Free A Long Time Gone by Karen White Page B

with pomade, but sprigs of curly blond hair seemed to sprout from his head like weeds in a garden.
    He looked behind us as if expecting to see somebody else. “Is your daddy not with you, Mr. Bodine? I was hoping to invite him to mynew establishment over on Monroe Street tonight. I got a blind pig that might interest him.”
    He winked at Willie, who twitched a bit in his starched collar as if it had suddenly grown too tight. “No, sir. He’s back at the farm. But I’ll be sure to let him know, although you know he’s a strict Baptist.”
    â€œYou do that,” Mr. Peacock said with another wink.
    I felt sorry for the poor pig and wanted to ask to go see it, but there was something in the way Mr. Peacock was smirking and the shade of red on my cousin’s cheeks that made me hold back the words.
    Mr. Peacock clasped his large hands together, and I noticed a heavy gold ring with an enormous diamond on one of his pinkie fingers. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit today?”
    Sarah Beth opened up her clutch purse. “My daddy’s watch isn’t working—it just stopped one day. He was hoping you might be able to fix it. His granddaddy wore it when he rode in the cavalry with General Nathan B. Forrest at Shiloh, and he’s quite fond of it. Mama has no idea what she’ll do to replace it if it can’t be fixed.”
    She pulled out the gold watch on its chain, his dangling Knight Templar fob clinking against the black onyx stone of a second fob.
    Mr. Peacock slipped a monocle from his pocket and placed it in his eye to see the watch more closely. “This is a beautiful piece of workmanship. Exquisite really.”
    â€œIt’s from Switzerland,” Sarah Beth said. “My great-grandmother bought it for my great-grandfather on their honeymoon.”
    The jeweler popped his monocle out of his eye. “So it’s very valuable in more ways than one,” he said, smiling. “And you are in luck, Miss Heathman. I have just employed a young gentleman. He’s originally from Missouri, but he has family here—the Scots who own the feed store. He’s got weak lungs and couldn’t handle the winters up north, so his family sent him down here when he was younger. His father is a clockmaker in St. Louis, and young John has been in his father’s workshop since he could walk. Knows all about the inner workings of clocks and can fix anything. As the old clockmaker saying goes, he has ways of making a clock tock.” He laughed at his own joke, and I smiled just to be polite.
    â€œHe’s in the back right now. Let me go get him, and he can give you an estimate of how long it might take to get it fixed.” His face becameserious. “I will remind him that Mr. Heathman is the president of the bank and a very important member of this community, and certainly not a man who can go without his watch for any length of time. It wouldn’t do for him to be late to meetings and appointments, would it? No, sir, it would not.”
    He smiled again, then headed toward a door at the back of the shop. We spent the few minutes he was gone admiring the jewelry in the low glass cabinets, each with a gilt-framed mirror atop the glass. In front of each cabinet sat a green velvet settee.
    I was busy admiring a cabinet full of delicate women’s wristwatches, leaning over the glass to get a better look at a watch on the far row.
    â€œMay I show you something?”
    I started and turned around at the male voice and found myself flushing. The man, about nineteen or twenty, was tall and lean, with dark blue eyes and hair the color of wheat, a dimple in his left cheek. He was probably the handsomest boy I’d ever met, his smile making it easy to forgive his Yankee accent.
    â€œNo. Thank you,” I stammered, wondering why my tongue suddenly felt thick in my mouth. “I’m just waiting for my friend over there,” I said,