Dangerous Book - Episode 35

May 16 Wednesday

Nap time. The game started after a dinner hour during which Billie and Allen ate salad  and a tuna casserole she made from a 1965 copy of The Northport Ladies Auxiliary Cookbook. I ate, what? A tuna sandwich.  

            Thinking about the break-in was making me restless. Unlike Professor Sergeant, I had not stolen anything that required my attention, and my head was a whirl.  I wanted more and I wanted to talk. But I needed to think. After letting Juniper out for a brief spell, I took out my bike, an old Rollins I’d liberated from the garage of a previous apartment, I started up 12^th Street. At University Avenue, I turned left, heading downtown with some notion of edging the river at the bridge to Northport. I had an idea I could get there and back, maybe stop midpoint on the bridge and watch the Black Warrior River slug by.  Instead, I turned right onto the Historic District.

            Tuscaloosa is riddled with historic districts that are each about a block long. Actually, everything from Caplewood to the river is lovely and ample. The streets are wide, the trees tall and the houses built for the tire and paper manufacturers and the university leaders. Department chairs, ancient professors and widows live in them now. Lawyers and a banker or two. Real estate queens and their moms. The young money is in Northport or on the way to Birmingham.

            And there is a condominium or two close to the river where Peter lives.  I wanted to see if he was home. I wanted to surprise him. But I didn’t see him.

            I did see Lura coming out of a unit on the ground floor near his address. I waved to her, she waved back. At Peter’s door I knocked and knocked, but he did not answer.