“No kidding?” Tanner said to her. “You’ve never had a drink in your life?”
“Never,” Hannah slurred. She was light-headed and giddy, already drunk. “Not a single one single time.”
Mooney raised his glass.
“To virgins,” he said. “God bless them every one.”
The entire group laughed, but instead of joining them, Hannah began to sulk. As the alcohol clouded her judgment and dislodged her self-control, she began to grow angry. She wasn’t a prude, after all. She just couldn’t face the thought of a man discovering her reconstructed breast. He would ask questions and jostle rusty memories of death and sorrow. How dare Mr. Mooney make fun of her.
Hannah drained the third glass of vodka and slammed her glass down on the table.
“I am a virgin, you know!” she yelled drunkenly into Mooney’s ear. The rest of the group immediately went silent. “A real virgin! And I don’t appreciate you laughing at me!”
37
Jack Dillard hustled along West End Avenue toward his dorm room in the semidarkness. It was nearly eight p.m. in Nashville, and he felt a constant rush of wind as the traffic roared past. His backpack was weighted down with textbooks and a twenty-pound plate he’d stuck inside. The extra weight pushed him, made him leaner and stronger.
Jack had been at Vanderbilt for three years now. When he arrived, he weighed two hundred thirty pounds and thought he was strong. Now, at two hundred fifteen pounds, he was stronger than ever, a walking piece of granite. Arkansas was coming in for a three-game series this weekend, and Jack briefly visualized smashing an inside fastball over the green monster in left field. He smiled to himself. He’d done it before. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he’d do it again.
Jack’s mind drifted to the paper he had to write later that night-five pages on biological anthropology. He intended to write about the difference between the evolution of man and the evolution of apes. Many people thought men evolved from apes. They were wrong. As he pondered his thesis sentence, Jack wondered how many papers he’d written at Vanderbilt. At least a hundred, he decided. The professors were all about being able to express yourself in writing.
Jack was sore and tired, but he was used to it. Vandy was a demanding place, and his baseball coach was a drill sergeant. His days were often twelve, fourteen hours. He was up early and off to class until noon. On game days, he’d be at the field right after lunch, hitting in the cages, throwing, shagging fly balls, lifting weights. After a two-hour warm-up, he’d play a three- or four-hour game, then do maintenance work on the field, take a shower, grab something to eat, and then study, study, study. Off days were just as strenuous, probably more so, because that’s when the team conditioned, and the sessions were brutaclass="underline" weight lifting, plyometrics, sprint work, endurance work. It was a never-ending assault on the mind and body. Free time was for nonathletes. Free time was for pussies.
Something ahead caught Jack’s eye. A man was leaning against a tree just inside the wrought-iron fence that separated the campus from the street. Jack wasn’t close enough to recognize him, but the man appeared to be watching him. As Jack approached, the figure slipped behind the tree and disappeared.
Jack walked past the spot and looked closely at where the man had been standing. There was a hemlock hedge to the right of the tree, and it appeared he had walked behind it. Maybe the guy was a student and had just walked outside the dorm for a smoke. Jack kept walking. Because of his size and strength, mugging had never been a concern, at Vandy or anywhere else, but as he pushed on down the street, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, maybe even followed.
Jack turned right onto the circle that surrounded the statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt. He looked over his shoulder. The lighting here was poor; if someone was going to attack him, this would be the best place. He lengthened his stride and veered off the circle onto the sidewalk that led toward the Hemingway Quad. As he passed a low wall of shrubbery, he caught a quick glimpse of someone moving quickly. He was suddenly knocked off balance as the figure jumped on his back and tried to get him in a choke hold.
Jack quickly gathered himself and dropped to his left knee. He instinctively tugged the attacker’s right shoulder forward with his left hand and jerked his upper body hard, downward and to his left. It was a judo throw his father had shown him years ago. Every time he’d used it when wrestling with teammates or challengers from the dorm, it had worked, and this was no different. His attacker flew over his shoulder and landed with a thud on his back. Jack quickly straddled him and was just about to unload on him with his fist, when he heard a familiar laugh. He stopped and looked closely at the face.
“Damn you, T-bone!” Jack yelled as he rose to his feet. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“What’s up, Hammer?” The person on the ground slowly climbed to his feet, and Jack found himself staring into the tired- looking, smiling face of Tommy Miller. “I should have known you’d use that judo crap on me.”
Jack hugged Tommy, and they shook hands. He loved Tommy like a brother. He was fun and easygoing, constantly joking. Jack had always found Tommy to be an honest and loyal friend. And he was a fierce competitor on the baseball field. Jack had faced him dozens of times in practice over the years. Tommy had a fastball in the low nineties, a wicked slider, and a changeup that had buckled Jack’s knees more than he cared to remember.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jack said.
“I’m in the wind, man. Let’s go get some coffee or something, and I’ll tell you about it.”
Jack knew Tommy was “in the wind.” His dad had called the night before and told him he’d been fired because he refused to try to persuade the grand jury to indict Tommy for murder. He said Tommy had run from the police in Durham and that his car had disappeared. He said Tommy would probably be indicted soon.
“The police are looking for you, T-bone.”
“Yeah, now I know how the runaway slaves felt.”
“Follow me.”
Jack led Tommy to a group of four picnic tables beneath an elm tree near the library. The tables were all vacant. Jack tossed his backpack beside him and sat down at the one nearest the tree. Tommy sat across from him.
“How’d you get here?”
Tommy’s Red Sox baseball cap was pulled low on his forehead. Jack noticed that his eyes kept darting around, watching everything. “I hitched a ride.”
“Why’d you run?”
“I was scared out of my mind. Mom told me they think I killed that judge.”
Jack tensed slightly. He didn’t want to ask the question, but he needed to.
“Did you?”
Tommy shook his head and let out a deep breath.
“I don’t even know where the guy lived,” Tommy said. “I went to Dad’s grave that night with a gallon of bourbon. I don’t drink very often, but I think I must have drunk the whole damned gallon, because the last thing I remember is sitting on the ground, leaning on the headstone, crying. I woke up in the backseat of my car around five the next morning. It was parked next to this little convenience store on Oakland, and I had no idea how I got there. I was so hungover, man. My head was splitting, and I felt like I was going to barf all over the place. Your house was a lot closer than mine, so I drove over there.”
“So you don’t remember anything you did?” Jack said. “You don’t remember driving to the convenience store?”
“No, and that’s the problem. That’s why I’m so scared of the cops. If they ask me what I was doing at such and such a time, I can’t tell them. Another thing that scares me is that Mom said whoever killed the judge burned him. I had freaking gasoline all over me when I woke up at the convenience store, and I don’t remember how it happened. I must have gotten gas somewhere, because my car was almost empty when I drove to the cemetery, and the next morning it was full.”