Chapter 17

Monday is when preachers get their weekend. From Tuesday onward they're visiting their people, working on their sermons, taking phone calls, doing all the little things that make up being a pastor, and then on Sunday preaching - and that might be three or four times if the church is big enough to have multiple services. But Monday they get a break.

The rest of the world doesn't get Monday off. Unless you've got an odd schedule, as do, for instance, the people who stock the shelves at Wal-Mart, you're off Saturday and Sunday, and go back to work Monday. This is so much a part of our culture that even those who've retired still take weekends off.

So it was Monday when Cecelia came to me. I'd finished Jane Eyre and was sitting in the living room with a thick science fiction novel, Revelation Space, when she sat down beside me on the sofa. "Have you," she asked, "thought any further about investigating this matter?"

"All I can come up with is the fact that I don't know who to talk to. An' without that, I ain't got no more chance than the cops do."

"Then my idea may be useful."

I looked at her. "It ain't like you to keep me hangin'."

"I am not sure I am entirely myself right now. We came here to escape from mental assaults, and now I can almost believe that what we left behind is preferable to what we now find ourselves in the midst of. I am not certain that my mind is as completely balanced as I could wish right now." She took a breath. "The idea that I have had, is that you could speak with Colonel Donovan."

I sat looking at her. Finally I said, "You know, that's a thought. I bet he's still in touch with a few people."

"That seems likely. His views have altered, but the patterns of a lifetime do not change utterly, not in a few years."

I thought about Col. Donovan. He was an old man – I wasn't sure how old, but I was sure that he was older than Mama and Daddy. He might be in his 80s or perhaps even his 90s. As far as I knew he'd never been a colonel, but he had spent time in the military – he might even have been an officer. "Colonel" was a courtesy title, something that occasionally happens in the south. There are states which will bestow the honorary title on prominent citizens. Both Harlan Sanders, who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Dave Thomas, who named Wendy's after his daughter, were Kentucky colonels. Col. Donovan's title wasn't anything so official, but everyone called him that, and I didn't even know his first name.

And he'd been a power in the Klan when he was younger. He wasn't talking, and most of those who'd known him in those days were dead, so I didn't know exactly what he'd been involved in, but it wouldn't surprise me if he'd had something to do with both of the cross burnings on Daddy's property when Cecelia was young. And while Leanna had never been buried in corpses, there'd been a couple of lynchings back in the 40s and 50s which he might have had something to do with.

But a few years back he'd asked Daddy to call on him, and had apologized for his past. I hadn't been there – it hadn't happened while we were in town – but Daddy had told us about it, and said that he believed the colonel was sincere in changing his views and in his apology. Cecelia and I know Col. Donovan, though you can't say we we're friends, and Cecelia was right – if there was anyone in the county who both knew people who might have been involved in this latest atrocity, and who might be willing to say something about it, it was the colonel.

I realized that I was still sitting there, the book in my lap, and Cecelia looking at me. "You got a point," I told her.

"You were not here for a moment," she said. "You saw me, but did not observe me; you were here in the flesh, but not mentally."

"No, I was thinking. You think he'll be at home?"

"Darvin, you know as well as I do that he hasn't left his property in years, and rarely even leaves his porch."

"True, true." I looked at my watch. "It ain't but 23 after 8. We could be at his place by 9."

"Indubitably. I assume you wish us to depart at once."

"Might as well. An' here's what I'm thinkin'. If he can come up with anyone to talk to, I'll go ahead an' follow the trail as far as I can. But if he has no names to give us, I'll just figure I ain't got a chance, an' we'll leave the investigation to the cops."

"That is not what I wished to hear, beloved. But it is reasonable. I do not especially desire to hear that which is reasonable right now – what I desire is to have the perpetrators within range of my fists. But I cannot fault you for being reasonable; I can, and do, require myself to use reason to the limits of my capabilities when I am cool, and I can hardly chastise you for doing likewise when I am not cool. I therefore accept your proposal, and shall govern myself in accordance therewith."

"That's more like the speechifyin' woman I married," I said with a grin. "I'll put my boots on, an' we'll go."

Col. Donovan didn't live in the stereotypical southern mansion. In fact, his house was smaller than Mama and Daddy's – only one story, fewer rooms, and smaller ones, unless it was all one big room. I'd never been inside; on the few occasions I'd been there, the colonel had been sitting on the porch.

That's where he was as we came up the long winding driveway. The place had once been a farm, but as Donovan had gotten older he'd farmed less and less, and for the past 20 years or so not at all, or so Cecelia had told me once. At some point he must have had someone dismantle and carry off the outbuildings, because there's never been anything but the house as long as I've known the area.

Col. Donovan waved at us as we got out of the Blazer. If he'd been taller he'd have been huge, but he wasn't any taller than I am, and so he was just a fat old man. Just as he didn't live in the stereotypical mansion, so he never wore the stereotypical white planter's suit – I'd seen him in everything from a regular business suit to worn overalls, and just now he had on a rumpled pair of khaki pants and a faded yellow shirt. He'd more or less combed his thin white hair, but it wasn't really neat and never had been any time I'd seen him. In spite of the excess weight his face was wrinkled and sagging, with a pronounced wattle under his chin where, surely, he'd had a double chin when he was younger. Although he hadn't been out in the fields in years he still had something of a tan – it was probably like my permanent tan, which fades a bit in the winter but never entirely vanishes.