When he reached the door, he extended his hand to knock, but the door swung open. Powell, wide-eyed and alert, stared at Rick.
“Dude, where you been?” Powell’s voice was frantic, and he ushered Rick inside. “I was about to drive over to your place.”
“Just, uh, out and about,” Rick said. “I brought you some—”
“I been trying to call you since three this morning,” Powell interrupted. His face was red, and he looked more agitated than Rick had ever seen him.
“I left my cell phone at the office. Powell, what’s—?”
“That’s when Doolittle Morris called me,” Powell continued as if Rick hadn’t said anything.
Rick felt his whole body tense. Doo? Mule’s cousin. “OK, what—?”
“Dude,” Powell interrupted again, running his hand through his sandy hair and sighing. “Mule is dead.”
PART FIVE
44
Tom cast his line out over the creek and slowly reeled the hook back in, grateful for the change of season. Tom had always been a hot-weather person, and the first week of June had brought temperatures into the nineties. For some reason the heat seemed to relax his aching bones. It also seemed to make “the torture”—Tom’s phrase for his chemo treatments—more bearable. As the sound of a bobcat’s squeal cut through the air, Tom recast his line, smiling at the memory of the fear in Bocephus Haynes’s eyes when Bo had heard that same sound several months before. The squeal also stirred Musso, who was lying at Tom’s side, from his sleep, and the bulldog cocked his head from side to side and cleared his throat.
“Easy, boy,” Tom said.
“Easy, my ass,” came a voice from behind Tom, which he recognized right off.
Tom laughed. “Bocephus, I was just thinking about you.”
“You sure those things are harmless?” Bo asked.
“As a mouse,” Tom said, shaking his head and inspecting his line. “Bobcats are only dangerous if they’re rabid, and besides, he’s not as close as you think.”
Tom recast his line, and this time the hook landed a good thirty feet away.
“Nice form. Caught anything?” Bo asked.
“Nope. May try to catch a buzz here in a few minutes. There’s beer in the cooler in the back of the truck.”
The creek was at the edge of the farm, a good two miles from the house. Though Tom had walked this trek many times, he had decided to drive today because of the soreness from that morning’s torture. Bo must have followed the wheel tracks to find him.
“So what gives me the honor?” Tom asked as Bo handed him a beer and they both popped the tops. “Can’t you get enough of me?” Bo had taken Tom to his treatment earlier that morning and as always had stayed until Tom had rid the poison from his bladder.
“Thought you might like to see this,” Bo said, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “I printed it off the Tuscaloosa News website. I get on there from time to time to read about the football team, and this article jumped out at me. It ran in today’s paper.” Bo paused. “Front page.”
Tom set the fishing rod on the ground and unfolded the piece of paper. His fingers tensed when he saw the headline. “Still No Word.” Underneath was a photograph of him.
“Jesus, when will they let it go?” Tom said, sighing and taking a sip of beer.
“Just read it,” Bo said.
Tom lowered his eyes and read as fast as he could. He stopped when he got to the part about Dawn. “Finally, the Professor has not responded to the allegations that he was forced into retirement due to the board’s belief that he was having an inappropriate relationship with a student, which the News reported in April was allegedly with his student assistant, Dawn Murphy.”
Tom looked up from the article, and Bo was squinting at him.
“I don’t remember you mentioning anything about a girl, Professor.”
“Do you have the article from April?”
Bo nodded, reaching into his pocket and pulling out another piece of paper. Tom snatched it from his hand and cringed when he saw the photograph. It was the picture of Dawn that was in the law school face book. He had looked at this same photograph when he called on Dawn for the first time.
She did nothing wrong, Tom thought as he read. Tyler said the board would take no action against her. So why release her name? Why now?
Tom folded both articles and looked up at Bo, who continued to gaze at Tom with his piercing black eyes.
“Well?” Bo pressed.
“Dawn was my student assistant. I had just hired her. When I gave her the job, she got emotional, and the dean saw me holding her hand. Then a couple days later I helped her to her car in the rain. She hugged me, and somebody was watching. They took photographs and showed them at the board meeting.”
“That’s it?” Bo asked.
Tom nodded, feeling anger pulse through him.
“That’s bullshit, dog.”
“When I told them I was leaving, they said they weren’t going to take any action against Dawn.”
“They being Jameson Tyler.”
Tom nodded.
Bo snorted, beginning to pace beside the creek bed. “I told you, Professor. Tyler’s a motherfucker, and there’s only one way to deal with a motherfucker. And you know that way. You know it.”
As Bo paced, Tom glanced up at the pine trees that surrounded the creek on both sides. When his daddy had needed time to think, he’d always come here. Tom would be sent out by his momma “to find Sut,” and Tom would invariably find him here, fishing by the creek bed, the only sounds the chirp of the crickets and the occasional song of a bluebird. Now, as the sun began to set and light shone through the pines, Tom recast his line and searched for his own answers. He had not heard from Dawn yet, and she was the only person who knew the number at the farm. He had given it to her when he hired her to work for Rick.
Why hasn’t she called? Tom unfolded the article again and looked at the date. The article had run on April 10, 2010. That was almost two months ago. Tom had sent her checks for April and May, but he hadn’t been checking his mail. Did she send them back?
Tom slowly reeled his line back in to shore as Bo finally stopped pacing. “Thanks for letting me know about this,” Tom said.
“So what are you gonna do?” Bo asked, the challenge evident in his voice.
Tom sighed, not looking at Bo. Instead, he gazed at the dying sunlight as it flickered across the creek. It would be dark in less than an hour.
“What can I do, Bo?” Tom asked, hating himself as he heard the words come out of his mouth.
From the corner of his eye, Tom saw Bo cross his arms, but his former student didn’t say anything. Several seconds passed with the only sounds being Musso’s snoring and the chirps of several crickets.
“You’re serious?” Bo finally said, sounding disgusted.
Tom looked at him. “Yes, I’m serious. What can I do? I’m a sixty-eight-year-old cancer patient. At the treatment this morning, they scoped me again and found some more of the shit. Not a full mass, just fragments of one. The doctor here thinks Bill probably just didn’t get all of it the first time around, which he said happens sometimes. Course, it could mean the cancer has already come back. Either way I’ve got more surgery in my future.”
Bo’s arms remained crossed. “So what? You’ve got to have more surgery. You just gonna quit?”
Tom felt heat on the back of his neck. “Listen, Bo—”
“No, you listen, Professor. I’m not blind. I’ve seen all that mail piling up on your kitchen table. I bring it every time I come, and there’s a steady flow. You haven’t opened a letter in months. If that’s not quitting, I don’t know what is.”
Tom threw down his fishing pole and stood from the log, his legs shaking from the effort. “I don’t need a lecture from you.”
Bo also stood, walking in front of Tom. “I think that’s exactly what you need, dog. What the hell are you doing out here? Are you just gon’ stay out here the rest of your life?” Bo grabbed Tom’s shoulder, making him stop. “You know what I think?” Bo asked.
“No, Bo.” Tom turned around, brushing Bo’s hand off his shoulder. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re scared, Professor.”
Tom glared back at him. “You think I’m scared. Me?”
“As a prissy schoolgirl,” Bo said.
Tom felt a flash of anger and he wheeled toward Bo, his hands tightening into fists. “Now, you listen here, Bocephus. I appreciate all that you’ve done, but I’m about to—”
“You’re about to what?”
Tom blinked, hesitating.
“Go on, say it. You know what you want to say. You’re about to whup my black ass. Right? That’s what you want to say. When I challenged you, you came back at me. Now, you’re pushing seventy years old and eighteen hours removed from chemotherapy. I’m a six-foot-four-inch, two-forty-pound black man who did fifty pull-ups this morning and stopped ’cause I wanted to, not ’cause I couldn’t do any more. But when I threatened you, your first reaction was to fight. That’s what you do when challenged, Professor. You fight. That’s who you are.”
Tom turned away.
“So what’s the holdup?” Bo asked, continuing his rant. “The cancer? So it came back. So what? The doctor will take it out, you’ll go through some more chemo washes, and it’ll be gone for good. You’re old? So what? I’ve seen you work as hard as a man twenty years younger. You’re still strong as a bull, dog.”
“I don’t know what to do, goddamnit!” Tom yelled, unable to take it anymore. “And yes, you’re right, Bo. I’ll admit it. I’m scared, OK. Happy? The old professor is scared. I’m sixty-eight years old, my wife is dead, I don’t have a job, my family has moved away, my old dog is about to die, and I don’t have a fucking clue what to do.”
“What do you want?” Bo asked, his voice quieter.
“Part of me wants to go back. Fight . . .” Tom sighed. “The other part”—Tom glanced at his sleeping dog—“just wants to go where Musso’s going soon . . . see Julie again.” He stopped, feeling his chest swelling with emotion. “Bo, part of me was glad today. When the doctor said the cancer was back, part of me was happy. I . . .” Tom stopped, unable to continue. He stared at the ground but looked up when Bo’s shoes came into his line of sight. “Look, Bo—”
“No, you look,” Bo interrupted, digging his finger into Tom’s chest, his eyes spitting fire. “You’re telling me you just want to die? That dying is an option here? Well, forgive me, Professor, but fuck you. My daddy died when I was five years old. He was hung by a rope by twenty white men wearing sheets and hoods. You ask me why I practice in Pulaski. Well, I’ll tell you why: ’cause every day I want to show the bastards who hung my father that Bocephus Haynes hasn’t forgotten. I’ll never stop fighting, Professor. Never. Fighting’s in my blood. It’s what I was born to do. You can’t fake who you are. When I said you were scared, you didn’t hesitate. You rose to fight. By quitting you’re going against who you are.” Bo stopped, breathing heavy.
“I’m not quitting,” Tom said. He glared at Bo, tiring of the lecture.
Bo glared back, but after several seconds his face broke into a smile and he glanced down at the ground. “We are who we are, Tom. And me and you, we’re like that bulldog over there.”
Tom wrinkled his face in confusion as he looked at Musso, snoring away.
“Yeah,” Bo continued, smiling at Musso. “You look at Musso, what do you see? A docile, sweet dog that licks your face and likes to lay around all day. That’s how he is ’cause that’s how people for years have conditioned him to act. His ass has been domesticated. You hear me?”
“I hear you, but what are you trying to—?”
“I’m getting to that. Now, the English bulldog wasn’t meant to be a damn lapdog. The English bulldog descended from the bull mastiff, a fighting dog. A war dog. Back in the day the bulldogs were used by the police to catch wild bulls that had gotten loose. Wild bulls. They’d grab the bull by its nose, close their eyes, and hold on until the officer could corral the bull. That’s what Musso is. At his core that’s what he is. And let me tell you, it’s a shame you’ll never see it. Musso is about gone and hasn’t ever been challenged. But you can bet your ass, Professor, that even now, even as old as Methuselah in dog years, if Musso was ever threatened he would not walk away and lay in the grass and die.” Bo paused. “Mark my words, as Jesus Christ is my witness and Bocephus Haynes is my name, that dog would fight.”
For a long time Tom gazed at Bocephus as a gentle breeze filtered through the pine trees. Finally, he couldn’t help but smile.
“Where’d you learn so much about bulldogs?”
“Jazz loves the History Channel,” Bo said, smirking. “Shit’s on all the time.”
Tom laughed and his groin flared in pain. He squinted at Bo. “So you’re telling me I’m a bulldog?”
Bo smiled but his eyes remained intense and he took a step closer. “What I’m trying to say is you’ve been challenged by the law school and Jameson Tyler, and you’re going against who you are by not coming back at them. It doesn’t matter that you’re sick or old. You are who you are. Just like I am.” He paused. “Just like Musso is.”
Bo reached forward and grabbed Tom around the back, squeezing him tight. “That’s my closing argument, dog.”
Bo started to walk away but then stopped, keeping his back to Tom. “Professor, I’m sorry about the last sentence of today’s article. I just thought you might need a push in the right direction.”
Tom wrinkled his brow and pulled out the article. He had stopped reading it after the part about Dawn. He skimmed down to the last sentence. Tom felt his blood pressure go through the roof as he read the words aloud.
“Believed to be sick and possibly near death, the Professor has retired to his family farm in Hazel Green, Alabama.”
“They didn’t get the ‘sick and near death’ part from me, but I think it’s a nice touch,” Bo said, beginning to walk away.
“Goddamnit,” Tom said. “They’ll descend like vultures on this place. What the hell were you thinking, Bo?” Tom was exasperated. “Bo!”
As Bo reached the edge of the clearing, he turned and smiled. “You can’t hide out here forever, dog.”
45
As the sun began to rise over the cornfield, Rick gazed at the brick farmhouse. Stop procrastinating, he told himself. Just do what you came to do. He took a sip of coffee from a Styrofoam Hardee’s cup, but still he didn’t move from the car. He glanced down at the passenger seat, where he’d put the article that ran in yesterday’s paper. Powell had brought the article by last night with an address. “Go see him, Rick,” Powell had urged. “Go get it from the horse’s mouth. He is the Professor, for God’s sake. He will help you.”
Rick wasn’t so sure. The Professor hadn’t been very helpful in the last year. He’d cost Rick a job with the best law firm in the state. He’d referred him a case that was going down the tubes. And despite Rick’s request not to interfere with the case, the Professor had hired him a law clerk who was now long gone. His “whore,” Rick thought, remembering Jameson Tyler’s words.
Rick took another sip of coffee knowing that none of that mattered anymore. He was three days from trial, and he was at the end of his rope. The Faunsdale Police Department had determined that Mule Morris’s pickup had flipped down the embankment of Highway 25 and exploded upon impact with a tree. The preliminary conclusion was that Mule’s brakes had gone out, causing him to lose control of the vehicle.
But Doolittle Morris wasn’t buying it. “Mule was a certified-by-God mechanic, and that truck might have been old but it ran like a top. No way the brakes would just go out.” Doo, who was distraught ove
r his cousin’s death, had no doubts over who was to blame when Rick and Powell caught up with him the day after the accident. Doo had shook his fist at them both and had to be restrained by several friends, his eyes burning with rage. “I wish I’d have never seen either of you turds. My cousin is dead because of you.”
And deep down Rick knew that Doo was right. Mule died three hours after he spoke with me and Dawn, he thought. He kept his truck in mint condition and had no known enemies. There was only one logical conclusion in Rick’s mind. Jack Willistone had hired someone to follow him and that person had taken out Mule. Murder, Rick thought, trying not to be paranoid but knowing he was right. Just thinking about it left his body covered in gooseflesh, and Rick now drove with one eye permanently fixed on the rearview mirror.
Finally, there was the Wilma Newton dilemma. Tyler still hadn’t deposed her, and Rick knew that Jameson Tyler wouldn’t just overlook a witness with damaging evidence against his client. Tyler is the best, Rick thought. If he doesn’t take her deposition, there’s got to be a reason. Rick felt a gnawing in the pit of his stomach. He’d sent Wilma an affidavit weeks ago, setting out exactly what she’d told him and Dawn at the Sands, but Wilma had yet to send it back. She had also gotten spotty about answering phone calls. Rick had called three times last week with no answer. I need that affidavit signed before I put her on the stand, Rick thought.
He sighed, his head hurting from all the questions he had and doubts he felt. Glaring at the farmhouse, he wished there was somewhere, anywhere, else he could go. But he knew there wasn’t. Other than Powell, Rick had no friends in the legal community who could help him. And Powell had told him to come here.
Rick grabbed the door handle, trying to summon the courage to move. With his other hand he felt in his pocket for the photograph he now kept with him at all times. A picture that Ruth Ann had given him during their first interview. He didn’t even have to look at it, the images were so burned into his mind. Bob Bradshaw’s beaming, proud face. Jeannie Bradshaw’s smile, her mouth slightly open as if someone had just made her laugh. And finally, Nicole Bradshaw holding a teddy bear under her arm, looking shy, vulnerable, and so young.
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