fanatical Moros during the Philippine Insurrection. It stopped them too."
When Raylan said, "Hey, I'm doing all the talking," Harry Arno told him no, go on, it was interesting. Harry busy cracking those crab claws and dipping them into butter or a kind of mustardy sauce. The hash browns were good; everything was good here. Harry said to have the Key lime pie after.
Raylan said, "It wasn't too tough at the academy, but if you weren't used to it, it could be stressful. There was one trainee, he threw his suitcase over the fence and was climbing it when they pulled him off and asked him, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'I've had enough, I'm leaving.' They said to him, 'Well, why don't you use the front gate?' This trainee had the feeling he was in prison and to get out he'd have to escape."
"When you were a trainee," Harry Arno asked, sucking on a claw, "did you have that feeling?"
"No, I liked it," Raylan said. "I was in the Marines before that, so it wasn't anything new. I mean physical training." He said, "I had a roommate, though," and had to grin recalling the guy, "who couldn't wait to get out. He'd sit there in the room looking at a map of the United States he had Scotch-taped to the wall? He'd say, This is how I'm going home, this road here and this one,' showing me how he'd get to St. Louis, Missouri."
Harry said, "Is that right?"
You could see he was interested and enjoying himself.
"Then the next time, the guy would ask me what I thought of the route, a different one. He had roads traced with a colored pencil that were like the straightest lines to where he wanted to go, but without taking interstates if they weren't direct routes. You know, that might be longer but would be quicker? It was like he was on the run, using back roads and such."
Harry touched his napkin to his mouth, put it on the table, and said, "Excuse me a minute, Raylan."
Raylan gripped his chair arms, ready to get up.
Harry said, "I'm just going to the men's. I'll be right back." He was up now but paused to smile.
And Raylan knew he was thinking about that time in the Atlanta airport. Raylan grinned back at him.
"It seems to me you said that once before."
Harry raised one hand, the way you might interrupt someone to say good-bye, and walked off around the tables -- just about all of them occupied now -- toward the men's room over on the other side.
Raylan was thinking that when Harry came back he'd tell him the other thing the map reader did. How he went to bed real early every night, around eight, instead of going into town for a few beers. Raylan would come back around midnight and if he was quiet, the roommate would be quiet the next morning when he got up about an hour early. But if Raylan accidentally made any noise at night when he came in, bumped into his locker or knocked something off the desk? The roommate would make the exact same noises the next morning.
He could tell Harry that one. He could tell about guys he knew from his training he ran into in the field.
He'd ask Harry if he did any fishing. Explain how he'd only been in the Miami Marshals Office since last spring and had not done any fishing around here. Growing up he'd fished mostly for catfish in ponds and streams that were contaminated and had hardly any fish in them. Then, instructing at Glynco and living in Brunswick, Georgia, he'd fished in the ocean, out in St. Andrew Sound off Jekyll Island. Ask Harry about bonefishing down in the Keys; he might know.
Now he wondered if Harry had fallen in.
He hadn't shown Harry pictures of his kids yet, his two boys, Ricky, nine, and Randy, three and a half.
If he did, though, he'd have to mention that his wife, Winona, was still in Brunswick with the two boys, but not go into any detail unless Harry asked why they weren't with him. How did you answer that in a few words and not bore him with a long, involved story? Well, you see, Winona's divorcing me. I left to report here, she stayed to sell the house, see if we could
Victoria Christopher Murray
Stefan Petrucha, Ryan Buell