Chapter 16

Meanwhile Burque's life had gone on. She was coming to church, and seemed to crave the love she found there. She'd sought counseling from the elders, but Jim Garrison had recommended she see a trained rape counselor, and suggested a ministry we support called the Albuquerque Anti-Rape Coalition. So she'd gone there, and it seemed to be helping. At least, she said, she wasn't having nightmares every time she laid down as had been the case at first, and she didn't flinch away from every man she saw.

I didn't get to see her much. I was working full time on the case, at least eight hours a day except Sunday, and even then I put in some time after church and lunch with my family. I hadn't worked so hard on a case in years. It wasn't just that it was personal with me, though it was, but that it was that kind of case. I had to put in the hours – if only on the principle that a leader never asks his people to do anything he's not willing to do himself. I could have been a mere manager, and delegated all the hard work to my employees, but I hadn't liked such people when I'd worked for them back in my younger days, and I wasn't about to go that route now that I was signing the paychecks.

So I ran into Burque at church – usually spotting her Afro before anything else – and reported to her once or twice a week, usually by phone, though I made it a point not to let us forget each other's faces. She had her job, and I was out in the field for hours every day, so all my in-person reports were at her place. At her request – which I understood – we sat out in front of her apartment, on the sidewalk, in a couple of lawn chairs. I knew that it wasn't that she distrusted me, but that the thought of being alone behind a closed door with any man was still more than she could be comfortable with. In my years in law enforcement I've dealt with enough rape victims, even though I've not made a career out of rape cases, that Burque's fear of men didn't surprise me. If I'd had that sort of experience it would have left me with scars too.

The other elders took up the slack that I was leaving. They'd known what my work could require when they'd recommended to the church that I become an elder, and the church had known when they'd voted to appoint me as an elder – at that time I'd been at MJT Christian Fellowship for 15 years. One of the benefits of a plural eldership came out during this case – if I'd been the sole pastor distributing the load would have been difficult if not impossible, but with several other elders it was easy to farm out an appointment here, a walk-in there, a sermon every few weeks.

The evening of the day we'd found out that Cecelia would start her surveillance the next night, we sat on the sofa in the living room. Since Cecelia would be home the next day – dozing mostly, but home – we'd had Letty bring Darlia home, and after a joyful reunion and a supper of fried potatoes, Cecelia's homemade French bread, and pecan pie with ice cream for desert, Darlia had fallen asleep in the window seat with a book open across her stomach – that wouldn't last much longer, not the way she was growing. She was getting too big to fit comfortably there. I'd seen the title of the book when I went to wake her up and send her to bed in her room – Beat to Quarters by C.S. Forester, one of my favorite books. She might still be a child, but she's beginning to enjoy adult books, and I remembered that when I was her age I too was reading above my age. Come to think of it, I might have been 11 or 12 when I first encountered Horatio Hornblower and the Lydia. Cecelia would have been doing the same thing, I suppose, if the poor black school she'd gone to had been able to afford more than the tattered leftovers that Jim Crow had allowed it to gather together. Of course Jim Crow was dead by the time she was in school, but the consequences lingered.

With Darlia tucked in and gently snoring, her hair spread out around her head and down to her waist on the bed, I sat back down beside Cecelia and took her hand. "It's sure good to have her home again, even if it's only for the night."

"It is. But it causes me to question my involvement in this work I've undertaken."

"How so?" I asked.

"I shall phrase it in the form of a question: Am I neglecting her? I feel as though I am."

"You ain't, though."

"Do not, Darvin, discount my feelings in this matter." It was a snap, straight out of her fiery temper.

I opened my mouth to let my own temper loose, and closed it again – forced it closed. I am finally, after years of excellent foot-mouth coordination, learning that sometimes I can do more good if I don't just shoot off every fool thing that comes to the tip of my tongue. Finally I said, "I don't discount your feelings, Cecelia. I'm just saying that you're not neglecting Darlia."

She leaned her head against my shoulder – she'd slid down on the sofa, so that though we're the same height, or nearly so, her head was that low. "I'm sorry, Darvin. I am the one who prides myself in the way my intellect controls my emotions, and yet you have proven more rational. I do not mean to subject you to my storms of feeling, and I know that you're right – or at least I know that I ought to give your statement reasoned consideration."

I grunted. "I ain't all that good at controlling my feelings, C – you know that. I don't rightly know how I managed to shut up this time. But Darlia sure don't seem to feel neglected."

"No, she doesn't. But she's a child."

"A child not much more than a year away from her teens. We've talked before about how she's growin' up fast. Do you realize that in just six years she'll be graduatin' from high school?"

"And we will be just 50 years old – barely that age, since we were born in April and she was born in May."

"Yeah. But we're wanderin'. Lemme see if I can't make some sense here." I thought for a minute. "She's the only kid we got – an only child, though not spoiled, I think. At least we've tried real hard not to spoil her, an' I've wore my hand out on her bottom some days workin' on not spoilin' her. Still, she's our only. An' so she's gotten all our attention, which if we'd had more kids would've had to split. Our love wouldn't, it's not that way, but our attention would have.