Lennox is so shocked he almost loses control of the car. — Jesus, fuck! What’s wrong? He slows down and pulls over on to the hard shoulder. Her screaming abates as she leans into him, forcing him to comfort her.
— I keep seein a face. A man’s face. She looks up him, her features tight and crinkled.
— It’s okay, he says, stiff and awkward as he pats her back, — it’s just a flashback, like a bad dream when you’re awake.
She buries her head in his chest. — Do they ever stop? her muffled voice asks.
— Course they do, he says, his hands now on her shoulders, making her sit up and look at him. — Who did you see? Was it this Clemson guy?
— No … and she straightens and pulls away, wiping a snottered nose on her sheep bag, looking apologetically at him until he dismisses her concern. — I thought it was, but it ain’t.
— Okay. Whoever it was, they won’t hurt you.
— Promise?
— Aye, he smiles, and she tries to return it but fear has frozen her face muscles. He starts up the engine.
They maintain an edgy silence as they eat the miles, content to let sounds coming from afar fill the vehicle. Call-in voices blast out, citizens as proud to demonstrate their intellect in radio’s anonymity as they are to display their stupidity in front of TV cameras. Then Lennox turns the dial and a throbbing hip-hop bass rattles through the Volkswagen, building so steadily that it seems to be propelling the accelerating vehicle. Soon a road sign announces the impending presence of Exit 49.
They step giddily from the car, taking a few seconds to adjust to the abrupt curtailment of velocity, and are walled by the hot, muggy air. The murky darkness is diluting the everyday miracle of the brown and green light that bounces off the great expanse of sawgrass and water. There’s no sign of Ginger and Dolores. The old gas station, a rusted corrugated shack with three pumps, has a moribund neon Coca-Cola sign that pulses sickly in the window. It betrays no sign of life: most likely it kept irregular hours. The stillness is eerie; a pervasive silence, with no songbirds in the trees or cars on the highway. Tianna moves over towards a broken area of fencing that borders the mangrove swamp.
— Don’t go too far from the car, Lennox warns. Four Rivers comes into his mind, probably because the turning for the reservation is nearby.
She moves over and leans on the bodywork of the car, fingering the solitary card. Catching him watching her, she looks up, brushing the hair from her face and says, — I found this card I figured I’d lost. It was on the boat. Hank Aaron. He was from Mobile too, y’know. But I cain’t remember losin it there. I had it when I was last on the boat, and I sorta remember … it was like I was sick … I could see the water. It was like a dream.
The surrounding silence is crumpled by a rustling from the mangrove bushes, followed by the brief, snuffed-out shriek of some animal and a raucous bellow of triumph. Lennox looks nervously to the swamp, then back at her, as if to dismiss it. It heralds a brief cacophony of bird sounds from the dense growth, which settles back into silence. — What do you mean? Like you were on the boat and seasick? he asks, smelling the saltiness in the gathering breeze.
— Like it was on the boat, and it was a dream … but it kinda wasn’t, she says in a dizzying moment of realisation.
Lennox’s pulse quickens and he swallows down more nothingness in his throat. — It was probably just a bad dream.
Tianna is far too eager to agree. Sensing she needs mental space, Lennox falls silent, allowing her to ask him, — Do you ever get bad dreams, Ray? I mean dreams so really, really bad that you just cain’t talk to anybody about em?
Now Lennox is stunned. He looks above. Expects to see dark stone instead of mottled blue. Seconds pass. — Yes, he finally says, his voice wavering and weak. — Yes, I do.
— Would you tell me them?
— Maybe later, pal.
She sweeps her hair from her face again. In the shaft of pale moonlight that filters through the trees behind the fence, she carries the gravity of a spectral prophet. — Y’all promise?
— Aye … Lennox hears his voice hover between a whisper and a gasp. Anxious for a diversion, he gestures to her to pass the baseball card and he reads:
* * *
HANK AARON
(b: February 5, 1934, Mobile, Alabama)
755 home runs in 23 seasons. A record in Major League baseball, he surpassed the legendary Babe Ruth.
Hank Aaron was Mobile’s favorite son. His parents moved south from Selma to work in the shipyards. Originally playing in the Negro Leagues, Aaron remembered how the restaurant staff would break the plates that he and his colleagues had eaten from. His Major League career spanned over two glorious decades, split between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Atlanta Braves.
* * *
Lennox recalls the name. Vaguely remembers reading about some steroid juggernaut’s joyless pursuit of Aaron’s record. — He seems some man. Sort of guy who’d never let anything hold him back. The arseholes who smashed these plates, who told him he was nothing, where are they now? Who cares what they think? He pauses, hands back the card. — You know what I’m saying?
She meets his gaze with a fixed stare of her own. — I guess so.
— Remember that. Always remember that.
He leans into the car to start the engine and fire up the car radio. They listen to Big 105.9 Miami’s classic rock station; Duran Duran’s ‘Is There Something I Should Know’ plays. Then they go on to the bouncy mayhem of a Spanish dance-music channel; fast, intoxicating fun that makes him want a tequila or mojito.
They are both glad of the distraction, but then a sad ballad commences and Tianna speaks again. — Nobody will ever marry me, she says in a tentative sorrow, her brows rising. — Supposin, just supposin, I was older and you was younger, would you marry me, Ray?
Lennox smiles tightly. — You can’t ask me that. You don’t know what I was like when I was younger, and for some reason he has an image of himself in a pair of Falmer jeans, a hooded top, and a long, floppy fringe. And that moustache. That daft, stupid thing they’d all slagged him off for, even in the polis. It had grown in correspondence with the cocaine habit. Trudi had loved it when he’d shaved it off, but he’d instantly regretted it. He felt exposed without it: naked and dirty. A lip dripping with spit.
He’d joined the force a few years after working as an apprentice joiner with a house-panel building firm at Livingston. The vectors of educational opportunity and youthful excitement crossed over on the Police Graduate programme, and he was sent to Heriot-Watt University, sponsored for a BSc in Information Technology. His boyhood mate Les Brodie, along with his plumbing apprenticeship, had taken up with the Hearts casuals as his outlet for the testosterone bubbling up inside him. But the police was a means rather than an end. Lennox had a mission; a buried, ill-defined quest that was pulled into sharper focus in the last few months than ever before.
The copper’s life had been difficult for him. The antisocial loner tag he’d developed at school, then as a young carpenter, seemed intent on relentless pursuit. He was the first of the new breed, the educated cop who saw policework as a bundle of sciences – psychology, sociology, criminology, information technology, forensics and public relations – and incurred the wrath of the old school types, to whom it would always remain a street art. And then there was the isolating nature of police life. One of Ray Lennox’s most excruciating moments came as a rookie on duty at Haymarket Police Station. Les Brodie got pulled in with some other guys after a minor footballing affray. Their eyes met briefly, then the estranged friends both turned away in shame, but not before they’d been witness to the other’s humiliation. Lennox hid back in the office for the rest of shift, squirming with embarrassment, relieved that Brodie had been released when he came in to work the next day.
Now, by the side of the freeway that cuts through the moonlit swamp, Tianna is looking at him in an unsettling expression of coy indulgence. — I’ll bet you was sweet when you was younger.<
br />
— A lot of people would disagree with that, he says gruffly. — Anyway, we don’t know what you’ll be like when you’re older. Maybe you’ll go to college and get a good job and a career, he hopefully speculates, then looks pointedly at her and asks, — What makes you think nobody is going to marry you?
— Vince … then Clemson. Said that if I told anyone what I’d done … what happened, then I’d be ruined for being married.
— You did nothing. It was those bastards who did wrong, not you. He slaps the car bonnet, livid with rage. — You never forget that, he says, — never.
Tianna’s big eyes are contemplative in the silver light, but Lennox knows that his anger is scaring her as much as his words are affirming. Softening his tone, he adds, — When you do think about getting married, and you probably will, it’ll be to a nice guy who loves and respects you.
— Like you love and respect Trudi, right?
— Aye, he gasps.
— Does Trudi have a good job and a career?
— Aye, I suppose she does, I mean, yes, Lennox concedes, weak in the face of his own selfish arrogance. He belittled Trudi’s achievements. She’d done well at Scottish Power, got a couple of promotions, was regarded as successful. He’d got so up himself about his work, bleeding self-importance and radiating contempt for others. He feels regret’s tender ache and if she had been there he would have said sorry, and meant it from the bottom of his heart.
The conversations with Tianna, though minimal, are like bursts of intense fire from an AK47. They leave him full of holes: far more disconcerting than when he talks to victims of sexual abuse as a cop. Here there’s no role to play, no badge to hide behind. But as long as she’s with him she isn’t in the hands of monsters like Dearing, Johnnie and, for all he knows, Chet. He considers the Hank Aaron card.
— When your mum was sick and you went to stay with Starry, did she treat you okay? His head twists as a solitary car tears past on the freeway.
— I guess, says Tianna doubtfully. — But that Johnnie, her brother, he was always round. Always makin dirty talk. I hated it when he came round Momma’s or Starry’s.
— Johnnie is Starry’s brother?
— Uh-huh. I guess I felt for Starry, her boy bein shot dead outside that 7–Eleven n all. But I didn’t like Momma hanging out with her n Johnnie.
He’d detected no resemblance at all between Johnnie and Starry. — What about Lance?
— Lance is a policeman. You sorta think he gotta be a good person, right?
— Right, Lennox says weakly, looking up as the wind rustles in the trees. Where the fuck is Ginger?
And the magazine is back there. It is waiting. Perfect Bride. His calling card: his excuse to go back into that vipers’ nest of nonces. He has all the reasons. It isn’t just about Tianna now. Let them try to stop him. Let them try.
— Do you love Trudi?
That simple question kicks the wind out of him. His head spins. — I know that I used to, he says after a bit, — but sometimes I wonder if our time might be up. It’s … well, we’ve got so much … history. Now, I don’t know if it’s love, or just a certain kind of life we’ve got used to. Sometimes I think …
— What?
— … that it might be time to walk away. It’s not easy.
Then a vision of Trudi fills his head. When they took him to her place after his breakdown in the pub. Again, when she saw the state of him in the tunnel after the funeral: the tears in her eyes. Oh my baby, my Ray, she’d cried. Lennox feels something climb inside of him. — I do love her, he says with a certainty coated in sadness, because what he is really choking on is his own sense of unworthiness, — I always will.
— The worst one that Momma brought back was Vince, Tianna says, straining as she sucks in her breath, cause he told me that he loved me. It was all lies, but I believed it, and it ain’t right to say that to somebody when it ain’t true. She rolls her bottom lip south. — So if you love her, you got to treat her right.
— Yes, Lennox agrees, almost sick with melancholy, — I have to treat her right.
The dancing bushes with their shadows, and the strange sounds from the swamp, drifting in and out of earshot, gnaw at his nerves as they wait at the deserted stop. Before he realises it he’s thinking of his pills again: the capsules, so smooth, sliding down the throat of a man who hates to swallow anything. He recalls his mother shouting at him when he couldn’t eat his stew, the fat on the bits of meat reminding him of snot, the meat reminding him of meat. Keeping it in his mouth, excusing himself and going to the toilet to spit it out or retch it up. Jackie grassing him up, — It’s disgusting, she would say, genuinely revolted. The tired compassion in his father’s eyes, — Just eat some, son. You have to eat. Then his mother rounding on him, rendered witless by his behaviour, — It’s best stewing steak!
Even then he wondered how steak only good enough for stewing could be described as ‘best’.
Another infrequent car passes, and Lennox is at first elated, then paranoid. It’s getting late. Where is Ginger? Perhaps he won’t show. He should have explained, emphasised how crucial it was. Dolores would have said no. She’d think it was a drunken rendezvous.
Unless …
Unless the paedophile cops network ran right across Florida and Ginger was in on it too. The way he’d looked at that young lassie in the strip club.
Get a fucking grip.
Lennox feels his breath catching. He’s snatching at gulps of air again. It’s heavy like it’s full of iron particles, pulverising his lungs. He wants to be away from Tianna. She can’t see him this way. He’s doing her more harm than good.
Then a vehicle slows down and pulls up. Lennox can’t make it out in the soupy darkness of the swamp. It looks like a 4x4. He feels every muscle in his body tense up as it stops a bit away from them. It doesn’t look like Ginger’s motor: it’s Dearing, he’s certain. — Get back in the car, he shouts at Tianna. She complies and he quickly follows. Those windows in the darkness and the shadows cast by the trees; he can see nothing.
Then there’s a rap on the windscreen. — Lennox! What the hell are ye playing at?!
Ginger’s big round face pulls into focus. Tianna gasps in shock, Lennox in relief, as he climbs out. — Ginger! Thank fuck … He wraps his arms around the barrel frame. Ginger is with Dolores. The dog, Braveheart, has jumped out the car behind them and is barking frantically. He is answered in kind by a long, throaty groan coming from behind the dark screen of mangroves.
— Ginger? Dolores asks, smiling in intrigue, before shouting after Braveheart, who is sniffing around the side of the gas station.
— How many fuckin times – Eddie Rogers snaps in annoyance, turning to the retreating Dolores, who is in pursuit of the dog. — Just a joke, hen, he says, then looks back at Lennox. — Sorry we’re late. We had to pick up –
Lennox looks over to see Trudi emerge from the back of the Dodge. She wears a long dark blue skirt and has her hair down. Her vague air of reproach vanishes as he staggers towards her. — Ray …
— I’m sorry, he groans, compelled to close the distance between them and take her in his arms, feeling his own body shake as her thin, sinewy, but python-strong limbs envelop him, her scent seeping through his shut eyelids into his brain. — I had to try and help. I had to get involved. I don’t know why, he says, and repeats, — I don’t know why.
Trudi’s soft voice in his ear, Lennox realising how much he loves her tones, her middle-class Edinburgh habit of enunciating every word. — It wasn’t your fault with Britney Hamil, Ray. It wasn’t your fault.
— Whose fault was it then? And he thinks of the time when he’d gotten suspended from school for flooding a corridor with a fire hose, his distraught mother saying in response to his lame protests, ‘Whose fault was it then if it wasn’t yours?’
— The beast who killed her, Trudi coos, like she is reading a child a bedtime story, — it was his fault.
Now remembering Britney’s mum, Ange
la Hamil, telling him, — It’s okay. You did your best …
Then Ray Lennox, in a terrible honesty, had admitted to that destroyed woman, — I didnae … I made a mistake. I didnae cause I made a wrong judgement about you. I thought … I could have done better! He had her for over three fucking days … I could have saved her.
And Angela’s face was pinched and riddled with pain as she turned away from him. — No, she quietly insisted, — you did your best. Ah kent you really cared aboot Britney fae the start.
He can now hear a small, persistent voice. — What? Tianna says. — What wasn’t your fault?
Guilt leaks from him. He can’t look at the young American girl. If he does he knows he’ll see a Scottish one in her stead. He holds Trudi tighter. — He was scum, he hisses into her slim neck. — He didnae, couldnae, know any better. Tae expect him to be better is to expect him to be the human being he can never be. I was the one who should have known …
— No. You did your job, Ray. You tried to help, Trudi says.
Then she feels a tug on her arm. It’s Tianna. She looks tearfully at Trudi. — Ray helped me, she says softly. Trudi smiles, and puts her arm around the young girl. — He said you were beautiful, Tianna observes, causing Lennox’s face to pain further, as he can’t recall saying anything of the kind.
— Hi, er, Tianna, isn’t it? She looks at the sheep clinging to her back. — I really like your bag.
— Ray helped me, Tianna repeats, thin tears glistening in her eyes. — He helped me.
Lennox feels his throat constricting. Tianna’s face seems to radiate with all the world’s possibilities. She could grow into somebody strong, vivacious and beautiful, or shrink in on herself, pasty and haunted. And she has so little time to decode the cruel puzzle others have malignly made of her life. — It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s okay. This is Ginger and Dol—