Page 5 of The River We Remember

“Maybe.” Brody stood up. “Once our coroner takes a look at him, we’ll know more.”

“What about Marta?”

“What about her?”

“When are you going to tell her?”

Brody looked up at the sky, a shattered blue among the boughs of the big cottonwoods overhead. “Soon,” he said.

For the most part, after that, both men held to silence and their own thoughts. It might seem odd, the casualness of these two as they kept company with the grisly remains. But war does something vile and irreparable to the human spirit, leaves thick scars on the soul. For Brody, however, there was another reason for silence. He was feeling a burning resentment because this was a place that had meant much to him, that was almost sacred in its way. On many occasions in his youth, this placid pool had offered him the beautiful nakedness of the only woman he’d ever loved. Now it felt to him desecrated, ruined by that damn Jimmy Quinn.

CHAPTER FOUR

FELIX KLEIN RETURNED to the Alabaster River with Deputy Asa Fielding and Doc Porter, who officially declared Quinn dead. Porter said he’d do the autopsy in the morning, then headed back to the festivities in Jewel. The remaining men zipped up Quinn’s corpse in a body bag, which they loaded in the back of Asa Fielding’s pickup and drove directly to Brown’s Funeral Home. Although it was Decoration Day, there was always someone at the funeral home, because, as Fred Brown was fond of saying, death never took a holiday.

Brown wasn’t there, but Alice, his wife, was, and she supplied Brody with a gurney. They got Quinn into one of the funeral home’s two prep rooms, where they slid him into the mortuary refrigerator to await the coroner’s examination. Quinn wasn’t alone in there.

“Who’s that?” Brody asked when Alice opened the door to the appliance and he saw another body bag on a lower shelf.

“Ruth Coffee.”

“Ruth?” Brody’s heart gave the kind of painful twist it never would over the death of Jimmy Quinn. “How?”

“The folks at River Haven called us. We brought her in a couple of hours ago. She died real peaceful in her rocking chair this morning. They thought she was napping, until they tried to wake her for lunch.”

“How come I wasn’t called?”

“We tried your office. No answer.”

Brody had known Ruth Coffee his whole life. She’d taught English forever at the high school in Jewel, and every kid in town passed through her classroom on the way to graduation. What Brody remembered best about his own time there was that she loved to read to her students from the classics and had a way of making even the most ancient of prose seem alive and relevant. It felt wrong to him that such a woman should have to reside in proximity to the monstrosity that had been Jimmy Quinn.

By the time Brody and the others returned to the jailhouse, the parade was long over and the festivities had moved to the park on the river. The town felt a little deserted.

Inside the jailhouse, Brody said, “I’ve got to lock you up, Felix.”

He walked the man back to his cell, but Felix paused before he entered it, turned to Brody, and said, “It’s my birthday today. I turned sixty.”

“I didn’t know that, Felix.”

“After Hannah died, I stopped caring. Didn’t seem much point to celebrating an empty life.”

Brody wasn’t sure he saw the point the man was trying to make.

“You know, I served in the Great War.”

“I know, Felix.”

“Every time I woke to a new day, I celebrated. That’s because I never expected to come back alive. Amazing how in the middle of hell something as simple as dawn can be the most beautiful thing imaginable. I’m thinking about Jimmy Quinn and that I never saw a smile on the man’s face. He had a wealth of blessings, but I never once saw him celebrate his life. And now he’s lost his chance. Makes me think it’s time I started celebrating again before it’s too late.”

“Hold on to that thought,” Brody said as he closed the cell door.

When he stepped back into the office, he found young Scott Madison talking with Asa Fielding and Sam Wicklow. Scott’s mother, Angie, one of the many war widows in Black Earth County, ran the Wagon Wheel Café. Because the county contracted with her to supply meals when someone was in lockup, fourteen-year-old Scott had become a regular visitor, dropping by with a tray of food or to check on what a prisoner might like. Brody had become fond of the kid, who spoke politely, stood up straight, and treated his elders with the respect people in Black Earth County expected from well-brought-up youths.

“Mom sent me over to see what Mr. Klein might like for supper,” Scott told Brody.

“Why don’t you ask him?”

When Brody brought Scott into the cellblock, Felix smiled and stood up from his cot. “What’s on the menu, son?”