by Scott Blade
The edge of the water was about 100 feet from the back of the house and the dock began about 15 feet before that. It stretched out about 65 feet over the water. There was no railing to keep someone from slipping in, but I doubted that anyone would need it. I could see the bed of the lake this close to the shore. The water was pretty shallow, at least this close it was.
The dock was basically just the platform, the wooden pillars beneath, the boards, and the nails. I kept thinking of it as a dock, but really I wasn’t sure if it was considered a dock or a pier. I was pretty sure that no one would call it a wharf. It could have been a pier, but it was thick enough to anchor a seaplane on the end, so I thought that a small dock was a better description.
Hank had invited me to join him last night, but I didn’t really want to fish. I had no interest in it. If I ever wanted to eat fish, I would just look for a seafood restaurant and order from the menu. So I hung back near the house. I took a moment to plan my next move.
My phone started to vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out. It was reminding me that I had missed calls and voicemails—55 of them. I didn’t even bother to look through them. Instead, I touched the screen and opened the settings menu. I switched the phone to airplane mode. Now no one could call me.
The only person in the world that I wanted to hear from was Jack Reacher, but he wouldn’t be calling me. He didn’t even know about me. From what I’ve learned of him so far, he may not even have known how to use a cell phone, much less own one. I clicked the power button on the top of the phone and the screen went dark. It was now in standby mode. I slipped the phone back into my pocket.
I started thinking about my next move and quickly came to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do was to walk around the lake, the southwest side, back down the road to the fork, and take the road into town. I was already here so it made sense to take a look at Black Rock. I figured that I might as well see America like a tourist while looking for clues about my father.
In town I could buy new clothes and a cell phone charger, plot out my route, and get a bite to eat. Then I could be gone by noon, back on the road, back on the hunt for my father.
I made it down to the edge of the lawn and the beginning of the dock. That was when I noticed a hiking trail worn in the soil from the foot traffic running on it. It looked like it might go all the way around the perimeter of the lake. I didn’t know the actual stats for Jarvis Lake, but I could see that it was long. It wasn’t like one of the Great Lakes, but it was a big lake for Mississippi.
I looked left, looked right, and then I paused. Running straight toward me was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Not just in real life, but in movies and the Internet. She was breathtaking. She should have been in fitness magazines. She jogged the track at a very brisk pace.
She looked like a gazelle. She was tall, maybe 5’10” and she was lean—flat stomach, muscular shoulders, and strong legs. She looked like a professional runner, like an athlete. She must have been a runner her whole life, probably track in high school and then college.
As she neared me, I realized that I had been staring straight at her. My gaze never let up, not once. In normal situations, whenever I’ve been caught staring at a woman, I’ve quickly looked away like I had only been glancing. This trick wouldn’t have worked here because she had seen me staring at her from just a few yards away and she hadn’t flinched, not even a little bit. She kept on running toward me. She was probably used to guys staring at her. In fact, she probably expected it, like breathing.
She wore a tight gray-and-white outfit, runner’s clothes, tight gray pants that stopped just below her knees and a tight white short-sleeved top.
She had incredible breasts, not too big, but far from small—perfect.
She wore white-and-red laced-up running shoes. They looked brand new, still stiff from never being worn and clean like they were straight out of the box.
Her hair was long and blond and pulled back in a tight French braid.
She had long bangs. The tips touched the top of her eyebrows. She had an Eastern European look about her. If she hadn’t spoken to me, if she had just run right by without saying a word, I would’ve thought that she was from Eastern Europe. For sure. No doubt about it. But she stopped three feet from me. She continued to run in place, shuffling from one foot to the next and then she bent over and placed her hands on her knees. She panted hard with long recovery breaths, then she stood up tall and pulled earbuds out of her ears. She held the ends in one hand and stared at me.
She must have been around 35 years old, an older woman, older than me anyway. I hadn’t really considered 35 to be old, but I was only 18. She was what my high school friends called a cougar or a puma, which meant that she was an attractive older woman. I believed that the puma was slightly older and the cougar was much older. I wasn’t sure what the age minimum was in order to be considered a cougar or a puma, but I surmised that the puma represented a younger version of a cougar. Therefore, she was a puma.
Her lips moved and she gave me the biggest smile—all white teeth.
She was magnificent. Her eyes were green and bright and her skin was tan and smooth. She took good care of herself; that was for damn sure.
She was so beautiful that I became overwhelmed with the urge to bow to her like I was some giant slave worker and she was royalty. She was the queen and I was nothing if not her servant.
She said, “I haven’t had a man stare at me so hard since I was in college.”
I gasped because the whole experience had been in slow motion. From the second that I saw her to this moment, I had been suspended in time. I couldn’t speak. The only thing that I could do was stand there trying to breathe like I was the one who had just run miles around the lake.
She said, “Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?”
She smiled at that joke. I wasn’t sure why.
I recovered and then I said, “Reacher. My name is Reacher.”
She said, “Sheldon.”
Then she paused for another deep breath and she asked, “Are you here fishing?”
I shook my head.
“Visiting?”
I shook my head again.
“Tourist?”
I said, “Kind of.”
There was a pause between us and then she said, “Okay. Well nice talking to you, or not, such as the case may be.”
She smiled and returned her earbuds into her ears; then she jogged away.
I waited and watched her run off. I would’ve been lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I stared at her rear as she went.
She turned back to look at me only once, but that one look had meant a lot. She was gorgeous, she had talked to me, and she had looked back at me. I had never experienced love at first sight before. I wasn’t sure that this qualified. It could’ve just been a case of meeting a woman more beautiful than you ever thought possible, which meant that it was probably lust at first sight. Either way, it felt good.
A voice from behind me said, “Aren’t ya glad dat ya decided ta stay on da lake wid me?”
I spun around and saw that Hank and Link were standing on the dock staring at me and having their own little chuckle over my behavior, Hank for obvious reasons, and Link was excited because Hank was excited. They were about 15 feet away, the old man with nothing in his hands but a pair of pliers, and the dog at his feet.
I smiled and said, “Yes, I am.”
Hank said, “Sit by me and fish.”
I said. “I will sit with you a while, but I don’t fish.”
Hank nodded. He returned to the edge of the dock next to his fishing rod and Link followed and sat down next to him.
I joined them. Hank sat on his bucket and I sat down on the dock. The bottom of my shoes touched the water before I even let my legs dangle all the way down, so I had to pull them up and sit Indian style.
Even sitting down, I towered over Hank and Link. My silhouette must have looked like Frankenstein’s monster sitting next t
o the elderly blind man that he met in that old black-and-white movie, except that Hank wasn’t blind.
I shook off the imagery and asked, “Catch anything?”
Hank said, “Oh, sure. I caught tree fish already. Look in da bucket over dere.”
I glanced in a second bucket beside me. Three huge fish were covered in ice.
I said, “Nice.”
No more words were exchanged for a while. I studied the water and then the opposite shoreline. There were trees and rocks and more trees. Next I scanned the northwest side of the lake. I saw full piers and watched as boats were launched into the water. I scanned past them and studied the low buildings. Most of the town was bunched up in the same rows of buildings. From this distance I couldn’t tell what they were, but I knew that there must have been banks, a fire station, bait shops, motels, bars, cafés, a school, a police station, a clinic or two, and of course, a church. This was the South and the South was a very religious place. I looked to the east of town and saw a group of buildings close together like a small military complex. One of the buildings was two stories and the others were one. From this distance it all looked expensive. A shiny, swirling barbed wire fence surrounded the place like a prison fence. It created an impressive quarantine perimeter around the complex.
I said, “Hank, what is that compound across the lake? It looks like a prison.”
Hank raised his hand above his eyes like he was saluting. He used it to block out the sunlight and then he squinted to see across the lake.
He said, “No. Dat’s da Eckhart Medical Center. It’s a research complex or somedin’. It’s one of da only other economies here. Da biggest group of da townsfolk make deir money from tourism and fishing. I would say about 15 percent of da town works for da Eckhart Medical Center or get deir business from dere.”
“Why the prison fence around it?”
Hank squinted again and asked, “How da hell are ya seeing dat detail? Dat fence is so tiny from here. I can’t even tell what it is fer sure.”
“I have perfect vision. Perfect hearing. I always have.”
Hank said, “I think dat dey do research on animals dere or somedin’. Dey don’t want any escapin’ or any environmentalists breakin’ in. I’ve heard dat dey’ve had problems with activists in da past.”
He’d whistled every “s.”
I said, “Big fence. What kind of animals do they have in their? Bears?”
“I never really dought about it before.”
I shrugged. A moment of silence fell between us and then I stood up. My legs had fallen asleep from sitting Indian style. I shook one and then the other, trying to get the blood circulating again.
I looked down at Hank. He hadn’t noticed that I had stood up until he saw that my giant shadow cast over him like an incoming predator. He stared directly up at me with his head completely cocked back.
He said, “Are ya leavin’ us?”
I nodded and said, “Thank you so much for the ride and a place to crash for the night, but I’d better be on my way.”
He put his fishing rod back down in the crack between two boards and stood up. He extended his hand for a handshake and smiled warmly.
He said, “Good luck, son. Come back if ya need a place ta stay tanight.”
I shook his hand, tried not to crush it, and thanked him. I turned and looked at the back of the lake house.
I could walk around the side of the house, take the road back to the fork, and walk into town along the road, but I decided to take the jogging path that Sheldon had run along. It looked like it snaked all the way around the lake. This route had two bonuses that I could see. It was scenic, following the lake, and there was a chance that Sheldon would turn around and run back this way, in which case I could see her again. So I walked and left Hank, Link, and the lake house thinking that I would never see any of them again.
Part of me wishes that that had been true.
Chapter 7
I walked for 44 minutes along the jogging path, following the same winding route and the same direction that Sheldon had taken before she vanished into the forest of pines. It took me 44 minutes to make it around Jarvis Lake to the edge of town.
I reached the outskirts at around 8:30 in the morning and I was hungry. I hadn’t even thought that if I had stayed with Hank for another hour he would have probably cooked us some breakfast. Old grandpa types were like that. At least that was what I had always believed. My grandpa had died long before I was born.
She had followed in her father’s footsteps and now I was following in mine.
I sighed and thought, What the hell am I doing?
What am I supposed to do when I find Jack Reacher anyway?
I paused from walking and took a break without even realizing it. My feet stopped and I stood there on the outskirts of town.
I looked around, half buried in my thoughts.
The jogging path had led me into a clearing that merged with the road that headed into town. The track, here neatly made with a fresh synthetic material that looked like sawdust, became a part of a paved sidewalk that paralleled the town’s main street.
I shook off the thoughts of my father and of Hank’s cooking trout and made up my mind to get a good solid breakfast. I had plenty of money in my bank account and a town, no matter where it was in the United States, was bound to have restaurants, cafés, and fast-food joints. Eateries were as American as apple pie. I didn’t imagine that there was a town anywhere that didn’t have a place where you could get a good hearty breakfast. Especially small towns. Small towns relied on tourism. They relied on outsiders to come in and pump cash into the local economy.
Black Rock was a fishing town, so it relied heavily on the lake to generate income. Naturally it would have seafood restaurants and a diner or two.
I decided to stop for breakfast and then shop for new clothes and a cell phone charger. I walked into town and noticed a lot of out-of-towners, definitely tourists and vacationers. They were mostly older, white men and mostly from Mississippi or Alabama or Louisiana or Tennessee or Georgia; the accents that I had hated to hear in movies were prevalent here among the diner customers. They drove around in big, fuel-guzzling pickups and wore polo shirts, sunglasses, and ball caps. They all had beer guts and tan lines. They were the faces of the Southern fishermen with money to spend.
Black Rock prospered on their money. So I knew that there would be some good Southern cooking here.
I walked into the heart of town. The traffic was moderate and everyone seemed to already be awake.
I walked on underneath streetlights and past a tiny florist shop with an awning shaped like a giant rose petal over the door, an ice cream shop that hadn’t opened yet, and a bakery that smelled of fresh beignets. I moved beyond the town’s municipal buildings. I saw a courthouse with a sign out front that read:
Public Safety Complex
It looked like the town had housed all of its public safety services under one roof. The courthouse was obviously here. In front of the building there were a couple cop cars parked in the lot. In the rear, under a standalone carport there was a fire truck, a shiny, old red thing that looked to be about 30 years old. But the city had taken good care of it like it was more of a spokesman rather than a functional fire vehicle.
I guessed that they didn’t get a lot of use out of it. They must have washed it constantly. They probably visited the local school and allowed the kids to hang on it for pictures. The kids probably took turns ringing the siren. It might have been the only time anyone ever heard the damn thing.
Black Rock so far had portrayed itself as a quiet town. Any ruckus in the area probably took place on the lake.
I looked back at the cop cars, studied them briefly. It was a pair of Dodge Intrepids. They were old, maybe 10 years, but like the fire truck, they were well maintained.
The Dodge Intrepid was not an uncommon vehicle to be used by police departments. Of course the Ford Crown Vic was more common, but for a small town like this, bud
get was everything. The Dodge Intrepid police package was probably lighter on the city’s budget, and the fact that they didn’t have a lot of ground to cover made it viable to keep the same cars for 10 years. I was sure that it was equally important to keep them in proper working order.
I left the Public Safety Building and walked around the town a bit longer. I decided to not stop for breakfast for at least another half an hour. I wanted to scan the town for all the options that it had to offer. Plus I wanted to plan out my day, so I ventured on.
Cars and trucks drove past me in a kind of slow speed like the drivers were all intrigued by the giant stranger who walked among them.
As I walked I discovered that the town had at least three different kinds of Christian churches. I saw no other religious house of worship to speak of. There were no synagogues, no temples, and no shrines. I wasn’t surprised. The South was not known for being tolerant of other religions outside of Christianity. Even then, the South was not very tolerant of too many denominations of Christianity.
Although, in my experience the South was far more open to pluralism than its reputation told. I had grown up with other kids who had gay parents or were gay themselves. I knew black kids, white kids, Asian kids, and Hispanic kids. I grew up in a small town not unlike Black Rock.
I imagined that not all of the different people who lived in Carter Crossing had been Christian. We had Jewish people, atheists, and even a Buddhist family. No one in the town ever protested any of those beliefs. It never caused any friction, no wars, no feuds. Everyone had gotten along fine, but I never saw a building of worship that wasn’t a Christian church. I’m sure that there were some in places like Jackson or Biloxi, but not in Carter Crossing and probably not in Black Rock.
Still, something about this town felt different to me. Something was missing and it was eating away at the smallest part of my brain like a pilot fish swimming close to the great white shark, cleaning it by nipping away at the small parasites that festered on its sandpaper skin. I was the shark and this small something was nipping at me like a pilot fish, only I couldn’t tell what it was.
