Sweet Jiminy

by Kristin Gore

  Lyn cut in. “Mr. Tomlins, Bo’s been working for Miz Hunt over the summer, and that sometimes involves driving Jiminy places.”

  As soon as Lyn had started speaking, Roy had put his hand up to block her words, but they’d wended their way through the cracks between his fingers, and now Roy seemed to consider them. Lyn hoped that he would. She recognized that he needed an excuse to back off and leave them alone. She wanted to fashion one for them all.

  “That so?” Roy said, turning to Bo. “You working for Miz Hunt?”

  Bo nodded. Technically, this was true, though it pained him to play the role his great-aunt was asking him to.

  “But she was the one driving,” Randy said.

  They’d seen them clearly. That was the point of having the brights on in the first place, to reveal what was going on with folks when they thought it was just them. The white girl had been driving, and the black boy had been sitting too close.

  “She wanted to learn how to drive stick shift,” Bo answered. “Sir.”

  Lyn’s wrinkled nose had told him to add the “sir.” She was enlisting different parts of her face to ensure that Bo acted the way he should, each twitch and furrow sending a clear signal, working overtime to keep him out of harm’s way.

  “And you were teaching her?” Roy queried.

  Jiminy sat up straighter in the car, looking as though she was just waking from a hazy dream.

  “Bo doesn’t work for me,” she said righteously. “He’s my boyfr—”

  “He’s Miz Hunt’s employee,” Lyn interrupted.

  She was frustrated that her invisible strings didn’t reach to this troublemaking girl. Furious that the girl didn’t automatically better understand the ways of this place, or what was at stake.

  “And our families go way back, as I think you know,” Lyn continued. “Miss Jiminy I’ve known since she was born.”

  Jiminy gaped at her. Roy looked from one to the other, and then at Bo, who was staring at the ground. In the silence that followed, the crickets grew louder. Roy shifted his weight and rubbed the back of his hand roughly across his nose.

  “Just needed to make sure no one was in any kinda trouble,” he said finally.

  Lyn’s insides unclenched. They were going to be okay.

  “We weren’t till you blinded us,” Jiminy retorted. “Your head beams nearly killed us.”

  Lyn groaned inwardly as Roy’s gaze snapped back to the girl. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Here he’d started out concerned for her, and what did he get in return? Attitude, not gratitude. Though maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, considering she was Willa and Henry’s granddaughter. He’d seen her around, he realized now. At Grady’s Grill, asking too many questions. She was trouble, that much was for sure.

  Roy felt a throbbing in his right temple as he tightened his free hand into a fist. He wanted to teach her a lesson. But what could he do, really? Randy would spring to action with a word, but it was already so late, and Roy was tired. He was ready to move on to the ice cream he was going to eat when he got back home.

  “Well, thank goodness no one got hurt,” Lyn said cautiously.

  Roy squinted at his captive audience, each in turn.

  “Y’all watch yourselves,” he said, his voice thick with implications for disobedience. “I know plenty of folks who wouldn’t be as understandin’ as us.”

  Jiminy, Bo, and Lyn remained silent and motionless as Roy and Randy turned and walked back to their truck. But as their taillights disappeared around the far curve a few moments later, Jiminy burst into tears.

  Chapter 8

  Carlos Castaverde was trying to think of a seven-letter word for the movement of water across a semipermeable membrane when his secretary stuck her head through his office doorway.

  “Someone to see you.”

  He nodded without looking up. He knew this answer. He could practically taste the word on the tip of his tongue.

  “Mr. Castaverde?”

  And away it went. He’d had it and lost it. He sighed and looked up from his crossword, hoping that if the answer still lingered in the air nearby, it would somehow find its way back to him.

  Delicate and fresh-looking, the young woman standing in his doorway reminded him of watercress.

  Since boyhood, Carlos had been fascinated with plants, and studied them with the religious fervor his parents wished he’d apply to the salvation of his soul. But Carlos didn’t care about churches; he cared about field guides, soil acidity, rainfall patterns, and chlorophyll levels. To help him memorize the details of various plant types, he’d begun making instant associations between people he met and plants he already knew. Over time, he’d honed an encyclopedic knowledge of all the major flora, as well as an unshakeable new way of thinking about people.

  The watercress woman spoke again.

  “Is this a bad time?”

  “No, come on in,” Carlos replied.

  She walked across the room and folded herself into a seat, then stood again, her slender arm outstretched.

  “I’m Jiminy Davis,” she announced.

  “Carlos Casteverde,” he replied as he shook her hand. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m from Fayeville, Mississippi,” Jiminy said. “Or at least my family is. And something happened there.”

  Carlos nodded, waiting for her to elaborate. He didn’t know exactly where Fayeville was, but the nearest town in Mississippi was a six-hour drive away. The girl had traveled to see him. As busy as he was, he decided to hear her out.

  “Something awful. Forty years ago. Like what you’ve seen and fixed already,” she continued.

  Carlos had seen and fixed more than he wanted to think about. No one of these buried mysteries was like any of the others, and the last one never prepared him for the next. Practice made him better at uncovering and pursuing, but it never dulled the shock and fury.

  “No one seems to know who did it exactly, or if they do, they’re not telling. And everyone seems content to just let it lie. But it’s not right. And things are all messed up there. I didn’t realize it at first, but they are.” Jiminy paused.

  She stared at the floor for a long moment, then lifted her head to look at Carlos again.

  “Things there just aren’t the way they’re supposed to be,” she said.

  Carlos watched her closely, trying to remember the last time he’d successfully grown watercress. It was the kind of thing best stumbled upon in nature, floating thick in a cold, shallow stream.

  “I’ll need to learn a lot more,” he replied as his crossword answer came to him, permeating the membrane of his forgetfulness at last.

  Osmosis. Of course.

  An hour later, Jiminy had shown Carlos the notes she’d made on everything to date, along with the photocopied clippings from the Ledger and her grandfather’s diary. She’d explained the circumstances of Edward’s and Jiminy’s deaths, and relayed the stories from the county pool and Grady’s Grill and the stretch of highway near Falling Rock Curve. Carlos had looked at and listened to it all, and now Jiminy was waiting to see how well she’d done.

  As she waited, she stared at his cheekbones, following their slant down toward a mouth that was set in a thinking frown. She noted for the second time that Carlos looked like somebody famous who was trying to go unrecognized, though she couldn’t place her finger on exactly who. It was something about his eyebrows and cheeks, something Native American to the shape of his features. She felt she’d seen him in a western, or a cop show.

  He certainly wasn’t dressed to be noticed. Jiminy wondered if he changed out of his jeans and flannel shirt on the days he went to court. There wasn’t anything scruffy about him—he was all clean lines and smooth shaves—but he wasn’t scrubbed. And if she hadn’t researched him and learned that he was forty-four years old, she wouldn’t have been able to tell his age. She’d have guessed anywhere from thirty to fifty. Older than her, but perhaps not significantly.

  If Carlos didn’t help her,
she wasn’t sure what she’d do. She was determined to prove some things, but she didn’t have the expertise and resources to pursue the unsolved Waters case on her own. She’d begun the fieldwork, but she needed Carlos in order to make something of it. And in making something of it, she hoped to make something of herself.

  Carlos tapped the eraser of his pencil against his temple. He opened up a large, flat, tan book. He glanced up at Jiminy’s entreating gaze.

  “I can be in Fayeville next Tuesday,” he said.

  Chapter 9

  She was determined to meet with him, even though he works out of Texarkana,” Willa told Jean between huffs as she sliced her remote control racket through the air.

  Willa was improving rapidly at virtual tennis, a game to which Jean had only recently introduced her. After their last trip to Trudi’s Tresses, Jean had insisted Willa come into the house when she dropped her off. She’d pulled Willa eagerly up her walk, in the exact way that she’d been pulling her into dances and kitchens, parties and quiet confidences, for nearly seventy years. The gesture made them feel young.

  Willa had only offered enough resistance to Jean’s tugging to make it more insistent. When they reached the living room, Jean had pointed to a small white box in front of her TV screen.

  “Ta da!” she exclaimed.

  “What is it?” Willa asked.

  “Our new tennis court!” Jean exclaimed excitedly. “Stand there. Are you limber?”

  This wasn’t the first time Jean had asked her this. She’d tried to get Willa into yoga several years ago without any luck.

  “You know I’m not,” Willa replied.

  “Just stay there,” Jean instructed, handing Willa an oddly shaped remote control. “You’ll see how it works.”

  Before them, the TV screen had changed to an image of a tennis court with two figures squared off against each other across the net.

  “I’m the one with the dark hair,” Jean informed Willa, indicating the brunette on the screen. “And you’re the blonde. I’m serving, so just watch the screen, and when the ball comes to you, pretend your remote is a tennis racket and hit it back to me.”

  “What do you mean hit it back to you? There’s nothing to hit back,” Willa replied.

  “Just watch,” Jean ordered.

  She made sure Willa was watching both her and the TV, then pressed the button that would release the on-screen ball and, holding the remote firmly in her hand, sliced her arm through the air in a serving motion. On the screen, her player served perfectly to Willa’s character, who stayed completely still as the ball passed her by.

  “Hit it!” Jean cried.

  “Hit what?” Willa demanded, confused.

  “On the screen, don’t look away from the screen!”

  “I got distracted by your little dance.”

  “Okay, just look at the real me for a second,” Jean said and sighed. “See, I’m treating the remote like my racket. This is the way I serve, this is my forehand, this is my backhand.”

  Willa watched Jean demonstrate each of these, pantomiming tennis, playing against the air.

  “Now everything I just did, I’m going to repeat, but this time don’t look at me. Look at the TV instead.”

  Willa watched the screen and saw the dark-haired tennis player in the short skirt make a serving stroke, a forehand, and a backhand.

  “Oh,” Willa said, a note of dawning comprehension in her voice.

  “You got it?”

  “Hang on.”

  Keeping her eyes glued to the blond on the screen, Willa made a few forehand strokes. The blond tennis player did, too.

  “Oh!” Willa cried, with significantly more delight.

  Before long, they were enjoying long rallies. They weren’t the quickest of athletes, but they were steady and dedicated, and they’d begun playing once a week. It was the first time they’d regularly raised their heartbeats in over a decade.

  “So this Carlos fella knew Emmet Till?” Jean asked, panting.

  “No, no,” Willa batted this away. “The Emmet Till Act. It’s a government thing. He works with it somehow, and he opens up old unsolved cases, and investigates them. Jiminy read all about him.”

  This wasn’t as foreign to Jean as her reactions would imply. She’d reviewed some of Jiminy’s Google searches by using the “History” tab on her computer and had followed a few of the links. Still, Jean hadn’t fully engaged with what she’d discovered. She hadn’t wanted to get pulled back in.

  She was getting pulled back in now, though. It appeared that all of them might be.

  “She drove all the way to Texarkana? That’s seven hours from here.”

  Jean tried to catch Willa off guard with a forehand to the left back corner of the virtual court. Willa stretched to return it.

  “As I said, she was determined,” Willa replied, energized to have made the shot.

  Jean was getting frustrated. She was glad that their games had become more competitive, but she was accustomed to winning more easily.

  “And she went by herself?” she asked.

  Which was the polite way of asking whether Bo went with her; whether they were spending the night together someplace in a strange town.

  “Yes. By herself,” Willa replied with her lips pursed.

  Willa was still in disbelief that her granddaughter had ever taken up with Bo. Though by the time Jiminy confirmed the relationship, late at night after the Roy Tomlins run-in, the two were freshly broken up.

  “Bo doesn’t think we should see each other anymore,” Jiminy had said.

  In a detached tone, she’d relayed the story of the encounter with Roy and Randy, and of the strange, sad way it had impacted Bo. He had sat in silence during the slow drive back to Willa’s farm. He parked the truck and climbed out and stood in the darkness on the gravel driveway, staring up at the sky. Jiminy had collected herself and joined him, reaching out for his hand. Which is when he began to speak in a voice one husky octave off of normal. He explained that Jiminy just fundamentally couldn’t understand what they were up against in Fayeville. He called himself stupid for thinking there was a chance they’d be let alone, and said he couldn’t in good conscience continue putting her at risk. He said that under different circumstances he’d be willing to force the issue, but the reality was that the summer was ending and neither of them planned to stay in town much longer. Given that, he didn’t think it was wise for them to make everything more difficult and dangerous than it needed to be. He’d focus on his studying, and she’d figure out her next steps. Down the line, maybe their paths could cross again in some friendlier, easier place.

  Jiminy had been unable to reply except to shake her head no while rogue tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. Bo took her hand, kissed her cheek, and told her it was better for them both if they just didn’t see each other anymore. And then he left.

  Willa had listened to her granddaughter, wishing she could alleviate her hurt. But she lacked confidence in her caretaking skills. She’d already failed spectacularly with Jiminy’s mother, as far as she could tell. And her timid attempts to help out with Jiminy when her daughter was otherwise engaged had been mainly rebuffed. Beyond agreeing to a handful of sporadic visits, Margaret had made a point of letting Willa know that her services were not needed. So Willa had backed off. But now Jiminy was on her own and had sought Willa out. Was she being given another chance? She’d tried her hardest to be comforting and wise.

  “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but Bo’s right,” she’d said. “This is for the best.”

  To Willa’s surprise, Jiminy had been outraged instead of soothed.

  “How could you say that?” she demanded.

  “It’s not right, I know, but this isn’t a battle worth fighting right now. Listen to Bo. When a young person is trying to make something of themselves, they should avoid unnecessary distractions that might throw them off course.”

  Jiminy blanched. She brought her hand down to the table.

  �
��Bo isn’t a distraction, he’s an inspiration!”

  Willa looked at her granddaughter with a face full of sympathy and apology. But it was an apology for what she was about to say rather than what she already had.

  “I know,” she explained gently. “I was talking about you.”

  Jiminy sat there, stunned, for a very long moment, and then she burst out laughing. It had taken Willa a few seconds to determine that it was laughter and not sobs.

  “I get it, I’m the distraction,” Jiminy replied. “Bo’s the one actually making something of himself, and I’m the one getting him off track. Of course. You’re absolutely right.”

  The next morning, Jiminy had told Willa that she was headed to Texarkana, and might be gone a few days.

  “Does Lyn know what she’s up to?” Jean asked Willa, determined to win the game in the next few strokes.

  They were both getting tired, and Jean was trying to capitalize on any mistakes Willa might make.

  “Because I imagine Lyn must have some strong feelings about it,” she continued. “I imagine she just might want it left alone.”

  “I’m leaving that between Jiminy and Lyn,” Willa answered, feeling a burn in her right side as she reached to return a shot that barely cleared the net.

  “But don’t you think Lyn would prefer Jiminy to leave all this alone?” Jean repeated, taking advantage of the weak return to hurtle a shot over the head of Willa’s avatar, to the opposite corner of the virtual court.

  Willa didn’t even try to go for it. Instead, she dropped her arm to her side and turned to face Jean.

  “I don’t know,” she answered in exasperation. “Is that what you’d prefer?”

  Part Two

  Chapter 10

  In the grand room of his plantation mansion ten miles outside of Fayeville, Travis Brayer was profoundly irritated.

  He’d decided to watch The Apartment after reading that his favorite director watched it before beginning any major project. It so happened that Travis had a major project to begin, so he’d put in The Apartment with high expectations. And now he was trying to figure out if he’d misunderstood and whether there might be another movie of the same name.