Lost Man's River(34)

Had Mike Tolen ordered that inscription as a warning to his brother’s killer? And had he suspected the enigmatic Edgar, who presumably stood among the mourners gathered here beneath these ancient oaks?

So rapt was he that he scarcely noticed when Sally Brown in a blue cotton dress kneeled down in the grass beside him. When he looked up, she smiled and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him softly on the mouth for the first time ever. Startled—as if a rare small bird had just flown in—he wanted to ask why she had done that. Instead he grinned a foolish grin and asked how she was faring, and also how she had arrived and where she might be staying, and how she had managed to track him to the cemetery—

“Professor?” She raised a finger to his lips. Open-mouthed, eyes quick and bright, long blond hair straying on her face, she was open and delightful as a summer peach. Unabashed, she took his hand in both of hers and snuggled this bonding of their flesh in her warm lap. The gesture seemed innocent and simple, yet feeling his hand against the airy dress, amidst the welling thighs, he fairly trembled at its implications. A cavernous groan escaped him, and she smiled. Her green eyes had gone demure and soft, and under his gaze, she blushed and bent her head as if awaiting some seigneurial decision.

Enchanted but anxious lest he scare away the shy bird of her undefended feelings, he dared to ask, “Do you suppose you will ever call me Lucius?” But realizing how feeble this must sound, he blurted abruptly, “Did the library send you? Did you see Arbie?” She opened her eyes to gauge him, then released his hand.

“I didn’t come here to see Arbie,” she said shortly, rolling easily to her feet and brushing the dead grass off her backside. “I can’t think why I came,” she added, tossing her hair.

“Hey,” he said. “Sit down!” But when she turned toward him, he did not dare touch her, or know what to say. Excuse me, Miss, may I brush that naughty grass off your sweet bottom? He laughed out of pure joy and nerves. Yes, Your Royal Heinie, it is I, L. Watson Collins, Ph.D.! Your revered teacher! Aloud, he said, “Phooey,” and got up awkwardly and brushed off his own inconsequential ass instead. He could use a drink.

“Phooey on yooey,” Sally said, still cross. “You miserable ol’ fart.” Then she laughed, too, she had forgiven him. A moment later, she astonished him anew with her odd mix of eroticism and innocence. “These old-time people, “she said wonderingly, waving at the gravestones. “You think they did it the way we do? Oral sex and all?” Though gratified to be sought out as a person knowledgeable in these matters, he was sorry she was so casual about such a rite. He frowned judiciously, saying, “Absolutely.” Laughing at him, she took his arm and squeezed his hand, and he felt an unseemly twinge in his hollow loins as they returned down the old broken sidewalks, in spring dusk. Letting go his hand, she skipped ahead over the cracks in the cement. He shifted his trousers, yearning after the fine firm bounce of her behind.

Love-besmirched, he followed the young Mrs. Harden down old broken sidewalks, in the cruel spring dusk.

In the little park beside the pond, they found the old man dozing on a bench. A rivulet of saliva, descending from a cleft in his grizzled chin, darkened his neckerchief, and in his lap was a small flask of corn whiskey—OKEFENOKEE MOON 100 Proof. Guaranteed Less Than Thirty Days of Age. It was no good chastising Arbie, who would only yell that he had “paid his dues in life” and could therefore drink wherever and whenever and whatever—and with whomever!—he damn pleased. Live hard, love hard, and die drunk—that was the boyish motto he’d proclaimed in a roadhouse bar on the way north, in a transport of jukebox sadness and vainglory.



The Columbia County Courthouse, where they went next morning, turned out to be a fat pink building overlooking the town pond, called Lake De Soto in commemoration of the great conquistador. In the county clerk’s office, three female staffers were chaffing a young black secretary who had brought in papers from another room. “Where’d you get that new bracelet, Myrtle? You being a good girl, Myrtle?” And the young woman swung a hip and chuckled saucily at her colleagues’ benevolent envy of her love life.

Awaiting these ladies’ attention at the counter, Lucius enjoyed the titillated banter, which he liked to think was an auspicious symptom of improved race relations in the South. But Arbie in his saw-toothed whisper bitched into his ear that the young black woman was being patronized whether she realized it or not, that all “those three harpies” were demonstrating was that old white fear of black sexuality—“of what they used to call ‘hard-fuckin niggers,’ ” Arbie said, not quietly enough, because the young woman winced as at a whiff of some bad smell.