followed the same procedure on his return trip, this time erasing the marks as he went. The process reminded him of an old Irish joke: If you get there first, Paddy, chalk a mark on the door. If I get there first, I’ll rub it out. There seemed no practical reason for the marks; it was simply tradition, perhaps dating all the way back, through a long chain of night knockers, to reconstruction days.
Thanks to one of the part-time deputies, Tim found a decent place to stay. George Burkett told him that his mother had a small furnished apartment over her garage and she’d rent it to him cheap if he was interested. “Only two rooms, but pretty nice. My brother lived there a couple of years before he moved down to Florida. Caught on at that Universal theme park in Orlando. Makes a decent wage.”
“Good for him.”
“Yeah, but the prices they charge for things in Florida . . . whoo, out of sight. Got to warn you, Tim, if you take the place, you can’t play music loud late at night. Mom don’t like music. She didn’t even like Floyd’s banjo, which he could play like a house on fire. They used to argue about it something awful.”
“George, I’m rarely home at night.”
Officer Burkett—mid-twenties, goodhearted and cheerful, not overburdened with native intelligence—brightened at this. “Right, forgot about that. Anyway, there’s a little Carrier up there, not much, but it keeps the place cool enough so you can sleep—Floyd could, at least. You indrested?”
Tim was, and although the window-shaker unit really wasn’t up to much, the bed was comfortable, the living room was cozy, and the shower didn’t drip. The kitchen was nothing but a microwave and a hotplate, but he was taking most of his meals at Bev’s Eatery anyway, so that was all right. And the rent couldn’t be beat: seventy a week. George had described his mother as something of a dragon, but Mrs. Burkett turned out to be a good old soul with a southern drawl so thick he could only understand half of what she said. Sometimes she left a piece of cornbread or a slice of cake wrapped in waxed paper outside his door. It was like having a Dixie elf for a landlady.
Norbert Hollister, the rat-faced motel owner, had been right about DuPray Storage & Warehousing; they were chronically short-staffed and always hiring. Tim guessed that in places where the work was manual labor recompensed by the smallest per-hour wage allowed by law (in South Carolina, that came to seven and a quarter an hour), high turnover was typical. He went to see the foreman, Val Jarrett, who was willing to put him on for three hours a day, starting at eight in the morning. That gave Tim time to get cleaned up and eat a meal after he finished his night knocker shift. And so, in addition to his nocturnal duties, he once more found himself loading and unloading.
The way of the world, he told himself. The way of the world. And just for now.
11
As his time in the little southern town passed, Tim Jamieson fell into a soothing routine. He had no intention of staying in DuPray for the rest of his life, but he could see himself still hanging around at Christmas (perhaps putting up a tiny artificial tree in his tiny over-the-garage apartment), maybe even until next summer. It was no cultural oasis, and he understood why the kids were mostly wild to escape its monochrome boringness, but Tim luxuriated in it. He was sure that would change in time, but for now it was okay.
Up at six in the evening; dinner at Bev’s, sometimes alone, sometimes with one of the deputies; night knocker tours for the next seven hours; breakfast at Bev’s; running a forklift at DuPray Storage & Warehousing until eleven; a sandwich and a Coke or sweet tea for lunch in the shade of the rail depot; back to Mrs. Burkett’s; sleep until six. On his days off, he sometimes slept for twelve hours at a stretch. He read legal thrillers by John Grisham and the entire Song of Ice and Fire series. He was a big fan of Tyrion Lannister. Tim knew there was a TV show based on the Martin books, but felt no need to watch it; his imagination provided all the dragons he needed.
As a cop, he had become familiar with Sarasota’s night side, as different from that vacation town’s surf-and-sun days