“All right, then. But there is one question I been dying to ask: What in hell are you doing back in Eudora?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “I’ve got a little business to tend to.”
“Lawyer business?”
“Just a simple job for the Justice Department. I have to interview a few lawyers in the county, that’s all it is. In the meantime—it’s catfish!” I said.
Pretty soon Miss Fanny came from behind the counter bearing plates of crispy fried fish, sizzling-hot hush puppies, and ice-cold sweet-pickle coleslaw. The first bite was delicious, and every bite after. I asked Miss Fanny what time the place opened for breakfast, and made up my mind never to suffer through another of Maybelle’s breakfasts.
“Hell, I look old, but you still look like a high-school boy, Ben,” said Jacob. “Like you could run ten miles and never even break a sweat.”
“Oh, I did plenty of sweating just riding that bike a dozen blocks,” I said. “It’ll take me a while to get used to this heat again. How you been keeping yourself, Jacob?”
“Well, let me see… you probably heard I turned down the offer to be ambassador to England… and that was right after I passed on the chance to be president of the university up in Tuscaloosa. Well, sir, it was shortly after that I made up my mind that the profession I was most suited for was as a carpenter’s assistant.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Honest work.”
“Yeah, me and Wylie Davis are the men you want to see if you need a new frame for your window screens, you know, or a new roof for your johnny house.”
Then there was silence, a good and acceptable kind of silence—nothing nervous or uncomfortable about it. The kind of quiet that is tolerable only between old friends.
It was Jacob who finally broke it.
“They were good days, Ben. Weren’t they?”
“They were great days.”
“We were friends! Right through it all.”
“The best,” I said. “We were like brothers.”
We clinked our iced-tea glasses. Then Jacob spoke.
“But there is one thing I need to make very clear to you, Ben.”
“What’s that?” I tried to keep the note of concern out of my voice.
“You said we were like brothers?”
“Yeah? That’s what I said.”
“I just need to remind you of something.”
“Well, go ahead, Jacob,” I said.
“I was always the pretty one.”
Chapter 31
ENOUGH!
Enough idle thoughts about my long-ago romance with Elizabeth Begley.
Enough turning over in my mind the painful lack of affection between my father and me, the disgust in his face when he saw me for the first time in six years.
Enough reliving an old friendship like Jacob’s and mine.
Theodore Roosevelt hadn’t sent me to Eudora to take a rickety bicycle ride down memory lane. I had a job to do, and it might even help change history.