It would be six kinds of rude to ask, so I haven’t, but I think Sam’s around forty years old. Those ravines that run from his nose to his lips, I’ve noticed that’s about the age they begin appearing on somebody’s face even if they aren’t prone to smiling all that much. His nose is beaked. His eyes are the color of hazelnuts and like the Zulus in the National Geographic magazine, he wears his hair bushy, not oiled. He dresses a whole lot better, but the rest of him takes after his mother in looks, except for skin color. Nobody knows who Sam’s father is except for Blind Beezy and she’s not telling. I know that it wasn’t Carl Bell. (Thank the Lord. I’ve seen pictures of him. The man looked like he got dropped off a bridge at dawn and nobody bothered picking him up ’til dusk.)
“How are you, Shen?” Sam asks, still working on the glove. From spending sixteen years up North, most of Sam’s Southern drawl has faded away, but you can hear it coming out on some words. And it’s not only how he sounds. It’s what he says. He always treats us like we’re on the same playing field. His kind voice made me uncomfortable at first. Like maybe Sam wasn’t very manly. A little too up on his toes, if you know what I mean. I’m used to him now.
“I been better, Sam,” I say, getting comfortable next to his calico named Wrigley, who’s named not after the gum, but a baseball field in Chicago, Illinois. Even if I didn’t tell you that somebody tossed him out of a fast moving car, that’s immediately what you’d think upon seeing this cat.
“Did you happen to see those shooting stars last night?” Sam asks, looking up like they might’ve left a scorch mark on this afternoon’s cottony sky.
“I certainly did.”
“Did you make a wish or two?”
“I certainly did not.”
“Why’s that?”
“You know why.” Wishes. Bah. “So I been thinkin’.”
“A portent of doom if ever there was one.” Sam shakes a couple of lemon drops out of the box that he keeps in his shirt pocket, places one in Woody’s cupped hand and wiggles the box at E. J., who, of course, accepts. “Care for one?” he asks me.
“No, thank you, and kindly quit trying to distract me.”
He tosses one of the lemon drops up in the air the way you do peanuts. “What’s giving your bounteous brain such a workout that you don’t have time to enjoy the finer things in life?”
“Well, amongst other things,” I say, looking past him at my sister, “Papa is threatening to send Woody away because she won’t talk.”
Sam jerks his head up and gives me a long, lingering look, like he wants to tell me something, but he doesn’t. That’s another of the qualities I really appreciate about him. He isn’t getting ready to say, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” He knows that spouting that kind of hooey doesn’t make you feel better at all.
“And Beezy told me this morning that she believes that I might be takin’ too big a bite out of this rescuing-Mama idea,” I say. “She thinks I could use somebody to help me out. You know anybody like that? I can pay. Been beatin’ the snot out of Mr. Jackson and Louise in five card.”
“Son, would you mind bringing me that bar of candy that’s sitting on my desk?” Sam says to E. J.
See that? Just like Beezy, Sam is excellent at changing directions whenever the subject of my mama comes up. I have hinted and hinted, but he hasn’t yet offered to apply his detecting skills to find her. He’s a generous soul, so I don’t think he’s being withholding. No, it’s a combination of perfectly good reasons that he’s not stepping into the batter’s box.
I believe Sam lost some confidence after his partner get shot dead right before his eyes. A bad guy, whose name I’m sure was Stumpy or The Maggot or something simply awful like that, ambushed Johnny Sardino, who was Sam’s police partner and best friend. How that killing creep managed to get out on bail I can’t imagine, but the police found him dead two days later in a Decatur alley. It took some time to identify The Maggot because his face had been beaten to a pulp, but when the cops finally figured out who it was, the shadow of suspicion immediately fell upon Detective Sam Moody. Charges were pressed against him, but on account of what is known in legal circles as insufficient evidence, Sam got off. But not entirely so. His chief called him into his office and explained to him that even though he would be sorely missed by one and all, he thought it would be for the best if Sam took an early retirement. (He doesn’t know that I know this. I pried this out of Beezy.) Grampa lectures that “revenge is a dish best served cold,” but just like almost everything else he says, I disagree. When the wrong is still piping hot, when your blood is still on the boil, that’s the best time to serve revenge up. I believe that’s what Sam thinks, too. That’s not even taking into consideration his breeding. His mother knocked off her husband, didn’t she? So I completely understand if Sam committed that justifiable homicide, but I get scared that the police up in Decatur might not feel the same way. They might discover new evidence in the death of Stumpy or The Maggot and come looking for Sam. I know how unrelenting officers of the law can be.
“Here ya go,” E. J. says, coming out of the station office with the Baby Ruth in hand. He winds up and tosses it to Sam, who catches it one-handed.
“You know, now that I see this chocolate up close, I just recalled I need to lose a few pounds,” Sam says, throwing the bar back to E. J. “Go ahead and eat that temptation for me, will you?” (What he’s really doing here is being considerate of E. J.’s always-complaining stomach. Sam does not at all run on the chunky side. He’s built like a Popsicle stick. Arms and legs just dripping.) “That reminds me. Did you know that in the 1918 World Series the Babe-”
I interrupt him with, “Pardon me?” Sam pitched for a few seasons in the Appalachian League and once Number Eight gets onto the subject of baseball, he can go on and on about who hit this and who caught that. Babe Ruth’s not his favorite player, though. I try to make sure never ever to say the word Jackie or Robinson or Brooklyn or Dodgers in any conversation or I’ll never get another word in edgewise. “The help?”
Sam gives me the kind of look a pitcher gives a batter when he’s deciding if he’s going to throw a fastball or a screwball. He says, “I ran into the sheriff this morning.”
He settled on the screwball.
“No kiddin’,” I say, not excited. I have suspected for some time that the sheriff is not on the up-and-up. I think Papa wrote Sheriff Nash a nice fat check for his Be-handy-Vote-for-Andy campaign. Sam doesn’t agree with me. He thinks Sheriff Nash is “doing the best he can given the circumstances.” I have seen the two of them now and again chatting away. It’s because they’re both cops that Sam likes Nash. Not me. The sheriff never did find Mama. The man couldn’t locate ants at a picnic. “Did you get anything out of him about Mama’s missing?”
“He’s not at liberty to discuss it,” Sam says.
Figured as much. I know the Eleventh Commandment-What goes on with the Carmodys is nobody’s business-just as well as I know the other ten. By heart.
Noticing, Sam points at my wrist and says, “You’re wearing Evie’s watch.”
I hold up my hand so the sun can catch it. “I know you told me to be careful, but… you don’t really mind, do you?”
I let him know right off when I found it last month by the old well. I went straightaway to his place. Sam was down by the creek fishing. “Look what I found!” I said, running up. “It’s the watch you gave Mama and it’s still running!” Since I was feeling like a month of Sundays, I was expecting a much livelier response out of Sam, but the air just went out of him like he’d sprung a leak. I hadn’t considered how seeing the watch might upset him, until I realized that if I gave someone a present nice as this one, I’d expect them to hold it dear. I’d feel that same way if I let myself wonder if Mama ran off and left me and Woody behind.