Southern Cross Read Free Page B

to college,
when Danny wasn’t even sure he’d graduate.
    Casey
bumped her leg against his and he jolted back to the here and now. “How’re you
doin’, anyway?” she asked.
    He
shrugged.
    “After
Mama died, I didn’t feel much like talking for a couple months,” she said.
“Everybody was always on me, though: ‘You gotta talk about your feelings.’
Thought I’d go crazy, everybody hounding me so much.”
    Danny
nodded. “They want me to go see Ms. Guilford. Like talking to the guidance
counselor’s gonna help anything. I been dodging her so far, but I don’t know
how much longer I can do it.”
    “Just
get it over with,” Casey said. “Make up some shit about dealin’ with your
feelings, maybe talk about a dream, and she’ll get off your back. Otherwise,
you’ll just spend the rest of the year on the run.”
    “Okay,”
he agreed. Casey’s mother died in a car accident a couple years back. This
whole thing was old hat for her.
    Another
branch cracked down below—this one right under the treehouse.
    “Dangit,
Ida, leave me be for two seconds, would you?” Danny hollered down.
    Casey
poked her head down the hatch. “There ain’t a soul down there. Weed’s makin’
you paranoid.”
    Danny
shook his head, his shaggy hair flopping in his eyes. For the first time, he
felt a little clutch of fear. Casey kept her leg against his, jostling it a
little like she knew he needed the reminder: they were okay.
    “Your
uncle comin’ in today?” she asked.
    He
nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I hear, anyway. Should be around anytime now. You’ll
like Diggs—he knows music like you wouldn’t believe. And he’s been everywhere.
Done just about everything.”
    “He’s
a looker, too,” Casey said. She blushed when he looked at her. “You showed me
them pictures, remember? You’ve talked about him enough—I reckon it’ll be good,
meetin’ the man behind the myth.”
    They
got quiet for a little bit after that, the outside of her leg warm against the
outside of his. Danny pocketed the roach when they were done smoking, but he
wasn’t ready to go yet. He felt that fear come at him again.
    “You
think they’re gonna find who did it?” he asked Casey. He didn’t have to explain
what he meant.
    She
shrugged, looking sad. Casey always liked her daddy—Danny used to be a little
jealous of the two of them, the way she took to talking to him whenever she had
troubles.
    “I
still don’t know why anybody’d want to go after a man like Dr. Durham,” she
said. “He was just about the nicest man I ever met.”
    But
you know why, don’t you, boy? Danny
imagined his daddy saying. Clear as you please, he pictured Wyatt Durham
sitting across from him in the treehouse. A wrinkle in his forehead, eyes
sadder’n a hound dog on his worst day. You know there’s only one reason
anybody ever would’a wanted me dead, his daddy said evenly. And that’s
you.

Chapter Three
SOLOMON
     
     
     
    The
Durhams lived in a little white farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Like,
literally. I left Einstein in the car until I could be sure he wouldn’t be
devoured by the family dogs, of which there seemed to be half a dozen. Diggs
and I went in without knocking, and were immediately besieged by well-meaning
relations. I stayed on the outskirts of the action, watching as Diggs was
welcomed back into the fold.
    It
took awhile before we were able to wade through the first wave of greeters to
get to the inner sanctum, an overcrowded parlor filled with family photos:
Wyatt on a sunny summer day, swimming with his twin boys; studio portraits of
the kids from toddler-hood on up; a candid of those same twin boys, now teenagers,
at what I assumed had been their high school prom. In the prom picture, one of
the boys looked like he was straight out of a Mormon recruitment flyer: short
hair and a standard-issue tux, bright white smile, a bland blonde girl with
braces laughing beside him. The other brother was more my speed, in a