And If I Die

by John Aubrey Anderson

  On a Monday afternoon, Mann stopped by the Pattersons’ to talk to Pat about shifting some of his workload in the office to Epstein. Epstein needed the income and welcomed the extra hours; Mann could use the spare time to hone his bull-riding skills. Pat was agreeable and told Mann to get with Anna and arrange the schedule to suit themselves. Mann was in a good mood when he walked back out to his car. He had his door open when a shrill whistle stopped him.

  “You forgot your cake!” yelled Missy.

  He shut the door and went back to meet her on the sidewalk. “Thanks. They’d’ve made me sleep on the porch if I’d left here without it.”

  “Dawg an’ Mose?”

  “And Supe. He’s practically taking up residence at the house.”

  “He’s never had a brother, Bill, an’ his daddy’s been gone five or six years. You an’ Mose are made to order.”

  “Yeah, well, as long as he doesn’t eat my share of the cake.”

  She rested her hand on his chest and smiled at him. “You talk real tough, Billy Bull Rider, but you’ve got a heart as soft as that cake icing.”

  “Don’t tell that to the bulls; it might give them an edge.”

  She pecked him on the cheek. “I promise.”

  It was only a matter of time . . . of exercising patience. Moses Washington and Missy Patterson had a father-daughter relationship, so all he had to do was put himself where he could watch her . . . time would take care of the rest. When the white woman stood on tiptoe to kiss the black student, the greenie out on the golf course saw what he’d been waiting three months to see. The philosophy department’s office boy was close to the same age Bill Prince would be, and he lived with an old black man who fit Moses Washington’s description. It wasn’t proof, but it was the next best thing.

  Two days later, on a Wednesday, the private line rang in Estelle Bainbridge’s office.

  “Yes?” said the woman.

  “I believe I’ve found two of them. I need to do some background work to make sure.”

  “And?”

  “Another month.”

  “And the other one?”

  “All in good time. I’ll have some questions for these two.”

  “How will I know you’ve fulfilled your obligation?”

  “I’ll get it in the papers and mail you a copy. You can have your people follow up.”

  “Where are you?”

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “You sound as if you don’t trust me.”

  Her answer was a dial tone.

  Seconds later, the phone rang again.

  “Yes?”

  The man on the phone said, “Sorry, ma’am, he was off the line too soon for us to get an accurate fix. We can put him in the Chicago area, but that’s as close as we can come.”

  “Thank you. You did the best you could.”

  She had been wise to choose Sheldon Aacock. He called from Chicago to keep her from knowing the location of the two she wanted dead; their actual location could be anywhere between Idaho and Florida. That he mistrusted her spoke well of his craft . . . that he was utterly ruthless was an established fact.

  She was pleased, but if things worked out as planned, Sheldon Aacock would not be needed.

  Aacock was standing at the curb outside the downtown Greyhound terminal seconds after he put down the phone. He caught a cab back to O’Hare Airport and an American Airlines Boeing 727 to Love Field in Dallas. He was back in Denton before dark.

  When the noon get-together was over, Dee Epstein walked into the hall and bumped into Hugh Griffin—literally.

  Her notebook was knocked free, and Griffin accidentally caught it on his toe. When he lurched backward the notebook was thrown into the air and landed in his outstretched hand. Dee Epstein saw the miraculous catch, but she was trying to keep from dropping her purse and missed the shocked look on Griffin’s face—her brother didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  “No harm done.”

  “Nice catch.” She actually smiled for the first time in weeks.

  “I’ve been practicing.” Griffin was smooth . . . acting as if he’d made the miraculous catch on purpose. “May I apologize for the collision by taking you to lunch one day?”

  The date request caught her off guard, and when she hesitated, he said, “That is, if you’re willing to date a common agnostic.”

  She happened to be looking at her brother when Griffin made the crack about agnostics and noticed the way he was looking at Griffin. She said, “I’d love to.”

  They left it at that, and she said her good-byes.

  Michael Epstein followed Griffin to his office and tapped on the open door. When Griffin turned, Epstein said, “I don’t want you dating my sister.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Simple. You’re a weasel.”

  Griffin’s frown became a smirk. “Dee thinks differently.”

  “What Dee thinks is not the issue here, is it?” Epstein stepped into the room. “I’m her brother, and I won’t let you date her.”

  “You’re fifty pounds short of being able to stop me, squirt.” Griffin’s lip curled, and he took a step toward Epstein. “Go play in the street.”

  Plastic clicked against plastic as Epstein folded his glasses. He was looking for a place to put them when Mann entered the room. “Hi, guys.”

  Epstein thrust the glasses at Mann. “Hold these.”

  Mann ignored his friend and walked past him to Griffin. “You’re a faculty member, Mr. Griffin, and this is ‘conduct unbecoming.’ ”

  “This doesn’t concern you, bro,” said Epstein. “Get out and pull the door shut.”

  Mann said, “Cool it for just a minute.” He closed the door but came back to take a mediator’s stance between the two men. “Mr. Griffin, you just heard this man say he thinks of me as his brother; that makes Miss Epstein related to me. Now, if I were you, I’d rethink my position. Only a fool would allow himself to be drawn into a fight against two men who feel honor bound to protect their sister.”

  “You think I’m scared of you two?” sneered Griffin.

  “You and I both know you are not.” Mann held up a placating hand. “But I’m equally confident you don’t want to cramp your style by ending up with a gap where your front teeth are supposed to be. I suggest a cooling-off period. If we still feel a need to settle this with our fists, we can do it next week over in the gym wearing sixteen-ounce gloves. Either way, here or there, if you start in on one of us, you get both.”

  The black guy was taller than the would-be philosopher by an inch or two, and Griffin processed a mental picture of what he would look like without his front teeth. He pretended to restrain himself and said, “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good enough,” said Mann. He opened the door and escorted a reluctant Epstein into the hall. “Let’s me and you get some fresh air, Supe.”

  The late-September air was good for Epstein. “Where’d you learn to talk like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like some guy from the State Department.”

  “Well, aren’t you the sorry little bigot. Does our two-man Anti-Defamation League allow Jewish members to assume that their black brethren don’t know how to use the King’s English?”

  “Where’d you learn?”

  “I read ‘Improving Your Vocabulary’ in last month’s Reader’s Digest.”

  “Humph.” Epstein went to the next subject. “I didn’t need your help back there.”

  “Right.” Mann stopped and faced his friend. “I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, Supe, but being stupid can cause wear and tear on your face. You and I are good friends, and if you and I fought, you’d try not to hurt me. Griffin’s a coward; he’d mark you up just to prove he’s tough. If you have to fight a coward, you make sure you’re holding the difference.”

  “The difference?”

  “In my house, it’s a sawed-off hoe handle.”
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  “Uncle’s walking cane? You’d use that?”

  “Nope, ’cause I don’t get in fights.”

  “Mmm.” Epstein pointed back over his shoulder. “You say Griffin’s a coward, but you told him you didn’t think he was scared of you.”

  “I told him I didn’t think he was scared of us. I lied . . . and he knew it. He needed an out.”

  “I’m not letting him date Dee.”

  “Boy, you have the IQ of a retarded aardvark.” Mann looked disgusted. “Your sister’s not going to date him.”

  “She as much as said she would.”

  “She won’t.”

  Epstein took thirty seconds to come to the conclusion that his sister was too smart to get hooked by a guy like Griffin. “You’re right.”

  “So, bad boy . . .” Mann was trying not to grin, “what do you plan to tell Poppa?”

  “About what?”

  Mann patted his feisty little brother on the back. “About walking out of your Bible study and threatening to whip up on a non-Christian?”

  Epstein winced. He didn’t have an answer. “What would you do?”

  Mann looked serious. “I’d pray he doesn’t find out.”

  “You think that’s possible?”

  “I sure do, provided God strikes me dumb before I get home.”

  Epstein knew the truth when he heard it, and Mann was laughing loudly enough to be heard by people in downtown Denton.

  Epstein left work early and beat Mann to the house in the oak trees. He related the afternoon’s events to Mose and was only mildly surprised when Mose failed to react.

  They rocked in silence, watching whatever passed in front of their eyes, enjoying the mild weather.

  Epstein warmed himself on the solitude shared with his older friend. The old man balanced the hoe handle across his lap and let his memory walk through sixty-plus years of a well-lighted path—a path leading him directly to this porch he shared with an Israelite boy who wasn’t much bigger than a thick switch. Every step of the black man’s life, large and small, was ordained by Him who calls the stars by name, and as Mose retraced them, he found himself stopping here and there to draw stamina from the wealth of the good times, while using the bad memories to build his resolve.

  He was raised by as godly a man as ever there was . . . he was holding the hoe handle Pap gave him . . . the same one he’d used to put down Ced Pommer before Pommer could murder Virginia Parker, thus preserving the line that gave the world Missy Parker Patterson . . . the resulting trip to south Mississippi came about so God could reveal His hand in the saving of Pap by Capt. Gilmer, thus preserving Mose’s heritage . . . God took Pap and gave Mose a beautiful and godly wife, then He took their son and gave them a special relationship with a spitfire white child, Missy Parker . . . he went to prison for killing one man and met Sam Jones . . . and came home from prison in time to save Missy by killing another . . . God kept him safe while others died, making him wealthy while others did without . . . then, on a wet night in the Delta, the good Lord gave him a ten-year-old boy to raise, the same way he was raised by Pap. Were it not for the obvious day-by-day intervention of God, he would be looking back on a life of no more consequence than a mist droplet in the wide river of history; however . . . if he could believe his heart, and the counsel of those around him, God was making them ready to watch the waters of history abandon their riverbed and carve a new channel. He would be used in the remaining days of his life the same way he’d been used in all the others—to bring glory to the name of his God.

  Finally, Mose said, “Who you reckon needs protectin’, you or Bill?”

  “Well, if he hadn’t been there, Griffin would’ve done a number on me.”

  “How ’bout tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? What happens tomorrow?”

  “We don’t never know, but in that boy’s case”—Mose was pointing toward Denton—“it’s gonna be bad.”

  “Tomorrow? For Bill?”

  “Maybe not the day after today, but soon enough. I been thinkin’ on what the good Lord’s done to bring me to this place, an’ it’s been more than a body can tell. I can’t see no reason for God to have me right where I’m at ’cept to look out for that boy.”

  “But Bill’s grown.” And capable of taking care of himself, thought Epstein.

  “Mm-hmm . . . but he ain’t ready. Folks that knows ’bout things say my boy’s comin’ up on a big go-’round.”

  “How big?” What could happen in the quiet country outside Pilot Hill, Texas?

  “That boy gonna be fightin’ Satan’s demons.”

  “The real devil?” Epstein had read a little about spiritual warfare. The battle between good and evil was going to rage until the second coming of Christ, but Epstein wasn’t expecting to see the front lines.

  “Maybe not the devil hisself . . . but his demons, fo’ sure. Folks what’s rarely wrong think God’s fixin’ to do somethin’.”

  “Well, I’ll be darned.” Epstein eased forward in his chair. Mose Mann did not have an alarmist molecule in his makeup. If the God-fearing old man said his grandson was destined for an encounter with demons, then hell was headed for Pilot Hill—and that meant big trouble for Bill Mann. “That makes Bill the one who’s vulnerable. As long as he refuses to choose God, you have to protect him no matter what.”

  Mose nodded.

  “So . . . if this fight you’re talking about happens . . . if it’s bad,” said Epstein, “you might be in trouble.”

  “I ’magine, but that ain’t what worries me. Keepin’ that boy alive is all I’m here for.”

  “When will it happen?”

  “Don’t make no difference. I just got to make sure I’m ready.”

  “Then count me in.” Epstein sat back in his chair; his mind was made up. God didn’t make mistakes, and if He’d given Epstein a friendship with Bill Mann, it was for a purpose. “I don’t know how much difference I can make, but if I’m around when it starts, I’ll try to help.”

  “I already knowed that.” Mose nodded and smiled. “You took on a big job when you started comin’ out here.”

  “I’m addicted to the cake.”

  They were quiet until Epstein said, “He’s a good man, Uncle.”

  “He is that,” Mose agreed. “He just don’t know it yet.”

  Epstein gave his thoughts to Mose’s words, and Mose napped until the dog left the porch and loped toward the driveway; the sound of a fast-approaching car came seconds later.

  Mose and his visitor watched Mann’s car slide around the long curve, raising dust and slinging gravel.

  “He makes it look easy,” said Epstein.

  “For him, it’s easy as sittin’ in one of these here chairs.”

  “He’s been looking at old Corvettes,” said Epstein.

  “That’d be good. If he got one, he wouldn’t be tryin’ to run it in the ditch.”

  Mann stepped out of the car and visited with the dog first. When he stood up, he said, “I hope y’all didn’t eat all the cake.”

  Epstein watched his black friend follow the dog to the porch and thought, Lord, I just volunteered to be the bodyguard of a guy that’s taller, tougher, and light-years smarter than I am . . . be kind enough to make me worthy of my role.

  Epstein’s angel listened to the prayer and turned to his companions. He has embraced wisdom.

  The tallest of the three nodded. Indeed he has.

  The angel who was entrusted with the guardianship of Bill Mann said, And none too soon.

  On the second Thursday in October, the noon Bible study was breaking up when Bill Mann stuck his head in Patterson’s office door. He was waving a handful of red coupons. “Excuse the interruption . . . tickets for this weekend.”

  “To what?” asked Dee.

  “Another confounded rodeo,” said Missy.

  Mann grinned and explained to Dee, “Rodeo isn’t Missy’s favorite sport, but she suppresses her true feelings so she won’t sound bitter.” He put the tickets
on Patterson’s desk. “Help yourselves.”

  “Are you performing?” asked Dee.

  “Not performing. Riding bulls.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  Mann chuckled and winked at Missy. “Only for mere mortals.”

  He was on his way out of the room before Missy could give him a dirty look.

  Dee watched Missy stick her tongue out at Mann’s back and asked, “One of your favorite people?”

  “Only when he’s pretendin’ to be sane.”

  Dee was examining one of the tickets. “I’ve never been to a rodeo.”

  “Well”—Missy was resigned—“we have to go. You want to come with us?”

  “Sure.”

  She held a pair of the tickets out to Epstein. “Supe?”

  “Thanks. I’m thinking about asking Bill to teach me how to ride,” he joked.

  Missy tried to throw the tickets at him, and they fluttered to the floor. Epstein laughed; Missy didn’t.

  “Was he kidding about how dangerous it is to ride a bull?” Dee asked.

  “Humph,” Missy snorted. “Imagine a head-on collision between two gasoline trucks . . . it’d be safer to walk through the wreckage with a flaming torch than to get on the back of a bull.”

  Mann was jogging past the library, hustling to get in an abbreviated weight workout, when he met Hugh Griffin.

  “What about that cooling-off period?” asked Griffin.

  Mann had decided Griffin was more to be pitied than anything else. He almost smiled at the man. “We’re cool.”

  “Does that we include your tough-acting sidekick?”

  “Tough-acting?”

  “Yeah. Your brother was bluffing.”

  “Not hardly.” Mann shook his head. “To hear my grandfather tell it, Supe’s ‘all wool and a yard wide.’ ”

  Griffin curled his lip. “Sounds quaint, but what does it mean?”

  “It means he’s the real article, Griffin. You might want to take a second look at him.” Mann went on his way and left the pitiable man standing on the sidewalk.