Page 102 of The River We Remember

“It’ll be fine. Creasy’ll sleep it off.”

The phone rang. It was Gordon Landis.

“That damn Felix Klein is drunk again, Brody,” Landis complained bitterly. “He just pissed all over a car out front of my inn. You come and get him or I swear I’ll sweep the street with his sorry little ass.”

“Don’t lay a hand on him, Gordy. I’ll be right there.”

Brody hung up. “Mind sticking around another half an hour, Hank?”

“You go do what you have to, Brody. Creasy acts up, I know where I can find handcuffs and a sock.”

Felix Klein wasn’t at the Alabaster Inn. Landis told Brody that Klein had taken off. Even drunk and with those amputated toes, the little man had disappeared into the night like a bat. Brody cruised Main Street and finally spotted Felix inside the Wagon Wheel, sitting at the counter with Angie Madison. He pulled into the parking lot.

“Are you drunk, too?” she asked with a gentle smile as she opened the door to him. “Or just hungry?”

Brody nodded toward Klein. “Sobering him up?”

“He doesn’t eat enough,” she said. “There’s never food in his system, nothing to help soak up the alcohol.”

“I’ve had a complaint, Angie. I’m taking him in.”

“Will you let him finish his sandwich first? I’ll make one for you, too, if you’d like.”

So they sat together, the sheriff, a slowly sobering drunk, and a woman from the bayou country, sharing a little food and the easy company of people who had a common history. It was part of what had brought Brody back to Black Earth County, part of the reason Felix Klein had stayed after his wife passed on, and one of the blessings that Angie Madison had discovered when, through marriage, she’d migrated there. And the Wagon Wheel? It was one of those places that exists everywhere, in which, small though it may be, somehow there’s always enough light inside to go around.

ANGIE SAW THEM off, standing at the door. Brody put Felix in the cruiser and walked back to her.

“Are you doing anything tomorrow evening?” he asked.

“Maybe. Why?”

“I’m thinking of asking Hank Evans to cover the jail. I understand the movie at the Rialto’s pretty good. Any interest in finding out?”

“With you?”

“That was my plan.”

“Is this an official date, Brody Dern?”

“I guess it is.”

“In that case, I’d be happy to go.” She kissed his cheek, which was rough from a day’s stubble.

“Be ready about seven?”

“Absolutely.”

She watched them pull away, then she closed and locked the café door. She spent a few minutes cleaning up from the meal she’d prepared for the two men, turned out the lights, and walked to the house. She stopped at the lean-to her son had constructed a week earlier. That skeleton of a lashed-together shelter might have been of great use in the deep woods somewhere. There on the lawn of the little house in Jewel, it was simply further evidence that Scott was growing into his own interests, his own concerns, his own life. A few more years and he would be gone, off to college. She would insist on this, though it would nearly kill her to see him go. And what for her then? She thought of Brody and smiled.

In the house, she turned off the lights Ida had left on for her. She went upstairs, past Scott’s bedroom, peeking in the doorway as she passed. He was sound asleep, the thin sheet that covered him barely disturbed. Good, she thought. He still seemed tired from his ordeal on the river. Deep sleep would do him good.

She put on her nightgown, brushed her teeth, and sat down at her desk to write in her journal. She took the key that always hung around her neck and tried to unlock the drawer where she kept the leather-bound books. The drawer was already unlocked. She slid it open. The old journal wasn’t there, or the newest one. Her heart did a leap and dive. She frantically scanned the desk and the area around it. Her mind began searching desperately for possibilities. Who could have opened the drawer? Ida? Scott? No, she had the only key, and why would they anyway?

Then she remembered. The night before. The rapping at the front door. How she’d knocked the journals to the floor and had quickly tossed them atop the box of books meant for donation. In all the distraction of Felix Klein’s visit, she hadn’t put her scribblings away in the drawer afterward. And then she’d asked Scott to give the box to…

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Garnet Dern.”

THE FIRST ENTRY in the first journal had been made in tentative script when she was twelve years old. It read: This book is a gift from Mama Farrah. She told me it’s my beginning. I asked her the beginning of what? She said my life.