The plan was to meet for the second interview later that day, at one-fifteen again. Sofia had to go to the Edison House and her uncle had to meet with a state investigator at a hotel over near the interstate. He had his good boots on, and a shiny watch he didn’t wear often.
“It just looks hot out there,” he said, bending at the waist to peer outside.
The state of Florida was reaching the time of year when the nights were as hot as the days. Everything was still as a painting out the window.
“What time do you get up in the morning?” Sofia asked her uncle. “You always stay up later than me, then you’re up earlier.”
“I’m a fast sleeper. I don’t dream. I don’t even roll over. I don’t get up and use the bathroom. I can sleep twice as quick as your average person.” He was sitting now. He dug his spoon into a lemon. He had a way of maneuvering around the seeds, of getting the meat out without squirting the juice.
After a moment he set the spoon down on the table and his face clouded over, his brow creasing. He sat still, making no move for his milk.
“What is it?” Sofia said.
“Some boys up in Sumter County barbecued a manatee,” he said. “Came over my radio this morning. You heard me right. They netted a manatee and drug it on land and cooked it like a hog in one of them brick pits.”
Sofia had some yogurt on her spoon but she put it back in the cup. “Maybe they were broke.”
“I hope so, because these days there’s no place in Florida you’re not a couple miles from a Publix.”
Sofia watched her uncle’s face. It wasn’t often that righteousness showed on it.
“Sometimes you start wondering if you’re a redneck,” he said, “because the folks over on the beach think you are. But something always happens to put things back in order.”
The second person of interest was JP. He was wearing a clingy long-sleeve athletic shirt. His shorts had numerous pockets and on his calf was a tattoo of an angel with dripping fangs. JP wasn’t much older than Sofia, mid-twenties. He’d almost been a big deal in baseball, had been drafted out of the local high school and made it to the majors for a stint. Sofia’s uncle said JP wasn’t satisfied with his right share of screwing up. He was going for the record. He’d bungled a baseball career, had a divorce and bankruptcy behind him already, and was on parole for DUIs. He was at the station because he had a boat up at Barn Renfro’s shop that Barn had refused to give back to him. Evidently, there’d been a misunderstanding over the fee. JP didn’t even want the boat anymore, and he and Barn had wound up agreeing to sell it, Barn entitled to a consignment share that would square them. The deal to sell the boat was unsubstantiated, since Barn wasn’t around to comment on it.
The very second JP settled in and leveled his disdainful glare at Sofia, she didn’t feel right. She was taken by surprise, but kept a neutral expression on her face. Her limbs were leaden, her mind flustered. It came over her like a dry wind. She had a grip on her own knee under the table, and her sinuses burned the way they did before she cried. Was this it? Is this what it would feel like, after all this time? She took in a full breath and released it slowly. It could be the beginning of a flu, this feeling, or the product of nerves or bad sleep. She didn’t believe that, though. She raised her arm off the table, trying to be casual, and dabbed her temples with the back of her hand. JP was sneering at her. She swallowed hard. Part of her was unhinged but part of her, deeper, was blessed with calm.
She was seeing a Sunday. The ancient pale sky and the black marl and the creatures in between that wanted to survive. A lie told. A boy sick and staying home from church — so yes, a Sunday — and then she saw a pistol. It was being looked at, but not yet held. Breathed upon. Sofia’s fingers felt stiffened, as if with cold. She could feel surly boredom, but that’s what JP was radiating right now. She saw a happy school bus on a country road. But Sunday? Little airplanes buzzing overhead, anonymous and joyriding. Buses and airplanes and pistols and church — the commonest of memories. Then she saw the egret, taking a high retreating step, puzzled at someone sloshing so close in the reeds of the drainage ditch. She could hear toads, the distant revving of an engine. JP was openly glaring at Sofia across the table, scratching his shoulder. She was still in the present, enough. Even scratching his shoulder, he was defiant. He still thought life was winning and losing, and he was claiming scorekeeper error and false starts. She heard the toneless echoing crack, saw the elegant white neck jerking, flung back and forth, an animal’s desperation and outrage. Sofia saw the body stagger forward, dragging the barely attached head, blood already blackening the feathers. She saw the bird topple over in the stagnant water, instantly a sodden ugly pile, instantly a meal for buzzards and nothing greater. And then all of it began to dissolve, her consciousness becoming whole again. She had no say in it, as far as she could tell — the wind dying out at once.
“I told your uncle I got five minutes,” JP said. “I hope I didn’t come up here to compete in a staring contest.”
Sofia sat up straight, giving her hair a shake. She quit squeezing her knee and crossed her arms in front of her, regaining her footing in the moment. She had no idea how to tack toward useful information, which was her duty here. She wouldn’t have imagined JP capable of guilt, but everyone was. The more you had, the deeper you kept it buried.
“I don’t have anything against you, JP.”
His face didn’t change. It lost no impatience.
“You’re scowling at me,” Sofia said. “I have no idea why.”
JP absently reached down to one of his pockets, a smoker’s habit. His pockets had been emptied. “I don’t mind telling you, if you got to know. The reason is because you think you’re better than everyone else. You always have, ever since you showed up here. And don’t say it ain’t true.”
“What a boring reason,” Sofia said. “Besides being wrong.”
“See, like that. That face you just made. Everybody’s always nice to you because your uncle’s the law, but people don’t appreciate you playing the little princess. I know, he’s right there watching. He’ll be mad at me now, but he’s always mad at me anyway.”
Sofia heard the air conditioner kick on in the room. She hoped the draft from the vent would find the back of her neck. Whatever had come over her was fully gone now, and she felt worn and hot. She was holding the egret in her mind’s eye.
“I think the person you’re mad at is yourself,” she said. “That’s probably not front-page news to you.”
“I guess you aced your intro to psychology class at the college. You showed up here and held your nose through a couple years of high school and then off to get some bullshit degree so you can tell me who I’m mad at. Or is it whom I’m mad at. I’m glad you did that. I’m glad you went to school.”