The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [54]
And then he’d quit the club.
“This one know we’re coming in?” I asked. “Because it seems like you caught Mr. Yandle back there a little off guard.” I cut the engine. “And that was a nice job, too, of getting him to volunteer what he didn’t think he was volunteering. A stick to the throat. Who would suspect a thing?”
“Called Dr. Cray this morning,” Unc said, and climbed out. “When I was at Miss Dinah’s. While you were off sleeping and dreaming on a sweet little black girl.”
He knew.
How? What had Tabitha told him?
I climbed out, slammed shut my door. “There a problem with that?”
“Not if you don’t get a skillet to the head by her momma. And don’t think for a minute she won’t try.” He reached in, got the stick. “No momma wants her daughter to marry beneath her. So get to studying for that SAT, Huger.” He nodded, smiled.
“Married!” I said, too loud. “All I did was kiss her!”
“You did?” he said. He stood across the hood from me, looking at me. “I didn’t know that.”
“But you said—”
“I floated an idea at you. Run it up the flagpole, see if someone salutes. Damned if you didn’t salute. In full dress uniform, no less.” He paused, turned for the building. “Thanks for volunteering.”
I watched him start up the steps of the place, tap out the ground with the stick. The steps were a couple feet deep, only rose the width of a brick on each one. He was having trouble, his steps small, a little fearful.
I wanted to make him do it himself, but I quick walked up to him, took his arm.
“Don’t be expecting any tip,” he said, and we started up.
“Brother Cray?” Unc hollered out. He’d pulled open the frosted glass panel, the waiting room empty, nobody in the reception area.
“Back here, you old fart,” came Cray’s answer.
I brought Unc into the office space back there, the walls on either side lined with color-coded files. At the end of the hall was a door standing open, the room it led into dark.
“Keep going,” he called, and I could hear he was chomping down on a cigar, his words squeezed down tight. “Geez, you’d think you were blind or something,” he said, and Unc laughed.
He sat on a roller chair at the far end of the room, in front of him a wall lit up, clipped all the way across X ray after X ray. Then he turned, still in the chair, rolled toward us.
“Brother Cray,” Unc said, and put out his hand.
“Another membership drive?” Cray said, and shook Unc’s hand hard. “You know I won’t come back to your godforsaken Club Med for the blueblood bubba set. I don’t work at the medical university anymore. Got my own digs now, got my own practice. Gave up that teaching stuff when I gave up my membership.”
He stood, took the cigar out, slapped Unc’s shoulder. “Good to see you, Leland.” He was heavy with black hair disappearing on him, a beard, round wire-rimmed glasses, and it seemed strange to see him here, when the only place I’d ever seen him was out to Hungry Neck, him in his camos and orange cap like everybody else.
“You too,” Unc said. “Though it looks like you been puttin’ on a few since last you been down.”
He jabbed at Cray’s middle, made him flinch.
“That’s what happens,” he said, sitting back down and rolling himself back to the lighted wall, “when you don’t get out and exercise regular like I used to down to Hungry Neck Hunt Club.” He reached into his lab coat, pulled out a little thing looked like a monocular, pressed it up against one of the X rays. “What I need’s a strict regimen like the one I used to get out your way: bacon and eggs before daylight, then piling into a pickup, then hopping out, sitting on a stump shivering my butt off, then picked up three hours later for a lunch of fried chicken and biscuits and gravy.” He brought the thing down, moved to the next one. “Used to break a sweat just looking at those piles of bacon.” Then he wheeled around to us again, said, “But enough about me. Tell me, what do you think of me?”
“I think we miss you down there.”
“Maybe you do,” he said, and now he scribbled something on the clipboard, looked up at the next X ray down. “But I know nobody else does.