Further Joy (20 page)

“No way, James.”

“But I need a ride.”

“What about
your
car?”

“It's back at my apartment. There's something not right with it. The intake or something.”

“How did you get here?”

“Rode the bus.”

“From Lower Grove?”

“Rode like four buses.”

“You rode the bus here thinking I would be forced to give you a ride back.”

“You sure make things black and white.”

“I'm not giving you a ride. It's not fair what you did.”

James ticked one eyebrow up and then released a shallow sigh. “Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

He pressed the corner of his eye with his fingertip, blinking. “So I guess that means I'll take the bus again,” he said. “No, it's okay. It'll be good. I'm interested in buses. Bus routes. Bus transfers. Stuff like that. Interesting people who smell like gas stations.”

James came back over to Sofia's side of the car. He kept his distance. His hair was a completely different hue in the sun than it was in the shade.

“You'll let us be happy one day,” he said. “I just hope I'm not bitter by then.”

Before Sofia could answer, James turned on his boot heel. “Bus to catch,” he called over his shoulder.

Sofia watched him walk off and then lowered herself into the driver's seat, the vinyl warm on her back and legs. She was staring into a swath of jungle. She wound down her window and then leaned over and wound down the passenger window too, hoping for a cross breeze that wasn't to be.

*
    
*
    
*

She sensed nothing out of the ordinary, felt nothing, face to face in the interrogation room with this wiry guy wearing a brand-new T-shirt and brand-new ball cap. They were conversing stiffly, like distant acquaintances who had bumped into each other at the grocery store. His name was Spencer. Sofia couldn't tell where he was from, whether he had hidden scars. She couldn't sense anything more than what she'd known coming in.

Spencer was a half-brother of Barn Renfro, the murdered man. When they were younger, the two of them had inherited a boat repair shop on a small lake. Barn had bought Spencer's share with money he'd made dealing pot and Spencer had blown through that money in the span of several months. Barn had run the business for the past twenty years, while his brother shuffled from odd job to odd job.

Spencer told Sofia that he'd found Jesus a few months ago, that in his old life he got depressed if he didn't get into a fight every couple weeks. There'd been only so long he could march knees high with the program before he needed to get punched in the face. That was his old self, he said. Sofia knew all this. Everyone in town did. Spencer had been a prize for the congregation that had tamed him, a feather in the cap of Lower Grove Church of Christ. He sat at the table with his back straight and his shoulders loose, his fists resting on the dull metal surface. His nose leaned to one side, which had the effect of giving his face character. Sofia's uncle was watching from behind the mirror, along with his lone deputy. The session was being taped. The floor was linoleum, but for some reason the air smelled of old carpet. Sofia was hoping for any flash into the life of this man before her, a glance at anything incriminating. She was getting flat nothing.

“I finally started wishing Barn well, then he goes and gets himself shot,” said Spencer. “I really was. I was hoping prosperity and peace on him. That's the lesson of my life: if I'm betting against you, you can feel pretty optimistic. If I'm rooting for you, you better watch your ass.”

“I guess we all feel that way sometimes,” Sofia said.

“Now God is supposed to tell me what to want and not want, so that simplifies things.”

“Do you think God wanted Barn dead?”

“I got no idea.” Spencer took a moment. He was tapping a spot on the tabletop with his finger. “I have a hard time seeing why He wants
me
alive. They say He loves me, though. They keep telling me that.” Spencer closed his eyes as tightly as he could, then opened them and refocused on Sofia. “I can't believe in your ability,” he said. “The Church of Christ doesn't acknowledge any of that as valid.”

“Well,” Sofia said. “Policy is policy.”

She ran her fingernail along the edge of the table. There was a whiteboard in the room but no markers. And a smoke detector on the ceiling, its green light pulsing tirelessly. When she looked at Spencer again, he had drawn inward, into his own mires and impasses. Sofia wasn't supposed to feel let down at the futility of the interview, she knew. She was supposed to be a disinterested party, awaiting truth about the crime and about herself.

Uncle Tunsil took a paring knife to a couple of lemons, whistling softly while he worked, then got out the little pot of sugar and miniature spoon. Sofia was nibbling at some peach yogurt. Her uncle hadn't acted a bit discouraged yesterday after she'd yielded nothing at the station. In fact, he'd seemed relieved. He hadn't thought Spencer was guilty, she knew. He had made sure Sofia still wanted to go through with the other interviews, giving her an out while not openly pushing her in either direction. He probably didn't know what to think. If she kept coming up empty it would be bad for the investigation, which seemed to be stalled or close to it. But if she hit on something, that would be a whole other can of worms. Sofia knew it was him who was helping her, as usual, not the other way around. He wouldn't admit to that. He would insist he was running a thorough operation, utilizing all resources.

The plan was to meet for the second interview later that day, at one-fifteen again. Sofia had to go to the Edison House and her uncle had to meet with a state investigator at a hotel over near the interstate. He had his good boots on, and a shiny watch he didn't wear often.

“It just
looks
hot out there,” he said, bending at the waist to peer outside.

The state of Florida was reaching the time of year when the nights were as hot as the days. Everything was still as a painting out the window.

“What time do you get up in the morning?” Sofia asked her uncle. “You always stay up later than me, then you're up earlier.”

“I'm a fast sleeper. I don't dream. I don't even roll over. I don't get up and use the bathroom. I can sleep twice as quick as your average person.” He was sitting now. He dug his spoon into a lemon. He had a way of maneuvering around the seeds, of getting the meat out without squirting the juice.

After a moment he set the spoon down on the table and his face clouded over, his brow creasing. He sat still, making no move for his milk.

“What is it?” Sofia said.

“Some boys up in Sumter County barbecued a manatee,” he said. “Came over my radio this morning. You heard me right. They netted a manatee and drug it on land and cooked it like a hog in one of them brick pits.”

Sofia had some yogurt on her spoon but she put it back in the cup. “Maybe they were broke.”

“I hope so, because these days there's no place in Florida you're not a couple miles from a Publix.”

Sofia watched her uncle's face. It wasn't often that righteousness showed on it.

“Sometimes you start wondering if
you're
a redneck,” he said, “because the folks over on the beach think you are. But something always happens to put things back in order.”

The second person of interest was JP. He was wearing a clingy long-sleeve athletic shirt. His shorts had numerous pockets and on his calf was a tattoo of an angel with dripping fangs. JP wasn't much older than Sofia, mid-twenties. He'd almost been a big deal in baseball, had been drafted out of the local high school and made it to the majors for a stint. Sofia's uncle said JP wasn't satisfied with his right share of screwing up. He was going for the record. He'd bungled a baseball career, had a divorce and
bankruptcy behind him already, and was on parole for DUIs. He was at the station because he had a boat up at Barn Renfro's shop that Barn had refused to give back to him. Evidently, there'd been a misunderstanding over the fee. JP didn't even want the boat anymore, and he and Barn had wound up agreeing to sell it, Barn entitled to a consignment share that would square them. The deal to sell the boat was unsubstantiated, since Barn wasn't around to comment on it.

The very second JP settled in and leveled his disdainful glare at Sofia, she didn't feel right. She was taken by surprise, but kept a neutral expression on her face. Her limbs were leaden, her mind flustered. It came over her like a dry wind. She had a grip on her own knee under the table, and her sinuses burned the way they did before she cried. Was this it? Is this what it would feel like, after all this time? She took in a full breath and released it slowly. It could be the beginning of a flu, this feeling, or the product of nerves or bad sleep. She didn't believe that, though. She raised her arm off the table, trying to be casual, and dabbed her temples with the back of her hand. JP was sneering at her. She swallowed hard. Part of her was unhinged but part of her, deeper, was blessed with calm.

She was seeing a Sunday. The ancient pale sky and the black marl and the creatures in between that wanted to survive. A lie told. A boy sick and staying home from church—so yes, a Sunday—and then she saw a pistol. It was being looked at, but not yet held. Breathed upon. Sofia's fingers felt stiffened, as if with cold. She could feel surly boredom, but that's what JP was radiating right now. She saw a happy school bus on a country road. But Sunday? Little airplanes buzzing overhead, anonymous and joyriding. Buses and airplanes and pistols and church—the commonest of memories. Then she saw the egret, taking a high retreating step, puzzled at someone sloshing so close in the reeds of the drainage ditch. She could hear toads, the distant revving of an engine. JP was openly glaring at Sofia across the table, scratching his shoulder. She was still in the present, enough. Even scratching his shoulder, he was defiant. He still thought life was winning and losing, and he was claiming scorekeeper error and false starts. She heard the toneless echoing crack, saw the elegant white neck jerking, flung back
and forth, an animal's desperation and outrage. Sofia saw the body stagger forward, dragging the barely attached head, blood already blackening the feathers. She saw the bird topple over in the stagnant water, instantly a sodden ugly pile, instantly a meal for buzzards and nothing greater. And then all of it began to dissolve, her consciousness becoming whole again. She had no say in it, as far as she could tell—the wind dying out at once.

“I told your uncle I got five minutes,” JP said. “I hope I didn't come up here to compete in a staring contest.”

Sofia sat up straight, giving her hair a shake. She quit squeezing her knee and crossed her arms in front of her, regaining her footing in the moment. She had no idea how to tack toward useful information, which was her duty here. She wouldn't have imagined JP capable of guilt, but everyone was. The more you had, the deeper you kept it buried.

“I don't have anything against you, JP.”

His face didn't change. It lost no impatience.

“You're scowling at me,” Sofia said. “I have no idea why.”

JP absently reached down to one of his pockets, a smoker's habit. His pockets had been emptied. “I don't mind telling you, if you got to know. The reason is because you think you're better than everyone else. You always have, ever since you showed up here. And don't say it ain't true.”

“What a boring reason,” Sofia said. “Besides being wrong.”

“See, like that. That face you just made. Everybody's always nice to you because your uncle's the law, but people don't appreciate you playing the little princess. I know, he's right there watching. He'll be mad at me now, but he's always mad at me anyway.”

Sofia heard the air conditioner kick on in the room. She hoped the draft from the vent would find the back of her neck. Whatever had come over her was fully gone now, and she felt worn and hot. She was holding the egret in her mind's eye.

“I think the person you're mad at is yourself,” she said. “That's probably not front-page news to you.”

“I guess you aced your intro to psychology class at the college. You showed up here and held your nose through a couple years of high school
and then off to get some bullshit degree so you can tell me who I'm mad at. Or is it
whom
I'm mad at. I'm glad you did that. I'm glad you went to school.”

“You've never even spoken to me before.”

“I am now, and it's going about how I expected.”

“You could go to college, you know.”

“Some of us got life to live,” JP said. “Some of us don't have a benefactor.” He looked over toward the mirror, toward where Sofia's uncle was. Sofia was staying composed. She'd told her uncle not to come in unless she asked him to, but that would go out the window the instant she seemed upset.

She wasn't going to see anything else, nothing connecting JP to Barn Renfro's death. She could tell. Just the egret, if the egret was real. She guessed he probably wasn't guilty, or he wouldn't be goading Sofia's uncle. Of course, some people goaded everyone all the time; that was their program.