By morning I had to choose between the cold store and an appointment made before Daniel disappeared. The Angola visit had taken waiting and arrangements; I could not simply move it to a kinder day. I sat in my pickup outside a filling station, looking at the highway west. I wanted to believe Kirksey McCord Nix could make Mercer listen without my having to confront Mercer myself. That was the temptation. I dressed it up as saving time and turned toward Louisiana.
The miles punished my shoulder. Each rough bridge joint sent a jolt beneath my collar, and changing gears required an awkward reach that drew looks whenever I stopped. I bought coffee instead of breakfast and counted the bills left after helping Ada. At a pay telephone I called the relative sheltering her. Ada came on after a long silence. 'Have you found him?' I said I had found a place worth watching. She asked whether I was watching it. I had no useful answer.
I told her I was trying to get help. 'From somebody who can bring him home?' she asked. A truck pulled up beside the booth, its engine drowning the small sounds on her end. I could have used that noise to pretend I had not heard. Instead I said, 'I don't know.' She told me not to spend Daniel's time making myself feel important. When she hung up, I remained with the receiver against my ear until the operator's recorded voice began.
Nix was incarcerated at Angola; that belongs to his public record. The visit I remember here belongs to this invented account of my own misplaced allegiance. I had carried private correspondence and treasured the recognition it bought me. I had never possessed a reliable measure of what that recognition meant. On the drive I kept arranging Mercer's name into sentences, then taking it out again. Every version asked another man to carry responsibility I had already failed to carry myself.
At the prison I submitted to the waiting, the directions, the surrender of small belongings. A belt buckle had never seemed so personal until somebody else told me where to put it. I sat among people guarding paper sacks and folded hands. Nobody there looked like protection. They looked tired. When my turn came, I stood too quickly and the damaged shoulder pulled me sideways. An attendant pointed me onward. I followed with the careful posture of a man trying not to show what hurt.
Across the institutional separation, Nix watched me settle into place. I will not give him words that belong to neither a record nor my knowledge. What mattered was what I brought there: a nephew missing, a familiar enforcer shutting doors, and the hope that an important acquaintance could turn fear into authority. I laid my good hand flat before me. The other stayed in my lap. Nothing about being recognized made me less responsible for having sent Daniel with my assurance.
I had imagined mentioning Mercer and watching some change occur, some sign that I had reached a stronger current. Sitting there, I understood that I would not know what such a sign meant. I knew my errands, the envelopes I had carried, the courtesies I had mistaken for belonging. I did not know another man's intentions. Asking for intervention would place Daniel inside a bargain whose terms I could not see. I kept the cold store and the missing people out of the visit.
When the allotted time ended, I rose without having sought the thing I had driven there to obtain. My shoulder caught against the chair back, and I had to stop before moving on. There was nothing noble in it. I had wasted a day discovering that I could not borrow certainty. Outside, I retrieved my belongings and stood beside the pickup until my breathing slowed. Then I drove east, rehearsing no messages, carrying no promise that anybody else would settle this for me.
It was dark when I reached Mercer's office. I went there for the keys to a sound company vehicle; my pickup had begun shaking above forty, and I could not afford a breakdown near the cold store. The dispatcher stood behind the half-open door. 'Cal says no vehicles.' I asked him to let me speak to Cal. He shook his head without looking back. Through the opening I saw my usual hook on the key board. It was empty.
I could have pushed the door and made him choose whether to stop me. Instead I stepped away. Beside the wall stood my canvas work bag, a chipped coffee mug, and the raincoat I kept behind the dispatch desk. Somebody had bundled them carefully enough to make the rejection look considerate. I lifted the bag with my good arm. The dispatcher shut the door before I could gather the rest. My belongings were waiting outside Mercer's office.