Free Blackbird by Tom Wright Page B

down through the stars, nothing to be seen but the soft blue dots of the altimeters on their wrists as they vectored cross-country over a mountain range and a hostile border to pop their chutes a thousand feet above the last ground four of them would ever touch. Johnny made it out alone nine weeks later with a permanent limp and a never-explained tendency to gag at the sight of beets.
    I took the best scholarship offer I got, the one from TCU, where I blew out both knees against Kansas State my second year and had no choice but to become an actualstudent, while Johnny eventually earned his law degree at Baylor and hung out his shingle in Burnsville, the county seat. He married a blonde former cheerleader named Alicia Meador and settled down to practise country law and watch his cows get fat on the little farm he and Li signed the mortgage on after he brought in his first big settlement. His medals were still gathering dust on his office wall along with his Chamber of Commerce and Rotary certificates and the team picture from our championship season, all of us standing forever shoulder to shoulder in sunlight that somehow seemed historical and heatless in the old print. Johnny himself looked like a dangerous but dapper Prohibition rum-runner or a tragic Irish poet, brick-coloured hair brushed casually to the side and face turned toward me with a small smile, as if I’d just cracked some dumb joke.
    ‘Hi, Jim,’ said Li’s telephone voice.
    I told her what I had in mind.
    She said, ‘Whatcha cooking?’
    ‘The Special.’
    ‘With that weird sauce?’
    ‘It’s the only one I know how to make.’
    ‘Count us in. I know Johnny’ll want to hear all about your hot case.’
    I heard Johnny’s voice in the background: ‘Ask him what’s going on with that. He got any suspects yet?’
    ‘Tell him when I catch somebody I’ll give them his number,’ I said. ‘If they’re rich enough to afford a big-time lawyer.’
    Hanging up the phone, I sipped beer, thinking about what Li had said. It resonated weirdly in my mind because, although the coin had felt warm to me, the case itself didn’tat all. It felt cool, like old mausoleum air or the dank and unfresh stirring of the breeze off a swamp at night.
    I put Mutt on the arm of the chair and stood up, thinking about what I wanted to ask Jonas and about the way things ought to be. ‘Your watch, boy,’ I said to the cat. ‘Don’t let any rats get by you.’
    He just stared at me, looking mystified.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    SIX
    I took Border Avenue south, with Arkansas and its liquor stores on my left, Texas with its car dealerships and Baptist bookstores to the right, and a mile ahead, the Louisiana Quarter, which some said existed only to show the world just how much political corruption and fine cooking it was possible to cram into one medium-sized town.
    Catching the light, I downshifted the F-250 around the corner onto Eastern and listened to the exhaust grumble and roar, a sound Jana called the ‘Serengeti baritone’. It was probably more of an indication of my thinking than I understood at the time, but a few years ago when Jana and the girls were still with me, I realised I was tired of our number-two car, the Acura I’d been driving to work for the last six years. The first vehicle I’d ever been able to call my own had been a pickup, and after my time on the Flying S working for Dusty, nothing felt as natural under my feet as a truck. Which is probably why this one, parked under a huge oak beside the highway with a For Sale sign wedged behind one windshield wiper, had caught my eye. After a ten-minute test drive I bought it from the alcoholic mechanic who’d reworked it, a committed Jehovah’s Witness until he came down with depression, started mixing his medicationswith vodka and fell from grace. He wasn’t definite about exactly how it happened, but I got the impression it involved several counts of interrupting services at the Kingdom