At half past the hour, a station wagon pulled into the parking lot next to the terminal. Ruth Paine was driving. Lee got out, went around to the rear, and opened the doorgate. Marina, with June in her arms, emerged from the backseat. Ruth Paine stayed behind the wheel.
Lee had only two items of luggage: an olive-green duffel bag and a quilted gun case, the kind with handles. He carried them to an idling Scenicruiser. The driver took the suitcase and the rifle and stowed them in the open luggage hold after a cursory glance at Lee’s ticket.
Lee went to the door of the bus, then turned and embraced his wife, kissing her on both cheeks and then the mouth. He took the baby and nuzzled beneath her chin. June laughed. Lee laughed with her, but I saw tears in his eyes. He kissed June on the forehead, gave her a hug, then returned her to Marina and ran up the steps of the bus without looking back.
Marina walked to the station wagon, where Ruth Paine was now standing. June held her arms out to the older woman, who took her with a smile. They stood there for awhile, watching passengers board, then drove off.
I stayed where I was until the bus pulled out at 6:00 P.M., right on time. The sun, going down bloody in the west, flashed across the destination window,
momentarily obscuring what was printed there. Then I could read it again, three words that meant Lee Harvey Oswald was out of my life, at least for awhile: NEW ORLEANS EXPRESS
I watched it climb the entrance ramp to I-20 East, then walked the two blocks to where I’d parked my car and drove back to Jodie.
Hunch-think: that again.
I paid the May rent on the West Neely Street apartment even though I needed to start watching my dollars and had no concrete reason to do so. All I had was an unformed but strong feeling that I should keep a base of operations in Dallas.
Two days before the Kentucky Derby ran, I drove to Greenville Avenue, fully intending to put down five hundred dollars on Chateaugay to place. That, I reasoned, would be less memorable than betting on the nag to win. I parked four blocks down from Faith Financial and locked my car, a necessary precaution in that part of town even at eleven in the morning. I walked briskly at first, but then-once more for no concrete reason-my steps began to lag.
Half a block from the betting parlor masquerading as a streetfront loan operation, I came to a full stop. Once again I could see the bookie-sans eyeshade this forenoon-leaning in the doorway of his establishment and smoking a cigarette. Standing there in a strong flood of sunlight, bracketed by the sharp shadows of the doorway, he looked like a figure in an Edward Hopper painting. There was no chance he saw me that day, because he was staring at a car parked across the street. It was a cream-colored Lincoln with a green license plate. Above the numbers were the words SUNSHINE STATE. Which did not mean it was a harmonic. Which certainly didn’t mean it belonged to Eduardo Gutierrez of Tampa, the bookie who used to smile and say Here comes my Yanqui from Yankeeland. The one who had almost certainly had my beachfront house burned down.
All the same, I turned and walked back to my car with the five hundred I’d intended to bet still in my pocket.
Hunch-think.
Given history’s penchant for repeating itself, at least around me, you won’t be surprised to find out that Mike Coslaw’s plan for paying Sadie’s bills was a return engagement of the Jodie Jamboree. He said he thought he could get the original participants to reprise their roles, as long as we scheduled it for midsummer, and he was as good as his word-almost all of them came on board. Ellie even agreed to encore her sturdy performances of “Camptown Races” and “Clinch Mountain Breakdown” on the banjo, although she claimed her fingers were still sore from the previous go-round. We picked the twelfth and thirteenth of July, but for awhile the issue was in some doubt.
The first obstacle to be surmounted was Sadie herself, who was horrified at the idea. She called it “taking charity.”
“That sounds like something you might have learned at your mother’s knee,” I said.
She glared at me for a moment, then looked down and began stroking her hair against the bad side of her face. “What if it was? Does that make it wrong?”
“Jeez, let me think. You’re talking about a life-lesson from the woman whose biggest concern after finding out her daughter had been mutilated and almost killed was her church affiliation.”
“It’s demeaning,” she said in a low voice. “Throwing yourself on the mercy of the town is demeaning.”
“You didn’t feel that way when it was Bobbi Jill.”
“You’re hounding me, Jake. Please don’t do that.”
I sat down beside her and took her hand. She pulled it away. I took it again. This time she let me hold it.
