Bridgewater

Bats distributed: four, suppliers visited: one.

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I brought the wagon around just after seven. Tate placed the bags in the back and opened the shotgun door for Naomi. She'd put on gold earrings I hadn't seen the night before, a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled. A paper bag in one hand, still smelling of butter, her phone gripped against the bag with her thumb; a thermos in the other.

"Hold on, I made us a playlist for the road…"

She got in and set the bag on her lap. Tate slid in behind us. I pulled away from the curb. She scanned the dash for a long moment. Then she looked at the headliner, the bats stacked behind her, the cigarette lighter.

"Where do I plug in?"

From the back: "Nowhere."

"Tate finds the games on AM," I said.

"Y'all drive across the country with only AM?"

"It's enough," he said.

She put the phone face-down in the console and turned the dial. A woman singing a hymn came in clear out of somewhere up by Picayune. She left it.

She leaned forward and ran a finger along the crack on the windshield's passenger side. "Looks like a star."

"Gravel coming out of Knockwood," Tate said.

She nodded once and faced forward.

We crossed the Pearl into Mississippi, the hymn still going. After a while Naomi looked back into the cabin.

"Cecil. You take the pills last night?"

"I did."

"One or two?"

"Two."

"Mhm."

She turned back around. I let some miles go by before I asked her about the place we were taking her.

"Royal Reds. Our supplier's winding down. We've been after Theriot a while."

"What's the difference?"

"Couple inches and an extra dollar a pound."

The marsh became pine.

"What's your favorite thing to cook?"

She gave it some thought. "Beef cheek. With marrow. It's a whole day, but when it's right —"

From the back: "Her best is the biscuits."

"Pop, no. Anybody can make biscuits. Those are my grandmother's."

"I've had those. Yours are better."

Naomi turned a little toward me, tucked her legs beneath her. "Your kid headed off to school?"

"Grinnell. End of August."

"Where's that?"

"Iowa."

"Iowa." The word was mostly air.

"But they haven't been answering my texts."

"They'll come around."

She looked back out the window. The hymn had given way to a man preaching.

Past Gulfport the road went into long stretches of pine. The sun was up over the trees on Naomi's side.

"Did you grow up in New Orleans?"

"No. L.A. Summers in Atlanta."

From the back: "Seven years there now."

After a while she reached forward to the dash and picked up the Polaroid Hayden had left there — Sochi turning toward the window, hand up. She looked at it. She set it back exactly where it had been.

We pulled in for fuel just east of Biloxi. Tate said he'd go in for water. The screen door slammed twice behind him.

"Hand me your phone." Naomi held her hand out.

I gave it to her. She typed for a few seconds — cook's fingers, scarred and quick — and handed it back. The contact card was open on the screen. Naomi Bridgewater. Her number underneath.

"You call me if anything happens."

The screen door banged.

"Bridgewater?" I said.

She was looking out her side window. Tate got in with three bottles of water.

---

Bayou La Batre on a Friday at ten is a working town. Boats at the dock, ice trucks, men in white rubber boots.

The address Naomi gave me was a low building on a cul-de-sac off the water. We pulled up. She got her bag.

"Thank you for the ride, Marshall."

Tate got out with her. I could see them through the windshield, her bag at her feet, the two of them nearly eye-level in her low heels. Naomi was talking. Tate had his hands in his pockets, nodding. She glanced through the windshield at me. I looked at the dash. When I looked back, she was raising her hands to his face. Said something with her palms on his cheeks. He held still. He took her hands in his. Said one word. She nodded, seemed to say it back. Their hands released at the same time. She picked up her bag and went inside.

Tate came around to the front. He got in the shotgun seat without a word, adjusted the back a click, and shut the door.

We were back on I-10 east of the bridge when he cracked the foil. Biscuits and ham, still warm. We ate. I said if her biscuits were this good I needed to try that beef cheek.

After a while he reached for a canelé.

"She worked in Paris. About a year and a half."

I waited but he was already eating.

The road east of Mobile is mostly pine. Tate rolled his window down a few inches, then all the way. He set his elbow on the door and let his hand ride the wind.

— Freely