She’d live for months without the virus of the outside world to taint her.
But as she was letting down the top on her ‘sixty-five Mustang convertible, Humes stopped her. She lifted her travel bag into the backseat and stared at his face framed by the purple and green lights of the Magnolia Grand floating in a fake river.
An agriplane buzzed overhead and a stray cloud on a cloudless day shielded the sun.
“What?”
“He has something for you,” Humes said, his gray hair looking like silver against his black skin.
“Not interested.”
“It’s more money than you’ve ever known.”
“Keep talkin’,” Perfect said, checking out her reflection in the glass of an SUV parked behind him. “I’m always open to new ideas.”
Chapter 4
Forty miles outside Memphis, I blew a tire, almost ran over a skin-and-bones mongrel dog, and nearly barreled off Highway 61 and headlong into a fundamentalist Baptist church. But luckily I missed the dog by a snout and came careening to a stop a few feet from the church’s cemetery. It was about noon and dry and hot as I climbed out of my dusty 1970 Bronco; a friend of mine dubbed it the Gray Ghost for its color and phantomlike ability to perform. I quickly began searching in the flatbed among milk crates full of cassettes of field interviews and juke house music for the jack and frequently patched spare. I could only find my Army duffel bag full of T-shirts and jeans and work boots, my case of Hohner harmonicas, and a box set of interviews conducted by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. The tire. No jack.
I took off my blue jean jacket, wiped my now-sweating face, and threw the jacket into the passenger seat. I wore a white T-shit, already smeared with sauce from a barbecue breakfast at Abe’s in Clarksdale, and rolled up my sleeves as I hunted for a greasy jack in the backseat. Finally, I found it and began to work.