Uncle Tunsil took down his milk in one steady draft, then looked toward Sofia. “I’ll be right on the other side of the glass, and I’ll make sure he’s aware of that. We’ll just see how this goes. I’m a long sight from comfortable with it.”
“I’m pretty tough,” Sofia said. “That’s something you might have noticed about me.”
Uncle Tunsil had already spent too much energy making sure Sofia wasn’t frightened, telling her she could back out anytime she wanted, squaring what he was going to allow her to do with his conscience. When she’d first offered her help, her uncle had balked, and she’d had to remind him she was an adult who’d been through a lot in her life and could handle herself. She’d stayed on him two days straight about it. And she’d known he would relent. The two of them had gone years without any mention of the unexplained events of Sofia’s childhood, but when Sofia finally brought up the topic, he hadn’t shied away from it. Courage was a settled fact of Uncle Tunsil’s makeup, and though he was charged with keeping order, there was something unaffiliated about him. He operated according to a reserved but staunch open-mindedness. He didn’t care what people thought, didn’t mind that some folks would snicker at his pursuing a case this way. And he understood this was important to her. There was a part of her she’d tamped down into a shadowy corner and she wanted to try to bring it out.
Sofia didn’t know what to expect out of the experiment. She had warned her uncle that if she did in fact discover anything, it likely wouldn’t be anything concrete, that she might only get a feeling, and probably not even that. Uncle Tunsil had tried to muster his familiar easy grin, and had told her a feeling would work fine. A feeling was exactly what they were lacking.
He started the faucet running and set his milk glass and lemon dish in the sink. There were some other dishes in there from last night. Sofia was finished with her cereal and he took her bowl too. He found a rag and started washing, his forearms flexing. He had a beard like Abraham Lincoln’s. It would’ve made someone else look like a fool.
“I keep thinking would your momma have let you do this,” he said, raising his voice over the running water. “I suppose we know the answer to that. That’s what I’m always thinking, what she would’ve said.”
“If my mother were around, she wouldn’t still be telling me what I could and couldn’t do. I’m the boss now. I’m the boss of Sofia.”
“Whether she’d let me do this, is maybe what I mean. You’re the boss of Sofia but I’m the boss of the police station.”
The salt and pepper shakers on the table were in the image of a farmer and his wife. Sofia touched the top of each one, then licked her finger. When she or her uncle mentioned Sofia’s mother, it was usually to say they missed her on a holiday or to praise her cobbler or, most often, to admire what a hard worker she’d been. She’d been able to leave enough money for Sofia’s college, no small accomplishment.
Sofia said, “Her way to deal with this, to deal with me, was to… not deal with it. And maybe that was the best thing for me back then. I’m sure it was.”
Uncle Tunsil was nodding, putting some elbow grease into one of the dishes. “You want to find out about yourself and that’s fine. You want some answers, like everyone wants. I’m still allowed to say this thing makes me nervous.”
“Think of it this way,” Sofia said. “It’s just talking to some guys who might be lying. For girls, that’s old hat.”
Sofia was behind her uncle, so she couldn’t see if he’d smiled at what she said. Wisps of steam were rising up from the sink and vanishing.
“A murder case,” he said. “I reckon if there’s a time to pull out the stops.” Sofia saw her uncle’s shoulders heave and then settle, but couldn’t hear his sigh. A shaft of sunlight was finding its way in at a low angle, spotlighting a swath of the kitchen floor.
“I expect I ought to be tickled,” he said. “You know, professionally. Analyzing crime scenes and supervising interviews instead of, I don’t know, busting some poor guy for buying beer for the trade school kids.”
The man who’d been killed was named Barn Renfro. It was an understatement to say no one in town had been fond of him, but the murder, the first in the city limits in over ten years, had people uneasy. Sofia’s uncle wasn’t one for a witch hunt, but he was going to be as thorough as he knew how. So far he didn’t have much to go on. Sofia didn’t know if he had any real hopes that she could help him, or if he was purely humoring her. If he held strong beliefs about anything — from the supernatural to politics to cornbread recipes — he kept them hidden.
“Who was buying beer for the trade school kids?” Sofia asked.
“Al Terry. This was near a couple weeks ago. Had to charge him, even though I don’t think he did anything wrong. I don’t make up the rules, I just enforce them. If they have beer, to my thinking, they might not wind up on something worse. Maybe that’s misguided.”
Uncle Tunsil cut the water off and Sofia hopped up and grabbed a clean hand towel. She started drying the dishes, leaving her uncle free to gather his wallet and badge and gun and phone. He combed his hair in front of a small mirror on the wall.
“There’s a sheriff in Oklahoma has this woman he uses. I follow her on the computer. She’s part Indian. Her specialty is where. She don’t know what it’s going to be or who put it there, but she’ll say to check the alley behind so-and-so, and sure enough, they’ll find a clue. It’s not an uncommon move anymore. Anyway, having another look at each of them boys in a stressful situation couldn’t hurt.”
Uncle Tunsil had himself together. He shook his head at Sofia, like people did when they thought they’d been sold a bill of goods. “So up at the station say one-fifteen?”
“See you then,” Sofia said.
He slipped his sunglasses on. Sofia followed him to the door like she always did, then waited as he got in the cruiser and bumped from the driveway up onto the straight two-lane road and out of sight. The road was blanketed in shade, but the front steps of the house were already in full morning sun. Sofia stepped out into the humidity.
She was thinking about her mother now, how wary she’d seemed of Sofia when she was young. The drastic looks her mother used to give her. She remembered the doctors, the tests, being handled like something breakable. Her mother had forbid anyone to talk about Sofia having a gift of any sort. Explanation or no, a gift was out of the question. Simple motherly concern was there, Sofia knew — worry over the terrible time Sofia would suffer in grade school, perhaps beyond grade school — but also her mother had been panic-stricken at the thought of scandal. Up north, for many bygone generations, Sofia’s family had been part of the lowest class, poor and of ill repute, immigrants who couldn’t adjust and then simple hustling riffraff. Sofia’s great-grandmother had moved south, about as south as one could move, and started fresh. She’d toiled her family to the fringe of blue-collar, taking any honest work she could find. Her daughter, Sofia’s grandmother, the next in the line, had been a dependable hand and eventually a permanent office employee at a booming citrus concern. Sofia’s mother had attended a trade school, and Sofia a real college. Uncle Tunsil wasn’t sensitive to this striving history like Sofia’s mother had been, but it was women who’d struggled the family upward, not men. Most of the men had taken their leave, thrown their lots elsewhere.