The Devil’s Punchbowl. Greg Iles

‘All right,’ she says, cutting off further discussion. ‘Go get Timmy, please. You know what time it is. He’s going to start crying any second.’

      The kitchen is so small she can feel Tim nodding in the shadows. ‘Okay,’ he mumbles in surrender.

      Julia opens the bottle and touches some hot milk to the inside of her wrist. She knows what’s important.

       7

      I come awake swatting at my bedside table like a man battling a horsefly. According to the alarm clock, I got four hours of sleep. It’s all I can do to walk blindly into the shower and stand under scalding spray until my synapses seem to be firing normally. After making sure Annie is awake, I dress a little sharper than usual, since I have to spend at least two hours giving Hans Necker, the visiting CEO, a tour of sites for his recycling plant. Annie gives me a thumbs-up when I walk into the kitchen, a rare seal of approval for my day’s outfit. She’s eating cereal and some garlic cheese grits my mother made yesterday. I finish off the cheese grits, drink the cup of coffee Annie has made me, and follow her out to the car, so exhausted that I forget to glance into Caitlin’s driveway for a car.

      Annie is uncharacteristically quiet during the ride to St Stephen’s, but as we near the turn for the school, I discover why.

      ‘I dreamed about Caitlin last night,’ she says softly.

      ‘Did you?’ I wonder whether my daughter could have seen or heard something across the street that told her Caitlin might be in town.

      Annie nods with slow deliberation. As I watch her from the corner of my eye, it strikes me that the topless teenager serving beer in Tim’s photograph was probably only four years older than my daughter. This realization is freighted with such horror that I have to clear my throat and look away. Annie knows nothing of such things yet, or at least I hope she doesn’t. Right now one of her deepest concerns is the women in my life.

      ‘Have you ever dreamed about Caitlin before?’ I ask.

      ‘Yes. Not for a long time, though.’

      ‘What was last night’s dream about?’

      Annie keeps her eyes forward. ‘I don’t want to say.’

      Strange. ‘Why not? Was it scary?’

      ‘Not at first. But then it was, kind of.’

      Recalling my own nightmare of the ice field and the wolf, I turn into the school’s driveway and pull up to the door of the middle school building. ‘Sometimes things are less scary if you talk about them.’

      Annie looks at me with her mother’s eyes. ‘I just want to think about it for a while.’

      Her enigmatic expression tells me she’s already beyond my understanding. ‘You know what’s best for you, I guess.’

      She gets out and shoulders her backpack like a younger version of her babysitter, but as she walks through the big doors, I see her mother in every sway of her body. It’s moments like these–the most commonplace events–that hit me hardest, reminding me that widower is more than an archaic word. As my eleven-year-old disappears into the halls of the same school I attended at her age, I wish fervently that the woman who supplied the other half of Annie’s DNA could have lived to see who she’s becoming.

      ‘Baby girl,’ I whisper to the breath-fogged window, ‘Mama sees you.’

      In this affirmation lies a hope that I’ve never quite been able to sustain, yet still I continue to affirm it. I don’t believe Sarah sits in heaven looking benevolently down upon our daughter; but I do believe she survives within Annie–in her face, her voice, in her quick perception and even temperament. In my years with Caitlin, seeing these avatars of my wife in my daughter brought pleasure, not pain. But now, alone again, I find that each memory carries a sharp edge on its trailing side. Whatever brings you comfort can also bring you pain.

      I turn onto Highway 61 and force my thoughts to the business of the city, which takes more effort than I would have believed possible two years ago.

      Whoever said, ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ must have served as mayor of a small town. If there were ever a case of being punished with one’s dream, being elected mayor of Natchez is it. The mayor of a city like Houston has a certain amount of insulation from his electorate, which he can justify in the name of security. But when you’re mayor of a small town, every mother’s son believes your time is his, no matter where you are or what you might be doing. A call from a Fortune 500 company might be followed by an irate visit from a man whose neighbor’s goats keep eating his rosebushes. If you keep your sense of humor, you can tolerate these situations with equanimity, but I’ve been having difficulty maintaining mine for some time now.

      Today it’s neither goats nor roses, but a Minnesota millionaire with a bold–or possibly crazy–scheme to recycle waste from all the cities along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Hans Necker plans to gather aluminum, plastic, and paper refuse, compress it at collection points, then float the resulting cubes downstream on barges to a recycling facility at Greenville or Natchez or Baton Rouge–wherever he ultimately decides to locate his plant. One thing is sure: Katrina just scratched New Orleans off his short list. We have three potential sites for such a facility in Natchez, all close to one another. Despite this, Necker has chartered a helicopter to view them, as well as the city and its environs. Even the thought of spending hours bobbing and pitching over the city in a chopper gives me a mild case of airsickness, but what choice do I have? Hans Necker wants a sky tour from the mayor, so a sky tour he will get.

      Halfway to the airport, Paul Labry, one of the few selectman I consider a friend, texts me that Necker is running late. The CEO has already spent more time in Greenville than he’d expected to, and the selectmen are drawing all sorts of negative conclusions from this. I can’t get too stirred up about it. Compared to what I’d have to deal with if Tim Jessup were to uncover proof of his allegations, losing a possible recycling plant seems like small potatoes.

      With the jarring synchronicity I experience so often in life, my cell phone vibrates against my thigh. I take it out, expecting another update from Labry, but I find a text message from a number I don’t know. I don’t even recognize the area code. When I click READ, the words make my mouth go dry.

      Xing the Rubicon. Stay close to ur fon & n range of a tower. Don’t respond 2 this msg! Mrs Haley.

      ‘Shit,’ I whisper. Mrs Haley taught Tim Jessup and me Latin in the eighth grade. Crossing the Rubicon? What the hell is Tim playing at? I figured he’d wait at least a few days to try whatever it is he’s been planning. Doesn’t he understand how important this weekend is to the city? ‘Shit,’ I say again, unable to get my mind around the idea that Jessup could be committing any number of felonies at this moment, endangering both himself and the future of the casino industry in Mississippi.

      ‘Tim, you crazy son of a bitch,’ I mutter, and start to reply to his message with a warning. But before I hit SEND, caution wins out over anxiety, and I shove the phone deep into my pocket.

      Locking my car, I march out onto the tarmac where a few single-engine planes wait in lonely silence. There isn’t much to see at the airport. Natchez hasn’t had steady commercial service since the 1970s, when the oil business was booming and the DC-3s of Southern Airways flew in and out every day. I remember being led aboard one of the sturdy old planes by a pretty stewardess when my parents took my sister and me to London as children. I’ve always believed that trip generated my sister Jenny’s love of Britain, a love that eventually pulled her away from us for good. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the buffeting wind from the big propellers as they revved up to carry us to the Pan Am 747 waiting in New Orleans. Two slices of Americana gone forever.

      I need that prop wash this afternoon. Last night’s wind died this morning, and the sun blazes white over the runways, roasting me as I check the northern