Page 20 of Hello, Summer
He pulled into the alley behind the station, then onto the street. He drove slowly around the square. It was deserted. When he passed the courthouse and the sheriff’s office, with the patrol car parked out front, he felt the inevitable ping of anxiety as he always did, but then he brushed it aside as he had earlier with the desiccated bug on the Corvette’s right rear bumper.
All the local cops knew him, joked with him at the ball games, gave him the inside scoop when there was a bad wreck or some actual news around town worth reporting. He’d stop by the sheriff’s office when he worked the afternoon shift, check out the incident reports, see if there was any news. He drank coffee with these guys, shot the shit with them. But he never let up his guard. Never.
Wariness wasn’t just a habit for him, it was a way of life. So he was watchful as he drove, as he passed the old abandoned mill and then the high school. God, he was glad school and, with it, baseball season were over. He hated sweating his balls off in the wooden press box, doing the play-by-play for a miserable hundred bucks a game. Still, that was money he’d miss until football season started up again in the fall. It was gas money, cigarette money, rent money. He’d need to line up some gigs for the summer, a prospect he dreaded. In the meantime, he’d keep working extra shifts at the station. Sleep? Who needed it?
Soon he was on the county road and clear of the Silver Bay city limits. Moonlight painted the pavement silver. He lowered the Vette’s windows and pressed down on the accelerator.
He was doing eighty now, and his carefully moussed and combed hair whipped about his narrow, angular face, but he didn’t care. He was Buddy Bright, Up All Night, a thing of his own creation.
He punched a button on the dashboard, and music poured from the speakers. He’d found a new station out of Tallahassee, run by collegekids at the university. It didn’t suck as much as the corporate-owned radio factories that had taken over the airwaves in the past decade. These little smart-asses played good music—some alt-rock, yeah, but their overnight deejay, a guy who called himself Cosmic, played the kind of headbanging heavy metal stuff he himself had played back in the day.
“Here’s a good-time tune for my man Buddy over on the Panhandle,” Cosmic said after a long, depressing set of Nirvana.
He cranked up the volume and thumped the steering wheel as Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away” blasted out of the speakers.
Before he knew it, he’d driven all the way out the causeway to the beach, slowing when he approached the bridge, because he knew the cops liked to lurk behind the now-darkened surf shop to ambush speeding teenagers.
The Vette cruised down to the end of the narrow island, to the tiny marina, and then he turned around, finally parking in the driveway of a house under construction. He got out, locked the car, and picked his way carefully through the construction debris and down to the edge of the dunes.
He stared out at the huge moon reflected in the calm waters of the Gulf, mesmerized as always, after all those years he’d spent in the Midwest, by the mere existence of such a seemingly endless body of water. For a minute, he thought about walking down onto the beach, but the idea was instantly rejected when he glanced down and remembered these were his favorite boots. Instead, he inhaled a lungful of salt air, releasing it slowly. This, he realized, was the only time he liked being at the beach. At night.
Back in the car, he cruised aimlessly, one arm resting on the windowsill, over the bridge, then out onto the county road, passing vast green farm fields, stands of timber, rows and rows of pine trees planted in military precision. He passed a sign alerting him that he’d crossed into Bronson County. The land was hillier here, the tree line thicker. This was quail country, he knew from countless nights traveling this same territory. He slowed, glimpsing moss-draped oak and pecan trees lining driveways half-hidden behind elaborate wrought iron gates set in brick walls.
The names of the plantations were all familiar now: Whileaway,Pinehaven, Folley, Buie’s Creek. He was startled at the presence of another car, pausing briefly at the gates of the plantation up ahead.
Oak Springs Farm, that was the one. As he watched, the gates swung open, and a gleaming black SUV bounced onto the highway, tires squealing as the car accelerated after hitting the pavement.
What the hell? He instantly recognized the car and the driver, an older man he sometimes encountered on his nocturnal ramblings.
The last time had been only a few weeks earlier. He’d walked into the Waffle House near the bypass and slumped onto a stool at the counter. It was past two, and he’d worked a double that day. A moment later, the door opened, and the man paused, then sat next to him. Not really a stranger. It had only taken a moment for Buddy to recognize the man, but he kept his cool.
The waitress knew Buddy, knew the older man too. She poured his coffee, then poised the pot over the empty mug on the counter.
“Y’all want some food?”
“Just coffee for me,” Buddy’d said.
But the stranger asked for grits. No bacon, no eggs, no toast, he’d said. “Just grits.”
Then he turned and gazed at his new companion. “Say that again?”
“What? Just coffee?”
The older man gave it some thought. “I know that voice from somewhere. From the radio, right?”
He’d nodded, stuck out his hand. “Buddy.”
The old guy snapped his fingers. “Up All Night with Buddy Bright.” He shook hands. “I’m, uh, Symmes. I’ve seen you in here a time or two before, right?”
“Now that you say it, yeah, I’ve seen you in here, but I’ve seen you someplace else too.”
“Maybe theWANTED—DEAD OR ALIVEposters at the post office?” The old dude chuckled at his own joke.
The waitress slid a steaming plate of grits with a melting pat of butter in the middle onto the counter. He lifted his fork, tasted, then sprinkled the grits liberally with salt and pepper.
“I got it,” Buddy said, laying it on thick. “You’re the politician. Senator Robinette. Am I right?”
“Representative Robinette,” Symmes said. “But let’s keep that just between us.”
