Tom looked at the phone on his desk. “I didn’t hear it ring.”
Melba squinted in puzzlement. “You didn’t?”
Over the years, so many thousands of patients had called Tom that he’d developed the ability to tune out the telephone altogether. “Lost in thought, I guess. Who is it?”
“He wouldn’t say. The caller ID said ‘pay phone,’ but all the man will say is that he served in Korea with you.”
Tom felt his heartbeat quicken.
“Thanks, Mel. I’ll take it.”
She hesitated, then went out. As soon as the door closed, he picked up the phone. “Walt?”
“You bet,” said a Texas drawl.
“Don’t say anything until my nurse hangs up.”
They waited for the click of the receiver. Tom had e-mailed Walt Garrity a few hours earlier, instructing the old Texas Ranger to call him at home using a pay phone.
There was a clatter in Tom’s left ear, then Melba said, “Dr. Cage? Have you got it?”
“I’ve got it,” he said, waiting for the click.
It was slow in coming, but at last it did. “Okay, Walt.”
“Jeez, pardner. Could you make it any harder on a fella?”
“What do you mean?”
“You just about can’t find a pay phone these days.”
“Sorry.”
The old Ranger chuckled. “I finally found one in the lobby of a hotel. I think mostly hookers and drug dealers use it. Anyway, what’s going on? Not your ticker again, is it?”
“No. This is worse.”
“Shit. Fire away.”
“I’m in trouble, buddy. I need help.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“The law.”
Garrity took a moment to process this. “That sounds like your son’s line of country.”
“Normally, it would be. But I have to keep Penn out of this. This is … different.”
“Different how?”
“This is like Korea.”
“Which part?”
Tom hesitated, wishing he didn’t have to raise any ghosts for Garrity. “Like the ambulance.”
“Oh, God. How do you mean?”
“Similar situation.”
This time the silence dragged for a long time. “I think I’ve got you. Tell me what you need.”
“I hate to ask this, Walt. I hate to ask you to leave Carmelita.” Garrity had found his true love late in life, a Mexican woman who put up with nothing but took wonderful care of him. “But I need you to come to Natchez.”
“Keep talking.”
“I may be in custody soon. Probably not tonight, but possibly as early as tomorrow. If that happens, I’m going to need you on the outside, doing what I can’t from jail.”
“I hear you.”
“This could be dangerous. I won’t lie to you.”
“Imagine that,” said the Ranger.
“Before you say yes, I want you to know—”
“I’ll tell you what I know, Corpsman Cage. Medics stick together. Right? Whatever you need, you’ve got it. You know that.”
Tom felt an unexpected rush of emotion. “Thanks, buddy.”
“Can you be more specific about your situation?”
“Not on the phone. Let’s just say I’ve got a target painted on my back.”
“Just like that ol’ red cross in the snow, huh?”
“Yep. A lot like that.”
“What goes around comes around, I reckon.”
“Walt—”
“Put a sock in it, Corpsman. Remember what we told the wounded. ‘Lie still. Play dead. Help’s a-comin’.’ I’ll be there tomorrow, if not sooner.”
The connection went dead.
Tom raised his arm and wiped tears from his eyes for the second time that day.
CHAPTER 17
MY KNOWLEDGE OF FERRIDAY, Louisiana, is so limited that I only recently realized that the town lies within Concordia Parish. I always thought the Concordia Beacon was printed in Vidalia, the little town just across the river from Natchez. I’d never confess this to Henry Sexton, of course. The man has done some amazing journalism from this farming village. I won’t be surprised if Henry brings a Pulitzer back to Ferriday someday, if only he lives long enough to accept it.
Dusk is falling as I roll into the town proper, its main drag a hodgepodge of gas stations, convenience stores, and small repair shops. The newest-looking building in sight is a Kentucky Fried Chicken. For most of my life, I thought of Ferriday only as a town I had to pass through to get to Lake St. John. During the Urban Cowboy craze, I’d hear it mentioned as the birthplace of Mickey Gilley, and later as that of Jimmy Swaggart. Both men are cultural footnotes now, and favorite son General Claire Chennault is as unfamiliar to anyone under fifty as the crank telephone. It’s local boy Jerry Lee Lewis—the Killer, by his own proclamation—who wrote his name in the brightest lights on the world’s stage. Jerry Lee may have tarnished his legacy by marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin (something that wouldn’t have shocked the homefolks nearly so much as it did the London reporters who first broke the story), but John Lennon kissed his feet twenty years later, and the Killer is still going strong. My clearest memory of Ferriday is driving over to sit in the decaying old Arcade theater in 1978, because unlike Natchez’s conservative theaters, the Arcade was showing Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. To this day, I believe the Arcade owners booked the film because they thought it was a movie about deer hunting, not Vietnam.
The Concordia Beacon is housed in a shockingly small building on the north edge of town. No bigger than a successful dentist’s office, it stands at the border of an empty cotton field that stretches off toward a distant tree line. The sickly sweet smell of some chemical poison rides the chilly breeze as I get out and walk to the glass front door.
I hold my breath until I get inside.
A woman of sixty-five stands behind a high receptionist’s desk, her hair done in a style that would have looked fashionable in the late 1950s. She looks as though she’s gathering up her things to leave. I hear a radio playing in the back, but when the woman calls “Henry?” over her shoulder, the music stops.
“Send him on back!” comes the reply. Then the music starts up again.