Wrapped in Rain(16)

Yes ma am.

I skipped around the grease spots again and stepped back into my truck. I set the Canon on the passenger seat as an eighteen-wheeler turned into the parking lot, honked, and then swung around back. Another oil change. Bessie looked up and saw the rig, and her fingers started flying over the keys on the cash register. The mother, wearing a red baseball cap pulled down tight over her ears, emerged at last from the bathroom, collected the wrappers, and spread them out across the counter, along with some Fig Newtons and a few sodas. Mother and son had matching caps. The windows above the beer cooler had condensed and started to fog up, so I couldn't see her too closely, but I knew one thing for sure. Something wasn't right. They didn't fit. I inserted the key into the ignition, waited for the glow plugs to warm up, and shook off Miss Ella, who was about to start quoting the New Testament. "No ma'am," I said, waving my hand across the dashboard, "I am going home."



Bessie slid the wrappers into the trash can and then waddle-walked out the back door. I peeled the tab off the lid of the coffee cup and listened as Maxximus tried to eat through the metal door. Taking a big gulp of really bad coffee, I swallowed and slowly let it warm my throat and stomach. She was right. It was horrible coffee. Its only redeeming feature was the mixture of heat and caffeine.

I revved the diesel, eased off on the clutch, pulled north, and felt the miles tick slowly by. My mind slowly returned to the one thought that I had not been able to shake for the last three days. Actually, I'd been trying to outrun it for the last nine months. It was the one thought I couldn't outrun no matter how fast or far I drove, flew, or ran. After nine furious years of being on the road forty weeks a year; visiting more than forty-five countries; owning a worn-out passport; getting dozens of immunizations; experiencing dysentery, malaria, and dengue fever; taking tens of thousands of photos; and making forty-seven national and international magazine covers as well as countless front pages of newspapers across the country, I was thinking about putting it down. Of turning off the camera. Permanently. My narcotic had become ineffective. To quote Gibby, I was "outside the efficacy range of the drug." I should have seen it coming. It had been the same with baseball. Sure, the injury made it easier, but the truth was that like most drugs, if you take them long enough, they work less and then not at all. Since I'd dropped Mutt off on Gibby's doorstep, I'd received a rather complete education on therapeutic narcotics.

Somewhere beneath the canopy of pine trees, Miss Ella forced her way back into the conversation. Just one question.

"Okay," I said out loud. "But just one."

Who's that little boy remind you or

"I knew you were gonna say that."

Tucker I asked you a question.

"I heard you."

Don't you sass me. Who's that boy remind you of?

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.