Fifty-Four
I STEP INTO the kitchen to take the call, which doesn’t last long. Briar Crockett tells me why he’s calling. As soon as he invites me to breakfast the next morning at his house, I accept.
Helene Mayes walks with EJ and me to my truck, along with Taylor, now that we’ve finally called it a night.
“Crockett is like a dog who detects danger, Silas,” Helene says. “And when he looks at you right now, all he sees is danger. So watch what you say. And watch your own ass tomorrow.”
“He always has,” Tay says. “Way he was raised.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” I say.
“Duh,” Tay says.
Even before I’m out of my truck, I’m greeted by what could be the beginning of a charm offensive on the part of Briar Crockett. He’s waiting for me out in front of his house, flanked by his two little girls.
I remember Laurance Most telling me one time that the one mistake he tries not to make as an agent is believing his own material.
“Or believing my own bullshit, as the case may be,” Laurance had said.
I’m wondering, as I walk toward Briar Crockett, if he’s already there and has been there for a powerful long time.
“Well aware that you’ve met my sons, those two devils,” he says as a form of greeting. “Thought it was time you met my little angels. The taller one to my right, this here is Annabelle. Her little sister is Sarabeth. She’s the shy one.”
The girls dutifully take turns shaking my hand.
“This is daddy’s friend Silas Tucker,” their father says.
“They’re beautiful, Briar,” I say to him.
“By the grace of the Good Lord above and as you can plainly see,” he says, “they clearly favor their mother, who’s out back swimming the first of about a thousand laps.”
“Very nice to meet you, Mr. Tucker,” Annabelle says, right before she and her sister turn and run into the house.
“Didn’t you mention the last time I was here that they were at sleepaway camp?” I ask.
“They got homesick,” he says. “And gave their daddy yet another chance to spoil them rotten by bringing them home.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll understand someday if you have a daughter.”
“If that day ever comes,” I say, “I’m the one who’ll need grace from the Good Lord above.”
He walks us through the door now and back to his dining room. There is a long table in here, two places set at the far end, the one at the head of the table almost certainly for the lord of the manor.
There is also a man standing down there who looks to be at least a head taller than I am, and even wider. Shaved head, arms full of tattoos, a shade of skin that looks to be the color of mocha. He is holding a silver tray with a coffee pot on it, and two mugs.
“Silas, meet my man Maury,” Briar says. “He does a little bit of everything around here, including the cooking when called on to do that.”
I give Maury a small wave and say to Briar, “He looks like he could even bench-press me.”
“Only if I ask him nicely,” Briar says.
It turns out to be the kind of breakfast EJ whips up for me from time to time: buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup on the side, scrambled eggs with cheese melted on top, a stack of bacon nearly as tall as Maury, biscuits, grits, fresh-squeezed orange juice.
“I call a meal like this my Triple Bypass,” Briar says.
“Only a triple?” I ask.
Maury has poured coffee for us and brought out the food, having to make three or four trips back to the kitchen. Everything is as delicious as it looks and smells, as I expected it would be, Briar clearly putting it on big for me, for whatever his reasons and wherever we’re going with this.
He drinks some of his coffee, smacks his lips after he does.
“Jacu bird,” he says. “The coffee. Brazil’s finest and most expensive.”
I grin. “Guess I’m not at Scobee’s anymore.”
“No, sir, you’re not, not that you’ll get me to say anything bad about Miss Bess’s coffee,” Briar says. He shakes his head, smiling. “How about those girls of mine? I’m not ashamed to tell you they’ve made me a better man, Silas, even at this stage of my life.”
I tamp down the urge to ask if they’ve done the same for his no-account sons.
“‘The most potent moral force in her life,’” he says, “‘was the love of her father.’”
He juts out his chin at me, almost imperceptibly.
“Know who wrote that?” he asks.
“I do not.”
“Harper Lee,” he says. “That’s Scout talking in Go Set a Watchman. They sold it as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, but it turned out to have been more like a first draft of that book.”
“I remember reading the book,” I say. “I kind of liked it, maybe because it was about the alienation of somebody returning back home.”
Briar stares at me now. He’s wearing a long-sleeved polo shirt buttoned all the way up and tight, as if to show off the shape he’s still in. I’m just close enough to him to smell his aftershave.
“You feeling a little of that alienation?” he asks. “You being our town’s most favorite son, after all, and being back here the way you are?”
“Not at all,” I say. “I feel as connected to Cross Rivers as I ever have in my life.”
“You sure sounded angry at the stadium the other day,” Briar says. A tiny smile plays across his thin lips. “And that language at the end. Glad my baby girls weren’t there to hear it.”
I give him a long look now. “I know you were there. I saw you.”
“Know you did,” he says. “You may not choose to believe this, but I happen to be a concerned citizen, too. Why I was there.”
“Is that why I’m here?” I ask, figuring it’s time we got to it.
He takes his time, reaching down and, every movement precise, taking his cloth napkin off his lap and meticulously folding it next to his plate.
When he finally speaks again, his voice is even softer than normal, as if he’s just adjusted the volume.
“You’re here because I want to hire you,” he says.