Two Beds

Bats distributed: four. Operational vehicles: one. Lab protocol: pending.

---

"Reservation for one room — two beds please."

The woman at the desk looked at me, then at Tate, then at her screen. The lobby smelled of pine cleaner and the floorboards under the old carpet creaked when I shifted my weight. Tate stood a step behind me with his bag at his feet, one hand in his pocket.

"Sure thing. Two queens?"

"Whatever you've got."

She slid a key card across the counter in a little paper sleeve. "Two-fourteen. Up the stairs and to the right. Will y'all need the parking pass?"

"We will."

"Can we get two keys?" Tate said.

She made him a second card.

We'd been more than eight hours on I-95 north out of Miami, giving Mar-a-Lago a wide berth. Yariel's tank replacement held.

Two-fourteen was small and clean. Two beds with a nightstand between them, a desk under the window, the window onto the parking lot. Tate set his bag on the bed nearest the wall. He put a few things on the nightstand — wallet, a thin paperback, two orange prescription bottles.

We grabbed a quick dinner down the block. I told Tate I wanted to walk for a bit. He took the second key and headed back to the room.

I went down to the squares. The streetlights had come on and the Spanish moss in lamplight went silver against the dark of the live oaks. Most of the benches were empty. I walked the grid.

I let myself in after ten. The room was dark. Tate had his back to me. I brushed my teeth and put the brush in the glass next to his.

I turned off the bathroom light.

---

Friday morning Tate was already dressed when I opened my eyes. He was at the desk with his phone face-up next to a paper cup of motel coffee, scrolling with his index finger.

"Morning."

"You been up a while?"

"A bit."

The light through the curtain was thin. I rolled over to look at my own phone. Nothing from anywhere I needed anything from.

I showered. Made coffee from the drip machine. By ten we were both still in the room — me at the window with my cup, Tate at the desk on his second.

I had been reading about Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room. It was on the same block on Jones Street since 1943 — family-style at communal tables of ten, no menu, whatever the kitchen put in front of you. Line down the sidewalk by eleven.

"Lunch?" I said.

Tate nodded.

We walked.

---

The walk over was four blocks of brick sidewalks and live oak. The trees were old enough to make the hundred-and-seventy-year-old houses look new. Spanish moss hung from the branches everywhere I looked.

The line at Mrs. Wilkes ran past two houses. We took our place. Tate had his hands in his pockets. A couple ahead of us was arguing about whether they should have made a reservation. They had clearly not done this before.

They seat you when there's room. We ended up at the far end of a long communal table with eight people we did not know. A woman across from me with a Southern accent introduced everyone around her by what they had ordered. "I'm fried chicken. He's fried chicken. They're fried chicken." The plates came hot in lazy susans to the middle of the table — fried chicken, mac and cheese, biscuits the size of dinner rolls, butter beans, candied yams, slaw, fried okra, collards.

I had two helpings of the mac. Tate took some chicken and a biscuit and a small portion of butter beans, and slowed about halfway through.

The woman across from us asked Tate what brought us through. He said baseball. She said her grandson played baseball. She said it was such a beautiful game, but kind of slow.

"Yes ma'am."

---

After lunch we walked. Chippewa Square, Madison, Monterey. The squares had been laid out by Oglethorpe in 1733 to a plan he never finished but the city had finished for him. Each square had a statue or a monument and a name and a wrought-iron fence and live oaks overhead. We went down Bull Street toward Forsyth on the grid the way you are supposed to.

In Chippewa, the one with Oglethorpe in bronze with his sword, Tate said: "Sherman burned it all from Atlanta to the sea, but he left Savannah."

"He did," I said. "I'm grateful. Look at it."

The bench was warm beneath me. The moss shifted.

Tate stayed on his feet.

---

My phone buzzed.

I looked at it. I read it twice.

Going with Reed's protocol. We've got two of our labs lined up. Should keep the spend manageable. Will follow up Monday.

I stopped. Turned the screen toward Tate. "Gary."

He read it.

"Two of our labs?" he said.

"Reed wants two from Miami's list," I said.

"Pick it up Monday."

We walked on.

---

Forsyth Park is the big one at the south end of the grid. We made it there by three. The fountain was running. We sat on a bench in the shade of one of the live oaks near the fountain. A man was selling kettle corn out of a cart and a couple of kids were chasing soap bubbles across the grass.

After a few minutes Tate said he was going to walk over to a coffee shop he had seen on the way in. He would catch up.

"Okay."

He went. Halfway across the grass he stopped, got out his phone, and walked on with it held to his ear.

I opened the text thread with Asher.

The last message in the thread was theirs, ten days ago: the field of dreams thing is for olds lol. stay safe. — a.

I typed.

The old city is made of squares, two dozen small green rooms set a few blocks apart, each one held inside live oaks so old they seem to have given up on height and stretched outward instead, their limbs laid low over the grass, heavy with moss. In the morning the light comes down through it in torn ribbons. A breeze lifts the moss and the shadows lift with it, and for a minute the whole square seems to breathe. I had already sat in one of these squares before we reached town, somewhere in my head past Jacksonville. I keep finding things here I want to show you.

I read it back.

I keep finding things here I want to show you.

I could hear their response. for olds lol.

I deleted it.

I tried a shorter version. I read it back. Same voice, fewer words.

I started a third one, just the basics.

We're in Savannah for a couple of days. What day is graduation again?

I read it. I sat with it for a minute. Then I backspaced it, one character at a time, until the screen was blank.

---

Tate came back twenty minutes later with two iced coffees, one half gone. He handed me the other and said his coffee shop had a pretty good iced coffee. I said thanks.

The fountain was running. The bubble kids had gone somewhere else.

---

We ate at a place on Broughton Street that did seafood. Shrimp and grits, blackened catfish. Tate ordered a plate of vegetables he did not finish. The check came. We walked back to the motel in the cooler part of the evening with the streetlights coming on.

Back at the room I sat down at the desk with the notebook I'd had since Knockwood.

Tate took off his shoes and sat on his bed. He had picked up a paperback at a gas station near Brunswick — an Elmore Leonard Western, the cover faded to pink. He opened it about a third of the way in.

I wrote. He read.

After some time Tate said, without looking up from the book: "What's the plan for Atlanta?"

"We'll leave Sunday morning. Beat the heat."

He turned a page, let it flip back. Turned it again. He closed the book over a finger.

"We need to be in Atlanta tomorrow."

I looked up.

"Naomi's grandmother turns ninety. Party's tomorrow night."

I set down the pen.

"You couldn't have mentioned this in Miami?"

He had opened the book back up. His eyes were on the page but he was not reading. "Naomi wanted me there today."

I picked up my phone. Opened the confirmation email. I had booked three nights — Thursday, Friday, Saturday. We were inside the second. I had paid in advance.

The screen went dark in my hand.

Tate did not look up.

---

We were up at six. Tate was already in the lobby with two cups of coffee when I came down with the bags. We checked out at quarter past. The desk woman from Thursday wasn't there.

I-16 west of Savannah is downtown for a few blocks and then it is salt marsh. The light came across the water flat.

"Look at the light on the marsh," I said.

We were past the city line by ten. Tate had his window up.

— Freely