Baptism in Blood(34)
Gregor looked down at the mess he had made in the seat next to him. The map was spread out across most of it, green and blue and red, showing the route Interstate 95 took south from Richmond. Gregor stood up and brushed past it all into the aisle. He was so big, the aisle felt too narrow, although it wasn’t. The ceiling was definitely too low. There was a bar and snack stand one car back. Gregor headed for that, even though he wasn’t hungry. None of his thoughts would settle into a pattern. At the coupling between cars, the doors felt too heavy for him. He was so used to being a big man with powerful muscles, he was surprised.
The problem with this little favor he had promised to do for David Sandler, Gregor realized, was that he hadn’t taken it seriously even yet. His picture of the South was so firmly fixed in his mind, he kept expecting the whole thing to turn out like a Beverly Hillbillies episode. Virginia Marsh would turn out to be itching to run off with her husband’s brother. The baby would turn out to have been the product of incest between Virginia and her own brother. The whole thing would blow up and land on Sally Jessy Raphael, which he would watch in stupefied amazement, unable to understand how anybody could be this dumb.
There was a drunk in the car, but Gregor ignored him. He was a drunk with a Yankee accent, which at least did nothing to excite Gregor’s prejudices. He asked for a diet Coke and paid nearly two dollars for it. He looked out the window behind the bartender’s head and saw rolling flatlands, as gentle as the waves on the surface of the water in a protected inland. Everything was green and bright and warm. True fall hadn’t come to North Carolina yet. The cars on the road all seemed to be very new and bought from Ford.
“Raleigh coming up,” the bartender said suddenly. It was as if one of the figures in a wax museum had started talking.
“Excuse me?” Gregor said.
“Raleigh coming up,” the bartender repeated. He had a soft southern drawl, like the ones Gregor had rarely heard outside the movies. “It’ll be less than five minutes. I’d go back to my seat if I had any luggage.”
“Oh,” Gregor said. “Yes. Thank you.”
“They’re going to cut this run, did you know that?” the bartender said. “The Republicans. Everybody votes Republican down here these days. My granddad would have died first. You a Republican?”
“I’m not an anything,” Gregor said, thinking that right now he would sooner admit to being an extraterrestrial.
The bartender was cleaning his counter with a rag. The drunk had gone to sleep.
“What I notice,” the bartender said, “these days, everybody up North is a Democrat, and everybody down here is a Republican. Opposite of what it used to be. You see what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“It’s the fault of the liberals,” the bartender said solemnly. “The liberals ruined the Democratic party. It was much better when it was full of people like us.”
“I think I’d better go back to my seat,” Gregor said. “I think I’d better pack up my books and get ready to go.”
“Nobody down here would vote for Jesse Helms if there was a decent Democrat running,” the bartender said. “I don’t think there’s been a decent Democrat running since Harry Truman.”
The bartender didn’t look like he was much more than twenty-five years old. How much could he possibly know about Harry Truman?
“Yes,” Gregor said, backing up. “Well.”
He turned around and headed for the coupling of the cars, hurrying. There were windows open in the bar car. He could feel the warm outside air fighting against the frigidity of the air-conditioning. The drunk was snoring next to his beer. Gregor went through the coupling and back into first class. The woman who had been playing solitaire had packed up her cards. She was now half-curled in her seat, reading a book called How to Have a Wonderful Sex Life at Any Age at All.
Gregor scooped up his maps and his books and his newspaper clippings and sat down in the aisle seat. The train had begun to shudder and rattle, the way trains did when the tracks under their wheels got complicated. Outside, Gregor could see the start of a small industrial center, the smokestacks and metal-sided buildings, the warehouses and big flat parking lots full of heavy trucks. Gregor got his briefcase off the floor and stuffed the mess into it. Then he got the still unopened diet Coke out of his pocket and decided he didn’t want to drink it after all.
Really, Gregor thought. I don’t know anything at all about the New South. I don’t know anything at all about North Carolina. It’s not only wrong to judge by stereotypes, it’s stupid, especially when you’re involved in a murder case.