rang from the wall. She swayed, grabbing for the counter to steady herself, and got a
drawer handle as two blue phones on the wall rang and rang.
Silverware crashed to the floor, and Brazil jumped up from his chair as his mother
managed to grab at her double-vision of the phone and bump it out of its cradle. It
banged against the wall, dangling from a snarled cord. She lunged for it again, almost
falling.
“What?” she slurred into the receiver.
“I was trying to reach Andy Brazil,” West said over the line, after an uncertain pause.
“In his room going.” Mrs. Brazil made drunken typing motions.
“You know. Usual! Thinks he’ll amount to Hemingway, something.”
Mrs. Brazil did not notice her son in the doorway, stricken as she talked on in fractured,
bleary words that could not possibly make sense to anyone. It was a house rule that she
did not answer the phone. Either her son got it or the answering machine did. He
watched in despair, helpless as she humiliated him yet again in life.
“Ginia West,” Mrs. Brazil repeated as she finally noticed two of her sons coming toward her. He took the phone out of her hand.
West’s intention had been merely to confess to Brazil that his story was rather wonderful
and she appreciated it, and didn’t deserve it.
She had not expected this impaired woman to answer, and now West knew it all. She
didn’t tell Brazil a thing other than that she was on her way. This was an order. West had
dealt with all types in her years of police work, and was undaunted by Mrs. Brazil, no
matter how vile, how hateful and hostile the woman was when her son and West put her
in bed and made her drink a lot of water. Mrs. Brazil passed out about five minutes after
West helped her into the bathroom to pee.
West and Brazil went for a walk in darkness broken by an occasional lighted window
from old southern homes along Main Street. Rain was gentle like mist. He had nothing to
say as they drew closer to the Davidson campus, which was quiet this time of year, even
when various camps were in session. A security guard in his Cushman watched the
couple pass, pleased that Andy Brazil might finally have a girlfriend.
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