Flesh and Blood (23 page)

As his friends started gathering around me, Jack Jordan, the man of the hour, stopped the band and, using the microphone said, “John, wherever you are, could you come up here, please? I want to thank all y’all for comin’ to my party. I consider myself to be a very fortunate man, indeed, to have so many fine friends and to have the honor of keepin’ y’all safe. Thanks again for comin’. Now, as you know, one of my boys is a preacher and he’s moved back down here from the big city, and I sure am glad. I want him to say a blessing over our food before we start eating.”

As I climbed up on the trailer and took the microphone, the noisy crowd grew quiet. I noticed several of the men taking off their baseball caps and cowboy hats. I felt out of place and unworthy of this honor, guilty for punching Jake and drinking so much lately, but as I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, I felt the calming presence of grace—unexpected, unbidden, undeserved.

“Let us pray,” I said. “Father in heaven, thank you for giving me such a good earthly father. Thank you that he has been able to be a father to our entire community. I ask that you continue to bless his life with health, happiness, and fine friends. And help us all find a way to thank him for taking the life you gave him and giving it to us. Please be with us all tonight. Keep us safe and bless the food and our time together… . ”

When I finished, the noise started again, and I found it comforting. I looked over in Jake’s direction. He was on his feet again, heading my way. I stepped off the trailer to stand with Laura and Dad.

“I think we better go,” I said.

“So soon?” Laura asked.

Dad nodded, then turning to Jake, held up his hand. “Not here,” he said.

Jake glared at me. “This ain’t over,” he said. “Not by a goddam long shot.”

I nodded. “I look forward to resuming our conversation,” I said.

When Jake walked away, Dad said, “I told Missy here that I’d be happy to help take care of her, so just let me know what you need.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Thank you, Jack,” she said, hugging him. “And happy birthday.”

“Sorry about …” I said, nodding in Jake’s direction.

“I wish you boys would get things worked out,” he said.

It was as if he couldn’t see just how deep our differences and animus went, as if his love for both of us gave him selective sight and long-term memory loss.

When I slammed the door to my truck, I gunned the engine and began barreling down the landing road, racing toward the Jack and Coke that would sooth the feral beast banging on my breastbone.

But Laura had other ideas for calming the creature inside.

Unbuckling her seatbelt, she leaned over and unbuttoned and unzipped my pants, my body responding immediately. Pulling down my underwear, she grabbed me hard with her hand, then brought me to her mouth, taking me in, going down deep, the warmth and wetness of her mouth enveloping me.

With amazing adroitness, she expertly used her hand and mouth to quickly, if temporarily, satiate my hunger and calm my rage. When she raised up to whisper what else she wanted to do to me and what she wanted me to do to her, I could smell myself in her mouth.

By the time we reached my place, I was ready to go again, and we didn’t waste time getting out of the truck or our clothes.

The next afternoon, while I was still a little hung over, Merrill and I played in a two person charity golf tournament at the Killearn Country Club in Tallahassee, and though both of us were athletic, neither of us were golfers, a fact we were often reminded of as we attempted not to surrender all of our dignity to the tiny white ball.

On the third hole, Merrill sliced the ball on his drive and it ricocheted off a pine tree near a house before splashing into the swimming pool.

“Tell me why the hell you signed us up for this again?” he said.

He was wearing long navy Sean John shorts, a long, untucked, light blue shirt, white socks blue Nike flip-flops and a white Miami Heat had on backwards, and receiving more than a few stares.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said.

He shook his head.

“It’s a good cause.”

“I’ll give’em a donation,” he said. “Hell, they can have my entire check. Anything but my pride.”

When we reached the house where the ball had bounced into the pool, an elderly white couple was out on their patio looking as if we had dropped an olive in their champagne.

Merrill walked up as if they weren’t there and dropped another ball just inside the fairway.

“There goes the neighborhood,” I said to the couple, as Merrill swung the club as if he were playing baseball rather than golf. This time he hooked it in the other direction, but it managed to stay on the fairway and land just this side of the green. He then turned to face the disapproving couple and bowed deeply, sweeping his arm in exaggerated fashion.

The lady began shaking her head as she eyed Merrill with even more disdain. Her husband looked away. “Y’all not even safe out here no more,” Merrill said. “Tiger Woods done opened up the door and all us darkies’re pourin’ through it like they’s free fried chicken at the end of every hole.”

He slung the club back into the bag and walked toward the green.

“Caddies these days,” I said, when I walked past the couple. “Don’t know their place anymore.”

When Merrill reached the green, he didn’t stop. When I caught up with him in the lounge of the country club, he was draining a cold beer out of a bottle, a glass of orange juice sat across from him.

“Not feeling very charitable anymore?” I asked.

He laughed.

A slim girl with a dark complexion and straight black hair that hung to her bottom set two bottles of beer and two glasses of orange juice on the table between us. Her enormous breasts bounced around as she moved, and she leaned over and put them in my face as she served us.

“You got some vodka you can pour in these?” I asked.

“Sure, sweetie,” she said, turning and giving me the titty treatment again.

“That’d happen more often, you leave your collar at home,” he said when she left.

I shrugged.

“This where we should’ve been all along.”

“Can’t argue that,” I said.

Of the three other people in the lounge, only one was a woman, and I noticed that the waitress didn’t put her breasts in her face.

“Seems sort of sexist to me,” I said.

“Uh huh.”

The woman, a white lady who looked to be in her mid-fifties, was seated at the bar having oral sex with a martini while a tall, skinny white man in his twenties, with greasy black hair plastered to his skull, was obviously trying to pick her up. Greasy looked desperate, and she looked disinterested, but not just in Greasy. In life. She wore heavy makeup, but even in the under-lit lounge it couldn’t hide the deep lines and harsh boredom on her face.

An elderly man with a round paunch both above and beneath his belt line was slumped in a seat at a table near the bar with his pants undone and laid open. When the waitress gave him the boob treatment, he actually wiggled his head like a new born trying to find a nipple.

“Why can’t they do a charity wet T-shirt contest?” Merrill asked. “Lotta money in T and A.”

“Always has been,” I said. “Of course it depends on whose T and whose A it is.”

The waitress made her way back over to us, placing a couple of vodkas on the table in front of me, then giving Merrill the boob job.

I sighed deeply. “I thought we had something special,” I said.

She smiled, but didn’t say anything, then walked away.

I mixed the OJ and vodka and started in on the first one.

“Been a while since I seen you do that,” he said.

“Tired of drinking alone,” I said.

He nodded.

I knew he was concerned, but he didn’t let on, and I felt no judgment from him.

“You need help climbing back up them steps,” he said, “let me know.”

Taylor Price moved in the self-conscious manner of a man being watched. It wasn’t that he was aware that Merrill and I were following him. It was his belief that everyone in his vicinity would want to watch him. He scanned the crowd the way some celebrities do, expecting to be recognized, paid attention to, desired, envied.

We had been following him for less than two hours and I knew everything I needed to about him except his arrest record— which Dad should be calling with soon.

As Taylor stepped off the escalator and into the parking garage beneath Governor Square Mall, he was carrying bags from stores that specialized in expensive clothes and the self-indulgent gadgets of the good life.

When he used his keyless remote to unlock his feminine-looking sports car and pop its small trunk, the noise it made was loud, showy, and annoying.

“This is going to be fun,” Merrill said. “Five Franklins says he wets his pants before we finish with him.”

I knew how Merrill felt. The kind of guy who would stalk and harass a woman was only slightly above a child molester on my list of least favorite people, but I wouldn’t take his bet. The Taylor Prices of the world could commit some cruel and inhumane acts on people physically weaker than them, but in a fair fight would fold faster than a good gambler with a bad hand.

We followed as he sped out of the parking garage, through the mall parking lot, and out onto Apalachee Parkway. Thankfully, we were in Merrill’s truck, not mine, and would have no trouble keeping up.

As we turned onto Monroe, my phone rang. It was Dad.

“Christopher Taylor Price, the third, has been arrested for aggravated battery, rape, and assault,” he said, “but he’s never been convicted of so much as a misdemeanor. Somehow witnesses against him change their story or don’t show up for court at all. He’s got a juvenile record, but it’s sealed, so I don’t know what’s in it but I’d bet more of the same.”

“Thanks.”

“This the guy bothering Laura?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Be careful,” he said.

“Merrill’s with me,” I said, “but this guy’s a—”

“I meant make sure you have an alibi and don’t leave any evidence,” he said.

Price pulled into Lake Ella Park, carefully maneuvering his car into a spot as far from the other two vehicles as he could.

“He loves that car,” Merrill said.

I nodded, though I suspected Taylor didn’t love anything, that the closest he got to anything resembling love was for himself.

“I’m gonna fuck it up,” he said.

Stepping out of his car, Taylor stripped down to his silk boxers, slowly, showing off his time at the health club and tanning salon, and put on his running clothes.

He then began to prance around the cement sidewalk surrounding the small lake.

It was a dark night, and it was getting late. Only three other people were on the track—a middle-aged dog walker and two college girls with FSU shorts and sports bras, their ponytails bouncing in sync as they jogged.

As he made his rounds, Taylor stepped off the track for the two coeds, saying something to them every time they passed, but made the dog walker choose between jumping out of his way or getting run over.

Merrill and I were beneath a large oak tree near Taylor’s car, watching.

When the dog walker finally left, he made his move on the coeds, and though they giggled and flirted a bit, they weren’t interested in anything more and told him so. But in Taylor’s world, “no” means “I want you to make me,” which was what he was beginning to do when Merrill and I lifted up one of the loose parking pavers and tossed it through the windshield of his car, setting off the alarm and bringing Taylor running.

“What the
fuck
?” he said as he ran up.

“We just tossed this paver here through your windshield,” I said. “Turn off your alarm and we’ll tell you why.”

Behind Taylor and up a small hill sat the Tallahassee Police Station. He turned and glanced in its direction, seeming to calculate whether he could make it.

By the time he looked back at us, Merrill had closed the distance between them and was ripping the car keys from the side of his shorts where they dangled loosely. Pressing a button on the remote, Merrill stopped the alarm. He then pivoted and drove an uppercut into Taylor’s stomach that doubled him over, dropped him to the ground, and had him making that breath-knocked-outof-you noise that meant he was doing his best to replace the air that had just been forced out of him, but his body wasn’t cooperating.

“Taylor,” I said.

He didn’t look up at me.

I slapped him across the face, my open hand smacking him hard, stinging his pampered skin.

He looked up at me.

“You get off on harassing women,” I said.