At the end of the hall, Jimbo sees the automatic door to the parking deck and a sign he can’t read until he gets closer: NICU.
Alphabet code for everything. Just before the door is an alcove and another door with a large window. A pair of colored scrubs hurries down the hall, into a bathroom. There’s a metal cart by the door like the one Jimbo uses in the shop. This one has a plastic bin on top and is filled with pink-striped blankets. Everything around it smells sweet and clean. A sound rises that resonates somewhere deep in his bones. Jimbo reaches into the cart, scoops up the bundle, and walks through the automatic door.
Part II
Your Cheatin’ Heart
The Price of Indulgence
by Carolyn Haines
Downtown Mobile
The fishy smell of Mobile Bay came through the open car window. Jackie watched the sun come up, casting gold shimmers on the light chop. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of the old blue Plymouth Fury, listening to the radio and waiting. The local AM country station was filled with static and aggravation, but soon the Salvation Radio Hour would be on. Brother Fred March preached the fiery word of the Lord and offered to save sinners who bought his prayer cloths or blessed water. Stupid suckers.
Jackie sank deeper into the bench seat, shifting to avoid a spring. She lit a cigarette and let the smoke roll out of her mouth. She’d never learned to make smoke rings.
“Hey, you alive?”
She sat up taller and caught the image of the big man in her side mirror. Merle Boykin, one of her best customers.
“More alive than you want to mess with.” She opened the car door and got out.
“You a feisty thing.” Merle looked her up and down, lazy and deliberately offensive. “Like those cutoff jeans.”
“If you had gunpowder for brains, you couldn’t even blow your nose.” She brushed past him and opened the trunk. “There it is. You carry it inside if you want it. I’m not your pack mule.”
“Girl, your good looks take you only so far. Push a little harder and see what you get.”
Jackie grinned. “Try your luck, asshole.”
Merle turned his attention to the gallon glass jugs in the trunk. He lifted one and looked through the clear liquid. “You ain’t got your daddy’s manners but you inherited his touch with a still. Never knew a girl could cook mash like you.”
“You want it, haul it out of my trunk after I have the money.”
Merle counted out the bills in twenties. He handed her the cash and then lifted the moonshine out of the trunk. He made eight trips to the ramshackle building that sold bait, fishing gear, rented boats, and also offered white lightning to trusted customers. Jackie leaned against the side of the car and watched him work.
“Your daddy always helped carry it in,” Merle said as he hefted two more gallons.
“My daddy was a good man. He died about thirty yards from where I’m standing. Being good didn’t matter a bit to the man who shot him.”
Merle shook his head. “That eats at you long enough, you’re gonna be shittin’ in a bag.”
“Thanks for the medical advice.” She slammed the trunk. The rear of the car still sank low to the white shells of the parking lot.
“Jackie, there’s no undoing what happened to your daddy. I don’t know who shot him, and fact is, I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. You gone get yourself hurt. There’re mean and powerful people out there. They’ll shoot you too.”
“If I thought you knew, I’d see that you told me.”
Merle slammed the trunk hard. “See you in a week.”
“My date with destiny.” She got behind the wheel, closed the door, and spun out onto the two lanes of the causeway that connected Mobile and Baldwin counties. The bay ruffled on her left, and the marshlands and rivers on her right. In ten minutes, she was cutting under the Mobile River via Bankhead Tunnel, a span of roadway that made her feel like she was in the belly of a snake. When she shot up into the light and sun again, she was in downtown Mobile.
She snapped the radio back on.
“God offers sinners the perfect miracle, absolute redemption. Even those who have died and are moldering in the ground, awaiting Judgment Day, can be helped. God wants to love and forgive. I can intercede with God on behalf of those you love, those awaiting final judgment, those who will live eternally in the fiery lake of hell if you don’t take action. Cash, check, or money order will do. Don’t let the flames of damnation lick the flesh of those you love. Send twenty-five dollars right now and the name of the person I need to pray for. God hears me, and He listens. Let me save the ones you love from eternal hellfire.”
The city had begun to awaken as she drove past the businesses and houses, many sporting evidence of the long occupation of the city by the French and Spanish. Wrought-iron balconies, stucco, windows that opened wide and were used as doors, the patio entrances that led back to what had once been stables and elegant bricked courtyards. This was Mobile, all shaded by the monster live oaks she loved.
When she passed the small, cinder-block AM radio station, WRED, she pulled to the curb and stopped. Brother Fred March was inside, doing his live radio show. She recognized his brand-new black Cadillac parked right at the front door. The morning deejay who ran the station was playing a gospel song, “Jesus Is Coming Soon” by the Oakridge Boys.
For the next half hour, she watched the squirrels run up the live oak trees and listened to Brother Fred.
“The Lord Jesus carries your sins every day. He can wash you clean and intercede for those who have gone before you. Here’s that address again. Cash, check, or money order and the name of the person I should pray for.”
The show always ended with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Before the song had even finished, the door of the radio station opened and Brother Fred stepped into the October sunlight. Tall with wide shoulders, he was a handsome man with his pomaded black hair. Before the ministry, he’d been a dock worker. Ten years of hard labor had given him a physical presence. Greed had given him the golden ticket of fleecing the desperate.
March lit a cigarette and a big diamond on his finger glinted. He didn’t even glance at the old Plymouth across the street.
Brother Fred wasn’t a very perceptive man, but to be on the safe side, Jackie had put on sunglasses and a scarf to hide her white-blond hair. She watched the radio evangelist pull hard on his cigarette and then flick the butt into the grass. He walked around the car and she took note of his fancy suit and cowboy boots. They were made of ostrich and cost a pretty penny, but God wanted him to have them. Brother Fred said so on the radio, and his flock had ponied up the bucks to buy them.
The evangelist left the radio station in a spray of gravel. Jackie waited a minute, then fell in behind him, heading west. The minister’s Cadillac cut through the October morning like God’s black missile. Brother Fred paid no heed to speed limits, which forced Jackie to do the same. When he turned into a new subdivision of brick ranch-style homes on the outskirts of Mobile, she passed the entrance, then returned, cruising until she found his car parked halfway behind a redbrick house with gray shutters. She brought the camera with a telephoto lens from the backseat just as March got out of the Caddy and knocked on the front door.
The woman who opened it wore a flimsy white negligee and a big red smile. March swept her into his arms and hurried inside, but not before Jackie had half a dozen photos.