“Anyhow,” I resumed, “I’ve been thinking about your thesis, and I think you need a different research project.”
“What? I’ve spent weeks—months—looking at pubic bones. I’ve looked at hundreds of pubic bones. Maybe a thousand pubic bones.”
“But wouldn’t you rather do something important?”
“You said the pubic-bone study was important, Dr. B.”
“It is. But not as important as this.”
“As what? Never mind—I don’t want to know.”
“Everybody studies pubic bones,” I said. “I’m talking about seminal research, Tyler.”
“You want me to research semen? I’m supposed to write a thesis about spunk?”
“Don’t be so literal. Or so argumentative. This research will be unique. Original. A pioneering contribution.”
“Dammit!” He swatted the back of his neck.
“You need to quit killing the flies, Tyler,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because they’re your new best friends. The stars of your new thesis project.”
“What new thesis project? You keep dropping these veiled hints,” he grumbled. “Veiled threats. Just spit it out, Dr. B.”
“The first detailed study of insect activity in human corpses,” I said. “Our first step toward basing time-since-death estimates on scientific data. One blowfly at a time.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re saying you want me to spend even more quality time out here, crawling around in pig shit?”
“Gathering data,” I said. “Advancing the cause of science.”
“And in your new vision, how much more time do I spend out here advancing the cause of science? How many data trips a day? This is a long damn way from the bone lab.” He had a point there, I had to admit. “Any chance you could get me a transporter beam, so I don’t spend four hours a day shuttling back and forth from campus?”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said, hoping it would prove true. My flash of nocturnal inspiration hadn’t extended to anything so mundane as transportation logistics.
In the darkness a few feet away, I heard the sound of one hand clapping—Tyler’s hand clapping against a fly on the back of his neck. Perhaps he had not yet fully grasped the brilliance of my new research plan. But he would. What choice, after all, did an indentured academic servant have?
CHAPTER 6
Crystal
CRYSTAL HEARD THE GROAN of the semi’s brakes close behind her, then the popping and skittering of gravel pinched by the edges of the tires, as a massive cab—no trailer—drew alongside her and stopped, the big pistons of the diesel knocking in its iron heart. The brakes hissed, causing her to jump. The truck was a long-hooded Peterbilt, which loomed over her like a locomotive; its small, divided windshield was shaded by a metal visor, jutting and ominous; the sleeper compartment, grafted behind the cab, looked half the size of Crystal’s house trailer.
Crystal took two more steps forward, into a band of shadow, to avoid being blinded by the sun as she looked up at the driver. The shadow, she realized, was cast by the Baptist Church’s giant cross, and for the first time in hundreds of comings and goings past it, Crystal was glad the cross was there, dispensing a bit of shade along with its monumental dose of disapproval.
The cross, the shade, and Crystal were thirty miles northwest of Knoxville, atop Jellico Mountain. Just beyond the point where I-75 finished its long, slanting climb up the mountain’s flank and leveled out, a handful of buildings clustered at Exit 141: a blue-roofed Comfort Inn; a Pilot truck stop; Redeemer Primitive Baptist Church; and—last but not least—Crystal’s place of employment, XXX Adult World. Adult World was the seamiest and the flashiest of the exit’s buildings: a neon-emblazoned establishment surmounted by a pair of billboards and ringed by a gravel lot capable of accommodating half a hundred tractor-trailer rigs at a time. For efficiency’s sake, Adult World ought to have shared a parking lot with the Pilot truck stop, since truckers constituted most of Adult World’s clientele—and since women like Crystal spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth between the two businesses. But irony had trumped efficiency in this case: The truck stop lay on the opposite side of the interstate, and Adult World instead sat cheek by jowl—or haunch to haunch—with Redeemer Primitive Baptist, a corrugated metal building whose five-story cross did double duty, inspiring multitudes of passing motorists while simultaneously rebuking Adult World’s lusty customers and fallen women.
“DIDN’T MEAN TO SCARE you.” The voice floated down from the cab toward Crystal. “You want a ride?”