In the Blood Read Free Page B

have something troubling occurring in my eye,” he said. “An affliction that’s been ongoing. I promise I’ll have an important statement within the week. One that will –”
    “What’s wrong with your eyes, sir?” a reporter called. “ Will it involve surgery?”
    “No, no…nothing so drastic. Thank you all for coming out on this momentous day.”
    “But, Reverend, surely you can –”
    Scaler held up his hand. Blinked. “I’ll speak soon. In fact, I am already speaking. When my words are in the light, they will ring from earth to sky. This I promise.”
    “I don’t understand, Reverend. You’re speaking and yet you’re not speaking? It doesn’t make sen —”
    But Scaler had already handed the microphone back to the assistant and resumed his look of distraction. Tutweiler cleared his throat and continued his platitudes. The camera cut to a reporter from a local affiliate, a sturdy young woman with the distinctly un-Southern name of Jonna Arnbjorg.
    “And that’s the news from the groundbreaking ceremony for the new library and dormitory at Kingdom College here in West Mobile. Most of today’s events featured Jeffords Tutweiler, Dean of the college, with only a few puzzling remarks from the often-controversial Reverend Richard Scaler, blaming an eye affliction for the uncharacteristic brevity of his input.”
    “If Scaler has an eye problem,” Harry groused, thumbing the TV off, “he got it from four decades of wearing blinders.”
    But, truth be told, Richard Scaler’s narrow field of vision appealed to a great many people. In a Bible Belt state like Alabama, few in office dared to challenge the uncompromising views of the Reverend Richard Scaler, knowing it could mean fast passage to another line of work.
    Outside the sun was rising and would soon transform the air to hot syrup and the sand to a griddle hot enough to sear the soles of your feet. A Dauphin Island copmobile was approaching, Jimmy Gentry’s face behind the wheel. He continued to the end of the street where the asphalt crumbled into the sand, exited and walked to the beach, hands in his pockets. He stood in the wet sand at the water’s edge and looked seaward.
    Harry and I wandered out. “S’up, Jimmy?” Harry called before Jimmy saw us approaching. “Expecting twins?”
    Jimmy dipped his finger in the foam of a broken wave and held it aloft in the breeze, discovering what my face had noted: a southwest wind, the basic rule this time of year. He plucked a foot-long piece of driftwood from the sand, a spar bleached by salt and sun. He chuckedit out a couple dozen yards, watched it bob eastward.
    “You know tides better than me, Carson,” he said. “Where you think the boat came from?”
    “West somewhere. If the boat was launched on an ebb tide, it would have floated out into the Gulf, reversed on the incoming. There’s a lateral drift because of current and the west wind.”
    Jimmy said, “Or the kid could have come from a boat way out on the water. Someone dropped her in the rowboat, kicked it away.”
    Jimmy’s words flashed pictures into my head. A blur of faces, one small and utterly helpless. A horizon of gray water in all directions. A tiny boat rocking alone on pitching waves.
    Though I’d seen every form of human cruelty and thought myself professionally inured to emotion, the pictures kicked the breath from my lungs. I felt my knees loosen and my eyes dampen at the thought of human hands placing a baby in a boat, human eyes watching it float away. I took a deep breath, blanked my mind of the images, and slipped my shades over wet eyes, as though the sun was bothersome. I turned back to my companions.
    “Coast Guard know anything?” Harry was asking Jimmy.
    “They’re gonna check suspicious-looking boats out on the water. But they figure anyone doing that kind of thing would be long gone.” Jimmyshook his head. “Of course, you guys would be zeroed-in on that kind of mentality.”
    Jimmy was referring