When she entered the pen the sheep gathered around her. Even the new ones had become accustomed to her as their shepherd. She put her hands in the dirty white wool of the little dam that had survived Stone’s slaughter and led her out to Wills.
He reached out to the sheep. Salt reminded him, “All sheep stink.”
He bent down and moved his hands over the dam’s knotty head. The normally placid little sheep stomped her hoof, let out a quick belch, then bent down to nibble at some weeds.
“I’ve named her Red.” Salt thought of her last glimpse of the lost woman, her thick hair the same color as red clay. “’Cause this sheep, she’s usually covered with dust,” she explained, vigorously patting the woolly flanks, sending up a halo of dust and the memory of a whistling whore.
Wills touched the knobby head between the horn remnants. “Her head’s like a rock, a hard head.” He spread his fingers into Red’s woolly neck. Red lifted her nose, sniffing. “Hello, Red.” The sheep moved close to sample one of his shoelaces. “She does stink,” agreed Wills, wrinkling his nose and pulling his foot from the sheep, but smiling and continuing to circle the sheep’s head with his hands.
Together they fed and watered Red and the lambs. While they were spreading the grain and filling the water trough, the sun, full and bright, came ’round the house and covered them with something like warmth.
40.
TURNING THE CORNER
Salt and Pepper had been able to finish a complete thirty-minute meal from clear broth to fortune cookies that neither had unwrapped. They talked about the new sheep, about Ann and the boys and how they were doing in school. For once radio had not interrupted to order them to calls.
“You gonna take the detective exam?” Pepper got down to it.
“Wills says he’ll pull for me to get to Homicide and he thinks because of the Shannell solve that I’ll be a shoo-in. You?”
He smiled, looking down. “Yeah, it’s time for both of us to do something career-wise. I’ll probably get sent to Narcotics if I make the cut. You know all us black guys get sent to drugs.” He shrugged, still smiling.
“Pep, it’ll be the first time in more than ten years we won’t be working together. It’s kinda like we’ve been a couple and now we won’t be.”
He stretched against the back of the booth, arms wide, and looked out at the room. “Let’s cross that bridge when it crumbles. It’s not like we won’t be spending time together, at least off duty. Although I see, happily I might add, that Wills is taking up some of your time.”
She openly grinned back at him. “Don’t forget that I’m gutting half the upstairs at home for the dojo. You promised to bring the boys over and we’ll all work out together. They can hang with Wonder and the sheep, pick pecans, whatever. Ann says you can, so that seals it.” She motioned for him to wipe a crumb from his chin.
He took a swipe with his napkin then, reaching out his hand to her, said, “Deal.” But instead of doing the buddy handshake he covered their clasped hands with his left hand. “You’ve got to promise though that you’ll always remember who’s got your back.”
“You do, Hot Pepper. You do.”
Embarrassed, they untangled their hands. “Check,” they simultaneously called to Mai.
* * *
• • •
Standing in the parking lot at their cars, she brought up what she hadn’t at the table. She wanted it said when Pepper didn’t have time to argue. “Help me watch out for Lil D,” she said.
He shook his head with frustration.
“Nothing big, Pep. Just if you see a chance. He needs to get his GED. Talk to him about a real job, something he’d want to do.”
“I guess I know where you’re off to. I don’t know why you’re so determined on that kid. Just seems you set yourself up for disappointment. But we’re in this together. You know all the guys will help somehow.” He gave a little salute, touching his fingers to her forehead instead of his own, and went back to his beat.
As usual Salt had the windows down, riding up the perimeter of her beat on Pryor. An almost cold wind worked with the last of the warm afternoon sun to keep her comfortable. She rode past Sam’s, where the corner crowd was gathering. A couple of bright cars with oversized wheels were tuned to the same rap station and blasted in stereo across the parking lot. The girls had traded their summer shorts and skirts for tight pants and jackets, unzipped to reveal firm cleavage. They snapped colorful fingers to the beats coming from the broadcasting cars. The out-on-bail gang members, plus some young new recruits, were working the deals, rolling up to the cars, palming hits to the walk-ups, pausing only briefly as Salt slowly drove by, hand raised in an unreturned wave to the crew. She made a right, then right again to get to her usual place where she could keep watch for him. She concealed the car two parallel alleys over, thumbed the car door locks, and began on the downward path toward the abandoned building.
“You got company.” Man fell in beside her, a big smile on his handsome face. He pointed to himself, smile widening.
“You gonna try to hold my hand?” She laughed. “Dispatch, hold me out on a suspicious person.” She gave radio her location and Man’s name and description. Her eyes all the while were steady on his face.
“You don’t trust me.” Man gave her a mock frown.
“Yes, I do. I trust you to be you.” She put two fingers over her left shirt pocket and the phone there.
“I didn’t put that scar on your head. That was a white man shot you.” Children’s voices came from somewhere close by, screeching, yelling, and laughing.
“He bought the gun from your boys.”
They got to the abandoned apartments where she generally kept watch on the gang. She turned instead and led Man toward the hill overlooking the corner. As they rounded the building a gang of seven or eight grubby little boys scurried like feral cats from the broken windows and missing-plyboard door of the building. One of the littlest caught his palm on a jagged piece of glass. She went over to help the kid but all the boys, including him, dashed to a nearby scrubby magnolia tree, shoving each other to be the first up.
“You checking on my boys across the street or you meeting somebody here?” Man said cheerfully.
“Meeting you,” she said.
He stood a bit away, watching his drug corner. She touched the phone again. The little boys in the tree settled on a limb, swinging sneakered feet.
“There’s always the possibility that Stone could turn.” She faced him straight on.
“He won’t. Ever. He’d die of natural causes. I ain’t been charged. There ain’t no proof. Anyway, you say the man who shot you was buyin’ guns from me. Even if that’s true, you know he was buying for some other white man, your side I mean.” He bent down, picked up a rock, squatted, and threw it down the cracked, dry red clay hill. They both watched it kick up loose pebbles and dirt.
“I’m not going to argue blame. There’s enough of that for everybody.” The boys in the tree hung close enough to be able to hear. She sensed that she and Man had their attention.
“So what’s changed, Officer Salt?” He turned his head and smiled at her. “I’m doing my job, Lil D and the boys still doing theirs, and you, you just passing through.”
“We’re all passing through, Man.”
“Yeah? So what’s different?”
“Some of us are changed.”
“Who else?” Man stood up and dusted off his brand-new baggy jeans. “Like I told you before, don’t nobody give a shit about this place. This city, people, don’t care ’bout no Homes.” He left her, walking off down the hill. “You ain’t even made no dent of a difference in this place,” he said, not looking back, even to wave goodbye.
She hummed a few notes of a gospel tune and turned her attention to the boys in the magnolia and hummed a little louder, loud enough so the tree boys looked down, put their hands
over uncertain grins, poking at one another for what to think about a cop standing on a rutty hill in the projects humming a church song. The children dropped to the ground like ripe fruit. Laughing, they ran up the hill in the opposite direction from the corner below. She hummed the chorus again.
The phone buzzed in her shirt pocket. Man was walking toward his gang. She pressed the phone close to her ear.
“That Merrill guy that you lookin’ for on that robbery?”
“Yeah,” she answered, recognizing the reliable informant.
“He on Thirkeld across from Sam’s right now. He scrapped,” he said, alerting her in the vernacular that Merrill was armed.
“D—” was all she got out before the connection was gone. Salt closed the phone. “Be careful,” she prayed for them both.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have tremendous gratitude for my agent, Nat Sobel, who has believed in Salt from the beginning. Thank you, thank you, Sara Minnich Blackburn, my editor; Katie McKee, my publicist; and the entire team at G. P. Putnam’s Sons. As always, I’m thankful for the support of my family—Noah, Viki, Gabriel, and Sadira. I am so fortunate to have my husband, Rick Saylor, along on this journey.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© Erin Brauer
Trudy Nan Boyce received her Ph.D. in community counseling before becoming a police officer for the City of Atlanta. During her more than thirty-year career she served as a beat cop, homicide detective, senior hostage negotiator, and lieutenant. Boyce retired from the police department in 2008 and still lives in Atlanta. She was awarded both a Georgia Author of the Year Award and a Pinckley Prize for her debut, Out of the Blues.
trudynanboyce.com
TrudyNanBoyce
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The Policeman's Daughter Page 29