both legs of her shorts. "Then it's poured into a plastic pitcher that doesn't need labeling and returned to its rightful spot in the refrigerator next to the milk jug."
Missy's jaw dropped, showing the pink lipstick that had smeared across her top two bleached-white teeth. Her eyes batted twice and, in doing so, unhinged the inside corner of the fake eyelash on her left eye. Dixie smiled, pointed discreetly to Missy's eye as if it were a secret only the two of them shared, and said, "You two probably need a few minutes. I'll come back."
Dixie walked off, and Rocco's eyes followed every seducing, shorts-hiking step. Missy, who had won his affection by playing the very same game, grabbed him by the dog collar and got a handful of carpet in the process. Mutt couldn't hear everything, but he did hear, "She'll never work here again." Rocco responded with a muffled and not so low "Uh-huh," but his eyes never left the waitress station where Dixie was rolling silverware. He unconsciously smiled when she looked his way and then licked the paper tab that fastened the napkin around the silverware.
While Missy chewed on her leash, Dixie returned and stood at the end of the table-this time a few inches closer to Rocco. Before Rocco had a chance to look up, Missy saw her chance, crunched up her face like a Boston terrier with a sinus infection, waved her hand over the porch toward the kitchen, and said, "You probably serve those nasty little grits, don't you?"
Without batting an eye, Dixie looked over each shoulder, leaned on the table, and whispered as if telling a wellkept secret, "It's really pretty simple. Years ago, somewhere down here, some corn farmer lost all his teeth and with them the ability to eat corn. So he just dried the corn, ground it into bits, boiled it into a soft, gummable mash, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, stirred in two tablespoons of butter, and called that `grits.' Minus butter, it's actually quite healthy. Now, truth is, there's nothing wrong with grits. They won't hurt you. And if you don't like them, that's fine with most Southerners. Just means more for us." She smiled and gently bumped Rocco in the shoulder with her hip. She wrinkled her nose, waved her hand across the table, and said, "But, honey, don't turn your nose up before you've had a plate. Most of us are eating sushi now and liking it, so anything's possible." Dixie looked out over the dock at the people fishing and said, "And I never thought I'd be eating bait." Dixie smiled at Rocco, dipped two fingers into his tea glass, pulled out a piece of ice, and stuck it in her mouth. She then tapped him on the end of the nose with the same wet finger.
With Rocco mesmerized by his own lust, Missy erupted. She collected her purse and stood up, but Rocco put a firm hand on her thigh and she sat back down with a defeated leash-stretching sigh and crossed her arms and legs. Dixie left in the direction of the kitchen, returned quickly with a small side plate of steaming cheese grits, and placed it and two spoons in front of the two of them. She took one spoon, carved out a small bite of grits, and held it up to Rocco's mouth as if she were feeding a child. Rocco opened and closed his mouth around the spoon without ever taking his eyes off Dixie. Missy threw her spoon in the creek. "Oh, and one more thing," Dixie said as she set the spoon in front of Rocco. "Coffee-which often accompanies grits and precedes tea-is not brewed; it's percolated. And you don't `make coffee,' you `put some on.' Most folks down here don't really get into cappuccino, but with a Starbucks on every corner, a few of us are moving into lattes." Dixie turned, took a step, stopped, and turned again. "Oh, and `dinner' is what you ate at noon. This is `supper."'
While Missy gnawed on her leash, Rocco enjoyed cheese grits for the first time in his life. Mutt smiled and eyed the kitchen door where a tray of food turned the corner like a steam locomotive. No sooner had the waiter put it down than Mutt dove in with a spoon and two fingers.
Smeared with cheese grits, grease, and tea, Mutt watched Missy sit frowning and tight-lipped as she looked out over the water. Rocco, unfazed by Missy, slowly dipped his alligator tail in the cocktail sauce and tried to get Dixie's attention, which she was giving liberally to two out-of-town execs sipping green-glassed beer at the next table. After several unsuccessful attempts, Rocco finally wiped his mouth with Missy's napkin and made for the men's bathroom.
Mutt finished his meal in about eight minutes and still hadn't heard the sirens. That meant dessert, and it required no decision. Not even the voices disagreed with key lime pie. He ordered two pieces,
downed both, and watched Rocco slip behind Dixie at the napkin station and then return to Missy with a smile pasted across his face. Dixie, happily folding napkins, slipped the hundreddollar bill in her back pocket and paid no attention to Rocco's cell phone number written across the back.
Mutt finished the pitcher and left two twenty-dollar bills-enough for the meal and a 241/2 percent tip. He walked past Missy and Rocco, but as a concrete thinker, he couldn't help himself. "Ma'am," Mutt said, pointing to Missy's necklace, "if you really want people to read your name tag, you need to put it on a shorter chain."
Mutt turned, said good night to Dixie, and then walked out onto the dock. He slipped a quarter into the turtle food dispenser and sprinkled it into the water, where the snapper turtles surfaced, jockeyed, and tried to drown each other en route to the rabbit pellets. When his hands were empty, he walked to the end of the dock and noticed the dusk and the absence of sirens. The commotion at the table next to him had been a welcome entertainment, but he knew he didn't have long before he wouldn't be able to hear himself think.
Mingling through six or eight kids diving off and swimming near the end of the dock, Mutt dove in, swam a few hundred yards along the north bank, and untied a yellow canoe owned by the marina. He climbed in, loosed the oar, and silently slipped along the bank northeastward, past Clark's, and then farther east into the fingers of Julington Creek.
By 6:15 p.m., Mutt was paddling like Osceola beneath the moonlight, where neither the darkness nor the shadows bothered him. Like the voices, he had befriended both years ago. A mile up creek-maybe half a mile as the crow flies-he heard the first of the sirens.
Chapter 4
I CROSSED THE ALABAMA LINE, DROVE THROUGH Taylor, and took the northern loop around Dothan while keeping one eye on my rearview mirror. I turned right onto 99 and switched my wipers to intermittent.