She was a lot older than him, but still worth looking at, and if any one needed a mother figure, that boy did.
The guard’s name was Clyde Briddlewood, and he had headed the modest Davidson College security force since days when the only problem in the world was pranks and drunkenness. Then the school had let women in. It was a bad idea, and he had told everyone he could. Briddlewood had done his best to warn the preoccupied professors as they were hurrying to class, and he had alerted Sam Spencer, the president back then. No one listened. Now Briddlewood had a security force of eight people and three Cushmans. They had radios, guns, and drank coffee with local cops.
Briddlewood dipped Copenhagen snuff, spitting in a Styrofoam cup as Brazil and his girlfriend followed the brick walk toward the Presbyterian church. Briddlewood had always liked that boy and was sorry as heck he had to grow up. He remembered Brazil as a kid, always in a hurry somewhere with his Western Auto tennis racket and plastic bag of bald, dead tennis balls that he’d fished out of the trash or begged off the tennis, coach. Brazil used to share his chewing gum and candy with Briddlewood, and this touched the security guard right down to his boots. The boy didn’t have much and lived with a bad situation. True, Muriel Brazil wasn’t hitting the sauce back then as bad as she did now, but her son had a lousy deal and everyone at Davidson knew it.
What Brazil didn’t know was that a number of people who lived in the college community had plotted behind the scenes for years, and had raised money from wealthy alumni, even dipping into their own wallets to make certain that when Brazil was college age, he was offered an opportunity to rise above his situation. Briddlewood, himself, had put a few bucks in the pot, when he didn’t have much to spare, and lived in a small house far enough away from Lake Norman that he couldn’t see the water but could at least watch the endless parade of trucks hauling boats along his dirt road. He spat again, silently rolling the Cushman closer to the church, keeping his eye on the couple, to make sure they were safe out here in the dark.
“What am I going to do with you?” West was saying to Brazil.
He had his pride and was in a humorless mood.
“For the record, I don’t need you to do a thing for me.”
“Yeah you do. You got serious problems.”
“And you don’t,” he said.
“All you got in your life is an eccentric cat.”
This surprised West. What else had he dug up about her?
“How’d you know about Niles?” she wanted to know.
West was aware they were being stalked by some security guard in a Cushman. He was hanging back in shadows, certain West and Brazil couldn’t see him creeping in the cover of boxwoods and magnolia trees. West couldn’t imagine how boring that job must be.
“I have a lot in my life,” she added.
“What a fantasy,” Brazil said.
“You know what? You’re a total waste of my time.” She meant it.
They walked on, moving away from the campus and cutting through narrow roads where faculty lived in restored homes with cherished lawns and old trees. Brazil used to wander these lanes as a boy, fantasizing about people inside expensive homes, imagining important professors and their nice husbands and wives. Light filled their windows and seemed so warm back then, and sometimes draperies were open and he could see people moving inside, walking across the living room with a drink, sitting in a chair reading, or at a desk working
Brazil’s loneliness was buried out of reach and unnamed. He did not know what to call the hollow hurt that started somewhere in his chest and pressed against his heart like two cold hands. He never cried when the hands pressed, but would tremble violently like a distressed flame when he thought he might lose his tennis match or when he didn’t get an A. Brazil could not watch sad movies, and now and then beauty overwhelmed him, especially live music played by symphonies and string quartets.